Saturday we did something we have not done in fourteen months: we went somewhere. Like, to hang out. Just seeing people besides ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger's parents.
This was specifically to her department party. An end-of-term get-together with the people she works with. Tempered this time by, well, obviously. Also by how some of them were laid off or (in the case of the department secretary) retired ahead of the disaster. bunnyhugger and I are vaccinated plus two weeks, of course, and to the best of our knowledge everyone else who'd be around (apart from an under-10-year-old kid) was too. And it was to be outdoors, on a day that turned out to be very pleasant and a little breezy, so we felt reasonably safe, considering.
It's still bizarre to have a table buffet there, though. Handing chips and really good artichoke dip and sliced carrots and such through tongs, of course, but still. Just, like, food laid out for anyone to come up to and take as they wished.
It was, though, great seeing everybody. I only know them dimly, most from a couple of previous department parties or eavesdropping on bunnyhugger's reading group online chats. And they know me at least as dimly, although they're all helped by my choice to stay close to bunnyhugger and their ability to draw the obvious conclusions from evidence. There were several dogs around too, including one chihuahua-pug mix who was very interested in some of the people, me included. bunnyhugger kept trying to draw the dog's interest, but he stayed shy of that. And yet, eventually, did come around to lick the back of her leg when she wasn't paying close attention.
Also I very briefly saw a juvenile wild rabbit, on the other side of the chain link fence, who took a look at all this activity plus a couple dogs and zipped back into a grove of day lilies never to be seen again.
It wasn't a very long gathering, by design, and even so it felt like it lasted about twenty minutes. I suppose the biggest adaptations from normal were the host trying several times to get a second gathering spot, one in chairs set up on the lawn, to sustain itself. It didn't, but the idea was good. (Also the breeze caused one particular chair to tip over whenever the person in it got up.) The other adaptation, that I keenly felt, was the need to keep moving so I didn't accidentally block someone from a walking path or the food table or anything like that.
And then it was all over, quicker than I really expected, and before bunnyhugger could quite get to the juiciest gossip. Still, the experience was ... not horrible, there's that.
Some more pictures from walking around town, mostly, in April of this year. I know, April! Can't believe it either.
A view from the road of those long narrow ``shoebox'' concrete cages they built in the 1960s(!) for bears and other large animals at the Potter Park Zoo. Might be my best view of this.
Getting back onto the River Trail, walking eastward. Spring creeps out of the ground.
Looking along the Red Cedar River.
The Grand Trunk Western Coal Tower seen from the east. The since-demolished bridge can just be seen underneath it.
Hey, a train! I had good timing that day.
Watching the train approach the zoo; it's a bit amazing they built the zoo somewhere that animals would have to grow comfortable with routine train noises.
Freight train seen in reflection in the Red Cedar River.
Last bit of the train going past.
Trivia: In 1996 Pope John Paul II promulgated rules for the election of Popes which excluded the method quassi ex inspiratione, that is, letting the electors chose a pope by inspiration and without a regular balloting process, declaring it was ``no longer an apt means of interpreting the thought of an electoral college so great in its number and so diverse in origin''. Source: The Pope Who Quit: A True Medieval Tale of Mystery, Death, and Salvation, Jon M Sweeney. (Inspiration was rarely used to select a Pope, but the process was not unknown.)
Currently Reading: Fables for our Time and Famous Poems, James Thurber. I did not realize the famous poems were, like, actual famous poems, like, Excelsior and stuff by Lord Tennyson and so on. I thought it would just be doggerel that Thurber or his friends had done.
