Day Three

The edict governing today's entertainment was 'no walking'. So we started with a barbecue. Turkey burgers (mmm, bland) and grilled salmon. All the fixings had to be bought from two *different* grocery stores, for some reason... at the first we were all there, and barely got anything done, but for the second they left mom and me playing Pikmin and went off to get everything else with a more reasonably sized shopping expedition.

After lunch, we tried to decide what to do, and settled on a movie. So we played Super Mario Party 4 on the evil koopa level with the stupid monkey making us all go the wrong way except Anna, who ended up with four stars to everyone else's zero, until 7:30 or so.

Then we saw '28 days later'. Mom hated it (and covered her eyes through most of it) but the rest of us thought it was pretty good, if a tad formulaic.

Afterwards we played a little more super mario party until mom fell asleep. A pattern began to form -- Alex would win all the mini games, I would collect the most coins, Anna would get the most stars, and mom would lose horribly. Falling asleep didn't help.

Then I took her back to her hotel. Part of 405 that we wanted to use and the 520 bridge were both closed, but it wasn't too far out of the way to go around.

Day Four

This was the last day my mom was in town, and again it started with me picking her up at her hotel and heading over to Anna's. Today was the day we'd planned to go look at festivals and fairs, so of course the weather shifted from warm and wonderful and sunny to cold and somewhat rainy.

The first place we went was the Fremont Sunday Market, which basically had a bunch of booths with people selling various things. I considered buying a silver butterfly ring, and a runestone cupholder with the symbol of a spiral, and an induction flashlight charged by shaking vigorously, and a scrap-metal sculpture of a small insect, but in the first case the ring was too gaudy and complicated, in the second the shopkeeper was absent from her booth, in the third the flashlights were badly overpriced, and in the last... well... I couldn't think of anywhere to put it. It was kind of big and heavy.

After visiting the Fremont Troll, we had lunch at Kidd Valley. The shakes were good, the food... not so good. Afterwards we went to some arts fair somewhere vaguely near there, where they had lots of tempting food and funnel cakes! I love funnel cakes... but I was full of fast food and coudln't have any. It was torture. I did buy something from that fair, at least... a colorful otter refrigerator magnet. An awful lot of the art and crafts on display were by children from the local school, so I'd have to say that overall the quality of merchandise was lower than the Fremont Market. Still, Fremont had no funnel cakes.

Then we really didn't have any idea what to do. It was raining, and people were sleepy. We stopped for overpriced coffee and tea at a Starbucks, and wandered around in the car, and ended up back at Anna's place, where we played some Super Mario Party, watched 'Zero Effect', and ate junk food, until it was late and mom was asleep on the couch.

Tomorrow she goes home, and the rest of us go back to work. Which means... ah, whatever.