My awesome day (so far)!!
So far, this day is going really great! Saturdays tend to be my favorite anyway -- I don't have to go to work, my husband is at work so I have the house to myself to do whatever I want without interruption (except from the cats), and be as lazy or productive as I want.
I woke up around 6:30 and got ready for Blue Moon rehearsal (the small group I sing with that practices on alternate Saturdays). Kristy's birthday is coming up, so I stopped by the drugstore to get her a card and had a few extra fun minutes reading all the cute and funny cards.
On to rehearsal, which went well, followed by birthday cake provided by lovely Ande!
After that, I stopped at Great Clips, which is having a special deal all weekend, all haircuts for $7.99! The girl who cut my hair did a good job and was friendly -- we chatted about gardening and fun plans for the weekend.
I had thought about stopping at home, but instead proceeded on to Magers and Quinn Booksellers to enjoy the festivities for Independent Booksellers Day. They brought in free coffee and doughnuts from Bogart Doughnuts. I wandered around the store, talked about books a bit with my favorite bookseller there, Aaron, who gave me some recommendations (books that take place in bookstores), but a lot of the books he found and brought to me for consideration (what service!) were ones I've already read. I ended up buying one that I found myself called "Tolstoy and the Purple Chair" by Nina Sankovitch, which is about how after her sister passed away, she decides to read a book a day for a year. I read the first few pages there, and it really grabbed me. Hopefully it will keep my attention, I'm not going a lot of reading lately, even though I *want* to. I just seem to be distracted by lots of different things instead.
I also bought one of the postcards they have on sale at the store by Adam Turman, a local artist. (Google him, I love his style, but I want to keep writing this post, so I'm not going to look up his website at the moment.)
As a special guest for part of the day, M&Q has poet Brett Elizabeth Jenkins there with her typewriter, writing you a poem while you wait. She wrote me a poem at the M&Q anniversary party last year based on asking her a question ("What section of the bookstore do you look in first?"), while today's poem prompt was telling her a secret (yours or someone else's). I told her "People think I like my job, but what I really want to do is quit and go work at a bookstore." I hoped the poem would be more about working in a bookstore, but it was more about the first half of the secret. For example, one line is: "I have smallpox and my hands fell off." But I still like it, and I had her autograph it when she was done, which seemed to really please her.
I stopped in to browse at PaperSource, the greeting card/craft/scrapbooking store down the street from M&Q, but I didn't really like their mother's day cards, so I'll get two of them at the grocery store later. But it's still a fun store to look in.
On the way back to my car, there was an older guy out walking his two bulldogs, so I stopped to say hello and he let me pet them. I asked if they were both bulldogs (they looked different from each other) and he explained that one is an English bulldog and the other is a French bulldog. When I asked if the two countries get along all right, he laughed and said in this case, they do. Both dogs seemed happy to be petted, and I enjoyed meeting them. I said thanks before I left, and as I walked away, he called back, "Hey, thank YOU!" So that was really nice.
I stopped at the gym on my way home and had a short workout on a treadmill, and now I'm home relaxing in our Book Nook with a window open and a lovely warm breeze. It's got to be in the mid to upper 70s outside, and just gorgeous! Right now, I SHOULD be doing laundry / getting groceries / digging volunteer trees out of the flowerbeds before they get any bigger / washing the dishes in the sink. But for now I'm just going to sit and enjoy the breeze a little longer before I get up.
Later on, I'll pick up my husband from work at 5:30 and we'll go back to Uptown -- M&Q is having a literary game night from 6 til 8, and I'm hoping to play Scrabble or Boggle with some nice people who like to hang out in bookstores. :-)
And to anybody still reading this, I hope you're having / you've had a nice day, too!
I woke up around 6:30 and got ready for Blue Moon rehearsal (the small group I sing with that practices on alternate Saturdays). Kristy's birthday is coming up, so I stopped by the drugstore to get her a card and had a few extra fun minutes reading all the cute and funny cards.
On to rehearsal, which went well, followed by birthday cake provided by lovely Ande!
After that, I stopped at Great Clips, which is having a special deal all weekend, all haircuts for $7.99! The girl who cut my hair did a good job and was friendly -- we chatted about gardening and fun plans for the weekend.
I had thought about stopping at home, but instead proceeded on to Magers and Quinn Booksellers to enjoy the festivities for Independent Booksellers Day. They brought in free coffee and doughnuts from Bogart Doughnuts. I wandered around the store, talked about books a bit with my favorite bookseller there, Aaron, who gave me some recommendations (books that take place in bookstores), but a lot of the books he found and brought to me for consideration (what service!) were ones I've already read. I ended up buying one that I found myself called "Tolstoy and the Purple Chair" by Nina Sankovitch, which is about how after her sister passed away, she decides to read a book a day for a year. I read the first few pages there, and it really grabbed me. Hopefully it will keep my attention, I'm not going a lot of reading lately, even though I *want* to. I just seem to be distracted by lots of different things instead.
I also bought one of the postcards they have on sale at the store by Adam Turman, a local artist. (Google him, I love his style, but I want to keep writing this post, so I'm not going to look up his website at the moment.)
As a special guest for part of the day, M&Q has poet Brett Elizabeth Jenkins there with her typewriter, writing you a poem while you wait. She wrote me a poem at the M&Q anniversary party last year based on asking her a question ("What section of the bookstore do you look in first?"), while today's poem prompt was telling her a secret (yours or someone else's). I told her "People think I like my job, but what I really want to do is quit and go work at a bookstore." I hoped the poem would be more about working in a bookstore, but it was more about the first half of the secret. For example, one line is: "I have smallpox and my hands fell off." But I still like it, and I had her autograph it when she was done, which seemed to really please her.
I stopped in to browse at PaperSource, the greeting card/craft/scrapbooking store down the street from M&Q, but I didn't really like their mother's day cards, so I'll get two of them at the grocery store later. But it's still a fun store to look in.
On the way back to my car, there was an older guy out walking his two bulldogs, so I stopped to say hello and he let me pet them. I asked if they were both bulldogs (they looked different from each other) and he explained that one is an English bulldog and the other is a French bulldog. When I asked if the two countries get along all right, he laughed and said in this case, they do. Both dogs seemed happy to be petted, and I enjoyed meeting them. I said thanks before I left, and as I walked away, he called back, "Hey, thank YOU!" So that was really nice.
I stopped at the gym on my way home and had a short workout on a treadmill, and now I'm home relaxing in our Book Nook with a window open and a lovely warm breeze. It's got to be in the mid to upper 70s outside, and just gorgeous! Right now, I SHOULD be doing laundry / getting groceries / digging volunteer trees out of the flowerbeds before they get any bigger / washing the dishes in the sink. But for now I'm just going to sit and enjoy the breeze a little longer before I get up.
Later on, I'll pick up my husband from work at 5:30 and we'll go back to Uptown -- M&Q is having a literary game night from 6 til 8, and I'm hoping to play Scrabble or Boggle with some nice people who like to hang out in bookstores. :-)
And to anybody still reading this, I hope you're having / you've had a nice day, too!