Weirdness abounds.

There's sad weirdness. This weekend, Paul Dana, a rookie IRL driver, crashed during a practice session and died. He got tired of just covering motorsports. He died living his dream, and many of us never get that. But how sad anyway.

There's adorable weirdness. This morning, Tai Shan, a/k/a Butterstick, didn't want to leave the nice cool panda house at the National Zoo, even though his mommy Mei Xiang wanted the doors opened very badly. (As usual. She's as bad as a cat.) Tai was having too much fun with his tub and the "cub in the mirror." That clever little monster inverted the tub over himself, so only a bit of nose and paws showed, then quickly withdrew the nose and paws when he saw his mother! That's right--he was deliberately hiding under the tub!!! Mei Xiang's sensitive nose found him, though.

There's hilarious weirdness. Jeff Gordon shoved Matt Kenseth after Bristol, for spinning him out. Like the wuss he is, Gordon kept his helmet on! As one of our friends hollered, "NERD FIGHT!"

There's heartwarming weirdness. L'Ailee and I met a two-woman couple who have been together for 55 years when we went out to eat Saturday night! We ended up talking. I won't complain about not getting married anyplace familiar anymore. (Okay, I will, but I do know things can be and have been so much harder.)

And then there's my ladylike L'Ailee, who said something almost completely out of character and got in trouble for it. She's almost the only woman in Brooklyn who doesn't use "the F-word," okay? And living with her has diminished my usage of it, too. We've met Lubavitcher Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses who cuss more and are generally cruder than she is. So this Friday, a 12-year-old in her tween-age gils' gymnastics class landed hard and I mean *hard* on the balance beam, getting hit *right* between her legs. It may not hurt on a female as badly as it would on a male, but of course the poor thing hurt some. So when she asked L'Ailee if she'd be okay, my darling wife replied, "Oh, you'll be fine, but your children will probably be born with splinters." For some reason, the kid's mother was offended, and wanted to "talk." L'Ailee told me later that I need to stop influencing her. :-)