It's been a quick week, and I've been tired for most of it. There've been too many hours at work, too many loose ends to take care of before I finally buy the house on Monday. That's the official day now.

It annoys me — and annoys my brother's anxious fiancee even more — that I won't be able to move all my stuff in immediately because of all the work that needs to be done on the house, but I'm planning to spend this weekend packing and (if all goes well at closing) much of next week repairing the house and getting settled in. The best part about this move will be not having to do it again in a couple years.

In other news, I just got back from a week in Bonita Springs with my family (except for Matt, who'll be in Florida while I'm moving out of his place). I didn't do anything particularly exciting, but it was warm and relaxing down there and that was all I needed.

We ate out for dinner every night — I'm trying to eat only "happy meat" at least until Lent is over, so I had a lot of shrimp and stone crab and grouper — but during the day everyone prettymuch did their own thing.

My thing was hanging out by the pool and reading: I must have read at least 3,000 pages last week, all of it sci-fi. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was pretty good, but I was only about five pages into Dan Simmons' The Hollow Man before I remembered why I'd never bother to finish the Hyperion Cantos.

When I wasn't reading I was usually either biking around while listening to podcasts, or wandering the nearby outdoor mall. The World Market store there had cool furniture and imported beer, although I only looked longingly at both offerings. Neither was worth carting all the way home.

On Tuesday or Wednesday of last week we saw The Watchmen, the story to which I only vaguely remembered from when I read it seven or eight years ago. Apparently there was a squid? And some stuff about a boat, which I'm sure I skipped over.

Anyways, I thought Rorschach was extremely well done and that's all I wanted. I can't remember where I heard it, but I like the idea that geeks should see the movie as an accessory to the graphic novel rather than an adaptation.

My littlest brother Josh left on Friday and my mom arrived late that night, so on Saturday we hit up a garden center and two flea markets in nearby Fort Myers.

There was a lot of cool stuff at the garden center (I've been thinking about getting a tropical for the bathroom), but I didn't see lemon verbena or miracle fruit. I might have to go to the seed catalog for some lemon verbena this year if I can't find a plant. After killing my last one and not being able to find another place in Minnesota that has them, I consider finding and growing lemon verbena a personal challenge.

Fleamasters, the second flea market we went to, was bustling with tourists and stocked with an incredible variety of cheap merchandise. It was like the Minnesota State Fair — without the gouging or the impassible crowds. I got some (happy meat–hypocritical) leather belts and an old book on growing herbs, and managed to purchase a neat German goblet at one of the garage sale booths just before the whole place shut down. St. Paul garage sales are up there with sandals on the list of things I'm looking forward to this spring.

I really like the idea that I left for Florida for a week and almost all the snow melted while I was gone and we're not going to have any more until November. Yeah, let's do that.