Heh, yesterday I was stopped behind a low-slung Mercedes at a red light, when suddenly the top started to lift up and the back window slid into the trunk, all in about 30 seconds. Now, that's a convertible.

Hardtop convertibles. Looks like they may be the next big thing, as you can lower the top but still have the advantages of a steel hardtop. A bunch of companies have them, including VW and the new Chrysler Sebring....

For a hot second in the 80s I thought I was living at the one true sartorial time, where everyone else was mockable and we'd be right forever.

ita's insight reminds me of this Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon, which provides a good illustration of age versus cohort for psychology classes:

[link]

Of course they didn't offer to transfer her BACK to Huntington, but they did offer to send her to UCLA, which at least must be a cleaner hospital than Children's.

Oh, Kat. I'm so sorry and so very angry at how the people you should be able to trust, who should answer your questions and who should be giving Grace the best of care screwed this up. My best thoughts are for your girl.

Oh god, Kat -- what a mess. I hope the situation gets better.

How you know you are at the hottest development rights lecture in town: Ed Koch is chillin' in the back.

And you thought it would be boring!

That kneeling-lady pillow is creepy.

Kat, good for you! More importantly, good for Grace.

not if it's as twee as the condom cases marketed towards women.

I....kinda like those. I can't explain why, but they exert a strange power over me.

On a related note: Batsuit.

Those boots....GUH. The boots made me all knee-wobbly and drooly fangirly.

I'm sorry it had to get to that necessary of a point, Kat, but I'm hoping it means good things for Grace. Damnit, as if it wasn't hard enough.

Transferring her seems like a good idea, Kat.

And you thought it would be boring!

Actually, there was one interesting part of the lecture, the special cases part-- for the purposes of the following trivia, you have to know that "development rights" are what people think of as "air rights" and that they can be transferred to non-adjacent buildings under some circumstances, which leads to some very tall buildings. In the theater district, they have a special zoning for about 40specified theatres. Since a theater building can't really build high-- you would have supporting beams right in front of the stage, like the UCB theater-- and they're always cash strapped, they are permitted to sell their development rights *anywhere in the theater district* for, among other things, a promise to always remain a theater. So if you see a huge highrise on 8th Ave. in the 40s, you can assume they bought the development rights from a theater that isn't going anywhere.

I thought that was interesting, at least.

Really? The interesting stuff is often the obscure trivia. I like knowing the details that explain stuff not visibly explicable.

Like the vinegar smell at Coldspring and 83. Or the history behind groundrents.

I still want to know where the sulfur smell near the stoplight courthouse by me comes from. Maybe the metro railyard?

Which is why I started giggling madly when the dental tech put an image from the microscope slide of my mouth creatures on the tv. Luckily, when I snorted out something like "Helllloooo my passengers" she thought I was funny, not a freak. But still. Seeing the spirowhatsits that live in your mouth squiggling around? Is freaking weird. I had a moment of feeling possesive, which was WHACKO. But hey, at least I know what my few (thankfully and amazingly) passengers look like, right? Um. Yeah, big dork here.

So if you see a huge highrise on 8th Ave. in the 40s, you can assume they bought the development rights from a theater that isn't going anywhere.

That is interesting. My piece of development rights trivia: builders can get extra air rights via adding public space to their buildings, so a lone highrise in a given area will likely have an atrium that's open to the public.