Wandering Notes

I haven't been blogging quite as much because my computer seems to be slowly dying. Sigh. Yes, first my beloved laptop, and now this. It's an iMac from 2011 and it keeps randomly turning off and is getting fussier and fussier and fussier about turning back on. Random googling tells me it could be overheating, or….a failing power supply. Neither of these are good. Another sigh. I have a decrepit iPad but it is in similar straits. That's why you find me posting more at Instagram. I love that, but it's not quite the same.

In other random news,

I still can't figure out what the Pp entry on Owen's Christmas list is. Damn it. It may have been a great idea. No more codes and abbreviations in the future.

Picking this up from yesterday.

After starting this and stepping away, the computer shut down and I couldn't get it to restart. So what did I do? I convinced Ernie to go for a drive. We got on Route 10 and headed toward Lincoln, Illinois, for no particular reason. I've been through there before but not in a long, long time. We were smitten with it. There were some delightful buildings and for a Sunday afternoon it seemed to be bustling. Well, bustling quietly, but just the same. We both had the thought that it reminded us of Champaign in the past…when we both were discovering downtown Champaign….for him in the 70's, for me in the 80's. Perhaps it was just the sense of unfamiliarity….something about the old buildings that hadn't been restored and changed a million times already. We stopped into an antique shops and found one of my little Pyrex fridgies. It had no lid, but fortunately, or unfortunately, one of mine had gotten broken so I had an extra lid. I try to keep to the solid colors (although the gooseberry and Early American patterns do make me a bit weak….we had the set of Early American mixing bowls in the brown and white with copper). This one was an odd little brown shade….it was marked $4 and was in the half price booth. $2.17 worth of pleasure!

We wandered on and I fell in love with a building that had a second hand/thrift shop in it. The building was gorgeous….I think it was an old furniture store and it was so pristine. The old entry way, with the display windows…inside you could see the way the windowed doors folded back to give you access….beautiful tin ceiling. I was strangely tempted by the $3 glitter Eiffel tower, but I made no purchases. Down the street was a bar called Old Joe's. A block or so over, a little Christmas tree stood in the unused stairway entrance of a little bar that offered gyros.