Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Law & Order & Sisters

I overslept and even with Dad and Jodie picking me up, was almost late to work! This was not a good thing. For one thing, it was pouring when I got up, and continued to pour all day. Big-time, monsoon-level, everything floods pouring. Dad and Jodie were taking Khai grocery shopping anyway, but I was still a little embarrassed.

Thankfully, that was the worst that happened. It was quiet-to-steady until the 4PM rush hour, after which it picked up considerably. I really got rather lucky. The college boy who was supposed to come in at 4:30 was so late, he came in for me when I was done at 5.

Dad picked me up at work. The rain was still coming down. The roads were really bad by then. They were starting to shut down parts of roads that had been flooded. The part of West Clinton that goes under the train bridge was so high, we barely got through in Dad's mini van. (Dad said we may have been the last ones through before the police shut the underpass down.)

I ended up at Dad's house for the rest of the night. My sister Rose was finally being sworn in as a lawyer! A local judge and his wife were going to do the swearing in, but they had problems getting there, thanks to all the road closings. Dinner took a lot longer than the swearing in. We used Dad's den for the event, and it took all of five minutes. Khai was so cute. He ran next to his mother and repeated the oath as best he could with his hand raised; he wanted to be sworn in, too!

I spent most of the rest of the evening watching Law & Order re-runs on WE and cartoons and playing games with Khai and Jessa. Khai got a lot of fun new games for his birthday. One was "Zingo!," basic bingo, only with words and pictures (like "cat" or "dog" or "sun") on chips instead of numbers and letters. Another was a variation on Candy Land, only with dinosaurs in a train trying to get home, and a spinner instead of cards. A third was a 3-D matching game. You set up penguins holding colored "eggs" inside and roll the dice. Each side of the dice has a color. You look under the penguin and see if you can find the color that matches the dice.

We finished with the penguin game in time for dinner. Jodie made her famous so-soft-they-fall-off-the-bone ribs, along with boiled asparagus (which was sadly rather overcooked) and scallops wrapped in bacon. Margaret, Dad's neighbor, made a delicious spinach and bacon salad. There was a lemon cake from the Acme in Westmont for dessert.

Khai and I watched a couple of on-demand cartoons as the others chatted. Evidently, Khai's interests are slowly moving from dinosaurs to superheroes, especially the Cartoon Network show Teen Titans Go! The original Teen Titans were four young adults - Batman's ward Robin, good-natured robot man Cyborg, sweet Beast Boy (who can change into any animal), naive alien Starfire, and goth bad girl Raven - who are the Justice League's apprentices. While the show did well enough, it must have gotten too dark for execs at Cartoon Network. The new show looks and sounds like a cross between The Powerpuff Girls and Super Friends. It's now done in super-cute Flash animation, and most stories revolve around the kids hanging out or being weird in their t-shaped hide-out. Very strange show with some oddly dark humor, especially the one that reveals all the kids' dreams in different styles, from live-action for Beast Boy to the original show's anime for Robin.

Wally Kazaam made at least slightly more sense. This Nick Jr. little kids' show follows the title character, a cute ogre whose stick can make magical words appear. His friends include a fairy, his dog-like dragon, and Bob Goblin, a goofy little monster with a very one-track mind. In the episode we saw, the four have to dodge rotten tomatoes raining from the sky and tricky trees to get to the Magical Wishing Potato and wish their fairy friend's voice back in time for her concert. Every episode has a letter or sound of the day, and those letters or sounds will appear in Wally's magical words (in this case, the "sh" sound). Very cute show; Bob Goblin in particular was a riot.

When Khai and I started having pillow fights and Dad played monster, we knew it was time to go home. Rose and Khai drove me back. Thankfully, by that point, it was still raining but not anywhere near as heavily. The waters had receded, and we were able to get home with no problems. It may not even be raining now.

Oh, and alas, the Flyers ended their season today, just barely losing to the New York Rangers 2-1.

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