Eccentric Flower:199812/logistics and the massive mall

twenty-one december (retroactive)

logistics and the massive mall

Set Inu up with her special motorized cat feeder. It's like a circle with pie-slice compartments; the lid has a wedge cut out of it, so that only one slice is available at a time. The lid rotates, using a timer like one of those things you plug your lamps into so the burglars won't think you're not home. She's tried her best to break it; we've tested it on her the last few days. Inu hates it when you mess with her food supply. Food is her life. The other cat eats like a cat; we can leave a supply of food for him and he'll nibble it when he gets hungry. Inu eats like a dog - she eats whatever's available until it's all gone, as fast as she can. Last night she pushed the feeder across the room and under the kitchen table with her nose. But it seems to be pretty catproof. We have someone coming to check on them anyway.

On the road early. Coffee. Sugary pastry. Gasoline. Batteries for the CD boombox in the back seat. All set. Eight hours to the District of Columbia.

In the interests of not having to stop for lunch on the New Jersey Turnpike (I won't get off the Garden State while I'm on it, for various reasons, and if I never have another cold Roy Rogers sandwich it'll be too soon), we stop at the Wall of Mall. This is Palisades Center, up on 87, barely in New York state. We've been noticing it for the past few trips. It's four stories tall but has almost no exterior windows, so you are greeted with a big white prison-like building with logos all over the outside. Very weird. Very imposing.

Inside it's even weirder. They've decided, for whatever reason, to keep the decor industrial. Concrete floors, exposed ceiling supports and ducts, metal latticework displays with garish neon. I dunno. Very scary place. Very big. There is a carousel, a ferris wheel, an IMAX theatre, a regular movie theatre, and two big entertainment places of the Dave and Busters' ilk. You can shop there too!

We eat and run, but not before sighting the Mister Bulky store ("Mister" in delicate red script, "Bulky" in fat purple block letters with white polka dots). Already made paranoid by the excessive weirdness aura of this mall, the Mister Bulky pushes us right over the edge and we giggle all the way back to the car.

It's a bulk-candy place, where you buy mix-n-match candy by the pound. You know. Mister Bulky.

Today is Yule, the shortest day of the year. It is already quite dim by the time we leave the Mall of Wall, and dark by the time we hit the NJTP. Joy. But the trip is uneventful.

Nonelvis' parents, in celebration of our engagement, have made lamb for dinner. I learn that the reason restaurant lamb is so bad is that they invariably overcook it. Do not eat lamb if you insist on having your meat well-done. In fact, don't eat meat.

Poked through an amazing and anal-retentive book listing all the battles of the Civil War in chronological order, often with battle maps. Whoever did this had too much free time, but it did make me aware of how little I know about the Civil War. Louisiana isn't one of those states where people care much about the Civil War ... not like Virginia, which seems to be gung-ho about it. On the other hand, about two-thirds of the fighting took place in Virginia, which isn't all that surprising since Richmond (the Confederate capital) and DC are so close to each other. Whose dumb idea was that?

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