In bloom: Mimosa trees, which always remind me of the mimosa that Nana used to have in her yard. Nana and I used to like to sit on the glider on the front porch in the evening and inhale the mimosa flowers' bewitching scent. Sadly, the tree sickened many years ago and had to be removed. Tab and I replaced it with a pink dogwood tree, but every summer I miss that mimosa.

Listening: The Canadian Brass Plays Great Baroque Music, a CD I found when rooting around in our collection. It's a kind of "Greatest Baroque Hits": Pachelbels' Canon, the suite from Handel's Water Music, Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor. I didn't much like it at first. Brass seems too bold and, well, brassy, for music that, in my opinion, requires a lighter, nimbler approach. But I found myself enjoying parts of the album, especially Bach's "Little" fugue in G, always one of my favorite pieces.

Background courtesy of
Ace of Space

Buying Quoits

We woke up this morning to rain! A welcome sight in the middle of this drought. And yet...I was planning to take to the boys to a playground this morning to give Tab a quiet house and a chance to get caught up on some of his work today. But I couldn't really complain about the rain when we need it so desperately. So we went shopping instead.

Today was the grand opening of the new Wegmans store on Route 1 in Princeton. Wegmans is supposed to be the supermarket to end all supermarkets. The parking lot was jammed when we arrived at 9:30. I noticed Wegmans employees with umbrellas who were escorting departing customers back to their cars. A nice touch, that.

I couldn't find a cart at first and almost left when I saw the huge crowds milling about at the entrance. But I finally located a cart and decided to press on.

With Stephen and Matthew in the cart, I threaded my way in and out of the knots of visitors, learning the layout of the store. Wegmans is quite nice, I decided. It has a wonderful produce section, along with most of the other grocery items we shop for on a regular basis, and, best of all, a tempting array of breads baked in the store's wood-fired hearth oven.

To the twins, the highlight of Wegmans was the play area. The play room has a security system that requires registering the kids ahead of time, a sign-in sheet (the signatures on which must match the registration card), and matching bracelets for kid and parent. Only the person who drops the child off is allowed to pick the child up, and that person is given a pager in case the play area attendants need to contact the parent or caregiver quickly.

So the boys happily played for forty minutes while I continued investigating the store, eventually buying a few things. I'm sure we'll return; the boys are already clamoring to go back to the play area; they kept talking about the mini-maze and the computers there, which they loved playing with.

After a quick stop home to unload the groceries, we headed out again. This time our destination was Harry's Army & Navy Store. A few weeks ago, my father asked if we could buy a set of quoits for him down here since he has been unable to find them in Maine. Quoits are played rather like horseshoes, except that quoits are circular. Last week, Tab checked Sports Authority, a local sporting store, without success. After a quick AltaVista search, I found out that Harry's Army Navy Store in Robbinsville sells quoits.

Harry's is not the type of store I usually frequent. Its 800 number is 800-GUNS USA, which tells you something right there. When we arrived we found the parking lot filled with pickup trucks, and nearly all the customers going in and out of the store looked like they'd be perfectly at home in either an armed militia encampment in Michigan or a lone shack in Montana.

Guns and hunting paraphernalia are big business at Harry's. So is camouflage. Shelf after shelf in the store was filled with camouflage and paramilitary attire. I saw a little boy, probably not much older than Daniel, outfitted in camouflage from head to foot, from cap down to army boots. I shuddered.

Standing in line to pay for the quoits, I noticed the impulse items for sale near the register. At first glance, they looked like the impulse items you'd see in any register line, but then I realized that they were all camouflage-patterned. Camouflage mini-flashlights, camouflage cigarette lighters, camouflage decks of cards. Even the beef jerky and packs of gum had camouflage packaging.

Fortunately, the quoits were the usual colors: black and red. I paid for them and left as quickly as I could, happy to put a little distance between Harry's customers and myself.

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