Unstagnant

Summer is the time when it is a big challenge not to stagnate.  Yesterday I went into the city.  Because gas is so expensive, I needed to have more than one reason.  I picked up frames for my Ralph McQuarrie Star Wars: A New Hope concept art that I got printed at the local office supply place.  Michael's seems to be the best frame place around. 

I delivered D__'s birthday gift to T__.  T___ is colour-blind, and owns a Robosapien toy or two, so D__ got him three 10 cent Robosapien colouring books.  It's not just that T__ is colour-blind that makes buying him the colouring books funny, but also that every page in every book displays nothing but Robosapien, who is, of course, white with black, so there's nothing at all to colour.  It is obvious that the people who made the book didn't really think about that.

 I also gave T__ (who is a soda connoisseur) some Temogami cream soda, which was very good, which I picked up when I was up north.

     In addition, I traded him a Sega Genesis game that he wanted (Lakers Vs. Celtics, I believe it was called) for an Atari 2600 Empire Strikes Back and an extra Genesis X-Men game.     

Not only these, but I picked up the two DVD ROMS onto which I paid a guy to transfer my parents' old super-8 silent film movies.  I want to get a scanner which scans slides, so I can incoporate slides also.  These old super-8 movies are from when I was born and learning to walk, and no one's watched them in maybe 20 years.  The slides, likewise, but covering more time.  I think I'll stick in some footage of Woodstock, Vietnam and the lunar landing, as I was born in 1969.  Some period music as well.   

    Today I went to my folks' to use Dad's papercutter to trim the prints to put in the frames.  I stopped by the high school to do that and pick up and return some stuff, but they were closed.  Dad looked at my car and tried unhooking things to see what was what with my car's automatic transmission not shifting consistently and falling into neutral when the brake is pressed.  He unhitched things until the car stopped starting, then unaccountably, unhitched something and it had no effect whatsoever except that the car drove perfectly for a bit before falling back into its nonsense of not dropping into gear once I've come to a complete stop.  I'm going back when he's got more time.  He thinks he might have unhitched the thing that makes sure I can't shift into park while tooling down the highway.  Hooray.   

   On the way back I dropped off some Disney DVDs I made for my four year old niece.  She watched part of Mulan, and then switched to Pocahontas before bedtime.  She likes the songs, but says "That's embarassing!" when a song starts, because we tease her about singing tuneless, wordless Disneyesque stuff to herself at the dinner table.  I saw my nephew of course, as well.  A four month old 20lb+ baby is quite something to lug around, and he is very wiggly also.  Always cheerful, though.