Decided twenty or so November 11ths were plenty to spend brooding on endless war, after just a bit of that decided to do fun things instead, started a couple flickr groups, here & here, then started googling for soda fountains, determined that there was one called 'Soda Fountain of Youth' in Gardner, decided to go, asked Tim if he wanted to come along, he did, so we went.

Soda Fountain of Youth was a bit difficult to find, nestled in a strip mall and closed due to unforeseen circumstances. Luckily there was another soda shop, 'Cruisers Malt Shoppe', in downtown Gardner so we went there instead. Got the 'Big Bopper' burger with onion rings & a coffee malted, best burger I've had in ages, really remarkable, had to explain to Tim who the Big Bopper was, sang him a bit of 'Chantilly Lace'. Staff were mystified & frightened by my taking pictures, showed them neat distorting thing camera does, they didn't really seem to understand, but it soothed them a bit.

Gardner's a very nice place to walk around in taking photographs. We ran into a crazy guy offering to sell us tools & things from an empty lot. He had an Ibanez practice amp he wanted $5 for, but I only had a ten & he only had two dollars in change, so I got him to throw in documents of Japan & Germany's surrenders from the National Archive, a needlepoint parrot & a utility knife.

Much to my amazement, found, on returning home, that practice amp works just fine.

Plans for later include eating posh leftovers, maybe watching Duck Soup.