Our kids are heading back to Seattle, so we spent most of Easter Sunday taking them places, starting with Adam to Dulles at 10 a.m. His flight was actually delayed several hours, but he managed to get on a different flight with a stopover in San Francisco that got him home close to the original time. Daniel and Cahaya were at the Smithsonian and had dinner plans, but since they're leaving a day earlier than planned, I persuaded Daniel to come see his grandparents for ice cream in the afternoon.
We dropped Daniel off at his hotel after a couple of Regieleki raids, then came home and did a bunch more packing around dinner -- leftovers -- and taking photos of stuffed animals to be given to kids. Then we watched this week's Sanditon, which was almost entirely predictable (Jane Austen would not have been that formulaic), and this week's Succession, which was truly shocking and had multiple performances deserving of Emmy Awards (Daniel asked if it was Who Shot J.R. level, which it was).
I Will Love You Forever (from the The Amber Spyglass)
By Philip Pullman
I will love you forever; whatever happens.
Till I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead,
I'll drift about forever, all my atoms, till I find you again...
I'll be looking for you, every moment, every single moment.
And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together so tight that nothing and no one'll ever tear us apart.
Every
atom of me and every atom of you... We'll live in birds and flowers and
dragonflies and pine trees and in clouds and in those little specks of
light you see floating in sunbeams...
And when they use our
atoms to make new lives, they won't just be able to take one. They'll
have to take two, one of you and one of me.
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My day involved a huge amount of cleaning up things in the basement and taking stuff to the county dump and scheduling things with mitigation companies and insurance who are coming tomorrow and Friday to start drying us out and figuring out what our damage is going to cost. (The wall is going to have to be hacked open to replace the pipe, but since we have no intention of using the hose for the next three months, that can wait till after things are dry.)
My evening involved watching Voyager's "Infinite Regress" with three of my five regular Tuesday night friends, an episode I hadn't remembered but it was pretty good, then watching the series finale of His Dark Materials, which I didn't love -- I don't think Pullman is as progressive as he thinks he is, since God may be dead but love is still only admirable when it's chaste and sacrificial. Here are some of the Christmas decorations at my in-laws' home in Hanover:
Watching the insane end of the insane Chargers-Raiders game, where I'm being petty and rooting for a tie because it's the only way to stop Pittsburgh, who beat the Ravens earlier and ended their playoff chances, from going to the playoffs themselves. We had a quiet morning keeping an eye on the weather, since we had freezing rain forecast, and knew we needed to pick up Daniel from National Harbor after Magfest ended. Fortunately the temperature stayed high enough that it was just scenic rain.
Daniel took the photo of the Betty White shrine at the convention and got me the amigurumi Baby Yoda and Snom (who's a Pokemon). I always love seeing the standing stones at National Harbor though there are rainy windshields in all my photos! We stopped at Giant on the way home and found unnervingly empty shelves, though we managed to get soup, a few yogurts, and cat treats. Then we unpacked, sorted some more of my in-laws' stuff, and watched the end of the Patriots-Dolphins game around dinner.
Dharma Bum
By David Guterson
Boat on the water—
A treble note, fading.
In the new light, it’s clear:
We’re moving toward rain.
Fallen flowers on the table—
Night has laid them under.
Already I’m foolish enough
To have hopes for the coming hours.
My morning tea’s rich,
Superior to other things.
I cling to the dancers
And the cruel remark.
I haven’t overcome the applause
Or the hearse.
My waste bin’s full of pleas.
I think about my needs.
Deposited on the shore of waking, alive,
A mayfly, like me, has all day.
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Thursday was going to be the day I caught back up on everything, but I got derailed at lunchtime because a woman came over to pick up a Barbie I was selling on Facebook Marketplace and I ended up showing her most of my collection, which was really fun -- I don't remember the last time I took so many down -- and letting Uhura go home with her as well as Cher. (She's a really interesting person who has traveled all over the world and I hope we end up being friends!)
Then I lost the rest of the afternoon to fighting with our new insurance and I still haven't managed to transfer my prescriptions, because Caremark won't let me access the old records now that I'm not a customer and the new HSA/FSA isn't active yet for some reason. We did manage to take a walk between bouts of early evening rain, and watched the two episodes of Kung Fu that we missed while out of town after I chatted with my fan friends. A morning at Seahurst Park:
