"Dites- Que fait ton ami?"

OK, it's time to talk about something else. The email blizzard burying my Inbox from the non-Gulf-Coast contigent of my family gets uglier by the day. It's turning into a darned flame-war! The problem is that you simply can't be a moderate in my family. If you have a view, it has to be FIRMLY and FIERCELY held, with no wiggle-room for any competing perspectives.

And if you ask me, exactly half of them are RIGHT and the other half are WRONG (I am still, after all, a member of said family and no exception to these attitudinal parameters). :-)

But that's beside the point. The point is that I don't want to talk about the GC right now.

So I'm changing the subject. In my Pimsleur Speak and Reach Essential French 3, they teach you how to quickly change the subject in conversation. They say that if you start a sentence with "Dites!" (which translates to "Say!") that this is a "polite way to change the subject." It's funny to formalize something like that in a language lesson, but a useful thing to know. Val will have to tell me whether this is the best way to politely change the subject or whether I should try something else (perhaps something equivalent to "Soooooo, anywaaaaaaay....").

Dites! Our cafeteria at work makes the only tuna salad that I can stand to eat anymore. I'm not sure when or why, but at some point I stopped liking tuna. Fresh or canned. But the SASeteria has a recipe that transcends tuna. I don't know what's in it. Maybe it's full-fat mayo? Yeah, that's probably it.

In other news, the MS150 is this weekend. Or, as we've taken to calling it, the MS200. Weather permitting, we're going to attempt the double-century (100 miles Sat and 100 miles Sun). Saturday is also my birthday. Since biking 100 miles is kind of a crappy way to spend your birthday, I get to have a rain-delay birthday. Also, since I'm giving up my real birthday to ride 100 miles, I get 2 rain-days to make up for it. SNG doesn't know that yet, but he will as soon as he reads this.

Last year we started a tradition with friends where birthday outings are celebrated with "fake-sport-and-food." Real food, not fake food. We've done bowling, billiards, lazer-tag, miniature golf, skee-ball, I can't remember what else. Food has mostly been pizza, with some BBQ, some gelatto, some other random stuff. This year I want Ice Dancing as my fake sport. I have to be careful calling this a fake sport- my mom used to be an ice dancer, but it's not as sporty as figure skating or speedskating. (Thank goodness she wasn't a synchronized swimmer- then I'd have all kinds of eggshells to tread) I think we should all dress in period outfits from a decade with great music and go to the ice rink and ice dance! Food will be sushi. It just seems appropriate for ice dancing somehow. Of course, not everyone eats sushi, so it's an "Ice Dancing and Sushi or something else from Whole Foods' deli case" party. Um, and since not everyone dances, it's OK to put on skates and slip-slide around on the rink as long as you wiggle your tooshie as if you're trying to dance. Or at least look cool hanging out by a pinball machine.

The best part is I have a whole mess of free passes to the ice rink. They might be the B.O.G.O. kind, but that's at least 1/2 price.

Consider yourself invited-- shoot me an email and I'll give you the details.