Vanguard

No question is so difficult to answer as that which the answer is obvious.
-- George Bernard Shaw

Saturday, November 4, 2000
One year ago: Weblog Hype
Two years ago: One Day
Three years ago: One Day

Jack and his daughter H--- arrived at lunch time. We walked up the street for burgers at Kidd Valley. Such delicious fries there!

We didn't have any specific plans for the afternoon, so I suggested we drive to the used book store, McDonald's Book Exchange, near my work. I'd built up quite a bit of credit because I've been taking sacks of books in (part of my decluttering effort) and only leaving with a few at a time. I let Jack drive. It was a crisp fall afternoon, with lots of colorful leaves still on the trees. We took the 520 highway all the way.

Turns out Jack used to go to this bookstore, but didn't recognize it from my descriptions, I guess. He said he used to always lose his credit slip!

I found lots of books, and so did Jack. H---, I think, was baffled by too many choices -- the same phenomenon I saw when we were at the thrift store a few weeks ago. But I picked up the Book of Questions from a spinning rack and handed it to her. This hit the spot! She asked us questions all the way home. "If you were offered the change to have your rate of aging slowed down 30 times, would you do it?"

We stopped at a plumbing supply place, then Fred Meyer, then Sears. This was all in aid of replacing the soap pump on my sink. Would you think this was such an unusual item? I'd no idea! The plumbing supply house did have them, but at around forty bucks I wanted to try a bit harder to get the original pump unclogged. Freddies and Sears didn't even have the pumps at all. Jack worked on this when we got home. I was appalled to see him trying to suck the soap out! That can't have tasted good. We also soaked the pump head in hot water, poked it with wires and broomstraws, and did various other things to it, without much change. Frustrating!

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For dinner I did a good stirfry: pork sirloin sliced up, with sweet grape tomatoes, a pack of "snack" peppers (small bell peppers in different colors -- very pretty!), and a sauce with soy, rice vinegar, sherry, and a bit of sesame oil. Into the rice cooker: brown rice mixed with half a pack of Lundberg Jubilee brown rice blend. (I like the variety of different sorts of rice they include.) This was all more of a success than the stew had been two weeks ago. Everyone had seconds, which pleased me! Then a cherry pie that Jack had brought, with no added sugar. I think it could have used some.

Jack put on a video of Jet Li's Black Mask while I was cooking, but it was too violent. H--- was covering her eyes! It's rated "R" and he hadn't had a chance to preview it. So he turned it off.

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H--- ready for us to go to Vanguard -- she wanted to start watching the videos we rented for her at Safeway earlier.

At Vanguard, Jane made fresh bread -- I had to have some even though I was still full from dinner. I talked with Tami about some romantic difficulties she's been having, but felt remarkably unhelpful. I spoke of how comforting I'd found talking with Jane and Luke, back when I'd been going through a crisis (much less serious than hers, though).

I talked to Andy Hooper and Victor Gonzales about my zine publishing plans for SONW. Meanwhile, Jack got his fill playing with Jane's toys. She's got a huge building set up (half the room) with remote control trucks that can carry freight (different sized plastic marbles) and dump it into various machines.

While we were driving home, Jack teased me about a few animadversions I made on some Vanguard attendees. But if I'm annoyed by someone, or criticize a person, it's probably because I neurotically fear that I have the same fault!