The Super Bowl is coming to Arlington in 2011!  

Cool. 

He'd been to Shimoda last week.  He pointed out there are some pix on the official Seventh Fleet Band website so off I went to take a gander, hoping  -  as a fond mother is wont to do  -  to see her son get some appropriate recognition.

Hmmmm.  As is so truly said, be careful what you wish for....you just might get it.    Oh, look.  I found him!  Here he is on the stop in Hong Kong when he was on the Blue Ridge earlier this year:

As the caption on the website explains:  "Musician 3rd Class Matthew Anderson plays the trombone
and Musician 3rd Class Alex Ivy rides the tuba pretending it’s a motorcycle to introduce the different
instruments they play during a performance at Yew Chung International School in Hong Kong."

Yup.  That's my boy.  The one riding the tuba. 

This is a much nicer picture:

While taking Dmitry to school there was some talk about it on the radio, and someone described the situation thusly:

Indianapolis is a strong contender, as it has experience hosting large sports events (such as the NCAA Final Four), it has a very nice downtown, and its spanking new stadium will be completed in 2008, a year ahead of the new Cowboys' stadium.

However....the Indianapolis stadium will seat fewer than 70K people (IIRC....it might have been < 75K), while the Cowboys' stadium will seat 95K.

It's forecast that by the year 2011 Super Bowl tickets will be selling for $900 each.  

Jerry Jones says "Do the math."

What do you wanna bet he's right?

I completely forgot to post the few stills I took on Saturday night, plus some snagged off the Flip Video:

I loved the little wave Jason gave as he left the stage.  ;^p

Isn't she precious?  Here are the two of them:

Jessica and Jason sharing a chuckle afterwards:

Okay, okay....I'll move on.

Last Thursday I went to the Regis at the mall to get my monthly
haircut, and entered through Sears' men's department.  My goodness, I
thought to myself, Sears has gotten serious about the add-on sale:

Riding mowers, sitting in the aisle next to the Dockers.  Apparently
they were just parked there temporarily, for when I returned a little
later they were nowhere to be seen.  Pity!  I'd think having 'em
sitting in the men's department would facilitate sales, and there I was
giving Sears credit for creative marketing display. 

While my fondness for chocolate runs deep and strong, there are limits to it, and chocolate-flavored bubble gum is one of 'em:

Yuck!   Who on earth would want to chew chocolate-flavored bubble gum?

Yesterday afternoon after church Dmitry and I went to fetch Raven so
she could come over for a few hours.  (Carolyn was out-of-pocket due to
it being her weekend with her father.)  The two of them had a grand
time playing video games (Raven brought a couple of hers), checking out
friends' MySpace sites, walking down to Dairy Queen for lunch, going
with me on a run to SuperTarget, arguing over the relative merits of
the upcoming summer movies, and updating their respective cell phone
greetings due to finding a site with suggested messages.

If someone calls Dmitry, don't be surprised to hear a Russian-accented
voice claim to be "Death", urging callers to leave their name or number
so that he can "be right with them."  I pointed out he ought to simply
record a greeting in Russian; if it's someone who knows him they'll
understand why they're hearing Russian, and if it's not, they'll be
fritzed out thinking they've somehow inadvertently called Russia and
how much is that going to cost them?

He wasn't interested.  Dollars to donuts, had such a clever notion been
found on that website he'd have been impressed, but since it was
brought up by his mother.....how good could it be?  

Isn't it the way?  This year she was in FOUR dances, yet attendance numbers (of those who turned out to see her) were down.  From our side of the family there was only Don and me, while fortunately more came from Jason's side (doubtless the fact he was dancing, too, might have been a factor).

She was in a jazz, ballet, mambo-themed, and daddy-daughter dance, which explains Jason's shaking a leg.  I used my Flip Video but darned if it didn't pick up the glare from the lights even worse than it did last weekend with Elaine's girls.    It's still a neat thing, but this is the last time I'm using it for recording performances on a stage like this.  I can't think how lighting that doesn't bother the people in the audience can wash out the performers in the middle like it does when captured on the Flip Video, but it does.  What really bothers me is I didn't get any stills of Brianna on stage with my regular camera, since I can't use both at one time (only having the one pair of hands).

And wasn't this a nuisance!  I arrived good and early to snag a good seat, which I did, pretty much.  The front section of seating was reserved for the dancers, and a large chunk in the middle was taken up by the official video recording people, but I did the best I could, getting a seat on the aisle, middle, left side.  A man showed up a little later and sat in front of me.  Well, okay, I'm not so dumb I expect the seat in front of me to be empty.

What I did not expect was that as soon as the recital began he held up his camcorder to record the dances.  What was so massively annoying is that to hold it up he used both arms (he used his left to hold a button down for some reason), so there was his rather large head framed by his arms.  Couldn't see one thing.  Don graciously switched with me, but became increasingly crabby himself at his inability to see around the guy.  Finally, as people began leaving and seats were emptying, we moved down and over, away from Mr. Oblivious.

Utterly astounding how rude people can be!

Oh well.  Here's the video of Brianna's ballet:

She's the last to dance onto the stage - #7 I think - and then darned if she's not in the middle.  She glows as if she were radioactive.  Here's the "My Girl" dance, with Brianna and Jason on the far left (until towards the end, when they move to the middle and glow):

I'm waiting for the jazz dance to be ready to view; when it does I'll let y'all know, so anyone interested can click on the "videos" link buried in the flowers up there and watch it.  ;^)

First is her take on motherhood:

HA!  Isn't that the truth? 

And here's one that just makes me grin like a loon:

I'm thinking I'll add that one to my next letter to Dan at Marine boot camp.  It'll doubtless inspire him.

And Craigellachie has a terrific one at her Xanga...be sure to check it out! (Link down in my subscriptions.)

Thanks, Kathryn! 

Here's a site that permits you to create your own "motivational" poster.

Here's one I whipped out:

If you think you've created something really choice, send it to me and I'll post it (assuming it's suitable for the entire family, of course).

Did you realize there are conferences dedicated to the Harry Potter series?

Fact!  There is one starting tomorrow in New Orleans, in fact:  Phoenix Rises

From the website:  "Phoenix Rising, a conference devoted to all things Harry Potter,
will fuse the intensity of academic debate with the improvisation of
exploratory dialogue, the rhythms of New Orleans with the colors and
pageantry of art. The conference will examine the novels, the movies,
and the extraordinary fan phenomenon during the day; then, attendees
will revel with the beat of the Crescent City — herself rising from ash
and flame — when evening advances."

Mercy Maud.  Who knew?

In August there's one in Toronto (hey, I said "America".....Canada's part of North America) called Prophecy.  Here's what puzzles me:  both conferences feature Quidditch games.  Um, there are no wizards or witches or flying broomsticks or golden snitches, so I was curious as to how the dickens are they proposing to play that game.  Not to worry, however.....official rules are posted, and the one thing for certain is that this is a complicated game indeed. 

For those fortunate enough to be in England on the "Deathly Hallows" release date, there's a conference going on then, too:  Sectus

That latter site has a discussion forum, and a quick perusal of it revealed the information that the upcoming "Order of the Phoenix" movie - opening on July 13 - will be released in IMAX format.  Alright, that sounds cool!  I've yet to see a feature movie in IMAX, but if it comes to the OmniMax, I'll have to go. 

The commercials are obnoxious enough to give me hives, so why oh WHY has ABC chosen to give those irritating GEICO cavemen their own show?  It's included in the upcoming fall line-up.  

The state of television in this country is utterly appalling, that's all there is to it.

This afternoon I made a quick dash to SuperTarget to purchase a game for Dmitry (we agreed he'd hang his father's shirts when taken out of the dryer - maybe 12 to 14 of them? - if I'd go to the store).  Hopped in my van, drove, parked, was in the store maybe 5-7 minutes, came back out, and the dumb car wouldn't start.  

Remember the Good Old Days when batteries would give you some warning they're about to go four feet in the air?  Now it's hale and hearty one minute, dead as a doornail the next.

Elaine was kind enough to rush to my rescue and take me home.  When Don arrived, we headed up there with battery cables, then had to wait until a parking spot opened up in front of the van so Don could get his car into position.  Attached the cables and tried the engine.

Nothing.   Adjustment made.  Nothing.  A nice man came over and helped, and after another two or three attempts, hooray!  It worked!  Can't think what he did that was different, but he knew what he was going.  The LORD clearly placed him right THERE for us, otherwise we'd have had to call a tow truck, and get my parents to take him to school tomorrow, as Don has an 8 a.m. meeting in Dallas.

Went to Sears to buy a nifty new battery.  Had to pay an upcharge due to the extra labor involved in replacing a Venture's battery.

Then this evening I realized I'd yet to alert Paperback Swap that I'd mailed the three C.S. Lewis books (the space trilogy) to the person who wanted them.  To make a long story short, to my utter horror I realized that the three requests hitting my mailbox at the same time was in reality a coincidence, and those books were supposed to have been mailed to three separate people in three different states. 

Oops.

What a mercy there's Amazon's resellers, for I was able to locate the same editions and arrange for them to be sent to the appropriate parties.

Unfortunately, for more than the $1.73 each it should have cost me, had I been careful and checked to ascertain the books were ordered by the same person, instead of assuming that was the case.

Sheesh.