I'm in urgent need of a wall calendar. Remarkably, I didn't get one for Christmas, and I haven't had a chance to hit World Market and B&N for after-holidays calendar shopping. I'll be there tomorrow for a meeting, though. Surely there'll be some left.

Need to get Mom one, too. Her bank didn't do freebies this year.

Ooh, Deb, before I pitch it, do you have any use for a 2004 wall calender with photos of 1930s Paris?

Anybody else with a crafting need for Paris photos? Going, going....

World of Wonder

Ocean, sky, in my face. Boardwalk, terrifyingly far below.

I'm at Coney Island with my brother. He's managed to talk me into a swinging car on what, to my ten-year-old eye, is obviously a medieval torture device called the Wonder Wheel.

"I don't want to."

He explains the physics. Mistrustful, I allow myself to be strapped in, and the car swings out, as it's supposed to.

As we hit the top, the power goes out. Turns out it's borough-wide. Yet the car keeps swinging.

For the next five hours, my heart, my trust in the universe, the universe itself, are all upside down.

Oh, oof. At ten, no less. How miserable.

I. do. not. LIKE. amusement. park. rides.

I hurled all over my brother. Served him bloody well right. Do you know what it's like to be moving, in space, in an otherwise lightless and motionless universe? While looking down - down, mind you - at a giant roller coaster?

Bev, the calendar I used for 2004 was that Paris calendar. I also had a gorgeous one of Tuscany.

deb, that ride scared the bejeesus out of me. Some idiot ride operator let me get in one by myself at 10. I rattled around in it like a seed in a dried gourd. The safety bar couldn't hold me in place and I kept sliding out from under it. I had to use my arms to brace myself in a handstand every time it went upside down. Plus, it looked like the cotter pin that held the cover closed was just going to slide out everytime I pushed on the screen. And the amazing thing is? When I was 14, I got back on with a friend and had a blast with it.

Sail, this is the Wonder Wheel - at the time, at least, it was the world's largest ferris wheel.

It took me years to forgive my brother. They got us down sometime after midnight.

Right, I'll not be sharing roller coaster rides with deb anytime soon. I like the wooden coasters. The ones that rattle.

Nope, mine wasn't even remotely ferris wheel like. It had cars that spun at a 90 degree angle to the plane of motion. It had a "steering wheel" that allowed you to turn it (if your arms were long enough to hold onto it, you weren't sliding out frum under the bar and you weren't a 60 pound weakling) either direction. A blast with two teenagers who could muscle the wheel around. NSM with just me.

We had no control over it. None, nada, zip, zilch. I hate rides with a stone solid passion, but that was the first time I remember going on a ride, and you have to admit, as a stellar way to turn someone off the idea for the rest of their fucking life, a five hour-plus power outage under those circs takes the cake.

No coasters. No ferris wheels. If I want to go on a ride, I climb into Ripper, or saddle a horse.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

connie, I tried to send you some comments on that story a few days ago, but I got an "unable to deliver due to being unable to connect to destination mail server" error.