A Sunday in which I gain traction and direction*

And mostly in a fun way.

I awoke Sunday morning with purpose.  I was taking Rhonda to the flea market.  I got up (well, after a bit) and started getting ready to go.  I roused Rhonda on the phone without much trouble, which is unusual just by itself.

We went up to Barnyard today in Greer.  I hadn't intended to look for glass today.  I was mainly going for produce.  But of course while we were there I was going to look around.  That flea market is always a good place to hunt, and I have scored some notable finds there.  As I did today.  Today's find was an $80 bowl I bought for $9.  I'm not crazy about that pattern, but it is a pretty piece.  It has some dirt and a ring in the bottom of it (as if something was sitting in it for a good while) but I think it will come clean.

Normandie large (8 1/2") fruit bowl in pink by Federal Glass Co, circa 1933-1940

I also scored a set of old sapphire blue Fire King ramekins for $5 - they sell for $8-$12 each in antique stores.  There are two shapes, and I like the other shape better, but at that price I couldn't turn them down.  I use mine, and have broken several. 

I got squash, nectarines, and bought some tomatoes from the locally-grown booth.  Rhonda has switched from figs to muscadines as the season has changed, and she picked up some of those.  I had planned to make egg salad (I bought extra eggs last weekend, thinking I might make a flourless Kahlua chocolate cake - and then didn't do it, so I had eggs to use), and take eggs salad sandwiches and broiled squash for lunches next week.  Uninspired, but not too bad, and that would use up some of the celery I had left also.

By the time we left I was starving, but Rhonda wasn't hungry.  She didn't mind if I stopped though, and I knew exactly what I wanted.  We stopped off at Corona for chilaquiles.  I LOVE those, and hadn't had any in a while.  Sometimes they won't make them without the meat (I don't know either), but they weren't too busy today so they did, and they just HIT the spot.  Yum.

After I had lunch we went back to the house and vegged for a while.  It seemed like nap time, but I couldn't doze off (probably from all the iced tea I had drank).  Plus my phone kept ringing.  Eve called to offer me wedding left-overs.  And I got some text messages from a guy name Brian I had been talking to online.  He was in town from Tennessee, and wanted to get together for dinner.

Since I wasn't sleeping anyway, I said goodbye to Rhondee and headed on over to Dad and Eve's, where I ran into Judy and one of her daughters in the process of dismantling the wedding stuff from the yard.  It looks as if it was quite a shin-dig.  I went on in the house, and Eve loaded me down with food.  There were a lot of devilled eggs left over, and she and Dad wouldn't eat them because of the recipe, so she gave me those, plus pickled vegetable salad (which I love), some copper pennies, a bag of pretty bad pasta salad that I think I can doctor up, and a bag of chips.  I got everything but wedding cake (which I frankly did NOT need after Friday's cheesecake orgy). 

I went on home to get things put away and taken care of.  I didn't have to cook anymore.  I had an idea for the devilled eggs.  I LOVE devilled eggs, but really probably shouldn't just eat them all week, so I decided to make them into egg salad.  All they needed was some chopped celery and some pickles and they were good to go.  So I put away salads.  I washed and chopped up the squash and threw it in the freezer.  I can stew and/or casserole-ize it anytime. 

I put in a load of laundry, futzed around the house, and just generally put things in order while I corresponded with Brian via text.  I put my new bowl in to soak the accumulated filth off, and then cleaned myself up.

I met Brian downtown at Carolina Ale House.  Now my friend Nicole works there, and she's been trying to get me to come out there forever, but I usually don't like to go downtown to eat because of the parking and walking issues.  But Brian wanted to eat downtown, and that's where he wanted to go.  No issues here.  The weather was lovely - it's been unseasonably and refreshingly cool for August here - and I snagged a table that met with his specific criteria.  I also had a nice, cool, summery cocktail they had no special that was tasty and had a little kick.  We ate burgers and talked.  They had an excellent veggie burger that I very much enjoyed.  The staff was super-nice - I mean notably so.  After I was seated, the hostess from downstairs came up to make sure I was happy with the table.  The service was good, the waiter was friendly, and we had at least one (and it seems like two) managers come by to make sure that our food was good.  It was a high level of service for the price. 

After dinner we went back to the house to look at the glass.  Brian is a former collector too, but he collected McCoy Pottery.  Still, he knew enough about old glass to enjoy seeing the collection and talking about it, and we both had collecting stories to tell.  It was a very enjoyable evening.  He's a nice guy.  He's rather specific about what he wants, but I guess it's good to know, right?