The Bookstores

Pretty day today... not as warm as it could have/should have been, but it wasn't freezing either. A light blazer was all we needed, but I still can't do without the silk camisole underneath a sweater, and a scarf around my neck. This too shall pass. Summery weather can't be too far away now.

We were thinking of driving to one of the gourmet food markets downtown, but then we thought again. Did we really want to spend an hour or more driving down there, then possibly coming home with just a few items after driving more than an hour to get home? So we didn't go. I suggested we browse around the two local bookstores.... Barnes & Noble, and Half-Price Books. So that's what we did.

Always something interesting in each place. In Barnes & Noble, I found four little St. Patty's Day gifts-- "The Four-Leaf Clover Kit." Cute little box wrapped in cellophane, with a little booklet inside on the history of the shamrock, and a planting pod filled with clover seeds that you plant right in the bottom of the box. Cute gift for the favor bags for our St. Patty's Day lunch, so I bought one for K and B, one for R and C, one for J, and one for us. (I will have to hide the little clover-box on a high window sill to keep it away from our cats after I plant the seeds.)

At Half-Price Books, I found eight packages of Mary Engelbreit stationery decorated with her "Queen of Everything" design. Perfect for tea party gifts, because I have invitation cards in the shape of a queen's diamond tiara. I've been wanting to have another tea party since the one I did the year before last.... just never got around to it because we were doing too many other things. Between the tiara invitations, the "Queen of Everything" stationary, and the other tea gifts in my party closet, I am all set for a tea party for eight.

While we were in Barnes & Noble, we stopped in at the Starbucks there to use the rest of our gift certificates that R and C gave us for Christmas. They had a slice of carrot cake, so we tried that, and my husband got an iced green tea... the small size of that was two dollars. Amazing what they can charge for flavored water. While my husband was shaking his head at the price, I was thinking that buying stock in the Starbucks company wouldn't be a bad idea.

I also bought an interesting book in Barnes & Noble.... "Praying for Gil Hodges: A Memoir of the 1955 World Series and One Family's Love of the Brooklyn Dodgers," by Thomas Oliphant. The story sounds good, and the subject is one that I've read about before... families in the 1950s with baseball as a staple in their lives. So that book is on my to-be-read pile, which isn't so high as it has been in the past. I plan to stop by the library tomorrow for a look-see at their books-for-sale room, so the pile might just be growing a little higher.

Our friend and neighbor B stopped by with four slices of his homemade chocolate cake. He was at our Valentine's Charades party, and he brought a yellow cake with chocolate icing for the potluck dinner. It was very good, but not as good as his chocolate cakes, which are the best I've tasted since my Aunt Dolly's chocolate cakes. B took one bite of that yellow cake at the party and told me that he didn't like it as much as his chocolate cake recipe, and he said he'd make a chocolate one and bring it by to us. I told him he didn't have to do that... I didn't want a whole chocolate cake in this house-- too much temptation. But when he called tonight to bring it by, I couldn't say no. I was happy to see that he only brought over part of the cake... we asked him to stay and have tea with us, but he was on his way to Kroger. Nice man... great baker.... we've had him to dinner a few times, in-between the parties. His wife passed away a few years ago so he lives alone with his dog and two cats, and all those "Cake Doctor" books he buys for the chocolate cake recipes. I have to admit that I did buy my own copy of The Cake Doctor, but I haven't made a single cake because I know I'd be sitting here eating it till every crumb was gone.