Happy Year of the Ox!

Happy Year of the Ox, y'all. It actually started Monday, but Chinese New Year's lasts 15 days till the Lantern Festival, and today was the parade in DC's rather small Chinatown. We went to the parade, ate at the Chinatown Fuddrucker's (Sarah likes their milkshakes), watched the parade, bought some souvenirs in Chinatown shops (mostly dragon related since Sarah was born in the Year of the Dragon and is big on dragons), and came home. Tonight we went out for Italian.

Today was a great day for the parade: low 50s, not a cloud in the sky. Some years it's been bitterly cold. Some years we haven't gone because Sarah didn't want to. She waxes hot and cold on how into her Chinese heritage she is, but we're in a hot period right now and she's really interested and wanted Chinese souvenirs. (She wanted expensive artwork, actually, but settled for stuff under $10, each, all with dragons.) More to come.

Let them Win Cake

Today [Saturday, November 15] was Sarah's school's annual Christmas Attic Fundraiser -- a major chunk of the school's fundraising effort; I think they made 20 grand or so at it last year. We attended but could only spare an hour or so. After making the rounds, Sarah decided to do the "cakewalk" in which you win a cake if you land on the winning number -- and on her second or third try, won a cake. A nice looking chocolate frosted cake with nuts. I agreed to take it home while she and Tam did other things (we live two blocks away).

Then I came back to the school. Sarah caught up with me in the hallway to announce she'd just won another cake! This one was a big thing shaped like a Christmas tree.

Up to this point Sarah had often complained "I never win anything!" and I noted that this would no longer be a valid complaint.

We decided that since her good friend across the street, Catherine, is suffering from a sort of quarantine because her older sister has mononucleosis, it would be nice to give one of the two cakes to her family. She agreed. She kept the Christmas tree cake, shown in the photo with her and Tam (kosher since Sarah's face does not appear, as it doesn't on blog pics).
She can no longer complain that she never has won anything.

That's most of the day; we had some quarreling and didn't do much else. But during the Christmas attic she did buy a little notebook/diary thing, which she personalized, from a nice nun selling stuff. In the Catholic schools today nuns are a rarity, and to Sarah they're a fascination, whereas those of us like me who were educated by nuns are bemused by how, to Sarah's generation, they are quaint, sweet ladies, instead of the abject holy terrors armed with rulers, as God obviously intended. Oh well.

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