It's a Mall World After All

Last night Lucie and I dropped off the kids at youth group at church, donned our bullet-proof vests, and went to the mall. I should have worn some eye protection - what a collection of freaks out there. At first glance, some of these side-show characters look like they just crawled into the place. But if you look carefully, they have crafted themselves to look grungy. One 'person' stopped Lucie and I in our tracks and people around us laughed at our expressions. Hard to describe how 'it' looked but it was nightmarish. Anyway, we were able to get the stuff Lucie needed for her church workers and the lines and traffic were not bad.

When we picked up the kids later, we talked to a couple of friends. One recently unemployed girl used a headhunter and wound up getting a job very quickly. She is going to forward me his name. So that was encouraging.

Saturday morning I took Elliott to basketball practice. That went well. He got into a pick-up game before his practice and did well. When that was over, his coach still hadn't arrived so I jumped in and started to set his team up for a scrimmage. Then the assistant coach arrived and took over. They practiced for about 30 minutes, then played another unofficial game against the next team coming in. They lost 18-22 but Elliott had 6 points, a few rebounds and steals, and played well. One kid formed an alliance with another apparently and tried to force-feed him the ball every time down court. Which resulted in a lot of turnovers. The coaches yelled at him to "Get Elliott the ball." He can hit the outside shots and is doing great on defense. His first game is next Saturday.

Today Elliott has a friend coming over to finish a science fair project. Just when I thought all the leaves were down, more drifted in during the recent snow and rain. I guess I will go suck them up. And brush out Jasmine - she is looking pretty woolly and in need of some de-thatching. Tonight we are going over to some friends' for dinner.