IG-11

Madison did her presentation today in science, and she's been studying tonight for her math quiz tomorrow.  She'll miss out on the math study session first thing tomorrow morning, because she's going to art club instead, where they'll be doing some pottery, which actually sounds kind of fun.  Tonight, we were off to taekwondo, where Madison was sparring with some other students that were higher in skill level than she was.  It was tough, but Madison was learning a few things, and probably in just the same way that the ones she later sparred with learned from her.  She had a good time, ultimately.

It was cold and rainy today, at least in the latter part of the day.  But earlier, it was just cold and dry, and that's when an iconic location in Gainesville caught fire ... and is now just a memory.  A restaurant named El Sombrero caught fire super early this morning, and the blaze got to be such a thing that there was nothing anyone could do.  This whole community is actually in mourning over this.  We have several other Mexican restaurants, including a few other El Sombrero locations.  But this was the first, the most historic, and a place of quite a few early memories for Mommy and Daddy.  It's sad indeed to see it go.

Daddy was filming today at work, and we were dressed as Pilgrims.  We're getting things set up for our KidPak Thanksgiving Special, which hopefully will work out well after it is all edited.  We certainly were having a tough time remembering simple lines this afternoon - it was goofy!  But hopefully all will work out in the end.

At one point, I ran into Bill Gaither upstairs, and had no idea who he was.  This has famously happened to me before, the "running into celebrity people that I don't recognize."  The last one was Toby Mac, who a friend and I spoke with at great length about "what there is to do around here."  Our answer was basically "go somewhere else."  But we sat there talking for a while, and went on from there, and people were asking us how we knew him.  And we were wondering, "know who?"  And of course after that we were laughing about it all.  We've met several people backstage here, of course, as a lot of folks come around the church to speak or sing.  Today was just funny, because it was so out of place.  It wasn't backstage or on stage either.  It was just him walking around to get his steps in for the day, and it was too cold outside for that.

ANYWAY, we spent some family time together tonight... of course watching Disney Plus.  Yeah, we're somewhat addicted lately, but that's because Madison had to see the first episode of "The Mandalorian."  And here's our favorite character thus far:

Meet IG-11.  He's not IG-88, but he's obviously the same model of droid.  And he's amazing.  He's basically everything I wanted to see from this character, dreaming of what on earth this droid could possibly do as a bounty hunter, ever since 1980.  Yes, that's almost forty years ago.  But I had this action figure early, the one for IG-88, and it was one of my favorites.  He was stiff and basically the same general shape as a screwdriver.  This was fascinating to me, the idea of this thing being on the same level of threat as Boba Fett, and sparking the imagination.  How could this droid be on the same level as any other bounty hunter?  Tonight, we certainly found out.  We saw glimpses of it with the Shadows of the Empire game, and in books along the way.  But IG-11 was a dream come true in this first episode.

There are other stand-outs in this episode.  Kuiil, an ugnaught, is another great one.  "I have spoken!" It was a great first episode - we've already seen it twice!

Tonight afterwards, we were upstairs, ready to go to bed earlier.  It's cold and rainy outside, so we should sleep well, especially with the big comforter added to the bed.  We read before going to bed, both from the devotional and also from our book in Narnia.  We've finally met Aslan for the first time, and Peter has battled a wolf.  Edmund has messed up though, big time.

After prayers, it was time for bed.  We're turning in early tonight!