And I bought you that ring 'cause I never was cool

Zach, one of my best and oldest friends in the world, was here for two days at the beginning of the month on his way to his ten-year college reunion at Yale.* He flew in to Boston on Wednesday morning and then took the train down to New Haven on Friday afternoon, so we had a good solid two days together.

We call him "Uncle Zach" to Nolan, same as we call Jen "Cool Aunt Jen" (her request) and Erica "Auntie Erica." I figure you can never have too much family for your kid, right?

So we didn't do much, which is our standard M.O. for visiting each other. I swear to God, one time when I visited Zach in San Francisco, a fabulous city with numerous wonderful things to see, we spent an entire day watching taped episodes of the Simpsons with the commercials edited out. We'd finish an episode and start to say, "Maybe we oughtta get mov-" and then the credits would roll on another one and our gazes would get sucked back to the TV. I think we sat there for like, 13 hours or something truly sad like that.

The Thursday he was here it was actually nice and hot and sunny, so we greased the kid up with SPF 45 and walked downtown to just sort of wander around. We went to the library, I bought some flip-flops at Payless, and then we went to lunch at this new Hot Pot restaurant that's in the mall. It's one of those places where they boil the broth at your table and you dunk in meats and vegetables to cook them. It was pretty darn good, I have to say, but they lost major points in my book for not having a changing table in the bathroom. Nolan's standard M.O. is to wait until we're out on the town or in a restaurant to have a Monster Poop, and he did not disappoint on this occasion. So I had to lay him down on the floor in the handicapped stall, and even though I put him on a changing pad, he still wriggled and moved all over the place, so who knows what disgusting tidbits he picked up. There should be a restaurant reviewer (and maybe there already is and I'm just unaware) who reviews places from a family-friendly standpoint; like, do they have highchairs? Are they clean? Changing tables in the bathroom? Kid's items on the menus? And crap like that.




And other than that, we didn't do a whole lot. We hung out in Nolan's room and played; we read books and sat around. We talked about being kids and having kids and baby sign language and poopy diapers and ER visits and college reunions and feeling old and lots of other crap. It was pretty nice.

Thanks for reading.

*Which also means it's my ten-year anniversary of graduating from college. *sigh* My mom asked me if the University of Wyoming was doing a ten-year reunion, and I just laughed.