I awoke around 3:30 and couldn't get back to sleep. I got out of bed around 5:10, then worked up two blog entries. Then I continued downselecting and assigning final file names to images I took in Alaska last year. I had breakfast after J started stirring around 7:30, then went back to downselecting and renaming images from Alaska. We left at 11:30 in the Jeep.

We went to the Post Office on the north side of Truth or Consequences at 11:55 to pick up our mail. It wasn't at that post office — it was at the downtown post office instead.

We went to the Post Office in downtown Truth or Consequences at 12:05 to pick up our mail.

We went to Cafe BellaLuca in Truth or Consequences around 12:10 for lunch. I had the Pasta of the Day (Fra Diavolo with sausage) and J got soup (eggplant and kalamata olive) and a sandwich (Muffaletta). The pasta was tasty, and J really loved the soup. We split a Chocolate Decadence ("Rich and dense flourless chocolate cake with whipped cream, raspberry coulis and a macerated berry blend") for dessert, and "macerated" sounded odd to me — I hoped they hadn't used a Flojet Macerator Pump. :)

We went to Ivan's Barbershop in Truth or Consequences so I could get a haircut. I don't like to have "strangers" cut it, but I didn't get it cut before we left Parker, Colorado, where my usual barber is, and my hair was really bothering me. Ivan did a good job, but shortened it more than I wanted. We left around 1:25.

We went to the Bullock's grocery store at 1:30. It was our first time shopping at this old store in the downtown area, and neither of us liked it. It was small, crowded, and on the dirty side. They did have some interesting things for sale though. J got some Brill 'Nana Crème Filling to use for a banana cream pie, I got a box of Dr. Oetker Tiramisu mix, and we both got a box of Dare Maple Leaf Creme Cookies. Dr. Oetker was mentioned many times by my parents when I was growing up. My father did post-graduate work at Philipps-Universität in Marburg, Germany, for 13 months, and they had fond memories of Dr. Oetker puddingpulver — the German equivalent of Jell-O instant pudding. I was leery of the Dr. Oetker Tiramisu mix when J pointed it out, but I couldn't resist after reading the instructions and holding a genuine Dr. Oetker product in my hands. Our friend Andy Baird had given us a few of the Dare Maple Leaf Creme Cookies when we arrived, and they were delicious. We left around 2:10.

We returned to the RV around 2:40. I cleaned up my hair (vacuumed and combed it out), and it was still bothering me so I took a shower so I could wash it. Then I went through my mail and took care of some things.

I looked into sniper services for eBay. "Sniper" in this context refers to submitting a last-minute bid in order to avoid bidding wars. Sniper services provide a way to specify your maximum bid, and then a few seconds before the eBay auction ends, it submits it just like you were logged into eBay directly. I've tried submitting last-minute bids on my own, and have missed some items because of slow response from eBay or our network connection, and I've missed others because I was busy working on something else and returned to eBay too late to bid on a item. I ended up trying Gixen because it's a free service and someone has written a script to be used with FireFox that adds a link to "Snipe this item" through Gixen on the eBay auction page. I've been looking for some items to buy on eBay to use up my eBay Bucks before they expire in February, and I'll use Gixen to try to get them at a better price.

Then I looked into Tiramisu recipes to compare with the mix by Dr. Oetker. The Simple Tiramisu recipe on Cooking For Engineers looks like a good one to make it from scratch. J's daughter E introduced me to the Cooking For Engineers site, and I was intrigued by the way he writes his recipes — they're unlike anything I had ever seen before, and they made sense to this former engineer. If you're a geek, or if you're into programming, then you'll appreciate the comment made by a visitor on the Simple Tiramisu recipe — search for "That's a great recipe!" on that page. :)

We had dinner of lunch stuff around 6:20 because we had had such a large lunch.

We went over to our friend Andy Baird's RV at 7:00 to watch Julie & Julia on DVD. It was a great movie about Julie, a New Yorker who wrote a blog about making all of the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and Julia Child while she was writing her book. Meryl Streep did a fantastic job portraying Julia Child, and seeing someone else blog was interesting.

We returned to our RV around 10:00, and I did some computer work before going to bed.