Bizzaro

So I'm sitting at the Peets in downtown Livermore chatting with a friend when I find myself looking over her right shoulder to movement outside the window. Across the street I think I'm seeing a person in a blue bathing suit lying down at the base of a large fountain flapping his/her hands in the water. I wasn't totally sure of what I was looking at because this blue blob was directly underneath the fountain and bubbles were plentiful. I ask my friend to turn around and look.

Sure enough, the blue blob sits up and it's a grown woman taking in the sublime pleasure of cool water on a very hot day in what has been a string of very hot days this week. She had no problem sitting in a public fountain on the corner of the busiest street in town, and evidentially no one else did as she didn't get a second glance from people passing by.

So my friend and I go back to our conversation but I am distracted once again by our bathing beauty. She is now standing tall, arching her back and washing her hair ~ or so it appeared from our vantage point. Again, no pedestrian blinked an eye. So we took their cue and went back to our conversation.

Literally minutes later, my eye wanders past my friend's left shoulder where I was distracted by a parade on the sidewalk across the street. Walking in single file were about a dozen young men dressed in military-looking uniforms with swords and an equal number of girls dressed like princesses. My friend swiveled in her seat and the two of us watched a cinquertera (I'm slaying the spelling but it's a coming-of-age party for 15 year-old girls of Mexican heritage). The young girls swirled and the young men preened while the photographer put them through their paces.

This was proving to be a highly entertaining day. A bathing woman on one side of the street; a photo shoot on the other. We return to our conversation when once again I am distracted by activity; this time on our side of the street.

A woman walks by with her arm in the air, Hitler style, and is talking to apparently no one. Turns out she was waving to a friend down the street, but after our earlier adventures, our minds immediately ventured to weird places.

I mean this is Livermore, for heaven's sake! This isn't some big city. Who expects all this excitement and entertainment in Livermore! Bizzaro! I wonder what the birds thought of the woman in the fountain.