Around the house, and reading
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Today I got a bunch of laundry and food shopping done. At the grocery store I asked for cash back and the magnitude of the ask seemed to surprise the cashier a little. I got two $50s, which doesn't seem like a big deal to me, so maybe it was just having to handle currency that caused her a momentary bout of confusion?
A few days ago I took a long drive to a small city (a college town) where I recalled there being a cool used bookstore. I turned out it was still there though the Main St. as I recall it (from several years ago) had changed quite a bit - small indie coffee shops taken over by big chains &etc. Things were very quiet in the summer off-season. I browsed for maybe an hour, chatted with the elderly shopkeeper, and scored three deals on books, one a hefty hardcover (with perfect dust-jacket) by a famous Soviet-era writer that would easily sell, on eBay, for 5x what I paid.
I asked the shopkeeper for one of their bookmarks and I received one. Nice, but it's of lower quality than their earlier versions - this one is flimsy and made of uncoated paper and only about 5" long - not of the necessary bookmark length for large hardcover tomes. It was free though.
Today I also mowed the lawn with the battery-powered mower. I say "lawn", but there's been little rain so it's just a smattering of tall, resilient weeds that got mowed. I'm still impressed by how much the mower can do on a single charge with just one battery.
A construction contractor declined to bid on my house re-siding job because I wouldn't accept a "time & materials" so-called "bid" and wouldn't pay $anything in advance of the work being done. These guys are all snakes. I may just have to paint over the crummy siding or learn how to do the work myself which would honestly be a good thing (for me - learning) though that's probably too interesting to talk about here.
