Saturday – 23 January 2021
I spent a bit of last evening chatting with my brother-in-law, John, and my nieces. We hadn’t chatted in many months, possibly not since before the pandemic hit.

It was fun to be able to see/hear of my Niece 1’s advances into geeky nerd-dom, which I fully support. During one part of our chat, she asked about the action figures visible on shelves on the wall behind me. There was a lot of “Wow…,” as I showed her those and explained to her that there were even more in the bookcase below the shelves. At one point, she noted that Black Widow was her favorite figure; I went to pull out two figures (classic comic and Endgame versions) and with a total pre-teen deadpan, she said, “Uncle Rob… don’t flex on me.” Which cracked me up.

Niece 2 perked up at this point, asking me if I had THIS figure and THAT figure. I showed her the ones she asked for. She was happy.

The Niece 3 was delighted just to show me her Baby Yoda and to inform me that it was “Upside-down Day,” as she rotated the iPad they were on so that she would appear upside-down. I also got to explain to her where Venom came from and how he was “related” to Spider-Man.

Niece 1 may have gotten a bit of flexing revenge as we were closing out our conversation and I was talking with John. She asked if I played “Breath of the Wild” and I told her that I didn’t have a Switch. She just walked away with a grin. I’ll give her that one. This time.

It was nice to have an opportunity to see and chat with them, as they are far away and schedule alignment doesn’t always work out.