March 15th, 2021

Hiya,

Gotta kick off today with this headline: Taiwan teen's toe falls out of sock after accident.  A 19 year-old crashed his scooter "at high speed' into a traffic island, but was able to ride it home.  Once he got there and saw his bloody sock, he took it off and the fourth (or ring?) toe 'tumbled' out of it.  He stuck it in the freezer but it was too late for it to be reattached.  The man's sister said that "Fortunately, he's an optimistic person" and the man joked that now he can wear two right footed flip flops (there is a drawing as to how that'll work).  They end the article by saying that "the sibling's mom thought about saving her son's disconnected digit but was put off by the idea of cooking it to remove the meat from the bone."  I knew it.

Last weekend was Babydoll's final High School dance performance.  She made the school's IASAS team (the group that would have traveled to compete against our like schools from Singapore, Jakarta, Bangkok, etc.), but the competition was held virtually this year.  Our school was the only one that was allowed to practice together and film without masks.  The dance and drama teams put on a show of their pieces for the school community and they were well executed as they always are at that place.  Obviously, I am biased, and maybe I have seen enough dance in the last years to have gained a deeper understanding and appreciation of it, but was not alone in saying this was the best dance piece in her era.  

Was told that it was a five vignette suite about the expectations and realities of being an Asian woman, and even I understood some of it this time.  Costumes were clever in that they were both loose but did not obscure the grace of their movements.

They have worked really hard over the last few months putting it together with many practice sessions after school and on weekends.  B-doll came home after one grueling practice totally gassed and explained that they did 3 full run throughs that day and as there are no boys this year, she was deemed the physically strongest of the team and had to do all of the lifts.  The coach/choreographer that organized the team came up to us after the show and raved that Babydoll worked extra hard and was the horse.  Miss Q has been a constant in our 4 years of dance there and B-doll loves her both as a coach and for her fiesty personality.  We all feel fortunate that she was able to have such a great mentor and give her a ton of credit as B-doll has come so far in her 4 years there with regards to confidence, stage presence, grace and strength.  

In the post show meet and greet, I got a little misty looking at her and her best friend and knowing this was the last one of these we'll probably get like this and was the end of an era.

Finally, Betty and I made an offer on a condo in Leschi and it was accepted.  There are a few hurdles to get over but things are looking good.  We've been giddy with excitement over things like what bed to buy, restaurants in the vicinity (Peruvian chicken, Ethiopian.....) and when we're gonna have people over for dinner.  As to when that'll be...TBD.