Miscellany.

Some people have too much time on their hands.... For example, the transparent screens pool at Flickr.

It's raining. It's been raining. It is grey and gloriously wet. It is so good to have proper spring rains again.

Tomorrow we go to Scott's aunt and uncle's place for easter dinner.

Near us are some apartments that are renting right now - they're very nice, actually, the best units back to a pretty little creek (the same one we back to, further up and away from them - they don't have farmland on the other side, but houses, but still...). They have balloons out. Or I should say had. As I drove to the grocery store, I slowed down to let the yellow one flow across my lane. The red and green and blue were more polite and waited to cross behind my car.... There's been a bit of rain and wind, not strong. They must not have been tied down all that tightly, or else something else happened, but in any case they were turned loose. I wished at that moment I had a video camera - a still camera would not have captured it quite the way I wished, so I did not bother trying. Besides, I was driving and trying not to run over balloons too foolish to use the crosswalk. :)

Saw an interesting license plate on my way from the first store (which didn't have my muffin bars) to the second (which didn't either, actually; I had to go up to Freddy's): "IO2 MCH". On an older white porsche. A very dirty one, I should add; white is not a good car color if you don't plan to clean it. I didn't realize it was a porsche at first, the dirt made it look like a beater. I guess it was slumming. (And really, if you owe too much then why are you paying extra for a custom plate? Hee.)

At Freddy's I saw "Bandaid collectible tins". I didn't stop to look, but I do boggle at what becomes - not merely reusable or collected, but formally labelled collectable, in our society. There's an essay in there about promoting materialism and how accumulation for its own sake is now being pushed because, be honest, they're out of ways to convince many of us that we need anything more otherwise.

There is an essay in there somewhere, but I'm not up for writing it. Except to add that when I went through frozen foods, I passed one of the sampler tables. The woman behind it was talking to another customer who had just asked something, I assume about the flavor; she had little cups of what looked like ice cream or frozen yogurt (but did not have the product prominently places, so I couldn't see what it was or even if she had it out at all). She answered that it was "double vanilla" which caused the customer to double-take and repeat it back in a questioning tone. The demonstration woman positively cooed and gushed (at once, geesh!) "double vanilla!" affirmingly, emphasis on double, and went on to say something else. By then I was passing out of range of hearing them and, while I confess to some curiosity, it was the morbid sort of "how far have we gone?"

Of course, I have been known to eat double-chocolate things, so why on earth this troubles me, I don't know. I think it may have been as much her tone of voice and emphasis of it, as the product; had she said it in a matter-of-fact tone I might not even have registered it, really.