At the Corner of Sweet and Sweet

Note to self: Don't judge a book by your impression of it as you fall asleep listening. Most nights I fall asleep listening to something. And then I lie in bed in the morning catching up on all the stuff I slept through. But when I listened to Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet I was not at all impressed. So I never went back to it - until late last week. Ya' know what? This is a pretty good book. Chinese boy, Japanese girl, Seattle, very early 1942, late 1986. It's all about that; and all that Seattle jazz. I really enjoyed most of this. I had problems with the internment camp segment because I remembered how pained my mother had been about losing her school chum to Manzanar. There's a lot of good stuff in here, including communications between fathers and sons. Or miscommunications. Good. I'd recommend this to my friends who liked The Help because this too is a story about people and feelings.

Went to The Times on Friday and saw a mess o' folks. It was a lot of fun. Per and I had lunch. He gave me a bunch of dried vegetables to try. Per loves to cook as we do in this house. He mail ordered tons of different kinds of veggies. How sweet of him to share. I look forward to experimenting. I saw Harriet again for the first time in a long time. She's now VP of Tribune Technology. Good on her. She is so capable, not always a recognized thing. In this case, it means she gets to spend 3 weeks in Chicago.

All my Times friends are traveling fiends. Per just got back a week ago from Chicago; Manny, Alexander and Dianne just got back from a management meeting; Tom is in Florida or Chicago every other week. Tribune has decided that it's better to fly than to hire. That's probably true. I guess that's like Cindy in Arlington. Only she's never in Arlington. They're all becoming George Clooney!

Saturday was a trip to the farmers' market. It was raining buckets in the early a.m. I'm usually there at 7:30, but it didn't look like it would ever stop. Then it did. Almost everyone was there vendor-wise. I hope the buyers came by. I thanked all the vendors for showing up. At that point, it looked like it was going to be another beautiful day in the neighborhood. When I got home it started to pour again. Poor vendors. Lucky Peggy. My timing was perfect.