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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.