Arrr, It Be Pirate Shopping Day
Today I decided that I had to get out of the house. I went over to a friend's apartment for a New Year's get-together last night (much fun was had), but other than that have been stuck in my apartment with bronchitis since Tuesday (and had to cancel plans to see insomniacat et al in Vegas--not pleasing). I decided that the thing to do would be to walk down to the Westside Pavillion and poke about a bit in the post-holiday madness. So I went and talked to the nice salesperson at Nordstroms who is possibly interested in modelling for my coworker's next photography project, and talked to the guy who runs the Seacrets Spa to Go stand (I highly recommend their body lotions). While I was looking around the purses at Robinsons-May, I saw one of the stranger things I've ever encountered in a department store: a nice enough looking young man with an American flag bandanna tied around his head and a parrot on his shoulder. The parrot, by the way, is about nine months old and likes to lick his owner's face. He (the parrot) is also very well behaved, especially given that he was in a department store on New Year's day, and most people of many times his age and several times his size are not always capable of minding their manners in that situation. The young man was looking through umbrellas, and was having trouble deciding between the plain black and something a little more colorful. Later, as I stepped out into the rain on Pico Blvd, I happened to see the piratey twosome crossing the street: it seems the young man with the bandanna had decided on the plain black umbrella, and the parrot was comfortably tucked in under it.