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April 2005

30 — Moving day. Dan’s friend Dave came over to help him move everything so I didn’t have to do a lick of work. We reserved a truck at U-Haul but will never use U-Haul again! Dan had to wait in line for 2 hours to get his truck. Jeebus.

29 — Dan stayed home from work today to help pack and throw out stuff. Moving day is tomorrow!

25 — Henry went to Disneyland with Bob Tedde and Chloe and some of Bob’s assorted relatives, and I stayed home and packed a few more things and did about half of the weekly housecleaning — I’ll do the mopping and bathrooms tomorrow. I needed to save some energy for teaching this afternoon as I’ve been really tired lately. I think my thyroid levels are still out of whack, sigh. So I sat around and played WoW in the afternoon which was fun of course. I finally found Yowler and killed him. It was sort of a suicide run — I had a soulstone so I just went ahead and attacked him and got jumped by about three of his friends, but my minion and I managed to kill Yowler before we were killed by his buddies. Then I resurrected and looted him and fled to town :) Love my warlock!

23 — Busy day. I went to Sal’s in the morning and helped her throw out a giant pile of JUNK, mostly old kitchen crud. We filled her front porch with give-away stuff! And we also re-arranged the furniture in the livingroom, and hung up laundry on the new Brabantia laundry rack. And then at noon I came home to make breakfast for Dan. After a while we went back to Sal’s and then down to Ikea to buy a desk for Dan! That was tiring but fun. We got home around 7:30, and then Mom came over to watch Survivor with us :)

20 — Yay Henry gets to stop wearing his splint today! We got up around 6 to take Dan to the airport. When we got home we were both pretty tired so we didn’t do much — Henry watched cartoons and I did housework and played a little WoW. I’ve got to recommend the insomniax collection of ui mods for World of Warcraft — it’s better than Cosmos and seemingly more stable. Dan replaced Cosmos with insomniax the other day and it’s wonderful.

19 — Henry and I had a lot of fun together today. First we went out to breakfast at Einstein Brothers, and then we browsed around in Bed Bath and Beyond looking at things we might like to have when we move (next week!). IT sounds boring but we really had a ton of fun :) And then we did a little grocery shopping, and then went to Mervyns for socks for Dan, and then came home. I guess it was fun because Henry is such an agreeable, friendly, pleasant little guy and a wonderful companion. When we got home we considered playing WoW but it was update day and the patch took an hour and a half to dl and install, so we ran out of time — so instead we played Streetcar and Amazing Labyrinth and watched the Antiques Roadshow together until it was time for me to go teach some of Sally’s students. Dan got home nice and early and I made him marinated ginger steak for dinner and he was happy :)

17 — So far I’m very pleased with Thunderbird. I’m still training it for spam but it’s learning quickly and it’s doing better than crm-114, and it’s a LOT easier to train than crm-114. Spam is the main reason I switched away from pine… The straw that broke the camel’s back happened when I trained crm-114 for a false positive and then the next morning my inbox was FULL of spam and a letter from Henry had been marked as spam. And I just got sick of it. This morning I went to Sal’s to check on the animals, and then bought water. Now I’m watching Dan make cinnamon rolls and advising him when necessary. But he doesn’t need much advising :)

16 — Henry and I got up early and I drove him down to his dad’s house. We listened to the latest cd of our homemade “Absolute Zero” audiobook. I’m quite a good reader, if I say so myself :) After I dropped him off I took myself to IKEA. I had never been there before and oh my goodness it was heaven on earth. Mercy. So many beautiful and useful things! I did not buy anything but I have my eye on some nice stuff for someday. I spent almost an hour there and had a lot of fun. After I got home I played a bit of WoW while Dan played his guitar. He’s working on “Dogs” and sounds amazing! I played my warlock and ran around in the Stonetalon Mountains with a nice fellow named Thiefelf who owns a liquor store in TX. And then I threw more stuff out and packed a box of sewing/desk stuff and worked on my rug while watching the history of Britain while Dan went to the shooting range. And then we watched a bunch of tv together, Malcolm in the Middle and Family Guy, and I installed the Thunderbird email client on my iBook and my linux box. I’ve been using pine for 6 years but I have finally gotten so sick and tired of dealing with spam that I decided to try Thunderbird, since I’m quite impressed with the way Thunderbird handles Henry’s spam. It took me a while to get it set up to my satisfaction but I think it will be ok now. Hint: if you’re installing it on more than one computer, you can fill in your addressbook on one computer, then export it, then import it to the other computers. Very handy.

14 — Henry was sick today, pukey and listless, so we lay around and watched movies. He watched his awfuldreadful Spy Kids 3-D movie, and then we watched Bells Are Ringing, and then The Empire Strikes Back, which is good for the first 20 minutes or so and then goes rapidly downhill heheh. And then he napped and I packed all the books in his bookshelf, and then I played a little WoW, doing quests in Ashenvale with my warlock. Tonight we watched Survivor — Coby’s gone, thank GOODNESS! If I had to see him roll his eyes while griping about everyone else one more time I was going to scream.

12 — Packed up the ENTIRE living room bookshelf! I’m so proud of us for gettign rid of so much stuff lately. If we had not, I would have probably filled at least 6 more boxes than I did. Ugh! Time to throw out even more stuff yay!

10 — I picked up Henry from Temecula around noon and then we went to La Jolla for Rockola’s Abbey Road show! It was a top-quality show and we had a great time. And we had front row seats! The band was wonderful, the extra musicians were wonderful, and the audience loved it! They didn’t just perform the album, they added lots of interesting little touches, like a real Moog synthesizer, a bubble machine and disco ball (for Octopus’s Garden), an extra percussionist to add all the funky little sound effects, a real upright piano for the songs which needed it… I could go on and on. Rockola rocks!

09 — We cleaned and packed up Dan’s desk area today. Whew. It was a huge horrible job but now it’s over and it looks so much better! And I packed a box of photos/art supplies, one of sewing/craft/costume books and one of music books. And then we ran out of boxes, so I’ll need to buy some more soon.

Forgot to mention that in Minish Cap I am at the part where you fight Vaati on top of the castle, and I keep dying. But I’ll conquer him eventually. And when I played WoW this morning, I got my rogue to lvl 26 woohoo! And then I decided to “forget” alchemy and learn skinning instead, so I had to travel back to Dolanaar to find easy animals to skin, to improve my skill. While I was over there I helped a group of lvl 8-9s with the Relics of Wakening quest. Horrible quest. I think if I ever start another character over there I’ll skip that one — it’s not worth the aggravation.

Mom came over tonight and Dan went out to get us ice cream and milkshakes for us, and then we talked and ate pizza and watched Survivor (Steph is all alone on her island now) and Arrested Development. Fun :)

07 — Happy birthday Kirsten!

05 –Took Grandma and Carol out on errands this morning. Carol flew in from Florida yesterday for the sole reason of escorting Grandma back to Florida with her, because Grandma is afraid to fly alone. Carol told me that that’s what Mike (my Grandpa, Carol’s recently deceased husband, Grandma’s ex) would have wanted her to do. Carol is a very good person.

Henry and I had to do a few more errands after we dropped them back off at Mom’s house, including the drugstore and the ice cream store, and then we went home to keep our Jeeves and Wooster date. We sat together on the couch, ate ice cream, and watched all three episodes on the new dvd. Very fun, very enjoyable! How awesome is it to have a 9 yr old son who enjoys Jeeves and Wooster so much? I worked on my prodded rug (2″ x 4″ strips of old t-shirts poked through the holes in a piece of rug canvas) while we watched, and got a lot done. My thumb is sore from rubbing on the canvas, though.

03 — Stupid time change. H8N. Yesterday Dan said that if I bought him a big garbage can it would be easier for him to go through his stuff and throw out the junk, so this morning I went to Lowe’s and bought one of those huge 45-gallon garbage cans with wheels! He filled it up THREE times today with old junk. Now, instead of having a closet filled with boxes of junk, we have a closet filled with empty boxes!

02 — Drove H to SD this morning (before the horrible all-day traffic jam, luckily). We listened to the first disk of “The Positronic Man” while we were driving. He seemed really to enjoy it and asked me to wait to listen to the rest of it until he’s home again, which I am haappy to do of course! We got up to the part where Sir starts asking Andrew to learn all about woodcarving. I think it’s Henry’s first real sci-fi novel. Dad would be proud. Even though he wasn’t a big Asimov fan, sci-fi is sci-fi.

In the afternoon we went over to Mom’s to help Grandma get packed up, and then Mom came over here in the evening to watch survivor but she and Dan mostly talked about the house remodelling projects. But then we finally got to watch survivor — poor Ulong has only two members left. They’ll surely merge next week.

01 — Henry’s new moccasin kit arrived today! He was soooo happy to get it. His old moccasins (which we gave him for Christmas in 2001) were too small and getting worn out so he ordered a new kit with his own money. He assembled one of the moccasins, and then asked me to do the other. He’s been wearing them constantly and proving how quietly he can walk in them :) Adorable little boy!

This was Chloe’s last day in SD so Dan picked her up on the way home from work and she came up and had dinner with us and hung around and listened to me read the end of Ordinary Jack and the beginning of Absolute Zero to Henry for bedtime, and then I drove her back to Bob’s house. We listened to Loveline all the way. She’s so much fun!