Forwards and skating and reunions and St. Patrick's Day and genetics, oh my

Got a forward from a friend the other day:

( HER FIRST PAY CHEQUE --- A heart warming story )

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Probably our last day skating yesterday. The season's ending and boy, was it short. But we went several times, had a great time every time, and Justin improved exponentially - started as an almost-skater, able to go about a minutes at a time without falling, and ended as a real skater, falling maybe four times in the whole hour and a half we were on the ice yesterday.

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Had dinner out and then stayed till the place closed Friday night with five of my high school friends/acquaintances. I can't quite believe it, but we were there six hours. Topics were all over the place - gossip about other members of our class and what they're doing, family histories, current jobs & families, reminiscences, religion, politics, 9/11, old misunderstandings, birth stories, England, spouses, debate over whether people change their basic personalities over time or not, day care, weddings, health... myeah. It was really, really cool. The food was excellent, too :)

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Justin asked what St. Patrick's Day was all about, and got a crash course in Irish history and the Irish Diaspora. At one point I pointed out that we're part of that diaspora too, even though I'm Chilean, through my maternal great-grandfather William O'Neale and my paternal great-great, Philip Lee. Also talked a bit about how the Irish were often discriminated against wherever they went, because they were poor and dirty and spoke funny and drank a lot and were the wrong kind of Christian-

"You mean we're part Christian too?" he asked in astonishment. "I didn't know that!"

Heh. Religion as an inherited trait.

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Speaking of inherited traits, Chris was able to do some neato genetics teaching using our family the other day. Talked about inheriting characteristics, dominant and recessive genes, etc and when he got to the part about heterozygous and homozygous, we had a little demo right there in our home.

( Wanna see? )

(no subject)

What with the time change discombobulating me slightly, and major interpersonal stuff coming to a head, and a generally somewhat crappy day, it was only around 4PM when I realized today's date. My mom would've been 63 today.

As per usual, I go to write more on the topic and rewrite a paragraph about ten times before just deleting it.

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I'll have to post Justin' food art whenever I get around to making the camera download to our hard drive again. It was most impressive. We had a dinner of shish kebabs (for salad, main course, and dessert) and watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, as Justin's choice, because "Jack almost gets turned into a shish kebab."

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This person is trying to finish illustrating Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince before Deathly Hallows comes out. No idea if she'll ever get there, as she's only on chapter 4, but what's there is quite hilarious. Of particular hilarity is her entire take on the Snape & Narcissa & Bellatix scene in chapter 2. Go see!

http://acciobrain.ligermagic.com/projecthbp.php

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I've been watching Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel, and feeling heartily thankful that femmeslash was notsomuch on the internets when either was aired, because whoa nelly would people have made a career out of Anne/Diana and Anne/Miss Stacey and Anne/Jenny Pringle and... well, you get the point.

Of course, it may well be that there exists Anne of Green Gables slash out there somewhere. I urge all of you to never tell me about it if that's the case, because I will cry. I still haven't really gotten over the deep shock that the existence of MASHSlash gave me, and that was like three years ago that I first heard of it.