Last Friday, I lived the dream: I took the day off to have pizza.
Okay, let's not rush into this. First, my sights for "the dream" are actually set a bit higher than pizza in lieu of work; and second, it was a bit more complicated than dedicating a day off to eating pizza.
Karli and I had recently received our NEXUS cards, and as such we wanted to give them a test at the border under circumstances where we weren't on the clock for anything time-sensitive. Her sister had recommended that we try a Fairhaven restaurant called
Fat Pie Pizza the next time we were in Washington state, so we decided to do a day trip down for lunch and shopping.
Work has been pleasantly normal recently, so we were able to combine some time from my lieu bank with one of Karli's regular Friday flex days.
However, it seemed a bit much to cross the border just for pizza, dream or no dream, so we did a little research to see what else we might do while visiting Fairhaven. Fortuitously, there turned out to be an independent book store called
Village Books located in the same block as
Fat Pie, so we added that to our agenda.
I liked
Village Books - it's an excellent example of a well done - and well run - indie book store. It's in a classic vintage building, with a wide selection of books spread over three floors. They follow the popular trend of having an associated coffee shop - the
Colophon Cafe, which we did not visit - and share space with
Paper Dreams, a home decor/gift shop.
The
Village Books science fiction/fantasy section is fairly good, although I don't really approve of mixing new and used books - I've visited a few book stores that do this, and it's always a bit irritating to pick up a book expecting to see a used price and find out that it's full cost.
I bought three books on sale - two hardcover and one trade paperback - for essentially the same price as standard paperbacks in Canada (even after conversion from USD). My choices were
Three Moments of an Explosion, a collection of China Miéville short stories (which I am long overdue to read); Paolo Bacigalupi's 2015 novel
The Water Knife; and another short story collection
, My Experiences in the Third World War, by Michael Moorcock. This was an unexpected treasure: Moorcock is a long time favourite of mine, and everything in this collection is new to me, I'm quite looking forward to it.
And just for fun, I also picked up a
War of the Worlds* T-shirt from the
Miles To Go literary T-shirt collection.
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| Photo by KT |
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Fat Pie Pizza completely lived up to their positive reviews - and their name.
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| Photo also by KT |
- Sid
* I wore my new T-shirt to a social gathering the next day, and I was surprised to learn that a lot of people are more aware of the 1938 Orson Welles radio hoax than the 1897 H.G. Wells novel. Tom Cruise (or Gene Barry) didn't come up at all.
