A Few Random Reflections

Shop window reflection courtesy of AuthentiCity on Congress Avenue.

But I was thinking more of reflections of the verbal, essay-like sort.

• Does a stock market rally that is HUGE percentage-wise really mean anything in this environment?
• Is it true that joblessness has caused a new surge of volunteerism because people have to have something to do and they have less money to give?
• I heard a thrift store (run by Junior League) on Burnet Road was closing due to competition from new clothes sold by Costco, Walmart, etc. Can this be a real trend?
  
• A friend who sorts collected donations for a charity's annual sale says donations are down. Are people not buying new clothes either and just wearing the stuff they used to give away?
• Above two remind me that there is a sack of stuff in my car that needs to be dropped at the thrift store. I patronize Top Drawer. I hope they don't go out of business. I hope they keep making enough money to stay open because they give vouchers to clients of AIDS orgs in town to shop for free. Free clothing and housewares seems good.
• I gave lots of stuff including toys and collectibles and housewares of some value to the above in the great downsizing. We gave away a lot of books, too.
• FFP has been looking for a book called Guns, Germs and Steel for two days. It never got cataloged but he says he once owned it. Maybe we gave it away.
• We were trying to sort and get rid of magazines a couple of days ago. I can't give away the Harper's Magazine or The New Yorker without first flipping through them. Too often this results in many minutes reading an article.
• We are going to the SXSW film festival. We claim to be film buffs but really we aren't. We like obscure docs. We have no idea about, for example, Watchmen and will be happy to never see it. Movies about young peoples' angst leave me cold.
  
• And yet we watch 24.
  
• We watched L Word. They spent the entire season teasing about killing off a character I hate. So, yeah, they did it. Ho. Hum. Not sorry to see them go.
• Have you seen United States of Tara? Inexplicably, I like it. That Diablo Cody really surprised me. She made me like a like some young folks and their angst and someone with an identity disorder.
• Speaking of young people (or maybe ALL people) have you noticed how people go out in groups in these sort of uniforms. Saw two guys in the Texas Chili Parlor, both in cargo shorts, tennis shoes with no visible socks, safari shirts (the ones with the vents and such), untucked, ball caps. Of course, FFP and I go out in slacks/blazer. You know what else? Young ladies go out in fancy party dresses with decolletage and lots of leg showing and high heels and are accompanied by guys in jeans, untucked shirts and flip flops. And all those tattoos and piercings you see. Although, I've got to say I meet more and more of the adorned young that are really great creative people. Diablo Cody. I'm just saying.
• Do you ever notice that when you don't have too much to do, you don't get much done? Lately I've had lots of free time really. Did I get stuff cleaned and organized? Not so much. Did I do any serious writing? You know the answer to that. No, instead when some appointment comes up I'm a little colicky even if it's a fun thing. I was thinking I'd have tomorrow free, but I was talking to Dad and he reminded me that I have to take him for a blood test and a haircut. I'm such a slug. Oh. Well.
• I'm upset at my coffee machine. It said it wanted to be cleaned I went through the cycle but it forgot we were doing it and went back to wanting to be cleaned again. This has happened before but somehow I got out of it. The only thing in the place I love more than that machine is FFP. But it can be frustrating loving stuff when it does you wrong.
• Which reminds me. I'm using this software I found called syncplicity as a third level of backup. (I have a local script backing up to a drive on the network and a paid-for Internet connected backup.) It is free. When it failed briefly this morning, it upset me. Ditto free scheduling software for the film festival. It's free. But if it's not perfect I can still get upset. facebook doesn't work to suit me? Same thing. People providing stuff for free are still held to the highest standards. I used to work for businesses that sold software. We had bugs all the time. We always acted sorry, though.
  

Yeah, random stuff. I'm going to do something useful now. Um.. Yeah.