Another sleepy morning. Not much new there. For some reason I just am not sleeping well lately, and I keep waking up way too early. Today wasn't as bad as yesterday's 5:45 a.m. wakeup, but I still wouldn't mind actually sleeping until my alarm goes off. It's not as though I am waking up because my body's done sleeping - I just wake up and am still tired. Grr.

I seem to have conquered the wandering gauge problem with the Topas yarn. At Stitch-n-Bitch last night I managed to get it to 5 stitches per inch on a #6 needle, and the swatch looked nice enough to start on Bonne Marie's Boat Neck Shell. I'm doing it in stripes of the green and canteloupe, approximately 2" in width. I'm keeping careful track of how many rows I do in each color, so that I can reproduce it exactly and match up the stripes when I finish. Let's hope it works. I'm just a few rows into the second stripe, and the colors look so pretty together! I'll take a picture tonight.

Going to pick up my new sunglasses at lunchtime today. Yoon totally hooked me up, vision-wise. When I saw her 2 weeks ago, I got a year's supply of (2-week disposable) contacts at cost (100 bucks), plus there's a $30 rebate on them. And I got really great prescription sunglasses - cool purple-y Calvin Klein plastic frames (with big sidepieces to block out the sun from my delicate little eyes) with polarized lenses and anti-scratch coating for 95 bucks. The frames alone list for around $200, without the prescription lenses, so this is obviously a fantastic deal! I love having prescription sunglasses, and haven't had a pair in years. They are so much better than the little sunglass clips that go on regular glasses.

I also want a new pair of non-prescription sunglasses, since the ones I have are like 5 years old and scratched. Now that I am wearing my contacts at least as often as my glasses, it's kind of important. I wanted these Persol glasses (#2607) I saw at Sunglass Hut, but they were $140 bucks there. I found them online (obviously) for much less - $90, but when I ordered, the guy called and said they would have to ship them from Italy and it would take 5 weeks. At the time, my trip was 6 weeks away, so I told him I'd be in Italy soon, and he told me I could get them even cheaper there. So, hopefully some nice shades will be one souvenir of this trip.