a day off

Since I wasn't signed up for any of today's short courses I took the day off. Started out by walking into town the senic way--keeping fairly high on the hill, passing Fitzroy Gardens and eventually wending my way into the city center, arriving just after 09:00, which was good since I wanted a few things from the shops.

My first shop was spice world--we don't have a spice store in Luleå, so have been just buying bottles at the normal grocery store, but have amassed way too many empty bottles (though we buy the spices in the paper/cardboard containers were possible, that is only a small subset of the ones we use), so I was wondering if perhaps I should pick up a few things to take back with me (and thus continue to procrastinate on looking for spices on line). Sadly, when I went in my backpack bumped into a display and knocked over a couple of bottles of sauce, which broke. I felt very bad about that (this is the first time that has ever happened to me), so I made a point of buying several different types of spices that I might not have otherwise purchased (including some Tasmanian saffron). Oddly, they said nothing to be about the accident (I did say "sorry" (right after I said "damn!")), but just cleaned up the mess, so I didn't mention it either.

My second stop was at the outlet for Beauty and the Bees. I have been using their baby lotion ever since I saw their booth at Salmanca Market, where they had a sign saying that their baby lotion was good for psoriasis. Back in those days my right knee itched constantly, and I often scratched it bloody (but, since psoriasis is skin growing faster than normal, the scratches normally healed in a day or two). So I bought a bottle and tried it, and sure enough, it helped keep it from feeling dry and itchy, and over the years of using it I have managed to learn not to scratch, and these days it is really rare that I scratch them bloody. The bottle I had brought with me when I moved from Tasmania to Italy was pretty low when I moved to Sweden, so sometime in about 2011 I wound up ordering one of their large bottles to be shipped to me there. That bottle is running low--I just transferred the last bit from the large bottle to a small one. That will likely last some months more, but I decided to just buy another large bottle while I am here, and save the cost of shipping. Good thing too, since the price has gone up since I bought the last one.

That turned out to be a fun stop--the woman working there was chatty, and we visited for a good thirty minutes before I moved on. From there I stopped into a health food store a bit down the way to buy a bit more tasty yeast, since I had brought only a tiny bit with me. Then I stopped into the high-end men's clothing store at which we had purchased a nice linen dress shirt for clovis_t years ago to see if they still carry them. Yes they do, the nice man at the counter said--two sorts: one more casual, the other with a stiff collar to wear with a tie. However, I couldn't purchase yet, since even though lord_kjar had promised to put his measurements onto google calender for me, they weren't yet showing on my phone. So I asked the guy where the nearest wifi hotspot was, and he directed me there.

After re-syncing my phone's calender with google I determined that the measurements were still not there, so I sent him a message, and started walking out of town towards the home of my friend G. Of course, his reply, with the measurements, came after I had been walking just long enough to not want to turn back, so I just kept going, and resolved to try to get back to the store on another occasion. From the city center it takes just about 1.5 hours to get to G's house, if one goes up and over the Domain for part of the trip. (That was the hardest part of the walk--since there are no hills to speak of in Luleå I am not really in shape for hill climbing, but I enjoyed it, nonetheless).

I arrived at their place a bit before 12:00, and settled into a lovely lunch (cooked and served by G's partner D), while she and I caught up on several years of life, adventures, and projects in progress. She is always a delight to visit with, and she is wonderfully generous--she gifted me with a few small trinkets picked up while they have been traveling in Asia, but the best gift of all were the strings of garnet beads. That beautiful dress in progress just got more hours of work added to the to-do list, but it is going to be stunning when it is done! She gave me enough beads that we can bling up something for lord_kjar too.

Our lunch date lasted till after 16:30, but then I decided I had better head home--her health hasn't been the best of late, so I wanted to let her rest and relax after the company. I walked about 35 minutes back towards town (without the detour over the hill this time), and then a car with to guys with European accents stopped and asked me the best way to the highway to Huonville. I tried to describe it, but clearly their English wasn't up for that much info that fast, so I offered to ride with them and navigate. I got them to and mostly through the city center, till there was only a "turn right, then left" left to worry about, then I hopped out and went back to that men's store, arriving right after they had locked the door for the day.

However, it was worth trying, so I knocked, and he answered, and I asked if he was interested in one last sale for the day. His first reply was "yes, but I already started the closing procedure", then suggested that if I wanted to do cash he could deal with the paperwork in the morning. I said that it would depend on how much cash, and told him what I wanted. He took me to the more formal linen shirts, with the stiff collars, and they cost $399. I said that I didn't have that much cash and would need to go to an ATM. Then he said he was willing to hit "cancel" on what he had been in the middle of, so I could pay with plastic, so I asked about the other linen shirt option. He wasn't certain where those were, so we walked around a bit, and then he found a couple of them on the sale shelf (not that I noticed at the time that it was). Those two were both size 2X, which is somewhat bigger than lord_kjar needs. But we can take things in far easier than making a new shirt, and I liked the texture of this fabric better, and the price was nicer, so I decided to just grab one of them. It turned out that the sale price made it only $57, which really makes it worth the bother of taking it in later.

One final stop at the grocery store on the way home, and my day of errands and adventures was done, only 12 hours after leaving the room this morning. Tomorrow I will be in the conference all day, and meeting up with another friend in the evening.