A Happy Day

We had such a happy day today, Don and I. With the interment, Christmas, and other matters behind us, today was OUR day to get out and about, just the two of us. Krista gave us a gift certificate to Tresetti's World Cafe so we started out there. Wine, coffee (of course!!) to die for French Onion soup, burgers (but oh what burgers!!), and crab cakes - delish and we left stuffed and waddling.
Our original plan was to go to Border's to spend our gift card money and Reward card money and we did eventually get there but during the lunch it occurred to me that I wanted to take another look at Barnes and Noble for a particular quarterly literary journal that I could not remember the name of. I was convinced I would know it if I saw it so off to B&N we went. No luck for me but Don scored with three of the books you see in the picture below.

Once we got to Border's Don scored yet again. I've been looking for Nick Bantock's Artful Dodger book without luck. It's in print so I know I can order it but I was sort of hoping I might get lucky and find it since it wasn't in the Turlock store. Well, no luck in Modesto either, however, I did discover copies at Amazon and other places so I'll probably just go that route. My search though for my journal came to a successful end. I found Rosebud at the BIG Borders as I affectionately call it, and rather than loss track of it again, I'm finally going to subscribe.

After finding Rosebud I ran across the current issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine. Have you ever experienced a mental tug, a mental whisper that turns into a shout? Well, this was happening to me. Mind you, I don't buy this particular magazine on a regular basis but today it just would not let go of me. I thumbed through it, flipping quickly through the pages, kept going back to one particular article and then finally said, "Enough" and made it my own. It wasn't until I got to the car and started looking at the table of contents that I finally understood what was going on. Corey Amaro at Tongue in Cheek was this month's guest writer. For those of you rare birds out there who have not discovered Corey's lyrical blog, be sure to click on her link and prepare to go back for many more visits.


Finally we headed home. BUT one more stop, this time at a new store in Old Turlock, The Mission Bell. The shop is own by the same lady who owns Lily's Emporium. Sadly, there is no website for Lily's to share here. The Mission Bell specializes in Catholic products and books. What a blessing to have such a store here in town and designed into such a pretty and inviting setting. One post-Christmas manger later (also in the picture) we were out the door and heading home. Don says he's not hungry - Hurray, no cooking for me tonight. Excuse me while I dive into one of my treasures.