Every year I say I'm going to be earlier to the Friends of the Library Book Sale. I was up at 7:30 and still didn't leave the house until 8:45. There were already forty or more people ahead of me by the time I got there and they kept coming after I got in line. The doors opened promptly at nine and I was off: checked the T's for any Gladys Taber fiction books (none) and missed a boxed hrdback set of Lord of the Rings by looking at something else. Then I checked the Christmas books—they had two carts full this year, a record—and then went down to the children's books, stumbling over the people with luggage carts, people with 30" suitcases, people with milk crates, people with shopping carts...argh! Happy at the number of kids really excited about getting books, though!

Here's the tally.

After I staggered out with my load and hefted them in the trunk, I drove to Publix. I noticed when I tried to roll down the driver's side window, it caught a little and I had to press the button a couple of times to get it to roll down. But it went up fine and I did my shopping.

When I tried to roll it back down—well, it's completely dead. That whine you hear is my credit card going "Oh, no, not again."

Since the window was stuck in the up position, at least I could manage my last errand, which was dropping a box of stuff off at Goodwill. It's only been sitting in the downstairs hall for six months.

I'd like to tell you I did wonderfully creative things when I got home, but I simply made the bed, had a PopTart and milk for lunch, and read Houseboat Girl, which was a Lois Lenski Regional story that I'd never read. Then I started In Search of Centennial, which is a picture book by one of the men who helped Michener do the research for Centennial, and the last chapter addresses the making of the miniseries as well. It was fascinating to see a little of how Michener worked, his tiny, tightly-lined notebooks, and the color photographs he took of the west in 1937, when he first conceived of writing a western-themed novel.

We had dinner at Golden Corral, which was a bad idea—the weekend buffet is now $15. This wouldn't matter if the food was actually decent, but the "honey sesame chicken" was salty and tasted of fennel, the rotisserie chicken was dry, the grilled steak's grill lines tasted burnt, and the popcorn shrimp was more "popcorn" than shrimp.

On the other hand, we saw the nearly full moon rising up against long ribbons of pale clouds painted with sunset pink and orange. It was absolutely lovely!

Came home to walk the dog and watch television for the rest of the evening. I am taking either James or his walking stick with me on my dog walks in early morning and late evening since what happened Wednesday morning. I had taken Tucker out before work and was just rounding the curve of the upper cul-de-sac when two fairly big dogs came out of nowhere at a determined lope. They didn't stop and greet us or growl or bark; they came straight after Tucker. I shouted at them at the top of my voice to go away, go home, go anywhere, but they kept tag teaming at him and he was frightened out of his wits and started to yelp and squeal. I knew I couldn't run; the dogs would only chase us and maybe knock me down, so I tried to lead Tucker away and he kept tangling up in my legs to get away from the dogs. I started screaming at the top of my lungs and our next-door neighbors Eddie and Miranda came running out of their house and held off the dogs until I could get Tucker into the house! (They didn't try to go after either of them, as far as I could see. It was Tucker they were after.) He had a big swathe of slobber all over his left flank, so they truly did try to grab him, but he wasn't bitten.

These weren't neighborhood dogs. One was white and one was brown and I thought they were some type of bully dog. Eddie saw them clearly and he said they were boxers! Wow! All the boxers I have known are friendly lap puppies. It must be some freaking messed up human who can manage to turn a boxer into an aggressive dog. Wretches.

Anyway, if I go out there alone from now on in the dark, I'm carrying something to hit back!

Labels: books, errands, food, shopping

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:47:00 PM

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