Excerpts from the breakfast notebooks:

"3/19

"Last Saturday we went out for breakfast at a new place -- Bonnie's Cafe, on University near the Amtrack station. Its sort of a twin to a little bar, which, according to David, was recently redecorated into a faux Irish bar. Before that they were twins trapped in a time warp -- Bonnie's at least doesn't appear to have changed in 20, 30, 40 years. A few newer appliances and coffee machines, but the cast iron stools and the pastel green painted woodwork and the yellow floral print wallpaper and the old ice machine haven't changed at all.

"Right away we noticed how quiet it was. Partly thee were only a few people there, partly because no one was talking. Even the rushing traffic on University was silent behind glass. We had menus on our table but they weren't very detailed -- there were more elaborate specials and combos written on tagboard taped up around the room, yellowed with the grease of many years. There wasn't any real egg-hashbrown-pancake combo -- most of the 'combos' combined eggs and meat.

"There hashbrowns & pancakes here were decent, not really spectacular or anything, but the prices were reasonable (except that David ended up spending $2 for an orange juice so his total was almost $10).

"One thing I liked was that you had to walk through the kitchen to get to the stairs to the bathroom in the basement."