Trader Joe’s, William Powell and how to get yourself some free furniture.

Glorioski, hallelujah and start the car … Trader Joe’s is finally coming to Dallas! I just saw an announcement on the Dallas Observer’s website that two stores will open here for sure in 2012 … one on lower Greenville Avenue in Dallas and another in Plano. For the record, I’ll be shopping at the Trader Joe’s on lower Greenville (see map below) because Plano is too far, too crowded, too privileged and too snooty. (Especially snooty.)

I’m so damn excited I think I’ll spend the rest of the afternoon figuring out my first grocery list even though the store on Greenville Avenue probably won’t open until September. (I hate waiting until the last minute.) I wonder if the Trader Joe’s stores here in Texas will stock all or most of my favorites from Los Angeles, such as their fresh-made individual pizzas with cornmeal crust to die for, granola, ginormous frozen sea scallops, beautiful prunes, kosher chicken, couscous salad with real raisins, stuffed peppers, teeny jars of killer sweet/hot mustard, frozen mangoes and — be still, my heart — the best large curd cottage cheese on the planet. Feel free to stay tuned for further developments.

For your possible interest Sam and I made a quick run to Costco this morning to load up on essentials for the long holiday weekend. These included rotisserie chicken salad, Sam’s favorite tortellini pasta salad with little hunks of salami, mozzarella balls wrapped in pepperoni and prosciutto, frozen pot stickers, a pair of calzones, a gigantic can of salted peanuts, a 10-pack of extremely nice kitchen towels, six pounds of ground sirloin and a few other things I can’t remember at the moment. Incidentally, we ate the calzones for lunch. (I wish we’d bought more.)

Hey there, classic movie fans ... TCM is showing another string of back-to-back William Powell films tonight, and I highly recommend all of them: The Great Ziegfeld, Love Crazy, I Love You Again, Manhattan Melodrama, Libeled Lady, Evelyn Prentice and Double Wedding. I probably won’t record these because Sam and I own all the DVDs. We own the entire Thin Man series, too. Come to think of it, we’ve got a virtual TON of classic films around here. (I buy them all from Amazon.com. The prices are incredible.)

Wow ... breaking news from Howdygramland! Remember the defective bench (see yesterday's post) I received a couple of days ago from Amazon? The seller was very apologetic about the problem this morning and refunded my money immediately ... but they don’t want me to return the bench and said I can either keep it or donate it. Seriously! Therefore I’ve decided to keep it for now and try to patch the two little flaws.

I’m going to sacrifice one of the matching throw pillows so I can cut two tiny little pieces of material and stick them on the flaws with fabric glue. If it works, fantastic, the boo-boos will be invisible and I’ve got myself a nice piece of extremely free furniture. If it looks crappy, Sam can always drag the bench out to the curb and a needy local Texan will drive away with it. I’ll let you know how my holiday craft project turns out, okay?

I think I should celebrate my exciting day — Trader Joe’s, more William Powell movies and free furniture — with a nice piece of cake. Thank you for reading this.