We’re in Richmond for the first time since my Mom’s funeral, so our first stop was her grave. It was the first time any of us had seen the marker, and of course Diane and Jeff had had to miss the funeral last year, so it was an emotional stop.

But then it was time for something completely different: a trip to Dave’s Comics and Silly Ass Toys so Jeff could pick up the current batch of comics in his subscription and we could talk with Dave, Marlon, Wendy, and Sheryl about old times, old friends, new toys, taxes, and spam.

Most of those topics aren’t of much interest to anyone but those involved (and taxes and spam will, I’m afraid, always be with us), but some of the toys were interesting. Dave showed us a Laser Star Projector — but he didn’t have one available for sale at the present time, so I won’t link to it. I will, however, sing the praises of one toy we’ve had for a few years, the Airzooka, which I really ought to bring into the office for those days where shooting something would be a good idea except for the consequences!

Dave recommended The Tavern in a small shopping center across the street, and it was a good choice. Not too noisy, all non-smoking (I think that’s still an issue here), tasty, and friendly. Worth another visit.

After that, we spent the rest of the afternoon in another cemetery, Hollywood Cemetery. I hadn’t been there in many, many years — when I went as a kid, I remember being somewhat frightened by the signs at the entrance reading “One Way In”. Those signs were gone, but the permanent residents remain, including two US Presidents (John Tyler and James Monroe) and one Confederate President (Jefferson Davis, of course). And one possible future president wanted to have his picture taken with all of them, but I’m only going to post one, at least tonight:

We also visited the Confederate section, where I found a monument to the Jewish Confederate dead with an oddly-transliterated version of the Sh’ma:

Apparently that spelling was used in the Prayer for the Confederacy, composed by the Rabbi of Congregation Beth Ahabah here in Richmond. I don’t know if it was supposed to be Yiddish or just idiosyncractic; I sure had never seen it before.

We finished our tourism for the day with a quick trip to Oregon Hill so I could show Diane and Jeff where my grandfather’s grocery store used to be, as well as some of the other sights I visited driving Shiva last year.

Then we headed back to my brother’s house where we finally saw them (they were asleep when we got in last night and we were asleep when they left for work and camp this morning), though we had exchanged phone calls during the day. Then dinner, a little geocaching, blogging, and now to bed….