The feast of the lovely cucurbit, 2007
Halloween came and went. Fifteen (twenty, it says here, now) thousand people downtown in costumes a large number of which were creepy or salacious or both -- I guess that's what Halloween is all about. We more or less live downtown but we don't go o9ut on Halloween, we hand out candy, and when we find them, cooler things than that. Last year it was little tiny play dough containers. Couldn't find them this year.
So when you see "20 thousand downtown" remember that the city's population is aboutn 55K. That is, a crowd the size of more than a third of the total population of the city was contained in about four blocks.
The police made 61 arrests, mostly for being drunk, some for being disorderly, some for having an open container of liquor where you're not supposed to. A policeman got stabbed, but he's sort of all right, having got stitches. For some reason not related to the constituional separation of powers the police announced that they would triple the fines. Isn't that the job of the courts?
My younger, single coworkers went downtown and didn't get to bed until really late. One went as the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, except her outfit looked more like an illustration in a fetish graphic novel. I wonder if her costume was Japanese in (design)origin? It wasn't expensive enough to be actually from Japan. How times change: I remember as a child how everything inexpensive was Japanese and a lot of people took Japanese origin to mean poor workmanship, but my mother explained it was that the workers were paid so very little. And the other one was dressed as Raggedy Ann, again with a short poofy skirt that made her so nervous she pulled the stockings right up to her butt and wore bike shorts on top of them to hold them in place.
There wasn't anything more innocent than that.
On an entirely different front, among Frank's things, along with four pocket knives (I still the grey mini Swiss Army one), I found an mp3 player. It's labelled "Evolution technologies EV-LX64" and it does not work. It uses AAA batteries, but the ones we have are old too, so I don't know if they are good. What else I have learned is this: it was produced in 2002. The company that made it is now called "Now Evolution." It takes SmartMedia cards, which seem to exist but are not inexpensive and almost but not quite the same size and configuration as the SanDisk I already have (alas, they are not interchangeable). It has 64 mb of internal memory which I gather is equivalent to about five songs. But there are two slots for the SmartMedia cards which are possibly made in modern sizes now. It has a little screen: I don't know if it will play videos, assuming you could fit one on to the cards. I don't know if it can be made to work at all. Googling is so far not productive.
And finally: I am officially as of today over halfway. I have lost 36 pounds in seven months (30 weeks, by counting on my knuckles). I am up to fifty of my exercise, except the modified pushups, which are reasonable to lag behind the others because of my hands worth a crap thing.
I have submitted a recipe for warm-pallette coleslaw to Sunset, and bookmarked the recipe submitting page, because it's really hard to find.
So when you see "20 thousand downtown" remember that the city's population is aboutn 55K. That is, a crowd the size of more than a third of the total population of the city was contained in about four blocks.
The police made 61 arrests, mostly for being drunk, some for being disorderly, some for having an open container of liquor where you're not supposed to. A policeman got stabbed, but he's sort of all right, having got stitches. For some reason not related to the constituional separation of powers the police announced that they would triple the fines. Isn't that the job of the courts?
My younger, single coworkers went downtown and didn't get to bed until really late. One went as the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, except her outfit looked more like an illustration in a fetish graphic novel. I wonder if her costume was Japanese in (design)origin? It wasn't expensive enough to be actually from Japan. How times change: I remember as a child how everything inexpensive was Japanese and a lot of people took Japanese origin to mean poor workmanship, but my mother explained it was that the workers were paid so very little. And the other one was dressed as Raggedy Ann, again with a short poofy skirt that made her so nervous she pulled the stockings right up to her butt and wore bike shorts on top of them to hold them in place.
There wasn't anything more innocent than that.
On an entirely different front, among Frank's things, along with four pocket knives (I still the grey mini Swiss Army one), I found an mp3 player. It's labelled "Evolution technologies EV-LX64" and it does not work. It uses AAA batteries, but the ones we have are old too, so I don't know if they are good. What else I have learned is this: it was produced in 2002. The company that made it is now called "Now Evolution." It takes SmartMedia cards, which seem to exist but are not inexpensive and almost but not quite the same size and configuration as the SanDisk I already have (alas, they are not interchangeable). It has 64 mb of internal memory which I gather is equivalent to about five songs. But there are two slots for the SmartMedia cards which are possibly made in modern sizes now. It has a little screen: I don't know if it will play videos, assuming you could fit one on to the cards. I don't know if it can be made to work at all. Googling is so far not productive.
And finally: I am officially as of today over halfway. I have lost 36 pounds in seven months (30 weeks, by counting on my knuckles). I am up to fifty of my exercise, except the modified pushups, which are reasonable to lag behind the others because of my hands worth a crap thing.
I have submitted a recipe for warm-pallette coleslaw to Sunset, and bookmarked the recipe submitting page, because it's really hard to find.