horseradish and a long white envelope from New York

filkerdave does the whole number in kashering his house for Passover. I buy matzoh and make haroset and grate horseradish. Even that's pretty much more than I can do (I mean, the house does not get clean).

The people I was working for yesterday came home kind of late, so I missed most of the Winterguard friends and family show, but I got to see the San Benito High School drum line do some very fine work to a very strange theme -- they all had SWAT team t shirts and they made their drums sound like gunfire. It was really a magnificent evening. The kids all cheered outrageously for each other, and danced together for a while afterwards, showing off their breakdancing moves, and some rifty stuff between the band and guard ("it's always that way," the director said)was clearly healed as the band members that came to watch the Winterguard made a big fuss about how wonderful they were. And they were -- they did a second performance of their Leonardo da Vinci- inspired piece and it was amazing. There's something different about the performances of kids (I mean kids who are not Hollywood professionals). It's so from the heart, and fujll of life and promise, and fun. I don't mean kids who are pushed into performing, like the Mormon kids at the funeral a couple months back. I mean things like our band and guard.

on the weather front, it did not rain on the 18th. I have been paying attention to this, because it's the birthday of my children so I notice. In 27 events (26 years plus the day of actual birth of my firstborn) it has rained on that day 20 times. But to make up for it, it's raining today. The main reason this is interesting is that hereabouts people tend to think that the rainy season ends in March.

I got a long white envelope from New York today. Somebody wants to see the first 50 pages of the Chuy book!

I can hardly breathe . . .

I had to read the thing four times to be able to tell whether it was "yes" or "no." It was a form rejection paper with all the submission format advice, but across the top was scrawled "pls send 1st 50 pgs address to --"

When my hands are not covered in chopped apple and raisins, I'll put the package together and send it.