I must have been operating under a misapprehension...I thought it was supposed to clear up today. Ah, well, at least it wasn't warm!

The alarm rang too early, but we wanted to make sure we were on time for the last Farmer's Market of the season. The vendors huddled under their little marquees trying to keep warm; some of them looked downright dour. I made sure to get the card of the gentleman who sells the goat cheese pesto so we can get some more during the winter. It was in the high thirties, but very breezy, with dark, looming clouds above, the air still saturated from the deluge yesterday. With the leaves on the trees gone, Glover Park and the streets around the square were just one big wind tunnel. The cold went down your neck and crept into your bones.

A lot of folks take their dog to the market, and I was approaching a booth where a man had an elderly Golden Retriever on a leash. I put out my fist for him to sniff and he stuck his nose under it and pushed up, dog language for "Pet the puppy!" :-)

We came home past Kroger for the usual necessities of life (milk, of course). Bought some oranges and a few other things, which somehow added up to almost $50. Gah.

Came home to put everything up (and empty the rest of the twofer groceries from yesterday out of the back of my car) and then had breakfast...we were pretty hungry by then.

For the afternoon portion of the day we went past the library to drop off a Xerox paper box full of books and DVDs to donate, then went to the hobby shop. From there we went up to Town Center. God, I'm glad we didn't go near the mall because going to the REI down the road was bad enough. Of course it was between the wine store and Ulta (a makeup store), two stores down from a shoe store, and then was the Target. I would have had to be desperate to have gone into Target today!

We found a couple of cool things in REI, then stopped at Hobbytown. James always gets small presents for a couple of his co-workers there. I wandered around and found a really cool gift for someone I had already bought a gift for (but I can put that away and save it for the person's birthday), then bought a Stablemates Breyer horse and a Breyer horse coloring book and put it in the Toys for Tots box. Hopefully there's some little girl out there who will love it as I would have.

It had started raining as we were shopping, but as we came out of Hobbytown it had at least stopped. We made a brief stop at Borders for James to pick up something, and I picked up the first book in a series with the mystery taking place during the Blitz. By then it was nearly four o'clock and we hadn't had lunch and were starving. So I called up Dragon and we went to pick up Chinese food for supper.

I remember the first time we had food from Dragon 168...it was my birthday and I was decorating the Christmas tree at the old house and James called to say he was stopping to pick up supper at the new Chinese place. He was getting me a pork with Chinese vegetables that came with pork fried rice. He said on the phone, apologetically, that it looked like it had the same old peas and carrots in it; he could see the green of the peas. Sadly, most fried rice at southern Chinese restaurants is like the fried rice you get at the food court at the mall: sort of a yellowish or brownish color with some onions and peas and carrots. Chinese restaurants up north (at least in my experience in Rhode Island, Boston, and New York City) make fried rice totally differently: dark brown, onions, bits of egg, bean sprouts, and whatever meat is involved. I despise cooked peas and the carrots make the fried rice too sweet.

So James brought dinner home and I took a break before the tinseling and opened the container and...the green wasn't peas. It was scallions (ur..."some people call them green onions but they're really scallions"...and who will get that joke?). It was dark brown. It had onions and bean sprouts and scallions and nice little chunks of pork...OMG, OMG, OMG! It was real fried rice! (Almost) best birthday gift ever!

Watched a bunch of Christmas Britcoms tonight, including an Are You Being Served? episode I swear we've never seen. Have "Waters of Mars" recorded so we can watch without the fool commercials. Pity we can't escape the stupid pop-ups and "bugs" and banners, too...ugh.

Labels: Christmas, dogs, food, shopping, weather

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 10:24:00 PM

Comments:

(ur..."some people call them green onions but they're really scallions"...and who will get that joke?)

Me, for one. (And I still haven't made up my mind about Toledo.)

Thanks for being the only other sane person in this state who knows how take-out fried rice is supposed to be prepared. ;-)

# posted by  Ivan G Shreve Jr : 2:02:00 AM

 

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