Books Galore
7:47 a.m. - 2014-02-10


We have needed new shelves in the living room for many years now, and now there are so many books stacked up there on the short little shelves that we look like hoarders. Anyhow, recently A called us up from the peninsula and told us about an unfinished furniture store there that she had found. This last Saturday we, including M, drove over there to check it out. The shelves were indeed nice, solid wood, with prices similar to the big chain Swedish furniture store, so we ordered some shelves for along the long wall. It will be some months before they arrive, giving me time to be ruthless in my selection of biblio survivors. I had a thought this morning that while too short for our present needs, the old shelves are much better quality than you can get nowadays, so maybe we could reuse them in the sewing room. Looks like there is going to be a lot of culling and moving stuff this year.

In addition to checking out the furniture store, we went to lunch at a soul food place in Santa Clara (fabulous sweet potato pie) and went to an antique show at the convention center in San Mateo. That place is really getting pricey. They charge $10 just for parking and then an $8 per head admission so we tend not to go there for most events. Sometimes, if we are lucky, we can find parking in the surrounding neighborhood and trek in, but M says she will drive all the way to Sacramento for gem shows just to avoid getting ripped off. This was something the spouse wanted to attend and he so rarely goes to venues like this that we are willing to fork it over for his sake.

We are coming to the end of the surprise big storm, so it is up in the air whether there will be a drought or not. I guess I'd better put in a seed order just in case.

We had Grandma over for Sunday dinner again yesterday. She really looks forward to it and is a pleasure to cook for. This time I made a recipe she gave us for a sausage and rice casserole. I had some sausage left over in the freezer from the batch I bought for the massively delicious and sinful casserole we make for Christmas breakfast, and when I poured the bag of frozen fried sausage into the rice dish I realized it was about twice the amount called for. This does not add to the health factor but made the casserole the best one I ever made from this recipe. Usually I have about half the casserole left over but this time the dish was scraped clean.

I still have one handbag to finish sewing so I think I will tackle that today. I have been tidying up the sewing room and trying to finish up some UFOs. I also have four more sweaters in the works and recently finished up four more, so that can only mean that warm weather is on the way.