Goodbye Forever Barnes and Noble

Besides shopping at the Goodwill bookstore and ordering books from Amazon so that I don't have to wait in line while chatty salespeople have their social time at Barnes and Noble, I found another bookstore that will be getting my money.

I had seen signs along Rosedale Hwy for BOOKS MOVIES MUSIC turn right here for a few months now, and the other day as I was coming back down the road from a trip to Beverly Fabrics downtown, I decided to turn right and check out the store. It's called Bookhounds and is in one of those industrial building complexes, and it's absolutely WONDERFUL! I was expecting the usual used bookstore prices of half off the cover but the prices are the same as at Goodwill, 99c for a paperback, $1.29 for a hardback, and anything with a blue sticker was another 25% off. I had to go to the bathroom and didn't see a customer restroom so cut my visit short and just got a few books, but went back yesterday and spent a lot longer browsing around and filling up my shopping cart. They had a lot to choose from and I had made a list of books I've had on my Amazon wishlist so found a few of those and then a lot more that weren't on my list. About half the books I got had blue stickers, so my huge stack of books that filled up three big bags cost a little over $30.00. The seven or so books from Barnes and Noble that were so annoying to stand in line to buy were $55.00. Hmm, let me see, which store will I be shopping at from now on?

Buddy has been a real pain this week, he's either really bored or missing Keith, who has been out on the coast working this week. The last two evenings he has been wandering around the living room doing his restless meowing thing and then BITING me. I've tried playing with him but that doesn't seem to do the trick. I have to walk carefully if I head to the bathroom or something because he follows me around rubbing on everything and getting under my feet and I'm afraid he is going to BITE me again. Keith says to just throw him out of the house when he acts like that, but I'm also afraid that then all the other cats will want to go out, too, and I'll spend all evening trying to get them to come back inside so that I can go to bed.

Today is Keith's last day at work, he will be driving back from the coast and getting back to the shop in time to do his exit interview and pick up his last paycheck and on Monday will start training to be a BNSF conductor. A job that he has been trying to get for about six years now. I am crossing my fingers in the hopes that there will be no family or personal crises this time to derail things because I want this to be the last job he gets and be a job that he doesn't dread getting up in the morning (or evening in the case of railroad work) to go do.

Quick Weekend

Keith got home at about 8pm on Friday after getting on the wrong freeway and nearly ending up in Indio. He drove for about an hour before he finally figured out that it wasn't the way home. It quickly looked like a hurricane had hit after he brought in all his dirty clothes and new grip bag full of new equipment for work. Especially looking like a hurricane after he started unpacking all of his new gear to show me and piled up the dirty clothes by the washer.

He put on all his new gear to model it for us.

New hard hat with removable shields for different sorts of work, and according to the rules, you'd better have the correct face shield on for whatever work you are doing. New safety jacket with long sleeves that has to be worn at all times when welding. New gloves. New leather leg shields, something he's never had before but they keep your legs and boots from getting burnt by sparks.


This is the metal mesh face shield:


Nathan and William had stopped by and William does not want to be held by this monster looking man. Daddy! Save me!


We did a little shopping for travel sized toiletries and some more work shirts, got the second half of the new tires put on the car and had breakfast at Denny's while waiting for the tires. It worked out perfectly, Denny's is in the same parking lot as the tire store and they called to say they were done just as we were waiting for the check. We were debating on whether we should wait on the tires but they had ordered them for us special and were holding them for us and since he'll be doing a lot of traveling, better to make sure the tires are good.

We did his laundry and I actually made him dinner on Saturday which wasn't all that great but he didn't want to go out to eat since that's all he'd done all week even though I would have loved to go out to eat because I'm ready to go somewhere after being home alone all week.

Then on Sunday morning I had him show me how to use the new lawn mower so that I could mow the lawn while he's gone. Let me tell you, I would not want to be a gardener for a living- that is hard work! We have to weed whack all around the yard edges and the stepping stones first, then mow, and that weed whacker makes your arms hurt and then the lawn mower is kind of heavy and you have to watch out so that you don't run over the cord. But, I got the lawn mowed and was just finishing up when his work buddy drove up to pick him up and leave town again. It was so nice of him to offer to come by and get him so that I could have the car this week even though I can't really drive it anywhere until we get the window fixed. The window that is duct taped and cardboarded up until Wednesday when the part will be in and it will cost at least $500 to fix. Sigh.

Anyway, he's off again and it will be another kind of strange week here all by myself.

Oh, new cat post here: http://festivalofelines.blogspot.com/2011/04/snaggletooth.html

Still Hungry

I just rode over to Foods Co to get some eggs because there was nothing to eat for breakfast here. And I woke up hungry. After eating my eggs and low carb yogurt I'm still hungry.

I was looking through the frozen food section looking for something, anything that doesn't have a pasta base but it seems like every Lean Cuisine or Stouffers entrees are all high carb. So...

I'm sick of salads and don't much care for canned soup. A big steak sounds pretty good but I'm not real good at cooking steak and what's a steak without a baked potato on the side anyway?

Oh well. I'll eat my turkey burger patties and cottage cheese which I'm getting pretty sick of, too.

Keith is on his last day of training this week and will be home late tonight. He called this morning because the window roller up thing broke and now the window is duct taped shut on the passenger side and of course none of the car dealership repair places do repairs like that on Saturdays, so he's going to ride down with one of his co-workers to work next week and I'll take the car over and get it fixed. It figures, his first week on the new out of town job and the car needs fixing.

It looks like he won't be home during the week for a long long time, his supervisor already has plans to send him all over the state so he can work in all the different places, then he has to pass his test to keep the job, then eventually go to Kansas for the welding school, then probably working all over the state each week again. I don't really mind being here by myself but it is a little strange at night. I thought I'd sleep better without him in the bed but so far that's not happening. I keep waking up 2 or 3 times a night having weird disturbing dreams and being hot and throwing off the covers, laying there for a while and then getting cold and pulling the covers back up. He's had a hard time sleeping in a strange bed, too. Hopefully he will get used to all of this and pass his test and all.