~Sunday~ Two of the visiting South African Fellows, who are really ladies, were going to church this morning with their American hosts. The best Xolani got on that front was listening to Amazing Grace–A Country Salute to Gospel, Vol. 1, playing on my Bose speaker from my iPod.
When I got up he had started a load of laundry, and I took that as an affirmation that he is getting more acculturated and feeling “at home” in my place. I mentioned about some laundry closet door knob replacements I’ve had for about 6 months now, but still haven’t replaced, and a little while later, he told me that the screws that came with the new knobs are not long enough to go through the door and into the knobs. I appreciated his thoughtfulness in checking it out and put “new screws” on my shopping list.
After Xolani finished his laundry, and I caught up my blog a bit, we rode back out to Crossroads Plaza to exchange his shoes, which turned out to be one size too small. While changing from my house clothes into my going out clothes, I sat down on my bed to put on my shoes, feeling something in my butt while simultaneously hearing the right lens of my glasses pop out of the frames.
We stopped by Cary Towne Center, where I ran into LensCrafters for a quick (free) fix. Coming out of there, I found Xolani in a store buying cuff links. Finishing up with that, we headed to Kohl’s.
There was a little bit of drama exchanging his shoes at Kohl’s in that there was no one working in shoes, and after waiting a tad too long for a slow-moving saleslady to get to the shoe department, she had trouble finding the box with the other shoe in it for us. It turned out that the only pair in Xolani’s size was the one on display, and the other one was supposed to be in a “specially-marked box in the back.” She eventually found it and we were good to go.
On the way back, I dropped Xolani off at Duma’s place, where they were going to start working on presentations that they each have to give in a few weeks, when they leave Raleigh and go to Washington, DC for a few days.
At home, I worked on homework, creating a way, way overdue blog entry for my Social Media and Technical Communication class. I finished that up just in time to run back to Duma’s to pick up Xolani, and then after a quick shower and change, I drove over to Joe’s.
He drove us to Bonefish at North Hills, where we met four women he works with: Kathy (an absolute stitch), Sarah, Rhonda, and Linda. Although the place is way too expensive to frequent often, I loved everything I had, which included some of Joe’s calamari appetizer and my meal, which was the “Deluxe Mixed Grill,” which I “upgraded,” replacing the sirloin with filet mignon. It also came with shrimp (2-3) and scallops (2-3) and the most delicious potatoes au gratin I think I’ve ever had. I had one bite of Kathy’s crème brûlée and a few bites of Linda’s chocolate cake à la mode. Outstanding. All of it.
At home before doing several hours of homework, which most consisted of catching up on the blogs of everyone in my group (in class), both reading them and commenting on them, I invested 12 minutes on this TED talk brought to my attention from Salon. It explores four things about science that most of us don’t know we don’t know:
- A little seed weighs next to nothing but a tree weighs a lot. From where does the tree get the stuff that makes up a wooden desk?
- Can you light a little torch-bulb with a battery, a bulb, and one piece of wire?
- Why is it hotter in summer than winter?
- Could you scribble a plan diagram of the solar system showing the shape of the planets’ orbits?