I was walking through the Plum Market after work today and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting was playing on the sound system and this beautiful black woman of an age somewhere within five years of my own was standing between the meat counter and the whine, rocking back and forth to the beat, and when they got to the “do-do-do-do doo doo doo doo dooo” part, she quietly sang along. Wow! I was in a pretty good mood already but her good cheer was infectious enough to put me right over the top.

It isn’t even that it was a song I particularly liked at the time it played on the radio (1974). I think I might even have thought it was a little too close to “disco” for my terribly refined tastes in music. I don’t have any specific memories of it. Rather it brings back a mishmash of memories. Hearing it on the radio while driving my old Pinto Wagon. Dancing to it at any number of bars. Swimming to it (!) in a college swimming class where the [lazy] instructor would put music on and let us do whatever we wanted. I learned how to swim at an early age (although it is probably not my strong suit these days) so, while I didn’t [arguably] need official lessons then, I at least was looking for some discipline. Swim five laps doing the crawl, then flip over and do another five with the backstroke. That kind of thing. I was an extremely busy and intense music student and I felt that it was a waste of my time to go through all the rigmarole of changing in and out of a bathing suit just to paddle around and play with water toys for an hour or whatever it was. Why do I need phys ed credits, again? (Sigh, another blahg)

Here’s a link to a Kung Fu Fighting video if you have no idea what I’m talking about and are inclined to check it out. Or want to rediscover it.

Sandals were probably not the best choice for walking over to the Plum this afternoon but I managed because I am just about done with snowboots for the year (except that y’all know that I am not because this is Michigan and it is still winter). Our sidewalks are dry except when they are not. Same thing with the streets except they are also slippery sometimes. My journey to the Plum in sandals involved mad dashes across the N. Maple Speedway to strategically avoid sidewalk puddles that were several inches deep.

And so, I am not nearly as scared about a government shutdown as I was the last time. This time, I have a decent salary and we haven’t had a mortgage since, well, shortly after the last government shutdown. But I am thinking (and I may well be wrong) that the GG is growing a beard because he is anticipating a government shutdown. I do not really like beards very well. At least not on the GG. If the government *does* shut down, I am gonna kick the GG up to the Great White North somewhere so that he isn’t just haaannnngggging around the Landfill. Unless he wants to hang around and figger out how to stop the blasted leak through the basement wall…

Oh whoa whoa whoahhhhhh! Do-do-do-do doo doo doo doo doooo. Hey, they have a halfway decent piccolo player in there. Not an easy instrument!

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