Five For Friday

Five Places to Visit in Seattle (at least based on my short visit there)

1. Pike Place Market- It's touristy, yes. However, its a great opportunity to get unique, handcrafted souvenirs while supporting the local economy. And some tasty Honeycrisp apples, if they're in season. Across the street are blocks of great little bakeries and coffee shops, including, OH HO!, the original Starbucks.

2. Elliott Bay Books- The oldest and largest of Seattle's independent bookstores. Fine selection, especially literary and unusual magazines. If you want to buy a guidebook on Seattle, spend your dollar here. Stop and enjoy the architecture in Pioneer Square while you're at it.

3. Atlas Clothing Company- Located on Broadway, just outside of Capitol Hill(and a weird stretch of street with trendy stores, sex shops, and restaurants populated largely by hipsters, gay couples and meth heads), Atlas Clothing is a vintage shop with some handmade original clothing and jewelry. Great stuff to be had, and I am only wishing I could have dropped $140 for that adorable customized velvet blazer.

4. Uwajimaya-Visiting this enormous Asian market is a little bit like culture immersion, especially when you are trying to decipher the packaging entirely in another language and determine whether or not it might be something scary or tasty. I loaded up on Asian candies and snacks. Alastair has really been loving his Japanese baby cookies which could be made with arsenic for all I know. There's nary an English word on the box. Uwajimaya also sells more varieties of saki than I knew existed; you can even buy it in enormous rope-wrapped barrels.

5. The Pink Door- Modeled after a Prohibition speakeasy, The Pink Door has no signage, only a large metal door painted pale pink to indicate its location. They serve traditional Italian fare, very nicely done, and if you order a single serving of wine they bring it to you in a small green bottle with a glass tumbler. The burlesque show starts after 11 p.m. on Saturday. If you're lucky and get a good waitress, she'll watch for an empty table in the back and move you after your meal. Oh and on Sundays, they have a trapeze artist swinging above diners.

Snapshots of Seattle

A professional photographer I am not. I really wish I could capture landscapes and cityscapes the way they appear, but unfortunately when I try to take those types vacation pictures, they end up looking weird and lame. Therefore, I've learned to
take pictures of weird little things I see while I am visiting a city or traveling. Odd bits that capture my fancy and hopefully capture the spirit of my experiences. I
still attempt those typical vacation shots and with mixed results. I am still pretty proud of a certain nighttime shot of the Eiffel Tower I managed to get.

Submitted for your approval, here are a few of my favorite snaps of Seattle (minus the ones from the disposable camera I had to buy after the digital died on a boat tour):



This first one is your typical cityscape taken from the observation deck at my friend Susan's office building. Note the Space Needle. That's all I am going to say about that.


Exhibit A of the random crap I shoot. The name on this boat struck me. Shortly after this, my camera died.




On our journey to find Lakeview Cemetery, Susan and I stumbled upon this memorial garden for veterans of the Civil War. This dude was a sharpshooter. How awesome is that?


We sojourned to Lakeview to find this man's grave. We also found awesome graves like this one:



Looks like the Wong family has done pretty well for themselves. Holy cow.





Pocari Sweat is like a unicorn. I'd heard about it, read about it, but never seen it up close and in real life. Imagine my excitement when I spotted it on the shelves at Uwajimaya, the crazy-huge Asian market.


Susan and I took an Underground Seattle tour. This was scrawled on a wall down there.

The florists at Pike Place Market would create these phenomenal bouquets and sell them for ridiculously cheap prices. These were going for like five bucks.



The Pink Door has great Italian food, charming atmosphere, and an enthusiastically friendly waitstaff. They also have a burlesque show Saturday evenings. While this picture is a testament to my photographic shortcomings, it also is indicative of burlesque itself where the tease is everything.



This is one of my last shots of Seattle, capturing a stereotypical Seattle view of a grey, rainy sky. Which is odd because I only experienced this kind of weather for about an hour.

My apologies if the layout is all effed up on this entry. Clearly I am sofa king wetarded on blog layouts too.

Rock over London.
Rock on Seattle.

I have returned

Thank you, Lady Nature, for keeping Virginia so hot and dry for me. After four days in Seattle, my body had forgotten how to sweat.

Seattle was awesome. It's a city I'd love to return to again and again. Nonetheless, I am delighted to be home with my man and my boy. Not so delighted to return to a mountain of laundry and rooms crying desperately for a vacuum.

I slipped in around 12:30 this morning from a rather uneventful flight home (except for the part where I got turned around in the Atlanta airport and had to go back through security to make my connection to Richmond). At the moment, my brain is still on West Coast time. My tummy is recovering from so many restaurant meals. I am a dehydrated, scaly husk from spending almost six hours on a plane.

In short, I am exhausted. Off I go to throw a load of laundry in the wash and take a little snooze. I'll finish unpacking tonight.

More on my trip to come.

Journey Woman

Tomorrow morning, I will be on my way to visit Susan in Seattle (Sounds like a radio show title, does it not? Up next on WRBM it's Susan in Seattle! ) for a few days. This trip marks the first time in two years I have flown and the first time in seven years I have traveled completely solo.

While I am excited about my trip and time with Susan, it's going to be difficult to be apart from my guys for longer than an overnight. I understand that time on my own is necessary to recharge my mommy batteries and how important it is to just be me for a while, not Woman or Momma A. Just Manda.

But I sure will miss his little face.

Keep me in your prayers. Keep Adrian as well. That little guy does wear one out.

I. See. PAINAH!

While we were at Virginia Beach enjoying a long weekend with the Amos Grandparents there were moments that I thought Little A's head would explode from excitement overload. Unlike the fairly serene atmosphere of Nag's Head, Virginia Beach had multiple elements of right joy to Little A including:

1. Large expanses of sand and ocean
2. A giant pile of sand suitable for climbing and descending, multiple times.
3. A bulldozer (or as he calls them "dirt tah-tahs") pushing sand on the first day we were out on the beach.
4. A big Radio Flier wagon suitable for rides and for a baby to demonstrate his strength by pulling down the sidewalk while proclaiming to the world, "I puh waaah."
5. Boats
6. Kites
7. Oceania Naval Base which provided jet flyovers multiple times a day. At the sight of any airplane, Alastair would stop and proudly proclaim, "I. See. PAINAH!"

There was also the thrilling extra-large car wash shower in our room at the B&B where he had his daily post-beach rinse offs followed by his declarations of "I shower. I keen. I dry."

(Oh and if you haven't noticed, Little A's become rather found of using sentences, particularly to explain what he is doing or seeing.)

As with most trips involving Little A, we discovered his new culinary preferences. This time it was citrus fruits, specifically oranges and lemons. At one restaurant, he ate, not just sucked on, but ate about four slices of lemon. The last slice he kept in his mouth like a giant yellow grin and bobbed his head from side to side. The entire table erupted in hysterical laughter.

The War on Sleep took an interesting turn. For the most part, we didn't have prolonged shriekfests at naptimes. However he did awaken at 5 a.m. the first morning which helped propel me into a low-blood-sugar induced meltdown a few hours later when I discovered I had forgotten my brush and managed to pack only one pair of shorts.

The last night he went to bed fine, albeit with a minor freakout a few minutes later. I was suffering from a really painful bout of indigestion and when Adrian and I finally hit the hay at 11 p.m., I couldn't really sleep. Just as I was starting to drift at about 1 a.m., Alastair woke up hysterically crying. He was inconsolable. We tried every trick we knew to get him to lie back down in his crib but he wasn't having it. Finally after co-sleeping turned into "Mommy and Daddy are a jungle gym", Adrian took him back to his crib, and I offered to lie on the floor beside him since, on the account of my aching belly, sleep was eluding me. This seemed to placate Alastair, for after a few minutes of me gently consoling him from the floor, he laid down of his own volition and went back to sleep.

I spent the rest of the evening wrapped in a bathrobe, my feet freezing, afraid to move, but I did manage to overcome my indigestion and get a few hours of sleep before Little A woke again.

Really though, we had a great time. It's just going to be a while before we travel with baby again. I'm still feeling a little shell-shocked.

So Much to Say

And so little time to blog.

Here's the short list of Clan Amos updates:

Alastair has now pee-peed in the potty three nights in a row. Urination completely fascinates him. If only we could all be as enamored of our bodily functions.

His vocabulary has expanded to now include baby-sized sentences like "Momma sit," "I eat," "I fall down," and my favorite "I kick ball." which sounds remarkably like "I kick butt." He's learning to identify things as "Ah's" (The way he says his own name), including me as "Ah's Momma".

He has also entered this exciting new phase whereby instead of lying down for his nap peacefully like he has for pretty much his entire life, he shrieks and cries as if someone is ripping his arm off. Today, after an hour of this keening, he finally passed out for a brief snooze. Momma A sat in a lawn chair in the backyard drinking a Coke Zero and smoking two cigarettes until all was quiet.

There have been moments during these daily shriekfests when I ponder why it was I wanted to have a kid in the first place. I suck so bad at this whole mother thing.

This phase coincides nicely with our trip to Virginia Beach this weekend. I anticipate hours spent playing in the sand, soaking up the sun, and then later tearing my hair out as my kid goes bananas in his portable crib.

Ah, motherhood.

To update my previous post about the perils of night jogging, I learned from the many comments that my best bet was to either find a ninja for a running partner or become a ninja myself. Since none of those are happening any time soon, Adrian and I have devised a schedule that prevents me from having to run in the dark. Three days out of the week, I run about an hour after dinner while it is still light. The other three days I run on my machine or cross train. I'm still thinking the Subtle Safety Ring might make a dandy stocking stuffer.

Finally, as yet another update on a previous post, I uncovered my old high school friend Kristin on Facebook (Any one else think Facebook is utterly wacky?) and have exchanged a few messages with her. Oddly enough, she seems to have completely forgotten where I went to college. I find this strange and mildly insulting considering she visited me there on more than one occasion. I guess it's true; you never really can go back.

Wish me luck and travel blessings as Clan Amos braves yet another trip with Crazy Ass Toddler Kid.

Pickles and Crab Cakes (And Totally Ripping off my Husband)

Clan Amos survived their First Official Family Vacation to, Cliché of all Clichés, Nag's Head.

Little A did surprisingly well on the grueling car ride to and from the beach despite gnarly traffic and intermittent napping. He also slept fairly well in the portable crib despite sharing space with Mom and Dad in what seemed to be the coldest room in our McMansion of a beach house. Perhaps the latter success had a little to do (Bad Mommy Alert! Bad Mommy Alert!) with the fact that I dosed Little A with a small amount of children's Benadryl each night.

Staying in a large beach house with numerous people has a set of unique challenges, but these challenges are heightened when 80% of the 20+ people (and one ultra-cute dachshund) sharing space with you are total strangers. And loud, hard-partying strangers at that. The minor dramas and traumas, however, were well worth the experiences we got to share with Little A.

The beach was a colossal hit. At first, I think Alastair was overwhelmed with a seemingly endless sandbox, but it wasn't long before he was dumping handfuls of sand upon himself, rolling in it, and once, unwisely, trying to eat it. I was the defacto sand tower builder to his sand tower demo expert. The ocean proved to be both thrilling and frightening. Eventually, Alastair came to enjoy sitting just where the edge of the waves came up on the beach, letting the water wash over his legs and torso, and then tossing handfuls of muddy sand in the air. He probably could have sat there until he had sunk waist-deep into the sand.

Jockey's Ridge was the real winner. For a boy obsessed with pile of dirt, visiting The Largest Pile of Dirt Ever was about as close to nirvana as this toddler's gonna get. Every time after our visit that we drove past the huge dunes, Alastair shouted out "Diiiiiiiirrrrrrt!"

Man, I love that kid.

We also continued our journey through Alastair's increasingly bizarre flavor palate. The kid who hates pasta and all forms of the potato gobbled down almost an entire crab cake and a whole pickle (not in the same sitting). Now if I could only get him to eat his steamed carrots without spitting them out.


Adrian and I enjoyed spending a lot of time with my college roommate Susan. It was the most amount of time I'd been able to spend with her in probably ten years. She was also a great Aunt Susan ("Suse") to Little A. I discovered the joys of combining coconut rum and Diet Coke, probably a little too much the first night anyway. My skin is slightly more dark than before I went, amazing accomplishment for this fair lass. I am more educated about the history of the Roanoke Island colonies. My toenails are a lovely iridescent mermaid shade of blue-green. I impressed a bunch of Yankees with my crafty t-shirt deconstruction abilities. I discovered a love for fish burritos and found a few good beach eats should anyone like recommendations.

But we're so glad to finally be home with our lovely feline companions, sleeping in our own beds and not sharing a kitchen with anyone else. Our bodies are slowly shifting back to Richmond World and the nasty blistering heat. Still finding random bits of sand everywhere.

How come you always need a day or two to "recover" from your vacation?

Change of Direction

Originally, I was going to write a little post called "Mountain Man" about how much Little A enjoyed his brief visit to the mountains last week. The few days we were in Wintergreen, he got to experience hiking down the side of a mountain (on my dad's back) and the joys of throwing stones off of a cliff. Every time we were up high and got a good view of the mountain ranges whether driving or hiking, Little A would gasp and chuckle. It was also a nice trip for me because, with his boundless reserves of energy, my dad would often take Alastair off for an hour at a time to play on the rocks or throw a found golf ball around the parking lot. I got to veg out and watch HGTV.

Also, my friend Vanessa had her Baby Critter. Terribly exciting.

Then I read this article. WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG. All I had to do was read that the 11-month-old daughter weighed only 10 lbs, and I wanted to get into my car, drive down to Las Vegas, and put a serious hurtin' on these idiots. That social services had to shave her head because it was caked with cat urine only fueled my rage even further. Times like these make me seriously consider government-issued chastity belts and extensive testing before parenthood can be granted. Or something like that. Then again ignorant people have been having babies for generations, and humankind has survived. So far.

Don't Blog Like I Should

Yeah, I know I'm putting like a week between my blogs. Whatever. See I got this kid, and he's high maintenance. Plus, whenever I'm online nowadays I am generally checking e-mail, working for my uncle, or getting sucked into the black hole that is celebrity gossip websites. And I've been running a lot more or at least trying to run more in prep for the upcoming Monument Ave 10K.

Last weekend, my husband planned an overnight getaway surprise jaunt for us. Granddaddy Jack came over Friday afternoon to look after Little A until my parent's came to pick him up. Adrian drove us over to the train station to wait for our afternoon train to... DC! Yeah! I hadn't been up to the Capitol in almost 3 years (My 29th birthday trip being our last jaunt to DC. The trip of the sandals of doom.). At the ticket window, Adrian discovered bad news. Two hour delay. We took it in stride, perused an antique mall for an hour, returned to the station, waited about 30 minutes more, only to learn the train was still an hour away. Parked. Fuck.

AmTrak Sucks.

Completely out of character with our past traveling attitude (Which would have been to get pouty about the setback, fight, and go home.), we threw caution to the wind, gassed up the Mini, coffee'd up our tummies and hit the highway. Amazing, as though driving was our divinely ordained method of travel, traffic was uncharacteristically light. We made it into the city in about 80 minutes. After checking into our hotel and with a long wait until dinner (Change in reservations prompted by AmTrak fuck-up.), we wandered, chatted, visited Borders. In other words, had a nice relaxing time.

We Metro'd (Man, I love public transport.) to dinner, enjoyed a nice late meal, and returned almost painfully full to the hotel where we collapsed into bed and sleep. After a tasty breakfast, we strolled over to the National Gallery so I could gaze at some French Impressionism and one of my favorite Degas. We also stumbled into some pretty cool exhibitions including a beautiful collection of Paris photography from the late 1800's through the 1920's. Among the works were fabulous shots of pre-Haussman Paris, inventive studies of the Eiffel Tower, and a shot of what we swore was "our alley"- a little enclave of shops and restaurants we discovered back in 2003.

I am a total art nerd. God bless my husband for indulging me. He sure knows how to show this girl a good time.

While we professed several times over the course of the trip to missing Little A(especially when we saw other babies), it was nice to go off for a while and be just a couple. Engage in conversation uninterrupted by life. Go wherever the day takes us, and not a certain someone's nap schedule. For a little while, I like pretending we weren't parents. It was relaxing. But I don't think I could have pretended for too long.

Fun consumerist goodness:

• My awesome new purse from Target. It's orange.
• Against everything I thought I knew about my personal style, I got capri jeans. I've not had the guts to wear them in public yet. Maybe I am waiting to find the right pair of shoes.
• The boyfriend trouser from Gap. Ladies, get yourself at pair. Totally comfy.

Whoa, Little A is up and barking with the neighbor dog. Bwoof, Bwoof, Bwoof.

Put that thing back where it came from! So help me!

I'za slacker.

In my defense I did just return from a week-long 5th anniversary trip to lovely Asheville, NC, a wonderful little town nestled in the moutains of WNC. Great hiking, food, sights, art, and a scrumdelicous spa.

And no the Amos' have still not seen Episode III. And NO, the Slack Ass Amos' have not been replaced by Pod People. We were on vacation. Sheesh. We managed to miss Lost, for crying out loud. The Hitchiker's Guide is still on our list of flicks to see. But not for long. Heh, heh.

I think my job is trying to drive me insane. I am slowly working my way down to the Ninth Level of Corporate Hell where they will stick my ass in a frozen lake and some demon will gnaw on my exposed limbs.

However, there is a minor bright spot in the near future. My annoying co-worker, BobbleHeaded Turtle Man, will be out for the entire month of June. Which means no complaining, whining, obtuse e-mails, tense spousal phone conversations, frozen lunches that stink like dog food, and most importantly, no nail clipping. Praise God and pass the biscuits.

But guess who gets stuck doing all his work while he's gone?

Lucky me.

Gotta take the good with the bad.

Happy B'Earth Day To Me

There’s nothing like the violation of a brutal week at work after a relaxing vacation, a four-day weekend followed by five days of pure hell. Yummy. So what do I do in the face of a rapidly increasing mountain of inescapable work? I blog. Run from your problems, Amanda! That’s always a brilliant solution.

Turning 30 was great, especially when I drew out the celebration over a several days.

Adrian and I kicked off the prolonged weekend with an evening at his parent's new river home in Irvington: a beautiful, old farmhouse, decorated in their typical exquisite taste. No phones (except cell phones), no television, no computer. Total relaxation.

We woke Thursday morning having had one of the most restful nights in weeks. On the way out of town, still cocooned in bliss from such a good night’s sleep, future and frequent return visits to the River House were planned. It’s amazing the peace that falls over you just a few hours outside of your normal life.

So, I have this annoying habit of being totally unprepared for ill-weather when traveling. Leaving Richmond that afternoon for Monticello, the sky was clear and sunny. By the time we reached Charlottesville, however, clouds were fast approaching. No sooner had we stepped onto the grounds of Monticello did the wind whip up and buckets of rain fall from the sky. The temperature dropped about 15 degrees. I was dressed for Richmond as we left it, a sunny day in the 70’s: tank top, skirt, and sandals. Bollocks.

A tour of the house got us out of the weather, but unfortunately, we were ahead of the most obnoxious tour guide ever who kept her group literally on our group's heels the entire tour. We’d start to move into the next room, and she would be bringing her people right in on top of us. It got tight at times, what with umbrellas and such. The grounds were gorgeous with some of the biggest tulips I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, we weren’t compelled to wander much with the rain and all.

I’d forgotten what a totally fascinating and somewhat insane man Jefferson was. I wonder with all his obsessions and eccentricities how he would be viewed today, especially considering the publicity microscope under which we view our public figures.

Of course, by the time we got to the car and were headed out of Monticello, the rain had stopped. Cold and a little soggy, we ventured into the pedestrian mall area of downtown Charlottesville. We scored tasty coffee beverages, noshed on a panini, and indulged Amanda in her love of used and vintage bookstores, of which there were quite a few. Yes, I am a Book Whore. So, while our trip to C’ville was a bit of a meteorological mess, the day was a great opportunity to explore and plan for return trips in better weather.

My actually birth day was pretty low-key. Sleeping in long enough to still catch some morning television (a rare indulgence). There was the opening of copious cards and the presents from Adrian. My husband showered love upon me in the form of Season 2 of Farscape, the Freaks and Geeks sole season, books, and bling. Yes, this Un-Bling Girl now has fabulous, 30th Birthday Bling. You really must see it; my husband and his excellent taste. That evening there was dinner with the ‘rents, more presents, and chocolate ganache cake with pinwheels.

So, now I’m 30. That’s all I have to say about that.

Mad Tea Party will be detailed tomorrow.

My cholesterol is 144.

According to the doc, I’m as healthy as a horse. Fifteen days before Thirty, it’s good to know that my body’s not started falling apart quite yet Props to my paternal Portuguese genes. Me and Dad: Two healthy horses. One more thing I frighteningly have in common with him.

Speaking of the impending Thirty, I still haven’t figured out what to do to commemorate the event. Quite evening at home? Riotous evening out with friends? Quite evening out with Husband? Riotous evening at home with friends?

Mad Tea Party?

Yesterday for the first time this year, I wore a skirt bare-legged. Bare-legged in all my Nuclear Winter White with Angry Red Dog Bite Scars glory. The temp peaked in the mid-80’s. This weekend, the weather will turn chilly and rainy. Man, I love Spring in the Old Dominion. Coming soon: The thick film of yellow evil.

Tuesday, my team had a day long meeting/team-building event. After seven years of Corporate Hell, I tend to get cynical about this type of bullshit, but Tuesday’s meeting was actually helpful. I really like our new Tier Five (translation: my boss’s boss). She’s enthusiastic, smart, driven, and compassionate. A far cry from the corporate douche-bags we’ve had to contend with in the past.

I have made a wonderful consumerist discovery: drugstore.com. I can now shop for OPI nail goodness and Neutrogena sunless tanning (Banish the Nuclear Winter White!) products without leaving my desk. Yum.

This weekend, I travel to Grundy with mom to visit my grandmom. We’re going to try and convince her to move to Richmond where she’d be closer to her three children and her two only grandchildren. I hope she can be persuaded. I’d really like to have my only surviving grandparent (I don’t count my bitch-ass paternal grandmother whom I’ve never even met.) closer than half a state away so I could spend more time with her.

Tonight I shop for mom’s Fiftieth birthday presents. I hope I do well with the big 5-OH gifts. I guess I feel like I can never repay all the things my mom has done for me. Any presents I give her feel paltry in comparison.

Squirrel Girl

I’m anxious, maybe because I won’t have a full weekend to relax and kick around the house for a month. My nerves are wound up tight as cheerleader’s ponytail, and no, I am no longer freebasing OTC decongestants. I feel like Lucy, my skittish black cat. One out-of-place noise and I’m clattering out of the room with my claws out and my tail puffed.

On Monday, I got to work three hours late. I thought that I had by chance avoided the weekly nail clippings. Not so. 12:45 p.m. and the snip-snipping began. God help me, but one day I am going to wrench those fucking clippers out of his hands and run out of the building, never to be heard from a again.

This past weekend was non-stop chaos as Adrian and I shuttled from one social commitment to another. The visit to Williamsburg was nice, crap weather aside. Even though my quest for Tori tickets was fruitless (damn you Ticketmaster!), I had Zen shopping and lunch at the ‘Tec. It’s weird to explore the little town I know and love with someone other than Adrian. Since I roamed about with someone new I didn’t stick to my usual path and discovered places in the ‘burg I didn’t know existed.

For starters, there was the B&B we stayed in Friday night, the Aldrich House. Tucked off of Second Street on a non-descript cul-de-sac, the Aldrich House was a spacious, yet homey B&B run by Tom and Sue Patton and lorded over by the resident feline princess and three-legged wonder, KC. We were lucky to be the only guests in the place, so we took advantage of the huge great room to chill out after a wonderfully filling dinner at Christiana Campbell’s Tavern and bond with the purr machine KC.

Adrian and I stayed in the lovely Patton Room, and my only regret was that I didn’t get to enjoy a bubble bath in the massive whirlpool tub. Breakfast was excellent with huge slices of French toast, a bowl of sliced fresh fruit, sausage (that everyone else enjoyed), and scrambled eggs. I got a little mushy inside when I noticed that the juice glasses were the same type of hand-blown flutes Adrian and I used to make our first toast at our wedding reception. Our stay was made particularly special by an early morning visit by KC, who slept in the bed with us for a few hours and made use feel like we were at home curled up with our own kitty babies.

This was our third B&B experience since this summer, and I’d have to say it ranks slightly under the exceptional Barclay Cottage of Virginia Beach and their massive gourmet breakfasts, awesome personal attention, and perfect location. At the bottom ranks our stay at the Gentry House in NOLA. While the price and location were just right, I felt like we were afterthoughts to the innkeeper as he was taking classes. Amenities were sparse and our rooms did not get cleaned daily (or at all during our week’s stay, I think), but we did get rocking croissants for breakfast each morning and killer restaurant recommendations.

We’ll definitely stay at the Aldrich House again, and since being bitten by the B&B bug, will continue to find ourselves seeking out accommodations at inns rather than the typical hotel/motel experience.

My second ‘burg discovery was Mermaid Books on Prince George St. Tucked in a tiny basement shop below Parlett’s, Mermaid Books could be considered my ideal store: crammed to the gills with used and vintage books, tchotcke of various decades, and tons of ephemera here and there throughout the shelves. Add a dash of vintage clothes and hats, and I would have thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Evelyn had to practically drag me away when it came time to go find Tori tickets. If I’d known what a fruitless expedition that turned out to be, I would have stayed happy as a clam amongst the shelves and boxes so precariously arranged until I was weak with hunger and could no longer stand. I don’t know how long Adrian will stand the claustrophobic atmosphere and the proliferation of old stuff, but I will return to the Mermaid next ‘burg trip.

Congrats to my husband and his navigator Jeff who won their class in the Rides of March Rally. This was their first rally, and I am just pleased as punch for their success. Luck number 13, after all.

Be jealous. I’m going on a date tomorrow night.