I'm Running Out of Room

My pipe collection grew by two over the past week. I drove my mom, who's visiting from Nevada, to Chambersburg with the intention of checking out one of the massive antique malls in the area. Given that we were in the neighborhood, I dropped by Boswell's and said hello.

I ended up leaving with a couple of new pipes, one bought by my mom for me as a birthday gift, and another that I couldn't resist buying for myself. My mom's gift to me was, as far as I can tell, a spiral shank billiard. Very nice and smokes great. My gift to myself was a very sweet Boswell tomato (basically, the bowl is round and squat, like a tomato). Dan threw in some tobacco at no charge, which was very nice of him.

I'll get some pictures of the new pipes and post them soon.

When we were done, we drove to the antique store but ended up passing it by on accident. The traffic was backed up due to some road work, so we decided to head up to Gettysburg and see the sights before turning around and heading back. Stephen ran around near some monuments for a bit, and we toured much of the battlefield in brief (honestly, it takes about two days to really experience Gettysburg; we only had a couple of hours).

We drove back to the antique store, but by the time we got there it was only going to be open for another 30 minutes. We checked out one of the buildings (the entire mall takes up 3-4 buildings on both sides of the road) and didn't see much more than a lot of expensive brik-a-brak.

We'd promised Dan we'd drop back by Boswell's, so we did. We sat for a bit and chatted, and I ended up buying an ounce of Boswell's Paradise blend (a dark aromatic) to try out, as well as a cigar (a Trinidad Anniversary cigar; smells great, can't wait to smoke it).

Now, I'm not much of a cigar person, but I may as well try them out and see what they're like. I may even invest in a humidor at some point. Amy is even less a fan of cigars than she is of pipe smoke, so I'll either have to smoke them outside or away from home.

In that vein, there's a new cigar bar open over at Fairfax Corner. I'd like to go check it out sometime; I'm not much of a barfly, but depending on the atmosphere it might be a cool place to hang out, especially if they're okay with pipe smoking.

About the title of this post: Well, I've got more pipes now than I have rack space for them. I need to find a place to keep them. I like displaying them, because they're all very nice, but our apartment is already stuffed to the gills with crap. Not literal crap, mind you, but shelf space is at a premium. It might be time to consider a wall-mounted cabinet or something similar. Such a thing is liable to be xpensive. Bleah.

Either that, or I find a larger rack.

I started reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road yesterday. I did a bit of reading out on the balcony, pipe in hand. The weather isn't horribly hot, especially when the breeze is going. Too bad that July and August are liable to be scorchers, as I could really get used to spending time out there with a good book.