Not a whole lot happened on Friday. I went to my usual M,W,F volunteer job at the Clemson Child Development Center for a couple of hours. The regular teacher is out with injuries she sustained in a fall in the classroom a week ago, so there was a substitute. I defer to her as the lead teacher. The kids were pretty rambunctious and loud (who knew the voices of four year-old boys could rival those of adult men in volume?), so I retreated to the reading nook and read to a couple of kids. One little girl has never uttered a word in my presence, so I thought she didn't understand or speak English. Her family is from Mongolia, I think. Anyway, she did a lot of pointing and nodding to things in the book we were looking at, but when I brought a hand puppet into the narrative and altered my voice when he "spoke," she lost her self-consciousness or her suspicion of strangers, or whatever had kept her clammed up so long, and she spoke! A breakthrough! Her English comprehension and pronunciation is just fine, thank you very much. Guess I just hadn't earned the right to converse with her until then.
I got home about noon and Eric and Lynn were preparing for a day of shopping and an evening in downtown Greenville. Turns out, it was quite a successful shopping spree. They spent 4 hours in Belk's in the Haywood Mall. Four hours! Lynn says the cosmetics that she bought for her friends at their request are three times cheaper here than in China, and we all know they're not cheap here! Hope her friends pay her back. So my conclusion is that the American economy has been enriched substantially by the efforts of these two residents of China. Wish I could have been the proverbial fly on the wall to see Lynn shopping alone. She and Eric went their separate ways to focus on their particular interests. Eric got a bunch of clothes, which is amazing because he HATES to shop for clothes. I'm not kidding when I write that he still wears clothes he had in high school 15 years ago. He was always cheap to clothe; that's why we could send him to an out-of-state college, ha ha.
After the shopping spree they ate at a Jamaican restaurant on Main street and met A.C. Whitley. Lynn finally saw downtown Greenville in its upbeat weekend state and really enjoyed that. They left Greenville pretty late and decided to buy food for today's tailgating at an all-night store like WALMART. They got some things there, but also needed to go to a Clemson grocery store. By the time they got there (2-ish in the morning) they discovered that even in an open-all-night store, beer can't be sold after 1 or 2 A.M. in SC.
At about 9:30 this morning, with very little sleep behind them they wolfed down breakfast while I made a pan of brownies for them to take to the game. I hadn't made brownies in decades, and I followed the directions to the letter, but they were so gooey that I could barely get them out of the pan even when they'd cooled. I packed a bunch of plastic forks for those brave friends who wanted to eat a brownie without having a hand covered with chocolate.
As I write this (5:50 P.M.), Clemson is beating Florida State (watching it on TV), so if they can hang onto their lead, this'll mean Clemson will have won their first three games. It'll be a happy time in Tiger Town tonight.
Eric and Lynn plan to leave early tomorrow for a very short, one night, trip to Charleston. I guess strong coffee and maybe a can of Red Bull will get them there.
While the kids were fixing the American trade imbalance, Harry and I grabbed dinner at a Thai place in Anderson and then went to see the new Brad Pitt movie, Moneyball. Saw several of my UUFC friends there too. Very good movie. Tonight we're eating at home and will watch a DVD. This is no time to get into that post-game traffic around Clemson.
It's all good. We have everything we need. Everything.
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