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may 29 — woke up at 3am with a story in my head, got up at 4am to write it down. it’s not good, but at least it’snot rattling around in my head anymore… been pretty tired all day. ugh. our little bird is SO sweet. it’s easy to takethe top off her cage, so she can go i and out at will. she’s pretty timid, so she likes to stay in her cage mostof the time, but a little while ago she fluttered out and landed on my leg (cage is on sofa next to me), hopped around,and then fluttered back home. what a sweetie she is!

may 28 — free ebooks! www.baen.com/library/

may 27 — boy oh boy this has been a nice weekend! let’s see what did we do… well, henry was with us for the whole weekend since matthew was out of town, so on saturday i read to him a lot (we got a big stack of books about parakeets from the library and i read them all to him) and i took him to see the fern street circus down in san diego. it was GREAT! yesterday we went with dan to the airfield to fly his helicopter, and i don’t know what else, but it was a lovely day. today henry is playing with sally all day, and i’ve been doing house stuff… bought water from the water store, and did a bunch of laundry. i can hear the kids in the apartment pool, shouting and laughing and having fun. :) oh i’m reading a REALLY good library book called “meditations on middle-earth” which is a collection of essays about tolkein by several well-known authors. here, you can read the reviews on amazon and that’ll give you some idea of what it’s about. if you like tolkien, go get this book.

may 26 — happy birthday dad!!

may 23 — got my subaru back with its nice new clutch AND a working window! i’m not happy with this webpage anymore… going to redesign soon. it was a lovely day today! for the world’s best, custom-made sheepskinslippers go to clobberleather.com. their customerservice is EXTREMELY good, and the prices are very reasonable. i ordered a pair for dan for his birthday (through onlyslippers.com, which also has excellent customer service)but they were too narrow for his feet, and clobberleather is making him a new pair, from his foot measurements!

may 21 — all day sunday i worked on sewing my new dress — i worked at it literally from 9am til 3:30pm, and thenin the evening i basted in the zipper while we watched tv, and then yesterday i finished it. it turned out EXTREMELY nice! fitted bodice with french darts, short sleeves, slim skirt with slight gathers in front and darts in back, just below knee length. and i made a little belt to go with it. and i wore it yesterday wheni went to teach my students! i’m really proud of the way it turned out. i’ll try to post a picture soon.

may 19 — it’s 11am on sunday… i’m listening to my pride and prejudice audiobook and planning out mynew dress. last night i found a couple yards of tomato-red rayon in the closet, and now i’m layingout the pattern pieces. there’s not QUITE enough cloth, but i think if i piece the sleeves it’ll work out.this cloth is sorta lightweight — i’ll need to wear a slip under it. hope it hangs ok. yesterday was wonderful.cold and cloudy, and we went for a walk on the beach. the last episode of SNL was on and will farrell is leaving!noooooooooo! who will play george w. bush?

may 18 — i forgot to mention that last sunday, on mother’s day, we watched a canyon fire near us. a firefighter plane was swooping over our building for hours. it was neat! and we rented phantom menacefor henry and realized that it it thoroughly unwatchable. ;-) ok now you’re all caught up! yesterdayhenry tested for his yellow belt in karate, and he passed. we’re all very proud :) now it’s saturdaymorning, and i’m about to take him to his gymnastics class.

may 16 — happy birthday, dan :)

may 15 — had a great day today! i woke up insanely early (6:45) but felt ok anyway, and had a couple of quiet hours alone, and then dan got up and i made him breakfast, and then we just hung around.. i playedrollercoaster tycoon (installed the expansion packs and they’re SO COOL) and cleaned up a bit and did laundry.sounds dull i guess but it was really nice. then i taught my little students (just alyson and jonathon today)and then we went out to dinner and had really good greek food. :)

may 14 — well, it got hot. i need to make some more summer clothes! i made a really great dress a fewyears ago, from a vintage 1963 pattern, and i started wearing it again. i love it, and i have beentold i look “stunning” in it :) so i’m thinking about making another one. my little piano students are sonice. i really enjoy teaching them to play! it’s very satisfying and pleasant, for the most part. i’ve got a nice free evening now, so i’m going to go install the rollercoaster tycoon expansion packs and play for a while :)

may 11 — we finally decided to sell the honda and keep the subaru, instead of the other way around. i’lldrive the accura when i go to SD. so yesterday henry and i washed the honda so the autotrader guy could take a picture. if you want to buy a really excellent 1996 honda accord, email me ;-) last night i had a dreamabout getting my subaru fixed up… at gymnastics yesterday, tehy said henry was ready to move up to thenext level, to an all-boys class, so we’re going to try out the 9am class today. neat :)

may 08 — last night we saw spiderman — pretty cool movie. nice to see a movie and not feel cheated out of $15 afterwards. definitely NOT going to take henry to see it — way too scary/intense. he’ll be sad, but we’ll rent it for him when it comes out on video and fast forward the scary stuff…. funny error message (thanks autumn)

may 05 — ok this a completely cool site: the baldwin project. it’s kind of like project gutenberg but for kids, and the texts are formatted nicely and they even include the original illustrations for some of them! we had a great day today. made cookies in the morning, finished reading “miss happiness and miss flower” to henry (one of my favorite books and he LOVED it), and then we took henry to play with sally in the afternoon while we went to the library, and then we all went out to the airfield again and i videotaped dan’s helicopter for him and shot a roll of film too. :) and henry ran around and played in the dirt.

may 04 — well we were GOING to go see spiderman today while henry was with matthew (so we can decide if it’s suitable for a 6-yr-old) but all the afternoon shows were sold out at every theater. jebus. so we went out to the airfield instead to dan could fly his RC helicopter, and i read an entire book from start to finish (one of the mitford books my jan karon — light, pleasant, a little too churchy but quite readable). i really need to get to the library tomorrow. techtv started running “max headroom” and we watched the first episode tonight. pretty good, didn’t suck, has a sort of eerie british feel to it for some reason. the little computer hacker kid was cool :)

may 03 — hmm what did i do today… oh, cleaned the fridge (it was nearly empty anyway), cleaned the kitchen, bought groceries (i think i remembered everything except dan’s wheat germ, and we’re not out yet anyway) oh i finished reading “ill met by moonlight” and it continued being readable and non-annoying and enjoyable all the way to the end! now i’m out of books and need to go to the library this weekend. oh, to my great delight i found that james lileks actually writes a column! rapture!

may 02 — last night pthree helped me javascriptify my webcam page,so now it doesn’t need the tacky meta refresh tag to reload the image. much better, as long as your browsersupports js… also yesterday i got out my sewing machine and did some sewing… made some of henry’stoo-short pants into nice little shorts for him, and altered a too-big skirt (it was size 8, i’m size 4) so itfits me perfectly now. it’s a great skirt — knee length, plaid wool, cut on the bias. it’s muted purpleand green, and the mossy green exactly matches my green frye’s boots. oooooo! lileks.com has a new look and a new section!!

may 01 — i just read a fairly mediocre book called “bad heir day” by wendy holden. the frequency of badpuns got kind of annoying after a while, and i didn’t like the heroine much, but it wasn’t so bad i couldn’tfinish it… now i’m reading what seems to be a very very good book, so far, called “ill metby moonlight” which is, well, sort of historical/fantasy/fiction based on william shakespeare’s life… sounds terrible, i know, but it’s actually quite interesting and fun to read :)