You hear that, Mr Andersen?

Book Fair, Car, Google Earth

I made it to the Downtown Community Mission Book Fair on Saturday afternoon. I find it's often the books that I don't choose to pick up that stay with me -- a book on etiquette by Quentin Crisp, for example. And the fantasy & scifi section was pretty much completely empty by the time I got there -- I picked up "The Lost Continent" by Edgar Rice Burrows, but that's about it. There was still a fair selection in the Young Adult tables, and I did manage to pick a bag's worth of books, but it wasn't the same haul as previous years.

The most wearying thing about book-fairs and second-hand book hunting isn't the crowds, or trying to read titles and corelating those with what you've already got or what you're looking for -- it's standing up, quite still, with ever-increasing loads in your arm for long periods of time. And because you're concentrating on the books, you don't really notice until you're standing in line to pay. I suspect you could make a fair bit of cash renting wheelie chairs to keen book-hunters who are stoically waiting to hand over cash for their "kills".

***

Someone pulled the symbol off the front of my car last night. Slightly frustrating, but my brother tells me that one of our friends has had the same thing happen, and it only cost around $40 to get the replacement part. Now, this is $40 that I wouldn't have had to spend if someone hadn't wrenched something off my car, but it's less than I thought it would be. It could have been worse -- they could have keyed the car, or stolen the hubcaps, or broken in for the stereo. (Though I would have been surprised if they did that last thing, since it's a tape-player that's about the same age as the car.)

In other car-related news -- because I really dislike email campaigns that are self-evidently stupid, I went in and filled my half-empty tank today. It was close to $50; so I can expect $100+ to fill the car in the not-to-distant future. No wonder they're advocating work-from-home, carless days and carpooling; I wish I had more days where I could walk to work. Roll on the electric car, say I.

***

In a recent game set in Wellington Jenni made a point about the banality of Supré (by having her Sidhe work there in an act of self-sacrifice). I was walking past their shop on Lambton Quay, and there was a young guy working there with artfully disarranged dark hair with a peroxided swoop along the front; I think he might have been in a tank-top, but that may just be my brain filling in details after the fact. Anyway, his expression suggested that he took himself deadly seriously, which may be why I remember him -- I found it very funny, which he might not have appreciated. :)

***

Technology is cool.

My grandparents were at my parents place for Father's Day dinner, and I mentioned Google Earth, which reminded Mum that they'd found the location of my sister's address in Hawaii. So we all went to the study, and looked at the roof of my sistere's new home; and then looked at Wellington; and then we looked at my granfather's old town back in Denmark, and followed the streets he used to walk to school as a boy, and found the farm where one of his old shipmates now lives.

Actually, I think I'll shift my position. Technology lets you do some really cool stuff. :)

Posted by svend at September 5, 2005 4:54 PM