Belated Friday five.

Five things I learned today, in no particular order:

• There is a children's coloring book called Great Lawyers. No shit - a coloring book. Only Borders* would have such a thing. (It's hilarious to me that when I googled "Great Lawyers coloring book" the post that came up was pretty much the guy doing what I did - leafing through it in fear and awe - and then blogging about it.)
  
• People can be quite reasonable when they want to avoid a lengthy and costly car insurance claim. (I was backing out of my space, and in true Brady Bunch form I checked and double checked before I started moving, and this SUV also backed up without looking, but the only damage was a scratch on my bumper and quite frankly I couldn't have cared less, so we basically said to each other, "I don't care - do you care? No? OK, well great, have a nice day!" and went about our business.**)
  
• The Indian joint in the Emeryville Public Market isn't very good.
• Trader Joe's has General Tsao's sauce which may allow me to recreate my favorite vegetarian dish that I can only find in Maryland (General Tsao's "chik'n" if you will), which irritates me to no end but also gives me something to look forward to after a 7 hour plane ride. [pause] If that doesn't work I will try this recipe. Gosh, it never occurred to me to search the web for a recipe. [pause] Apparently it also didn't occur to me to search the web for a restaurant near me that serves said dish. Next time I go to the Shoreline, I am soooooo there. [pause] Say, wait a minute... OK, next time I go to San Francisco, I am soooooo there. [pause] WOW. There are several others too. To sum up, today I learned that I have a new and exciting mission ahead of me.
• It's surprisingly easy to kill two hours in Ikea.
  

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* Lest ye judge, I only went to Border's because I wanted to buy one of my favorite childhood books as a gift for my long-time friend's son. In case he already has it, they don't have Diesel or Pegasus or Moe's back east, okay?! They didn't have Danny and the Dinosaur in stock, which was probably my favorite book at age 4. I really wanted to read that one again. Bah.

** I'm running short on this type of luck. I've never had a major car accident. However, on my way home from a wedding a couple years ago I rear-ended a woman (though I just barely tapped her car). I was mortified - I was pretty emotional because of my lack of any prospects for a wedding in the foreseeable future - but she just got out of her car, looked at me, looked at her bumper, said "are you OK? I'm fine," I said, "I'm fine," and she said "OK, have a nice day" and drove off. Perhaps my teary reply worked in my favor that day. But there's something about the "three strikes you're out" rule... So I think my next accident will be a doozy.