Catching up but not in the LJ entry sense

The birthday party my niece was going to this morning got cancelled, but instead my brother went and ran in some race this morning instead.

So I went to hang out with Julie and Jason and their kids (well, we were going to do that anyway, but I couldn't drag my side of people along). They picked me up and we went to IHOP! I had pancakes, watched the kids eat smiley pancakes (or not eat), caught up with the adults, etc. It was super-crowded. Afterwards, I tagged along with them back to their house to hang out for a few hours. It was kind of amusing because we were all sitting around talking, when Ariana complains, "Daddy, how come when your friends come over, you just all sit and talk, and play with my baby brother, but I get stuck sitting here with nothing to do? I'm boooooored!" so I said, "hey, wanna play a game? How about Qwirkle?" So Jason and I sat down with her to play. It was a remarkable game compared to the cutthroat ways I've been playing recently with adults in Seattle, where we just try to keep other people from getting good lines, and instead in this one there was a ton of Qwirkles and the final score was something like Jason 169, me 168, Ariana 164. Pretty crazy. But at least it gave me some perspective since Ariana seems a lot like Lily in terms of just being all kinds of talkative and outgoing and clever. After a little while longer I realized that I should probably head back to my brother's place since it was pushing past 2:30pm and our guess was my mom would show up around 3pm, originally.

J&J live literally a mile from my brother, probably less actually, so I walked home, it was a nice walk and a nice day for it.

But then it turned out Mom wasn't showing up until 4:30ish. So we played in the basement for a while instead. I took some hilarious videos of Lily -- or more like, I'd turn on the camera, and she'd go "Pleeeaaaasseee?" and beg me for it, and then spend 5 minutes running around the room taking "photos" by pointing the camera at people, so I've got all this footage of the three of us adults with Lily saying "Say cheese mommy. Say cheese daddy. Say cheese aunt Deanna." It's really cute.

Mom showed up. We had pizza for dinner. I started doing the Samurai Sudoku in the newspaper, which is a 4-corner thing and pretty ridiculous; I fell asleep working on it for a bit, and apparently missed Lily's bedtime too, whoops. I got the upper two corners, couldn't quite finish the lower two, bleh.

I would write about sitting around talking with my mom, brother, and sister-in-law, but it's really better if I don't.

snow?

Should be on my way to Philly tomorrow evening (thinking to spend the day wandering in DC and then head up via Amtrak). Still trying to figure out who I need to catch up with in Philly (and maybe NYC if I go up?)

Today, we went to lunch with my mom at The Noodle Company and then sent her on her way home. While Emily had a doctor's appointment, Danny and Lily and I headed over to Georgetown Prep and met up with my friend Larry Rocca, who showed us around the campus. He's like some senior VP type person for development or whatever there and he really loves the place (he's an alum) and he still has a bunch of Chiba Lotte Marines stuff in his office (he even took us around wearing a ridiculous Saburo jacket). It totally exhausted Lily but I guess it was interesting to see the campus, there were no classes today but at one point we ended up seeing the entire lacrosse team hanging out in the athletic center's lobby, that was kind of odd. It's a nice campus, really scary to see how the other half lives in a way ($27k/year tuition for HIGH SCHOOL?! And 500 students with a campus as big as CMU's?) but interesting in other ways, especially the historic aspects of the place (and a really nice cathedral built in the 1930's). Larry seems really happy, too.

Afterwards we just hung out at home (remember, a talkative 2-year-old really will provide entertainment for people for quite a while). Had chili for dinner. Whee.

Now I'm sitting here hoping my throat is just dry and not sore/sick... and trying to figure out what I should do in DC tomorrow (I have my heart set on Fuddrucker's for lunch, and I figure there are some galleries and museums near where it is if nothing else pans out). Hopefully I'll figure out the lockers at Union Station and then go wander, before going up to Philly.