96 degrees in the sha-e-ade

For some reason, that's one of my favorite regae line - "Real hot, oh, yeah, in the shade." That's how it feels today - January 6 in Boston. I'm sweating after just wearing a t-shirt and walking over to the library. The feeling in the air definitely has that heavy humidity - heavy both because of the heat and also it's finals week. Just walked into Lamont library, and there's an energy here that seems more stressed than usual. Hmm...maybe it's just me. Oh, how I just want to hang out - outside, but back to task. Another schizo day - just had a "successful" as more than one parent put it - birthday party for liam. We went to a bowling alley. It was pretty cool and mellow, actually. Liam had a good time, which was the most important aspect of the event, and it was nice to connect with more of the Blue Room parents - something I rarely get to do.

I'm also so glad Chris suggested we ask people not to give gifts. The result was just a few gifts, anyway, and it was nice for him to open a few gifts but not the gaggle of presents in light of the craziness already with the holidays - though we managed to keep it pretty low-key on the consumer front this year.

Yesterday, I had an interesting experience in my persuasion class - we all did these two minute speeches. One of the people in my group, Jsh - did a great talk on why people who talk too much in classes should be banned from speaking at all. It was a great tongue and cheek rap. Afterwards, I was telling him how much I liked his speech - and him vice versa - that he had voted for me (I just need a little glory right now) - anyway, he is such a cool, chill guy with longish red hair that I certainly made assumptions about him. While we were talking I realized he was in the military. Upon further probing, he always wanted to be and really loves it. It was kind of a mind bender. He just seemed energetically like the kind of guy I could talk real politics with - and, in fact, he and another army dude (whose wife takes her daughter to the same music together class as Chris takes Kalian) were great listeners and eager questioners to my life as a filmmaker, especially in the Philippines - why is there such a divide politically? Why do really nice guys like these have to be responsible for such unjust wars - and they really, honestly, don't get it. I didn't even try to persuade them otherwise, heh heh, not sure of the value in a situation like that - not that I held back my views - of course, Jsh thought his hair was so incredibly long, but I nicely reminded him that my husband's was twice as long - and then reported the Liam ponytail story - which they thought was hilarious. What's up with all of this? Maybe I could probe them further - but I've been around military guys long enough that they think they're just doing their job to protect the country - but you'd think K school students would be willing to engage in policy just a tad, eh?