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How to pill a cat II

Sparky's been taking his calming pills okay. He whines about it, but he doesn't offer too much resistance. He never did muster much enthusiasm for the treats, though, which is so unlike him. I was beginning to wonder if this medicine was making him a little too calm. But I sort of knew what the problem was.

Sucky treats.

Oz had a thing of the crunchy tartar control kind, so we figured we'd use them up. And they were lasting a good, long time, too, because most of the time Sparky would just wander off after getting his pill.

It was kind of sad.

Last time we went to buy cat food, we picked up some better treats. Softer treats! With fun flavors and less ghoulish dye! Now Pill Time is Fun Time. This evening Sparky and the other cat, who gets treats though he gets no pill, perked up and hurried over when I got out Sparky's pill. I still have to pry Sparky's mouth open and drop the pill in, but the prying operation takes rather less effort than before the advent of the soft treats.

In unrelated 'hood news: This afternoon the police caught one of the burglars in the act. Also this afternoon, there was another break-in. With any luck the burglars all know each other and the captured one will rat out his associates.

In unrelated weather news: I found that one of the gutters still has a leak, though it is smaller than before. Just in time for Tropical Storm Ernesto. I got an automated call from the City this evening telling me to have three days worth of food and "sanitary" (whatever that means … storm-induced, citywide toilet paper shortage?) and to be prepared to shelter in place unless I am in a flood prone area, in which case I should be prepared to evacuate. Sounds a bit extreme, considering the National Weather Service is only saying "LOCALLY HEAVY RAINFALL POSSIBLE." On the other hand, they're using all caps.

Pom Poko

We just watched Pom Poko, a Miyazaki anime film about tanuki fighting to save their woodland home from development into a Tokyo bedroom community.

How do the tanuki fight? They use their magical shapeshifting powers and their mad testicular skills. At any sign of progress, they party down and they are easily distracted by thoughts of food. "Let's kill all the humans!" "Okay! But then where will we get tempura?"

The movie is fun and very Japanese, with the combination of low humor, mythological references, and a rather complex ending. We'd love to party with the tanuki. I think we can dance as well as badgers do.

For the first time I was distracted by the voice acting in a Japanese anime. This used to only happen with American animated movies, but now I've watched enough cheesy Japanese TV dramas that I can recognize the voices of the character actors in particular. So I'm looking at one tanuki and thinking, "That's the cow guy from Chura-san." (Ha! I just crosschecked the cast listings for Pom Poko and Churasan, and I was right.)

Guttering gutters

It's been a dry summer, but that hasn't stopped my gutters from driving me mad. The patch job the guys did last February didn't hold at all and every time it's rained, the leaking of the gutters has driven me mad. I hear it, the dripping on the downstairs window flashing, the dripping on the oven vent.

So finally I called the Handyman of Choice, who I should have had work on the roof in the first place, except that I'd thought he'd retired. Turns out, he's planning to retire next year, at which point he'll cut back to working only forty hours a week.

He came last week and did something to the gutters. He scraped them out, lined them with Peel-N-Seal, and slapped more patching cement around. Then he collected his check and disappeared.

I've been wondering whether he did a good job, but it hasn't rained. I figure it's just as well. Any day I don't hear my gutters leak is a good day, rain or shine.

It finally started raining this evening, and I couldn't even tell till I went into the kitchen and could hear it pounding on the tin porch roof. Yay for the HoC!

True horror

According to my referral logs, the URL of some death metal group has been pointing to my blog for a few weeks now. So, welcome, death metal readers (if you're still reading). I hope you find the talk of wedding dress shopping, egg frying, and the local crime wave sufficiently horrifying.

Someone local may be disturbed by all the egg talk. This morning Oz found egg all over his car. Judging by the splatter pattern, it was either tossed from a passing vehicle or laid in flight by an angry chicken. (Hey, angry chicken, we are using the cage-free eggs nowadays!)

Or it could be coincidence.

Let's find out with more egg talk. I made, oh, three more tamago-yaki on Saturday. One came out pretty, the next came out too dark, and the last came out close to perfect, so I stopped cooking at that point and gave the perfect one to my mom. She had it for breakfast today and then called to tell me it was delicious and ask how to make it. Heh.

Tamago-yaki, the new obsession.

To finish up, here is an atypical swimsuit shopping whine. The elastic in my old suit is disintegrating from chlorine and from age, since it's certainly no younger than eight years old. Time for a new suit, before the butt area gets totally translucent. I'm very sensible about swimsuits: I want a black Speedo suit with a good back. When I buy a swimsuit, it doesn't take any longer than it takes to drive to the sporting goods store. Well, things have changed since 1998! The big store with the huge rack of racing suits and the depressing fitting rooms is gone, replaced by a trendier big store with a climbing wall and a tiny selection of racing suits, none of which were in my size, so I can't report on the fitting rooms. So, as my shopping has trended increasingly since 1998, I came home, got the model number off my old suit, found it on the manufacturer's website, and ordered it online. Hah! Take that, you stupid trendy store with lots of bikinis and almost no suits for people who actually swim! "Sporting goods," indeed.

You know, I'd be perfectly happy to go to a real store and interact with actual human beings. Too bad the real stores don't feel the same way. It's not that I'm an odd size, but stores rarely seem to carry a full range of sizes anymore. I could almost break out some of these cards.

More eggs

Yum. Tamago-yaki.

I went and bought more eggs. I told Oz that we didn't need to eat all the tamago-yaki, I just wanted to make them. It is fun when you have half a clue what you're doing. Even though I messed up the instructions a bit, the one I made today still turned out respectably, if a little scruffy looking. But still! Identifiable as what it is and very tasty. Not bad for a first effort.

And, oh joy, it's a taste of Japan that I now don't have to endure 24 hours of planes and airports to get. Tamago-yaki is one of those touchstone foods: it's what your mom makes for your bento, it's what you get for special on New Year's, and it's hard to make right. So people get all misty-eyed over mom's dry, malformed tamago-yaki, and then go buy nice juicy tamago-yaki from the food halls at the department store.

You have to hand it to those Tameshite Gatten food science people, they really do know how to break down the subtle art of simple, yet incredibly easy to screw up, food preparation into something that even a gaijin or dorky guest celebrity can handle.

I have reviewed the video and I will try again tomorrow to see if I can improve on the appearance.

Now we are alarmed

There was another break-in around the corner last night. Great! The police are starting to take this neverending crime wave personally. We see them driving by at all hours, they are patrolling the alleys on their bicycles, and they even flew around over the neighborhood in a helicopter last night.

But now when the burglars come, my house will make a loud noise and call the police. Hah! I'm still thinking about the web cam.

In other 'hood news, the city decided to hold the Back-to-School Parade after all. This Saturday morning at 10:00, I'll run down to Broad Street and cover it again this year.

Also, what's up with the robots? I have some lounge pants with robots on them. In today's laundry, the drawstring of the robot pants unraveled and attacked some other pants. When I was folding, I had to get some scissors from Oz to cut the pants free.

He said, "The robot revolution begins with the pants."

"Well, now we know."

"There will be no other pants before me."

And, finally, I have something to do with all those eggs. I bought a dozen and then neglected to use them. Today was the "best by" date, but oddly enough tonight's episode of Tameshite Gatten is featuring how to make tamago-yaki (Japanese fried egg) like a pro. It's not easy, and I really enjoyed the section of the show featuring non-pros making the most godawful tamago-yaki, because now I don't feel so stupid that I can't make it even though I have the special rectangular pan and everything. I'm taping the pro's demonstration and I'll distress some eggs tomorrow.

Beep

There's a burglar in the neighborhood and a couple houses on my block got hit this past weekend. The burglar steals underwear and ransacks the kitchen for snacks. The burglar is not deterred by much, either, he's even broken in to some houses when people were home. Of course, if he keeps that up he's going to get shot. Not that I have a gun, but I'm just sayin' …

The burglar may also come back for the more expensive stuff he passed over on his first visit. My mom says there are similar burglaries taking place in her Northside neighborhood.

We are all extra paranoid now. My neighbors are getting an alarm system. I am getting an alarm system. (I already had one, but it doesn't work anymore.) We are talking about setting up wireless web cams and surveilling our kitchens and backyards.

Now that's what the Internet really needs: pictures of me stumbling around and making coffee in the morning, or Oz futilely watering the dirt and grass seed. Not that these would be public, mind you.

The alarm system guy came tonight to sell us the system. The tech is coming tomorrow to set it up. Oz is saying, "Yes! I don't want no burglar messing around in my underwear!"

Biblioshoque

I finished up today's job a little bit early and decided to make a library run with my extra free time. There are a few out of print books I want to read and the library has them. (Actually, I just checked and they don't have one that's on my list, so I have now ordered it. The internet, it can be a dangerous thing for the budget.)

I parked at the back the library, the main branch, on Main Street and noticed that there were rather more people than usual sitting in the garden behind the building. But, it's a nice day and shady in the garden, so I didn't think too much of it. Then when I walked around the building I noticed a suspicious amount of available street parking.

I rounded the corner and saw a large number of people standing around in front of the building. So at that point the bad feeling which started to develop when I passed a woman on the sidewalk muttering, "Library closed" really takes off. I find notices, all in magic marker, taped to the front door saying "Library closed until further notice."

I can see staff milling around inside and there's a stonefaced security lady sitting inside the front doors. The lights are all on, but there's a power company truck parked out front. Maybe it's a power thing?

Considering that the city cancelled the Back to School Parade two days before the actual parade, I'm wondering if they've cancelled the libraries too. Like in Salinas a couple years ago?

Another would-be library patron walked up and flipped out. He'd just applied for a job there. He scurried over to the power company guys and got a little information. Yes, some weird electrical issue and the library may reopen tomorrow. I am relieved. I may even have time to go the library tomorrow.

Also, does my city have an adorable skyline, or what?

Chewy postal goodness

Of late the post office seems to have been getting my mail to my house. We've had the same carrier for the past few months and he has demonstrated his excellent capacity for reading street names. Since the problems from the beginning of the year have been solved (for now), I can once again order used books online and have some confidence that they'll make it to my house. I still wonder what happened to that book on the seventeenth-century British civil service …

But the post office is doing their best to keep me from developing a false sense of security.

Back in April, I got an email from a client about an invoice I sent through the mail which was so damaged that she could neither read it nor reconstruct it. I sent in another copy of the invoice and forgot about it.

Till yesterday, when I received the other half of it from the Undeliverable Mail Office. My business envelope had been torn lengthwise, right down the center. My client must have received the half with the mailing address in April, and I received the half with the return address and the stamp. The post office kindly included a postage paid envelope with their "oops" note, dated 16 August.

Four months? The Undeliverable Mail Office, which is at the central post office maybe a ten minute drive from my house so it's not like my half envelope has been wending its way around the country because the stamp wasn't even cancelled so it must have been torn right there at the central post office, has a four month backup of undeliverable mail?

I wonder what else they've got lurking around in Undeliverables. Maybe they've got my history book.

Propaganda

Japanese propaganda is pleasingly straightforward. It is also comedic.

We were watching an ecology show, featuring a close look at the slime from the bottom of Lake Biwa. A biologist brought up a lump of brown slime from a depth of ten meters and invited the spokesmodel to touch it. The model said, "O-oh. Is it okay to touch it?" She was a good sport about the slime-touching and observed how the stringy slime looked just like natto. (Also, making natto is easy and fun. Or it could poison you.)

After covering the proliferation of anaerobic bacteria in Lake Biwa, they cut back to our studio panelists: two young beautiful people, an elderly scientist, and a demon. (I wonder about the increasing frequency of appearance of popular, but edgy—in a mild, Japanese way—entertainers on NHK specials. Is this a has-been thing? The slow slide down towards hosting the regional family entertainment variety shows?)

The scientist talks about global warming, we see various visual aids. "Worldwide ocean currents will fail and it will be very, very bad!" Then they give us a news broadcast from the future. The anchor has plasticized hair and a silver lame blazer, because he's from the future. He talks with a reporter in the Amazonian desert and another reporter roasting in Paris. "My, you look very sweaty. Make sure you get enough water." Each reporter says, "Well, look at the devastation. You know, this all started a hundred years ago. It used to be nice, but those people who lived a hundred years ago, they really suck! They better take some responsibility and stop pumping out all that stupid carbon dioxide!"

Then the screen went all wavy and returned us to the present, where the studio panelists said, "Oh my! What can we do to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions?"

I don't know. The sight of a fake Japanese reporter in a fake pith helmet standing in a fake, computer-generated desert didn't quite have that effect on us.

Lava Love

On a trip to Target for kitty litter, Oz found another lava lamp for his collection. He didn't have black wax with clear liquid yet, but he does now. When the light is on and the wax is bobbing, the color is more of a dark, environmental-disaster brown. He claims to have seen in a science catalog some lava lamps which appeared to have metallic wax. I just wandered over to Mathmos and their very interesting offerings didn't include anything like that. Too bad they use Flash. What is it with design wonks?

Other than that? When we went out for dinner, we saw the local Mullet Police mobile. We think, yes, maybe that is a good thing. I suppose they scurry around with hair trimmers to protect society from mulletry. Some Mullet Police in the UK use internet shaming instead. If you like mullets, you can get the T-shirt.

Hauntings

The other day I got a call from Dr. Smith, my faculty mentor at engineering school. It seems that the guys down at the super-duper research facility (which ought to hire me because I am so great) have a few questions about the Hamster project. Which I haven't looked at for over a year now, but I guess I can rack the old brains. I had them email me a few of their questions to jog my memory.

Their questions were easy. I feel the urge to simply tell them to read the documentation, though the answers to some of their questions ("Why did you do it this way? What does it mean?") wouldn't be in there.

I'm wondering if they need someone to fiddle with the code. Me? Would they pay me? Well, I wouldn't do it for free.

And Dr. Smith has got me thinking about getting back to the job hunt. When I told him that I was still translating, he said, "But, the world is missing out!"

A couple things I saw today, before I forget

I went to the grocery store where I saw a punk mom and her two little boys. One had a standard little-boy haircut, but the other had a Mohawk. The cutest, blond, little-boy Mohawk I ever did see, with bangs hanging into his eyes and a fuzzy head, and the most perfect little cowlick on the crown of his head, like a pinwheel right in the middle of the Mohawk area.

This evening we went to the Tan-A market to pick up some rice. They were out of the kind I wanted. (I'm so spoiled, I simply must have koshihikari!) While I was whinging about the rice, some of the personal care products on the nearby shelves caught our eyes: Darkie Toothpaste (yeah, they call it "Darlie" now, but we know what it really is) and Snake Brand Prickly Heat Powder. If the line had been shorter, I would have got them, just for the packaging. I'm still wondering why the Snake Brand snake has an arrow through his head. It doesn't give one an impression of non-prickly comfort.

In my daily dose of Wonderland, Alice went to Tarina Tarantino's shop, where they have a Barbie collection, a Hello Kitty collection, and a bridal collection. The princess simply is their demographic and she hasn't got a tiara yet, so I sent her the link. She's all, "Oooh, Barbie tiara? Hello Kitty tiara?"

Pedestriana

We did basically nothing all day, but it seemed to keep us busy enough.

Around sunset we were out and, though the sky wasn't being particularly photogenic, took some pictures along Broad Street. We schlepped the tripod along and took some long exposure shots. Some guys walking by were very adamant about not getting their picture taken.

"Okay," we said.

"Really, I do not want to be documented."

"Fine. Look, I'll turn off the camera. Just go along."

"I do not want to be documented."

"Okay."

"I'm just a panhandler, trying to sell booze and cigarettes and I don't want to be documented."

"Oh." Do we seem at all interested in taking his picture? Or in buying a swig of his booze? No.

Eventually they moved along. When they were partway down the block, one of them turned and said we could take a picture now. I wanted to tell them that we had a zoom lens, but we just told them we were done. Then he tried to sell us cigarettes.

It rains

I can't think of anything to write and Oz is sitting near me, making little maddening sounds, like breathing. The nerve.

So I've moved to the downstairs computer where it's quiet and no one else is breathing in here but me.

I still don't have anything to write about. I dusted today and worked for a couple hours. It rained and my gutters leaked. I called the guy who I called a few weeks ago about the gutters and left a message, asking if he'd forgotten me. I didn't even cook. I made rice and we had leftover curry for dinner.

As you might have guessed, I was all set to stop lazing about, because it's not terribly interesting, and then Oz told me he was taking tomorrow off.

One fun thing I have been doing is playing with my future world for my cyberpunk story. I don't think it'll be set in the near future, because we're living in the near future and all this wild stuff is everyday life now if you're on one side of the digital divide. So it's looking like a more distant future after all, except that the distant future looks a lot like the past in some respects. I'd tell you more, but I don't know it yet.

Snooze

This lady of leisure stuff is time-consuming. Work arrived on Monday afternoon but with no fixed deadline. I already mentally gave myself this week off, so it's been easy to take it.

I've mostly been running errands.

I played with my camera for awhile. I can make myself look very tall (I'm not) with a wide angle lens, a narrow hallway, and a tripod set up to hold the camera a foot off the floor. The effect is very spooky, especially when the only light is from the flash. I recommend the process.

I pulled some pictures off my little camera. I was pleased with how they came out, the light was perfect. It just goes to show, the best camera is the one you have with you. I carry my little Stylus when I'm too tired to lug the D50 around, or when the weather precludes using the D50.

I cooked food two nights in a row. Can I make it three? Or will Oz insist on draft beer and French fries tomorrow?

I swam laps. I read magazines.

Tonight we scouted out some of the interesting neon and signage along Broad Street. We don't have much here in town, and some of the most interesting signs are in sad shape. My goal is to shoot some shortly after sunset, when there's enough light in the sky that you can see the city, but not so much that you can't see the light. Neon lobsters may be coming your way soon.

The hesitation

So after all that. All the shopping, the perusal of bridal magazines, the trip to New York, the hoisting of fifty pound dresses over her head, the offers to customize the design …

The princess emails me and says, "I'm thinking about changing the color from white to ivory. I'm thinking maybe that other dress. I need advice from someone sensible. What do you think?"

Oh, princess! Get whatever you want!

That is basically my advice, but I used more words and told her that she couldn't go wrong because both the dresses looked wonderful on her. (Which is true.) (In case she's reading this, but I don't think she does.)

When my cousin got married, she rented the dress and the bridesmaids' dresses were rented too. I think she saved herself a lot more than just money. I bet when you rent a dress, you can second-guess yourself and change your mind for months …

Hmm. Maybe that's not such a good thing after all.

The plunge

Back to the story of the trip to New York and shopping for wedding dresses with the princess, who is a friend of mine, not my daughter. I am childless, though I am old enough to have a child of marriageable age. I'd be screeching, "No! Are you insane? You can't get married before you're thirty. Go to your room!" I'm really proud of myself for not screeching that at my various classmates from engineering school who did that idiotic thing where they graduate, move, start a proper job for the first time ever, and get married in the space of three weeks, because that's some serious insanity there.

Where was I? The princess, yes. Okay, the princess is an actual grown-up and is paying for her own dream wedding, and she dreams big. I doubt I'd even consider buying such a big fancy gown for myself, but I'm happy to see what it's like. Actually, a story about the dress buying part of the industrial wedding complex would be pretty interesting. The Washington Post just ran an article about wedding dress clearance at Filene's, which is all about how to get that US$5000 dress for $500. The process of getting a bargain dress is much more stressful than when you pay full price.

First of all, you don't make a mad dash, you make an appointment.

The princess's plan for New York was to attend two trunk shows (I saw no trunks), where if she purchased a dress she'd get a 12.5% discount. The first was at Reem Acra's salon in midtown, the second was at Kleinfeld, a bridal shop in Chelsea which carries dresses from many different designers. At both places, the designers were present and schmoozing with the brides. The schmoozing was rather nice. At first the designers only introduced themselves to us and mingled elsewhere while the princess tried on dresses. Once she found a dress that looked really fabulous on her, as opposed to simply great, the designers swooped enthusiastically, calling for veils and playing with her hair to show her how it would look best with the gown.

"And you will wear your hair down, see?"

"Actually I was thinking of wearing it up …"

"No! It is your feature. You must wear it like this, so that it frames your face, yes?"

Also at both places, and maybe wedding dress shops in general (I don't know), the staff all dressed entirely in black. This sets up some interesting visual contrasts, which is why I was disappointed I couldn't take photographs. You have this soft, flattering light, tall mirrors, and a row of happy, excited brides standing on podiums and attended by black-clad women who are fussing with the trains, adjusting the clamps on the backs of the dresses, and crowning them with veils and tiaras.

The deal with the clamps is that there is only one sample dress. All the brides are different sizes, so the attendant uses the clamps to snug up the dress on the small brides. For the larger brides, the dress doesn't get zipped up in back (I forget exactly how they hold it somewhat closed) and a piece of satin gets inserted in the open spot.

Another interesting visual that I wish I could have shot was the plunge into the dress. The princess was trying on strapless gowns with huge skirts puffed out by yards of crinolines. These dresses are heavy and nearly impossible to put on by yourself. You can't step into it because there's only the one sample and they don't want you stepping on it, or tripping and tearing it. So the attendant, all in black, hoists the dress into the air and works her hands in from the bodice to open a path through the inner slip. In profile one sees the layers of the dress constructed like a huge, complicated flower: the slip, the burst of crinoline, the sleek, heavy folds of the skirt. Before all that stands the bride, clad only in a longline bra, her underpants, and high heels, with her arms raised over her head, poised as if to dive into a pool.

One thing I wasn't expecting was the social aspect of the process. Most of the brides have a friend or some family along to help. After seeing what's involved, I can't imagine going through this alone. There's so much emotion and fantasy for the bride, plus the sales attendant who is helping you find the right dress (but she is also trying to make a sale), that it's a good thing to have a companion present to diffuse the focus of the sales pitch and to ask questions and make observations that are impossible for the bride who is sort of oxygen deprived from being clamped into a big heavy gown, like "Yes, that embroidery around the bust is rather enhancing, but it also looks too much like a brassiere." It's even better for the bride if her companion is approximately her same size and height.

For example, I am the exact same height and about the same size as the princess.

At the end, once she'd narrowed down to two dresses, one with the perfect train and one with the perfect bodice, she had me try them on. So I too experienced the plunge through the tunnel of gown, the clamping, and the oxygen deprivation. The skirts of a satin ballgown are so heavy, I can't imagine why she'd want to drag them around for a whole evening, but she's the princess … And I observed that, damn, but when you have the dress on, even with all the mirrors, you totally cannot see how it looks on you, especially from the back. You can see the edge of the train and that's about it.

I also got to experience the transient micro-community that forms around the bride when she has on a good dress. These ladies who were there with another bride drifted over to both the princess and myself to tell us how lovely the dress was and how good we both looked in it. In fact, the princess looked fabulous in all the dresses she tried on, she only had to select the one that made her happiest. Not as easy a choice as you might think. The designer's assistants bustled around, addressing the princess's concerns about how the train was not quite fancy enough. "Oh, we can make it fancier. How about some scalloping? Shall we draw you a sketch?" Neither the princess nor I can draw, so we were disproportionately impressed by the instant sketching.

The micro-communities are interesting. They're dress-centered, and you have the phenomenon where a dress looks great on one bride and all the other brides want to try it on, and then you have the phenomenon where the brides who are getting the same dress bond momentarily over the dress. At the Reem Acra boutique, we met a bride with her mom and sister (also a Reem bride) up from Atlanta who was getting the dress that the princess almost got. Happy past brides make excellent sales pitches. I got to take their picture (with their camera). Now that I think of it, bridal salons should have someone on staff with a good camera to take pictures of the brides. I took pictures of the princess with both my Nikon and her point-and-shoot, and according to the princess, my pictures are "so much better."

It's not necessarily all sweetness and joy at the bridal salon. I mostly saw happy brides, but I'm sure that dress-related conflict arises. We saw some brewing. At Kleinfeld we noticed a dreadful dress on a mannequin, it was a translucent, lacy corset-with-a-skirt thing and our reaction was "Who would want that?" Later we saw someone actually trying it on! She was there with her mother and grandmother, who were sitting on a sofa and circumspectly averting their eyes and remarking, "I don't know. I don't think I like all that ruffley stuff on the skirt." As opposed to screeching, "NO! Are you insane? You are not walking down that aisle in a merry widow, skirt or no!"

And that is the fancy bridal shop experience.

Another excellent argument in favor of elopement?

It depends on the bride, of course.

I had better do some writing

Snakes on a pediment, at the Coca-Cola Company, 711 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

I've been working and messing around with pictures. Surprise, surprise. Not too many of the shots from New York turned out, what with this not being a leisurely photographic tour, but I'm pleased enough with the ones that did. They're in the Big City set. This "snakes on a pediment" picture of the Coca-Cola doorway got linked up by another blog, which must get a lot more traffic than mine, because this image has gotten more views in a day than any of the rest of the pictures in my photostream since I started messing around on Flickr.

Oh, the work? I seem to be done with the huge mass of patents for litigation, which has been keeping me busy for the past few months. Right now, ah bliss! I have no work scheduled for next week. I'm alternately planning chores to do, imagining being lazy and doing none of them, and having little attacks of "oh no! I'll never work again!"

Odds are I'll work again. Odds are pretty good I'll work again next week, especially if I plan to go shop for a new shower enclosure for my bathroom.

Today we expanded our carbon footprint a little more and drove up to Fredericksburg to see if we could find a chest of drawers in one of the antique shops on Caroline Street. We didn't, but Oz found a very stylish Italian hat which looked awful on me. It really belongs on an Italian lady. While I was sitting on a shady bench out on the sidewalk and waiting for Oz to finish up in one store, I saw a flock of Red Hat Society ladies, all in purple and red hats, descend on an ice cream store. They were moving too fast for me to get a picture, but they were carrying digital cameras. I guess they've got the photographic documentation covered for themselves. At a stationery store we acquired little fancy-pants notebooks and disposable fountain pens. We're so literary. Next thing you know, we'll be hanging out in cafes and pretending to write poetry.

Girly weekend

Cartier, East 52nd Street and Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

That was a whirlwind sort of thing. I'm still processing it all. The princess and I caught a midday train at Union Station in DC and she was trying on wedding dresses within a couple hours of our arrival in New York. The shopping was the whole point of the trip, so I didn't get to do a lot of photography because we had important things to do. Also, the princess set a limit on how many times she'd hold my coffee cup while I took pictures of fancy doorways.

Would you believe? They won't let you photograph the dresses until you agree to buy one. It's a pity too, because the whole process inside the dress shops is really interesting and allowing me to shoot would have (almost) made up for the soundtrack, an endless loop of the mushiest pop songs of the last thirty years.

Our mission was ultimately successful. Even better, the princess may be having her fittings done in New York too. Not that we'd need an excuse to go back.