Mother's Bistro

My mother-in-law took the kids & and me out to Mother's Bistro for brunch yesterday morning. There was an empty parking space right in front of the front door. What luck! They go inside and I go to feed the permit vendor, which is out of order. Figures. Walk to the next machine on the next block. It's not far, 50, maybe 100, yards. It's cold as the devil. This machine is working, but is slow as the devil. The cold devil and the slow devil are working hand in hard. It takes so long that darling daughter comes looking for me.

We get to our table and I start telling some feeble story and dutiful daughter tells me to speak softer. I was using my normal voice, designed to be heard above the hub-bub, but evidently it is more than they need. This has happened before. I lower my voice but now I can barely hear what I am saying, but it seems they can hear me fine.

A couple of times while I am eating I look down at my coffee cup, wanting more, but expecting it to be empty, but it's not. Guess I didn't drink as much as I thought. Afterwards we are talking about the restaurant and I tell them I thought it was pretty good, except they never refilled my coffee. Contradictary daughter tells me the waitress refilled my coffee cup twice. I never noticed. I don't think that has ever happened before. I was shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

We head over to Powell's. No visit to Portland is complete without a stop at Powell's. I have decided that I want to get some books that I want to read. I've read some interesting stuff and some strange stuff this year, but now I want some stuff I can just read for fun, and that means Science Fiction. Elizabeth Moon and Lois McMaster Bujold are my current favorites so I pick up a used one by each. $5 a piece, used. There were some ratty looking used ones for as much as $10. Used book prices have gone up. You can find them on Amazon for as little as 26 cents, but there is a $4 shipping charge for each book, regardless of how many you buy. The dollar has fallen in value and prices for some things have doubled in the last ten years.