I got e-mail from my brother's fiancée this morning, and boy am I glad we're going to be relaxing in Chicago for the week after this wedding! Wednesday evening we're driving to Washington, D.C. to stay overnight at a hotel near the airport. We'll spend all of Thursday morning in an airplane (I need to make sure I charge up my Palm before we go), and between landing in Great Falls on Thursday and leaving Sunday, I've got a shower, a photo session, a luncheon, a rehearsal, a dinner, a hair appointment, another photo session, a dress fitting - oh yeah, and a wedding and reception. Not to mention coordinating with my family to make sure Matt gets his tuxedo picked up and to the bachelor's party baseball game. And Sam warns in the e-mail that she's got "individual jobs" for the attendants. My poor Palm will be smoking by the time we've boarded the plane for Chicago.
I'll be taking its recharger, so if I get a slow moment (there are always slow moments, no matter how packed the schedule looks) I'll try to take notes so I can post a journal entry when I get home.
We've got a lot to do in Chicago, too, but it will be a more relaxed pace. Of course we'll want to visit all the available relatives and friends, and we've got plans for at least one day in Chicago proper, and Matt's mom wants to take us to the movies one day... But as I said - much more relaxed. I just need to remember my anti-inflammatory drugs for the day in Chicago.
Look for Matt to go completely bezerk any day now as I start to stress over the packing and planning.
We had a good weekend, I think. We were going to game with K.T. and Kevin on Friday, but K.T. had acquired a desire for steak for dinner, so we went out to eat. By the time we got home, she decided it was too late to game, so we popped The Shadow in the VCR.
Saturday, I'd been planning on risking a trip to the Barnes & Noble for a copy of the new Harry Potter book, but there were a couple of copies in the comic book store when we stopped for our comics. I weighed the discount Barnes & Noble would be offering against the probability that I'd be having to fight dozens of kids and long lines for the book, and decided to pay full price for it at the Cube instead.
So I spent most of Saturday draped over the living room chair, reading. I hadn't quite finished the book when we went to bed, but since we had plans for Sunday that meant I shouldn't sleep in too late, I decided not to stay up late to finish it.
Just as an aside, now that I've finished it... There had been an uproar on one of my mailing lists about this book, mostly anger at parents' groups who wanted the book banned from schools because it portrayed magic and witchcraft in a positive light, and encouraged rebellion against authority. Now, I'm with my fellow list members on the magic/witchcraft thing - kids do understand the difference between reality and fantasy, and it's absurd to think that they'd become Satanists or anything just because they read about magic in a book. And up until I read the book, I was with them on the discussion of rebellion - I do agree that kids need to be taught to think for themselves, and I don't think quetioning authority is necessarily a bad thing. But there were things in this book that disturbed me, and would have disturbed me further, I think, if I were a parent. They boil down to this: cheating, with no punishment or ill-effects - that is even represented as the only way to achieve the desired goals, and assisted by an authority figure.
Now, I still enjoyed the book, and I appreciate Harry as a normal kid, mischevious but basically decent. I love it that he's got his share of personality flaws, and I think he represents a good role model for modern children. The stories are fun, with just enough plot twists to keep me guessing, without becoming so convoluted that I can't follow what's going on. They must be fantastic to kids - a protagonist they can relate to in a story that neither insults their intelligence nor preaches. So, all in all, despite my discomfort, I still think they're the best thing to happen in children's literature for years.
Sunday, I got up and finished the book, and once we were both up and showered, we headed over to K.T. and Kevin's again. We went out to get some lunch, and then over to the movie theater to catch Fantasia 2000. The movie was brilliant. I thought it was too short - only 70 minutes - but the little kids in the theater started getting restless just at the beginning of the last piece, so it was just a hair too long for them.
Actually, I have to say I was surprised at how well-behaved the kids were. I had mentally groaned at the number of parents with little kids (like four or so) coming into the theater. Fantasia is beautiful, but I couldn't see such little kids sitting still for it. Heck, I'd been bored by the original Fantasia until I was in college. Luckily, this one featured a lot less in the way of abstract visuals, and some of the pieces were downright funny, so I guess that helped.
Word of the Day: effigy - an image or likeness, especially of a person, as a sculpted image on a tomb, or a crude figure representing a hated person
There was a guitar player and singer at the restaurant we went to Friday night. He was set up in the bar area, but you could hear him in the lobby and the first dining room of the restaurant. He was awful. While we waited for our table, we heard him butcher several songs we recognized, and even the songs we didn't know were terrible. We considered burning him in effigy, and then for real, but instead Matt requested a table as far as possible from him.
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