Sunday Morning Ramblings

I love Sunday mornings. I either get to sleep late or I go for walks in the park with friends or, like this morning, I get one of the best treats of all... I go for an early morning book run to Barnes & Noble, then head over to Panerra and get a coffee and croissant and sit and read the new book that I just purchased. Early Sunday mornings are the best time to get out and around in Greenville. You can sit in relative obscurity and quiet because the vast majority of our good citizens are attending their, on average, 2 1/2 hours of church services. This leaves the town open for the rest of us heathens to enjoy our quiet morning... a religious experience in and of itself. But, warning... you MUST vacate before 11:00 am because all the restaurants and shops are suddenly full of men, women and children dressed in their decidedly preppy, church-going finest. All women are tastefully attired in skirts with a hemline at their ankles and all men are wearing a uniform of khaki pants and blue oxford shirts with a blue blazer. The children are similarly attired... just smaller versions of their parents. This army must be avoided at all costs or else you forfeit the almost zen-like mood that you have managed to achieve.

This morning, I won. I had to purchase a book for our next book club meeting... A Confederacy of Dunces. I am into the second chapter now. It is one of my daughter's favorite books, so I was eager to read it.

Speaking of my daughter... She is really brilliant and bitingly funny. I think she has a bright future in front of her (says the proud mother!). Anyway, she was telling me a bit about some correspondence in which she was involved. It seems there is a test that she administers... to see if someone can use the word "schadenfreude" in casual conversation. (Meaning: "taking pleasure in the misfortune of others"). Well, this wonderful German word is our password for acceptance... if you know it, you get points. If you can use it, you get more points... and if you can pronounce it correctly... ding, ding, ding! Jackpot! So, my question was... how did they pronounce it? Quite well, apparently. She said at least they didn't pronounce it "Shootenfruity"... at which point we both went off into gales of laughter. I said the definition of this is "taking pleasure in the mispronunciation by others". We both thought this was hilarious! (Yes, we are nerds.)

So, ramble, ramble... perhaps I shouldn't have indulged in the third cup of coffee, lol!