Where's my pumpkin?

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This weekend, my Bride and I went to the Ball. A for-real and true ball, with for-real and true evening gowns, black ties, the whole deal. Except the ball room dancing. Even though we brushed the dust off our three and a half years of ballroom dance lessons (we still have our third place ribbon for the Central Savannah River Area open Waltz competition - bite me Richard Gere), the dancing turned out to be more like all your bad memories of prom, with a cover band specializing in the UK hits of the early 70's.

Still, the whole night was for a good cause (The 'Kids First' program of the Alcohol & Drug Services group), and a chance for us to get gussied up. I gave up combining a black tie with trousers a long time ago, so of course, I wore a kilt again. But to step it up a notch, I bought a real live, tie-it-yourself bowtie when we were at Harrod's last week. It came with instructions, complete with pictures. This was not enough. I am apparently bow-tie impaired. Fortunately, the guy behind the counter (Filipino. We bonded.) left it tied for me so I could just slip it on.

The ball itself was a hoot (even the dancing - you've never lived 'til you've danced to 'Y.M.C.A.' in a kilt), with a lovely meal - our places were reserved for us with lovely name cards. I hope you will all refer to my Bride as 'Gear' from now on. As these events are wont to have, there were a number of other fund-raising appeals throughout the night. At the first bid of the auction, a cranky looking grandfatherly fellow opened the night by bidding £2000 on 4 seats to a Kylie Minogue concert (who, until this weekend, I'm not sure I had ever heard before). Considering the auctioneer had opened the bid at £500 or so (and even that amount had me running in the other direction), this guy had obviously told his wife he had a £2000 budget for this charity thing, and bid it on the first thing up. It didn't matter if the guy was auctioning off a pair of tickets to the 87th annual Coat Hanger Merchants symposium. Which is too bad, really, because later in the evening they auctioned off a framed handkerchief from Heath Ledger's new movie. That ended up selling for only £800. What a bargain.





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The Wall

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Last night's dinner conversation: The Critter: 'Pudding, daddy!' Me: Did you eat your meat? C: Eh? Pudding, daddy? Me: Wrong! Do it again! Did you eat your meat? C: Um. Pudding, please? Me: How can you have your pudding if you don't eat your meat! My Bride: It's vegetarian stir-fry, you twit. Me: ...le sigh... OK, I don't really expect my 2 year old to get the Pink Floyd reference, and my bride trots out her "I didn't grow up in your country" defense every time stuff like this happens, but I mean really, don't they make people answer these kind of questions on citizenship tests?
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A sackfull of irony

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I was in London for most of last week, and so my Bride and the Critter hopped a train down to spend the weekend getting our annual dose of culture. We took in the dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History museum, and saw both the Magna Carta and the Gutenberg Bible at the British Library, which fascinated the heck out of us (as did some of the original 1775 stamps from the Stamp Act. You know. The Stamp Act that irked a bunch of colonists and led to Mel Gibson going all medieval on Draco Malfoy's dad. This was extremely cool, but as I tried to explain the historical significance to my 2 year old, I caught the British docent rolling his eyes, and hurried along to something a little less obviously 'I'm an American tourist') Equally as cool, however, was the infusion of other down-home goodness. Krispy Kreme at Harrod's? BBQ Ribs and even a Daly City license plate in Chelsea? How cool is that! The Crabshack experience also led to discovering that the Critter is a huge fan of mussels. This she gets from my Bride. Literally, in this case - as she scarfed down half the plate-full that her mother had ordered, ignoring the quarter rack of ribs I had ordered for her.             The only bad part about the weekend was me managing to come down with the flu during it all. Considering I'm still on antibiotics strong enough to kill off anthrax, I know it's not a simple cold. Me with the flu. Oh the irony.
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