Aquaria

I learned about this from Scrivener : Opening Wednesday, it's the largest aquarium in the world . I'm a big aquarium fan. I think it started with the tv ads for the National Aquarium in Baltimore when I was a kid. They showed these giant column filled with water and bubbles rising to the top, and they just looked so magical to me, I was hooked. The Boston Aquarium is pretty good too, but I found it a bit limited. Good penguin exhibit though.

Knitting-wise, I'm very happy that the missing sock of the pair I recently finished for M.M. mysteriously showed back up today. I had looked lots of places for it, but apparently not in the middle of the bedroom floor, because that's where it was this morning. I'm getting close to finishing the first of the socks I'm working on for my brother. I was hoping to do the whole pair in three weeks, but it looks like this one is going to take at least two. This means that my cousins will not be recieving hand-knit socks for Christmas this year. Not from me, anyway. However, this will not stop me from ordering Socks that Rock. I've already got the pattern picked for that, as well as for the Koigu that I got last month (was it only last month?).

M.M. has laryngitis of some sort. The poor thing can barely speak, and when she does, she sounds like a hard-livin' 17 year old. Her voice is low and hoarse and alternately crackly and squeaky. It sounds like she spends all her nights smoking and drinking whiskey, which is a little disturbing to this over-protective Mama. Luckily, other than being a little less energetic – or perhaps I should say more quickly tired-out – she doesn't seem to feel unwell. And she gets to take medicine, which is her all-time favorite thing to do (I'm so worried she's going to turn into a drug addict!). I've only been giving her homeopathic remedies, which don't really do anything, but they taste good.

She's really really excited about going on the train to Boston next week. The tickets arrived by FedEx today. By the way, don't even get me started on the fact that Amtrak forced me to pay an extra $12 for FedEx delivery of my tickets. In an age when they make machines that sell subway tickets and airlines don't even have actual tickets anymore, you can't tell me that they can't come up with some other way to work train tickets than delivering them by FedEx. Not only that but I had to actually call their 800 number rather than just order them online, because that was the only way to waive the signature requirement - which would have meant that I had to be home Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 because they couldn't tell me when they'd actually get here. Is this real? Do they actually think this is 1954 and people are home all day?

Anyway, what was I saying? M.M. is really excited about the trip. About half and hour after the tickets came, she said "Mama can I go on the Amtrak train now?" When I said no, it's in 5 days, she got out her Weebles and played train with them. This meant that she sat in her chair and set them up in rows in front of her, I gather as though they were all riding on a train together.