Dear everyone,
Lucas B. is gone.
Cindy and Lucas drove to Oberlin on Monday. They off-loaded on Tuesday in a
rainstorm. Sadly, Oberlin does not hire
upper classmen (and women) to come to school early and help freshman parents unload,
or maybe they were avoiding the deluge of rain.
It sounded unpleasant. Lucas met
his roommate Jared, and his father. They
are from Phoenix, AZ. Jared is a student
at the conservatory; he is a jazz drummer.
They appear to be from a relatively observant Jewish family. Cindy and Lucas went to a few College-wide
functions, and then Cindy flew home on Wednesday. Lucas B will be taking economics, psychology,
Greek, and a course on Pompeii. Meanwhile, I stayed home with Jasper and Lucas
D. I went to work for a half-day, but mainly
I drove the boys to school (it started a week ago Friday), picked them up, and
made sure that there was food in the house.
Lucas D has joined the high school level AYSO (American Youth Soccer). Lucas B. played AYSO soccer two years here before joining
a travel team. The high school level
teams are co-ed and not super competitive, but are probably a lot of fun. Meanwhile, Jasper’s gym class is ‘Aquatics’,
which is a thinly veiled method of getting the swim team to practice
unofficially. Both boys seem to like
their classes so far. Jasper is taking
Latin, Trigonometry, English, Chemistry, and AP Euro history; Lucas D is taking
American history, Spanish, English, Chemistry, and Choir. Nicola is still at work in the U of C alumni
call center; she leaves for London in about a few weeks.
Cindy’s friend Melanie came to visit today. She is here just for a day or so and then
back to New York. She is going to China
again at the end of the month. She said
that Chinese officials go over the photographs of politicians and make note of clothing,
jewelry (watches), and such like, to try to determine if you have consumption
above your government salary. Ten years
ago watches were pretty good bribes as disposable items that did not depreciate
very quickly, and whose worth wasn’t obvious to outsiders - - not so much so
today; so Tourneau and other sellers aren’t doing so well there anymore. The bottom has dropped out of the banquet
business also!
I ate and cooked a lot this weekend: Italian breaded steak
on Saturday, Chinatown on Sunday (we went to Lao Beijing, and had the yummy
crispy duck, and also some kind of dish where the noodles were made out of tofu
(mixed with pork, garlic, ginger, and pepper).
Today I made pizzas – one regular cheese and pepperoni, the other one
with samosa filling (potatoes, peas, onions, spices) as the topping. This turned out really well! Nicola was also here for a couple of
days. She made lahmacun topping (with
tortillas) to bring back to her apartment for a pot-luck dinner.
A couple of weekends ago we were at the Tuchlers’ for a big
barbeque. We had a great time. Highlights were meeting the Mom of one of the
creators of the ‘Cards Against Humanity’ game, and another couple where the
wife was a big martial artist - - tae kwan do, krav maga, yoga, etc. She was scary. Our boy were happy to see the older Tuchler
boys, whom they had not had a chance to spend time with in many months.
Jasper and I went to see ‘The Grandmaster’ based on a review
in the tribune. It is a partial biography
of Ip Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yip_Man),
who brought Wing Chun Kung Fu out of mainland China to Hong Kong (and the
world) in the 50s. Ip Man is a pretty
famous martial artist (one of his students was Bruce Lee). The movie was unbearably slow, with almost no
drama. Skip it. I read a pretty good book recently by Max
Barry called Lexicon (http://www.maxbarry.com/lexicon/). Think of a conspiracy theory with big doses
of Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Grossman’s The Magicians.
Love, H.
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