Well, we've left San Antonio and are now semi-comfortably ensconced in a Motel 6 in Greenville, Texas (where, like our last hotel, wifi is only accessible from the lobby; and where, unlike our last hotel, said lobby has no chairs). I was telling Tryphena last night or today some time that we should just make a simple list of what we saw, since we probably don't have the time or energy to actually journal about it and we don't want to forget. You know me, so you know it's gonna turn out long anyway, but here goes.

Tuesday:
Travelled in Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas. Saw 0 armadillos. Got pulled over by 2 Texas state cops for the same dead headlight within 15 miles of one another and 30 miles of our destination. I was driving both times.

Wednesday:
More travelling through Texas. Drove through Dallas, Waco, Austin, and - get this - DeSoto, TX. Arrived in San Antonio. Went to the hotel in the SW corner of the city, realized the airport was in the NE corner, picked Meg up from the airport. Saw giant pair or cowboy boots and lots of palm trees. Beginning to suspect armadillos to be a myth.

Thursday:
Spent the day on Lackland Air Force Base. Got Molly for "base freedom" in the afternoon. Had lunch at Godfather's. Ben called during Lunch and Molly ate and talked at the same time - in a very pofessional, airmanlike manner, of course. Hit every BX on the base. Sunburned.

Friday:
Watched Mo graduate from boot camp. Got Mo for "town pass" in the afternoon. Saw the Alamo. Got separated from everybody but Meg and wandered around the vicinity of the Alamo, seeing such sights as the Ripley's: Believe it or Not storefronts and the Torch of Friendship. Remembered the Alamo. Reunited with family, walked to the River Walk. Took a River Walk guided boat tour, which I TOTALLY recommend! BARELY got Mo back to base on time.

Saturday:
Mo had all-day town pass, which meant it was time to go to SEA WORLD! She couldn't find any lonely family-less wingmen to bring along, so it was just us folks minus Grandma. This is what we saw and did:
- Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales (I got to touch one)
- the killer whale show, featuring Shamu and about four (?) other orcas. (Note: This was so, so, so, so, SO, so cool!)
- baluga/dolphin/human acrobats show
- crocs (Mo's in the 320th, whose mascot is a croc)
- sea lions (one sat on its head...  not as a trick, just 'cause it felt like it; so funny!)
- otters! (yay!) both Asian and North American
- a spinny-upside-downy-coaster: fun, but too short
- a long swoopy roller coaster; closer, but also too short imho; great view of San Antonio though
That may not sound like much, but it was a reasonably full day and quite satisfying. The only thing I would do differently, had I more energy and time, is I would have seen the orcas twice. They were by far the coolest thing, to me at any rate. Also, I'm writing them to ask for the addition of armadillos to the park. (Hey, if they can have Clydesdales...)
After that we went back to our hotel, where Molly insisted we watch Stargate together for old times' sake while she went through the stuff she'd asked us to bring and decided what she REALLY wanted to bring to tech school. BARELY got Mo back to base on time.
We had a late dinner at the Denny's next to our hotel, and we met Meg's friend Ryan who worked over where she lives (Papa and Grandma met him before, when they were there) whose parents live in San Antonio. Told him my plans to travel to the other side of the world my first time flying. He told me I was crazy, which, as you can imagine, was news to me.

Sunday:
Papa took Meg back to the airport at three in the morning and she left for Orlando.
The rest of us went to church with Molly on base. There were a few family members of graduates there, but primarily it was Air Force trainees. It was really great to watch how meaningful it was to them. Like Mo says, "'There are no atheists in foxholes'...or in boot camp." They played a music video - you may have seen it before, but I hadn't - of a song called Letters from Home. In any other setting I might have thought it kind of cheesy, probably wouldn't have cared much... but those trainees cheered like you wouldn't believe when it came on, end even more when the soldier comes home at the end. Mo says some of the people in her flight cry every time.
Had lunch with Mo on base - she packed away so much Godfather's pizza. Papa said, "We're not gonna be able to finish this;" but she said, "Speak for your own self. Nothin' can stop the Air Force, the song says so," and downed another slice of pepperoni, some streudel, and some monkey bread. Verily, she is mighty.
Headed back up to Greenville. I drove most of the way and still haven't seen an armadillo. I think I've been fed a lie this whole time and there is no such thing.

p.s. Mo says during graduation the guy next to her passed out and face-planted into the guy in front of him (not an uncommon occurrence for exhausted graduates if they lock their knees or fail to properly hydrate). She didn't laugh till later, but - she brags - retained her "military bearing."
p.p.s. Mo had her hair in a "sock bun" the first two days, which is rather doughnut-esque and leaves a nice indent at the back of her head for Phebe and I to poke. We got away with this much more than we would have with the old Molly. That's military bearing for you.

This hotel we're staying at now has wifi, but it doesn't apparently reach to our rooms so last night and tonight we've come to the lobby for a bit before bed to check e-mails etc. Tonight I also have to check when Iron Man comes out, becaues Molly wants to know.
Molly! Who is graduating from boot camp tomorrow!
We got to see her today, and she is SO TANNED! More tanned than any of us knew some one in our family could get. She has to wear glasses instead of contacts, too - just for basic - so she looked really different. Also, she's lost weight and when we saw her she was wearing her dress blues. Tomorrow is when she actually graduates, and then we get to take her off base for the afternoon. We're going to the San Antonio River Walk and to the Alamo. (We're also going to work on my movie for school, filming my parents' scene.) The next day, aparently, we're going to SeaWorld. Grandma doesn't particularly want to go, so the folks told Mo to adopt some poor fellow airman whose family couldn't come for the day. I hope that works out, 'cause it would be really nice.

P.S. There was a t-shirt that said "My Sister Wears Combat Boots," which of course I wanted... but it wasn't all that attractive, and I didn't have any money anyway, so I didn't get it.

Well, it'll be about 8:30 by the time I get done writing this.

I have so much going on I don't have time to write it all. The headlines are as follows:

My younger sister went in for Basic Training in Texas. Her boot camp graduation is in April, and I am trying hard to work out being able to go... but working around school is going to be rough, because this semester is really really busy and I've had to use skips for weather.

I spent Spring Break running around the Midwest: Nashville, Indianapolis, Winona Lake, a short jaunt to Fort Wayne, and finally Wheaton. I have where all I went an what all I did well documented in my Book of Anything, but I probably won't get around to typing that all up to share with you all. If I saw you, you know it. If I didn't, I'm sorry; my week really was quite booked full.

This week I signed up for my final semeter of college. Ahhh! People keep saying, "It probably still seems far away," and I'm like, "Ahhh, no! It's too soon, it's too soon!" *gasps in an exaggerated anime fashion* I'm so not ready for the "real world." They're making me take algebra again, which is ridiculous; my Grace algebra credit didn't have the proper prerequisites, even though the SIU one is gonna be easier than what I took at Grace. *rolls eyes* What a grandiose waste of my time.

Last, but certainly not least, some of you my be aware of my consternation over what to do with myself this summer. I've pretty much settled on a plan, but it all depends on whether or not it can be afforded. So! If possible, I will be spending the summer in Asia with my older sister, doing design work for language-related NGOs. (This is where you ask, "The B-I NGOs?" lol... ahh I'm funny. No, "NGO" just means "non-government organization," fyi.) So! Please pray about that, it's pretty major.

p.s. Just discovered this anime, totally by accident, on YouTube. I really like it, but it takes a little while to figure out what it's about. If you don't like shojo anime you probably won't stick with it long enough to get to the action... and you won't necessarilly like the ending... but I thought, overall, that it was a good miniseries. As with a lot of anime, I'm eager to watch it again now that I know what was going on that whole time (you know, post-big reveal). Also it taught me some more Japanese: "Sola" means "sky." See, anime is educational!
p.p.s. Have started leaving off personal pronouns at beginning of sentances. Have no excuse for this recreant behavior. Beg my readers' forbearance.

I got a snow day! I actually did, since it's been snowing then sleeting then raining then snowing and sleeting some more since yesterday morning resulting in a very fine sheet of ice coated in a thin, powdery layer of snow all over the ground today... very nice sledding weather! The precipitation ceased so we - my father, my sisters, and I - dug out the old red sled ("red" as in the color it was fifteen or twenty years ago when it was purchased) and had some fun in the back yard and the cornsicle field beyond. Being an old and abused thing, the sled eventually broke on us... so we compromised with a bin lid (Molly's contribution) and a piece of old pool siding ("It's good for everything!") with holes put in it and ropes tied through (contrived by my father). We broke the former, and the latter almost broke us (once I was sure I was going to hit the telephone pole and gave myself a cramp trying desperately to stop; and just about every time the ride ended by the rider being dumped onto patches of grassicles). We tried it one at a time, two at a time, four at a time; on our bums, on our knees; once Mo and I went back-to back with our arms linked and she steered us so I was face-first when we reached the treeline... lol. Finally, when she went to throw away the shattered bin lid, Mo brought back the coordinating bin (which was cracked down the front)... proceeded to kick out the front, and made it about half-way down the hill despite the resistance of that bevelled bin-bottom. Finally we came inside and got good and toasty with hot chocolate and laptops. I noted to Molly, "My cheeks are rosy! I can feel it. It's like a bunch of fairies are pinching me."
...To which she replied, "You need a slam-bug-whopper."*

*"slam-bug-whopper" was my brother's term for a fly-swatter when he was little.

p.s. King Caspian (Samuel West) from the old Narnia VotDT was in this movie - w00t.

As you may or may not know, one of my hobbies is digging up shows posted on YouTube or other video hosting sites. The discovery that such a thing is possible has given me the chance to see fan-subtitled anime that hasn't officially made it to this country yet, get Doctor Who right after they get it in the UK rather than waiting a million years till it trickles down to us poor Americans, and discover or rediscover old shows long dead.

In this last category falls the show Now & Again, a modern-day-setting sci-fi that ran for only 22 episodes in 1999 and 2000. The main character is a normal man, Michael Wiseman (John Goodman), who is hit by a subway train and whose brain is placed in a man-made superhuman body (Eric Close) under the control and funding of the government. He is offered a choice by project leader Doctor Morris (played by Dennis Haysbert of The Unit and those AllState commercials): continue living, on their terms and their rules in this body that they own, or die like he would have anyway if they hadn't been there to harvest his mind. Obviously he chooses the former (else we wouldn't have a show or, at any rate, he wouldn't be the main character), which proves to be a problem as the government's rules entail never again making contact with his wife and teenage daughter. Each episode has two storylines which occasionally converge: what's going on with Michael, and what's going on with his family.

Now this show of course had its flaws (the basic premise of a government-owned superhuman being unoriginal, for one), but it also had heart... it had heart in spades. It was great fun while it ran, a real disappointment when it was cancelled, exciting to rediscover, and another disappointement when I finished the 22nd episode again the other day.

I'm not exactly sure what this post is about, besides commemorating my disappointment that there isn't any more of this show to be had. I've written before about the feeling of finishing a tv or book series... and how, despite it, while I'm in the midst of a given series I can't wait till I've reached the end. The other thing I was thinking about was how sad it was that Now & Again isn't listed on Xangazon and probably isn't even available on DVD... and what a wonderful thing YouTube is. If I ever met its maker, I would give him a cookie.