Plot Summary

Bought shoes this weekend, boldly deciding against the Target-brand "Hadley"s I'd been wearing for a year or two now.

I had the clerk at Payless measure the laces which came with this new pair, confirming my suspicion that shoelaces have become ludicrously long over the past few years. At 54″, the laces were nine inches longer than they needed to be; I bought new laces and expect no problems once I learn to tie my shoes properly.

But the excitement of my trip to Brainerd was not limited to new shoes, buster.

Jenna came home for Easter as well, and while I carted her around we had several enlightening conversations, the (narcissistic) kind I could only have with someone as obliging as Jenna.

I felt quite wishy-washy (in the bad, non-political way), and in an amazing feat of role-reversal, Jenna seemed dead sure of many things. Astrology was only mentioned once or twice.

These conversations may actually have made me a better person. We'll see.

In nonautomotive settings, I really didn't do much with Jenna because of her strep throat. Our plan to visit one of Brainerd's seedier bars will have to wait.

Jenna drove The Deathtrap briefly, from Best Buy to the new mall, and I attempted to teach her everything I know about driving. I'm a sloppy driver perhaps, perhaps even careless. A "bad" driver in the sense that, as Graham would have it, people who can't find places while driving are bad.

But word on the street to the contrary, I'm not literally a bad driver. Unless it rains. I still haven't fixed my windshield wipers.

My cousin Amy, one of my better cousins, was around on Saturday, a day early for Easter. I helped her take some snowmobiles up north so I wouldn't be around to help put in the dock. We talked about various amusing trivialities (fingersnap teleportation), and I learned some important details about my other relatives, details I've already forgotten.

98% of my good conversations this weekend occurred in cars. But mostly, I stayed at home and got some face time with my family. Mostly.

We watched Runaway Jury and I was the only person willing to claim that Lost in Translation was (much) better. The next day, my grandma would perform a similar act of defiance, half-heartedly standing up for Kerry (she liked Edwards) at dinner in the face of insurmountable odds.

She wanted Bradley in the last election, I remember. And I wanted McCain…

On Saturday night, I stayed up late and watched Wes Craven's They and a new episode of Penn and Teller's show. The first was fun, the latter was somewhat uneven, but still enjoyable. The new intro shows a church with dollar signs on it.

I just hope that Penn and Teller don't spend all season attacking easy Middle-American targets; last year's critiques of Environmentalism, bottled-water, and second-hand smoke fears were brilliant.

I stayed up well past midnight and got maybe five hours of sleep. Church.

Easter was a big deal. Many of my relatives came (my cousins from one family seem to have developed a fine sense of irony since Christmas) and we ate and talked and ate and hunted Easter eggs.

My youngest of younger brothers hid the eggs Saturday, with Amy. Our backyard is moderately big, the best kind of big, and finding the plastic name-eggs proved exhilaratingly difficult.

After half an hour of vainglorious searching, I grudgingly resorted to the hot/cold system, unearthing my purple "Dan" egg in the garden soon after. It was buried under a half inch of black dirt, but I regret giving up so soon.

I could have found it. O yes, I could have…

The last of my relatives left at six, and I finished washing the last of my dirty laundry in time to pick up Jenna at 7:30; she ate dinner quite late.

At Hamline for the night, I stood up for my earlier sci-fi–bashing and watched a few (taped) episodes of The Simpsons with Manney and one of their housemates before collapsing on the couch for my first good night's sleep in days.

Speaking of which…

Oh, and the new Modest Mouse CD rocks in a surprisingly upbeat way.