we start with an ugliness: i watched a really yucky movie last night. i so regret it. anything good about the movie was completely overshadowed by it's yuckiness. at one point i so wanted to go. i wanted to cover my eyes and my ears at the same time. why didn't i leave? i don't know. i hated the movie and i didn't want to be there. i'm telling you people now--that's the last time i ever stay in a movie like that. i don't care who i'm with. i don't care if i make a scene. my spirit was offended by that movie.

on to better things: today was the day. the day of all you can eat sushi at shabusen with fatima and daman, jordan and tracy, and evan and esther. the brothers and wives were late of course. i got there a few minutes after 11. it was our first time going there so early. 11 is when they open, but jordan had a wedding to do later that afternoon. anyways i walked in and saw d.man and f.woman situating themselves at a table. when i joined them d.man said "hey do you want to get a boat?" and i was totally "yah! can we?" so d.man asked the young waiter boy and sure enough, he got us a boat. when we were taking off our shoes to get in d.man confused the boy by asking about life preservers. f.atima had to tell him that he was joking. this brought up the time f.'oman had that embarrassing moment with the waiter in nanimo:

f: we must have known each other in another life!

w: what?

f: we must have known each other in another life... (in a smaller voice)

w: i'm sorry, i didn't hear that?

f:...er we must have known each other in another life?

ha. anyways, we sat in our boat and chatted and ordered our first round of foods and by the time they started arriving brothers and wives arrived as well. tracy wasn't doing well with the sushi--even the california rolls which are usually her thing "it's an aversion." said jordan matter of factly while tweezing a slice of sushi with his chopsticks. "it's a pregnancy thing." so we plied tracy with cooked meats. esther claimed while eating a chunk of spicy agedeshi tofu that it was her first time having tofu, a fact which evan had to argue, pointing out that she has had miso soup before. "it's my FIRST time!" she contested.

we had some good laughs over some tracy-isms and some typical clarke family dinner debates. d.man got a taste of it all. one such discussion was started inadvertently by me. i brought up that evan and esther are thinking of changing from our ward to the spanish ward. i think they probably will because esther loves it so much. i selfishly don't want them to because i really like having family in my ward. i never get to experience it. anyways so then the discussion moved on to whether there should be separate wards for people of different languages or not. one side was worshiping in your own language and the other was integrating into english speaking wards so you can learn english. there were a lot of points on both sides. what it boils down to for me, is i can see why esther would want to go to the spanish ward, but i want them to stay. and so i said this to them, "what about me? can't you take me into consideration in your decision making process?" shrug. it was worth at try.

so we ate too much, we had a good time and we left. down on the street, at the foot of the stairs we hugged goodbye. vague promises of a games night in the future were uttered. they went one way and we went another.

we went to my car. i had parked it in the only parking garage i ever use downtown. and every time i'm there it reminds me of going to the symphony. and hey! the opening night is coming up and i think i'm going to go. i love opening night at the symphony. last year i was going to go with theresa but that was the exact time that edith found the first bed bug in her room. this year i have considerably less stuff, blue bags of books in the freezer, and i live in a little cozy hovel, but i'm bed bug free and i can go. there's going to be pianist! a virtuoso!

speaking of bed bugs f.woman and d.man traumatized me afresh with description of a dr. oz show about bed bugs. a dr. stuck his arm into a b.b. infested thing and let them bite him! the thought of that alone--of seeing one on a person and biting him to boot, can throw me over the edge.

this was our conversation on the way to bcit to get d.man's student id. d.man's a student now and evan is enjoying his first semester at ubc. he's taking linguistics 100! we were talking about it at breakfast/lunch/dinner (you don't eat much else on shabusen days) and it totally brought me back to my 1st semester at ubc. i took linguistics 100 too. i remember the room with the tiered wooden seats terraced up. that's where i met mia and she forced me to be her friend. i miss school. there's something so great about going to school and being a student. to opening up your mind and absorbing all the new info and ideas. and that's your main job. that's what you do. you're devoted to learning, thinking, making connections, internalizing, seeing things a new way. sigh. i hope evan and kyle and d.man enjoy themselves.

it's raining hard.

after bcit we went back to d.man's and f.woman's place and f.'oman and i chatted. d.man went to the gym. then i came home.

i forgot to say that i almost got into an accident on the way to shabusen this morning. i was driving down the left hand turn lane and the light was green. there was a lot of space between me and the car in front of me luckily because it stopped and i was going quite fast, so i put on my breaks and since it had been raining the road was really oily there and i skidded and i skidded hard. i felt for sure i was going to ram into the back of that car but i stopped just short. and that's when my heart exploded into my throat. it would have been bad. real bad.

and this is the end to my rambling road.