It was a weekend, I'll grant that. Saturday eight year old wanted a playdate, and wanted a playdate with preschool_girl, which is a rare thing, so she came over, as did preschool_mom, boy and toddler. Preschool_boy loves Lego, and his dad doesn't play it with him, so heck, I was game, and spent a long time building a flying boat, using a wooden rowboat for the boat part. I ended up giving him a few pieces, too. He'll get more out of them than I will.

In depressing news, we visited my mother_in_law in the dementia ward on Sunday, she seemed foggier than usual, did not repeatedly ask when we were moving to Buffalo, and did not go on and on about her ex and her kids. She just kind of was.

Mrs. Ha's brother also stopped by, and we had a short chat. Later, on the way back to Rochester we stopped at Mighty Taco for a quick bite, it wasn't very relaxing since there seemed to be a pee-wee football team running around. My taco was okay, but still not as good as their radio ads.

On Tuesday We let out oldest walk to the bus stop alone, first time ever. It really isn't as big a deal as it seems, she's been walking home from the bus stop most afternoons, and there's more sketchy people out at 3 pm than 7:30 am. It does let me get to work by 8:30, I'm usually here by 9.

It was also payday, the first half of September was rough, due to back to school and my wife having smaller than usual paychecks (due to vacations and Labor Day). We still need to get a backpack and sneakers for our youngest.

Since I was able to put money in my pocket, I got a haircut that day too. The barber is a younger woman, and as we talked about our respective summers and festivals we attended, I mentioned biking to the Lilac Festival to see MC Lars. "Who?" Apparently keeping up with the younger kids is harder than just listening to alternative radio.

On to media news.

After reading Zero, and got to thinking about Coast Watchers, and what was that musical about Coast Watchers, ohyeah, South Pacific, which turned out to be based on a book of Michener's short stories called Tales of the South Pacific, which I soon found an old copy at the library close to my job. I think it was printed in 1961.

In other nautical books, while browsing the non-fiction at the library, I found Blind Man's Bluff, about US submarine based espionage, mostly against Russia. It was more personal and less technical than the similar Silent War, though Craven is mentioned in both, and much of it deals with the finding of K-129.

In a similar vein, years ago I bought a copy of Victory at Sea, and I started going through them when Mrs. Ha went to bed early. The Japanese movies of the attack on Pearl Harbor made you really appreciate the balls of carrier pilots, those carriers are darn small to fly off and land on.

"I don't get Facebook, it's boring"  said thirteen, until yesterday. Newspaper_girl got an FB account last week, and yesterday she called me asking for permission to get one too. Now I'm faced with the question of the appropriateness of friending her friends (the ones I know at least). I'm thinking no.

I'm going to call summer over, despite the equinox not yet here. My parent's pool is closed, the kids are in school, and I wore a soft comfy flannel today instead of a Hawaiian shirt.