newnumber6 | Dinner with Mom

So my Mom was in town for the weekend, and my brother, his gf and I went to dinner with her. Well, not just with her. With her, two of her friends (who were close enough to us that growing up we referred to them as 'uncle' and 'aunt'), who we knew would be there, and a real uncle(ish, the relation's kind of complicated and even I'm not entirely sure of it) and cousin I haven't seen for years and years. Like the cousin the last memory I have of him was a hyperactive little kid, and now he's graduated high school. And, strangely, looks a fair bit like the pictures I've seen of

coyotepuck. I of course didn't mention this because it would have been weird. Anyway, I haven't seen my mom in at least 3 years, before she went to Afghanistan I think, and this is the first time in something like 15 that I've been in the same room with her and my brother at the same time.

Dinner itself was good. Had something called a Cajun Steak Wrap, with onion rings, plus there were appetizers like hot wings, nacho platter, bread, and cheese poppers, and I had a tiny bite of bison burger (which tastes good, like hamburger but a little stronger meat flavour, like steak). For dessert, some chocolatey ice cream with raspberry sorbet in it. The raspberry was good, although the chocolate was a bit too chocolatey for my tastes.

Conversation was a bit awkward and difficult with a big table and hard to talk to everyone at once and so wounded up repeating various things (like the fact that I'm out of school, or what I do for a living) to different people at different times. Also a bit of the annoying 'oh, why aren't you doing anything in your field' questions or why I'm not looking for a fuller time job. Yeah, because I'm socially screwed up and even the thought of applying for a job (not doing a job, but actually trying to sell myself to someone I've never met) paralyzes me into inaction. Well, no, of course I didn't say that, I just shrugged and said it wasn't that important to me at this point. In general I didn't talk a whole lot compared to others. My mom's a good storyteller, so hearing her stories of various stuff was kind of amusing.

But gasp! Conversation briefly turned to Firefly Serenity when we were were talking about SF (I think we were talking about books first since my mother gave a couple to us in a bunch of bags of gifts of other stuff), and my mother hadn't even heard of it. I briefly described it and said she should check it out but didn't go into it or not. On the brighter side the cousin was familiar with it and was a fan of the series and movie. Though again, due to the difficulty in conversation we didn't really go on beyond that point. Still nice to know there's another flan in the family even if I'll likely not see him again for 20 years. ;). And hopefully Mom'll check it out at some point.

Anyway, it was, in short, a family thing. Nice to see her of course, and the others, and the meal was good.