Oh, I Think So

The moon looked pretty damn full last Tuesday night when my brother-in-law brought over the whoopie pie my sister made.  The whoopie pie was also full of deliciousness and when I gave it my attention, I ingested it pretty quickly. Before I put that tasty thing into my gob, I went outside to get a picture of the moon.  I live in a city.  It wasn't like in Bremerton, Washington, standing by the harbor where there are many charming boats and not a lot of lights and you can get a good shot of the orb without a lot of city-light distractions.  Chicago is a city that likes its streetlights -- I am pretty fond of them myself -- and I went outside and stood pretty much underneath one so I could get the moon and not trees.  (Chicago also has lots of trees.)  I managed to keep still and my new love, the Man in the Moon, made my evening. Is my new love sticking his tongue out at me?

Seattle, y'all, is a very hip and happening place.  They also don't frown on nonhipster types like me.  All are welcome!  There are great restaurants and hotels, beautiful scenery, and delicious donuts.  Of course I mean Top Pot Doughnuts.  There are Top Pot locations around town but I chose to walk 2/3 of a mile from my hotel to eat at the Mothership location.  (The roast beef sandwich they make is also delish.) My trip to Seattle coincided with getting a new camera.  I'd been talking about getting a new camera for a while, wanting something more robust than the point and shoots I'd been using that would also give me more control.  Of course, after buying it, I thought it was too extravagant a purchase but I decided to shut up about it because I'd been saving and I wanted it a lot.  This was my first outing with my new camera-love and I enjoyed photography again. So what did I do on my vacay?  Walked a lot -- one day I walked about ...

Last year, my best pal asked me if I wanted to see "The Hunger Games."  She couldn't persuade me to see any of the Twilight franchise and thought maybe I'd give this new one a go.  I agreed.  The books were totally off my radar and I'd no clue about what they offered.  When I found out, I was okay with it:  vampires and werewolves scare the bejeezus out of me but a country made smaller by global warming and melted glaciers, run by bloodthirsty despots, was okay.  Yeah, all kinda nuts right here. In case you've been ignoring it, "The Hunger Games" takes place in what might be a post-apocalyptic America.  There are 12 districts and a capital.  There were 13 districts, but the thirteenth was nuked into Kingdom Come for trying to rebel against the Capital.  To keep the remaining districts in line, every year there is a fight to the death to win the games.  The players, called Tributes, are chosen from a pool of all 12-to-18 year olds in ea...

Yesterday, I spent the better part of a day with my friend and his friend who was visiting from Dallas.  She told stories of road construction.  One particular road is going from like 6 lanes to 26 lanes.  TWENTY-SIX LANES OF TRAFFIC!  North of Dallas. "And," I said, "I bet no homes were knocked down for it." "Very few," she said. Texas has oodles of space, y'all, and can accommodate a 26-lane highway with very little displacement.  It's almost hard to imagine.  From her description, almost every highway in the Dallas-Fort Worth area is under major construction.  That's also almost hard to imagine.  But everything, I gather, is totally effed up and it takes a couple of hours to go 50 miles on an interstate. My friend's friend is a lucky person.  Her situation is enviable.  She lives with her dad who is 88.  Her dad is totally with it.  He makes no insane demands on her.  He still drives.  Think about that:...