Fun family/neighbors

I meant to blog about this earlier, but forgot to. This is perhaps not terribly exciting, but it's the biggest "blip" on the screen, of late, for me in terms of excitement.

Sometime last week GyeGreene inivited StarTrek Sister-in-Law, who lives next door, to come over and look at a CD-R of recent digital photos of the cousins (her kids, my kid, SchoolAdministrator Sister-in-Law/The Murph's kid). (They couldn't view it at home, as their laptop's CD drive is flakey.) StarTrekSis brought her kids, OnlyNeice (13 y.o.) and FirstNephew (8 y.o.). It was good to have people over to visit, as we typically don't due to the house being un-tidy (The Lady doesn't like people seeing the house in that state). But it's acceptable [barely!] for close family to see it like that.

Gye Greene, StarTrekSister, and OnlyNeice sat around the computer and "slideshowed" through all the different photos. StarTrekSister jotted down notes for which ones she wanted: Big W [like Target, Fred Meyers] has those "print your digital photo" terminals where you choose your digital prints, and each 4"x6" print is 20c each -- very reasonable! -- and they're ready in about an hour. (And you can crop them a bit and change the contrast, too!) Meanwhile, FirstNephew played with Ralphie the Dog.

Then StarTrekSister and OnlyNeice went into the bedroom to talk to The Lady and The Bub, while Gye Greene showed FirstNephew the "hide and seek" game with Ralphie: essentially, you bring Ralphie to the kitchen, tell him to sit, then intone "Staaaay... staaaay" as you leave the kitchen and go hide yourself somewhere around the house. Then you yell out "O.K.!!!" and Ralphie runs all over the houe trying to find you. When you're found, you give him a treat.

FirstNephew was **much** better at it than Gye Greene, as FirstNephew was willing to hide in smaller, more creative places than GG ever does. Several times, Ralphie couldn't find FirstNephew (corgis are cattle-herding dogs, not bred for tracking or hunting; it shows). Then GG and StarTrekSister sat around in the living room while FirstNephew and Ralphie continued to play hide and seek; OnlyNeice helped The Lady with a crossword puzzle.

Finally, it was time for them to go. They got as far as the veranda, just inside the front door, when one of them absent-mindedly started tapping on one of the cymbals of the drum set (what? Not everyone keeps a drum set on the front porch?). So GG fetched a drumstick for each of them, and they started pounding away.

The pounding and crashing kept up for a five or ten minutes, until BrotherDave phoned from next door, asking where his family was -- and also to apologize for being a party-pooper, but could we please stop the kids from drumming: it was setting the dogs off. (They'd listen, then bark their heads off; listen, then bark.) Curiously, Ralphie wasn't barking at all: he's probably used to all the racket.)

And then everyone went home.

I ended up mostly staying out on the veranda. I'm not very sociable, I'm afraid. Should be -- but I'm not.

--TG