A post in which I spend some time with my best girl Rhonda*

Rhonda and I had made plans to go downtown to the 'farmer's market' today.  Local businesses come to sell produce and the like.  It's more of a street festival than a real farmer's market, but I'm all about locally grown and produced food.  Rhonda wanted to go to feed her (apparently ravenous) fig addiction.  The season is short, so it's a 'gather ye rosebuds while ye may' kinda thing.  She bought several pounds (!!) of figs.  I also got some peaches, and some heirloom tomatoes from a local grower who is broadening my horizons from Cherokee Purples to all sorts of exotic cultivars.  I got a couple of small black tomatoes to try, and one beautiful tomato that was bright yellow with green streaks (called a green zebra).  It would have been gorgeous in a salad.  Rhonda said she had been craving some cucumber salad, and I found some of the Chinese (or Japanese, or whatever they were) cucumbers, so we picked them up.  I also got some scallions and fresh basil for the checca sauce I was making this weekend, and some focaccia bread, just because it looked good. 

We nipped back to my place with the haul to put stuff in the fridge, and I whipped up a cucumber salad for her to take home. 

By that time we were both hungry, so we repaired to Greenfields Bagels and Deli for authentic, locally made lesbian bagles.  I adore lox, which is not exactly a local kinda thing.  When I approached the window to place my order, the guy was like "You must be from up North."  LOL  I couldn't believe it!  I am from the mountains of North Carolina originally, and so the last thing people usually think when they hear me open my mouth is 'yankee'.  I got a huge kick out of it though, and was cracking jokes there with the guy, who was super-nice.  The bagels there are fantastic, and they are not stingy with the lox, either.  The potato salad was excellent too - and obviously made there.  I can spot factory-made potato salad (yerrgh!) from across the room.  Plus I knew since they make their own pickles (which I don't care for) they weren't going to order out for potato salad.  I picked up some bagels and some of their delicious scallion cream cheese spread (they make a selection of gorgeous things with cream cheese) to take home for breakfast tomorrow or Monday, when Jason will be there.

After breakfast we went to whole foods for the fancy cheeses I needed to finish my pasta.  Then I dropped her at home and went back to cook.  I did laundry, and made my pasta with checca sauce up for lunches next week (realizing just as I popped the lunches in the fridge that I had forgotten to add the fresh basil I had purchased specifically for that - grrr).

I did some laundry and had a light lunch of tomatoes and focaccia bread, surprised that while my exotically-colored tomatoes looked wild, they basically tasted like, well, tomatoes.  They were good, don't get me wrong, they just weren't as wild as I had expected.  I needed them too, because the focaccia bread was quite surprisingly greasy.  There was a lot of olive oil in it.

I got in touch with the boys to see what they were doing for supper, but they were in Spartanburg visiting Billy's sister.  They invited me up to have Thai food with them, but they were already there, and I didn't want to horn in on time with Billy's sister, plus I had spent quite enough money this weekend already, thank you.  I settled in to watch The Seven Year Itch, but as usual found that I just couldn't get into it.  It's supposed to be one of Marilyn Monroe's defining performances, but I prefer her in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (plus I really love Rosalind Russel), although I saw more of Itch than I usually watch today, and she was quite good. 

I ended up wandering into the internet vortex, and had a buddy come to see me named Steve.  I haven't seen him in a while.  He's a very nice guy.  I probably shouldn't have had him over today, but we both had a really nice time, and it was good to see him. 

I ended up staying in and web-surfing tonight, which was really fine.  I had a very active morning, and was quite tired.  I also spent some time chatting with Jason's friend Rodney.  Rodney has been quite upset about the whole CFA debacle.  I wanted to tell him about my success story with my co-worker, which I had hoped might kind of buck him up a little.  Sadly, Rodney is a bit of a glass-half-empty kinda guy though, and this fight has hit home for him even more closely than it has for me.  He spent some time living in Europe, where things are much better for us.  Additionally his own family is supporting CFA and all this bigotry.  Now my dad does too, but through the years, I've kind of learned to look the other way (or live in denial, or whatever you choose to label this as).  He's having a hard time doing that.  But I tried to make him feel a little better.

Before I turned in I had a text from the boys inviting me to the flea market in the morning!  Yay!