Mom visited us yesterday, on her way to Idaho. We dropped her off at the Burbank airport this morning, after staying up late watching Two Towers and Fellowship of the Ring.

I'm very glad she got the chance to see those fine films, as they provide some measure of meaning to much in my life! It started with reading The Hobbit in seventh grade... that led to reading Lord of the Rings... that led to D&D... that led to getting into computers... so you can blame it all on whomever chose our reading material for English class in seventh grade.

We had dinner out at Cafe Med in Pasadena. It rates a whopping okay. I reckon one can judge an Italian place by the kind of cheese they offer to put on your dishes. This place used a spoon to sprinkle grated Parmeson that looked like it came out of a can. A good place would have used a real cheese grater with a block of cheese instead. Ah well, the food was decent enough.

And let the record show that Tuesday night we saw the first holiday-decorated house in the area. It has a large inflatable snowman and Santa along with many lights and other standard cheesy X-mas yard items out front. I know the stores start carrying X-mas stuff after Halloween, but most people wait until at least Thanksgiving to put it up in their yards.