One fellow remembers, when he was a preschooler, dipping worms in food colouring, dropping the worms on paper and watching them wriggle original designs long before elephants made money painting masterpieces.

Baring memories in the bright lights of the dance floor in one’s middle years.

Renee celebrated her birthday.

A young woman in a red dress smiled.

A son, 27 years old, gets tired at nine o’clock after working more than a week of a fulltime job.

Another woman turns labels and stocks the shelves of a supermarket at night.

A new couple attends the Friday night get-together.

A pretty face wearing a tie (no, make that an ascot) at the drive-through/takeaway window said, “Thank you.”

Flashy eyelashes handed out caramel apple treats, too.

We are, rich and poor, simply us.

No matter who wears the pants in the relationship.

= = =

The Committee wants me to drop the “’I’m so poor…,’ ‘How poor are you?’” routine, saying they’d gladly turn me into an instant megamillionaire like so many others before me just to shut me up.

The temptation to take the money is a good feeling.  I can’t deny the desire to feel wealthy is there.

But the absence of money makes me appreciate what little I have.

= = =

A young redhead talks about her class schedule, including psychology and anatomy, looking forward to dissecting a cat.  Her brother pulls together his Harry Potter CD/audiocassette collection to share.  Their father can’t get a RAV4 door to open, the lock mechanism disengaged somehow, but shares his old LP album collection to convert to MP3, scratches and all (Jason and the Scorchers, Red Hot Chili Peppers, 2001: A Space Odyssey soundtrack, X, David Bowie, Miles Davis, to name a few).

= = =

A new friend talks about helping film an apocalyptic movie in an old quarry.  She’d worn a Star Trek NextGen costume and Princess Leia slave outfit at Dragon*Con, her boy friend enjoying the paranormal track but not the $800/night hotel cost.

= = =

How many of us remember the kindergarten mats we slept on?  How many of us missed that privilege, having grown up on farms?

Me, I remember hatching an egg in an incubator in kindergarten class.  My wife remembers collecting eggs from the chicken house on the family farm.

= = =

Linux found my old Windows Vista recovery partition but rstrui.exe doesn’t seem to work (or, rather, found no hard disk driver to use, or something like that).

= = =

Oh well, back to managing the rest of us seven billion.  Being a humble leader is a hard job, let me tell you.

Hey, if I can do this with a supercomputer, the Book of the Future, a crystal ball, a network of hackers and my business associates, what do we need Geithner flying around Europe pretending that a Sinophile has answers for the EU that haven’t worked for the USA?  Whatever we’re paying him, it’s too much.  Obama, I have a suggestion for cutting the budget – start with the Treasury secretary!

And Putin, dude, what’s with all the he-man stuff?  You’re beginning to look like Hemingway – we all know what that means.