Visiting the folks these days has become an experience rather like camping out in a restaurant. Lots of food, but you have to sleep in the manger with the dogs, or dog, as it were. There's only one bedroom in the current condo, and that goes to the Princess of the Pea & her 9 PM bedtimes. I shouldn't complain - she had a much longer way to go, and via Logan Airport at that. The only travel hazards I have to fear are sleep-deprived maniacs in eighteen-wheelers trying to make NYC by daylight.

No stateside terror attacks yet, unless you believe that al Queda has gotten its hands on major-league BW technology, and chose to use it to attack the beef industry. Beagle II stubbornly refuses to say a peep; I fear that would be due to its current simultaneous occupation of twenty acres of Martian outback. My sister sounds like one of those myopic leftie villains from an old Ben Bova novel, complaining about money spent on the space program which "ought to be spent on education". She's been in New England too long; must be something in Boston municipal water or something. I blame the Kennedies.

I went shopping in a little game shop over on Babcock Boulevard yesterday. Malls are all different, but comix and gaming shops are all the same in their little ways. Had to pry the clerk out of a tabletop gaming session in the back to get my shopping done. Twice. They had the POS station wired with a synthetic voice, announcing the details of every transaction. Wonder if they have a blind clerk on one of their shifts or something?

My sister got me a DVD of Chicago for Christmas, and then complained bitterly when she found out that the parents didn't have a DVD set for the television. She had counted on watching it. Way to go, there, Sis. So she watched an old VHS tape of the Matrix, kevtching about how ooky it was.