I left the World-Wide-Web to venture out into the real world. Twelve hours. Twelve measly hours and Van der Leun has three new posts. That’s on top of the three new ones I saw this morning which I barely had time to glance at before we left The Farm to make our way to the airport, and then up to Oxford. Oxford, Mississippi.

Sheeze. Stuff happens when I’m not looking.

Oxford is still Oxford, by the way. Big Bad Breakfast is still BBB (skip the chicken waffle, that place in Meridian has better; Mr. Big Food’s oyster scramble was delish). Ajax is Ajax. Had the roast beef w/gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. Still amazes me that they continue to ask if I want gravy on those potatoes, after I’ve ordered the roast beef with gravy. It’s Ajax in Oxford, Mississippi. Of course I want gravy!

Though there was one thing of note.

I’ve seen more than one look of amazement on more than one face which gazed upon the stained glass in Ventress Hall, so I skipped the tour of Ole Miss campus Mr. Big Food gave the Guest Speaker, and instead went to wander around Office Depot (never been in OD in Oxford, saddest OD I’ve ever been in), Marshall’s, and Home Depot. I was looking forward to looking over the “original price / our price” homemaking offerings at Marshall’s. I’m a bit behind my Book Dusting / Spring Cleaning schedule (too much time on the World-Wide-Web? No!). Nothing like a new dining room tablecloth to light a fire under a Spring Cleaning homemaker!

[Aside. I’m certain the Toxic among you have similar motivational instruments. I did linger a bit too long in front of the Makita shelves at Home Depot. But projects requiring Makita have a much lower priority than current projects.]

What would I find? A new tablecloth or runner– even for the breakfast table! New napkins? A new tray for my new tray cabinet? Or better yet, the perfect– what?– perfect lighthearted accessory or cloth to adorn the top of my new tray cabinet.

What did I find? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Say it again. Not as in, Marshall’s had little that interested me. But in nothing. There were no tablecloths– at all– let alone any of that other froofroo Oxford-is-the-cultural-capital-of-Mississippi-and-are-we-not-such-gracious-Southern-Homemakers?-stuff and surely Marshall’s is aware of this market. Nothing.

[Aside. This– my hyphenated stream of conscience– is a cultural tidbit that means nothing to anyone outside of Northern Mississippi, but it is interesting. I’m thinking about this.]

Sure. I found a few items of a practical nature that we needed. Some glasses– ordinary but nice glasses, $5.99 for four– that were better quality than what I find at Fred’s or Dollar General. But certainly nothing that would inspire motivation.

And this, right here boys & girls, is why you do NOT throw out everything you’ve not used in the last year. Because it occurs to you that you– needing inspiration to motivate, as you do, to get moving on the prettification of your home– could just set up the board in front of the television on Saturday afternoon and go shopping for inspiration in your ironing basket.

The ultimate goal of this Spring Cleaning exercise is, of course, since cleaning goes top to bottom, beautiful floors. So I was happy to discover that Home Depot had a reasonable price on the jumbo sized jugs of my preferred hardwood floor cleaner / shine. Strangely motivational. Especially after I looked at that link.

Right. The talk was about how the standard H.M. model of memory was wrong. Interesting. Really. It was. I hadn’t intended to go, but I ran out of things to do in Oxford.

Hadn’t intended to go to the Guest Speaker’s talk tomorrow– hadn’t intended to go today but Marshall’s failed me– but he let it slip at the end that “you need a theory to interpret data.” This is true in a narrow sense of both the data set and the theory. But it is not true when interpreting Big Data (which I understand as ‘metadata’) which is his target tomorrow. I called it “Theory-laden Data Analysis Exploration.” And I think that’s what it is. But we’ll see.