ROADTRIP!

I spent yet another amusing day with The Muses yesterday. Our first stop was the huge Goodwill Outlet in north Austin, but this was no ordinary Goodwill. This is the mother of all Goodwills - the one where everything that doesn't sell in all the other Goodwills goes to when they're done with it.

Here's the fun part: Instead of each item being individually priced, they sell it all by the pound! Yesiree, they actually have those fancy in-ground scales at the checkout stations, and you just roll your cart onto one, then get charged $1.49 per pound for the lot, minus the cart ('though they occasionally make exceptions for extremely dense items, like say, bowling balls).

They have rows upon rows of these huge rolling tables and, periodically, they block off one aisle in order to fill it with a new load of merchandise. That's when the hordes begin to gather, like vultures awaiting fresh roadkill. Soon as they give the OK, you'd better stand back Nellie, or you're liable to get trampled! The cart in the photo holds the combined treasures of all four of us, and you can tell much about the way we think by examining what we chose. Outdoor Woman saw brightly colored toy houses and immediately thought "Aha! Birdhouses!" (I never would have thought of that, would you?) Fiber Woman saw one of those beauty school mannequin heads and thought... well, honestly, I have no idea what she was thinking, but whatever she does with it, I'm sure it will be fabulous! Me, I bought books. Just books. Probably not the best choice, when you are paying by the pound, but it's the one thing I can never seem to resist. Maybe that's why they call me Wordy Woman, huh?

From there we moved just down the road a bit, to the little shopping center where that great Asian cafe I told you about recently was located - only this time, we were there to scope out the Asian grocery store next to it, and an Indian market just a few doors down. Ahhh, can you smell it? There is nothing quite like the fragrance of an ethnic market, each with its own special blend of spices, to transport me back to another place and time.

Last stop of the day was at Get Some Dim Sum, on North Lamar (thank heavens for that - we were ravenous by then!) and it was mighty tasty, too. I must admit though, I did miss having the little rolling carts threading their way through large round tables filled with noisy chatter and clicking chopsticks. It's much quicker, yes, to order at the counter, but not quite the same ambience, no?