This morning I had another driving lesson from Doris Shima; instead of beginning at 8:30 started at 10:00. I was reading The Veritas Conflict until it was time; the book is getting real interesting and am getting quite hooked on it! By this time, Naomi and Maki had gone out to get Maki's x-rays done. My driving lesson went well; drove downtown, a lot around Chinatown and the business district. Also... I drove on the freeway! It wasn't as big a deal as I thought it was (for one thing, I didn't change lanes much), I just had to drive a lot faster than on normal roads.

Came home around 11:30 and when Erin came back (she had gone out somewhere) we all had a nice lunch. It's really nice eating at the dining room table altogether; it gives such a feeling of 'family-ness' (if there is such a word.)

Oh, yes! I got letter from Meg! Thanks so much, I really enjoyed finding mail for myself in the mailbox. ^_^ Big hugs to Meggawitz!

I continued writing a bit more for my LOTR fanfiction and read some more of my book. Then just a little before two o'clock, I drove Naomi and Maki over to Diamond Head Theatre where I signed up for a four-class session of tap class. I'm looking forward to taking the class from next Thursday; I signed up for the Intermediate course and I hope I can keep up! I have absolutely no idea on the level of classes at the Theatre so I'll just have to see how it goes.

Next drove over to Kahala Mall for Maki and I could watch Fantastic Four! It was Maki's first time to watch; my second time but I enjoyed it even after the second viewing. I love the banter between Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm. I like this poster I found for the movie. Fantastic! (Ok, bad pun...)

After the movie, Maki and I spent some time in Barnes&Noble. Maki got the book Les Miserables (naturally, she really likes the music from the Broadway play); and this book is huge! It certainly rivals War and Peace. Of course, I got a pretty thick book, too: The Moonstone written by Wilkie Collins, author of Woman in White which is one of my favorite books. The Moonstone is said to be 'the inventor of the modern detective story', the detective story that started it all. I'm looking forward to reading it!

Erin came to pick us up and we went home. Naomi and I watched a Remington Steele episode, an episode we both agreed to be one of our favorites. For one thing, there's a lot of 'snide' banter between Remington and Murphy. Also, Murphy finally 'takes charge' and gets to kiss Laura!! *sigh* Poor Murphy, we all just know Remington is going to end up with Laura. Which is good, but where does that leave Murphy? Leaves him to be taken off the show after only one season... :P Oh, well. Got to try to find more movies starring James Read...

At around 6:40 we headed over for Friday Night Service but it was already VERY crowded. This week the church has been having VBS (Vacation Bible School) where preschoolers to 6th graders gathered together doing crafts, learning the Bible, and basically learning about God. So tonight all the parents were invited (a lot of the kids aren't from Christian families). Pastor Ron had come back from his trip to African so he had a slideshow of pictures he had taken. It was hard to concentrate on him though because the kids were soooo noisy!! Naomi, Erin, Maki, and I were all kind of distracted from all the noise and the volume of noise. Just so many kids...

The kids performed several very simple sign dances. 'Cute' is the only word to describe the dances. Everyone was liked "Awwww... how cute!" I don't know, but for me, I think that besides the cute sign dances they might maybe next time have more presentation to show for their coming to a 'Vacation Bible School'. Maybe skits from the Bible or memory verse recitation, naming the books of the Bible or show a slideshow of their crafts or artwork. I think that in that way they could impact the children's parents even more. Maybe next year!

Great, I forgot to take a picture of Joe and his family AGAIN! I got to talk with the family quite a bit; played around a lot with Nikka and Kyla. They seem used to me already and we were running around, making faces a lot. ^_^ Oh, yes! Joe is giving drum lessons from next Saturday at the church and he's invited me to join the class. So, hurray, I'll get to play some drums again! My schedule is filling up....

<---- Naomi, Priscilla, and Yuriy
After the service, the Friday Night 'young people' decided as usual to go out to eat. This time, our group was pretty big; 17 people! So we went to CPK's but as usual that restaurant was really crowded. We waited for a while but some of us began to get tired of waiting since it was getting a bit late. So making a quick decision, our whole group went over to Chilis (just next door) and got seated after only maybe about 8 minutes waiting. Phew! By that time I was REALLY hungry. :P

Our group consisted of Don, Brandon, Christie, Ericson, Taryn, Byron, Tiffany, Tina, Jin, Maria, Yoko, and we four girls. Matt, Yuriy, Ardell, Paulette, and this other girl whom I had never met before had come along but left without eating. Went somewhere else I guess.

Oh, well, after all the little 'mini-dramas' of getting us all seated and our group getting a wee bit smaller, we all had a wonderful, great ol' time! (I have a lot of pictures because Don seems to like taking pictures with my camera a lot...) While waiting we at the complimentary chips and salsa. We ate so much of it that Ericson actually couldn't eat the food he and Taryn had ordered to share! :P Chili's chips and salsa are REALLY good though; the chips are nice and crispy and the salsa is just the right 'hotness'.

We four girls shared a full rack of ribs though I think I ate the most... :P The other girls weren't really that hungry! We also had some sort of crispy chicken salad but I didn't care for it too much because the dressing reminded me of the dressing used on airplane-food salads. Blech!

Luckily, because we changed restaurants we were able to get home just before 11:00. Whew! Naomi, Erin, and Maki seem really tired and I must admit I'm a 'wee bit tired meself'. Good night, I shall leave this blog with a quote Daddy and I found very funny: "You don't need to understand the words to watch TV. Stupidity is the universal language." lol!