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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 :)