Here at last you see Bryan's mom, Mrs. Kim. I'm sure she would *not* appreciate that your first view of her is her ZOMG face, that she has cat hair on her sweats, or that she has been combing her hair with her pencil while she does paperwork. (Bryan does that too). She was putting together an University of Ellesberg application for a tall Aer kid who wandered into the law library that morning, thinking it was the main library ( he was amazed there was a *bigger* library on campus, and he was carrying a cowboy hat.) Mrs. Kim thought he was adorable, but he needed a Visitor tag-- so she took her lunch hour, got him a tag, and gave him a tour of the main library and a couple of classrooms, and promised to send him a sample application with pointers on how to deal with the forms. The TV was on while she worked, and she suddenly heard "slicer" and "Pearl Street", and immediately grabbed the remote to turn up the volume. She'd already missed most of the story, so she called Petunia to find out what was going on. Petunia gave her a very short, edited version without any mention of Bryan, and told her that she had just gone to get rice pudding with Bryan, and left him in his dorm watching the rebroadcast of Hollywood Chihuahua, so Mrs. Kim didn't need to worry about either of them:) Vanessa is supervising a retirement party at the Three Cranes Hotel, and told Mrs Kim she'd call back as soon as they got the dessert served. ------------------ Various trivia--the woman on the TV is the upper part of the pink bunny slippers in "Excuse Me..." ,and is Dr. Hatcher, head of the English Department. She said to her sister on seeing herself on TV: "WHY did they run that? I look insane! I look like I have 40 cats!" (Monday's faculty meeting had a lot of muffled giggling in the back.) The lamp is bent, it's not the camera angle. It's from Bryan, a soccer ball, and it was 2390. It's been bent ever since. There is a larger version of the photo of Bryan and his sisters here . The photo behind the lamp, (to keep Madame Mau Mau, the Tonkinese cat by the lamp, from pushing it off) is of the late Mr. Kim, who passed away suddenly when Petunia was a baby (Bryan's father is still very much alive, and writes Bryan every week, though he was supposed to be an anonymous donor). Bryan's father also bought the house Mrs. Kim is in, though none of the "kids" know that. And if for some reason you need to know, the cat on the floor is "General Fang"