Mr. Shopping Spree

Well, those continuing ed lectures at the seminary down in Dubuque actually turned out to be worthwhile. Which is more than I ordinarily expect when I go away on a couple of days of study leave. Bit of a surprise.

As usual, when I go somewhere on study leave, I fall into the odd habit of shopping. On the way down, I stopped off at the antique mall in Dyersville, and came away with an old card game, Man-Chu, the Famous Chinese Game. Turns out to be mah jongg, played with cards instead of tiles, United States Playing Card Company, 1923. A nice addition to my playing card collection.

I stayed at a hotel downtown where I usually stay when I'm in Dubuque. Yes, the place now is set up for high-speed wireless Internet, in fact they'll even loan you a wireless card. Whether such a card would've worked with Linux, had I brought my ThinkPad "with," is another question.

Somehow I was not surprised to discover that, in this day and age, a major chain hotel no longer has Gideon Bibles in its rooms. But that's okay, I brought my own Bible with me, bwahahahahaha! Talk about civil disobedience, transporting a Bible in a public place without a government-issued Bible-carrying permit...

At the little Catholic religious supply store down the street from the hotel, I bought:

• A Justo Juez holy card, only 60¢ cheap
  
  
• A red scapular, color me an inquisitive Presbyterian
  
  
• A book, The Cube and the Cathedral by George Weigel, which has been on my floating mental book list now for some time. The store clerk tried to charge me the Canadian price for the book, fortunately I caught it and saved myself $10

Ummmmm, ate at the little restaurant in the hotel. Also had a greaseburger at the Hardee's near campus, where I ate many a time twenty-odd years ago when I was a young punk.

Someone alerted me that Kennedy Mall in Dubuque now has a Borders bookstore. Guess we can no longer sing that old jingle,

Kennedy Mall
Has nothing at all
Kennedy Mall
Has nothing at all...

Didn't get anything at Borders, but at another shop in the mall, I did randomly pick up three DVDs for a song:

• Waterworld, one of my favorites even if it did bomb at the box office, and hey, Jeanne Tripplehorn is hot
  
  
• Blade Runner, loved this movie ever since I first saw it in the theaters years ago
  
  
• 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I did not yet have in any medium (actually I already had the other two movies in VHS, which is, as they say, "the new vinyl")

People in Dubuque are still the worst drivers in the universe. And the traffic in Dubuque has become astonishing for a small city: you'd never get across University Avenue alive without lights at the crosswalk, the flow of traffic there is just nonstop at all hours of the day.

Speaking of young punks, in the library a young punk accosted me à propos of nothing, and tried to convince me that the Presbyterian Lay Committee is the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Well, I was sitting there at a table, reading the latest issue of The Presbyterian Layman.) I demurred. But he was civil about it, which in this day and age is unusual.

On the way home, there was a lot of traffic. At one point, toward dusk, I sneezed, and just as I was reorienting myself to the roadway afterwards, I noticed a deer dashing across the highway right in front of me. I missed it.

I stopped off in Waukon to pick up a large vanilla shake, had to wait more than five minutes at the drive-up window, and what they gave me was probably not a large vanilla shake. Oh well. I got home in one piece. Now comes the rush of the rest of this week.