Company Picnic

To be more precise, it was the Patent Office Technology Center 3600 picnic. I hitched a ride to Fort Hunt Park, and found that there was a rock group playing amplified noise. A friend of mine told me that one of the musicians (to give that word a very broad meaning) was one of the directors of the Tech Center. “Oh, well, I suppose there’s probably some rule against assassinating a director,” I said.

“It isn’t in the MPEP,” she said. (That’s Manual of Patent Examining Procedure.)

Unfortunately, there is also the Penal Code, so I had to endure the noise, and found it difficult to converse with people over the background in the pavilion. I did spend time out in the sun or under trees, and I played some ladderball (someone thought that’s what it’s called) with a new acquaintance, the son of a man I know; he was about ten years old. There were three sets of two balls connected by a rope, and there were two goals, each having three bars; the idea is to throw a pair of balls so that it wraps around one of the bars at the opposite goal. My young friend did much better that this than I did.

I also got to make friends with a golden retriever, who had a typical golden personality, and let me and everyone else who was interested pet him.