Extinguishing Some Candles Again

Today is Mom's birthday, and for the first time in eons, I actually got to see her on "the day." It was a short teaching day to begin with, since all my Friday schools were either on band trip or at UIL, so I taught my remaining Wednesday schedule today and that was it. I also finally got an estimate on my car from my wreck last month, and now it's time to let the insurance people do their thing. It'll take about ten days to fix, so who knows what I'll be tooling around in later in the month (huh huh, he said "tool").

The visit with Mom and Dad was really nice once again. In the past, these get-togethers were often fraught with criticism aimed at me (and my resistance thereto), but this time, they were really complimentary of everything: how the house was looking, the small bit of cleanage I did in advance of their visit, and even of Fizban's work on the lawn. This is the second totally pleasant visit in a row, and I'm looking forward to many, many more.

During dinner at Outback, we got onto an interesting tangent about why people kept suing McDonald's for ridiculous reasons (spilled coffee, their own obesity) and how it was a wonder that my sister and I survived childhood without car safety seats, non-metal playground equipment, etc. We also got on a tangent on race relations and how people are labeled (my dad used the term "Oriental" several times instead of the more-PC "Asian," even though, admittedly, "Oriental" is way more descriptive). It reminded me of a conversation in grad school between two of my fraternity brothers, Brian (a white guy from Alaska) and Tony (a black guy from Chicago, by way of Carrollton):

BRIAN: So what do you prefer to be called, black or African-American?
TONY: Well, I really prefer to be called Tony.

That pretty much sums it up right there on the subject of labeling, as far as I'm concerned.

A boatload of burritos: I filled out the BurritoEZ form mentioned in yesterday's post, and I discovered that I went to Chipotle 108 times in 2003! This includes an amazing sixteen straight Tuesdays over the summer. I'm not sure if I should be proud or embarrassed...