This Saturday dawned gray, wet, chilled: perfection. Do I like rainy days from sheer obstinancy? Is it a surviving echo from my toddler days, when my teachers declared I could only wear the sun dresses I so adored on wet days, when there was no danger of revealing anything delicate while playing at my recess? (My mother still avers to this theory.) Perhaps it's the invitation such days offer to quiet reading in lowlit coffee shops. Whatever the causation, today was one of those soggy days that most can't abide and I so love.

And it has unfolded deliciously. This morning Kaitlin joined me on a quest to locate the nearest Bojangles to my new home. According to Mapquest, it was a mere 10 miles away to the northeast of Arlington, and we found it with no problem. I had a few qualms about the place. The fries were cold and there was no seasoning on the counter for my always generous application. But the bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit was hot and lovely, the tea syruppy-sweet, and the waitress gave me plenty of seasoning when I asked. I have the feeling that many Saturday trips will be in order, particularly when any North Carolinians are in town.

And then, to satisfy cravings of a different order, we returned to our side of the river and visited a little store on Wilson Boulevard that boasted selling a variety of British goods. They weren't lying. We found shelves of brown sauce, digestive biscuits, OXO cubes, canned spotted dick, Walker's crisps, Aero bars, and every sort of Cadbury bar, to name just a sampling. It was by far the best selection of British goods I've seen on our side of the pond. I emerged with some golden-syrup-and-cream digestives, Smoky Bacon-flavoured Walkers crisps (delicious, but you can taste them for days afterwards), brown Irish soda bread mix, and fruit gums. So I was able to satitate both my NC needs and UK needs in one morning - brilliant.

Now I'm doing the very best thing a person can do on a day such as today: sitting at a coffee shop, nursing a latte, and alternately reading Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel and surfing the free wireless. Tomorrow - a sunnier, springish day promises the Post - there will be time for wandering downtown, visiting museums and celebrating Shakespeare's birthday at the Folger, but today, I will enjoy the holy damp.