(no subject)

Travelling back with aunt and uncle from grandfather's memorial service, all four of us - nearly-three-year-old cousin too - got picked for security screening. Cousinling is going through sensitive phase about Mama - like screaming if an elevator door starts to close while she's still coming out - and freaked out as soon as they started wanding her. Uncle had to pick him up and hold him to keep him from running to her, with him writhing and sobbing (cousin, not uncle - uncle was sort of resignedly annoyed [ed: at the security people, not cousin - both aunt and uncle were understandably upset that their baby was so unhappy]). And of course he got even more upset when they patted him down - they couldn't get him to stand still to be wanded, except for his feet which were sticking out in his clinging-to-mom position - getting touched by strange guy not really best thing to calm scared kid. Screeners had the grace to look slightly sheepish for investigating the major security threat posed by panicked toddler... for godsakes, can't they come up with a profiling system? Also as we went through to gate area they had confiscated the tuning wrench to my uncle's mandolin - very small allen wrench - because it was a tool, and "tools aren't allowed". Amount I feel safer: none.

In a much more heartwarming story, Grandpa got the last laugh on the Chinese restaurants... the place they used to go in Toledo, the Lantern, was so bad, it used to amaze me how my grandpa had been to China twice and liked this bad Chinese food. He had written just before he passed away about this place he'd gone with a lunch group that he thought was the best Chinese restaurant he'd ever been to, and I expected it would be really bad as well. Well, Grandpa may have been right - it was fabulous. We were one of only two groups in this big place (really neat, too, a long curving wall of floor-to-ceiling window) and the headwaiter guy offered to make us special stuff that wasn't on the menu, so we ended up requesting n dishes and to include some chicken and veggies and let them do it. Taro-root shrimp balls and some sort of veggies-in-bean-curd roll for appetizers, then amazing almond shrimp and little steaks in some kind of very complex dark sauce and "Hong Kong" sweet-and-sour chicken, and I never like sweet-and-sour stuff but this was so fresh and lemony that it worked, and a whole fish cooked in a sort of schezhwanny mix of peppers and sauce. WONDERFUL! as my grandpa would say. So it seems that while he could still appreciate the bad stuff - and Grandpa always had a great appetite for food - he actually knew what he was talking about when it came to quality, too.