Thursday Musings

I woke up in a VERY bad mood around 6:20am this morning. I do not know what woke me up. I believe the cat was clawing my leg or something. When I fell asleep last night, our smallest cat Nox was curled up between my legs (getting just a bit too personal with me honestly). Apparently she stayed down by my legs all night. I think she was resting her claws on my leg and so I woke up. I was being overcrowded by Grim (the dog) on one side, DH on the other, and the cat in my leg space. On top of that, I had a headache, was over heating, and was VERY tired, and therefore not wanting to think about the fact I was supposed to get up in a half hour. After trying to get comfortable despite the cat for a few minutes I pulled her up out of the covers and that resolved the problem quickly. Except the headache. And the overheating. Very luckily for me, despite my horrendous mood at 6:20am, and then again at 6:45 when I actually had to get up, once I was up and showered things felt much better.

The class I taught this morning went very well. We are moving out of theory, and more into case studies, starting with The Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, S. Korea, and Taiwan). Of course we had to take care of a bit more theory in order to discuss the cases- mainly the difference between import substitution industrialization and export oriented industrialization. My class was very interested in how exchange rates work (pegged versus floating, undervaluing and overvaluing, the declining value of the dollar, etc). We ended up talking a lot more about how exchange rates work and the position the U.S. is in right now then we did South East Asia, but we can get to that next time. Eh?

Now I am waiting for a friend to be ready to go to lunch. I have been thinking a lot about what exactly friendship is, and more significantly, why we make the friends we do, and what different types of friends there are, and why friendships end. I was going to write about it in the entry, but I started and decided that its worth of its own post at some point when I have more time to write it well. So, instead I will move on to something much more trivial.

A lot of people are talking about new cars in my blogging world at the moment. While a new car would be delightful, its really pretty low on my priority list. My car is mostly something that gets me from place to place, its relatively reliable and gets good gas mileage, so why would I want to replace it? That said, I can't help but occasionally think about what car I would want if I were to get a new one. Even in my dream cars I tend to be overly practical. I would love to have a Toyota Camry, or the cute little Yaris, though I clearly prefer the 2008 Camry to their current model, I think they sort of wrecked it with the redesign. I like the curvy little squat cars, not the lankier sleeker varieties. I also am a big fan of the new Toyota Vanza. Yes. It being featured on Top Chef last night worked on me. (Speaking of which, I was very sad to see Fabio go, he was SO entertaining. I think they should give him his own cooking show, he is MADE for TV.) I wish the website had more pictures of the interior though. The nice thing about a station wagon or small SUV is that we could throw Grim in the back easier, or carry Grim and extra people without worrying about her sitting on them.

DH values cars a lot more highly than I do, despite not in any way being a "car guy". He likes the idea of driving around a nice, fast car. The strange part is he does not like driving all that much. LOL. Anyways, if I had enough frivolous income to buy a frivolous car, I would much rather put it towards things like home improvements, big trips, and a cleaning service.

But, its all a moot point. I do not expect to buy a new car or hire a cleaning service for quite sometime!