Well, today's the winter solstice, so can summer be that far off? This is the hat I wore at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. When I got there and saw everyone buying or swapping pins, I thought it was pretty silly -- until I bought my first one. From then on, I went nuts and probably spent over $200 on the bloody things. I put many of my pins on my hat, as can be seen. A few days into the games I started to get terrible headaches for no obvious reason -- at least none that I could see. Everyone else could see that I had dozens of pointy metal things all pressing into my bald pate. Duh!

Actually, it was the death of my friend Carole that reminded me of the Olympics and the hat. She had moved down to Atlanta a couple of years earlier so she could be involved in the Olympics; she ended up being an escort for the Korean delegation, I think. It was one of the too few times I saw her. Lots of memories in that hat.