Now what?

[howeird]

Well, at least I got out of the apartment.
Dropped the car off at Pro Audio at 10 am, to have them fix the trunk release and install a backup camera. Took the bus to the mall, and after walking around a bit got a mocha and a pastry at Starbucks and parked outside with my laptop at one of the big tables by the cupcakes. The tables inside are too small for me to put both the laptop and the food. Let alone the mouse.

Lots of beautiful women going by, many compliments from them for my stegosaurus backpack.

Went up to the food court to see what was new. Not much, but two big changes - Le Boulanger shifted from the corner (best location in the court) over one, grabbing the space Ivar's abandoned, and a place claiming to be Thai but is actually Chinese has taken the corner. The chefs there today were an African-American and a Hispanic man. All the help was Chinese.

Biggest line was for Mongolian grill. Bigger than MacDonald's.

1:45, the car should have been done by now, but no call from them. Caught the 2 o'clock bus, car was outside and ready to go. Looked like it had been done since noon. They have had some staff turnover in the front, not for the better. Trunk release works fine. Backup cam is too wide angle, and has no indicators of how close I am. And they remounted the screen angled a little bit away from me, making it harder to see - more glare. But I don't have time to have them mess with it.

On the way home I got gas at Costco - $4.039/gal, which is the same price as the nearest Arco, except Arco charges 45¢ for the ATM card and doesn't take credit cards. Costco AMEX card gives me cash back.

Home, pulled out Nancie McDermott's Quick and Easy Thai and attempted to follow the recipe for crab cakes, but with shrimp instead of pork and a full pound of crab instead of 3/4. It called for 1/2 cup of bread crumbs, but when it was all mixed it didn't seem to be thick enough (the recipe says they should be able to be shaped into patties) so I added another 1/2 cup. They fried up great after I got the timing right, but it turned out to be too much bread - can hardly taste the seafood. Nice and crunchy, though, and with egg roll sauce they should be fine.

Or not. I hate to do it, but will probably throw the lot out. That's a lot of $$ in crab meat, but what's the use if you can't taste it? Maybe tomorrow I'll go to Costco and get more crab. 

And now I'm out of things to do. Maybe I should start on the aerogramme project. I looked up my order on scancafe.com, and it is still in the queue and not expected to be done until the end of April. That's a lot slower than their web site led me to believe, but not surprising, considering it's 48 rolls of B&W film.

Oh. Yes. Two things at the mall. I stopped in at the Sony store and they have two models of those "go-cams" hdras10 and 15, those little ones which can be clamped onto a helmet or used as a windshield cam. Nice wide angle lens, which none of their affordable handycams has. And affordable. I think I'll get one to record Kaan fetching. And I'm sure I'll think up other uses. The 15 has wi-fi, the 10 just records to micro-SD.

There was a table set up in the hallway against the wall of an empty store which I thought was for Die-Annette-ics because there was a posterboard display next to it with the challenge "ARE YOU A GENIUS?" over a set of questions and an optical illusion Albert Einstein image. I laughed at the questions and was going to move on when the very pretty lady behind the table asked what was so funny. So I told her the answers to all the questions, and how cute it was that the concave mold of Einstein appears to be convex from a distance. She said I must be very smart, but did I know about Jesus?

Here are the questions:

1. Say and spell the word "stop". What do you do when you come to a green traffic light?
2. How many animals did Moses bring onto the ark?
3. Say and spell the word "silk". What does a cow drink?
4. What is the raised lettering deaf people use to read with?

We had a fun conversation, she had all kinds of lame reasons to be Christian, but her old testament knowledge was almost non-existent (she thought the 10 commandments were all the laws that were in there) and I finally walked away (with a smile) when she tried to prove there is a god by trying to prove a negative. My parting words, which made her jaw drop, were "Prove to me that the cow did not jump over the moon."

Also at the mall, once online I replied by private message to Beth's call for Conflikt feedback. Would have posted it publicly, but there were some names named whom I know read LJ and want to keep as friends. 

Plans for tomorrow:
Maybe see a movie. Silver Lining Playbook and Oz The Great and Powerful are at the top of the list. 
Meet Janice for coffee. Last one before her Caribbean trip.
I had originally planned to help paint at the Lyric Theatre shop, but the highly annoying and mostly incompetent Janey-come-lately SM has been pounding the cast with it every day this week, so I figure they will have more than enough people. I've already more than earned my helper points by building the web site.