A grand day out

I spent yesterday doing my devoted filial duty, first by attending one of those gigantic Christmas craft fairs with my mother, whose regular craft-show partner has just moved away, and then by going to dinner with my parents to one of those outrageously expensive continental restaurants to celebrate my father's newly-minted sexagenarian status.

(An aside about this restaurant: Holy shit. It was one of those restaurants where the food's pretty good but isn't anything special, and that ends up trying to make up for it with atmosphere, and this one looked like an old-world high-class whorehouse, which frankly I'd have been pretty into if it hadn't been for the enormous goddamn creepy Venetian marionettes which were hanging from the ceilings everywhere.

Have I mentioned the fact that marionettes really, really creep me out? Especially the sinister-looking Venetian ones? Well, they do. And so I spent the whole of the dinner sitting in my plush velvet chair wishing I were eating some nice sushi instead because I have never been to a sushi restaurant where I was stared down by leering satin-clad puppets.)

:::

And today! I got home from my trip to the Family Dollar, which in my neighborhood is sort of like going shopping in somebody's garage, to find a package waiting for me. I wonder, I thought to myself, what that package could be? Well! It was my prize for winning the Fantasy Rock Band contest! And though I had high hopes for my prize, that copy of The Boy in the Plastic Bubble being a hard act to follow, I never in my wildest dreams expected a copy of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close signed by my boyfriend Jonanthan Safran Foer!! Let this be a lesson to you: Fantasy Rock Band is a game worth playing, man.

:::

Also, courtesy of coco_palmolive via email, some of the most satisfying Bush footage I've ever seen.