Banjo night at the bagel shop resumed on Friday, after the participants took most of the summer off. The only announcement was a little flyer on the door of the bagel shop, posted only days before it occurred, so turnout was minimal. Unfortunately, some of the people who were not notified of the event were several of the performers. So it was actually this one guy with a guitar, sitting on the stage with his cell phone, trying to gather the troops. He played for a while, and then this other guy showed up, wearing a big hat and bearing a bright pink guitar. The two of them played for a while, limited to their common repertoire of songs. In the middle of all the proceedings, the door opened and in strode this tall guy wearing a sweater (odd on an 80-degree day) and a beret. You couldn't help but notice him, especially after he announced to all assembled, "Hi! My name is Dave and I'm from Scotland and I'm here to see the music!" Dave sat down. Dave laughed loudly, and clapped like someone beating up a bison. Anything Dave said, we all heard. But at least he was having a good time. Actually, the rest of us were, too, but it was odd that there were no banjos.
The fall edition of the library book sale took place Saturday morning. It's not as big a deal as the spring one, taking place on the lawn of the library instead of in a barn. Smaller isn't always bad, because in this case it means cheaper. Books are priced by the bag or box instead of individually, and I had a pretty large bag. To be honest, I didn't find all that much I wanted to read, but I found plenty of books to sell. I figured out how much I had paid for each of them ($3 for the whole bag) and it ended up being about 6 or 7 cents each, which should make for a decent profit on them. My biggest find was a brand-new copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, discarded by some disgruntled student or someone. I spent last night reading it and felt very anal-retentive for doing so, sort of the way I feel when I read through the AP Stylebook on a slooooooow afternoon.
Became a threat to national security on Friday. I drove my dad down to the airport so that he could pick up a rental car, and he always likes it if whoever is dropping him off doesn�t leave until he has the keys to the rental car in hand. So I drove up to the waiting area in front of the airport (lot parking is limited and extremely pricey, considering it's the only place in town one actually has to pay for parking), where several other cars were parked and people seemed to be loading and unloading. My dad went inside, and I sat there, waiting in the car. Then there was a knock on my window. It was a guy in camouflage, who I assumed was a national guardsman sent to guard the airport. [1] I unrolled the window and he glared at me. "You can't park here," he said. I protested, saying that there were many others who seemed to be parked here like I was, but then I looked around and realized that all the other cars parked in front of the airport were military or government vehicles. So I moved. Not wanting to pay for parking, I just circled around the airport in my car for a while, making Mr. Guardsman and his buddies sort of nervous each time I passed by them. Then I just went home. That seemed sort of like overkill for such an unpopular airport.
Tried to cook. I made tofu and noodles with spicy peanut sauce one night, and risotto with roasted garlic and collard greens the other night. The former was marred by the fact that I just don't like obvious tofu (hidden tofu is acceptable, as is tofu jerky) and the latter by the lack of good Parmesan cheese. There's only one place in town here that sells actual, honest-to-god Parmigano-Reggiano cheese, and they were out when I went by there. I picked up the best available subsitute �Esome domestic Parmesan from the deli case at Safeway. It was okay. It was edible, but it just didn't taste right �Ethere's a unique taste (tanginess? nuttiness?) that comes from using real Parm-Reg, and it was lacking. So I was disappointed and overly critical of my dish. Which is pretty dumb, really.
Worked. Bleah. Not how I wanted to spend seven hours of a perfectly good Sunday afternoon.
[1] Actually, at this time of year, he could have just been a hunter.