After work I headed to the Lyndale Borders to meet
irish_dragon who wanted to go out for her birthday. We spent much time perusing the books. I got another knitting book. The folks who do the Learning Visually computer books also did a knitting book. Their computer books are much too simplistic for me but they're really useful for the knitting thing since it shows pictures of actual yarn & hands holding needles & such. We also each bought a copy of the paperback anthology that has 5 vampire stories including a new original one by Laurell K. Hamilton. After deciding that an escape would be a good thing to our pocketbooks we figured out where the nearest Red Lobster was and went off to dinner. I had lots of yummy shrimp and lots of good conversation.Friday:
A very weird thing happened here on Friday. It snowed. I know, Minnesota, January, what's so weird about snow? Well, until this we had only had about 2 inches ALL WINTER, bost of it non-accumulating. Hell, parts of TEXAS got more snow than we had! Now, according to our cute little snowman snow gauge that
hellbob bought on clearance, we've got more than 8 inches, but less than 10. Hurrah! Another weird thing happened on Friday. I got an email at work from an old high school friend.
scubagrrl, it was Lance! Dawn had forwarded the pics I took of Sandy's twins to him because he has two little twin girls. I haven't seen him in about 3 or 4 years!Friday evening our neighbor Tammy stopped by to invite us over for drinks. Her husband Steve, and friends Krystal and Glen were also there. We sat around & chatted & played Yahtzee & drank a drink out of a big volcano shaped bowl with a flame in the middle. Plans were made for me to go to a knitting class with Tammy & Glen's wife Carol tomorrow. I will be learning to knit a hat!
Saturday (also known as today...):
I got up early (for a weekend) so I could snow blow the driveway. I like snow blowing almost as much as I hate mowing! Then I lounged for a little bit before driving on over to St. Paul for Alton Brown's book signing.
He did a Q & A before the show. The episodes with his sister & nephew... Not really his sister & nephew. He doesn't have a sister & he said that if she was his sister she probably would have been killed by the time he was 12. But, the eps that had his mom & his Grandma, that really was them.
He does the Iron Chef competition thing. When someone asked him which chef's leftovers he liked to eat best he said he doesn't eat them anymore because of three little words: Trout Ice Cream. He said that no matter what you were picturing that tasting like you weren't even close unless you were imagining that it tasted like the rotting back end of a yak.
I had to wait a bit for my signing because I had gotten there right at 2:00. They used a page-a-day calendar as place holders & mine had a May date. While I was there I saw
silmarian & wiredferret and they had both kids with them. Kay was having a bad day though & wouldn't stop crying. I also saw michaellee. Then, as I was browsing to kill time I turned around & there was a guy standing there smiling at me. It was my friend Ben from Fargo! I hadn't seen him in 8 years. He was there with his boyfriend Brian (they've been together almost 10 years) and their friends Mel & Dave. Mel is also hellbob's ex-girlfriend of about 4 years. The four of them all live down in Rochester and I exchanged contact info with Ben so we can attempt to stay in touch. After a while it was finally time for me to get in line to get my book signed. Alton was very nice & friendly. It's so cute. When people come up to him for the signing he shakes their hand and introduces himself.
Hey,
mcbarnes1970, Alton really likes fishsticks. This will make sense to you in a couple days. 