Flying Kites and Chinese Food

Yesterday was a pretty blank day. It’s the kind of day where you get stuff done but you just can’t think of what any of it was. I just remember working on something in the morning, and then getting interrupted to go eat Chinese food at the Golden Rice restaurant. The guys in Network Services like that place because they have both a buffet and Mongolian BBQ. After we got back I worked on some other nameless stuff and was interrupted by Tamara calling to tell me not to be late coming home because she had a softball game at 8 (She’s coaching a girls 14 and under slow-pitch softball team. This is her third year coaching the team with her mother. They really don’t get any better but they have fun.)

I left earlier than my usual 5:30 to 6 pm and got home to leftover porcupine balls (kind of a meatloaf made with rice instead of bread crumbs and then put into meatball shapes dinner with mashed potatoes, green beans and corn). After dinner Duncan wanted to go to the park to play. We drove over to the closest local park and there were no kids so we drove to a park near my mother-in-law’s house and there were no kids. So we drove further to Eldon Lyon Park. Duncan had been there the Saturday before Easter for a community Easter egg hunt and had wanted to climb up a hill that is at the edge of the park. Today we did that. I’d climb up behind him in case he lost his balance – he never did but he did ask for my help a couple of times. We climbed up and climbed down a couple of times. Duncan wanted to slide down on his butt but I didn’t think that was a good idea – both for the damage that would be done to his pants and for the damage that could be done if he slid down the wrong hill and went into a roll (some parts of the hill were pretty steep).

After that we went and played on the swing set and slides but again there were no kids. Being a little chilly, very windy and a Wednesday, I figured most kids were either at church or being held captive in their houses. There was a guy at the park flying a kite so I thought we could go get one ourselves and take advantage of the wind before the sun set. We went to a K-Mart and eventually found the end cap with all of the kites. Duncan picked out a kite featuring characters from the soon to be released Disney film, Atlantis. But he put that back pretty quickly when I showed him the kite I found – Sponge Bob Square Pants. We took Sponge Bob back to the park and flew him until it was too dark to see.

On the way home Duncan wanted to stop at Braum’s and get some ice cream. He wanted a tub of half vanilla and half chocolate. I told him they didn’t make that and he pointed out that they did make one with three flavors, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry (called Neapolitan for some arcane reason known only to the aficionados of ice cream trivia).

Then we went back home and while Duncan washed himself in the shower I watched the last battle on the first of two episodes of Robotica on The Learning Channel. The match was a classic David and Goliath story – except David usually doesn’t get pushed off of a 12 foot high 16 by 16 foot battle arena. During the second episode we ate our ice cream. In this one a robot named Viper narrowly defeated Panzer Mark I to make it to the Robotica finals.

At this point Tamara returned home from the softball game. They lost. They have a team of 18 girls and since it was Wednesday (a church day) they only had 11 of the girls show up for the game. As far as I know all of the missing girls were nice enough to call beforehand but that still disheartened Tamara, especially when they lost by 16 to 1. She was kind of bummed and went to the bedroom to call her mother and rehash the game some more.

I put Duncan to bed and started a cassette tape of music from the Japanese animation film “My Neighbor Totoro.” He likes to listen to music while he goes to sleep. Tamara and I then watched the Star Trek: Voyager episode Author, Author. It wasn’t bad but most of Voyager falls into that category. There’s only 5 episodes left until the series finally. I still remember that Star Trek: Deep Space Nine got to do a series finally story arch that took up most of the final season. Tamara and I both agree that DS9 has been the best of the Trek series.