I am trying to type this in a hurry with my 20 minute allotted time slot at the public library. Sure enough my brain is going to go into hibernation mode just as the timer is ticking away. Well. Dearest one is at a conference for his professional association at one ritzy hotel. Now that is a new experience. Continental breakfast brought to room at a price of 21 buckaroos. For one person. Needless to say we shared it. I went to the restaurant last night - all I really wanted was a plate of fries and a diet coke. I opened the menu to find no prices, just numbers. Great. Visions of paying 10 bucks for an order of fries swirled around in my head. Yep. Fries and diet coke plus tip came to over $10. On our trip here we stopped at every Canadians favourite coffee shop, Tim Horton's, and I bought a bagel with cream cheese for $1.59. Same bagel in hotel is $9 plus 3.25 for delivery plus 17% gratuity. Makes one groan and laugh at the absurdity of it at the same time. I cannot imagine people paying these prices without a second thought. Or a third one for that matter. I went to a grocery store yesterday and bought breakfast food for us. I don't know if I am cheap, frugal or just a complainer.
Ritzy hotel is across the street from the public library. It's huge. My local library would fit into the foyer of this one. I go looking for books yesterday and couldn't believe it when the bulk of one section was devoted to the 700 and 800's. The rest of the non fiction was on a different floor! Brings me back 30 years to when my dad would bring us to a city library with its very own floor for children's books plus a story corner where you went through a door that made it look like you were entering the inside of a tree!
I try to go online and when asked for my library card (which works for home library plus any library in Alberta), they see that the expiry date sticker is two years past due and refuse to let me use it. Try to tell them that I come from Hickville where renewing library cards is pretty casual and that the sticker doesn't really mean anything. Nothing doing. A whole process to be able to take out books and get online. I chuckle to myself. I manage to hit on a day when the little bitty library back home is open but then I remember it is also Farmer's Market day and our librarian usually goes there to sell honey. Finally a librarian gives me a temporary card to use the internet but I can't take out any books. So here I am. Trying to type as the clock ticks away. Eleven minutes and counting left.
But I did get to a few book stores yesterday. Walking On Water by Anthony DeMello is quickly becoming one of my favourites. A little book by Catherine Doherty on reconciliation and a pocket book of Merton are in my new stack of books too. And I have a CD collection of Leonard Cohen's best songs. Hubby agreed to let it go into the CD player in his car if I promised not to listen to it 12 times in a row. Something tells me my new John Michael Talbot CD is not going to get any more play time either. That's what happens when you ride in a car owned by a man whose tastes run towards Rush,The Eagles and Dr. Hook. We make quite the pair, don't you think?
Tonight we are off to the little town where only daughter is on stage. We'll pay less for two nights in a bed and breakfast there than we will for one night at ritzy hotel.
The title of this post says it well. Sorry, the clock is ticking and tells me to save files before they cut me off. I just had to tell someone how out of my league and spoiled I feel in Ritzville.
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