Now all of a sudden, our living room looks huge, and the TV, which used to sit on one of the shelves and at 19″ seemed pretty big, is suddenly quite wee. Good thing we’re going to get a nice new 32″ flat screen soon!

After we finished moving stuff, we headed over to SLO to check out the Central Coast Book and Author Festival, wander around downtown, do a bit of window shopping and have a nice lunch. It was a gorgeous day – almost too hot, but there was a nice breeze keeping the temperature down to a tolerable level.

It maybe didn’t have anything to do with books, but I thought the idea of this Musical Petting Zoo was really cute!

We did a quick walk-through of the festival, but decided to have lunch before we browsed the books. I decided on Novo, which is one of my favourite little restaurants in SLO. I particularly like their beautiful creekside patios, and we were lucky enough to get a nice table on a lower deck.

I planned to have a glass of wine with my lunch, but when I noticed a particularly delicious-sounding cocktail, I decided to try the ginger mint martini. It was delicious and very refreshing on a hot day.

Mom and I decided to be smart about our meal this time and chose to share an appetizer and sandwich instead of getting an entree each. For the appetizer, we chose The Trio, which consisted of three artisan cheeses with figs, grapes and apples and some nuts which I believe were carmelized.

Our sandwich was the Novo BLTA on ciabatta bread – so amazingly delicous! And sharing it was perfect, as trying to eat a whole sandwich would have left me overstuffed and uncomfortable, I’m sure.

When we finished our wonderfully relaxing and delicious lunch, we headed back to the Mission Plaza to check out the books and authors and entertainment.

We didn’t mean to buy so many books. We really didn’t. But, really, put a couple bibliophiles in among a bunch of books, and what do you think is going to happen? Yes, this:

We ended up buying six books (all autographed by the authors except the first one):

1. Gone Coastal an Anthology by the Central Coast Mystery Writers
2. Kachima Spirit by Marilyn Meredith
3. Wing Beat by Marilyn Meredith
4. Deadly Omen by Marilyn Meredith (this was a free book because we’d already chosen two of her books)
5. Cruel Whispers by Starr Reina
6. Cruel Past by Starr Reina

There were a couple more books I wanted to get (Black’s Beach Shuffle by Corey Lynn Fayman and The Haunting of Cambria by Richard Taylor) but we figured we had enough books to keep us busy for a while, and I could always pick up the other books later.

It was a really good day. I haven’t had very many good days lately, so it was nice, so nice, to be able to really enjoy myself and be happy for a little while.