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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 baking a lemon cake. EVERYONE should read james lileks’ backfence from time to time. here’s a funny joke for you (thanks gar)

june 07 — built a new shelf out of some pine planks and big old cinder blocks. it fits perfectly behind the couch, and now i have room for the books that were still in boxes, yay!

june 06 — we were listening to our Caddie Woodlawn audio book in the car today, and when we got home and had to turn it off itwas right at a very exciting part — the part where Caddie is trying to get Indian John to understand that he and his people need to escape before the white mob comes to kill them… then we had a conversation that struck meas 100% adorable. kara: don’t worry henry, it all turns out all right in the end! henry: oh i know, these children’s books always do.

june 05 — it’s only 12:30 and i’ve done a lot of stuff today… made waffles for dan and henry for breakfast (ok, well, i thawed them out anyway ;-), read two dr. seuss books to henry (scrambled eggs super, andthe one about the pale green pants with nobody inside them), made some REALLY good chocolate chip cookies, and cleaned thekitchen floor. and now henry and i are going to do a Project — make a paper plate monster. he loves crafty Projects,just like i did when i was little :)

june 04 — henry’s last junior theater class was today. they performed a delightful abridged, narrated version of midsummer night’s dream. it was absolutely adorable. henry was one of the Pucks (there were six, appearing in pairs) he was great!

june 03 — henry and i went to the library and came home with a lovely giant pile of books. sometime soon i will improve henry’s book page, and make one of my own. one of the best ones we got today is “tomas and the library lady” — a picture book, with lovely language and beautiful artwork about a little boy, the son of migrant workers, who befriends a library lady in iowa and falls in love with books. it chokes me up every time i read it.

june 02 — just got back from camping at cuyamaca over the weekend. it was SO nice! we left fridayafternoon and got there in plenty of time to set up camp while it was still light. it’s still spring up on the mountain,not too hot in the daytime, not too cold at night. and it stayed light til almost 7. things are still pretty greenup there, not too dried-out yet, and there were even a few wildflowers. we had a lovely hike on saturday, and rented a boat at the lake and just had a wonderful time. marshmallows do interesting things when thrown into a campfire :)