Twin Cities Book Festival

Have been neglecting my quotes so here we go:

"I have a couple girlfriends who are like, healing. We take care of each other. They know when I need to be taken care of" (Maggie Gyllenhall, actress, born 1977)

You have seen our picture several times on the blog. My high school friend, Beth Solheim, from Bemidji. They spent the weekend with us and I helped her at the ALL-DAY book festival downtown Minneapolis where thousands of people attended and bought books. It was great and every moment Beth was not promoting her book we talked to each other and would just pick up the conversation wherever we left off - got a lot of things accomplished and talked over. Her sequel to At Witt's End will be coming out in January 2011. Ross went to bed listening to chatter and would get up and say "Are you two still talking?" - all the way to dinner in the back seat, every moment of every hour.

This is mid-afternoon on the floor of Metropolitan Community College. I got so many used and free books that I will have to start reading even more and faster. I loved it!

Beth's husband, Jerry, makes wine so we were given gifts:). I also told him about my new venture of growing garlic - ordered, shared and needs to go in the ground after the first hard frost. Article in the Star Trib this week by a local grower says they ordered 14 pounds and harvested 20,000. My goals are not that magnificent. However, Jer must have been convinced as he trekked down to Mill City Farmer's Market, bought 5 heads (each clove makes one plant) of Russian type garlic from this grower and shared with me. Said he looks just like his picture.

They treated us to dinner at one of my favorite places - Convention Grill in Edina. Best hamburgers and malts in town.

So you may be asking "Now what?" for me - researching a trip to Russia - what I'm reading is that it would be a good thing to know the Cyrillic alphabet (ever looked at it?) - this trip may just require some input from a few English speaking guides - we'll see.