2002-04-27 - 10:47 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Wonderful Tonight", Eric Clapton

I have two recent experiences that I would like to share with you all.

First. A local middle eastern restaurant which delivers had left menus in the lobby of our building. I got all excited (hummus! tabouli! spices!) and we ordered a bunch of stuff for dinner.

I ordered something with ground beef and spices, expecting a sort of oval hamburger-looking kinda thing. The food arrived, and I opened up my little styrofoam container, and I got a little surprise.

I'll making you click to see the photo so you will be just as surprised as I was.

Well, I had to summon up a little nerve to eat that, I must confess. I looked at it for a while. The meat was reddish in color, so I cut off half of a piece (the one missing in the photo) and nuked it for a minute. It just got dried up, but stayed red.

So, I ate about a turd and a half, I think, and it was exactly as advertised -- ground beef with spices. But I don't think I'll be ordering that again. Not just because of the odd shape, but because it was hopelessly overcooked. Poindexter ate a lamb kabob that was charred beyond recognition.

The vegetarian stuff, however, was fabulous, so we'll just stick to that in the future.

Speaking of vegetarians, I'd imagine Portia is probably feeling very confident in her dietary lifestyle right about now.

So, one thing I really like about living in the city is that I don't have to go anywhere for exciting stuff to happen. It brings itself to my door.

Well, it depends on what you call "exciting", I suppose. Remember I'm easily amused.

About 10am, after my nose woke me up (allergies) this morning, I was snuggling in bed with Poindexter discussing dreams we'd had and tickling his chest when we heard an odd sound.

To me it sounded at first like a rattletrap truck. Then drums. Finally Poindexter said, "That sounds like a parade."

Sure enough, the local Girl Scouts of America were parading right by our building. And there was a middle-school band providing some music.

We opened up the windows and leaned out and waved at the girls for a while. There wasn't anybody lining the streets to watch, so they were tickled pink to have somebody to wave at. Some of them were even blowing us kisses.

There hundreds of girls, from all over the Philadelphia area. Brownies, Girl Scouts, moms, and a few brothers scattered here and there. Most of the girls were wearing the same light blue t-shirt, but here and there were troops that were more formally attired for the occasion:

Suits and white gloves. That's impressive.

Near the back of the parade, incongruous and completely inexplicable to us, was The Gigantic Acme Shopping Cart:

The thing was at least 15 feet high, and the really odd part was that it had a huge engine. Is there some kind of shopping cart drag racing underground thing I don't know about?

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