Weird things

1. My parents and my brother live here. Four girls live at my house in Morris. Yet somehow I've already found myself waiting for the bathroom more here than I am used to doing in college.
   
   This is mostly my brother's fault.


2. Yesterday morning I went out for breakfast with my dad. This means we actually went to New Richland and ate at this little cafe (it's of course not even the kind of place you'd write "café" for). It's had three owners that I remember but no matter what they call the place my family invariably calls it "the restaurant."
   
   Since my family--my dad especially--doesn't talk much, I did what I usually do when I'm in restaurants with them: I caught myself unintentionally listening to the conversations of people near me. In the booth behind me four guys were drinking coffee and talking about the kinds of things they usually talk about. There was a group of women on the other side of the restaurant talking about what they usually talk about, but I was much happier to be sitting by the men. This way, I heard about several wonders of the world: the new fuel-cell cars, a car with 1000 horsepower (my dad said it's made by Cadillac and has a V-16), a Dodge motorcycle that apparently has four wheels and a motor for one of their trucks or smething, and the existence of a sixteen-row combine.


3. I was watching the end of Breakfast at Tiffany's after dinner--"supper," I have to remember to call it supper here or I'll confuse everybody; they think "dinner" is in the middle of the day--and when my dad came in the living room I politely told him he could watch something else if he wanted; the movie was just about over and it wasn't like I hadn't seen it before. So he did--he switched it to "Friends." My dad actually watches "Friends"?! Not just because it's there, or because it's on, no, he made a point of it. Says he likes it. I don't understand...
   
   Okay, it was funny when he liked Bridget Jones's Diary enough to pay seven dollars for the video, or whatever it is. That was just amusingly incongruent to how I think of my dad. (My brother accused my mom of buying a horrible movie when he saw that one among our others and he was so shocked when she said "That's not mine, that's your dad's." I just laughed.) But now...


4. When my parents and I stopped at Perkins on our way back from Morris I mentioned something about John and my mom seemed confused for a minute. Then she said, conversationally, "Well, at least he's a little more normal than..." What, I was thinking. What could John possibly be "more normal than"? "...Matt," she finished. I was really proud of myself for having enough restraint not to laugh.
   
   I told Matt this yesterday and we did laugh. He said John may seem more normal than he does but that John's pretty strange too.