We figured to go into New York City either Sunday or Monday, and Sunday was forecast to rain while Monday was forecast to not, so, we went to the mall on Sunday instead. This was relatively wise as it rained horrendously, the sort where clouds are holding you down and punching you silly, and while much of the day was pleasant we'd never have had a decent day in the city under those conditions.
The mall was jammed, surely the result of it being the first post-Christmas weekend and it raining so heavily what else was there to do. We admired the pets in the animal shelter that took over where the pet store had been, and watched the roller coasters on a little kiddie motion-simulator type ride because the roller coasters on that, Gemini and Blue Streak, are ones we know very well from Cedar Point. We were able to figure that at least the Gemini footage was taken between about 1990 and 1995, based on features of the park we could see. I'm not sure we could conclude anything about the Blue Streak footage.
Also we went into Radio Shack to buy a replacement power cord for my satellite navigator. I had had one, but it had a swappable plug with many different possible mini-USB ends because I wasn't sure which of the too many kinds of mini-USB plugs was right for the device. But sometime during Saturday the plug end went missing and couldn't be found, so, I needed a replacement. We paid what felt like too much at Radio Shack because of course, but at least it worked ... well, kind of. In the rental car it made the navigator put up the ``device connected to computer'' screen, and we could sometimes make it break out of that mode and show the actual map, by a process of waiting and unplugging it and replugging it and turning it off and on. On finding a ritual that worked, then, after two more times that ritual would stop working and we'd have to go back to experimenting from scratch. So a couple days later we returned to Radio Shack, returning the thing and filling out the paperwork for a credit card exchange. (The return receipt listed our address as ``lancing MS'' which just ... oh, Radio Shack.)
Our real goal in going to the mall was to see a movie, specifically Frozen, as it's kind of Christmas-y and everyone has been saying it's ``really better than you probably thought it was going to be and the creepy snowman isn't in it as much as the commercials suggest'', which is just the sort of endorsement you want in a major motion picture. So it might be, but when we went to the theater next to the mall we found there was every person in the world waiting in line ahead of us, and Frozen was sold out through to 9 pm, well after the mall would close. We concluded there was no sense in waiting for all that. We went back to the mall to wander around a little more, and went home instead.
Trivia: The light cruiser HMS Caroline, last surviving ship from the Battle of Jutland, was still in service as a training vessel in Northern Ireland at least as recently as summer 2009. Source: Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, Simon Winchester.
Currently Reading: Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir, Tom Jones.