Hanging out with Anthea

[mellicious]

I mentioned back before Thanksgiving that I had volunteered to drive Anthea (aka antheap ) to Austin. That has now formally fallen through, which is a bit of a relief because the logistics were rather complicated. Only the other hand I am sorry, too, because I love hanging around with her and I always love an excuse to go to Austin. She does report that she expects to be back in May for a conference, so maybe we'll be able to try again then.

I did get to hang out with her for a couple of hours tonight, though. We had talked about making a pilgrimagevisit to Sephora, because we both really enjoyed that when we went before, but before we got around to it, she mentioned in passing that she was looking for a certain kind of salt (which I misheard as "sauce" for quite some time) so I had the bright idea of going to Central Market. Actually, first we tried to go to the University Co-op - because it's right down the street from her Houston workplace and I thought it would be entertaining - but we couldn't even find a parking place at Uptown Park where the store is, so we had to abandon that idea. I suspect that she would have been highly amused by it, but I guess we will never know (unless of course we go to Austin and I can drag her into the real one on the Drag, which would be even better). I don't know what was going on at Uptown Park, but whatever it was, seemingly everybody was there. But Central Market worked out quite well, even though we didn't find the item she was looking for. Anth and I sort of have the same sort of "ooh! shiny!" attitude towards shopping, which I guess is why we always end up shopping when she comes. Anyway, she seemed to really enjoy it (Central Market, I mean), and I always do, too. And as I always do, I came out with pomegranates (photographic evidence!) and sourdough bread and pie and other such odds and ends. Never fails.

After that we went across the street to Highland Village and went in a couple of places - PaperSource was a big hit. (Anth bought several of the items on this page. Well, or maybe just this one. Plus Jesus and his Magnetic Wardrobe, which does not seem to be there although several other versions are.) And we also went into Williams-Sonoma and sampled the peppermint bark. And then everything was closing and that was all the shopping we could do, darnit.

(There were tons of parking places at Central Market and even at Highland, which can sometimes be crowded. I have no idea what was going on at that other shopping center, but apparently it was the hot place to be.)


(I am listening to the Nerdist podcast with Matt Smith, which I know many of you will already know about, but it's very entertaining. Just thought I'd mention it.)