Sunday was the birthday celebration for my mother in law, so rather than Mrs. Ha and I getting some time to ourselves, we all get in the Windstar and shuffled off to Tonawanda. The plate of cheese I brought was a big hit, amazing what some cheddar, havarti, Jarlsberg and smoked gouda will do. I also focused on Mediterranean snacks, with olives, dolmades, feta, hummus and pitas.

I was feeling pretty tired, as I had gotten up at 6:30 to pick up eleven year old and newspaper_girl at a distant Y, newspaper_girl had talked eleven year old into a last minute Girl Scout overnight, they toook, so I agreed to pick them up Sunday morning. The nursing home provided coffee, but it wasn't that good, it reminded me of the canned coffee I used to drink, before I discovered home grinding, and now home roasting.

We headed back around five, so we decided to eat out, rather than get home at 6:30 and figure out something for dinner and get them to bed late. We found out the girls' favorite restaurants are Bob Evans, Original Pancake House, Friendly's and Wendy's, despite there being no Bob Evans in Rochester (there was one or two, but they closed, Rochester likes healthy food, or hot dogs). There is a Bob Evans in Batavia, right off the exit, so that's where we went. The girls still got to bed later than we like.

The late nights continued, Monday night was a meeting for the sixth grade's class gift, three artists showed up so tell what they could do with the kids. In a moment of overconfidence, I offered to help co-ordinate the baby sitting fund raising, though it does help us meet our 20 hours a year goal.

Saturday was a good day, in many respects. Mrs. Ha had made plans with Irish_girl and her girls to go to the local children's museum with our girls, leaving me free for hours and hours. I fit in a workout and video swap, then went off to the local brewing store. Amazingly, I could find no Cascade hops for my honey lager. I still bought fixings for honey lager and a bock, and at home I decided to make a batch of honey lager with Fuggles and Crystal. This will probably be my last batch of honey lager until fall. I hope to squeeze in that bock before it gets too warm in the basement.

Where do you Husi brewers get your stuff? Fixings for two batches set me back $80 USD, which I'm thinking is too much.

After diligent refreshing of our library's online system, I was able to get Black Snake Moan, finally. Yes, like the title, Christina Ricci does spend a fair amount of the movie barely dressed, chained to a radiator by Samuel L. Jackson. She plays a skinny young chick in rural Tennessee who sees her boyfriend off to the Army and then heads into town to hook up with a black crack dealer, while Jackson plays an old religious farmer and former bluesman dealing with with wife running off with his brother. It's a good movie, but may be too intense for some people when it shows the abuse inflicted upon Ricci and the pain she goes through. It does have a sappy ending, if chaining someone to a radiator for a few days really helped overcome childhood abuse, a lot of therapists would be out of work and big pharm would be making lower profits. Justin Timberlake is in it, but he didn't do much with his role.

The other movie was saw was Rabbit Proof Fence, a movie set in Australia dealing with the Stolen Generation, mixed race aborigine children who were taken from their aborginal families and sent to camps where they could concentrate on learning how to be servants. In this case, three girls decide to leave this concentration camp and head back to their homeland, which is near a rabbit proof fence, which the girls follow to get home. The postscript says they get recaptured by the Australians troopers who storm into their ecampments, so those stormtroopers take them back to the concentration camp a few times. Recommended if you like white guilt.

In other media news, we finished Polar Bears past Bedtime, in which Annie and Jack head to the artic and see dog sleds, a seal hunter, an igloo and some polar bears.

Six year old has a great career ahead of her as a labor organizer. She came home from school early yesterday because she wasn't feeling well (it may have been the extra strength nite time Triaminic, too), and ended up helping Mrs. Ha depoop and rake the yard. Mrs. Ha offered her $5 for that, but six year old held out for $6.

Work has been crazy busy, I'm the go to person this week, and our clever poorly tested fix is not behaving well.

In gaming news, I finished my first ASL Sk 1 scenario, Return to Vierville, with a resounding American victory, the Germans didn't grab any of the buildings on the north edge to stop the American reinforcements. I also didn't use smoke, or ELR ratings to change troop quality. I can now claim to have played Advanced Squad Leader, at a very low level.