There was

The hospital trip yesterday led to a diagnosis of tendonitis, a shot of cortisone, and a prescription for physical therapy for my mom. I learned that mom is even more squeamish than I am when she made the "eww" face and twitched when the doctor brought out a plastic model of the tendon-bond joint in question to demonstrate why she (mom, not the doctor, obviously) was in pain. The doctor said it was partially due to bad design of the human bone structure there and, of course, I immediately started thinking the intelligent design vs. natural selection argument in my head. The engineers may have something to say about putting a tendon between two bones, but the evolution biologists would most certainly point out that considering the joint in question was intended to be used in a life style significantly different from what we're currently putting it through, all things considered, it's doing fairly well.

Phone calls for appointments and things will follow.

Now, for the next recap:

Wednesday was the time-honored Lunatics Movies Day. Kateryna arrived with Lusine. Anna arrived with Malvina. I'm not entirely sure how Victoria arrived but she came also, while I arrived with Soniya. There was food and movies and every one liked Victoria's brown cake. (We had some fun trying to figure out, ahead of time, if there was anything else edible besides chocolate that'd make a cake brown.)

We swapped presents and Anna, despite of being sick, remembered to bring the Hello Kitty coloring book that we got at the arcade in Golfland over the summer. Along with coloring implements. For those who are less familiar with the antics of the Lunatics a coloring book seems harmless enough, if not downright tame and boring. They would then, upon taking a look at the content of the book, be forcefully reminded of the fact that while the Lunatics are many things (loud? Sometimes. Strange? Most definitely) boring is generally not one of them. Ever imagined Hello Kitty with an evil smile? Emo-goth Hello Kitty? Aquamarine bears and Hello Kitty with chicken pox and some sort of Russian remedy that's apparently GREEN plastered on top of each pox?
Like I said: boring is...not so much of a problem.

We watched Ratatouille (Kate hid in her room, courtesy of having watched it a few times too many already). We watched Spongebob (Victoria, Soniya, and I spent different amounts of time occupied with things that are not located near the direction of the TV). Anna threatened us to color the coloring book, or ELSE (everyone laughed, but everyone colored a little too.) I think we watched Meet the Robinsons that day too, though my recollection of the order of movies we watched is a little hazy by now (I watched more movies that week than I did in the six months before). There was a strange pizza for lunch. It was very geometrical with whole basil leaves and perfect transverse cross sections of a tomato fruit laid out on top. It was my first encounter with pizza precision geometry. (Though if Mike knew how to bake pizzas and made pizza for himself when bored he may lay out the topping in some sort of fractal configuration.) (This will only ever occur if no one else is around and is likely to be around for a while, of course.) Anna brought chocolate, which came with a CD of classical music, and we imagined someone sitting alone in a room eating chocolate while listening to...what was it? Mozart? Beethoven?

...actually that would be a very depressing scenario -- eating chocolate alone with classical music.

Eventually the party tapered down to four people again and we watched Pushing Daisies until my dad came and picked me up. Photo from the day: