Odd coincidence:

Corn hasn't been on sale too much, but it finally was the other week, and I was saving the cobs to boil and make vegetable broth per the advice of a friend who works in communications at school.

I did that in the morning, then left the veggies out in a strainer to drain them and get even more broth, and then headed out to enjoy the nice weather at the beach.

There, I ran into the person who gave me the advice about the corn cobs!

My mother's new hobby:

The AARP magazine gave the name of a website where you could enter names and find unclaimed money, so my mom's been thinking up people she knows to enter their names and see if they have unclaimed money.

So, she found out that my godmother had some and left a message on her answering machine, but she was calling me to get her cell, because it's easier to get hold of my godmother that way and she wanted to make sure my godmother knew.

Gossip: Bad retail environment.

So, the other week I caught up with a friend from undergrad who's half of a two-person fashion-and-accessories small business.

She had been working crazy crazy hours, like full days seven days a week, and I was surprised to hear that she was doing all she could to keep the business alive, and she was getting ticked because her accessories endeavors were propping up the clothing lines run by the other person, since the bottom had dropped out of that.

"No one has any money!", she was like, and added that if Macy's was having problems, they were going to have problems.

Fortunately, though, people tend to still buy accessories when the economy is bad, she said.

A dream:

The other week, I dreamt –

I’m on a skyscraper looking down onto an augmented virtual reality overlay of the city, where balloons pop up showing locations I’ve “liked” on Facebook, and the locations of my Facebook friends as they go about their days in the city.

As I do that, I think about the privacy invasion, and how I somehow didn’t fully approve for all of that information of mine to be used in that way.

Interesting way to connect to people:

For my city’s adult summer reading program, the game they set up forces you to broaden your reading, including to a childhood favorite that you re-read.

So, I selected a Roald Dahl book that I remember very much loving as a kid but I don’t remember much about apart from a few plot details and the fact that it was the first book that I ever owned in hard cover.

One night, I was out reading it at a bar, and a (younger) (white) (female) real estate agent with a big floppy hat called out to me, and she said that it was the cutest thing ever that I was reading that book.

This one (Italian) guy I know was also at the bar, and he said that that Roald Dahl book was the first book he ever read in English, back in Italy when he was a teenager, and he mused that it’s probably better and more complicated than a lot of books for adults.

Clubbing flashback:

Years ago, I vomited in the toilet, rinsed my mouth, got another beer, and kept on going.

I thought of that the other night when I was at the same club.

Bay Area Cottage of my one (straight) friend who’s into BDSM.

So, my one (straight) friend who’s into BDSM lives in a cottage in the Bay Area, and he was describing it to me when he was back visiting the other week.

First off, he said it’s a post-earthquake cottage that became a permanent dwelling.

Second off, he said it’s cute, with rafters and everything.

“And they’re nice to tie people up to, too,” he was like.