September 2001
sept 30 — we cleared off a long low wide shelf in the garage for henry to use as a desk/play area, and showed it to him tonight. he likes it! i am thinking about bringing his computer down here, too, but i haven’t decided yet. dan and i just watched the sopranos. it’s so nice at night, when everyone else is asleep and the house is quiet, and we cuddle up on the couch and watch tv or talk. my life is so good and i’m so happy :)
sept 29 — do you like graph paper? here’s a freeware program for windows that lets you make just about any kind of graph paper you want: gpaper. lol here’s a good article: enterprise.
sept 28 — yesterday was henry’s 6th birthday and we had a great day. i picked him up from matthew’s at 1:00, and he opened his presents right when we got home. he liked everything! he and dan played with his erector set for hours, and we watched his new 1960s batman movie, and read some of peter pan. :) today henry and i played with his erector set most of the day, and we built a working crane model, which raises and lowers and has a gripper thing to pick up cargo. super neat! also took him to his friday gymnastics class, which was nice. and we played with his Gross Soap kit (from wonderful susan) and made many Gross Soaps with rubber bugs in them :)oh, last night dan and i cleaned and re-organized the garage and it is much better now. i’ve got “robot parade” in my head… robot parade, robot parade, wave the flag that the robots made…
sept 26 — mom and i had our second gymnastics class today! something in my leg still hurts so that i couldn’t even attempt a cartwheel, and my muscles are still tired and sore from the last class so it was hard to keep my balance on the beam. but we did backward rolls, which was hard but not painful, and the best thing was we got to do vaults! now THAT was fun! run run run run boing JUMP! first we did straddle jumps up onto the vault thing, and then straddle jumps over it so our feet never touched it, and then squat jumps both ways. it was great! i hope we get to vault next week. matthew picked up henry after his class, so tonight i wrapped henry’s birthday presents in purple paper. oh, and we watched and taped “enterprise”, the new star trek series. it was pretty good, except for having the worst possible theme song. god.
sept 24 — ok finally i am getting around to writing about the tmbg concert we went to on saturday! it was wonderful. dan and i drove up to LA around 3:30, got a little bit lost in the city but found ourselves again, drove into the wiltern theater parking garage around 6, and then walked over to a mcdonalds for dinner. the parking garage was only $8, which was a nice surprise. after we ate we went back to the theater and stood in line outside until they let us in. the crowd was a mixture of older people and younger people, geeky-types, goth-types, and really normal looking people. :) the theater was a lovely old restored 1930s movie palace. i got the t-shirt i wanted while we were waiting for the music to start. the first opening band was “the amazing moses leroy” and they were ok. the second was “bicycle thief” who sucked. imagine, as turok said, woody allen as a hippy, playing folk guitar. whine, whine, whine. well, eventually TMBG came on and they played for almost two hours and everyone in the audience stood up and i danced the whole time and they were SO GOOD! they played so much good stuff… here is the set list. we had a great time!
sept 23 — article about afghanistan. i hope someone is paying attention to what this man says.
sept 22 — tonight we see they might be giants! yesterday we dropped henry off at matthew’s and then went to fry’s to get a scsi cable so i can put zeppelin’s old 17 gig hard drive in strangelove. so we wandered around fry’s for a while… i was drooling over the color clie — the only real drooling i’ve done over any of the latest palmos devices. it’s little, very high resolution, beautiful color screen… but $399 :) well, i’m still very happy with my iiic :)
sept 21 — last night we watched “rear window” with sally. fun to see it again. we stayed up really really late… where’s my coffee? muscles are still sore.
sept 20 — oh my god my entire body is horribly sore. everything hurts. i am dl’ing the “numb” video (U2) and it is taking all day but what i have so far is fun to watch. i tried to find some TMBG videos on kazaa but could not. if anyone knows of a source, please email me. we have the garage door open, and we can see night falling on the street outside, and the night air smells wonderful.
sept 19 — my first gymnastics class was today! sally and i went together; henry’s gymnastics place started offering adult classes. it was fun but very difficult and exhausting and my muscles started feeling really sore in the afternoon. henry had a dentist appointment which was good, no cavities. we got boston market food for dinner ’cause i was too tired to cook. we watched star trek IV with henry! that was really fun. he’s old enough to watch good movies with us, now. :)
sept 17 — henry had a burning desire to make a piggy bank, so we made a lovely little one out of a water bottle and some cardboard ears and legs, covered with papier-mache and painted bright red! it is SO cute. :) we watched episode 6 of first-season sopranos tonight. oh, a very nice man came to fix the dishwasher.
sept 16 — went to the library, got a big giant stack of books plus “rear window” to watch with mom sometime. also we went to OPT and got lots of film for mom and some more developing chemicals. i think mike and carol (my grandparents who have been visiting) are going home tomorrow — it seems their flight is scheduled as normal. i will miss them. i got to know them better, this visit, because of the WTC tragedy. we spent a lot of time all together watching the news, which we wouldn’t have if it hadn’t happened.
sept 15 — i figured out how to make the dishplayer search for certain types of shows, and i told it to record a few interesting-looking things that we can watch with henry — something about pyramids, something about moose, etc. i finished “strong poison” (great book). we bought this excellent belgian milk chocolate and had that plus wine, cheese, apples, and crackers for dinner. pthree paints like thomas kincaide!
sept 14 — photos from all over the world
sept 14 — i took henry to brian’s to play… long hot drive and difficult visit. brian is so horribly rude, cruel, and uncivilized that it is difficult to be around him. he attacked henry with a stick in a frighteningly violent way. we won’t be playing with brian anymore. sigh. however, i did not stare at CNN all day so i managed not to spend the day crying. yesterday was hard, watching the friends and families of missing people begging for any information at all. one thing that really strikes me in a positive way is the thousands of people springing into action to help, from firefighters to just ordinary people. the news just showed the tremendous pile of bottled water that has been donated for the rescue workers, for instance, and they have so many volunteer workers they had to start turning them away. when we went to the drugstore yesterday, the donation jars for the red cross were stuffed full of cash. seems like i’ve never seen so much GOOD stuff happening on the news. it’s encouraging to see how people can be so generous and selfless.
sept 11 — terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into the world trade center and the pentagon. we watched CNN all day.
sept 10 — i turned the heel on my gray sock and am decreasing now. i found several sources for cleckheaton yarn online, so if the place in PB doens’t carry it anymore i can get more. cleckheaton is the nicest yarn i’ve ever worked with — 100% wool, but very soft and washable, and it never felts. we ordered an erector set for henry’s birthday, and one of those little potholder-weaving looms, with the little loops. also got him the 1960s batman movie, and a lovely hardbound copy of “peter pan” with beautiful paintings. so we’re all set for his birthday! i made a bunch of prints this morning, all on my own, and they turned out great!
sept 08 — last night macinjosh IM’d me and said that turok wanted to know if i’d tape conan o’brian, since TMBG was a guest. so we set up the dishplayer and i just watched the show and it was great. they played “man it’s so loud in here”. i can hardly wait for the concert! (we’re going to see them in LA on sept. 22)
sept 07 — i took henry to torrey pines and we went on the nice little guy fleming hiking trail and we had a wonderful time. henry says he loves being alive. ok, time to go do some errands.
sept 06 — happy 18th birthday chloe! busy day — we had to drive to the colo and swap a bunch of computer hardware around but now dan has his desktop machine back and i might be able to use the extra 17 gig hard drive in strangelove. cross your fingers :)
sept 05 — henry and i made a cheesecake this morning, and a batch of cookie dough! the cheesecake turned out wonderful and the cookie dough is still chilling in the fridge. we’ll bake some cookies tomorrow — they are cinnamon-sugar cookies. henry’s thursday morning gymnastics class got cancelled ’cause the other kids all went to school, so now he’s in an afternoon class, and the first session was today. he’s got mr. philip for a coach — very jolly and playful. henry smiled the whole time as usual. oh, yesterday i upgraded the firmware in my riovolt and now it is even cooler than it was when i got it!
sept 04 — today was wonderful. we got up pretty early ’cause the phone rang and woke us, but that was ok. wedrove down to torrey pines state reserve park and hiked along the guy fleming trail and took lots of photos. dan is developing them right now, but in the meantime you can see some really terrible photos here.
sept 03 — we took some photos for humanclock today… hope they turn out good enough to submit :)
sept 02 — this morning i finished reading Betsy-Tacy to henry. he loved it. he’s with matthew now, but i think i will go to the library and try to find the next book in the series to read to him when he gets back. i don’t know if i believe this guy, but it’s an entertaining story: rocket car legend. ok here’s one you have to see: extreme ironing! look at the gallery pages.
sept 01 — ugh i have sort of a stomache ache tonight but i had a great day. i cleaned up the back yard,practiced my bach invention (#8, two parts), played a duet with mom, and took henry to the park (we rode scootersand we helped him practice bike-riding). also henry and i listened to the first few tapes of “Matilda” byraold dahl, read out loud by some wonderful englishman, and i started knitting a gray sock with some cablesdown the side.