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Friday Fun! (Visit to VT, Gal Pals, Wii)
Although the reason for my visit home last weekend was sad, I had a wonderful time getting to see my dad’s side of the family mostly together for a change. My aunts, uncles, and cousins were all wonderful, although it’d been so many years that I did shock a few by having beer at the wake. Hah! Apparently, me being 23 snuck up on them. I also got to see my nephew, who is now talking in complete sentences. I was shocked at how well he remembers me, as well as at how much time he wanted to spend with me. It was fun! Apparently, I like toddlers. Who knew. I also got to meet my niece for the first time. She’s got her daddy’s red hair, so she’s bound to be a bundle of trouble. ;-) Really, though, she’s looking quite good for all the time she had to spend in intensive care at first.
Back in Boston, I hung out with my ever-lovely gal pals, Nina and E. I, shockingly, got to introduce them to the infamous Telephone music video, which they naturally fell in love with. Bonding occurred over Thai food, and Nina sent me off with a bottle of vodka. The gal knows me so well. :-) Meanwhile, all three of my herb plants came up and seem to be doing relatively well. *fingers crossed* Also making an appearance is the seedlings from the mystery seeds I got from Old Navy. I have no idea what flower it’s going to be. We shall see. I’ve been playing my way through wii’s Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess. It’s the furthest I’ve ever made it in that type of game. I will say, getting to swipe the wiimote in the air and having it kill troll things on the screen is AWESOME. I think if I ever actually manage to defeat this, I’ll have to try another game where I get to wave my arms around and kill things.
Happy weekends, everyone! Here’s hoping the gorgeous weather holds out!
Friday Fun! (Merry Chrismukkah!)
What a busy week it’s been! Full of good and bad stress. Thankfully mostly the good kind. Unfortunately stress of any kind can make me act kinda wonky, so…..sorry about that.
Over the weekend I visited my family in Vermont. My nephew is 2 and has reached the “why” stage of development. My brother and sister-in-law have grown a bit tired of it, but I gotta say I thoroughly enjoyed answering all of his “why’s” to the fullest extent. Of course, I only was around him for a portion of 2 days, lol. My aunt and uncle (who my dad lives with) were very hospitable, and I drank much wine. My dad gave me housewarming money which was fairly promptly used to buy a toaster and a rice cooker. They haven’t arrived yet, but they’re bright red and appear to be entirely awesome.
Monday was my presentation of my final team project for this semester of grad school, which means I am officially on winter break! Yayyyyyy!!! I already got my grades, and they were both just fine and dandy.
This week I hosted a Chrismukkah gathering for my group of lesbian friends (I call them “The Lesbians,” and yes they are just fine with that. In fact, they kinda love it). I had my first attempt at making latkes. I used the vegan sweet potato latke recipe from this month’s issue of Vegetarian Times magazine. I was doubtful that substituting pureed sweet potato for egg would work, but by golly it did. The latkes tasted great, although I need to work on figuring out the appropriate cooking time. There aren’t the helpful bubbles that you get with regular pancakes, so a few got a bit, erm, burnt. We lit the menorah (and I am proud to say that I can now sing the prayer), and we watched Claymation Christmas. If you have never seen Claymation Christmas I hereby order you to go find it on Youtube. It is quite trippy. The Lesbians surprised me by giving me a crock pot! This means you may be hearing about my vegetarian crock pot cooking adventures in the future.
You guys were totally going to get an adorable picture of my kitty snuggled up in wrapping paper, but I didn’t get a chance to download them to my computer. I swear these Friday posts will have pictures eventually.
I hope everyone’s holidays are going well. Try to enjoy and stay stress-free!
Indie Bookstores: Violet’s Book Exchange (Claremont, NH)
Since I am known for meandering into any indie bookstore that I happen across, I thought it might be fun to highlight ones that I visit on my blog. Obviously this will be a totally random recurring post.
As you all know, this weekend I was in Vermont (right on the border of New Hampshire) visiting my family. My dad, knowing my perpetual love of books, suggested we stop in one of only two indie bookstores in driving distance of them–Violet’s Book Exchange located in Claremont, New Hampshire.
I had been there before, but not for a while. When she started the business, Violet had a few bookshelves and an excellent store credit for books policy. To my recollection, she didn’t have any new books. Now she has two floors, a children’s room, and a wonderful mix of used and fairly priced used books. She also features arts and crafts handmade by local people on one shelf, which is an excellent way for an indie bookstore to be connected to their community.
It’s not really surprising to me that this bookstore has taken off, as the library situation in that area of Vermont/New Hampshire is dire. There is one medium-sized, up-to-date library located in Claremont, but most of the people in the area do not live within the district that would give them access to free library cards. This is a predominantly poor, working class area of VT/NH, and most of the people can’t afford the exhorbitant library fee. With often bad, still *wired* internet access, there is little to do. Violet’s cheap used and new books with an excellent rate on books you yourself bring in for store credit really helps to fill that gap. Violet clearly has business acumen, and I salute her for filling a much-desired need in the area.
While I was there, my dad picked up a cookbook (which I would totally provide a cover image for if I could remember what it was), and a book for me. I present to you: The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming: A Christmas Story
To top it all off, the clerk asked us if we had any store credit. I honestly answered that I used to, but I had thrown away the card after moving permanently to Boston. (Yes, I should have given it to my brother, but I was being dumb and didn’t think of that). Anyway, apparently in the meantime they’d computerized and lo and behold she found my store credit and we got to use it. I was seriously impressed at this level of organization.
If you can visit Violet’s Book Exchange in person, I highly recommend it. If you can’t, you can at least check out their website where you can get books shipped to you. I encourage you to consider it, because this bookstore is vital for these small towns.
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This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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