Well, today was definitely a mixed bag.  I woke up as usual, got ready, and was about to head out and get something for my mom for Mother’s Day when my stepdad came home and conscripted me to help his with his latest impulse-buy:  an iPod touch.  Their Windows XP computer was having difficulty working with it (it turned out that an outdated version of iTunes was the real culprit: nasty fiend), so after instructing him how to rip CD’s, sync music and photos, have separate libraries for him and my mom, work with the Touch interface, and use the iTunes store, a couple of hours had been gobbled by the insidious gobbler of hours.

As I was getting ready to head out again, my mother got back home from her mischief (philandering, gallivanting… whatever it is she does when she’s out of my sight.  She always comes back on Saturdays with the scent of carnage and her shoulders held a little higher) and my grandmother called.  It seems that last night my aunt Sandra passed away.  I only really knew Sandra very well in the context of family gatherings, as she never lived near me in my lifetime, but it was a very significant hit to the rest of my family.  What I do know of her was that she was just the nicest woman, always so cheerful and loving.  She had a pending offer to me to go get dinner at her house, as she is the only member of my mom’s side of the family that lives on the west side of the state.  My mother was in tears, and my grandpa (I call him Granddad) I’m sure was having an even harder time with it, too.  Both he and his ex-wife outlived their daughter, and I cannot even imagine the pain that causes.  She was 52, I believe, by the way.  Her youngest daughter (17) is now completely alone, as her father is not in the picture and none of the rest of the family lives over in the Seattle area except for her brother (28.)  Death just isn’t very easy, it seems.  My family’s immediate goal, from what I can gather, is to not let this ruin Mother’s Day too much.

After absorbing this news and getting back on our feet, I was about ready to leave anew when my stepdad suggested that for Mother’s Day I make dinner for my mom tonight.  Thus, I opted to try to make a delectable spaghetti recipe, as spaghetti is my mom’s all-time favorite food.  So I finally made it out the door!!  ...albeit just to the grocery store roughly a block away.  We ended up inviting my grandparents to join us for dinner, as I have this most unfortunate habit of acquisitioning enough ingredients when I go shopping to undo a couple holocausts, and we wanted to give them an opportunity to get out of the house.  Everyone said they liked the spaghetti:  I think the honey and chili paste are the most notable ingredients in this recipe.  I think also that I will make it again.

I kept feeding my dog the pasta when it was done cooking.  She ate it very satisfyingly, managing to slurp it despite her lack of really sealable lips.  Pasta really ranks up there with peanut butter as an amusing dog treat.  I plan to experiment with feeding her more exotic substances at a later time.

Oh, and I had some good conversations with my cat.  If I meow at him while he’s sleeping, he’ll get up and look really ruffled, but he will invariably meow back at me.  After having believed for years now that I was having profound discussions with him when I meow with him, I concluded today that he is, in fact, trying to teach me how to meow correctly (seeing that he shares a familiar similar, annoyed, expression with my German teacher when they both keep repeating things to me) as opposed to actually conversing with me.  He often also ends our speech sessions with a good claw-to-the-face-or-arm.  Indeed, I could imagine this scenario with human language rather vividly:  a man visiting Palestine encounters a gruff-looking man carrying an automatic firearm walking on the street.  The first man, due to lack of language mastery, says that the second’s mother is something embarrassingly unbecoming instead of asking how to get to the bakery for some delectable scones.  The second man repeatedly tells the man how to actually ask how to get to the bakery from some delectable scones, and the first man repeatedly tells the second that his mother is doing something involving livestock and shaming the family honor.  The man with the firearm finally gets so fed up that he claws the first in the arm and prowls away to eat some mice and talk with me.

After dinner, I met up with Tyler and Ana at the Locus of Spokane:  Wal-Mart.  I got some ingredients for the Double Peanut Butter Cheesecake Swirl Brownies (Mk II) that I’m going to be making tomorrow for our Mother’s Day brunch.  My reserve supply of non-Wal-Mart air was running out (they get a discount on it when they ship it in from the same sweatshops from which they get their clothing and cashiers) after about a half-hour, so I convinced Tyler and Ana to get out of there before we grew mullets.  Tyler and I then went on to LASER QUEST.  Oh, my Spokane trips are only complete when I get to visit Laser Quest.  In case you, dear reader, are unaware, I worked at Laser Quest for roughly a year and a half when I was in high school, so I have the most intimate of connections with it (really, don’t ask.)  My little record I have going with myself is that ever since I quit there almost two years ago now, I have never gotten anything other than first place, and this is over like probably 30 games now.  Tonight… was very close.  I did indeed get first place, but instead of a comfortable buffer of a few hundred points between me and second-place, we were only about 50 points apart.  I have blisters on me’ fingers from pulling that damned trigger almost three thousand times over 40 minutes.  Laser Quest, by the way, falls in that embarrassing category with DDR as “one-of-those-activities-in-which-I-sweat-a-lot-more-than-I-really-should.”  Indeed, it’s rather acrobatic if you play it right.  Anyone who has seen a hardcore Laser Questor (yes, it is an honorable title held by us select few) at work knows that it involves a lot of dancing, twisting, and otherwise writhing in a manner that would be really amusing to replicate at work, on the street, or in a high intensity hostage situation.  This evening, for example, I’m pretty sure I managed to touch my head to my heel in a maneuver for which my spine has not yet forgiven me.  My right shoulder blade and one of my vertebrate had a falling out and are refusing to talk to each other.  They insist on using my poor nerve endings to carry messages back and forth to each other instead of just talking it out like normal bones (Disclaimer to friends:  I don’t really think you are bones.)  When they were handing out score cards after our round of Laser Quest, I got a rousing bout of ‘boo’s (actually mixed with probably an equal amount of applause, to be completely fair) when my name was called.  There was one guy, though, with whom I was dueling on and off through the whole match who came up and gave me a high-five and heartfelt congratulations.  He was very kind, so I conjured a treat from my goody bag and gave him a free game of Laser Quest.  (To clarify what otherwise might be a confusing statement, I had a free game that expired before I next came back to Spokane, so I wanted to give it away, and it seemed that natural justice dictated that I give it to the good sport of the bunch.  The parts about conjuring and goody bags are less easily explained.)

I drove home, following a police officer who was speeding and changing all of the stoplights with his magic stoplight changer (generally, seeing as the officer was clearly not on assignment due to lack of flashing lights, this would bother me, but as I was following and getting to speed and blow through stoplights, I decided to just go with it.)  It is of note, though, that this is the second Spokane police officer who I’ve seen abuse their stoplight changing powers (or first, and he just gets around).  Hm.

Tomorrow is a day of sad family, yummy brunch, delicious dessert, goodbyes, more air travel, a midterm essay, and the end of the weekend.  I must be sure to chat some more with my cat before I leave.