Chrome City, and Other Vacational Oddments

So here I am on vacation in Madison, Wisconsin, and it's a bright sunny summer day, and I'm driving around Madison, and I notice what I don't often notice living on a gravel road way out in the countryside. Namely, all the chrome on motor vehicles in traffic. Chrome bumpers, chrome trim, chrome whatever.

And it's like photic arrows right in my eyes. Stabbing, bright, sharp. I know, chrome is bright, chrome is decorative. But where did the idea ever arise to decorate motor vehicles with all this mirror-shiny chrome that reflects the sun, blinding bright, right into your eyes as you're driving in traffic?

I'm just wondering.

Speaking of vacationing in the city, and continuing on my curmudgeonly trajectory, ahem, I was tooling around with my folks in my Jeep, and we stopped at a McDonald's, and at the drive-through (or is that "drive-thru"?) I ordered three large vanilla shakes. I spoke clearly and distinctly into the grille: "three large vanilla shakes."

After we got home, we discovered that they had given us three large chocolate shakes. Not vanilla, but chocolate.

This being the city, and this being McDonald's, somehow I'm not surprised.

Oh well. Chocolate shakes, not gonna drive 10 or 12 blocks back there, I'll survive. :-) But still. What part of "vanilla" didn't they understand?!

On the more upward side of things, I've been catching up on my sleep, as is my wont these first few days of vacation. Sleeping like a log day and night.

We also hit a restaurant out on Cottage Grove Road, American Dairyland, or American Dairyland Family Table Restaurant, or somesuch. As usual, my appetites do not range far afield from a hamburger and fries.

I brought my Shogi materials with me, and have been playing through a championship game from 1938 or thereabouts.

And I've been hanging out with family. Don't get to do nearly enough of that, living over in Iowa.

May go out and hit a used bookstore today. Or not. We shall see. This is vacation.