We'd been toying with going to Chattanooga today, and the subject had gone back and forth for a couple of days. James worried about it possibly being crowded on the road because of shoppers and travelers, but then we wouldn't have a chance again until right before Christmas. And we got skunked out of our vacation, so today would be kind of a mini-vacation for us. So we set an alarm for eight and ended up waking at 7:30. Still, we didn't actually get on the road until 9:30, after eating, Tucker's walk, and a stop at Sam's Club for gasoline and to use the facilities. (We got there at 9:01. The sign on the door said that until Christmas Eve they were open at 7 a.m. The doors were still locked. They let us go in the exit, and didn't look ready to open yet. How strange.)

Anyway, it was a nice ride up, with pretty trees that faded about the time we got to very north Georgia. I drove, and we listened to "A Way With Words." The time passed pretty quickly. I don't know why we complain so much about driving up there; it takes me longer to get home from work half the time, and the ride isn't half as pleasurable.

McKay's was crowded, but not terribly so. A man helped us carry in the books and we sent them forward for trade in, and then set to investigating the shelves. They had the Christmas CDs right out front and I was chatting with a lady about music we liked to listen to as I thumbed through the albums. I got a nice selection of books, including three Malcolm Gladwell volumes, a book where a family cycles the Lewis & Clark trail, another where the narrators travel Spain and stay only at monasteries, some linguistics books, a book about the Harvey Girls, another about Queen Victoria's daughters, a big beautiful anthropology book in full color for only $4, and a bunch of other goodies including some nice Christmas music (Robert Shaw, Narada, etc.).

By the time we were finished, we were both hungry as wolves, breakfast having been five hours ago. As usual, we went to City Cafe for lunch. They are attached to a Best Western motel, have a diner motif, cook yummy food, and I love their chicken soup: it is very light and flavorful, with carrots, celery, and parsley, pieces of chicken, and the noodles are the way my mom and aunts and godmothers did them in a hurry, just spaghetti broken up into small bits, so it's very nostalgic. We both had a cup and James had liver and onions with pilaf and green beans, and I had spaghetti with meat sauce. It came in a huge bowl and I took most of it home. We also bought two extra servings of soup to bring home.

Sadly, by then it was three o'clock,so we had no time to go by the Barnes & Noble at the Hamilton Mall (I like to see the regional books and magazines) and still get home before dark. So we topped up the truck, since it's around 25 cents a gallon cheaper up there, and headed south. Ran into a couple of small traffic jams, but nothing else, and spent the rest of the night relaxing and messing with the new phone again.

Labels: books, food, podcasts, travel

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:33:00 PM

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