Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Retail Therapy (Sort of...)

I don't think I'm going to get over the shock of the election and its aftermath quickly, but I'm working on it.  Moving on...

When you're feeling down in the dumps what do you do?  A little retail therapy usually helps me feel better.  I don't even have to buy anything although it's LOTS better if I do.  Just the process of going into a store, realizing that we have so many choices, and so much available to us, makes me feel better.

If I buy fabric, or books, well then it's just been nirvana.  Not the band.  😉

Here's what I did yesterday:

Stopped by my local library to pick up a book... and on the way out there's an area of shelves where you can buy books for pennies, really, nothing over $5 and many for much, much less.  I was on my way to the car and I thought I'd just take a peek.

I found these four books plus one other and spent $7 total.  I mean two of these are hard covers, and you know the price of hardcover books these days!  They were $1 each.  The Alexander McCall was 50 cents!  I love his books!  The one on the top was $2.50 but it's the latest DCI Banks mystery (of PBS fame...)

 
The Cara Black at the bottom of this pile was also purchased at the library, also a hard cover.
 
There was also a big padded mailer on the table from Amazon and the three top books were in that.  I purchased them via Amazon Smile on Saturday.  My church will get a small donation from that purchase.  There are quite a number of charities that participate, there might be some organization that you could help if you check it out.
 
 
Two weekends ago I went to Murder and Mayhem in Milwaukee, a small conference for mystery and crime writers and fans.  I enjoyed myself thoroughly and came home with a whole list of new writers to check out.  That's where I met Cara Black and heard her speak on a panel about her French lady detective, and her series of books -- Murder in (insert location in France).
 
We also had the pleasure of listening to an interview with Sara Paretsky.  If you don't know who she is, she's the creator of the Chicago female detective V.I. Warshawsky.  I've been reading those novels since I stumbled across the first one at a little used book emporium in Seattle years ago.  Yes, I went to the Powell's mother ship during a trip there.  All I can say is wow!  I had to buy another tote bag to carry my finds home that trip.

Here's a very bad phone pic of Sara singing about the Chicago Cubs before she started the interview.  The other person on stage is co-emcee Dana Cameron.  I am on the lookout for copies of the Emma Fielding novels, one of Dana's multitude of series, she's very prolific!


Sorry for the fuzzy focus.  I did get a nice shot of the back of the lady sitting in front of me.  Here's one of Dana with Tom Schreck who was giving us the opportunity to learn some boxing moves.  He's the author of a number of novels involving boxers, and he also coaches boxing.  He pointed out that if you read about someone using a right hook there might be some inaccuracy in the fight description because that could get you ko'd!  Who knew he'd let Dana get that close??  LOL!

 

The last thing I did before I went to bed last night was cut and bag some more kits for our church quilt guild.  My co-leader and I had made some purchases a couple of weeks ago, and it seemed like spending some time in the sewing studio would be good therapy.
 
We've given out a large number of quilts to people having babies, having surgery, etc, and we needed to replenish the kit bag.  Now I feel ready for this Saturday and the quilty ladies!
 

 
Getting ready to sew on...


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