On Saturday, as YA and I drove around, it seemed as if every restaurant in SW Minneapolis had chosen that day to assemble their outside tables and chairs and begin their outdoor service. Lots of folks were taking them up on the offer too.
Then on Sunday morning, when I let the dogs out, a fresh rainy burst of air hit me – aah, the smell of Spring. Finally. Made me wish I has sat outside at a restaurant table the day before to sip wine and appreciate the first truly warm day of the season.
Do you have a favorite outdoor restaurant/dining spot?
Yesterday was the anniversary of the opening of the first free public library, the Peterborough Town Library in 1833. The decision to purchase books and open a tax-funded library happened at the Town meeting and for the first sixty years, the books were housed in the general store. In 1893 they were moved to the current location and there have been two expansions since then.
Here are a few fun library quotes:
“Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.” Zadie Smith
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” Albert Einstein
“Libraries: The medicine chest of the soul.” Library at Thebes, inscription over the door
“My two favorite things in life are libraries and bicycles. They both move people forward without wasting anything. The perfect day: riding a bike to the library.” Peter Golkin
“I have always imaged that Paradise will be a kind of library.” Jorge Luis Borges
I’m a complete library junkie. One of the biggest selling points when I bought my house was that it was a block and a half from the Washburn Library. On the average week I am there twice. I know the hours by heart, am friendly with the librarians. I even have my library card number memorized. Twice I’ve had the opportunity to spend an afternoon in the Central downtown library in the upstairs reading rooms – times when I wanted to read resource material that they don’t allow you to check-out. It was warm and wonderful; so relaxing that I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave at the end of the day.
I found a recipe online that I wanted to try, but it needed two items that I’d never heard of. A quick search made it clear that the only place I would find these items would be in a specialty market. These days you can find so many different kinds of things in regular grocery stores and I don’t visit any specialty markets (think Asian grocery or Mexican grocery) often.
So there I am in the middle of aisle upon aisle of items that I don’t recognize, some of which I can’t even GUESS what they are. Unfortunately I was on my lunch break so didn’t have time to wander and linger. I asked about my two items, was shown where to find them, checked out and went back to work.
But now I think I’ll have to go back next week when I have more time. I hope I don’t spend too much when I do!
Do you have a favorite ethnic/specialty market or restaurant?
My car radio displays the name and artist of whatever is playing.
Like most of us here, I have a wide range of musical tastes. Also I’m a channel surfer whether radio or TV and consequently as I’m flipping through radio stations I see a song called “She Just Started Liking Cheatin’ Son”.
Mind Blown! I don’t know if I should be appalled at the lack of moral character of this woman, or the bad grammar, or the cheatin’ son. And the song started and the man sang “She Just Started Liking Cheatin’ Songs”.
Oh. “Songs”. That’s different. I’m still offended by the lousy grammar. More than her possibly loose character evidently. But at least the son isn’t cheating. Ugh, I cannot do country music unless it’s Johnny Cash.
It’s a song by John Anderson. Evidently, it’s humorous. I wouldn’t know; I didn’t listen to any more of it.
“A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.”
Baltasar Gracian
Baltasar Gracian was a Spanish Jesuit, writer and philosopher who lived in the first half of the 1600s. There are many wonderful quotes by him but when I stumbled across this one yesterday, it made me laugh.
I type A LOT for my job – letters, agendas, rosters, briefing notes, website information – in addition to the day by day routine of emails to suppliers, clients and internal teams. Over the years I’ve had trouble typing various words correctly. Some of these problems with words resolve themselves after a few years but a few of them have been with me for as long as I’ve been doing this:
Unfortunately there aren’t good synonyms for some of my words, at least not that are accepted throughout my industry. Hors d’oeuvres is a good example. I can’t use “canapes” because that actually means something specific . “Appetizers” is more work to type and I can’t really go with “morsel”, “tidbit”, “finger food” as these would throw my hotels and supplier for a loop.
That means I have to have work-arounds. For “hors d’oeuvres” I have an auto-fill set up – when I type “hors” and a space, then the computer fills in the rest, spelled correctly every time. Typing in “accom” will get me to “accommodations”. I also have an auto-correct so that any time I type “rools”, the computer changes it to “rolls”. “Deposit” and “Worldwide” I just have to struggle with as they are too similar to other words, so the shortcuts are just as long as slowing down and typing more carefully.
BBC.com is one of the news sites that I look at through the week and yesterday I saw an article about decentralizing the workforce and increasing the ability to work remotely. Clark Valberg, CEO of a software design company says “A decentralized workforce now allows employers to access “passionate talent anywhere in the world irrespective of any geographic boundary.” This is not good news to me.
My company instituted a Work at Home policy three years ago; each associate is allowed to work from home one day a week. I think I am about the only one in the company who does not take advantage of this. I prefer going into the office, I don’t want to be dragging my work laptop home all the time and I didn’t think I would be good at it.
Mother Nature finally forced me to test my theory that I wouldn’t be good at working from home. We had two snow days in February this year and I just had too much on my plate to take the days off. I had warning so I had brought my work laptop home and gotten a lesson from a co-worker on how to get onto the network.
I don’t know if it was a self-fulfilling prophecy but I really hated working at home. I got work done; I was efficient enough but every minute I was thinking of what else I could be doing. I could bake some cornbread, I could work on my solstice project, I could throw in a load of laundry, I could pay bills. I could brush the dogs, do my nails…. aarrgggh. The fact that my life was surrounding me while I tapped away at the computer drove me crazy. I knew if I left my desk, I might never return.
So luckily the weather is turning nicer and I probably don’t have to worry about having to work from home any more this year. And I certainly hope that my workplace doesn’t get decentralized before I’m ready to retire!
What distracts you from what you need to get done?
Found this video clip online today. Apparently this took place a few days ago, in celebration of the last super moon of 2019. I’m pretty sure I would have thought it was a meteor or meteoroid (apparently there is a serious difference in the scientific world) if I had seen it live. Glad to know the police had been forewarned.
But seriously, jump out of a helicopter at 4,000 feet? Obviously the jumpers could breathe at this altitude, since Mount Everest is a lot higher, but still….jump out of a helicopter at 4,000 feet? Gives me the wilies.
I’ve done two really scary things in my life. Both of them within 3 days of each other. When YA was just a year old, I was offered the trip of a lifetime to Kenya and Tanzania. We started in Nairobi and traveled around for 8 days, staying at a different lodge every night. We had early morning and late afternoon safari runs, entertainment and massive amounts of great food.
I knew prior to the trip that an option hot-air balloon ride would be offered and I convinced my boss that I should be allowed to expense it. If you had asked me before this if I would EVER get in a hot air balloon, the answer would have been an unequivocal “no”. When faced with this option however, I couldn’t get past the idea that I would be sorry to let an opportunity like this pass me by. I was correct – it was fabulous and nothing like I expected. We even had a wonderful breakfast cooked for us in the bush after we came down, complete with champagne.
Two days later, the group met a pilot who was doing open-air biplane tourist flights around Mount Kenya. He came and spoke to our group at a cocktail reception and at the end of his talk, he mentioned that the group leader had said there would be time for one flight in the morning before we left; was anyone interested? I had my hand up so fast that I almost pulled my arm out of my socket. Again – fabulous, complete with leather jackets and silk scarves and Out of Africa music playing in our headphones. I felt like Dennis Finch Hatton.
So I’ve overcome my fear twice for experiences that were over the top. But I’m still fairly sure no one will ever convince me to bungee jump. Or fling myself out of a helicopter at 4,000 feet.
I just finished the latest installment of Louise Penny’s Inspector Gamache series. I adore this series, so much so that I am often frustrated while I wait for Louise Penny to write the next one. In fact, I didn’t rush out to read The Kingdom of the Blind when it was published because I knew I would have a wait for the next one.
At the library over my lunch hour, I found books on CDs by Preston and Douglas; they have four separate character series, but none of the ones that are next on my list were on the library shelf. I’ve read online that you can probably read Preston and Douglas out of order, but I can’t bring myself to do that. Gotta do them in order!
So now I have the next P&D on request from the library and came away from the CD shelves with some other items – a comedy memoir and a young adult fiction that has magic and dragons. Hopefully those will keep be going in the car until my next series arrives!
What’s your favorite series? Do you like to read them in order?
Off the shores of Palermo, Sicily, an aristocratic Italian family has put up their private island for sale. It’s called Isola delle Femmine (Island of Women). It’s uninhabited and is part of a marine park that is protected and used as an elite scuba and snorkeling area. It can be yours for just $1.1 million.
When I was in the market for a new car four years ago, I delegated the research to YA. She recognizes car makes and models; she knows all our friends’ and neighbors’ cars. She is definitely a car person. I gave her my requirements (hybrid, 4-door, red) and off she went. Her research came in the form of a chart with the five cars that she had identified as possibilities. One was axed due to being the wrong color and two were eliminated by their price.
We went and test drove the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight. I’d never heard of an Insight before but since I’m definitely NOT a car person, I didn’t think too much about. I love my Insight but it became clear pretty quickly that I wasn’t the only one who had never heard of an Insight. Nobody had ever heard of it. In four years nobody has ever recognized my car, even car people.
So imagine my surprise today, when a guy coming out of the gym as I was getting out of my car, stopped and said “how do you like your Insight?” He had purchased his Insight in November. We had a nice talk about the mileage (great), the cost of filling up (teeny) and the blue/green light that tells you whether you are using gas or electricity (mesmerizing). As I went into the gym and he headed to his Insight I thought “this must be what it feels like to be a car person”? Then when I came out of the gym I’d forgotten where I parked. Oh well.
We all have our special areas of interest. Do you have comrades in arms?
Trail Baboon 