Score!!

SCORE!!! My bundt pan and a muffin tin

What a successful day, after an interesting week.  I finally, after scouring stores for six months, found a bundt pan.  And I bought it so fast it nearly burned the cash register.  The guy there was so helpful and told me that if I needed any other specialized bakeware to come in and we would look at the catalog together.  

Small joys--books, bakeware, plants

And when I looked up from my purchase and through the glass windows of the front door, I saw a book sale going on in Halles Prosper Montagner, so I hurried myself in there and got a couple of juvenile fiction books--some sort of medieval quest series. Used book sales are the same in Carcassonne as they are in Brookings and attract quite a crowd here.  Remember, this is a city that three local daily papers and at least 4 independent bookstores.  These people still read.  For the price, I bought all three in the series. I figure that will help improve my reading comprehension---hard enough to be interesting, but not so developed a vocabulary that I have to look up every second word.  That gets depressing and frustrating.  I also scored about a dozen or more English language books from a new friend earlier this week.  She belongs to a book club--they pay 50 cents a book that they "borrow," and at the end of the year, the money goes to a local charity.

My Christmas cactus has decided to stay and thrive

And I have been craving a Morning Glory muffin.  I have the ingredients to make them, after going round Robin's barn to find grated coconut and almond flour, so I think the merchants on the block are getting Morning Glory muffins tomorrow morning.  But I had first to find some muffin tins.  I have never used silicone before, but it is almost all you can find here, so I will try it.  I found a tin with reinforced edges so it doesn't collapse like so many of the silicone baking pans when you put it on the oven rack.

My indoor garden

My jade plant is due a bigger pot

My jade plant is thriving, my Christmas cactus is going to bloom, I will have muffins tomorrow morning and I managed to play a Bach piece I have been wrestling with for months at 85% of the correct speed with no mistakes--repeatedly. I saw some wonderful kindness today on the bus. This all balances out the sneaky Windows update to Windows 10 that I specifically said, "Not now," to.  Talk about angry!  But on the whole, it's very very good here.  Flamenco ballet this evening, Saturday market tomorrow (hopefully I can stay upright).  Many of the Spanish tourists clogging the street have gone home, city workers have cleared the Canal towpath out to the Pont Rouge zone, so a nice walk is on tap.  I smile almost all the time.