We slept in this morning, getting up at about 10:30. We decided to forgo the BBQ plate luncheon that was included in our Stomp Weekend Pass in favor of getting out of town earlier.
We stopped at Replacements, Ltd. on the way back, in Greensboro, where I picked up a wedding gift for my neighbor’s wedding—an item from her registry Her wedding is at the end of May, so that’ll save me a trip of running back there between now and then.
After dropping Robert off in Durham, I got back to my place and did exactly what I said I mustn’t do, which was to take a nap.
The Mostly Social Book Club met tonight in a new location in Cary, which wasn’t where I had told everyone it was. We had been meeting at the Barnes & Nobel at the corners of Walnut & Maynard, but it’s usually hard to find seating for five there, so I had suggested we meet at Caribou on Maynard instead, which I’d said was “just around the corner.”
As it turns out, it was just around the corner (on Maynard), but a mile or so down the road just past the next intersection, which is Kildaire farms. And then once you got there, they’d changed the traffic pattern so as to disallow a left turn into the place now. You have to go down to the next intersection, where they’ve so thoughtfully placed a “No U-turn” sign, which caused some of us to turn left, pull into a parking lot to turn around, come back out, and turn back onto Maynard going in the necessary direction. Ridiculous.
Jumping through all those hoops leads you to a parking situation that is so poor there that two of our five members had to park across the four-lane road that Maynard is, and dodge the traffic to come back across. There’s a dry cleaning place right next door that is closed in the evening, but there are “Towing 24×7” signs there and the barista assured us that they do indeed tow even at night. Did I mention ridiculous?
The barista told Mary you could park next door at the gas station, but Sharon had just come from there and there were “No parking – towing” signs there, as well.
Needless to say, at our age, the book club is not really adapting to change too well anymore, with the final complaint being, “It’s cold in here.” They do have great seating there—two large tables that can accommodate six, as well as a fireplace with big, comfortable chairs and coffee tables around them, but unfortunately, the hassle of gettiing in the place and the parking really isn’t worth it.
We’re going to look for yet another place for the next time we meet in Cary, which will be three months from now, as our rotating schedule will put us at the Carribou at Brier Creek next time, and at the Barnes & Nobel at Southpoint the time after that.
We held off discussing Dewey, as Suzanne hadn’t finished it, and I was still number 17 on the waiting list at the library for the “large print” edition. Sharon brought her copy of the book though, which she owns and is finished with, so I took it.
We went ahead and picked our next book, which is going to be the biggest commitment the Mostly Social Book Club has taken on in the almost 20 years we’ve been meeting—Anna Karenina, “weighing in” at 837 pages. God knows when we’ll all finish that.
Back home after book club, I finished up a couple of things that I didn’t get done on Friday while working from home.