(I typed this up on the Saturday after I arrived in the Burgh.)

So, I saw Star Wars: the Clone Wars with my nephew and his girlfriend on the Saturday after I got home. The movie was okay: not spectacular, not awful. The plot was fairly well-structured, but some of the new characters grated on me. Anakin’s Padewan learner really irritated me. After watching her for several minutes all I could think was “Star Wars doesn’t need a Scrappy Do, does it?” She annoyed the Bejesus out of me. But she was delightful in comparison to Jabba the Hutt’s apparently gay uncle, Zero. My nephew thought he sounded a little like South Park’s Cartman; to me, his voice resembled that of Truman Capote.

Seriously, Zero was like a gay drag Hutt. Only not done up enough to be spectacular, just enough to be... well.. kind of sad, really.

The animation was okay, if unspectacular.

Meanwhile, having spent time around them, I now know why the nephew’s current girlfriend bothers my mom. The girlfriend seems to encourage the nephew’s lazier characteristics. She is a chatterbox, which doesn’t bother me, but she comes off as uneducated, which does bother me. I don't expect most people to be as geekily into reading and history as I and many of my friends are, but she seems to be content in her cluelessness. That bugs.

Meantime, I haven't been able to spend much time with mom or my sisters yet, because one sister was working her second job, the other sister was out to see West Side Story at the Benedum Center and mom was running a conference at church.

Yes, a conference at church. She is the vice-president of the parish's Ladies of Charity, and, this year, our parish Queen of the Rosary* was chosen to host a day long retreat for all the Ladies of Charity diocese-wide. Then, the president, a family friend named Edna, fell ill and was hospitalized for five weeks (and no, the doctors still don't know what was wrong), so mom ended up running the show.

So mom was busy. Mom said that it went well except for one of the huge coffee makers, which took three hours to brew. Well, after three hours, they gave up. Mom is still, two weeks later, pissed about this, and, since she's on the parish's finance committee, she is going to hound our priest into buying a new one.

I pity him. If he's smart, he'll just agree with her and do it. When my mother is determined to do something, you have two choices: help her or get out of her way.

*When the parishes in my hometown were merged, the three major ethnic groups were Irish, Italian and Polish, so the diocese couldn't choose a saint from those groups because it was piss off the other ethnic groups. So I suggested they chose a French saint and piss off everyone. Instead, they chose Queen of the Rosary. I still sometimes refer to our parish as Our Lady of Holy Genericness.