Sunday

Sunshine has a head cold. This hasn't prevented her from doing some very interesting things over the last few days (like going to the hospital today and observed several knee- and hip-replacement surgeries connected with some current altruistic medical something-or-other). What it's prevented is our being too adventuresome in whatever spare time we've had together this weekend. Mostly, we've been making soup and watching TV. Since Thursday afternoon, with more free hours than normal after the fire drill,* I've spent my alone time crafting and uploading photographs to Flickr. See here. It seems insupportably absurd for me to be spending these Ho Chi Minh City days lovingly processing photos I took last summer in the Eden Center Shopping Complex, the "little Vietnam" located at Seven Corners in Falls Church, Virginia. All the while I've been putting-off those photos I've taken of big Vietnam outside. But that's what I've done. On that particular Saturday, back in 2007, Sunshine had scheduled a telephone interview with a Venezuelan beauty queen in conjunction with her project, so I cleared out of our little apartment unit, and walked down the block to the local Vietnamese-American strip mall. I only had an hour, and didn't have any sort of plan, so I took pictures I deemed to be "beauty themed" in accordance with overall swing of the day. Sort of an art project, I guess. I cannot imagine that this theme-oriented idea would have even occurred to me, or been so faithfully adhered to, if Eden Center were not sprinkled liberally with hair-and-nail beauty salons and facial clinics offering "permanent make-up" to walk-in customers, arranged chockablock with dessert counters and restaurants. Now these photos are out of the way, and I'm one step closer (really, one step away) from posting actual Viet Nam pictures. [Cavin]