LACEO Banquet 2011...

Mom had a busy weekend. On Saturday morning, we headed out to Sam's to attend the annual LACEO banquet. For those of you who don't know, LACEO is the Latin-American Cultural Exchange Organization. LACEO is a Philadelphia non-profit organization, dedicated to outreach to youth and the local community, located in Graterford Prison, Graterford PA. LACEO usually holds a banquet complete with guest speakers on the day before Mother's Day.

With last year's controversy still very fresh in our memories, Mom and I were not sure what to expect. We arrived a bit early and waited for the sky to fall and come crashing down on our heads, but, to our very pleasant surprise, everything ran very smoothly. The staff member who decided to take it upon herself to make unilateral and ultimately very expensive decisions that impacted hundreds of people, after having been relieved of any responsibility, was quietly allowed to move on to other things.

We met up with Sam around noon and swapped war stories and talked about a variety of things. The banquet was a bit more intimate than in previous years, but, the food was still good and it turned out to be a very nice day to see Sam. It was a really, really good visit.

On the way to Sam's place and on the way back from Sam's place, Mom and I happened to see two multi-car accidents. One accident involved a car attempting to merge into traffic from a freeway on-ramp -- apparently without yielding for on-coming traffic. It looks like one car hit another and then that car went flying across three lanes of traffic. We saw skid marks on the road. Despite the horrific nature of the accident, it didn't appear that anyone was hurt.

The second accident, on the way home from Sam's place, involved three cars. There was a four-way intersection, so, our best guess, is that someone entered the intersection when they weren't supposed to. Unfortunately, it appears as though there were people with severe injuries in this accident. One driver appeared to be pinned in his car and there was a lot of debris on the road. After we passed the accident scene, we saw two ambulances responding to the accident.

After we got home, Mom and a group of her lady friends decided to go to Delaware Avenue to check out the Sugar House Casino. Mom played on the penny slot machines and managed to lose about $20. The food was good, but, Mom believes that the casinos at A.C. have better food.

On Sunday, we had the family over for a small gathering complete with free eats. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts to keep out of trouble since the disastrous events of a few weeks ago, it seems that Junior and Karen couldn't find it in their hearts to also keep out of trouble and let sleeping dogs lie. Junior showed up drunk or high and Karen, for her part, kept pestering Mom. They managed to cause some kind of controversy, in front of Mom and the family on Mother's Day, no less. Mom was thoroughly unhappy with their behaviour and promised that there will be consequences. Fortunately, I had taken the opportunity, while the family was still gathering, to remove myself to a nice quiet place and slept through the entire incident.

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