festival season

Phew! It's been a busy week. I'll try to make up for not posting with some extras today and tomorrow. I've been enjoying the festival fun that comes with fall in North Florida. I love the way this community comes alive again once the consistent 90-degree days give way to 70s and 80s. Last weekend was the Thornbrooke Arts Festival. I went with my Mom on Sunday -- the first mostly dry day after four days straight of rain. There was a lot of jewelry at the show and an abundance of glass pumpkins. Mom found one we both fell in love with, but it was already sold. We were disappointed with the day after that until I found this cute print that Mom graciously bought for me:


I'm a Gainesville Area NOW board member, so it was particularly cute to me. I think I'll put it in a simple frame and hang it in my office.

Today I went to the Friends of the Library fall book sale (there's also a smaller one in the spring.) For the uninitiated, the FOL has about 300,000 books, records, CDs, DVDs, games, and more crammed in a meticulously organized fashion into a (now) small warehouse. The sale runs for five days, but if you want a chance at the best of the best you ought to be there Saturday morning. It's so celebrated that folks even camp out the night before, making sure to be one of the first through the door. It's a FOL ritual of mine to pass by the parking lot the evening before just to check out the campers (there were at least two out there yesterday at 4:30.) How do these campers know what they want? Well, that's the fun of the sale. Typically you never really know what you'll find at the sale since there is no preview day, which is different from most library sales. By the time the doors open at 9:00, the line has snaked through the parking lot several times and down the street. Being full of mostly book lovers though, the entrance into the sale is usually orderly and quick. I picked up a few old Marthas (magazines are only a quarter), a quilting magazine, and the Home Restaurant cookbook. Home, located in NYC's Greenwich Village, was the only place I ate more than once the entire summer I spent at NYU. The cookbook brings back lots of good memories.

Unfortunately, I missed the 12th annual fall plant sale at Kanapaha Botanical Gardens, the Natural History Museum's ButterflyFest 2007, and several fall festivals in surrounding communities. Next weekend is the 1890s festival in McIntosh and Morningside's native plant sale. I'm hoping to get to both before the 3:30 UF/Kentucky kickoff.