To boldly shop where Gazes have not shopped before

Gaz is about to encounter American Science & Surplus for the first time. Be afraid. And probably also amused.

My only regret is that I have too much reading to join in on the fun. I'm also knitting up a stylish black beret for her very first round of color guard duty at the upcoming awards assemblies at school.

So, Gaz's class wrote stories to put on the hall bulletin board. They were shown a picture of a guy blowing a bubble, and told to write about it. Most did a comedy thing, or a simple descriptive bit. Gaz's was longer than one sheet of paper, so they had to tape an extra couple of lines worth for her to finish. She's given me permission to transcribe, so here goes (as close to original as I can manage):

THE ROUND HOUSE

One day when the Doctor came of his bubble house and his wife Ly'shia had kissed him good-bye. He went into his TARDIS. When he looked around he noticed he was in a bubble a man was blowing! There were lots of bubble animals in there! They chased him all around until his house appeared on the scene. Then, it rolled away. It rolled faster and faster. The Doctor tried to catch up but it was too fast. It started bounding and in mid-bounce, he jumped in and was safe again. His wife was happy he was back because she needed help cooking. She was cooking his favorite soup. Then it was time for bed. So both husband and wife went to bed. The thing he didn't notice was there was something wrong with the TARDIS. Something was broken inside the time travel mechanism. Now it couldn't travel in time! When he did notice it took days to repair. His eldest daughter, Kelly helped him take it apart and his other children helped put it back together again. Then he went back to his quiet life.

I am informed that Ly'shia and Kelly are friends of hers, and the bubble animals were originally Daleks, but she had to connect them to the bubble picture.

We were discussing movies to watch in this weekend's mini-B-Fest (we get to watch movies late into the night and much of the next day, and George gets to study up so maybe we can do a family thing on Sunday).  I brought up a time-travel movie I think she'd like, and she asks if it has the Doctor in it.

So I start describing in very general terms what "Time Bandits" is like, and I bring up the fact that it has John Cleese and Michael Palin in it, from Monty Python.  It took a couple of tries to describe John Cleese, until she goes "Oh, it's the 'And now for something completely different,' guy!"

"Yes, and Michael Palin dresses up to be the 'It's...' guy."

Then we digressed, and long story short, this next Halloween, we'll either be doing Bubbles from the Powerpuff Girls, Wednesday Addams, or she'll be in old age drag, going up to people and not saying "Trick or treat" but saying "It's..." before I hit the recording of Sousa.  As you do.

(transcribed from Facebook; I wish we had a widget that would do this automatically)

To avoid dwelling on my increasingly crappy-ass week, I'm going to tell some Gaz stories.

The other day, I came up the stairs and saw a sign taped to the door, "Jordon College."  I'm sure she meant Jordan, because that's the college where Lyra grew up in "The Golden Compass," which we've been reading.

Turns out, Gaz not only declared the apartment a college, she also cut her own aleithiometer out of posterboard and decorated it nicely, complete with tiny symbols.

She also cut a polar bear head out of the same sheet of posterboard, and taped it to the arm of the couch, reasoning that it was the largest piece of furniture she could climb on that wasn't a bed.

I have to hand it to her, she really does have fun with a book.