simple pleasures

Tonight i went out for food. i was spending an evening alone and have been putting off grocery shopping (so no food to speak of in the house) and was craving a burrito... so off i went to qdoba (mmm...). parked the car (wasn't feeling well so didn't walk) and walked the half-block to get my dinner.

but!

on the way, i turned into the open, well-lit doorway of a shop stacked STACKED with books. i never even noticed it before, to my shame, but i have in my neighborhood one of those really wonderful used-book-stores that is well-organized and yet nearly-overstuffed with previously owned, reasonably priced BOOKS. this is a treasure - i had just been bemoaning the combined facts that a) i'm running out of books to read on my own shelf; b) new books are prohibitively expensive to buy on a regular basis; and c) my wallet is unfortunately thin. then, eureka! used books in every possible category for which one could hope.

and...

there's a lovely black cat with a white face-blaze and three white feet who will rub against your legs while you walk through the "true crime" section and will happily purr while you rub his chin. i'm not sure why he showed up in the 'true crime' section and i wondered, as i enjoyed his attention, what sort of odd cat-loving-conspiracy-theorist-type i might seem to be if anyone walked past to see me crouched over a big, purring cat in front of the true-and-unvarnished stories of murder-in-a-small-town-or-some-such .... but aside from that, heaven!

i'm very pleased with this new discovery. it was one of those things that is remarkably soothing on a night that, for no particular reason, was not outstandingly ... well, outstanding. thank you, God, for simple pleasures, and in my own part of the world, too!