… belting out Hark the Herald Angels Sing.

She just called to say the concert went well.

Watch UD‘s kid singing with the American Family Choir at Christmas in Washington this Friday, TNT, 8:00.

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Update: Backstage at La Kid‘s latest gig.

… La Kid is going through a final rehearsal, at the National Building Museum, for tonight’s Christmas in Washington concert.

Biebermania made it a little difficult for her to get in the building for yesterday’s rehearsal. Shrieking fans everywhere.

Jennifer Hudson is “very nice. She chatted with us a lot [La Kid‘s in a gospel choir singing with Bieber and Hudson] and we took a bunch of pictures.”

Conan O’Brien will preside. The Obama family will be in the audience.

I woke up this morning from the following dream, strikingly similar, it seems to me, to this one.

Mr UD and I are driving on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, gradually climbing toward its highest point. A voice on a loudspeaker repeats the following instructions:

“Like Evel Knievel,” I say to Mr UD, who gets ready.

As we approach the break, Mr UD accelerates. The car flies over the gap.

I look down while we’re up in the air, and see several vehicles in the water.

“It’s not fair,” I say. “You have to understand English.”

**********************************

I clearly have some transportation infrastructure issues.

…happy, here’s a list of the saddest cities in America.

The listmakers simply checked out suicide, unemployment, and antidepressant-use statistics.

UD‘s Washington DC ranks high for sadness (they give it a D-), which, despite the low unemployment rate here, doesn’t surprise her. If you look at the list, two sorts of cities stand out, sadwise: rich ones, and poor ones.

Of course Detroit and Baltimore are sad!

But rich people in well-heeled cities take oodles of antidepressants and spend tons of time with psychiatrists and will probably if asked report that they’re sad. (The listmakers also checked out “the number of people who report feeling the blues all or most of the time.”)

… and (gevalt) Justin Bieber at this year’s Christmas in Washington concert. She’s in a gospel choir.

TNT, December 16, 8:00.

No, that’s not right.

UD has known for years about online Scrabble.

She has shunned it as one shuns heroin, sensing its life-sucking flow…

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UD is an extremely good, intensely competitive Scrabble player who almost always scores well over three hundred points.

At Scrabble clubs and tournaments, experts average between 330-450 points per game… A better measure of skill is determining the “average points per turn” score. If [you] average 30 or more points per turn, not counting tile exchanges, then [you] may very well be a Scrabble expert. The very top Scrabble players average 35 or more points per turn, not counting exchanges.

UD plays very quickly, rarely waiting more than a minute to put a word down, and routinely putting a word down right away. Her impatience with opponents who actually take time to make a move, and with opponents who shuffle their tiles around on their tile holder (UD sees her words, whatever the configuration of the tiles) is notorious. In short, though UD would never win anything at a truly serious Scrabble tournament, she’s an expert.

*********************************

So far UD‘s meaningful Scrabble life has consisted of regular matches with her similarly ferocious older sister; but Barbara lives in upstate NY and they don’t see each other too often. UD‘s last game was a few weeks ago, in ‘thesda, with Rita Kosofsky (Eve and David’s mother). Rita and UD sat side by side on Rita’s couch and played on her iPad.

Maybe it was Rita’s iPad that began the insidious process of UD‘s undoing… UD had tried to build a break-water of order and elegance against the sordid tide of Scrabble and to dam up, by rules of conduct and active interest and new filial relations, the powerful recurrence of its tides within her.

But now… Two words: MANUMITS. SPEEDING. Triple word score. Last night.

The game allows players to chat. After she made speeding, at the very end of a game in which UD had been down by a few points, her opponent wrote

I LOVE IT WHEN THAT HAPPENS

and UD realized that in virtual opponent land (this one was from Vancouver) many serious players prefer exciting competition to simply winning (UD‘s all about winning).

That chatting is another thing. It makes UD a little nervous. How friendly should you get? These are total strangers, etc. Yet how strange can they be when they are exactly like you Scrabblewise?

WE’RE EERILY WELL-MATCHED

wrote UD toward the end of this game, during which our scores tracked one another extremely closely… Could this be my long-lost soulmate? Perhaps my life with Mr UD has been a horrible mischancing (he sucks at Scrabble) and I’m meant to be with the Vancouver person…

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Yes, it all has to end. It must be nipped in the bud and I will try to do that.

“Wow. Fangor really churned out the propaganda in his younger days,” said UD to Mr UD this morning over breakfast. “There’s a big exhibit in Warsaw of tons of his commie posters.” She showed Mr UD this one by their old friend, of the yearning big-eyed woman with the fraternal nations of the world around her neck.

“1955 World Festival of Youth and Students,” he mused. “You know, I think I learned to read during that festival. They gave out posters with national flags on the front; and on the back, for each country, little descriptive paragraphs. I think that was the first thing I read.”

… offers her latest Garrett Park Bugle reporting.

… down the street from UD‘s house.

Les UDs stopped for dinner last night, on their way back to ‘thesda, in a Denny’s outside Harrisonburg Virginia. The place was jammed with families. Fathers wore baseball caps. One guy’s t-shirt said DRINKIN’ BEERS & SHOOTIN’ DEERS. THAT’S HOW I ROLL. A woman ate mayonnaise from a spoon.

Les UDs liked the room’s vibe. Happy excited families. Two solicitous teenage sons chatted with the mayonnaise woman. Everybody knew everybody. As people entered to take a table, they shook hands and joshed with already-seated neighbors.

Our server treated us lovingly, attentively. When she realized we like to make jokes, she laughed along. She brought our food quickly and checked back with us three times to make sure everything – especially Mr UD’s steak – was okay. The manager came by. Everything ok for you folks? My club sandwich had too much mayonnaise but I said everything was fine, and it was, even with the extra mayo. It was quite fine.

… enjoying another autumn weekend. I’ll be blogging later tonight.

La Kid conducted The Sirens, a GW a capella group, in the singing of the national anthem at last night’s GW basketball game.

Location: Edge of living room, sliding door open to large forested backyard.

My Condition: Sitting on a black-cushioned futon footrest, laptop balanced on my chilly knees. My lower back hurts from too much raking over the last week, plus a too-long hike on the C&O Canal last weekend.

Time: 6:30 in the morning.

What I See: A mist-shrouded world. Huge colorful trees leaning into each other in the mist. Leaves swirling off limbs. In front of a black butterfly chair, a gray-green weather vane. Our gray wooden deck. On a small garden table, a black Japanese lantern. A stone birdbath.

What I Hear: Not the hoot owl I heard last night. Small birds, whistling from every corner of the ghostly stage. The tinkling sound of leaf touch-downs. Morning trains coming from West Virginia into the city.

What I Feel: Cold. Happy.

She’s on the left.

She’s Yoshi.

Some video game.

Halloween mayhem down the street from UD‘s office.