amazed

Ariel arrived Friday for a wedding. We saw her for a brief time on Saturday evening, stopping first to watch some of the cousins' baseball games and to say hi to some family, then getting some red and green chile enchiladas, bean burritos, and huevos rancheros at Monroe's with Janey and Jenna, who were also in town.

On the Tuesday before, Jackson had soccer practice. Rylee came along. He kicked his ball up and down the nearby vacant field, running full speed. He was drinking lots of water, too, and complained about a pain: his first stomach cramp, I told him. Then we walked from the school field to the school cafeteria for the cub scout meeting. There was a magician, and the boys learned magic tricks.

Friday night was a pleasant dinner with Cyndi's company. We haven't done that in, dare I say, years. There was wine and good food and I met some friendly folks. On Saturday, while Ariel was at the wedding and Cyndi went for a run around the Academy with Ellie, who walked, the boys and I tried Netflix again over the Wii console, which worked well for about 30 minutes and then never worked right again. (The problem is the Verizon Mi-Fi, which we just found out cannot give us the advertised speeds. Verizon is now taking the position that they can only deliver the advertised speeds streetside, and I asked them if they expected me to use my laptop and the Wii console outside on the curb this winter.)  We all then went to Borders, where Ry got a bakugan, the storage unit, where we grabbed all the Halloween decorations, and then Jack's soccer game. There was some incident where Jackson reported that the assistant coach chastised Jackson for talking smack to the other team and then didn't believe Jack when Jack said that wasn't the case. There's no way Jack would do that. No way. He's much more apt to be saying hello and congratulating someone, no matter what team they're on. Anyway, that got me a little peeved. So, after the game there were team  pictures, and Cyndi took Jackson back to Borders before dinner with Ariel to get a Wii version of I Spy, using a birthday gift card. 

Sunday, I went for a long run around the cross country course inside the Academy. We almost didn't go to church but we did. Ry asked me not to go to the children's eulogy with him downstairs in the basement, so I asked Jack to watch out for him. Immediately afterward, we drove down to the corn maze in the Anderson fields in the valley. It was a bit warm and I was thirsty from my earlier run. We walked quite a bit, so it was a good way to spend some time together. Not spectacular, but okay. Ry beaned me with the yellow ears of corn. We ran by Home Depot to buy some mums on sale and by Costco to get some steaks, because Jackson has been asking for steak for weeks.  We haven't been doing a lot of grilling, but that evening I started the charcoal. Left a message as the steaks grilled to Mom & Dad in Hawaii.

Ariel was pretty busy during her short visit. Some work to do; some friends to visit. She and I had lunch at Los Cuates near my office and later I picked her up to spend the night with us before she had to catch her plane the next morning.  Jackson was thrilled that Ariel would spend an overnight with us. I had to take Jackson to a pack meeting, but we picked up a Dion's pizza on the way home.

It was so good to see Ariel. She likes her new place in Brooklyn and generally things are well. She looked happy. She talked about her and Chris' plans for Christmas. We caught up a tad on family. I remembered a few memory stories.  I told her the one about our first, and only, "sex talk" when she was little. The story ends in a punch line. I'll have to tell you it someday. I started talking about it because I had just read an article in New Yorker on the subject, which also had a similar punch line.  We talked about the time we stayed in the cabin in Tres Ritos. There's some nice stories there. It's when we read To Kill a Mockingbird together. (That's also one of those remarkable stories about our time together.)  Ariel mentioned something about it that I hadn't thought about, at least not since we read it. She said it struck her like a "horror story."  I remember that we spent a lot of time talking while we were reading it, going back and forth, because it had a lot of adult themes. So I asked her if she meant the scene with the children and the scary attack in the woods and she said, no, she was thinking of the subject of the trial itself. It was the first time she had heard of rape. I had thought the hardest part of the book was the issue of race. I distinctly remember glossing over some words when I was reading passages to her, because they were too abundant, and too horrible to say, for me.

The next morning Ariel got on her plane to JFK (with a stop in Atlanta). She took a bag of red and green chile.

A few days have gone by. There's a bank of low, gray clouds overhead today, covering the peak. It hailed yesterday, and the temperature is cooler, probably under 70.

Note that I just added a video produced by Ariel about Swarm Mentality from ScienceLine on the side bar. Try also searching her name on IEEE Spectrum for several, really good articles. I don't know where her podcasts are yet.