Sunday, September 25, 2011

My outing

Yesterday there was a "Mammoth Book Sale" put on by the "Friends of the Ottawa Public Library".  They actually call themselves FOPL, really.  Anyway they advertised it as thousands of books, 10 for $1.00.  What a deal right?  Wrong.  For me anyway but I'm getting ahead of myself.

John was working (of course) and I woke up too early, I was still tired.  I lay in bed for quite a while debating over whether I should walk the dog, go to the book sale, both, neither and which I should do first.  Finally I hauled my ass out of bed and took Max for a walk then got my trusty bus tickets out and headed to the bus stop.

I tried to put the bus tickets (takes two to get on the bus, go figure) in the wrong slot so I gave the driver a bit of a chuckle.  (my good deed for the day)  The bus ride seemed to take forever but it was fortunately one bus, no transfers. It was sort of at the other end of the city and when I finally got to the book sale I was sorely disappointed to find that they were all fiction and kids books and the majority of them were paperback books so after a 45 minute bus ride I spent a grand total of about 10 minutes there.  My bus transfer had not expired yet and it was still early in the day so I decided I would take the first bus that went downtown and wander around the mall and check out the Chapters store which I did.

Somewhere between when I got on the bus and downtown I changed my mind about going to the mall so I just stayed on the bus.  I was looking forward to just hopping off the bus, walking down the street and having a nap.  We were pulling away from the last transit station before heading to my neighbourhood when they announce the next stop and it's not where I want to go.  Damn,  I'm on the 95 not the 94.  So I have to get off at the next stop, get another bus that travels all over the place and on top of that when I get off I have to walk farther to get home than I would have on the 94.  Finally, to add insult to injury, my transfer had expired and I had to use two more tickets to get on the last bus, which I didn't want to take in the first place. 

Yes, getting out of the house is great!  The good news is, except for the bus fare, I spent no money.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah I went to the same sale, but I had a very different experience. There were thousands of books and the people holding the sale kept coming out and restocking tables. I ended up getting one bag of books (true, it was fiction but I found a few books I had never gotten around to reading when they came out).

    It was a bag of books for a dollar, but the money goes to the library so I gave $5. When I asked why it was all fiction they said they needed to get rid of stock and the focus would change at each sale, so at the next sale it's supposed to be all different categories.

    The volunteers were really friendly and for me the sale was worthwhile. I had a hard time finding the building because it doesn't have a name yet, but now that I know it's the yellow one it'll be easier in the future. I plan to keep going because, like I said, it was a nice experience for me and a good deal.

    I'm sorry the day sucked for you.

    ReplyDelete