A day out with Amber

I spent an afternoon with Amber about a week ago. She is my good friend and erstwhile neighbor and we appear to be slowly following one another around California. We both lived in the same apartment complex in Mountain View–a few years apart. We both lived in the same area of Sunnyvale–a few years apart. Then we lived in Sunnyvale only a couple of blocks from one another, and met through Book Crossing. Finally, she moved away, and now we’re within ten miles of one another again.

How cool is that? *grin*

So, we hung out together and went to Tim’s? Tom’s? used bookstore in downtown Lodi. Per our usual technique we drove randomly around the city pretending to read maps until we eventually stumbled on somewhere we recognized and were able to track the place down. I noticed that Lodi’s downtown had been snazzed up since I was last there–in fact, Lodi was one of my first official snarfaris for Markeroni, back in 2003, and I need to go back and take photographs this time. There are new murals depicting historical scenes and I have already penciled in a date with myself to go down there and take lots of photos, both of the murals and of Lodi’s downtown in general.

The town was oozing with little kids in Hallowe’en garb. Downtown businesses were “doing” Hallowe’en and a variety of bored teenaged employees were sitting outside the stores with their buckets of candy doing their duty by the spacemen, butterflies and who-knows-whats. We found the bookstore and looked around its dusty, bookstore-smelling shelves before we gave up. I didn’t buy any books and AmberLee only bought a couple, and it ensued that neither of us was particularly impressed by the selection. What we did both like, however, was the pair of cats who obviously lived there and either sat placidly on the counter or miaowed at the patrons, some of whom were having animated and loud conversations about lofty subjects and deserved to be miaowed at.

On the way back, we witnessed a lovely little parade: about a dozen vintage cars trundling slowly down the street in convoy, heading into the parking lot, touring it, and pouring out the other side. We sat on a bench and watched with big grins on our faces, and they grinned back at us. Some even honked their horns: Aroo-ga! Aroo-ga!

It was the icing on the cake of a lovely day.