Instead of writing an open letter to my neighbor, whose garbage I am tired of seeing stacked up in front of his house and strewn about the alley, I decided to think about positive things:

1) I decided that it was important I get some new flats. I found a pair on Zappos that after some careful consideration I decided I needed. I ordered them Wednesday and they came on Thursday. Sometimes I think Zappos cares about my happiness more than anyone I know.

2) I found a dress online for a crazy reduced price at Nordstrom. I pondered for a while whether I actually needed this dress and then decided I did, only to find that during my stupid reflection time the dress became unavailable. I logged into the customer service chat to bitch about it and within 5 minutes a salesperson in California who had the dress in stock called me. Granted, she thought Chicago was a state but who cares.

3) With the tiny bit of money I had left I went out to dinner with some girlfriends on Saturday to this place Hot Chocolate. Our waiter was extremely nice, apologizing for the wait we had before being seated and generally being very friendly and helpful and cool, to the point where I felt bad for not ordering the specials he seemed so excited about. He did highly recommend this one pear dessert which I ordered, and it genuinely seemed to please him that I went for that as opposed to the restaurant's more famous chocolate offerings. When the bill came, he wrote "Lovely!" on it. "What's that for?" my friend Julie asked and I said "Obviously, he's talking about us," jokingly. I asked him, though, just to be clear, what he meant and he said "Oh, I just thought you guys were lovely" and I said "That's what I thought!" I'm sure the fact that we hung around and ordered a lot of food and wine didn't influence his opinion at all but still, he was very nice.

You're welcome, by the way, America, for the way I've been stimulating your economy lately.