Take This Down

Someone asked if I planned on blogging while in Europe. Tentatively, yes. I should have Internet access in my hotel room (in Paris, at least) and I’m sure WiFi hotspots are plentiful in both cities. I think I’ll also create a Flickr account to post photos. But I probably won’t write anything detailed until I return. Dictating to someone else simply doesn’t feel natural to me. Before I could use the computer independently, I used to dictate all the time, even through college. I’m suddenly remembering all the term papers that I dictated, mostly to other friends in college who were looking for some easy money. How tedious that must have been for them. But in the last ten years or so, I’ve grown accustomed to doing all of my writing myself. To try and dictate now would be awkward for me, like having someone come into the bathroom while you’re singing in the shower.
A friend and I caught a bit of a concert in the courtyard of the Mill Ruins Plaza last night. The plaza is surrounded by the old stone walls of the flour mill that once stood there, which lend an echo-y, orchestra-hall quality to the acoustics of the place. We watched the concert from the upper balcony and to get there, my friend went ahead of me to clear a path through the crowd. As I followed, I’m pretty sure I struck her in the shins a couple times with my footrest. She didn’t complain, but someone really needs to invent an anti-collision system for wheelchairs. Better yet, it should be able to distinguish between people I don’t want to hit (friends, attractive women, small children, the elderly) and the expendable (drunken college kids, men in wife-beaters, tourists).