Is it just me?

Or is the idea of a gun show that opens on Singles Awareness Day as absurd and ironic to you as it is to me? [Promise her anything, but give her a .357 Magnum?] Almost as good as the e-card I once sent to a friend, claiming that Cupid had flown into a bug zapper.

[Which would explain my love life, or lack thereof.]

In other news, I have been having adventures. On Saturday, after I picked up two novels and two audiobooks at the library, I decided to locate the next restaurant that I want to try. I had printed off the directions on Google [and left them at home, on the printer]. I knew I had to navigate the Weatherford Traffic Circle [which is not in Weatherford, any more than the Bluebonnet Traffic Circle is in Bluebonnet, if there is a Bluebonnet; but I digress] and go out Highway 377 until I got to Highway 1187. So I took the first exit for 1187 and drove and drove and drove until I found myself in Aledo.

Aledo is one of those places where people with lots of new money are building McMansions whose sole purpose seems to declare, “I could afford to buy a million dollars’ worth of bricks, and then I had my three year old design our house.” I have seen [and built] Lego houses that were more attractive.

I turned Lorelai around and drove the other way on that section of 1187 until I got back to 377, then turned right and drove a few blocks and turned left on eastbound 1187. And there it was!

Cafe 1187 is in a yellow house that I thought I remembered Trainman describing as “little”. He used to live in a cottage here in The Heights. So either I misunderstood him [not out of the realm of possibility], or he has forgotten what “little” means and now lives in one of those horrible McMansions himself. I will ask clarifying questions, next time I see him, and get back to you.

B*i*g house. Not as big as Southfork, perhaps, and certainly more modest than the monstrosities a few miles away on the other side of the highway, but way bigger than either of the places in which he and I have dined together.

I was hoping to go there for lunch next Saturday with BestFriend, but that day is getting all clabbered up with other commitments, which is why we had planned to have her come visit after church yesterday. When I do get there, I’ll give y’all a review.

A book recommendation, from the book group column at Meridian. The Fiction Class, by Susan Breen; it’s one of the books that I got at the library. I loved how, early in the story, the protagonist comments that she has been engaged, twice, to men who looked like Atticus Finch but had more kinship with Boo Radley. Why, you ask? On the back of my couch is the audiobook of To Kill a Mockingbird, which also followed me home from the library. And there is a writing exercise at the end of one of the chapters near the end of the book, where we are told that there is a man sitting in a tree, and what he is wearing, and are invited to explain how it happened. I hooted in a most unladylike manner. I may have to write that one out, myself. And there is a genteel but lively May-December romance, something with which I have more than passing familiarity.

Speaking of romance, I want to see the new Dustin Hoffman movie. I adore Emma Thompson, and I usually enjoy him. [Tootsie is one of my all-time favorites.]

In yet-more-news-of-the-weird, I got an alleged match on the Churchboy Dating Service with one of the four guys I asked out back in 2000; this would be the one who makes sure there is an entire gymnasium between us if we happen to show up at the same activity. And the day before that, I was matched with one of the other guys who turned me down, who has become [and remained] a friend.

After church yesterday, I pulled out my camera so I could take the picture that opens this post; I was driving home at my usual sedate pace when I noticed an unusual emblem on the back of a minivan. It consisted of a heart superimposed over a triangle. Something like agape colliding with a Star of David in a New Age feel-good frenzy. I followed the van over hill and down dale for several miles, until I could pull alongside and make the “roll down your window” sign.

I asked her what it stood for. [Gladney Adoption. I tried to find it on their website and came up empty.] Now if I could only figure out what that weird symbol is on the back of some pickup trucks; it looks like a cross between a Keith Haring figure and the Green Man, or maybe a moose. And then I could stuff Pandora back into her room with the box, and shut the door, and get on with my knitting.