Mech No Mistake

So, a combination of nerdy nostalgia combined with a chance encounter at the game store means that I am wandering back into the world of Battletech for the first time in, gosh, it must be over a decade.

Battletech was my first military sci-fi war game, predating Warhammer 40,000 for me by several years. Players assume command of various walking tanks called battlemechs and maneuver them around a hexagon gridded map while raining hot death on one's opponents.

Before I went off to college, my mates and I played an awful lot of this game, and why not? An elegant set of balanced mechanics, a fascinating (if terribly derivative) gaming universe, a robust construction system that let you modify existing 'mechs or create your own, and, most importantly, giant robots.

The game has changed a lot since it was introduced 25 years ago, mostly by necessity. You see, most of the 'mech designs, including those used on the box and book covers, were lifted pretty much wholesale from Japanimation series like Robotech, which very few people in North America had heard of at the time. It was heartbreaking to see some of our favorite vehicles, like the beloved Warhammer, Phoenix Hawk and Marauder replaced by much blockier and less elegant iterations once this came to light. And all this after having to change from their first name choice of Battledroids due to some understandable opposition from George Lucas!

Eventually, the game makers took the bold step of evolving the in-game universe, and introduced renegade factions from outside the established borders of the Inner Sphere equipped with much higher levels of technology. While this galvanized the interest of the hardcore crowd, more casual gamers like myself lamented the loss of the elegance and streamlined play and simply drifted away.

I could bore you with many a war story from the Fourth Succession War ("...and then I go prone"), but suffice to say, coming across the 25th anniversary introductory box set took me right back to those early days of balancing tonnage, setting up hex maps, and coordinating the movements of fast and fragile scout 'mechs with ponderous 100 ton assault monsters. Best of all, it is pretty easy to play with anywhere from 2-10 people, making it a great fit for G&G VII in May.

The box set comes with extremely sturdy mapboards, a comprehensive assortment of rulebooks, and two dozen plastic battlemech models. The loss of the original anime elegance notwithstanding, some of these really do put the 'ech' into 'mech, if you catch my drift. It's hard to complain when I can still recall playing with cardboard counters folded into standy bases instead of the lead miniatures we would use later on, but these figures really are about one step up on green army men, and I am not too confident in their ability to take paint. That said, I certainly have no intention of playing them as unpainted grey plastic, so we will just have to see how it goes.

I was a little disappointed to discover one 'mech had broken off at the waist, and that the Zeus had his left leg broken off in two sections, but worst of all was finding that the 80 ton Awesome came out of the box with his furshlugginer arms glued on backwards! Even these gaijin mecha look better when they are facing the right direction. Still, it's a couple dozen more 'mechs than I had yesterday, and I didn't have to spend $200+ getting them.

So, yes, with a little trepidation, I am looking forward to revisiting the 31st millennium for a little while; I am sure it will provide a nice break from the 41st that I am so much more familiar with.

Old School Heroics - Justice League: Doom Review

If you are the parent of anyone grade three or older, I hope you have shown your offspring the Justice League animated series from a few years back. Since comic books now seem largely aimed at a more 'mature' market, this brightly colored and wonderfully written series is a great way to expose children to this modern-day mythology, and even squeeze in some lessons about unfashionable things like justice, and friendship, and sacrifice. Plus, the writing was strong enough that a number of my friends without kids began watching as well.

When the tv series ended, and was replaced with some flat renditions of Batman and the Legion of Superheroes, I was pretty disappointed, but the 3-4 direct to video releases per year that DC has done have been uniformly decent. My favorite to date had been last year's Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths, but it's now been supplanted by Justice League: Doom.

Doom opens up with a fantastic set-piece pitting Batman (and eventually the rest of the League) against the Royal Flush gang. In addition to being a great bit of animated action, it also does a great job of reacquainting us with this iteration of the League. For instance, Hal Jordan returns as the original Green Lantern, and is ably voiced by Nathan Fillion, and while Michael Rosenbaum does similarly as The Flash, he is no longer playing Wally West, but Barry Allen, the original Flash. I suspect these changes (and the inclusion of Cyborg, who I remember most from the Teen Titans comics of my youth) were made to maintain some sort of continuity with DC Comics' gigantic reboot last year, the so-called 'New 52'. Frankly, as long as Kevin Conroy is playing Batman, they can do what they like with the rest.

Despite these changes, Doom feels like an extra-long, bigger budget episode of the animated series, much like Crisis on Two Earths before it. Much of this is due to the excellent screenplay by Dwayne McDuffie, one of the series' strongest writers, who was also one of the few black men writing comics before his untimely death last year.

The story grows around the theft of Batman's 'contingency plans': means of containing his super-powered comrades if they should ever cross the line, become possessed, or be replaced by doppelgangers from an alternate reality.

In the hands of immortal super-villain Vandal Savage and his Legion of Doom, these strategies become highly effective and lethal weapons to be turned against the League, in a series of diabolically well planned death traps and ambushes. After all, what else would you expect from Batman?

Doom is not just entertaining as we watch legendary heroes tested to their limits, but we get insights into their all too human psyches (and yes, this also includes Martians and Kryptonians), and some great debates about the sanctity of trust versus the safety of the world. There are plenty of laughs, too, as McDuffie's dab hand at superhuman banter gets a final chance to shine,

You can see the trailer on YouTube, but I would honestly recommend against it; with a running time of only 77 minutes, there is not a lot of time to sneak in surprises, so you might as well enjoy the ones you can, right?

A big-screen Justice League does not appear to be in the cards anytime soon, but honestly, these DTV adventures are the next best thing, and they come out far more regularly. If you want some thrilling heroics with familiar, larger than life characters, and a surprisingly legitimate sense of peril, it is well worth checking out Justice League: Doom.

From Carpets To Cassettes, Via Kohlrabi

One should refrain, we have it on good authority, from giving a mouse a cookie; for if you do, he is surely going to want a glass of milk. If you give him a glass of milk, he is going to want to wash his face, and so on, ad infinitum.  This afternoon, friends of ours gave us some floor coverings, and this simple act of generosity initiated a series of events that culminated in our divesting ourselves of literally hundreds of old audio cassettes.

On our way out to church this morning, Audrey informed me that we would be stopping to see these friends of ours in order to both drop off their crock pot (left at our Oscar party) and to pick up a couple of area rugs they were no longer using.  Fair enough, I thought, and asked where they were going, as there had been speculation about a number of possible locations during previous conversations.  Her plan was to put one or both in the unfinished section of our basement, and since this would result in a warmer and comfier circuit to and from the downstairs (i.e. beer) fridge, I expressed my immediate and unconditional support.  Since they were rugs and not carpets, I figured no actual work would be required, having witnessed rug deployments on a number of previous occasions.  No gluing, no cutting; no muss, no fuss.

Obviously I had neglected to take into consideration the fact that a number of items currently at rest on the cement floor would need to be moved prior to the rugs doing their thing.  Fair enough, I thought, so Fenya and I moved the old toy box, the bottle and can bin, the dog food, the dance pads and a few other things.

This reallocation of goods revealed a horrifying assortment of brobdingnagian dust bunnies and an assortment of other detritus such as errant bits of kibble and many a wayward bead.  Clearly, even a rug could not be situated in such squalor, and so we dragged out the vacuum cleaner to rectify the situation.

We hadn't even finished the vacuuming when Glory appeared at the bottom of the stairs with the Swiffer, under the direction of her mother.  Well, now that the dust had been removed, it only made sense to throw a little more elbow grease at the cement floor before covering it with a rug, right?  Fenya kindly took care of this while I packed away the vacuum cleaner, and soon, the entrance to the basement was cleaner than it had been since we moved in, I'm guessing.

At last, Audrey and I were in a position to finally place the rugs.  Her original plan was to lay them in an overlapping l-shape, so both the entrance and the area directly in front of the refrigerator could benefit from this comfy coverage.  However, she became concerned that someone might catch their foot on the topmost rug, and seeing the potential for spilled ales, I quickly shared her concern.

"We can place the two rugs side-by-side," she estimated, "if we can fit this other one under the fridge." I wasted no time expressing my opposition to this, since emptying the fridge to facilitate moving it vastly exceeded the personal resources I had budgeted to expend on this endeavour.  Audrey's deft measurements soon revealed that the fridge would not necessarily need to be moved, merely tipped, a far more agreeable option.

Tipping the fridge did not seem to present a problem in terms of its contents, but like every other flat space in the basement, the top of it was laden with a variety of items, including a space heater, a bundle of blossoming twigs, a fan, and boxes full of about 500 cassette tapes dating back to high school for the both of us.

Well, a few minutes later, we had emptied the top of the refrigerator, tipped it the required amount, and slid the rug under it.  There was no denying the two rugs both looked and felt good, but viewing the boxes of cassettes, we both realized that, having lugged them from college to our first apartment together, and then to Toronto and back, and finally into this house, there was very little point in returning them from whence they came.  After all, I had listened to perhaps 7 of them since moving into this house six years ago.

And so it came to pass that I spent much of the remainder of the afternoon going through these outmoded sound storage devices, dividing the commercial tapes from the copies traded with friends, and simultaneously  jotting down which of them would be worth replacing.

Strangely, there won't be as much replacement as I'd thought.  Many of the cassettes I'd purchased had been done on the basis of a strong single, and often the accompanying album did not bear this out, such as David & David's "Welcome to the Boomtown".  Others had been superceded by various "Best Of" collections or box sets, or simply reflected an exploration of my youth that I would be just as comfortable revisiting through YouTube, if at all.

There were some exceptions, however.  The first was in a handful of oddball cassettes, like the "Diane Tapes" of Agent Dale Cooper from the television series Twin Peaks, or the soundtrack to the brilliant blaxploitation spoof, "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka", that I can't imagine finding in another medium, and will hang on to them in the meantime.  Others, like the audio tour of Gettysburg from our 1998 visit, or the tape of Conversational Klingon failed to make the cut.

The other exception was the assortment of mix tapes made by myself and others.

I explained to Audrey my reluctance to part with these audio time capsules, and she quickly agreed that we could find room for them.  I was pleasantly surprised to find my first 'serious' mix tape, made largely with tracks from my friend Rob's collection, hence the name Kohlrabi.  Rob was a bit of an audiophile, and showed me how to correct the recording levels in order to avoid jarring changes in volume, as well as explaining how to properly construct a properly balanced and paced mix tape, moving seamlessly between genres and tempos.

Later came Return of Kohlrabi, Son of Kohlrabi, It Came From Beyond Kohlrabi, and many others.  Even tapes I made for others bore similar names, like Gift of Kohlrabi, or Seasonal Kohlrabi.  In college, several of my friends saw the appeal of this quirky naming convention, and quickly adopted it for themselves.

Radio Free Kohlrabi was taped from a number of demo CDs we discovered languishing at the campus radio station.  "There is a warning label here that says 'Not For Resale'," one person observed nervously.

"That's fine," I reassured him.  "There's no money changing hands here, right?"

Others were specifically recorded for a road trip or vacation, such as Kohlrabi Mountain High, or Pete's Chaosburg Address from our trip to Gettysburg, Chaos being his own iteration of Kohlrabi, even prior to our meeting.

Looking back at these collections, it is comforting to see that I have been an eclectic music listener for as far back as I can remember, due in no small part to the diverse tastes of my friends like Rob and Island Mike.  Some of these Kohlrabi tracks are still the soundtrack to my life in some fashion or another, while others have a far more vestigial resonance, or serve as a trail marker to a place where I once was, but am unlikely to return to.

I don't know how much Kohlrabi lies in my future to be honest; even with the technology to burn compact discs for truly Digital Kohlrabi, I don't do it very often.  This is the age of the playlist, after all, not the mix tape.

We only have one working tape player in the house, and it is a bit dodgy, to be honest.  If I had a lick of sense, I would transfer the Kohlrabi Kollection to the computer in an mp3 format and listen to it like some sort of time travelling podcast series.  I wish I had written down the date they were recorded, but knowing they reflect what I listened to between, say, 1986 and 1999 (I don't recall recording any after we returned to Edmonton from Ontario), they still have both a sentimental and archival value, at least to me.

I knew that moving rugs and carpets would shake loose some dust, but I certainly wasn't expecting any from  25 years back, and I didn't expect it to bring so much nostalgia along for the ride, but like giving that mouse a cookie, it is impossible to predict where such ventures can end up.

Oscar Night 2012

Over two dozen friends and relations came over to watch the 84th Oscar telecast with us tonight. It's pretty late, but I had a few thoughts to share before crashing:

• It is a wonderful privilege to know so many people who love the movies and parties, or else the Oscars would be just one more lengthy broadcast. Or, as 9 time host Billy Crystal put it, "nothing underscores our recent economic turmoil like a billion people watching millionaires giving gold trophies to one another."
  
• I enjoyed The Artist and don't begrudge its win, but I still think a Best Picture should have more going for it than charm and nostalgia.
  
• The Cirque du Soleil routine was breathtaking; why didn't they use that to highlight some of this year's music nominees?
• Terence Malick's Tree of Life was far too inaccessible and challenging a movie to win Best Picture, but I wish it had won for cinematography, because It is almost painfully gorgeous and completely naturally lit.
  
• Christopher Plummer's speech was probably my favorite, mixing sentimentality and cynicism in equal measure; he expresses tremendous gratitude and respect for the other nominees, the says, "I would share this with them if I had any decency...but I don't..."
  
• I only had to take three shots for this year's March of the Dead, a personal best.
  
• It was great to have Billy Crystal hosting again, but his 'audience mind reading' shtick seemed much funnier last time, with Michael Clarke Duncan 'thinking' "I see white people," and Dame Judi Dench's " my thong is killing me."
  
• I'm looking forward to many great things from Best Actor Jean Dujardin, who brings almost as much old school Hollywood style to the party as George Clooney.
  
• Meryl Streep's first win since 1982 (and 14 nominations!) was good to see, and her speech was excellent (very few people had only the laundry list of thank yous this year), but my favorite film of hers will probably always be Death Becomes Her...
  
• It didn't win any of the 'big' awards, but I hope Hugo's wins get it some more box office; we can use more movies like this!
• Congratulations to James for winning the prediction game with an immense 18 out of 24 correct!
  

 

 

3 Million Rivets, A Postage Stamp, An Egg Cup

I wasn't interested in going to the Titanic artifacts exhibit at the Telus World of Science, which, in retrospect, surprises me.  Both girls were keen on it, and not just because of the James Cameron movie; Glory is actually reading a "Dear Canada"" book about the Titanic, and Fenya has read about it as well.  I submitted to the tyranny of the majority and went along, against my wishes, and I'm glad I did.

In two months' time, it will have been a century since the sinking of the unsinkable ship and the loss of 1500 lives.  In terms of tragedy, there have been two world wars, innumerable natural disasters, and the 9/11 attacks in the interim, so why does the sinking of the Titanic continue to intrigue us, a hundred years later?

I continue to be drawn in by the 'what if's' of the scenario, like the Marvel comic of the same name, seeing diverse alternatives play out infinite possibilities.  What if Captain Edward Smith had listened to the ice warnings from other ships like the Carpathia, and reduced his speed instead rushing to New York at full steam?  What if the binoculars for the crow's nest hadn't been lost and the onrushing iceberg spotted miles ahead?  What if that same iceberg had a smooth side, or had only punctured 4 watertight compartments instead of six and managed to stay afloat?

Unlike Fenya, all the books I read about the Titanic in school had to speculate about its final resting place, as the wreck was only discovered in 1985, and nothing was brought up until the early 90s. Fenya asked why it was so difficult to retrieve the artifacts and I said, "Well, imagine swimming in a pool the size of a football field.  Now turn it sideways so the far end is now the bottom, all right?  You know how your ears start to hurt at the bottom of the deep end?  Now imagine swimming to bottom of that big pool.  Got it?  Now imagine going 40 pools deep."

The exhibit was a tremendous opportunity to see actual items recovered from the Titanic, from the obscure to the mundane. Rivets, representative of the three million used in her construction.  Glassware and china from all three classes of passenger.  Luggage, clothing, postcards, even a remarkably preserved Canadian postage stamp, all brought up into the light after almost 8 decades where no sunlight reaches, and the pressure is an astonishing 6000 pounds per square inch.

In the accompanying Imax film Titanica, we accompanied the international crew of the Akademik Keldysh and her two submersibles as they travel to the wreckage.  Intellectually, I know there is some life at those depths, but seeing fish swimming and crabs scuttling in that pressure and cold is still like watching telemetry from a distant planet.  And when the captain asks how the dive chief knows the coordinates of the wreckage, heaign him say, "back before they sealed up all the charts and maps, I saw the position written upside down and I memorized it.  I plugged it into my GPS and now it's plugged in to the Keldysh, and we're heading straight there," is like hearing dialogue from a spy thriller.

Everyone attending the exhibit is given a boarding pass showing the name and background information of one of the Titanic's passengers, and a list at the end of the exhibit shows you whether or not your particular individual was one of the lucky survivors or not.

Visitors are matched by gender, so I knew the odds were against 'my' survival; onlhy 17% of the men on the Titanic survived, since priority was given to 'women and children' first.  Fenya's school teacher returning from India likewise perished, but Audrey and Glory's passengers both survived.

We picked up the green-screen photo above to commemorate our visit to the depths and the past, and the obligatory fridge magnet which is our souvenir of choice (every home has a dedicated display space that just also happens to contain food and beer).  Fenya opted for something a bit more obscure, yet everyday: a replica White Star Lines egg cup, proudly bearing the company logo.

When it launched, the Titanic was the largest moving object ever built by human hands, and designed to carry over 1000 people across the Atlantic in as much comfort as possible, with their dolls, relish dishes, tools and books.  On a legendary vessel, their simple goal of transiting from one place to another went terribly awry, and took most of them into history instead.  How could one not be interested in that?

Regardez Hugo, Vite, Vite!

It's been observed a number of times that I spend more time anticipating movies than I do actually seeing them, and it's probably true.  All my favourite films are perpetually yet to come out, largely because I become attached to them when I first hear about who is making them, or when I see the first trailer.  But then I hear poor word of mouth, or disappointing reviews, and I start hedging my bets, and I end up seeing it much later on video, if at all.

Conversely, some of my best film experiences have come from movies I know very little about, like Martin Scorcese's Hugo which the four of us saw this afternoon.  I knew it was from a director I have tremendous respect for, but who hasn't made a PG film in 18 years.  I knew it was based on a book, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and courtesy of a workmate, I knew it dealt with a lot of early cinema.  I also know it leads the Academy Award nominations with 11 nods, so by watching this one film, I greatly enhance my enjoyment of Oscar night.

Most of the people I know who like movies will like this one, and theys hould go see it while it enjoys a resurgence due to the Oscars.  (Two weeks ago, Hugo had one showing a night at South Edmonton Common, this weekend it was 1, 4, 7, and 10!)  This is a movie you are likely to enjoy morethe less you know about it, so I will simply express my appreciation for some points within it.

Child actors - Always a mixed bag, but Hugo is very compellingly portrayed by a young lad named Asa Butterfield, who reminds me of a child-size interpretation of Cillian Murphy (the industrialist's son from Inception) only with the piercing eyes of a Fremen from Dune.  Asa does a masterful job of mixing emotions, such as the cocktail of shame, anger, fear and defiance he displays when he is caught thieving, so I am thrilled to hear he might end up playing Ender Wiggins in the movie version of Ender's Game that might actually happen.  I was also very pleasantly surprised when twenty minutes in, I recognized Hugo's friend isabelle as Chloe Grace Moretz, also known as Hit Girl from Kick-Ass.  She exhibits a similar talent that is surprising in a 14 year-old, and I look forward to seeing her in many more films.

Veteran Filmmakers - Martin Scorcese is often enough to prompt me to see a film, but he is also enough of a master to draw such quality performers as Ben Kingsley to his projects.  Scorcese's non-abuse of 3D is similar to that of James Cameron, in that he uses it to immerse you in the period and specifically, the inner workings of the clockworks of the train station in which the orphaned Hugo lives.  In fact, Cameron applauded the use of 3D as the best he'd ever seen, including his own films.  Including Christopher Lee in a small role as the owner of a bookstore is a step in the right direction as well.

Layered Story - Four of us aged 9 to 40-something all enjoyed this movie; it's a period piece framed in a thoroughly modern fashion.  It's a movie about an orphan that balances between whimsy and pathos, and a children's movie that is not shrill or cloying.  I think I will need to pick up the book by Brian Selznick, because it is a beautiful story.

Hugo is a story about the power of stories, both on the printed page and on the silver screen.  If you have an affection for or believe in the power of either of these two mediums, please check out Hugo, in a theater, and, yes, in 3D.  If nothing else, it will demystify 11 Oscar nominations for you.

A Tea Party

Let there be no mistake here; of the two of us, Audrey is by far the better quality human.

I have mentioned previously the wonder in which I hold the continued patience, perseverance and compassion that she brings to her job as a Special Needs Teaching Assistant in a school which is located well onto the wrong side of the tracks.  The stories she brings home about unacceptable behaviours, tragic circumstances and squandered opportunities are enough to bring a tear to a glass eye.  And I should clarify that a lot of the worst behaviours belong to the supposedly responsible adults, not the children in their care who range from kindergarten to grade 6.  It's not uncommon for one of Audrey's workplace anecdotes to end up discussing how much better off a child might be in the foster care system, or having been put up for adoption as infants.  It's hard to imagine going home to an environment where the best possible after-school scenario is being completely ignored until the next morning when you can escape back to your classes.

At any rate, there sometimes seems to be more opportunities to reach out to the young males in Audrey's grade 6 class, rather than the females.  Maybe this is because the boys are more likely to end up perceived as a threat to society after they are targeted by gangs, or because more of them seem to suffer from things like Oppositional Defiant Disorder which makes simple containment a major part of their everyday routine.  Regardless, sometime last fall Audrey got an idea in her head to host a tea party for the girls in her class, and to let them keep the teacups afterwards.

Audrey has collected fancy teacups for years, and it is one of the few really girly things she does.  She has a couple of dandies from her Oma, and a couple of others she has received as gifts in the last few years.  My favourite Christmas picture is one I took seconds after she realized her sister Betty had given her a cup she'd seen in an antique store in Rocky Mountain House.

At any rate, she brought the idea to the teacher, who thought it was great.  Audrey had a couple of teacups she could spare, but she not only wanted one for every girl who participated, but one additional one, so that even the last person to choose would still have a choice.  It's this degree of empathy and planning that I never would have considered until after I watched the last person choose.

She asked her colleagues in the church choir, many of whom are ladies of a certain age, if they had any teacups they could spare, and of course, some of them did.  She then went to the HomeSense store on 137th Avenue and asked if they had any extra boxes for the teacups, so that Audrey could get them to school, but more importantly, so her girls could get them home safely. After she explained what she was doing and why, they were only too glad to help, but with Christmas approaching, they forgot to arrange them by the next time she dropped in.

The staff were so penitent about this oversight, that when Audrey next returned, they had not only collected more than enough boxes, but two of them had gone to thrift stores collecting cups, and one even received one from her own Mom's collection.

Prior to the tea party, which was held just before the Christmas break, there was a little concern as to exactly how the girls would respond.  In addition to going to a school in - let's be charitable and call it a bleak part of town, a number of them face challenges at home, or bear the scars of decisions made before they were born, like Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.  Some of them are new Canadians who don't even have a preconceived notion as to what a tea party is.

The girls were told they were having Girls Club at noon that day, which meant it would be a special time with no boys allowed, but they were not told what they would be doing.  Audrey had baked some butterkoek (Dutch cake) and brownies, and had the tea ready when she unveiled the cups, and explained how a tea party works, and that they would get to keep the cup they picked as their Christmas present.

Every single girl was thrilled to participate, which is tremendous when you consider that some of them don't have a lot of opportunity to do 'girly' things, and many of them had never even played at having a tea party when they were younger.  Many of them live their lives untouched by delicacy, and for some, just expressing an appreciation for such things is enough to single them out as a target once out of view of their teachers.  In this case though, every girl was genuinely appreciative of this opportunity, as simple as it seems.

At one point during the proceedings, one of the girls asked Audrey and the teacher, "Are you guys tryin' to make us into young ladies or something?"

"Trying, yes," said the teacher, but even though this made most of them laugh, it didn't stop them from continuing to drink their tea, with their pinkies extended.

When everyone was finished, Audrey labeled all the boxes, took all the cups to the kitchen and washed them so the girls could take them home clean.  some of the other teachers and staff came by to admire the cups, and to express their admiration for the idea.

Two weeks ago, one of the girls was asked by her grandmother to come for a visit.  "Can I bring my teacup?" she asked, and of course she could, and of course they had a tea party as well.

Fancy teacups are delicate, and beautiful, and hard to protect from the rough and tumble world that surrounds them, and so are young ladies.  I hope they manage to keep their cups intact for a good long time, and perhaps collect a couple more along the way, or leave this first one out where others can see it and ask about it.  I hope they remember the Grade 6 Girls Club tea party for an even longer time, and never forget that everyone is entitled to a bit of fanciness in their lives once in a while.

Most of all, I hope Audrey never stops coming up with these ideas to make the kids in her school feel special.