Lunch at the Coffee House

I keep hearing the Coffee House isn't Uppity enough for Normal anymore and is going to close.  But it was still alive and kicking yesterday when I had lunch there with a group of women from NCC who are thinking about going to Ecuador for a combination language-school-travel experience and wanted to ask me a whole bunch of questions before they decide. They invited me and bought my lunch.  I had the Meditarranean Salad which in and of itself was really boring but it came with a side of hummus and pita bread which was very good.  The salad was definitely not uppity enough even for the likes of me.

Before having lunch at the Coffee House I stopped by to visit Kathleen at Babbitt's where I managed to distract her from her real work but then I did buy a book so I think the boss would have been okay with that.  I bought a copy of Winesburg Ohio which I only know about because Kathleen had recommended it to me a long time ago.  I found it on the half-price cart out front, which meant it's usual price of $3 was down to a buck and change.  But a little more change than the book's original price on the front cover of only $1.45 back when it was published.  I should tell you when that was, but I'm feeling lazy and don't want to get up and find the book to do so. 

I was reminded of a used bookstore in Port Jefferson, New York that was about a block from my apartment the second year I lived there.  My apartment was the upstairs of an old house in the "downtown" area of Port Jeff, right by the harbor on Long Island Sound.  (That's pronounced Long Guyland in Port Jeff.)  The bookstore sold paperbacks at half the publisher's price.  So when I found paperbacks published in the 60's for a buck, I could buy them there for 50 cents.  I did a lot of reading that year, without ever going to the library. 

But I digress...

After buying Winesburg Ohio I headed to the Normal Public Library where I returned a couple of kids books including How to Steal a Dog.  While there I ran into yet another NCC-er who works there, Ruth.  What an uppity-town bunch of women we are!

Then I went to lunch and had a few bites of boring salad but devoured my delicious hummus and pita bread.  And drank my iced coffee.  And got to talk about good places for people in their 60's to go in Ecuador.  And where to avoid.  They are an adventuresome group, more concerned about being at very high altitudes than about erupting volcanoes.  Which can both be a concern in Ecuador.  This group has travelled together to Latin America before, to Mexico and to Costa Rica.  So they are prepared to drink bottled water, avoid salads, and toss their toilet paper in the wastebaskets for a couple of weeks.

Today it is time to head back to work...I've had ten days away and now must go into the office and pick up that little computer and hit the streets!  But after that I get to go back to Uppity Town for the Normal Farmer's Market!