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a small Aldi accident
For Reasons, once a week I am stuck in an Aldi for approximately 90 minutes. Aldi, for those who are not familiar with it, is a German grocery chain that also carry Stuff. The Stuff changes twice a week, and covers a wide range of Possible Things You Never Knew You Needed, or sometimes, Things You Really Needed And Can Get Here At A Decent Quality And Fairly Affordable Price.
Normally I’m fairly brave about this situation and do not come home with Stuff, but I had a small Aldi (smAldi?) accident this week.
See, there was only one ultrasound jewelry cleaner left, and I’ve been thinking about getting one for ages, and, well, if I didn’t get it then clearly I wasn’t going to be able to, right? Right. So I had to.
In case you were wondering, my earrings are (after three rounds in the cleaner, and some scrubbing with a toothbrush) *very* sparkly. (They had not been cleaned in a very long time. We will not discuss it further.)
The Cute Yarn: there was only one package of this and someone had opened it and it in fact only had 4 of the skeins in it, possibly not even all 4 colors, but I found the others randomly distributed through the rest of the two bins the other (non “bright” yarn) packages were in, and I thought it would make a brilliant color-block scarf to go with the AMAZING wool coat that I, uh, do not fit in.
(In my defense, I ordered the coat from the States & was genuinely trying to buy it to fit me as I am, not as I would like to be, but I forgot sizes in the States run smaller, so…it’s too small. But not so much too small that I couldn’t fit into it if I did get to where I would like to be, so I kept it as #Goals. Plus sending it back would have cost a lot.)
There was also less cute but very handsome denim yarn that I didn’t take a picture of, but there was ALSO *DIFFERENT* cute yarn for making into silly hats, and…I was weak.
I don’t even knit that much, guys. *grimaces* And, like,yeah, I get that collecting yarn and knitting are two different hobbies, and in my defense I have a pretty small yarn stash (even if you include what I inherited from my mom, it’s not that big), but…it was really cute and suggested Specific Projects which seemed within my skill set.
Not the denim yarn, though. It had a Sekrit Hidden Patten which turned out to be for a shawl that’s way out of my pay grade. But who knows, maybe I’ll either learn, or decide on something else to do with it. :)
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bookstore accidents galore
Every time we’ve gone into a bookstore here we’ve come out with piles of books. Today I picked up Kari Sperring’s LIVING WITH GHOSTS; a couple days ago I got Ursula Vernon’s 2nd DRAGONBREATH book and Ted picked up DB Jackson’s THIEFTAKER. Yes, everything we’ve bought on this trip, except at the used bookstore, has been by people we knew. :)
And at the used bookstore, I got 3 of the Starbridge novels I foolishly decided to get rid of last year because I knew I was going to buy them digitally and thought I didn’t need the hard copies anymore. I have been regretting it since, so upon seeing the books I got ’em. And I got a few cozy mysteries, but restrained myself manfully and *only* got ones where I could find the first book in the series, so I put several back. *looks noble*
We may have to pack an entire box of books to mail home, though, because jeez, bookstore accidents galore.
We also brought books *to* the used bookstore, and ended up with $100 in credit ($20 of which we, and by “we” I mostly mean “I”, immediately spent), so it appears we’ll be forced to come back to Fairbanks sometime to finish spending that. :)
In other news:
– my mother-in-law scared up four complete sets of TAKE A CHANCE for me, so now I’ve got more to send out. #determined
– I found a book on how to braid rugs at the used bookstore. I got it, because as I said to Ted, “I read about braiding rugs in the Laura Ingalls books, and I always wanted to try it,” and the girl behind the counter, with whom I had already bonded over…some other topic while I was giving them our old books to sort through…said, “Me too! So I tried doing it just by myself (“So did I!” I proclaimed) but it turned out to be something I had to look up to learn how to do, so I did and now I’m working on one! I don’t know how they ever had enough cloth back then, it takes TONS!” So clearly she and I are kindred spirits. That was neat. :)
– I have read 6 books, seen 4 movies in the theatre, and written 20,000 words while on holiday. I feel pretty good about this.
– We went through boxes of Stuff again (as might be guessed by the books we decided to bring to the used bookstore). Among the gems I discovered was the (speaking of Starbridge) 4 page letter AC Crispin wrote me after I wrote her a fanmail, and the rejection letter for IMMORTAL BELOVED, the Highlander novel I sent to my eventual QUEEN’S BASTARD editor back in 1999. :)
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EasterCon
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I won’t be going to EasterCon this weekend after all. Somehow I vaguely feel this means I should, I don’t know, write a book this weekend instead. Or at least revise one. That’s normal, right?
However, perhaps heading off that urge, I bought the Hunger Games trilogy and a bunch of Dick Francis novels I haven’t read yet. And I’m reading Michelle Sagara’s CAST IN CHAOS, which may be my favorite of the Cast books so far, which is saying a lot, since I generally love them. I’m going to have to go back to the beginning and re-read them all soon, I think. Yes. This is a good plan.
Of course, it’s contingent on actually setting time aside for reading instead of writing, which is always a difficult one for me, but hope springs eternal. :)
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and the rest of the story
Aside from the Gaimaning, we had a really good time in Dublin. Hm. That sentence seems to suggest that we didn’t have a good time Gaimaning, which is clearly not what I meant. Ah, language. Don’t try this at home; I’m a professional. :)
Anyway, aside from dinner with Pádraig and Deirdre we lunched with Brian/
, who is his usual charming self. (I mean this with all sincerity. Brian is a splendid example of a typical Irishman, with a tongue that is both silver and wicked. I love hanging out with him.) And we dined with Kate and Shelly and Michael after going a-Gaimaning, in a meal event which happened entirely organically and which Shelly, when we were halfway to where we were (trying) to have dinner, observed she hadn’t actually been invited to and started seeming concerned that she’d invited herself. Kate (who had also invited herself) then invited Shelly. *laughs* (Sadly, we did not get Mr. Gaiman and Ms. Palmer in on this self-inviting gig, although given that we ended up walking across the entire city centre only to walk into various restaurants as they closed, that might be just as well. I don’t feel so guilty about making my friends walk a mile and a half for dinner on sore feet (which is to say, their feet were sore, not dinner’s…) but I’d have felt dreadful about making two very tired performers walk that far. :)) Anyway, the point of all that was it was lovely to actually talk and hang out with them all outside of the Event. So it made for a very nice evening. We accidentally bought a pile of books at Chapters, none of which was Jim’s latest Codex Alera book, which I’ve been failing to buy for several months now. Several *were* Gaiman books (and are now signed and shiny) and although I didn’t take Mary Anne’s specific advice, I did take the general advice and found two Pilates books which looked, between them, as though I could get some use out of them. (My friend Silkie said I should do like a youtube Pilates video for people who aren’t, you know. Supermodels. Or my sister, for that matter, who teaches Pilates and is slim and very strong, unlike me. :) I told her I would when I could do more than 8 exercises…:)) Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading them and creating some kind of regular (variable) program from them. (One says “do this program and in six weeks you’ll see a major change in your body.” Well, no *shit*, Sherlock. It’s an entire *book’s* worth of workouts. And as far as I can tell they’re suggesting doing it all daily. Even I, with my lacksadaisical schedule, am somewhat loath to spend two solid hours doing a Pilates workout. Assuming I could, which is unrealistic. Sheesh.)
Let’s see, what else. We went to the museum, which was pretty cool, although I noticed how we lingered at first and by the end we were almost marching through the rooms. :) Went to a movie (“He’s Just Not That Into You”), which we generally enjoyed. Ate out at different restaurants than we’d ever eaten at in Dublin (though we’d eaten at Milano in Cork, so it’s not quite a *new* restaurant to us), and…yeah. It was lovely. And now I’m going to eat nothing but salad and do nothing but Pilates for the next three years, or something, to make up for all that high living. :)
miles to Minas Tirith: 39.4