To Market, to Market

We had a busy weekend and I was just enjoying myself to dang much to stop and blog about it. Sorry. I'll try to keep my priorities straight next time that happens. So any how, you luck out because you get to hear about my weekend during the week.

On Saturday, we had a plan, but except for making it to the post office and getting lunch, we didn't follow the plan. After we had a tasty lunch at the Banyan Tree restaurant, we went next door to the Asian market to get ingredients for a couple recipes I've been messing with.

We also picked up my favorite chili pepper paste that I told you about way-back-when. There are days I can eat this spoonful after painful spoonful. Must be a hormonal thing, 'cause there are other times I think I'm going to die from this stuff (though those other some times are usually after the actual eating of it).

It's Delightfully Hot!

As we were walking into the market, I spotted one of these things on a car dash.


The leaves and little sunflower head were bobbing and it reminded me of the Plants vs. Zombies game that I'm still addicted to. Scoob has decided that I must have one and the rest of our day was spent on a scavenger hunt of sorts. We figured out that they're made by Flip Flap and Tomy, and that these little solar-powered bobbers are very popular in Japan, so we headed to the Mitsuwa Japanese market in San Jose where we did find various other bobbers, but not the sunflower one. We did, however, find an interesting (and surprisingly big) Japanese bookstore. Even though we didn't understand a single thing we were looking at, it was still fun browse.

We picked up a bottle of this miso and mustard salad dressing while we were at Mitsuwa.

It's one of my favorites!

Afterward, we meandered over to the Valley Fair Mall and strolled and browsed, keeping an eye on the kiosks for my little bobber. Some of our earliest outings when Scoob and I first started dating were at Valley Fair where we would stroll and invariably stop for a pretzel. So that was fun in a low-key kind of way, though there were no pretzels involved this time. I guess the wooing period is over. Though Scoob did buy me a new ring. I think I like it better on my thumb where the band isn't right against the other ring.

I seriously need to sit down with a nail file.

I was actually stunned at all upscale designers with stores at Valley Fair now—Louis Vuitton, Betsy Johnson, Coach, and more. This used to be the go-to mall when I was in my 20s, it now feels like it caters to a market with much more disposable income than we have, which on the one hand can be depressing yet on the other makes for some really fun window shopping where I can ooooh and aaaah over the crazy things people will waste money on—not at all like my bobber thingy.

I finished reading The Plague of Doves the other night and I really enjoyed it. It's a multi-generational story of lives and histories on a reservation and how people cope with individual realities emanating from a shared, ugly past event. In addition to the main story, I thought it was an interesting look into survivor's syndrome. And how the ripples from a single, defining and common moment or event—it could be anything, 9/11, the Loma Prieta earthquake, Challenger, Kennedy's assassination—act on each person in different ways, in this case, it's a lynching. I also think the book was hopeful in that no matter how different from each other the characters became, they were just different, not entirely incompatible. It felt a little disjointed in places, though in its way, that disjointedness complements the story. Huh. I hadn't quite realized I'd thought about the story that deeply, so I guess it was pretty good.

I started Water for Elephants last night and was hooked from page 2. I'm having to be very disciplined about putting it down.

Oh, so Saturday's plan had been to go to the Renaissance Fair at the Farm. Yup, the very same farm that had the crazy train festival last weekend. But we ended up doing that on Sunday.