'Tis the Season

Hello friends!

It's been a while. I've been pretty busy between work and other stuff. And I bet you have too. But here we are now!

I spent this weekend in my college town of Frederick, Maryland visiting friends and professors and former coworkers from my museum days and it's been pretty awesome.

And on top of, like, getting to see all these people who I love a lot, I also got to spend time in my favorite downtown area and shop small businesses, which I don't get a lot of time to do in my normal life because I'm always working and stuff.

Since I got paid the day that I left for my trip, I had plenty to spend on various items from the downtown Frederick area; and since I was in my favorite small town area I didn't feel guilty about using my paycheck on what I was getting (which is a thing I usually feel when I spend money). I also spent less money than what I tend to when I'm shopping online, because when you shop in person, you then have to carry stuff around with you, which is actually pretty inconvenient. But I digress.

So, I went on my usual tour of the downtown Frederick shops: Curious Iguana (bookshop), Dancing Bear (battery-free toy store), Retro Metro (multitude of weird and cool items of varying varieties), Voila (tea shop--sorry to my friend who works at one of the 10 other tea shops...), the Pasta Palette (excellent pasta), the McCutcheon's Factory Store (McCutcheon's is a local apple company and they make all kinds of cool preserves and stuff), and the National Museum of Civil War Medicine gift shop (cause I'm a member and get a discount there and there's always something interesting to pick up).

When I have more time and the things I got aren't all in my trunk 5 blocks away, I'll talk about what I got, but until then I'm just going to stick with a short post about shopping small businesses and supporting the local community, because the people who own small businesses are just that: real actual human beings who get really excited when you buy stuff from them instead of going to a big retail store. Also small businesses usually have much cooler stuff than big retailers because the people who own small businesses put their own personality into their businesses and so it's like a little piece of them that they're putting out there for others to enjoy, and that's a really cool and brave thing to do.

I also got to hang out with some of my former professors, as there was a party in one of their apartments on Friday night that I went to with the friends I was staying with, and another at another's house tonight, so that was really cool. They're all really great people, and I was planning to visit them at the school before leaving tomorrow anyway, but getting to see them outside of the school environment was like a real treat.

And now I'm getting ready for some good sleep, 'cause it's been a long weekend and I ended up staying out way past my bedtime on both Friday and Saturday, so I'm going to go to sleep at a decent hour (meaning one that is actually followed by a PM instead of an AM) tonight, and I'll post more tomorrow or the next day once I get settled back down in Richmond.

xx,

Sienna

The Fierce Feminist