satisfiedIt was another "lending library" trip for me and my friend Alicia: I got back books and discs she'd borrowed, I left her plenty of others and borrowed some more stuff from her, and we visited. Drove, too: had very good and filling rice and bean bowls at a place called the Yumm! Cafe, shopped at a local drugstore, visited her family's cats (including a Siamese kitten named Jasmine), browsed the downtown Smith Family Bookstore ("They're trying to be the Eugene Powell's," Alicia said; "Good goal to have," I replied), and enjoyed each other's company. And the company of various cats, including her cat Colby, who likes me. Yay!
Also yay: Some CD purchases at House of Records, including the nice surprise of a used CD of Elmer Bernstein's score to The Man With the Golden Arm. I'd had that score on my mind (it's kind of jazz-from-Hell, for the film about Frank Sinatra as a drummer who's a junkie), and it's nice to have a CD copy.
Not yay: Some really bad drivers on I-5, both coming and going. And at one point on the way there, I had a guy in a pickup pace me on my right, speeding up when I tried to pass him and losing some (not all) of that speed if I tried to let him pass me. I think he was toying with me; nothing was wrong with my car on the side he could see (I checked later), he wasn't trying to signal me, and I didn't recognize him (and the odds of him being someone I know were about as long as I-5 itself). I eventually slowed to 55 in the left lane (on a 70 mph stretch of the road) to fall back, hoping that no one came up quickly behind me, and once I was behind one more vehicle, I got into the right lane and stayed there, unmolested for the rest of the trip. And then I spent time getting over being angry at his treating me like that. Rude, I tell you.
Edited To End With Something More Positive Than That Driving Jerk: Alicia also got gifts today! I giftwrapped for her a jigsaw puzzle of a kitten, copies of Daughter of Hounds and Threshold by
greygirlbeast, and (she was especially taken by this) a Pirates of the Caribbean Davey Jones action figure or, as we call him, Disney Cthulhu. 