I saw Harry Potter II at a downtown mallplex after noting that the Cinerama showing we had tix for was too crowded.

I reflected on my privileged childhood exactly as I did when I saw the previous film – why, for example, does Harry go back to his horrible foster parents when every international ruling class school has summer residencies, for, for example, the children of deposed dictators, kids of their underlings, and other victims of the undertow?

(Really, I attended a private school in Switzerland, and that was the way it was done for such unfortunates, I kid you not. You were welcome to join the landscaping crew if your father’s international killing machine failed to deliver the tuition. I am not making ths up, and I’m not ate up about it. After all, did you ask for your parents? It’s humanitarian, if elitist.)

Ths leads to odd reflective moments during the films which, at the time, are really not worth explaining to my wife, or anyone else, for that matter.

Then Viv read the latest book out loud for a few before we snoozed (I, sneakily, have her working on the Amber Chronicles in the hopes that geek reading habits can be slipstreamed into the wake of the boy wizard and the grand grey one yet to open – although he’ll be wearing white this year, of course).

Today, after awakening, we went thrifting in the ‘hood, and BOY, my locale is now the home of Seattle’s grandest concentration of secondhand shops, which is just too cool. It used to be in Fremont, to our north and west, but then the developers got to it, and well, if you like Starbucks and Jamba Juice, they are looking out for your best interests as consumers, lemme tell ya.

If you prefer the crabby, foulmouthed business person that waves sex toys about if too many straight people show up, or the black-hearted antiquarian that keeps real human corpses behind the counter (no joke!), then Fremont circa three years ago or my neighborhood, Capitol Hill, is more the place for you.

I still, however, was disappointed to not find a single spare ADB cable at any of the shops or charity thrifts. Looks like eBay is a necessity for the next harebrained computer project.

Also, today was very foggy, and once the sun went down, watching the cold tendril drift and billow under the lamps was a pleasure. As we walked up the hill toward home, a phalanx of bicycle cops, (also known as “playground supervisors”) filed by. Viv and I looked, and I wondered, “Does that mean the kids are coming up here again?”

Today was November 30, the third anniversary of a little thing that happened here in my city, neighborhood, and on my ass in the form of rubber pellets from a police stun grenade. There was a comemmorative rally downtown today, and the drifting fog and biking cops recalled clouds of tear gas, chanting and unhappy neighbors, and lots of open bars to my mind.

I believe I may share some recollections.