The kids drove back to college at o'dark-hundred this morning. It was wonderful having them home for a few days. :)

That subject line? New friends probably haven't heard about our daughter's phobia regarding crustaceans (crabs, crawdads, lobsters), but it is a real thing. :O

Geico has been running a TV commercial recently that features a couple at a resort lounging in a spa, only to have a giant lobster soaking across from them strike up a conversation. I've been seeing it for weeks, and thinking that it is totally our daughter's nightmare.

Well, Friday night she came back from running an errand and sat down on the sofa for a few minutes. The TV was on, and...

"Oh my god! And those giant legs! Ugh, that's disgusting!" *flees*

Part of me was thinking she really needed to see it, because she would hate it so much! But also, totally Ewwww for her, so... \o?

Every now and then I think about phobias, and how OTHER people's phobias sometimes seem weird while your own, of course, are perfectly reasonable.

So, why not a poll? This is for actual phobias, not general fears or even severe dislikes. *drumrolllll*

Just a quick reminder to please check out the LJ Idol entries for this week. There are two sets of entries and two polls, and we're down to the Top Six (so, 12 entries in all). I'm hoping to make it through this week, so every vote helps!

Today we visited Washington's Mt. Vernon estate. It was beautiful and huge, and I can't imagine living there without air-conditioning. Like the previous few days, it was so hot and muggy today that we just sweated through all our clothes until we became soggy and miserable. I honestly don't know how people manage to wear business suits in this weather. Even just a t-shirt and shorts were too much! Tomorrow should be an interesting situation, what with cool clothes needed for DC roaming and then fresh, moderate clothes for the lengthy airplane trips back. Plus, packing sweaty clothes back in with the regular clothes. :O

I wish we'd had time to go to the museum store at the National Art Gallery yesterday. It was huge. On Thursday, we spent so much time fooling around at the Natural History Museum store that we felt compelled to buy something. First, there were lobster and squid hats, a plush squid, and then various assorted plastic squid, octopi, and crustaceans to photograph and send to our daughter, who has a crustacean phobia. This goes along with the pictures of a boiled shrimp and an official t-shirt-with-happy-idiot crawdad, from our dinner at Hot and Juicy on Wednesday night. The boiled shrimp picture prompted a STAHP response, and I'm not sure she ever saw the t-shirt. She says she ignored the offerings from the Museum Store (boooo! Those were the "We're thinking of you!" photos), which means she never saw the plush narwhal picture we also sent. Seriously—there's a whole narwhal thing going on at that museum right now. My son and I each bought a small, chubby, derpy-looking plastic dinosaur creature at that store, as entertainment payback. But there were a lot of cute plush toys there.

Oh, and for random amusement, we started and finished watching Stranger Things while staying in D.C. We all enjoyed that a lot. Now I've finally persuaded HalfshellHusband and the boy to try out Awake, even though it was cancelled after one season. Still, what an intriguing show.

Okay, off to bed. There's packing and other logistics tomorrow, plus a trip to the National Portrait Gallery, which our daughter raves about. Though she was "meh" on the National Art Gallery (I could have spent a whole day there), and she told us that the Air and Space Museum wasn't all that great (the rest of us spent FOUR HOURS there, just on Space plus the Wright Brothers, as I said). So, you know. Her judgment might be a little suspect. But still, those are the plans.

Hope you're all enjoying the weekend, and that it's less hot wherever you are...

While I want this to be over, I'm petrified of the fallout if American voters make the wrong choice this election. I can't vote until after work, as my polling place is back to being my local elementary school and there isn't enough parking. Before work is also school drop-off, so that wasn't going to work out.

This weekend, I took down the outside Halloween decorations. They still aren't boxed up (I had to shake the water out of the lights, and crack open and drain a plastic ghost), but maybe tonight? I DID get out on the roof and look around for any chewed spots that might explain how the creatures-between-the-floors got in. The roof looks great, so no news there.

Sunday, while I was in the bathroom, I heard a *scrabble* *whoosh* sound-sequence that I thought might be a squirrel skidding on the roof.

Me: Hah! So there!
??: *whuff* *whuff*
Me: Wait. Kitty, is that you?

The noise wasn't from the roof, it was from the door to the hallway. Someone was seeking access to her buckets again...

I'll be going out for a bike ride in an hour or so. The weather should be nice—about 75^o, with little wind. OTOH, the wind direction is from the dump. Also? It's spider migration season again. *positive arachnid-free thoughts* *positive arachnid-free thoughts*

You may remember my daughter's crustacean phobia. We ran across a photo from a play in the San Francisco Chronical over the weekend, and while technically not a crustacean, creepy enough. She'd gone to the beach the day before, so my husband sent it to her in an email with "DID YOU ENJOY THE BEACH????!!!!???" as the subject line:



\o? Fortunately, not an actual phobia trigger, so I think she found it funny instead. But what a picture!

Speaking of pictures, I ran across this JJ Levine Switch photo series the other day. What an interesting idea, and there are cases where I cannot be sure of which gender is the true one for the people in the photos. Makeup and hairstyles and accessories make more of a difference than you might think.

Yesterday, I spent some time trying to find good performances of Shostakovich's Piano Concerto #2. I have one that I love, but it's on vinyl, and I need birthday suggestions for family. I tooled around Amazon, then over to youtube (to see what else was available). At some point, I actually Googled the Time-Life series with the performance I like, and discovered it was not the pianist I thought. Who IS available on CD. Hah! But in the meantime, I had fun comparing other interpretations. This one is not bad—fantastic orchestra performance, and the soloist's interpretation is very good (who knew Samwise Gamgee played the piano? And with such commitment! Check out 4:00-5:00 for allll the feels). This other had a nicer piano interpretation, though I liked the orchestra less. I loved the recurring complaints in the comments for most about the first movement being played too fast—invariably followed up by, "Have you heard the composer's own rendition of this piece?" The soloists clearly felt Shostakovich himself crossed the line, so they are ALL slower to some degree. I prefer a slightly smoother, confident approach to the opening rather than a staccato one, so this slow, poinky rendition was pretty much unbearable. The one I'm adding to my wishlist is Christina Ortiz (not on youtube—her version there is too placid), along with some of the Khachaturian pieces I listened to a few weeks back. But otherwise, the list is pretty small. I'm old enough that I don't need or want much apart from free time and winning the lottery, neither of which is easily acquired! We're staggering under maintenance/repair for all three cars right now, too, so that's just as well, up until the point where people (husband and kids) feel bad because they can't figure out what to give me. /o\

Oh, my muse—it would be nice to have that back, too. But again... not something you can order via Amazon!

All right, meetings await. Always. Hrmmm...