Here's a new one...

I generally don't mind playing the "has anyone ever told you that you look like..." game, because it's usually a pretty favorable comparison, but Saturday evening we were at a cookout at Cesar's friend Greg's house and in the course of a somewhat surreal conversation with the host's sister that lasted all of 5 minutes but in which she expressed how thrilled she was that I lobbied on women's health issues because that was so important to her as a result of her own cervical cancer/HPV scare and exclaimed no wonder your husband's so gorgeous, he's Nicaraguan, and at least all the Nicaraguans who made it to this country are such beautiful people....she comes out with "has anyone ever told you that you look like - and I mean this as a compliment because I love her - Courtney Love?" Ummm...Nope. And, yes, the preceding was a really long sentence! Then Greg joined and his sis asked him "doesn't she look like Courtney Love?" And he wisely says "I'm not going to insult her like that!" And sis defends herself with " I love her, she's a great actress." And Greg says "well that just explains you" and walks away. And I'm thinking Courtney Love = actress. Huh? Guess I'd forgotten about "The People vs. Larry Flynt" since I never saw it. And Greg's sis continues to try to lend credence to her comparison with "did you ever see The Man on the Moon? That's where I'm thinking you look like her." And I assented, but I was mistakenly thinking of the Reese Witherspoon/Jason London 1991 coming of age classic "The Man IN the Moon" and not of Jim Carrey's portrayal of Andy Kauffman, so I still couldn't place her reference. Now I'm not a C. Love hater by any means - in about 1 out of every 100 photos or so she cleans up well and looks fit and lucid - but I was relieved when this curious conversation came to a close and I had the opportunity to go pluck a beer from the cooler! Leila did have a great time running around Greg's yard with his neighborhood kids, but she wanted no part of the display of fireworks procured across the PA state line. I don't blame her. I mean I used to get a kick out of Mark White's fireworks shows in our 'hood and even sacrificed my painstakingly crafted 7th grade history project model of Monticello to his tanks one year, because this was Mark White, the object of my end all be all crush from ages 13 to 17 or so, but I am still fairly squeamish about amateur fireworks hour.

Anyhow! The rest of our weekend centered around Leila of course. She had her first Perch swim class at the Y Saturday morning and appeared to be a natural. I'll get some fuzzy through the glass pictures up soon. I went to load them this morning but Cesar had unplugged the DSL outlet for some reason and I could not for the life of me figure out where it hooked back in. There are enough cables coming out of that darn laptop and so many crazy USB ports rigged to the desk at various stations that it looks like it could substitute for a car bomb outside Tiger Tiger (which happens to be the only nightclub I've ever been to in London, but that was a totally different sidebar conversation last Friday.) It was so nice yesterday that Leila and I just wasted away the morning in good quality playground and strolling around Old Town time. I was shocked to see that it was almost 2:00 by the time we wandered back home and the poor child then consumed about a 4 course lunch in rapid time.