Odds n Ends

A couple of friends and I had a silly good time a the grand opening of a new Target store. (That whole blank spot on the map is a forth-coming strip mall. It's where the Great Big Green House used to be.) I do like looking at all of the nice things, and having a little money again does make it nicer. Not that I could let myself go nuts -- the only extras I got were a white t-shirt and some Cadbury eggs creme eggs.

In the office and school supplies aisles I mused aloud about switching calendar systems: maybe I could get a bigger day runner that I would keep open on my desk and carry home every night so I will never mess up which weekends I work and whether I've switched nights working. With that thought so fresh in my head, I still went to bed and got up thinking about a vow to go to the Sandston Y for morning water aerobics on this, my usual morning off. At the same time, I spent some last time thinking about what I would wear to work today that I can wear straight to a GS volunteer meeting tonight that will maintain my hip image. . . . Oh, yeah, I switched my schedule around already: this is not a morning off.

We also went to the opening of an exhibition called The Golden Age of Illustration in Richmond PL's special collection room.

Thanks to all for notes and calls about Catly. J wrote to say, "As a one-time swatee, I cherish memories of her unpredictably...." Ah, don't we all. I adopted her after starting grad school at William & Mary. The first or second night she lived with me, I playfully put my face in hers as she sat on the coffee table. She swatted me across the face and I went to class with a noticeable split lip. My new classmates and I joked that So-and-so, with the kitten, sounded like a parent of a new-born, while I sounded like one with a troubled teen.

Adam Gopnik wrote in the February 14 & 21 issue of The New Yorker about the city's new suburb-like street signs. They're getting those big ones that hang with the street lights, so it's easy to see which cross street is coming. I find the ones in Capital City's far west end very helpful. In Manhattan, of course, they seem wrong: "the signs ... violate the First Law of civilization, which states that nothing must ever be done for the convenience of cars (the mark of any city of worth living in is that there are never enough places to park)...."