Live from CoMo!

Hi!

I'm in Columbia!

Yesterday, while driving home from work early (3:30 because we had just wrapped up a 2-day conference), I decided to take a trip to Columbia. I've been going a bit crazy in St. Louis and needed to take a break from my routines....so here I am.

I'll have to post pictures later, but here's a quick summary....

2:00
Arrived in Columbia and went directly to Main Squeeze for lunch. Their Tempeh Ruby (vegetarian reuben) and Ring of Fire (beet, orange, carrot, ginger juice) were as yummy as always.

2:45ish
After eating, I walked around 9th street a bit and stopped into a new-to-me store, Spare Parts Gallery. In addition to browsing goods made by local people, I ran into some familiar faces, Becky and Debbie, who are good friends with my friends Katie and Beth. So, I now have an invitation to Debbie's birthday dinner tonight at Flat Branch. My social life in Columbia is already busier than that in St. Louis.

I also stopped at Uprise Bakery and was totally overwhelmed by the selection. Since I realized that I needed to pace myself food-wise, I skipped their unbelievably yummy potato knishes and bought two little dark chocolate-black pepper shortbread cookies. Yum! Very happy with the choice.

3:00
Supposedly, Mizzou has been having a fantastic football season this year, which is killing Porkchop because she is so far away. At her request, I walked down to the university bookstore and picked out a MIZ-ZOU shirt for her. During my walk there, I was asked for directions to Harpo's...gag! Also, I found the quad to be a construction zone...maybe a couple of the buildings caught fire? More research is needed on my part.

In addition to loads of t-shirts, the bookstore also had a table packed full of zines! Yay! The zine table and their first annual zine fest (coming in Spring 2008) is organized by a woman who started working at the bookstore when I worked there. So, I picked up a few zines....not just because I wanted to support a former co-worker, but also because they had some of my favorite zines! Such as...

• Slave to the Needles. The best and cutest rock n roll knitting zine ever! The writer lives in Madison via Seattle, and I got to meet her at a zine fest in Madison.
• Doris. My favorite zine - the only one I seek out to buy regularly. I have the anthology...I really should just subscribe to it.
• The F-Word: A Feminist Handbook for the Revolution. This is the second issue; I never saw the first one.
• Tenacious: Art and Writing from Women in Prison. The 12th issue; never saw the previous ones.
• Also, I bought a 2008 Slingshot organizer. My favorite thing about these organizers...the menstrual calendar!

4:00
I went to Hillcreek Yarn Shoppe. It's a nice shop, but they didn't have any of the yarn that I was looking for (actually, the employee had never heard of Blue Sky yarn).

On the way to the shop, I drove by my old apartment on North 9th Street - looks the owner is still doing absolutely no maintenance to the house. So, after browsing the shop, I drove in the direction of downtown and then decided to check out another place where I used to live - a duplex at Rock Quarry and Nifong.

For about 10 minutes, I started to believe that the whole development had been torn down and Rock Quarry shortened, but then I remembered the whole "Grindstone Parkway" business. Geez! How does a big 4-lane road pop up out of nowhere complete with big box stores and restaurants on it?? It blew my mind. I had to turn around at the top of Rock Quarry and drive back down it to make sure that my old duplex was still there.

It was.

Fortunately, I love driving on Rock Quarry! It was an explosion of reds and oranges and yellows and greens. So pretty! I wished so much that Porkchop could be in the car with me instead of in New Mexico.

Murr.

5:00
After weighing my selection of coffee shops downtown, I decided on Kaldi's. Yes - the St. Louis company is now in Columbia. Since Kaldi's coffee is everywhere in STL, I didn't want to come here. But, it looks like Lakota is still being jerky (luckily, I rarely paid more than $1 for anything there when I was college thanks to generous discounts given to me by the staff - my roommate worked there for 3 years), and I never feel comfortable at the Artisan. Anyway, so here I am. Reading and writing and knitting.

What about Shakespeare's?
Yeah, I don't think I'll get any pizza on this trip. It's still slammed because of the football game, and I might have dinner at Flat Branch.

Next time! Also, next time I hope to be able to connect with my friend Jean!

Yay! Columbia!