Since we'd picked up hoagie rolls last night, we were free to go to the Farmer's Market this morning before Hair Day. Munched on samples, bought a huge tomato ($1.50 for a tomato!), some sweet corn, chicken salad, and sun goat pesto to also bring along. James wore his Gaelic Storm T-shirt and one person asked him if it was a sports team, but another recognized it and said they'd been to one of their concerts. Then we went to the Butlers via Polk Street, Dallas Highway (stopping at Kroger to get crackers to go along with the sun goat pesto, which, incidentally, tastes good with pretzels, too), and Villa Rica Road. I particularly like this last leg because there are still farms out that way, with horses and houses snugged under stands of trees.

Hair Day was fun. We had sandwiches, macaroni salad, fresh tomatoes, olives, and lettuce, and Terica made a strawberry cake, and gabbed and gabbed. Elayna's little boy is getting so big!

We left about quarter after one, taking the veggies and the chicken salad home and swapping the car for the truck (we took the car in case Juanita needed a ride home), then went to the hobby shop. I was reading John Noble Wilford's The Mapmakers until someone tossed a magazine at me. It was the first issue of a magazine called "The Atlantan" from 1958.

Whoa. Talk about time machines. Of course the first thing you noticed about it was that everyone in the magazine was white. And there was a depressing one-page article about desegregation of schools being bad because crime, vandalism, etc. went up in schools that were desegregated.

On the other hand, some of the entries were a trip. There was a humorous story about Martians who land in a rural area and befriend an old farmer. An article about the carving on Stone Mountain, which wasn't finished yet, and several pages of ladies' fashions at the time.

One full-page article, "Chicks in Georgia," was about poultry production in the state. I was especially amused by this passage under the heading "Feed Progress":

Feed manufacturers have made their contributions, too. Tremendous improvements have been made in the feed which the broilers eat. Foods now may contain antibiotics, medicinals or other growth-promoting additives.

All those things in the late 1950s were seen as something positive in agriculture; now they are all considered negative! I also hadn't realized how long those additives had been in animal feed.

The magazine had been in with some old stuff, no one wanted it, so I got to take it home.

I'd thought about going to another Barnes & Noble to see if they had any books I could put away for gifts, but we were so hot and thirsty by that time we just came home. I had realized that I had not started a gift list for this year and so did not know who we already had gifts for and who we did not, so I spent about an hour sorting in the Christmas boxes and rearranging, making a list on my phone. I already have a surprising number of people taken care of for Christmas, and now just have to fill in the blanks.

And James' anniversary gift is already wrapped and hidden away.

Around suppertime we watched the latest Jesse Stone film with Tom Selleck. It looks as if we missed a great deal of backstory not watching the previous five films, but I enjoyed the mystery nonetheless. And then finally we watched "The Pandorica Opens" and "The Big Bang," this year's season finale to Doctor Who. Whoa! Bouncing timestreams! About to go cross-eyed. Glad to see that little Amelia got a return engagement. Great roller-coaster of an episode.

Labels: Christmas, food, friends, gifts, movies, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:43:00 PM

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