You've probably heard me tell stories of my ancient Accord, Ruby Lee, who has been getting less and less dependable. The Mr.'s Avalon made sense when he bought it a decade ago, but it's a little silly at this point in terms of gas mileage. So, Ruby's days are probably numbered, and I'll be stuck driving a Toyota boat. Which is OK, I guess, because I don't drive to work (I take Metro), so it's only for shopping and such. Hence the Prius.

It's white and its rear visibility sucks, but it has a back-up camera (and lots of other strange electronic gizmos). I'm thinking we could call it Jeep and confuse everyone.

Oh, and half the power at the dealership building was out. So it took us more than 3 effin' hours to complete the paperwork (the staff were all sharing the printers in the powered part of the building, for one thing). At one point, I was lighting the process with the Mini-Maglite that I carry in my bag, like the geek I am. I am now more behind that ever on what I was trying to get done this weekend ... .

As proof, I offer the fact that I spelled "dead" as "ded," above, when I started this message.

We're RPGing on Saturday night for the second weekend in a row, in an attempt to get the monthly game back on its pre-summer schedule (it has now become a space opera game; I am an uplifted dog ... who happens to be a fantastically skilled paramedic). And the Young Lady is in a high-intensity driving/driver safety course that runs 10:00am-1:15pm on every weekend (both days) for the rest of the month, and it's located in Rockville (= 40-minute drive).

And between dropping her (and her best friend) off at driving lessons tomorrow and going to the game, I am driving to Glen Air to visit my sis-in-law who is recovering from a hip replacement. So I am not going to be able to mellow out for a day any time soon (hmmm ... maybe Columbus Day, although TYL has school, so I will still be waking up early).

And also! Sunday is the Takoma Park Street Festival. Which will make it hard to get in and out of our neighborhood, because they block off the end of our street near the main drag and set up one of the stages there ... .

No wonder I can't get any creative thinking done ... .

Yesterday I showed the Young Lady, who is now 17, a piece from IBARW 4, called Unlearning Racism Adventure #1. I read aloud this part: "Comedian W. Kamau Bell notes that if 70% or more of the people in a place are white, it’s possible that place is racist. That place is my life. In Oakland, California, only about 35% of the people are white. So why couldn’t I think of anyone to bring with me to La Pena get the 2 for 1 discount for coming with someone of a different race?"

I said to my daughter, "This was pretty much my life too, until quite recently."

She said, warmly, "My life isn't like that at all! I could have taken K-. K- is black, and she is my friend!" She listed several more friends of color she could have brought. They were Asian: she hangs out with the Robotics Team, which skews heavily Asian and Jewish.

So, not perfect diversity - but better than her parents' generation. She then went on, musing: "It's hard to know what to call people sometimes. Some people say 'black' is disrespectful. Other people don't want to be called African-American, because they're Haitian or something and are proud of that. You have to get to know them."

It is good to hand down the important things in life to the next generation.

I just introduced The Young Lady to They Fight Crime.

(The impulse was inspired, I should add, by oyceter's recent book review.)

Yes, I know you never use your LJ anymore, having abandoned it for Facebook.

17 years ago today ... your grandmother recognized you in the nursery. She said you looked just like I did!

So I meant to post about this like, Tuesday night, or maybe yesterday. Didn't happen. And nothing disastrous happened either - in fact, I had a lovely (if too-brief) visit with smillaraaq. But so much that was supposed to happen - didn't.

So yesterday I went down by Metro to visit smillaraaq at her place. I met her lovely doggie Ms. Biscuit and her sweet but shy cat Strega, and Biscuit and I got along very nicely indeed, and Strega got used to me pretty quickly and even came and hung out around me. And smilla baked bread and we talked for hours and then smilla let me play with her "Okami" game. And then we ate popcorn and watched anime: "Ginga Legend Weed" in strange Nordic fansubbing, which was cutely heroically silly, and the first couple of episodes of "Samurai Champloo," which was very cool.

And then the Mr. and the Young Lady came and got us, and we went to Old Town Alexandria and had (sadly) an only average-ish French dinner at Le Gaulois, which was disappointing because 20 years ago, when it was in DC, Le Gaulois was a really great restaurant. But then we went back and hung out at smilla's some more, all together, and listened to Anna Russell (classical music humor) and ate goodies and drank tea and read smilla's books, and then the Mr. fell asleep on her floor. XD

I brought smilla some books and manga to borrow, and she sent me back with more than twice as much, because that's just the sort of awesome person she is!

So I imagine that at least I and the Young Lady will spending the day at Balticon tomorrow. (The Mr. was muttering something about Too Much Work.) I see that they do indeed have single-day registration available, although it's $40 for Saturday.

Is anybody else headed out that way?

Woes. The Young Lady needs to get her wisdom teeth removed.

This isn't a big surprise (my husband and his sister, and I and my sister, all had to have that done), but it was already looking like a busy summer. And she's never had a serious medical procedure - not even a single stitch or an ilness worse than the flu in 16 years. So she's not feeling very brave about it.

From the Washington Post:

"Larger and more boisterous groups have picketed Montgomery County government, but surely never one with a higher average SAT score.

"Students from the science, mathematics and computer science magnet at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring [MD] marched through downtown Rockville yesterday to defend their program, one of the top math-science operations in the nation, from the budgetary ax.

"'Fund us, Weast,' the crowd chanted, beckoning to Superintendent Jerry D. Weast as about 100 protesters -- a few were from schools other than Blair -- approached the doors of the school system's headquarters shortly after 5 p.m. One student beat a bass drum. Another carried a sign that read, 'We can do the math' ... "(click for original article)

The Young Lady is in Blair's other special program, which is smaller, but my friend Kat's eldest daughter is a "Magnet" (which is what they call themselves). The program isn't being completely cut or anything - but the funding cuts will adversely affect both the number of teachers in it and the amount of time the remaining teachers have to concentrate on Magnet projects and curriculum.

I got a lovely postcard from some of my friends at Shejidan! They had a mini-convention in New York City the other week. (I swear, the Post Awful must have sat on this for a while ...I think ipperne's last post from Denmark arrived faster than this.) Thank you, Sk8er, Griffinmoon, Suzdal, Starexplorer, and Kokipy!

In totally unrelated news, I'm struggling to resist thinking about the new saiyuki_time prompt. I thought I'd maybe write it tonight, but the Young Lady is suffering social withdrawal (it's Spring Break, and her best friend is skiing in Colorado). So she mugged me after dinner when I tried to sit down to answer e-mail and write a story, and made me look at people's usericons with her instead. I admit that this certainly wasn't the roughest motherhood moment I've ever had ... .

The sis-in-law (the one who's married to a minister) had a rotten week: her employer is transferring her, with almost no notice, to a different facility, and as she runs a senior center (basically, daycare for senior citizens), it means leaving behind not only staff, but also clients. So she decided at virtually the last minute to come down (with our nephew in tow) and see the Young Lady's play (our daughter is crewing her school's not-quite-spring musical, Beauty and the Beast) Friday night, because she thought it would cheer her up. This meant I had to clean up the guest room, which was wall-to-wall wrapping paper bits and rolls still, from the last installment of Xmas. But when I got home, there was an Amazon box waiting: I have Samurai Deeper Kyo 27, xxxHolic 11 [thanks, megan!!], and Takumi-Kun 2!

Saturday I was not feeling well - malaise about sums it up - and nothing much happened except meals out (lunch at Oriental East, which has great dim sum and forgettable service; dinner at Austin Grill, which is quite good for a chain) and the week's grocery shopping. The Young Lady was crewing again and had to eat leftovers for dinner. Oh well - it builds character!

Sis-in-law left early Sunday morning, and then sanada came to visit! We had brunch at Jackie's (retro American cuisine in a groovy-funky 1960s industrial setting) and talked manga nonstop. A good dose of fangirling makes one feel ever so much better. Then we went and saw the matinee of the play ourselves. Energy level good, one or two really good performances, scenery very uneven (the Beast's castle was very, very good, the village scenery was pretty lame), costumes pretty nice (althought the dinner plates were awful), and the special effects were much fun ... during the Beast's transformation at the end, petals fell from the catwalks onto our heads. They were meant to be rose petals, but all I could think of was (a) Sakura of Doom and (b) Nanao dumping baskets of petals over Shunsui. And the casting was the usual marvellous Blair High School racial mix: Oriental Belle, African American Gaston, Hispanic (I think) Beast, and so on. Dinner was what the Mr. calls "the meat place" - Brazilian BBQ.

Thursday: Woke up late, did a little Intarwebs, woke the Young Lady, made My Famous Mashed Potatoes, and drove them up to Glenair, MD, to have Thanksgiving dinner with the Mr.'s family at our new stepsister's house (you may recall that the mom-in-law remarried Sept. 1 after 16 years of widowhood). There were the usual mishaps: dinner was 90 minutes late as a result of turkey mistiming, the green beans with dill and bacon were just weird, and my sister-in-law's back was killing her so badly that she had to lie down (I revived her with my amateur massage efforts - go me!).

Friday: Decided to brave Rockville Pike (a/k/a the Ninth Circle of Hell) and buy the camera that I had been saving performance bonuses for two years to buy. I will blog the camera later! It's spiffy! Bought challah and chocolate pumpkin loaf at the Great Harvest Bread Company, then got home to discover that the Mr. had bought challah and cinnamon loaf. Good thing we all like carbs ... . Hosted sister-in-law (the one with the bad back) and nephew overnight.

Saturday: Entertained visiting family until they had to leave. Went to friend K's house for turkey soup, home-made biscuits, and salad, followed by leftover pies and cakes. Hung out with K and her family (including her visiting relatives) and watched the Marx Brothers on their big TV until quite late.

Sunday: Met my sister and her family, and my old buddy Mike and his son and Mom for dim sum. Then did chores until it was time to go to the grocery, at which point I could not start my aged car. Neither could the Mr. We started to wonder whether someone had been messing with it, because I had forgotten to lock its door, and one of our neighbors had reported that several people had had their cars rifled through and small items taken. We even had the police out, but the officer said he couldn't see any signs that someone had tried to jimmy the ignition. After much to do and fretting (and being take shopping by the Mr.), we finally tried again and made her start this time. Oh Ruby Lee, you fussy old thing, must you torment me like this?

I owe y'all a proper post about manga or something interesting! (And I have 32 messages in my LJ Inbox.) Later, I'm afraid ... .

It's generally a sense of duty that compels parents to attend theatrical performances that involve their offspring. However, we didn't suffer at all this evening by attending A Comedy of Errors at the Young Lady's school (she helped design and build the set and was the Usher Captain for all four performances). This performance was distinguished by colorful Greek/Mediterranean costuming (ca. maybe 1800), a sun-drenched set that appeared to be white stucco building fronts (with many doors) around a town well, resolutely colorblind casting, solid acting in the key roles, and comedic pacing that many professional troupes might envy.

A merry time was had by all!

So everyone else has gone home for the three-day weekend in honor of Memorial Day ... and I was scatterbrained today (what's new?) and still have a few things to finish.

All sorts of folks are going out of town this weekend ... not us! We may do one day at Balticon, just for the hell of it. But it would be nicer to do something with friends too, and not just our li'l nuke'yular family.

Who else is staying in town (near his or her computer), I wonder ...?

The Young Lady is a freshman member of her high school's stage crew, and they have been nominated for a Cappie Award for their December production of A Christmas Carol. "Cappies" is a high school threater critics program. It started as a local Washington D.C. thing, and now has spread across the country and into Canada.

So she gets to go to the Kennedy Center for the awards presentation and gala at the end of the month!

I am very proud of her, but I do wonder what I'm going to do in that corner of downtown for 3 hours on a Sunday night ... .

So the Mr., the Young Lady, and I were all driving home Saturday night, and the Mr. pointed out that we were going to pass a grocery. "If there's anything we need ... " he added, suggestively. We actually did have a need for essentials like salad greens (for the bun-rabs) and TP, so off we went.

And as I puttered around looking at bags of greens and bundles of TP rolls, a box of Entenman's doughnuts ("Chocolate Lover's Assortment"), two 2-packs of Kozy Shack Flan, and a panful of the bakery shop's apple-topped bread pudding appeared in the cart.

> sigh <

The Young Lady's high school spring musical opens tonight: The Pirates of Penzance (she's been doing costumes and stage crew stuff). I saw a bit of the rehearsal the other night when I went to pick her up, and their Modern Major-General is quite good, especially for a teen.

But somehow the plotline about the Major-General's numerous nubile daughters has smerged in my mind with Gojyo and Hakkai's wierdly cute little conversation on the bridge in Saiyuki Reload vol. 6 - the one where Hakkai paints this bizarre vision of the domestic bliss he'd like, and finishes with something like "My only worry is that my lovely daughters might fall prey to Uncle Gojyo."

And now I wanna see Gojyo in a pirate hat, singing and dancing and leering at the Major-General's daughters with the rest of the pirate chorus ... . (Lately I can make almost everything come back to Saiyuki if I try hard enough!)