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Dec 31 — Happy New year’s Eve!We’re watching Some Like It Hot. Great movie :) I bought some engineer-striped overallsfor Henry from ebay ($10 including shipping!) last week and he loves them so much that he doesn’t wantto wear anything else! And they look so darn cute on him. He hates pants that are tight around thewaist (he’s SUPER sensitive about it) and I thought that overalls should solve the problem!

Dec 30 — I’m making this fabulous soup right now. You saute some onions (and garlic if you have any)in butter for a while, and then you add some chopped potatoes and carrots, saute for a while, add some water and simmer til the veggies are done. Then you run the soup through the blender with some cream cheeseand milk (or cream) and then you reheat and stir in some grated cheddar cheese. Lord it’s good. Andvery rich. I helped Tabatha open a savings account at our bank today. They’re SO NICE there! (MissionFederal Credit Union) I really like having Tab here… She fits right into our funny family and is reallyeasy-going and flexible, helpful, and good company! Henry and I got this super-cool book from the library — let’s see if I can find a link… here you go! Art Fraud Detective. I love looking at art with him, and the puzzle-format of the book makes it extra fun for us to examine the paintings and talk about them.

Dec 29 — Mmmm slept nice and late. The AI beat me again at Freeciv… I don’t know how it managesto be building a spaceship when I haven’t even discovered electricity yet! Pretty soon I’m going overto Dad’s house to help him out, and then I go to SD to pick up Henry! Yay!

Dec 28 — My new monitor is so nice! Windows decided not to work on this machine after we put inthe new motherboard (Dan can fix it after I have enough money to buy another part) so I’m having funwith linux. I’d gotten lazy and was using windows for tasks I used to use linux for… but boyit’s nice to be forced to stay in linux and get comfortable with it again! Freedom from Windows!I spent 4 hours this morning trying to get my freeciv client updated… (note: remember to get freeciv-gtk if you want the client!) Thanks, liiwi, for straightening me out :) I’m using 1.13 now and it’s really nice, but has anodd bug (”feature”?) where if it gives you a few popup windows at the beginning of your turn youhave to close the back one before you can close the front one… other than that it’s good.

Dec 27 — Whoops I fell behind :) Let me bring you up to date! Christmas was lovely. Since Henry was with Matthew, we all slept very very late, and then we opened presents! Tabatha gave me a big pyramid of myfavorite candy - Ferraro Rocher hazelnut dealies. Yum!! Dan gave me the MOST BEAUTIFULdark blue real silk nightgown and robe… There is no way I can describe how elegant they are but I will try!The nightgown is longish and slim, and cut on the bias so it fits like a dream. Every edge is perfectly boundand the seams are French, and the straps are even adjustable. The robe (it really needs a fancier name…”dressing gown”, “kimono”?) is just as perfectly made, with an inner tie as well as a belt AND a side seam pocket! I feel like a princess, or a movie star from 1930, in them, I really do. AND he gave me a 15″ LCD monitor! Talk about luxury! Ok, it’s TON bigger than my old monitor, it’s crystal-clear, it’s beautiful :) And he thinks it will be better for my eyes too.My motherboard died right before Christmas but Dan found me a new one that would work (no small feat) and fixed up my computer yesterday, with hours of sweat, pain, and toil, and so today I got to enjoy my lovely monitor all day :) So then on Christmas afternoon we went for a walk on the beach, which was fun. Someone had made a sand-snowman with driftwoodarms, holding some balloons, with pebbles for a face, and someone else had made these amazing stacks of beach rocks, balanced on top of each other in seemingly impossible ways! We wished we had taken the camera. There were lots of people out enjoying the lovely weather. I made kayray’s special pastafor dinner and we lounged around :) On Thursday I picked up Henry from his dad’s house and brought himhome and he got to open his presents! He was so happy with everything, such a cheerful excited joyfullittle person! We all had fun playing with his new things with him :) Today… um what happened today…well my mom is out of town and a tweaker stole her car and crashed it so we had to deal with the police andall… I was the prime suspect since my grandma told the cops I had keys (which I don’t), heheh, but after they talked tome they decided I hadn’t done it! I’m not exactly the tweaker-car-thief-hit-and-run type… so thatwas a little more excitement than we all needed. Mostly I played with Henry and cleaned up my deskand enjoyed my new monitor and stuff… Oh yeah I’m knitting new mittens for Henry, and finally finishedthe first one today. I started on Christmas eve but miscalculated and had to rip back a few times. Theywent a lot faster after I had him here to try them on! I’ll post photos to the crafts section soon. Alsoneed to add the socks I just finished, and his OLD mittens, and a couple of cute hats!

Dec 24 — Happy Christmas Eve! Yesterday in the morning I took Henry ice skating at the Ice-o-plexin Escondido with the Kenyon girls, and they all had a great time. In the afternoon we went over toMom and Dad’s house for an early Christmas with them — Kirsten and Marcos came over too and we all hadfun opening presents. Kirsten gave me the most beautful little handmade cross-stitched old-fashionedSanta ornament. It’s so pretty! She finished it in a really creative way, with little bows of bluefloss and rustic-looking twine for a hanger. She and Marcos gave Henry two really neat toys fromDiscovery Toys — a sort of helicopter-like toy (pull the string and a 8″ disk shoots up really highinto the air). We tried it in the street and it was so cool! Henry was thrilled. And they gave him akite that pops open like one of those car windshield sun-protectors… Boing! We can play with bothtoys down on The Prairie (a big vacant lot near our building). And Grandma Jean gave Henry a LegoSkateboard Park kit which he LOVES. He put it together right away and Kirst and I played with it withhim. Mike and Carol sent him two Hardy Boys books and a neat t-shirt with a drag-race car on it. Again,he was thrilled :) I read the first chapter of the first Hardy Boys book to him last night and he just loved it! And Daniel Thile sent him a Klutz Body Crayon book/kit which is so cool! He had me drawa flying-saucer tattoo on his arm and showed it off to everyone. :) Grandma gave me several pairs ofnew pretty hair-sticks (to stab though my hair to make a bun or whatever) which are lovely, and Momgave me the pretty, blue-flowered, Duofold thermals from LL Bean that I was wishing for so much! Iwore them to bed last night :)Oh, and Mike and Carol sent me some new dark blue towels with fish embroidered on them — very cute!I’m sorry if I forgot anything! On the way home we stoped at the pet store for bird food. I gave Henry the money and he ran in and bought it all by himself. I think he felt very proud :)Last night I felt SO exhausted. Did too much all day and I’m stillrecovering. So we all collapsed on the couch and watched Best In Show again — great movie. Tabathahad never seen it before and she liked it! She’s really fun to hang around with. AND she did the dishes yesterday without even being asked to — I told her she can stay here forever :) This morningMatthew picked up Henry and I went out to the bank and the water store and two grocery stores. Whew.Everyone in San Diego was out this morning, I think, doing last-minute errands. But I’m home now and it’s going to be a nice day :)

Dec 21 — Dan and I have the funniest conversations sometimes! The night I made the latkes, he was asking me how I made them. He said they seemed less homogeneous than regular pancakes, almost asif they were woven. So with a perfectly straight face I told him that I had woven them on my LatkeLoom, out of potato fibers which I had spun, and he said, oh, and then did you bake them on the Latke Loom and then peel them off? And I said yes! And we laughed until we almost fell out of bed. :)Someone on the homeschooling list sent us this url: looney labs. It’s a little company thatmakes very cool-looking games! I’m going to keep them in mind for next year’ birthdays and Christmas!In other news, my cold it a bit better today, and I felt well enough to do laundry, whee. Henry hadsome major dental work done yesterday, and he was feeling sick and awful all day and this morning, butnow he has perked up, eaten some soup, and is playing Worms World Party — his new favorite computergame. I read him all of chapter 9 of TTT yesterday, and today we started chap. 10 — The Voiceof Sauruman. Yesterday when he was feeling so completely awful I asked if he wouldn’t like me to readsomething a little more comforting, but he wouldn’t stand for it! Still haven’t decided if I should lethim see TTT in the theater… There’s so much chopping and hacking and scary loud stuff. I think he could probably handle it, but do I want him to see all that fighting and heads being swoppedoff and all? And do I want to sit through it again? I dunno…

Dec 19 — I’m a little bit sick today. Little cold, little sore throat, nothing serious. I went tothe farmer’s market this morning but now I don’t have to go anywhere until 4 so I’m just beinglazy, watching “Pillow Talk” (1959, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Thelma Ritter, Tony Randall). Sofar it’s quite entertaining. Luscious costumes too :) On Tuesday night we picked up Dan’s littlesister, Tabatha, from the airport — Henry entertained her with pleasant conversation all the wayhome. He’s such a little ambassador! Tabatha is really sweet! We’re glad to have her stayingwith us :) Last night we saw The Two Towers! It was pretty darn good… They re-wrote the storyquite a bit, more than the first movie, but I guess they had too, in order to fit everything in.I don’t remember Aragorn falling off a cliff into a river and nearly dying and being rescued by a horse that Arwen sent… But oh well. Gollum was excellent, Gandalf was amazing! The Pippin/Merry/Treebeard part was kind of weak, andI got tired of hearing icky things roaring and seeing people hacking at each other, but on the whole i enjoyed it very much! I could have done without Gimli’s comic relief, and Legolas snowboardingdown a flight of steps, but they made up for it by letting me watch Legolas shooting arrows ;-)

Dec 16 — I had really freaky dreams last night and then when the alarm went off I almost didn’t hearit. Stayed in bed for a long time… I felt really odd today, and after I cleaned both bathrooms and made breakfast, I went back to bed for a while and just rested and read my book. Both Henryand Dan came in to check on me a lot so i didn’t get lonely :) In the afternoon it got really windy,super windy, and the big eucalyptus trees outside were actually swaying! And later we had a little rainstorm too. Henry and I watched “The Prince and the Pauper” (1937, Errol Flynn) and he proclaimedit to be “First class entertainment” :) And we made some home-made applesauce, and I made latkesfor dinner and EVERYONE LIKED THEM! It’s pretty amazing when I make something that all three ofus actually like ;-)

Dec 15 — Hmm, what’s been happening… Yesterday I mailed a bunch of Christmas stuff to people. I feel good that I didn’t wait til the last minute. I sat out at the helicopter field with Danwhile he flew, and I finished the two books I was reading — “Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at theTurn of the Century” and the first half “All Creatures Great and Small”. Toward the end of the dayDan crashed his Freya, bummer, but it wasn’t a terribly bad crash and now he has the fun of tinkering withit which is one of his favorite things to do ;-) Ok I’m going to see if the TiVo has gotten anygood movies lately, and if not I will read the second half of “All Creatures…”. Oh wait first I haveto hang up the laundry. Also considering mixing up some gingerbread dough so we can make cut-out cookies…we’ll have to see how ambitious I feel.

Dec 12 — This morning we met Mom at the skating rink in Escondido, and she and Henry ice skatedtogether for a 2 1/2 hours! My mom is great. She’s almost 60, looks about 20 years younger, andhas more energy than I do! She and Henry looked so cute together, but I forgot to take a camera.Next time I will. I sat there and read my book (”The Edge” by Dick Francis) the whole time, which was lovely. Ok now I absolutely must do Christmas Cards or my friends andfamily won’t get them until 2003!

Dec 10 — Mmmm, noodles and butter for dinner! And I think I’ll have some grapefruit juice too — beverage of the gods. At Henry’s bedtime I read him another chunk of The Two Towers. Gandalf showedup and told about his fight with the Balrog. I’m finding this book to be a little more fun to read than Fellowship — I’m way less familiar with it and I really don’t know what’s going to happen next.Henry does, though — he knows the BBC radio play backwards and forwards, and he’s always fillingme in on the plot and chiming in on some of the dialogue. Ok I’m going to go cut out mitten shapesfor our christmas cards and watch the Antiques Roadshow!

Dec 09 — This morning we went to the library and I got a stack of good-looking books!After I write this I’m going to go read for a while. And then we went to radio shack to buy somebatteries, ’cause we didn’t have to get involved in a big Shopping Center Nightmare in order to get there. And then we went to Mom and Dad’s house so we could give Dad his batteries and helphim with his printer. His printer was acting up, so we swapped it for Mom’s printer but I thinkOS/2 didn’t like it very much. We never did get it working, bummer. It’s rough to be without a printer when you really need one! And then we went to the water store and bought 10 gallons ofgood, tasty, pure water, and now we’re home and Henry is playing his new Freddi the Fish game (from the library) and I made garlic toast and mini pizzas for lunch. Mmmm :) Ok, reading time!

Dec 08 — Ok, I finished my How to Make Beaded Snowflakes page!I got up this morning and added those variation photos at the bottom. I also uploaded a couple ofphotos of our Christmas Tree! You can see several of my snowflakes,and the paper chain that Henry and I made, and the pipe-cleaner helicopter that Dan made,and Henry’s Gymnastics medals, and the beaded candycanes he made, and the cross-stitched ornamentthat Kirsten made, and some of my needlepointed soldiers, and one of the Celtic Knot ornamentsthat Chloe and I made one year, and the little painted wood Santa that John made (lower center, KC ;-)and my little wooden nativity scene, and and and… ;-) Can youtell how how fond I am of all our special decorations?

Dec 07 — We bought our tree today! Henry and I went after his 9am gymnastics class, and we got a nice noble fir. Then we came home and cleaned the living room for ages in order to make room for it!We moved a shelf full of videotapes that was on the big table next to the tv, and we put the tree thereinstead. It almost touches the ceiling. And then we did the lights and decorated it and it looks sopretty! Dan took the digicam out to the heli field, but when he gets home I’ll take some pictures!

Dec 04 — I feel a lot better today. Hmm, what did we do… well, Henry and I went grocery shopping,whoop-dee-doo, so now we have food again, yay! Oh, we popped in to Cost Plus and lookedat all the fabulous Christmas ornaments they have there. That was so much fun! They have so many prettyand interesting ornaments. I liked the embroidered silk ones from India — they reminded me of the ones my mom bought at Cost Plus when I was very small — the little velvet rabbit, the elephant, and the pinkhorse with the fuzzy mane. Oh how I loved hanging those ornaments up every year!

Dec 03 — I got 9 hours of sleep last night but still felt strange and tired all day. Took a napin the afternoon while Henry was at his piano lesson and playing with Sal. Wierd, maybe I’m comingdown with something. Ugh. Let’s see what happened today… Henry helped me with the laundry –we attached a rope to one of the laundry baskets and he dragged it down to the laundry room for me :)I have two laundry racks so I can actually dry three loads at once — I hang all the shirts on hangars and they dry in the bathroom. Drying stuff in the house is a combination of thrift and laziness.I save $.75 per load, and I don’t have to walk all the way to the laundry room TWICE :) Also I never haveto worry about stuff shrinking! I found an extremely super-neat website today (thanks to kc :) — knitty.com. I’m in love with the “Vegan Fox” design (in the “patterns”section.) Where would I wear it? I have NO idea, but I still want to make one so I can look like a cruelty-free 1930s movie star ;-)

Dec 02 — I just found getcrafty.com! Neat stuffthere. I’ve got to try making that T-Shirt underwear! They’re holding a scarf drive, collectinghandmade scarves for homeless women in the NYC area. Deadline is Dec. 15… If I hurry I could knit one! here’s a link to the thread: get crafty scarf drive thread.

Dec 01 — Happy December! Check out my new crafts page! Mom and I went on a trail ride at a stable down near Poway today! We rode for almost 3 hours, in Rancho Penasquitos Canyon. I think that’s the name — it’s a big nature preserve down there, a canyon between suburbs. It rained a couple days ago (we even had lighting — very rare) so the canyon was green and had that nice moist smell, and a couple of little run-off streams and a little waterfall, even! We had a great time. Our guide, Lisa, was super-nice, and the horses were nice too. I haven’t ridden in so long. My muscles are protesting and I know I’m barely going to be able to walk tomorrow :)

Nov 30 — We went out for milk and zip ties, also got Dan’s car washed and waxed, and went to the craft store for more pipe-cleaners for Henry, and some embroidery floss for me and new rulers for Dan.Yesterday Dan made the CF card reader work in linux for me, so now I can unload photos off thedigicam without bugging him! So now I’m really inspired to set up my crafts page (inspired byKC’s Craftbox. So after the digicam battery charges upI may go take a bunch of photos of my crafty stuff — maybe. Or maybe I’ll sit around and watchold movies. Or play my banjo! Who knows… (later) Ok I got my crafts page up! It’s very much unfinshed, but at least it’s a start. I also added a few pictures to the photos page. Ok time to do dishes and go to bed!

Nov 29 — Henry and I worked on our long paper christmas chain for a long time, and listened to the “Over Sea, Under Stone” audiobook that we got from the library. I’m glad he likes it, ’causethat’s one of my favorite books, and maybe I can read the whole series to him soon. Our chain is getting really long! We’re using my good artist-quality spectra fadeless colored paper. If you want to makea chain like ours, just cut a lot of circles out of folded paper — make sure about 1/2″ of the edge of thecircles are on the fold. Cut the center out like a donut. Then link them together like this. Then chain ends up to be very flexible and drapable, and you can coilit up into a nice flat pile when you want to pack it away, and you don’t need any tape or glue!I practiced my banjo a lot today, and played the piano, and cleaned the kitchen very well and the livingrooma bit too, and read to Henry, and played rummy and spyfox with him. At night Dan and I watched the rest of “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” and laughed and laughed :)

Nov 28 — Happy Thanksgiving :) Henry and I watched the Macy’s Parade together. Lotsof fun! He liked the Rockettes :) I made apple pie and stuffing and green beans and cranberry sauce (well Henry helped me make that a couple days ago) and turkey and gravyand mashed potatoes today and Dan said everything was really good. *whew* It’s the first time I ever made a traditional-type Thanksgiving feast so I was nervous. We had such a niceday, all together! Dan took Henry out for a while to drive Dan’s old RC car, and Henryloved it, and we played Rummy together, and Henry and I played a Spy Fox game, and we hung around.And I sorta cooked on and off all day and then when everything was done we ate and then we walked around the apartment complex. And now I’m terribly sleepy so I’m going to go reada little Dick Francis (large print! no headaches!) and then go to sleep :)

Nov 27 — Another fairly good episode of Enterprise tonight! I started teaching Henry howto play Rummy today. We play with our cards down on the table, so I can help him with hisstrategy and he can observe mine. He’s catching on fast. I realized it was time to teach himto play rummy while we were playing zelda one day — he was guiding me around on the world map,telling me where I could buy a special shield or whatever, and I thought, man, this kid’s got a good memory! Time for RUMMY! Oh, and speaking of zelda, I’m nearly to the end of the game.I just need to rescue zelda AGAIN, and then fight the Big Boss — “ganon” is his name I think.

Nov 26 — Antiques Roadshow — yay! Just imagine owning a mourning maternity dress wornby your great-grandmother in 1850. Man. Sensei Paul gave Henry his orange belt at class today.I’m so proud of my little boy! I fixed him pancakes for dinner, and we watched a little moreof The Music Man while he ate. Then we did the Teeth Routine (I floss and brush his teeth, andhe yells) and then the Bedtime Routine (we scrape the toys off his bed, I read to him ’til 8,then we put on one of his audio-books, and check to make sure he has his brown monkey, his graymonkey, his spiderman doll, my old german shephard toy, and Mary Doll. Then we give each othera million kisses and hugs and then I turn out the light for him :) And then I made cheese blintzesfor Dan and me, and now I’m watching the Roadshow and writing my blog! I’m tired of this layout.

Nov 24 — It’s Sunday — the house is quiet, I’m listening to NPR and cleaning the kitchen.Sounds like Prairie Home Companion is starting up — neat, I haven’t heard that show in a couple of years! Last night I watched the Ken Burns’ American Experience biography of Mark Twain –I guess it was part two of a three-part series. Bummer that I missed the first part, but part two was fascinating. And after that I finished watching a Nova episode about Venice.Venice is sinking, the ocean is rising, and poor Venice is flooded an awful lot of the time.Great show. Yay PBS! Yesterday we spent hours and hours out at the flying field, and I tookmy Spencerian Writing stuff and worked on it for ages. I’m getting a lot better! I reallywant Michael Sull’s book, though — I think it will be more useful than the books I have. Oh, and a few weeks ago I started teaching Dan to play the piano. He loves to play,and since he and Henry both wanted to be able to practice at home instead of driving to Sally’s,we decided to rent a piano. So we found a nice Yamaha, and it was delivered on Friday! Wemade room for it in the bedroom by packing away my trains (I never worked on my layout after we moved, for some reason… I think I do better with hobbies that are portable, such as knitting,writing, beadwork, needlework, etc.) and shoving all the servers into a corner. And now ourroom is less cluttered and we have a lovely piano in there! OK, I guess I’d better get back to the kitchen ;-)

Nov 22 — I slept really well for about a week, but the last two nights were bad. I woke up atexactly 7:41 both mornings, with that “impossible to fall back asleep” feeling that I haven’thad in quite a while. Oh well. And last night, while I was doing the dishes, I breathed wrong,choked, and coughed for ages — now my throat feels all messed up. Bleah. Ok, that ends thecomplaints section of the blog :) Yesterday I made room on my deskfor the scanner, so I can scan some examples of my Spencerian writing copybooks for KC. I had a horrible time finding drivers for the thing. Umax doesn’t seem to have them available for download anymore. But I eventually found them on someRussian site. And then I realized I didn’t have the power supply! Heheh. But I’ve got it now andI’m going to see if I can make the thing work before everyone else wakes up.

Nov 20 — It’s hot. We just watched “Enterprise” (the episode entitled “Singularity”) and I’d say it was the best episode so far. It was very tense and not entirely predictable, plus we got to see a Vulcan Neck Pinch and the invention of the “Red Alert” system :)Yesterday Henry had his Junior Theatre performance! Heplayed the Lord of Night and was adorable. He sure does love that class. We’ve been playing withthe digicam and I have a few photos that I’ll put up soon — a couple of our Tiny Bird ™ playing in her birdy bath, and a couple self portraits that Henry and I took of ourselves :)I photoshopped the thumbnails tonight but I’m too tired to ftp them and fix up the html and everything, so come back tomorrow :)

Nov 18 — I cleaned the back bathroom today — YAY! I hate to sound like a commercial here, butOxyclean is really good stuff. It cleans well, and doesn’t remove the skin from my hands or cause my eyes and lungs to burn. Henry has been dying to watch Star Wars Episode II with me, so werented it today and I watched it with him. Yes, I watched the whole thing. I am a good mother.Henry says it is the best movie ever, but actually it is possibly the worst movie I have ever seen…I’m trying to think of a worse movie… Oh yes there was that one in which Patrick Stewart played asenile paranoid spy or something. That was also very very bad. Oh, Waterworld was also comparablybad. But back to Star Wars. I would like to mention to moviemakers everywhere that special effectsare not enough. A movie requires a plot. A movie requires decent dialogue. A movie requires at leastone main character about whom we can care, even just a little bit. Actors who can ACT are also a plus. (Samuel Jackson and Christopher Lee were the only ones, and they weren’t in it much)Ok, ok, it’s just a movie. Henry loved it. I endured it. Yick!

Nov 16 — It has been hot lately, in the mid-80s much of the time, and dry dry dry. Crazy. Where is WINTER? We were out at the flying field for hours today. Dan flew 5 times and was ecstatically happy.I played lemonade tycoon for ages. Great game,but now that I have all the useful upgrades (ice freezer, juicer, cash register, fancy stand) I’m wishing there were more. And I also worked through the fist two of my Spencerian Copybooks! I learned all the “short letters” plus “d” and “t”. I need a finer pen for the third copybook, though. My medium Shaeffer was good enough before but the lines are ruled much closer together in the next book. Hmm… I may finally get around to making a pen out of the feather I have here. We saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tonight. It was pretty good! Quite enjoyable. Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart was absolutely perfect and a pleasure to watch. They did a fine job on Dobby, too. I was afraid they’d make him too cute, but he was perfect. Henry was with Matthew — we wanted to see the movie first to see how scary it was. Definitely too scary. We’ll let him watch it at home if he wants to see it, so we can warn him of scary stuff ahead of time and fast-forward if he wishes. Oh yes, I would like to mention the previews. Yeah. Ok. Well, there was one which we found quite shockingly bad. It seemed to be about a black guy and a white guy, friends, both disgustingly stereotyped, who go to Australia for some reason and encounter there a talking kangaroo who fouls up their plans in some way. Wacky hijinks ensue. I really can’t describe to you how truly dreadful this movie looked. It seemed as if they had gone out of their way to make a movie that would be offensive to pretty much everyone who saw it, whether they be man, woman, or kangaroo. After the preview was over, we just stared at each other in horror. Who came up with this idea? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

Nov 15 — We joined a few extremely nice homeschooling families at our local ice-o-plex for a morning of ice skating! Henry said it wasthe most fun he ever had, so we’ll definitely be going back soon. I have three tunes memorized on my banjo! I tried “Soldier’s Joy” tonight without looking at the music and was amazed to find I remembered almost all of it perfectly. My Spencerian Writing books arrived today, but I’m too tired now to learn anything new, so maybe I’ll take them to the heli field tomorrow. Oh, my brother (a.k.a. King of the Freaky Websites) gave me this url, which should be entertaining for anyone who has ever fiddled with a Rubik’s Cube — astronauts and rubik’s cube (you’ll need flash, and it’s perfectly child-safe)

Nov 14 — I took my banjo along to homeschooler park day today, and practiced for about an hour and a half! My fingers are so sore now. Henry dug in the sand with his friends and had a great time. :)I thought I had lost my little pile of needlepointing stuff, including my current project, but I found all at Sally’s house! Yay! I thought of a MySQL and php project I want to make (a movies database)and Dan says he’ll help me with that soon. I need to get out my big red php book and remember what Iused to know… It’ll be a LOT easier than a comments system for my blog, so it’s less dauntingto get it started.

Nov 12 — Emotion Eric goes on adventures! I’m tired today,and it took me WAY TOO LONG to figure out that there is more than one picture in each adventure :)I just practiced my banjo for ages, until my fingers hurt too much to continue. I have “Hop HighLadies” and “Red-Haired Boy” completely memorized, and I’m working hard on “Soldier’s Joy” whichis a super-nice tune. It’s the hardest one I’ve worked on, and I have to play up high on the neckin one place, and in third position for a while. It took a lot of work to get my fingers to find just the right spot on the neck, but I can do it almost every time now. Tomorrow I’ll probablywork on memorizing it, and then I’ll have three tunes memorized! I recently became interested in learning to write with beautiful penmanship, so after doing a lot of online research, I decidedto order this set of instruction books from an extremely christian site. Hey, they had the best price :) It’s nearly impossible to find good examples of Spencerian writing online. spencerian.com has a small example. Pretty, huh?

Nov 11 — Nice day. I finally got the neckline of my plaid flannel dress lowered. Big job, took forever, turned out nice. I still haven’t decided if I should shorten the sleeves though.They’re so pretty long, and they were tricky to make, and they have elbow darts and little zippersat the wrists (I made this dress from a 1963 dress pattern), but it’s almost never cool enough towear long sleeves all day, and they bother me if I have to cook or do dishes or anything like that.So I don’t know. I’ll probably end up chopping them short.

Nov 10 — I slept until 11:00 — YAY! I think today I will finally alter these two dresses I made. I made them with a rather high neckline and I think I’d like them a lot more with a lower neckline. It’s a little tricky to change a neckline after a dress is finished… but I can do it. I’ll just have to be very careful. I think I will also turn the long-sleeved dress into a short-sleeved dress. Looks like it’s sunny out there today, which means Dan can fly his new heli again! I made some really good soup last night — a little sauteed onion and green pepper (in lots of butter), some chicken stock, a can of black beans, and a can of italian plum tomatoes, with a lump of cream cheese flung in at the end. Mmmmm!

Nov 09 — it rained all day again, plus heavy fog at night! Very unusual. I drove Henry downto Matthew’s house (the new place he rented is really nice!) and it was raining on and off the whole way and my left windshield wiper decided to freak out. It flips itself off the edge of the windshieldand gets stuck, and I have to open the window and push it back onto the glass, and keep my hand thereso it doesn’t flip off again. LOTS of fun.

Nov 08 — Little Henry felt much better today, but we stayed at home and had a quiet day justto make sure. We cuddled on the couch and I read to him a lot — some Harry Potter, and some ofa neat book we got from the library called “The Secret Garden Cookbook” which has recipiesinspired by “The Secret Garden” and also LOTS of information about Victorian foods and cookingand meals and stuff! It rained all day today — amazing! I literally can’t remember the last timeit rained for more that a couple of hours. It was so nice to get to stay home and be lazy andlisten to the rain. Hmm, which founding father are you most like? I am similar to Alexander Hamilton, it seems… Oh I played Zelda for a while today. I conquered the wizardbut he sent Zelda to the Dark World so I’m there now, looking for the 7 princesses or something :)

Nov 07 — Henry’s sick today, poor fellow. So we’re hanging out on the couch. He’s nappingright now. Earlier we watched an episode of Mr. Rogers and one of Leave it to Beaver (thank youTiVo!) and then I read him the next chapter of Chamber of Secrets. We’re about to start Chapter 6. It’s been a while since I read the Harry Potter books, and I had forgotten how funthey were. Yeah there are plot holes and inconsistencies — but the author is so creative andimaginative that you can just ignore the little annoyances and just enjoy the fun. In othernews, Dan has finished building his Freya helicopter! He’s planning to fly it for the first time today. Cool :)

Nov 06 — Um heh I was going to write something but I’m too tired to think of anything. Bedtime!

Nov 05 — Election day. I voted — did you? Took Henry down to JT this morning, hung out, came back, went to bank, deposited money, transfered money, came home, paid bills, etc. Taught mystudents this evening, and during a little break I installed zsneson Sally’s computer, and found roms for Zelda, Super Mario All-Stars, and a couple other games.So now we can play SUPER NINTENDO over there while I wait for students or Henry waits for me :)Matthew dropped Henry off while I was still teaching, and Henry discovered SUPER NINTENDO onSal’s computer and figured out how to start it and get Zelda running and was playing happily whenI went to check on him — even though we have no gamepad over there. He figured out how touse the keyboard instead. Last night we read the first chapter of Chamber of Secrets, and tonightwe read the second. Those chapters go by pretty quickly, compared to Tolkein. :) … Heheh I just found the rom for “Donkey Kong Country”. It’s thecutest game I have ever seen and it’s FUN!I think Henry will love it. I’ll show him how to play tomorrow, after his piano lesson :)

Nov 04 — Played Zelda all morning, then Henry and I went out to do errands — groceries, water, etc.He’s a good little helper. Oh we went to the library too, and got Harry Potter and the Chamberof Secrets, so I can read it to Henry before the movie comes out. We have about 10 days…

Nov 03 — I got the second Pendant in Zelda today! Dan had to kill the awful sand-worms for me. He’samazing! We had a nice lazy relaxing day today… Dan worked on his Freya all day, and I practiced my banjo(worked on Red-Haired Boy, Arkansas Traveller, and Bill Cheatham), made apple turnovers, and playedwith Henry-Pie. We made a neat carnival-ride thing out of K’Nex, and played Zelda for ages, and watched a good episode of “Nature” about deep-sea exploration.

Nov 02 — Happy birthday John! We just finished watching “The Farmer’s Daughter” (1947, Loretta Young, Joseph Cotton, EthylBarrymore). Super-good movie. Today we spent most of the day out at the helicopter field. They’re holding a Fun-Fly out there this weekend, so there were dozens of pilots flying all day. I sat,watched the flying, and worked puzzles in my latest GAMES magazine. Henry played with the other littlekids who showed up, and Dan hung around with the other pilots :) After it got dark and the other little kids went home, we all sat together and watched the night flying, which was neat. People put light-wireand glow-sticks and stuff on their helicopters and they look amazing! And one crashed HARD into a million little pieces which sucks of course but is still entertaining (Schadenfreude). We sure had a great day :)

Nov 01 — I decided I could maybe stop being lazy and actually use capital letters once in a while ;-)We’ll see how long it lasts… I had a nice day today! Henry and I played Zelda this morning and he cheered me on while I obtained the Pendant of Courage and was rewarded with another heart and the Pegasus Boots. Yay me!! And then we went to Circuit City to buy a new little tape recorder. Henrylikes for me to tape myself reading his bedtime story every night. We have four tapes of me reading “Fellowship of the Ring” so far, and he listens to them again after I’ve kissed him goodnight andturned out the light. He says they soothe his soul. ;-) Anyway, last night the motor in his oldwalkman finally burned out. The thing was about 4 years old and had been used fairly constantly all that time — it’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did. So, since I understand how truly important it is for Henry to be able to record my reading, we went to Circuit City and got an old-fashionedtape recorder. That’s all it does — it records (and plays) cassette tapes. It’s pretty much thesame machine we had in 1978, and it has an AC adapter so we no longer have to worry about batteries.Yay! Henry and I had a great time kicking around in the store too, playing with demo models and looking at software and stuff. And we poked around in a craft store called Value Craft too –it’s nearer to our house than Michael’s and it’s way better too! They even have fabric and sewingsupplies!

oct 31 — happy halloween! hmm what happened today… i woke up with a headache and it didn’t go away until i was walking around outdoors with henry tonight. funny, ’cause i was walking a lot at the park in the afternoon and that just made it feel worse. hmm. anyway henry played with sally this morningwhich always fills him with joy, and i stayed home and played zelda and did laundry etc. i found a very good walkthrough for the zelda gamethat we are all playing (a link to the past) and i think maybe i will be able to beat those awfulmonsters soon. mm so anyway i also made corn muffins (thank you trader joe’s mix) to take to the homeschooler park day halloween potluck, which was delightfully fun! henry has met a dear little boy named tim there and they like to hang out together and play “spy fox”. let’s see and then i went toteach a piano student, and then eventually we came home and went trick-or-treating. dan answered the door and gave out candy while we were out, and then henry took over after we got home. and we watched mr.rogers together before bedtime. lovely day :) i’m trying out galeon tonight and so far it seems to be the best graphical browser for linux that i have ever used!

oct 30 — the tivo got the antiques roadshow for me! yay! what a fun show. i watched about half of it just now. i took henry to hiskarate halloween party earlier today. he’s a sheriff — jeans, cowboy hat, vest, boots, sheriff’s badge.oh and i drew a big black handlebar moustache on his face :) TOO CUTE. he had a great time at theparty and i had fun watching the kids. oh he won a prize in the costume contest –”most entertaining”.i spent a little time in the library this morning while henry had his piano lesson, and found a couplebooks that look interesting — one about optimizing web graphics with photoshop, and the other aboutREALLY learning flash 5. i think i have flash 5… well anyway i’ll learn something. i haven’t been reading somuch lately because of the headaches, but i have found that if i take a lot of breaks it’s ok. ooo i forgotto mention how much fun we’ve been having with the super nintendo emulator! we’ve been playing zelda a lot…henry likes to play, and he likes to watch me (or dan) play so we all have a lot of fun. great game! i’mstuck though… i have to beat some big fierce monsters and i just keep getting creamed over and over.ok i’m tired — bed!

oct 29 — we watched “powder”. ehh. not that great a movie, but not that bad either. entertaining enough :)what made it wonderful and special and super-enjoyable was cuddling up under my old quilt and watching it together. finally it’s not so HOT all the time and we can actually sit next to each other without dying in a puddle of sweat!

oct 28 — h and i went to the wild animal park this morning! we had so much fun :) rode the monorail,walked around, ate sandwiches, talked, fed the lorikeets, watched the elephants. what a lovely placeit is. nice day too — not too hot, not too cold.

oct 27 — dan and henry and i went to see the san diego junior theatre performance of rogers and hammerstein’s cinderella! we had a great time! my excellent nephew john has got his website back up. don’t forget to visit hissilica gel page… everyone else in the entire world has a blog with a commentsystem… i’m getting jealous. dan says he’ll help me make mine have comment capability too…stay tuned but don’t hold your breath ;-) i really really hate the time change. yeah i got an “extra” hour of sleep this morning but it’s not worth a) feeling tired even EARLIER in the evening and b) feeling like crap for a week because my body clock feels confused and c) feeling even worse when we “lose” an hour next spring. stupid daylight savings! </rant>

oct 26 — i really wish i had some sparkling apple juice right now but we don’t have any… ahh dan brought me some grapefruit juice — almost as good :) have you seen the viking kitties singing the immigrant song? heheh.we’re having a super-nice weekend. henry and i played mariokart in the morning, then i took him togymnastics and watched him tumble and bounce and fly through the air :) as a surprise i made him The One Ring out of yellow glass beads and hung it on “an elven chain, light yet strong” (blue embroidery floss)and gave it to him after his class and he was delighted. sweet little boy! then i took our little budgieto the vet — her beak and legs were looking oddly crusty. turns out she has mites, poor little thing.but the vet says she’ll be fine. we have to go back for more medicine at 2-week intervals for a while.she’s the dearest little bird in the whole world — we all love her so we’re relieved that there’s nothingterribly wrong with her! then dan and i went out to the field and he flew his helicopter and i mademore lovely snowflakes and played mario brothers 3 on dan’s little laptop. and then we came home, and finished watching the apartment and now i’m watchingholiday (one of my all-time favorites) and eating noodleswith cream-cheese garlic sauce. my goodness katherine hepburn sure has a sparkle, but dan says he likes my sparkle better :) :) :) have i mentioned lately how wonderful he is?

oct 25 — i went to michaels (a craft store) this morning! they had some good glass beads onsale so i bought a bunch more, plus another little compartment box to keep them in. i made severalmore super-pretty snowflakes yesterday. i keep my beading stuff in my Lucy Lunchbox, along with mylittle needlepoint projects, so i can carry it along with me and work on my snowflakes while i’m waiting for henry at karate or gymnastics or wherever. ok the dishes are stacked up mighty high in thesink so i’d better take care of that now, and then i should have time for some banjo practice before it’stime to leave again for piano students and karate. oh i forgot to mention what incredible strengthof will i used at michaels. they had so much cool stuff there and they had some christmas stitchery kits on sale that i really liked… yet i managed to buy only what i went there for. amazing! :)

oct 24 — i forgot to mention that we are hosting julie’s site now, and in exchange for a bunch of workdan did for her, she gave him one of her spare digicams :) it’s really amazing! dan took this photo of me last night.

oct 23 — went to the library after henry’s piano lesson and got some cool books! henry’s getting a lot moreinterested in learning to read, so we picked out a few picture books with few and simple words. he read oneto me tonight entitled “big pig and little pig” and needed help with only one word (”going”). he wasEXTREMELY proud of himself. all he’s been needing is a little confidence. pretty soon he’ll be a fine reader, i think :) i made a bunch of really pretty snowflakes today using the new beads i boughtat The Black Bead in ocean beach. hmm, they don’t have a website but they RULE. also playedsuper mario brothers 3 with henry (he loves watching and coaching me, and he takes a turn sometimes too). played “worms world party” with dan again too, lots of fun. :) and i just practiced my banjofor AGES. i’ve got “hop high ladies” memorized and i learned a new one too — “red-haired boy”. it’sgot a couple of tricky chords in it but i can do it!

oct 21 — what a day. but hey, life is good and the weather is cooler :) dan’s been playing “worms” lately and today we played against each other — fun little game! and i got a new game for my palm — variegate. see my palmstuff page for details. also updated my bookspage. set up dad’s new remote-controlled heater, made apple turnovers. took henry to the playgroundand he met a nice little girl and they played while i made a few more snowflakes. ok time for bed andsleeeeeeeeeeep.

oct 20 — just woke up. 10 hours of sleep! yay! we watched SNL last night and most of it was quite funny!”America needs another great lake.” ok there are a lot of things i want to do today so i’d better get started!

oct 19 — spent hours at the helicopter field while dan flew and helped kyle with his heli. i played on the clie, listened to music, did puzzles in GAMES magazine, and made a couple more beaded snowflakes. reallypleasant and relaxing :) i was just cleaning henry’s room — ugh! i have to do it when he’s not here or he won’t let methrow away even the tiniest scrap of paper. oh yesterday we went on a homeschooler field trip to the rokenbok company headquarters (in encinitas). it was pretty neatbut more of a sales pitch than anything. pretty boring for the little guys to have to listen to a speech abouttheir marketing strategies. but we got to meet some of the designers/engineers and see where they test the toys andstuff, and , best of all, we got to play with the toys before the tour started ;-) but it was henry’s least-favoritefield trip ever, poor child. they really need to re-think their tour plan and make it a lot more interesting for little kids, if they are inviting little kids to go on the tour.ok time for some apples and cottage cheese. that’s a good bedtime snack.

oct 18 — i’m learning a little fiddle tune on my banjo — “hop high ladies” it’s called. it’sin my ken perlman book and is the first piece in there that i’ve really loved. i think i have itmemorized now, and i also printed out some staff paper and transcribed it out of tab into standard notation, just for fun :) dan might give me his clie n760c! he isn’t using it since he got the treo, and he’d rather give it to me than sell it. so i’ve got all my programs loaded on there and am trying it out. listening to mp3son a palm is pretty cool :) so far i like it a lot! but i’m very sentimental about my iiic so we shall see…i finished all my books and didn’t read at all today (except to henry — we’re on chapter 12 ofThe Fellowship) and no got no headaches! yay!

oct 16 — finished my book today. wow! that was a good one. dan wrote a review of his nifty newcellphone/palm (handspring treo 300). you can read his review at the gadgeteer. i love the way he writesabout it — so full of enthusiasm, facts, and extra information! that’s the kind of review i’d like to read if i were thinking about getting one. and i got to proofread it for him, which i love to do. whoopsi just found one more comma that should be a semi-colon. oh well ;-) i’m glad i finally know what’swrong with my eyes. it does seem to help the jumpiness to hold my book as far away from my face as possible,and when i feel a headache coming on to rest my eyes completely for a while.

oct 15 — took henry down to his theater class and took myself to the art museum and the mingei :) nice andpeaceful, no one talking. they have antique dolls and toys at the mingei (folk art museum) and the “goulden baby house” which is a dollhouse built in 1750 and still containing the furnishings of the first owner and her great-grandaughter (c. 1820). it’s wonderful but i can’t find a picture online for you,sorry :( hmm then i came home, bought milk, took myself to the library and got this book called “dresscodes of three girlhoods: my mother’s, my father’s, and mine” by noelle howley. i’ve been reading itat every spare moment all day (e.g. at stoplights) and i’m about halfway through. it’s really interesting and well-written, and i’m enthralled. here, read the reviews on amazon. they put it better than i can :) get it from the library and read it!

oct 14 — jeeze i need to catch up here… let’s see… today’s monday… on saturday i had another migraineand did basically nothing all day. bleah. sunday i got enough sleep (finally) and felt good all day!we went out to the field so dan could fly his helicopter, and i read my incredibly good book “The Battleof the Villa Fiorita” by Rumer Godden. and we went up to john’s house in temecula so dan could fix up hisnetwork etc and then we went over to the ben and jerry’s in temecula (that’s the closest one to our house)and dan bought me a cone and two quarts to take home :) and we hung out for a while and then picked uplittle henry-monkey at matthew’s mom’s house and took him home with us. also fixed up the nyip website butthe new version isn’t up yet so i won’t url you. today i went to get my eyes checked… i’ve been having a lotof headaches and funny vision things going on lately. turns out i have something called “convergence insufficiency” which there is prettymuch nothing they can do about unless i am a zillionaire and/or have vision insurance to pay for visiontherapy. but oh well at least i know what’s causing the headaches and funny vision things! plus i cansay i have “convergence insufficiency” which sounds impressive ;-) ok i have brought you my loyal fans up to date and now i can get back to my incredibly good book (which i bought for $.50 at a garage salealong with a wonderfully tacky 8-book set of 1964 cookbooks.) p.s. the sopranos last night was… better.

oct 10 — i don’t believe i ever mentioned how truly terrible last week’s episode of The Sopranos was. now,The Sopranos has always been a pretty good show, and we look forward to watching it together every sunday.it has always been well-acted (except for Silvio — where did they dig him up?) and well-written, and usually the plot makes sense. but last week’s episode was a disaster. it seemed as if the writers suddenlyran out of things to write about, and were grasping at straws, trying ANYTHING to fill up an hour. a familyof blind, elderly, and/or deranged hitmen? Furio, pining for the good old days when he was a gardener??Ralphie, apparently shrugging off the fact that janice dumped him and shoved him down the stairs? Melfi,complaining to her shrink about her son’s lack of ambition? (that one REALLY seemed out of character to me).the astonishing yet pointless coincidences of meadow meeting melfi’s shrink’s son/daughter (we never decided whether it was male or female) AND malfi’s shrink encountering tony in the parking garage? did tony stop seeing melfi?isn’t that what the show is BASED ON? and that last scene, where we were obviously supposed to think that carmellawas hearing “furio music” in her head… but it was really meadow’s stereo. what was THAT for? the whole thing wasa mess. and did they forget about the GIANT BUILDUP toward adriana getting picked up by the feds… well,now what? gripe, gripe ;-) well, sorry, but sopranos was really the only tv show worth looking forward toanymore so it’ll be sad if it’s going to start to stink. let’s hope the next episode is better.

oct 09 — finally got to see “gosford park”! excellent movie, lot of familiar faces in it that i have to lookup on imdb now… helen mirren and steven fry are the only two that i can put names to right away… but i thinkthe girl who played anne elliot in a recent version of Persuasion was in it. dan looked up the actress who playedeliie-the-maid for me, ’cause she was driving me crazy — turns out she played the blind girl in Red Dragon. heheh.i NEVER would have placed her if not for imdb.com. and george-the-footman was played by the actor who played sewell in the-movie-where-van-helsing-teleports, aka NOT bram stoker’s dracula. anyway i’m going to eat myenglish muffin now and go to sleep. if you want to see a good english-country-house-murder-mystery, go watchgosford park!

oct 07 — i’m making some of my good veggie soup for lunch — lots of barley, potatoes, carrots, a bit of celery andgreen pepper, minced onion, and a can of plum tomatoes in their juice. yum! it’s starting to smell good already. this morning henry and i made a rocket ship ride with his K’Nex! K’Nex gets my coveted firstannual Coolest Toy of the Year Award. i practiced my banjo for a long time this morning. i’m working on somerather difficult exercises in my lesson book, and also on the lovely little songs in the booklet that camealong with my Happy Traum Beginning Banjo video. :) forgot to mentiont hat we went to lisa’s birthday partyfor a little while on saturday (happy birthday lisa :) and then to horton plaza to see The Red Dragon. It was good, better than i was expecting. a lot better than Hannibal. ralph fiennes is AMAZING — we’d just watchedhim being charles van doren in Quiz Show, and he was almost unrecognizable in Red Dragon.

oct 05 — took henry to his gymnastics class this morning and started reading “travels with charley” by johnsteinbeck. i just picked it up to see how for i’d gotten, and accidentally read another ten pages withoutrealizing it. what a book! anyway he’s in maine, talking to the canadians who harvest the potato crop. yesterday i had a migraine, bleah, not terrible but it made me feel pretty crappy all day. henry and dan tookgood care of me, though. henry and i have been reading his beautiful hardbound birthday copy of Lord of the Ringsevery day. we’re up to chapter VII — the Tom Bombadil one. We’re going to skip Fog on the Barrow Downs,though — that chapter scared me when i was little and it’s boring, too. heheh. this morning i’m working onhenry’s computer some more. we got him more RAM and a new cd-rom drive for his birthday, and i’m donating my old6 gig hard drive. so right now i’m fixing up the hard drive with a ncie clean installation of win98se and allhis good henry software etc. he’s been longing to have room for mp3s on his computer and now he will!

oct 03 — happy birthday kathy! oh this change in the weather is so nice. i’m so glad fall is finally here. somepeople say there are no seasons in southern california, but that’s not true. there are no obvious, dramatic seasonalchanges — the trees are not turning color or anything, and it’s still sunny all the time, but the air feels and smells different and the sun is not as intense as it is in summer. it’s much more pleasant to be outside, now that the heat and sun are not so oppressive. i practiced my banjo last night and dan said he wasreally impressed at how fast i’m improving! i sure love playing it. it has such a friendly, joyful, soothingsound.

oct 02 — henry bought a bionicle board game with some birthday money and we just played it — it’s pretty fun :) ok time for shower and doing stuff… the kitchen floor is driving me crazy so maybe i’ll mop it today… maybe ;-)kirsten came over monday night and we watched “witness for the prosecution” which was really good! charleslaughton is so cool, and tyrone power was amazing! it is actually a little bit cooler lately… i have been using both my blankets at night and now my feet are cold. yay!

sept 29 — last night was so nice — we took a walk in the evening, and hung around in the quiet together for ages and then we drove down to the baskin-robbins for ice cream but when we got there we realized we were really hungry so we ZOOMED over to the mall because dan wanteda Quiznos sandwich but they had just closed (at 8:30 on a saturday? we thought the mall was open til 10…). sothen we headed back to baskin-robbins and had ice cream. never again! they have HORRID ice cream. the only decentice cream place is Ben and Jerry’s i guess. but we had a lot of fun anyway, driving around at night together. :)and today has been wonderful too! i had the house all to myself for hours this morning, and then after dan gotup we went to lunch and i bought beading wire. and then i made another snowflake, and now i’m going to clean upand practice my banjo and then go pick up our dear little henry-pie.

sept 28 — we had henry’s birthday party today. ohhhhh how i hate birthday parties. his two good friends,spike and nicolas, came and i think everyone had a good time, but henry was a basket case,compared to his normal, easy-going, relatively calm little self. being the center of attention is too much for asensitive little kid to handle, i think. after the party i went to the bead store for more beads so i can makemore snowflakes for christmas presents!

sept 27 — happy 7th birthday darling henry! we had a fun nice day doing henry birthday things — lookedat his new books, played with his K’Nex (he loves them), played his new computer games, etc. he seemed really happy all day, and he got to play with sally for an hour this morning, which filled him with joy :)we were there when 11am came, the time when he was born, and sally ran to get a big brass bell for him toring and we all cheered :)

sept 26 — the rush concert last night was fun! it was at the coors amphitheater which is a really nice outdoor concert place. our seats were good, it was not too cold, there was no opening band, and we hada good time :)

sept 25 — i bought ingredients for henry’s birthday cake today. he wants lemon cake, and he doesn’t like frostingso i bought lemon marmelade to stick the layers together, and blue sprinkles for the top (his favorite color isblue). tonight we are going to the Rush concert… I don’t like Rush, but dan does so i am going with him to keep him company :) ok now i have to call the damn DMV and see where my registration stickers are…

sept 23 — it is hot. hot hot hot. made apple pie again yesterday and it’s all gone already :) i found a really fun little space invaders clone for henry — if you set the speed to slow, it’s just right for a little kid with no1980s videogame experience. he loves it! here you go: buggers.i’m reading such a good book: “Squire” by tamora pierce. in fact i’m going to go read some more now.

sept 22 — happy birthday pthree! C A N… ok i had a really goodday yesterday! watched two of the banjo intructional videotapes that my dear sweet aunt susan sent me (she works forhomespun tapes) and practiced and improved some more! and we drove down to the Borders bookstore down in SD so I could get books for Henry’s birthday. got him a nice hardback of “dr dolittle”and a german picture dictionary (he wants me to teach him german) and we went out to dinner. and it was a lovely day :) now i’m going to go clean henry’s room before he gets back!

sept 20 — dropped henry off at sally’s for his piano lesson and playtime this morning, and then went to do a little birthday shopping for him… bought him a big K’Nex kit which looks like lots of fun! you can build lots of neat things with it. dan and i can hardly wait to play with it with him. :)also looked at bookstar for good books for him but couldn’t find anything so i willgo down to the big borders bookstore on sunday i think. yesterday my beaded snowflakes kit finally arrived!i made a snowflake right away and it was so much fun! henry helped me sort and choose and string the beads.and also yesterday i practiced my banjo for a long time and dan said i was noticably improved and that it soundedlike real music :) :) :) ok now i am going to go make another snowflake.

sept 19 — last night i dreamed that dan and henry and i moved into a little house in a little town where icould walk to the library and the store. nice dream :) and then i dreamed that some friends and i were performing “much ado about nothing” — my friend martha played bianca, and i think i played hero, and keanu reeves was there ;-) last night we watched the season premiere of “enterprise” and it was actuallyGOOD. whoa. and i realized that my feet were cold so i put on a pair of henry’s socks that were on the couch.cold feet mean summer might finally be almost over! if they remain cold (without socks) i will know for sure.this morning henry and i are planning to go to the bank and the library and the farmers’ market. fun :) we want to buy some tomatoes that have a TASTE, and i’m hoping the tamale lady will be there.

sept 17 — i keep thinking of all this stuff i want to write about and then when i finally get to my computeri forget everything. argh. oh well. windows is all nice and useful on this computer now. i’m still booted into windows because i’ve been getting a bunch of mp3s with kazaa lite. i haven’t found a goodp2p file sharing program for linux yet, and kazaa lite is really excellent. i installed the german version, just for fun :) “audiodateien suchen”. henry has been listening to “99 luftballon” a lot, and i realizedthat i can understand a lot of the lyrics, which is really cool. here’s a list of my indispensible windows programs: securecrt, winamp, kazaa lite, trillian, ncftp, irfanview, photoshop, flash, audiograbber, and nero.trillian is new for me… it’s an aim client. i like it a lot! all right, i guess i’b better go buy somejuice. heheh i just walked down the hall to the bathroom… austin is sleeping in henry’s room since henryis down at matthew’s. austin has the door open, so i’m sure the sounds of my typing and rummaging in the kitchenare clearly audible in henry’s room, AND the window blinds are wide open and the sun is shining full in austin’s face. yet he can sleep. amazing.

sept 16 — nice day today! henry and i took a nice walk on the beach (well, a wade-and-walk) and played”streetcar” (excellent board game). oh that pie i made yesterday turned out perfectly and it is already completely gone. tonight we’re going to take henry to matthew’s and pick up austin from his uncle’s place. i’m still waiting for my banjo case and my book and my beaded snowflake kit to arrive!

sept 15 — last night we watched “it happened one night”. that is one incredibly well-written/directed/actedmovie. but the damn tivo cut off the last few minutes of it so the last thing we saw was Ellie walking down the aislewith the WRONG MAN. grrrr. we’re going to rent it soon so we can watch it all over again and actually see the end this time. also installed the winders on Strangelove’s other partition yesterday… this morning i spenta few hours installing software and stuff. i think i’m all set now so i’m going to go practice my banjo andthen make an apple pie for dan, who is absolutely LUSTING for pie. allrecipies.com rules :) congratulations john and kc!!! we love you :)

sept 14 — we just took austin down to his uncle’s place in lakeside. on the way we stopped at the wonderful computercirculation center and bought some more parts for henry’s computer. dan discovered that the fan was failing, and he thinksthat might be contributing to the instability problem. and we got a new slotket. ok i am ravenously hungry so i amgoing to make my favorite lunch (big salad wrapped up in lots of soft buttery corn tortillas) and watch a fred astaire movie.i think it’s “follow the fleet” and i’ve never seen it before!

sept 13 — i can play “buffalo gals” pretty well! slowly, but nicely. i bought a banjo instruction book on amazon (used) so pretty soon i will be able to make sure i’m not learning bad habits. i read a lot of good reviews of ken perlman’sclawhammer banjo book… i hope it gets here soon! last night i watched “breaker morant” — excellent movie. i watched it years and years ago, and i was glad to see that it was as good as i remembered.

sept 11 — last year on this date, dan and i were sound asleep when my mom pounded on our door (we were still livingthere) and said there was something terrible going on in NY and she, my grandpa mike, grandma carol, and grandma jean couldn’t get the tv to work. i went downstairs, fiddled with the cable, made the tv work, and sat there glued with them,watching when the second plane hit the tower. after a bit i went back up to get dan thinking he’d better know what was going on.we were all very worried about my brother, who lives in NYC, and his wife, who is a flight attendent. turned out theywere just fine. henry was with matthew that day, so all we did all day was watch CNN. today, everything was normal inmy world. everyone i know and love is safe and well.

sept 10 — we all went down to SD tech books so dan could get an Oracle book.and then we stopped by giacoletti’s (the local music store) and dan bought me my banjo! it’s so lovely. it’s the deering goodtime that i linked to on the 8th. i didn’t buy a case for it — i’m waiting until i can afford a hard case.i can probably get one on ebay for < $100. now i need an instuction book -- i have been reading reviews online and i think i know the one i want. luckily there are lots and lots of fine banjo websites -- i was fooling around onuncle ben’s banjo page and actually made somethingthat sounded a little bit like music! oh, and i had a new adult student today — she’s so sweet and enthusiastic. she’sgoing to be fun to teach!

sept 09 — took henry down to balboa park to play with nicolas. alina had some free passes to the science museum,so we all went there and it was really fun! my parents used to take us there when we were little. it’s all differentnow, much much bigger, way more exhibits, but a few of the old ones that i remember are still there. :) at night kirsten came over and we watched “double indemnity”. great old movie!

sept 08 — i got sally’s computer all fixed up with a nice clean install of win98 and all the software she needs,and I took it over this morning and set it up for her. it was fun! henry and i played one of his pajama samgames all the way through — it took about 2 hours and was really quite enjoyable! for the past couple of daysi’ve been surfing for information about banjos… i’ve wanted to learn to play the banjo for years and recentlydan said he wanted to buy me something very special and i think a banjo is what i want! this is theone i’m looking at: deering goodtime…

sept 07 — our friend austin has come to visit for two weeks! before we picked him up at the airport (the adorablelittle carlsbad airport) we went to computer circulation center (the BEST computer stuff store in san diego) forparts for mom’s new hand-me-down computer and for henry’s birthday upgrade. we got a stick of ram for each of them, a new cd-rom drive for each, and a video card for henry-pie. i’ve been working on sally’s computer now for a long time…installing windows updates now. whee. oh, i went to the library this morning, and also stopped by the goodwill for fun –i bought an adorable striped spandex/cotton shirt, and a plaid wrap miniskirt for a total of $5.28 :)

sept 06 — happy birthday chloe!

sept 05 — dan’s parents sent me a big box of jellybeans and a lovely enormous wooden cuttingboard for my birthday!it was such a nice surprise :) today was a good day. it was a little cooler and cloudy, and it even rained just a tinylittle bit a couple of times. it was so exciting to smell rain again!

sept 04 — ok well i was going to write while i was watching a movie (”my sister eileen”) but it’s really goodso far so i can’t really watch and write at the same time… ok now i paused it. thank you mr. tiVo. i’vebeen commanding the tivo to record a lot ov movies lately and some of them have been pretty good! let’s see…in the last couple weeks we’ve watched The Graduate, The Great Escape, Airplane, and The Spirit of St. Louis,all of which were really good! Watched Spirit of St. L. with henry and he loved it too, and has been playing “charles lindberg” with a funny knitted cap of mine that looks a little like an aviator’s helmet. and speaking of henry i wanted to write down a little song he composed while we were camping: “imagine a berryas big as a canary, three thousand miles in length! imagine a grape as big as an ape, three thousand milesin length!” so anyway about my day today. it started out great — watched a wonderful episode of “nature”with henry, all about the birds and beasts of iceland, and then i read to him, and then i helped him clean hisroom, and then he helped me carry out loads of garbage, and then i cleaned my sewing table and unloaded and cleanedthe long bookshelf, and vacuumed under the coffee table, and then i was planning to finish sewing that blackshirt i am making but i got a bad migraine and just lay on the couch for a few hours. ugh. i still feel kind of bad but not as bad as i did this afternoon. ok back to My Sister Eileen.

sept 03 — we had fun camping. it was VERY hot and dry up on the mountain, though — i don’t think we will camp upthere again at this time of year. the hot dry dusty weather was exhausting. but we had a great time! henry and i gotthere at 1:30 on sunday and set up the tent and walked around and ate. and then saly got there later and we walked aroundand ate some more. :) after the sun went down we took another walk (it was just as hot but without the glaring sun)and looked at the stars, which was amazing. i had actually forgotten what a night sky full of stars looks like! darncity lights :( after we got home yesterday henry and i watched most of “spirit of st. louis”, a good old movie aboutcharles lindbergh starring jimmy stewart. it was REALLY good! we’re going to finish it this morning. i guessi’d better go unload the camping stuff out of the car before it gets too hot and miserable out there. i wish winterwould get here. i wish i lived somewhere where there actually WAS winter, heheh.

sept 02 — happy birthday ken!

sept 01 — went to bed very very late last night, and woke up very very early because i am excited about going camping! so i’m kind of tired this morning but oh well at least i will probably get to bed early tonight. our parakeet is so delightful! she is very tame and gentle, and just so adorable. we leave the top off her cage allthe time, with a 5′ long walking-stick-like branch that henry brought home across the top for an extra-nice perch for her.she is a very very sweet little bird.

aug 31 — drove up to van nuys for an RC Helicopter fun-fly thing. I watched some of the stunt-flying, but mostlysat in the shade, finished reading “persuasion” and played an entire game of kingdom :) very pleasant!traffic was AWFUL on the way home. we just finished watching The Graduate. great movie. i thought i spotted a VERY young richard dreyfuss — looked him up on IMDB and i was right! he’s the guy in the boarding house whowants to call the cops. i was trying to watch Cabaret (another one for when henry’s not home) but lizaminelli is just too annoying and i can’t stand her anymore so i’m going to bed! taking henry camping on the mountaintomorrow :)

aug 30 — i was working on my aldon’s crossing module yesterday and was totally perplexed by the fact that my actors were only giving half the experience points that they should be… i stewed over it and posted to the forum and fretted…and finally tony pointed out the fact that when you have a pet, he takes half the experience too… D’OH! boy did i feel foolish! bought push-pins recently and hung henry’s posters up, finally. he nees a little bookshelf and a little dresser for his clothes, but that will have to wait for another month until i have money again :)

aug 27 — happy birthday to me! i’m having a lovely day. henry gave me a big set of colored pens, and dan gave me two wonderful coloring books, dr. strangelove on dvd, and a james hogan paperback (the Giants trilogy).

aug 26 — whoops missed some days there. sorry! we had a great weekend! Henry’s gymnastics recital was on saturday,so that was fun and exciting. he had a wonderful time. let’s see what else happened… i worked on my aldon’s crossingmodule quite a bit. it’s slow though… i need to think of some more quests! oh and last night dan and i watched some of “the great escape” which i told the TiVo to record for me. we’ll probably finish it tonight. good movie! today we met nicolas and alina at mission bay park and we all had such a good time! henry and nicolas get along great together, and alina and i get along great together too :) it was lovely — we were there for hours!

aug 23 — josh just url’d me freeciv for palmos.oh my god. it looks amazing! i hope they complete it someday — i just emailed and volunteerd to beta test :) lookat the screenshots!

aug 22 — woke up at 6:45am for some reason. argh. yesterday i was cleaning henry’s room, and dealing with this horrible old vacuum that we got for free, and something inside me just SNAPPED and i decided to go spend some ofmy savings on a brand new vacuum. so i ran down to the Denault’s True Value Hardware Store and bought a nice littlehoover upright.(mine was on sale for $79) a nice grandmotherly sales lady let me try it out and everything, and told me all about the Denaultfamily — how the first store was started in 1950 or something, and the grown up sons manage the stores and the grandkids work in the office, etc. brought my nice new vacuum home and it works wonderfully. yay! …later that same day… well since i was up so early i decided to use the quiet morning to find/install/test/use a new aim client. i use gaim, which is an aim client for linux. well, lately gaim has been exhibiting some undesirable behaviour (e.g. showing me chinese,nothing, or large bars of blue instead of whatever text people are trying to send me). I tried ntaim (non-graphical)but it leaves a LOT to be desired. so today i tried everybuddy and kopete, both of which i have heard good things about.well, everybuddy segfaults whenever i run it. i even got the latest version from their website, compiled it(which took forever because i had to track down a bunch of extra libs and stuff)… and boom, it segfaults every time. ok so i thought i’d try kopete… well, kopete depends on a bunch of kde stuff that apt never heard of (i don’t use kde, but i do use konqueror so i thought maybe kopete would work too… no such luck.) so at this point, 14 hours later (well i didn’t spend the entire day on this project but it kind of feels as if i did) i’m back to semi-good old gaim.

aug 21 — mom and dad gave my birthday present early, since mom will be out of town on my actual birthday. theygave me a beautiful pair of zeeta shoes! i love them.

aug 20 — last night i slept well, and went all night without coughing. yay :) i have found two new GOOD palm games: Kingdom and Timebomb. see my palm stuff page for details.

aug 18 — yesterday i felt ok in the morning but crummy again by nighttime. went out to the flying field with dan to watchhim fly his RC heli and started reading “Persuasion” again (the penguin classics edition he gave me for christmas).after flying, we picked up Sal and went to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding which was absolutely wonderful. (that review gets a couple of details wrong, but you’ll getthe idea) go see it go see it go see it. by the time we got home i felt awful so i lay on the couch and watchedNick at Night (a couple of annoying Lucy episodes and a couple of pleasant, early, Leave it to Beaver episodes). I feel a bitbetter again this morning — i’ll try not to over-do it again today. have you ever been to villainsupply.com?

aug 16 — finally started feeling better yesterday. i still have a bit of a dry cough, but my appetite is back and i feel human again! yay for good health! i just discovered that kayray.org is listed in the “recommended” catagorynycteris.net — the lovely site belonging to my dear nephew’s g/f. i feel honored :)hope to meet you someday, kc!

aug 15 — henry invented a wonderful game today. i sent him off to wash his hands, and after a while i realized there wassinging coming from the bathroom. he was in there a long long time and then he came out and said he’d invented a game,ao i went with him to see. the game is called “Boiling Lake”. you fill up the sink to the very brim with hot water,and you sing the Boiling Lake song (”the boiling lake will make you go insane, everyone wants to see that groovy thing”to the tune of “Spiraling Shape” by TMBG) and then you dunk toys in it… apparently it is extremely fun! yay henry :)

aug 14 — sick. but taught my wednesday students anyway — there were only two today. henry is home! yay!!! he had a busy day — first a grappling seminar at the dojo, and then he went to an indoor rockclimbing place with his friends, and then he played with them, and then they dropped him off at sally’s when i was done teaching and then i took him to gymnastics. and then we lay on the couch and watched two mr. rogers episodes (how people make balloons!)and it was lovely and relaxing.

aug 13 — sick. lay on the couch all day, napped, listened to bach. dan took good care of me.

aug 12 — woke up feeling bad… i can feel a sore throat starting and i feel generally crummy. blah. lay aroundmost of the day, and then dan drove me around to do errands and stuff.

aug 11 — my birthday wishlist is up! i did a little shopping for henry’s birthday today. i bought him a couple of cd-roms at costco — the I Spy Treasure Hunt (he liked the I Spy Schoolhouse game a lot) and a three-pack of Spy Fox games, which I hear are good, and they are made by the same company that makes pajama sam,freddi the fish, and other favorites.

aug 10 — yesterday i worked on my little mod all day (when i had time) and late at night my modmaker crashed and ilost everything i’d done all day (which wasn’t much — i’ve been fighting with an actor script). grrrr, learn to savemore often, kara :) i made my fabulous casserole for dinner again — here’s the basic recipe: make a big pot of polenta (2 c. polenta, 6 c. water, some salt) when it’s done, stir in a lot of grated parmesan, romano, or asiago cheese. meanwhile,saute some onion, garlic, diced peeled eggplant, carrots, red/green peppers, and zuchini in a big pot in olive oil, orwhatever is handy. when the vegetables are nice and tender, add a big can of diced tomatoes and some basil and oregano, and salt and pepper, cook it down a little, and stir in a lot or grated cheese, again. pour the polenta into a LARGE casserole, and then pour the vegetable mixture in on top, gently. sprinkle a lot of grated mozzarella on to, and bake at350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until the cheese gets bubbly. let it rest a while, and then devour it. yummmm!today has been lovely so for. got up pretty early, and henry and i played on our computers next to each other untilit was time to take him to gymnastics. read my book while he bounced around. then we came home, and i read him three more chapters of swiss family robinson, and then we watched “splash”, and then took himswimming so he could be a merman. and then read to him some more and then matthew came to pick him up. and nowdan and i are sitting together — he is working on his helicopter, and i am going to tinker with my mod!

aug 08 — yesterday the LotR dvd arrived! henry and dan sat down to watch it together right away — i had to goteach my little piano students. henry loved it! today i took henry to the 10am karate class, then we ate pastry at alittle cafe, then we drove though horrid traffic to encinitas to meet a little homeschol boys playgroup at the beach!henry’s dear friend nicolas was there, and some other nice fun guys. h rode his little kickboard in the waves, and then ran off with the boys and dug complicated canals and pits in the sand for a few hours. :) i hid from the sununder my hat, long sleeved shirt, long pants, and umbrella, and read “little lord fauntleroy”. read the first coupleof chapters to nicolas, too. he’s a shy fellow, and was hanging around the grownups, for a while, just like i used to do.he’s a very pleasant little fellow, and really enjoyed fauntleroy!

aug 06 — just installed xmcd so i could play audio cds, and i’ve got the Italian Concerto in right now. ahhh, bach.started reading Swiss Family Robinson (unabridged, of course!) to henry last night, and he loved it and begged for more!read him four more chapters this morning. :) i’ve been waiting and waiting for him to be old enough to enjoy the SwissFamily with me. i got the troublesome script in my little AC mod working perfectly! now i feel inspired to start thinkingof a story for REAL mod. i’m going to start VERY small, just to make something, so i don’t get overly ambitious andend up with nothing. now i have to think of a story…. hmmm…

aug 04 — on saturday henry and i watched “bicentennial man” which was surprisingly good. i wasn’t expecting much, but it looked like something we might both enjoy… we liked it a lot! i don’t remember the original Asimov storyvery clearly, but i don’t *think* the movie altered it beyond recognition. this evening henry and i went to nighttimezoo! we entered the hula-hoop contest and did very well. henry lasted longer than i did! we also saw a tiny babygorilla being carried by its mom, and we watched the orangutans for about half an hour. henry climbed on the gorilla statues, we looked at some beautful birds, and we saw the sea lion show. then we rode the sky buckets to the otherside of the zoo, and then back again, and then we looked at some of the snakes, and then it was late so we came home.also henry had a churro and i had some coffee, and we shared. (henry is telling me what to write :) we had a great time!

aug 03 — oh, strangelove (my desktop) is so nice now. i have 256mb of ram now and it seems lightning-fast! yesterdayi played with racuum for hours and hours… i added a map to an existing mod, with spawning monsters, a signpost, and a little man who tells you something when you tap him. and everything worked! at night randy came into #aldonscrossingand he explained various scripts from AC to me for hours, and now i understand so much more than i did and i’m all eager to add stuff to my little mod. i’m going to just practice adding and changing things until i feel really comfortable,and then i’ll try my hand at making an actual, playable mod! yay! the $5 clothing store is going out of business, andi stopped by there yesterday, sifted through the piles of super-tacky polyester, and came away with brown bike shorts,a little black skirt, a pair of olive-green linen drawstring pants, a little green stretchy top, and a long slim browntencel skirt, for a TOTAL of $3.23 :) :) :) the linen pants are my new Favorite Pants — wore them all day yesterdaywith my mustard-yellow plaid vintage camp shirt, and felt beautiful and comfortable.

aug 02 — yay linux is all happy and nice on my desktop now! eventually, i’ll put windows on the other partition…dan helped me SO MUCH last night. we tried to rescue stuff off my old hard drive but to no avail… but oh, well,there were not many irreplacable files, and it’s my own fault for not backing stuff up. i do wish i had myjohn linnell/john flansburg wallpaper, though. i made it ages ago and it was a pain in the neck to get it just right.can’t seem to find a copy on any other box. i’m reading “inherit the stars” by james p. hogan and it’s so good!thank you rob for telling us about these books :) yesterday i made racuum work! racuum is an aldon’s crossing modmaker for unix, and it took me a LONG time to compile it, becausei didn’t know what i was doing. but i finally managed, with only a little help (thanks worf :). if you want to compileit on a debian box, and you, too, don’t know what you are doing, the packages you want are libgtk1.2-dev, autoconf, and automake :)

aug 01 — nice and cloudy this morning! took henry to the 10am karate class (they got to do point sparring, which he loves, and the three little girls he likes so much were there too :), then drove him down to matthew’splace. happy birthday matthew! on the way home i went to costco for 32x cd-rs for dan, and got one of their big2.75 lb boxes of fabulous fresh blueberries. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)

july 31 — henry and i watched three mr. rogers episodes today, off the TiVo. in one of them, we saw how people make combs, in another we saw how people assemble traffic signals, and in the third we saw how people assemble computermice. we love mr. rogers!

july 30 — the hard drive in my desktop box (strangelove) finally failed… so we bought a nice big one (40 gigs! i used to have 20) and finally got around to hooking it out a few days ago. and then i had floppy drive/cable problems so we couldn’t boot off a floppy so the project was delayed… so finally last night i borrowed dan’s floppy drive and cable, andwe finally started installing the lunix! YAY!

july 29 — i picked henry up early in temecula, and gave him the “NO!” cd i bought for him at the concert. we listenedto it all the way home, and he listened to it for most of the day, as well. he loves it :) and i haven’t even shownhim the interactive animation on it yet.

july 28 — last night we went to hear They Might Be Giants in anaheim, at the house of blues. we had a kind of a hard time finding the place — it’s in this horrible disney-kitsch shopping/restaurant mall thing. you can’t see it at allfrom the road we were on, and we had bad directions, so we went past it and had to call the place. but we got there okin te end. TMBG was wonderful! they are SO GOOD live! they did lots of songs from “NO!” (”NO!”is their new kids’ cd which is very good, by the way, and you should BUY IT for your kids (or yourself)). my favorite was “violin”.

july 26 — lego fun — great site, go there NOW!

july 25 — last night i had a really great dream. i dreamed i had this great job working for a scientist. my job was tokind of make things easy for him, take care of little ordinary tasks like the phone, and the mail and stuff… i had this nice reception room/office place, all pleasant Ikea-style furnishings and lots of plants, and the scientist liked it that Henry came along with me, and we made a little place for him to play and we listened to audio-books, and i would cook lunch for the scientist and make sure he didn’t forget things and keep people from bothering him. the scientist had a BIG room next to my office,with giant tables and stuff, and his science friends would go in there and talk to him. it was a good, happy, fun dream :) and then i woke up and it was 5:45am and i never did get back to sleep.

july 24 — taught jonathan how to play legato today, and he picked it up in no time at all. he’s a nice kid :) henry went swimming twice today, and went to his new “handstands” gymnastics class today, and loved it. it’s more of a challengethan his old class. tonight dan let me practice docking in jumpgate! he offered to let me play when he saw how muchi like Elite, which is kind of the ultimate ancestor of jumpgate. i can hardly wait to play some more!

july 23 — took henry to the park this morning, the nice big one in carlsbad, and we shot off his water-rocket things for a long time, and then he played in the sand with his dump trucks and i read my book… i finally bought a couple of thosenice collapsible comfy chairs, so i took one along and was all happy in the shade. and then we went to the libraryand got him a giant stack of books about knights, two new computer games, and three books-on-cd!

july 22 — beatlefair was yesterday! henry and i were there all day and had a great time :)

july 19 — lazy morning, then i picked up henry in SD and brought him back here for his gymnastics class. traffic was horrendous. some day i’m moving somewhere where the rush hour parking lot freeway doesn’t start at 2pm. it took me an hour and 20 minutes to drive about 40 miles. in the evening we took henry geocaching — it was a cache that dan had found already, so we thought it would be good for henry’s first time. he LOVED it. before he went to bed he told dan that that was the most fun he had had in his entire life so far :) after henry went to bed we listened to the next CD of “black sunday”, while dan worked on his helicopter and i charted a new needlepoint design onto canvas. oh the book i’m reading, “code of the lifemaker” by james p. hogan is SO GOOD!

july 18 — had a great day today! woke up early, took henry to the beach around 9:30. it was all overcast and cloudy there(that’s the way i like the beach) and the water was 70 degrees, and the tide was out, so every time a wave came in therewas lots of shallow water to wade in. henry played on his kickboard, and bodysurfed, and bounced around in the waves, and i waded. and then when he turned blue and freezing, we sat on the beach. i read my book (code of the lifemaker byjames p. hogan — good sci-fi) and henry played in the sand for AGES. it was just so nice! and then we went home and got all the sand off, and i made a good lunch. and then in the afternoon i had a piano student (cheyenne, who didvery very well today) and then took henry to karate. matthew picked him up there. and then i went back to sally’s to teach elizabeth, who is also doing very well, and then eventually i came home. and then dan took me out todinner at ruby’s, on the pier!

july 17 — last night i finished reading “time and again” and i was kind of disappointed. so, exactly HOW did itbecome safe for them to go back to 1882, when the cops were supposed to shoot them on sight??? anyone who knows whythis makes sense please email me. the author seemed to say that because they knew carmody’s real identity, he wouldn’t harm them… um, doesn’t that make him MORE LIKELY THAN EVER to want them killed?? if the rest of the book was bad, i wouldn’t mind so much… i just feel as if the author got lazy and didn’t feel like coming up with a convincing ending. grrrr. in other news, henry and i made blueberry muffins this morning and they turned out great! the batter seemed kind of dry, so we added an extra glug of milk. oh, and we used frozen berries.

july 15 — we had such a nice time in berkeley — we stayed with our wonderful friend david (”wastrel” on the irc) whom we had never met in real life before, and he was absolutely great, 100%! We felt really happy and comfortable at his place.we got there after 9pm sometime on friday, and wastrel wasn’t home yet so we walked around berkeley for a while, and then after he got home we went out to dinner at a nice diner-type place. wastrel has a great fat orange cat named george (a veryfriendly cat) and a fishtank with fish, frogs, and a sinister-looking small eel. on saturday i got up early and walked down to the corner for coffee, and locked myself out of the apartment. so i sat on the porch tapping “SOS” in morse onthe window til dan heard me and let me in. i lay around a lot of the day, just reading in wastrel’s quiet, pleasantapartment. he and his g/f amy have several LARGE bookshelves filled with wonderful books. and we dealt with the server, and walked around berkeley, and ate pizza, and went to a fabulous independent bookstore where i bought a present for henry — a nice new copy of “animal fair” which is a book i loved when i was little. sunday we drove home…left nice and early, and the drive only took 7.5 hours. we listened to an audiobook (Black Sunday by thomas harris)all the way and it really helped to pass the time. it was nice to be away together :)

july 12 — we’re driving to the bay area today, as soon as dan gets the new server up and running (we’re taking itto a colo in SF). i’ll be back late sunday, probably…

july 10 — yesterday our power was out from 8:30am til almost 10pm. candlelight, lantern, propane stove :) this morninghenry and i took a long walk on the beach — it was all foggy and gloomy and lovely. henry collected gull feathers…i think we came home with 30 or 40 tattered, sandy old feathers :) i made a pen out of one feather for him, athis request — not an old fashioned quill pen (he gave me a big feather, and i’ll make a fancy pen for myself out of it),but a nice easy pen for a little boy — i took apart a ballpoint pen, took out the inside part with the ink and the ballpoint tip, cut it to the right length, and shoved it up inside the quill of the feather. he was delighted, and it worksvery well :)

july 08 — i’m reading a really good book with a terrible title (girl from the south). can’t put it down! tomorrow the power company is doing some major work near here so our power will be out all day, pretty much. whee :)

july 07 — feeling better finally! just a stuffy head now. we all went to the movies today — dan and court sawmen in black 2, and henry and i saw lilo and stitch, which was pretty good :)

july 06 — still sick. ugh. i’ve been lying here watching “one hit wonders” on VH1 all day… best thing on, believeit or not. we picked up dan’s friend court at the airport last night, and now they are out flying dan’s RChelicopter.

july 05 — i still have a cold. yuck. today i did pretty much nothing, which was nice… oh, if you are looking for me on IRC, i’m not on openprojects anymore — all my channels there moved to a more stable, less annoying network, oftc. connect to irc.oftc.net and /join #palmchat or /msg kayray if you are looking for me.

july 04 — happy independance day! this morning henry and i drew some flags and stuck them on the windows,and then we went for a walk all around the apartment complex, and looked over the edge at the view, and henry playedin all the little play areas and climbed trees. and then we watched 101 dalmations (original), and then matthew cameto pick him up. and then i hung around, and cleaned the living room pretty well (vacuumed and everything!) and spent hoursreading. the bird is so nice! she climbed in and out of her cage all day and walked around, and sat on my leg and my ethernet cable. sweet adventure bird!

july 03 — woke up in the night with a little sore throat, yick. but this morning it’s much better, just a littlebit tender. i’ve got a whole bag of lemon-mint ricolas to suck on. warning: mushy stuff ahead… one year ago today, dan moved to CA so we could live together, and it has been a wonderful year, and we have a great life together, and i love him so much. thanks for being here, my dan :)

july 02 — the most interesting thing i saw at the fair yesterday was the collection of lovely art deco stovetop saltand pepper shakers, the large ones that came with the new modern white enameled stoves of the 30s and 40s. the collecterhad typed up information labels about every set of shakers, pointing out design details etc, and also a couple of big pages about the art deco movement and everything. i never knew that stoves used to come with salt and pepper (and sometimesflour and sugar) shakers for the cook to use.

july 01 — we’re probably going to go to the fair today! more later… well we went to the fair, henry and i,and we had such a nice time! we met up with lisa for a while, which was really fun, and went to the design-in-wood and gemstones exhibits with her, and looked at some of the widgets. and then henry and i went off together and looked at hobbies and cakes and animals, and just really had a great time together.

june 30 — slept nice and late, hung around, read one of my new books, then drove down to SD to pick up henry-pie, then wentto a party at the selvig/greenblatt house which was their usual type of really good party — lots of terrific food and nicepeople. we got there plenty early so we had a chance to talk with susan and charlotte. it was lovely! oh, heh, yesterdaynight we watched “bram stoker’s dracula” which was absolutely horrendous… they changed every character in the bookbeyond recognition and twisted the plot around so it was almost unrecognizable. ugh! but we enjoyed making fun ofit, anyway. read the book, don’t watch the movie.

june 29 — we played freeciv together twice yesterday — i won once and dan won once, but each game was VERY closeand nerve-wracking towards the end. very fun :) henry’s had a bit of a cold, not a bad one, just the sniffles and a littlecough, so we stayed home from all our activites yesterday and thursday, and did lots of reading and talking… finishedsecret garden and read lots and lots of picture books. this morning i’m going to the library for more. we madekiller-diller banana muffins!

june 26 — well, a couple days ago my desktop started acting… funny. it exhibited a few odd behaviours, and dan thinks maybe my hard drive is failing. so i started backing things up and burning my mp3s onto cds and suddenly my cd burner seems to be malfunctioning. and yesterday my laptop hard drive began making a grinding noise… today the grinding noise seems to have stopped — but i’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. henry and i have only one more chapter of secret garden to read! i’m reading =tepper isn’t going out= by calvin trillin — enjoying it very much :)

june 23 — yay i slept ’til almost 10:30. last night i started yet another freeciv game and i did WAY better — the trick is to produce settlers as fast as you can and found lots and lots of new towns — and become a monarchy ASAP. i gotto Alpha Centauri in 1970! i think next time I play, i may play against an AI now that i have some idea of proper strategy.and if i play against dan i may have a chance of actually winning this time :)

june 22 — a pleasant saturday. went to bed around 3am, woke up at 7am. WHY??? why can’t i sleep in on the weekends?i sleep til the alarm goes of on weekdays, and as often as not on weekends i wake up early for NO REASON. sigh. but i’m having a nice day anyway. took myself to the library this morning, then finished my freecivgame — got to Alpha Centauriin 2186 A.D., which is better than ever before, i think. i forgot to incite a revolution, though, and was a despotismuntil the 19th century, which really hindered my progress. so next time i’ll do even better! dan gave me this link:villainsupply.com. funny funny funny. i liked the evil lairs and bases sectionvery much — each one includes a “convenient, obvious self-destruct mechanism” :) click the evil realtor ad too!

june 21 — first day of summer and it’s gloomy and even raining a little bit! yay! i played freeciv for hours today.

june 19 — we finished our monkey toy, and he’s adorable. henry carried him around all day, along with his big stuffedspiderman doll. i like the spiderman doll MUCH better than his action figures. a nice soft comfy spiderman just seems more pleasant than a muscle-bound hard plastic one. we read chapter 17 of secret garden for bedtimetonight — the chapter called “a tantrum” — we were both looking forward to it so much! he knows the whole bookby heart from listening to the audio-book so much, and he recites along with me once in a while. that’s a great chapter:) i’m feeling really proud of my little piano students lately… everyone is doing so well, and they’re all sopleasant.

june 18 — henry and i started to make a monkey toy today. he’s been wanting one of those stuffed monkey toys withlong skinny arms and legs, and velcro on its hands and feet. so i thought it would be fun to make one! we’re usingsome old gray velour pants for the fabric, and we bought some wire so we can make his tail bendable. today we made a pattern and cut out the pieces, and sewed the arms and legs together.

june 17 — watched “the great race” with henry — he loved all that wacky 60s mahem. dan liked it too! funny movie.

june 16 — happy father’s day, dad :) nice lazy day today. goofed around all morning, watched movie version of”84 charing cross road” (wow they turned a great book into a movie and didn’t ruin it!!!). we pickedhenry up in temecula, bought helicopter fuel… nice day. ooo here’s a photo of that eclipse.

june 15 — after matthew picked up henry at gymnastics this morning, i went to the library, and then when dan woke uphe called me and i went home and then we went geocaching which was fun, butgosh it was hot and sunny and dry out there. while we were hiking around we noticed smoke rising over the hills and soon we saw that there was a wildfire burning a couple hills away from us. by the time we had reached the car, the sky was filled with smoke and the fire engines were showing up. whee!

june 14 — the little homeschool boys’ playgroup, the firebirds, met at the zoo this morning and we joined them, for the first time. everyone was REALLY nice and we had a great time! but gosh i hate summer. i have to keep applying layersand layers of sunscreen or else i burn, and i have to wear long sleeves if i can bear it, and then i feel all sticky and hotand it makes me feel tired and cross, and my eyes always hurt after being out in the bright hot sun. ugh. i wish winterwere here again. this is now the time of year when i have to try to never go outside in the daytime, which is impossible.i read three more chapters of secret garden to henry today. that’s a wonderful read-aloud book; the language is lovelyand the story is interesting even when you’ve read it 75 times already. :)

june 13 — my book came today! i won a book on ebay called “how to design your own dress patterns” by adele margolis, and it got here today and i am delighted! i bid on it, thinking it looked old and cool, and HOPING it was the same book i checked out of the jackson library in 1979 (or whenever that was) when i was little kid. and today when it got here i discovered to my INTENSE delight that it is the same book :) :) :) it inspired me greatly back then, and now i actually own it. yay!!!!! oh, yesterday we noticed a nice old lady putting a pile of goodwill-type things out in her driveway, and there was a vacuum there, so i asked her if we could have it and she gave it to us! she said it was broken, but i cleaned out a big clog of gunk and it seem to work just fine now :) torquil made a new website!!

june 12 — henry and i went to see “spirit” today, and it wasn’t that bad! it wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t 100% predictable, andthe scenery was lovely. the opening sequence, the eagle soaring around, was breathtaking, actually. and we snuck candy in withus and had a good old time :) the moviemakers had a fine disregard for Facts, however… so if you see it you’ll have to suspend your disbelief. i really liked the bit when the steam engine slid down the mountain!

june 11 — josh gave me a link to a not-quite-finished palm game called kingdom. looks GREAT and i can hardly wait til it’s done! i brought my blender home yesterday, and dan made smoothies for breakfast. they were SO good. he is amazing :)

june 10 — my hand still has this mysterious pain… dan went out this morning and got me a brace so i can immobilize it. seems to get worse when i use it lot. got a migraine this morning too, lots of fun. took henry down to SD to play with nicolas, whom we haven’t seen in maybe two years. they ran around in a park for two hours and had a wonderful time. it was great to see alina again, too! then i took henry to circus practice for the first time and he LOVED it. they had different areas set up so the kids could learn juggling, tumbling, tightrope, trapeze, trampoline, etc. henry stayed in the trapeze area the whole time. he can’t wait til next monday! while circus practice was going on, some of us kept going outside to check on the eclipse. i showed some kids how to make pinhole cameras so we could look safely, and then someone brought out two welding masks so we could stare at the sun. it was neat seeing the sun with a big bite taken out of it. :) FUNNY STUFF: “things my girlfriend and i fight about”. apparently there are people in the world who are more stubborn and fight about stupider stuff than we do… amazing :)

june 08 — another lovely saturday. i did two loads of laundry already, and got my redesigned website up, as you can see. thank goodness for php… i use it in a very simple way to make redesigns easy. i keep the main design of the page in a top.php file and a bottom.php file, then simply include them with the content on all the pages. so to change the look of the entire multi-page website i only have to change two main files. last night i watched dan play Final Fantasy X for hours… it’s the only one of the FF games i’ve been tempted to actually PLAY. And i probably will, when he’s all finished. ok i’m going to go eat a tomato/avocado sandwich now, and think about maybe ba