Entry tags:
On Devon
The carpet guys arrived this morning--barely. Our window was 8-10, and it was 11:30 before they even started moving their supplies into the house. But they did lovely work and were done by 4 p.m. One was rather tickled to find out I spoke un poquito, and asked me if I liked speaking Spanish. I confessed that I preferred German. "Pero es muy difícil ¿no?" "Creo que es mas fácil que el español...para mi al menos." (Cue indulgent looks of disbelief.)
While our house was topsy-turvy, I decided to take care of some shopping and struck out for the commercial stretch of Devon. First, lunch at Arya Bhavan, where I was the only customer. Total heartburn food, but I simply couldn't resist. Then Mughal Bakery, to restock my critically-low supplies of tea biscuits. From there, India House Books, because I don't know that it's physically possible for me to pass a bookstore on a shopping trip and not go in. (I even popped into one of the Islamic bookstores looking for learning materials for Urdu and the Russian bookstore to find a card for my Russian-speaking brother.)
One problem with sending me out shopping is that I'm so resistant to spending in general, that once I get started, I tend to go overboard. So even though Patel Brothers didn't have what I wanted, I still left with bulging bags of pulses and nuts, stuff we can always use but don't really need. And I was tickled to spy music posters in Aramaic on the windows of Tiger Video, which led to the purchase of two Umm Kulthum albums--nice to have, but also hardly a necessity. (Especially considering the effective $3 markup because of the cash-only policy. "There's a Citibank around the corner," the owner told me; what I didn't tell him was that I bank at Chase, so I was prepared to abandon the recordings and purchase them another time--until it dawned on me that I'd accidentally abandoned my cookies there as well. So the $3 was more of a ransom than anything else.) And since I finally, at long long last, made it into the Georgian Bakery, I ended up leaving with not one but two khachapurebi and a sweet dessert to boot. That was the point I decided I need to head back before I started getting really reckless. (Also, the khachapurebi were fresh from the oven and I wanted to get![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
monshu a taste before they cooled completely.)
Tomorrow, Sam's Wines and Spirits. God help me!
While our house was topsy-turvy, I decided to take care of some shopping and struck out for the commercial stretch of Devon. First, lunch at Arya Bhavan, where I was the only customer. Total heartburn food, but I simply couldn't resist. Then Mughal Bakery, to restock my critically-low supplies of tea biscuits. From there, India House Books, because I don't know that it's physically possible for me to pass a bookstore on a shopping trip and not go in. (I even popped into one of the Islamic bookstores looking for learning materials for Urdu and the Russian bookstore to find a card for my Russian-speaking brother.)
One problem with sending me out shopping is that I'm so resistant to spending in general, that once I get started, I tend to go overboard. So even though Patel Brothers didn't have what I wanted, I still left with bulging bags of pulses and nuts, stuff we can always use but don't really need. And I was tickled to spy music posters in Aramaic on the windows of Tiger Video, which led to the purchase of two Umm Kulthum albums--nice to have, but also hardly a necessity. (Especially considering the effective $3 markup because of the cash-only policy. "There's a Citibank around the corner," the owner told me; what I didn't tell him was that I bank at Chase, so I was prepared to abandon the recordings and purchase them another time--until it dawned on me that I'd accidentally abandoned my cookies there as well. So the $3 was more of a ransom than anything else.) And since I finally, at long long last, made it into the Georgian Bakery, I ended up leaving with not one but two khachapurebi and a sweet dessert to boot. That was the point I decided I need to head back before I started getting really reckless. (Also, the khachapurebi were fresh from the oven and I wanted to get
monshu a taste before they cooled completely.)Tomorrow, Sam's Wines and Spirits. God help me!