January 2006
January 2006
29 — Henry’s Musical Theater class had their performance of “Seussical” this evening! It went soooo well, and was very adorable.
27 — I feel a bit better but still sort of crummy. Might be a touch of the flu or something. I did manage to get three more chapter of The Secret Garden recorded!
26 — Bayshore Day this morning — Henry wrote a really cool sort of spy story in Creative Writing. I’m going to encourage him to type it up into his blog. I started feeling crummy this afternoon, bleah.
24 — Henry and I did a lot of stuff today! The power was off for several hours this morning, so we cleaned his room all nice and found several things that had gone missing — his wallet, his Harry Potter book, and his Duel Disk. We went to his rehearsal at 11, and while he rehearsed I had my meeting with Carolyn, which went well as usual! She issued Henry a report card, with my OK, and we decided he had earned “A”s in everything :) And really, he’s made progress in all his “subjects” and put in some effort, so I think that’s fair. He takes once-a-week classes for science, writing, and theater and his teachers had written nice comments. He’s very proud and showed it round to everyone.
On the way home we stopped at Target to look for costuming stuff for his performance. He has to wear yellow and black, so got him a nice inexpensive yellow shirt which he can wear with some of his black stretchy pants. And while we were there we looked at storage containers. We’d just read the chapter in The Unofficial Lego Builder’s Guide about sorting and storing LEGOs to make them a lot easier to work with, and Henry got all enthusiastic about the prospect! YAY! So, we bought six nice shoebox-sized plastic storage containers on sale for a dollar each, and picked up a package of sandwich-size ones too.
After we got home I had to check on the librivox forum for a couple of hours (since the power was out all morning I hadn’t checked yet and there was a lot of work to be done) and then we dumped Henry’s giant Bucket O’ Legos onto a blanket on the floor and set to work. We filled one conatiner with 2xN pieces, one with plates, one with 1xNs where N > 2, one with technic stuff, one with slopes, doors, windows, and arches, and one with Larger Uncategorized Pieces. In the little sandwich size boxes we put 1x1s, 1x2s, tiles, minifigs + accessories, and Tiny Uncategorized Pieces. It was REALLY fun, belive it or not, and Henry’s all inspired to build now that he doesn’t have to dump a giant bucket out to find the tiny things that sink to the bottom. He built a nice spaceship while I was reading his bedtime story (Knight’s Castle, for a change). Oh and after dinner I recorded my chapter of Robin Hood and Henry listened and played with legos very very quietly. And now he’s in bed, Dan’s playing his guitar near me, and I think it’s time for me to go! G’night.
23 — Happy birthday wonderful Mom!
Last night Dan and I curled up in bed with some Mud Pie and a new (to us) episide of Foyle’s War — The one where Sam goes undercover at the fuel depot. We love the Foyle shows SO MUCH, and that was an especially good one. While we’re watching, we’ll often pause the TiVo and discuss the plot, and try to guess the outcome. Rex’s secret took us totally by surprise — but it all made perfect sense. Praise and glory to the writers and creaters of Folye! The plots are dense and tangled, yet they always make sense in the end, with rarely even a tiny hole or loose end. The acting is superb. The atmosphere is amazing, and every tiny detail seems just right. Kathy, you got us started with Foyle — a million thanks!
In contrast, we watched an episode of Miami Vice on Saturday. Yes. Yes, we did. One hour of bad acting, bad directing, bad writing, no plot to speak of, an appalling sound track, more pastel menswear than anyone should ever have to see, and a ten-minute speedboat race. Guess who won? I think we’ll stick to Foyle :)
22 — So tired, so tired. Henry’s got a bit of a cold so I’ll probably get it too. I broke the librivox podcast xml file this morning but Dan came and rescued me like a knight in shining armor. A capital “T” in an itunes tag can really screw things up. Yipe.
21 — Edited all four new Secret Garden recordings, yay! And did my little roles for Richard II. And played a lot of WoW. And lazed around with Dan :)
20 — Recorded FOUR chapters of The Secret Garden today, so that makes 10! I still need to edit some of them, and fix the tags, etc, but still, I think it’l be ok to start podcasting them on MOnday. That’s three weeks worth — sure by the time three weeks have passed I’ll have most or even ALL the rest of them done.
16 — Did millions of chores today. Woohoo. I really wish we had some of that fabulous Mud Pie from Trader Joe’s but we finished it off last night. I don’t like the crust but I love all the other parts — even the nuts! Discovered that I had the wrong date on the last six or eight episodes of my “A Little Princess” podcast — I had them marked Dec 2006 instead of Jan 2006. So now they are floating at the top of the list in the ITMS and I suppose they won’t be in the right place until next December, even though I fixed the xml file. SIGH…
15 — Well! The LA Times ran a great article about Librivox! Here’s a link to a my gallery page, where you can see a scan of the print article (including a very good photo of me) and the text of the online article (which is the same as the scanned text, but a little bit easier to read): Librivox’s LA Times Article and Photo
14 — Slept really badly, blah. The journalist who wrote the Wired.com article about librivox, Cyrus Farivar, came down by train from LA today to do a little interview with me for NPR’s “The World” — I’ll post a link when the show airs! Managed to get a bit of recording done on The Secret Garden and edited my chapter of A Princess of Mars. Also handed in my Pridewing Venom Sacs, collected Sida’s Bag, collected nine Flints, and bought the first aid manuals from Stromgarde.
13 — Well, here I am again! Not off to a very good start blogging every day this year, am I? librivox.org has been growing outrageously fast and it’s been practically a full-time (unpaid) job to answer questions, help re-organize the forum, manage projects, talk to reporters (!), catalog finished projects, and even get a little recording done from time to time. I’m working on The Secret Garden as a solo project, and have recently recorded a couple of Aesop’s fables, two chapter of A Tale of Two Cities, three chapters of The War of the Worlds, a chapter of The Prince (Machiavelli – great fun!), and a chapter of Beyond Good And Evil (Nietzsche – not particularly fun). See our catalog page and marvel at the number of completed works!
The LA Times is planning to run an article on librivox in the BUsiness/Technology section this Sunday (Jan 15). A very nice reporter interviewed Hugh, Alex, me, and maybe some other volunteers, and, since I’m the nearest to Los Angeles, sent a photographer here this morning to get pictures of me reading. So check the LA times on Sunday — both print and online, I believe.
I’ve been feeling mostly better lately — still not quite normal, but pretty good. So don’t worry about me. We went to our first Bayshore Day of the year yesterday, and Henry had the Best Science Class Ever — he got to dissect an owl pellet and dig out the bones of tiny animals! He’s brought a baggie of little bones home and a chart to identify them.
04 — Feeling a bit better today but I’m still just lying around, mostly. Took care of editing my Dracula chapter, and recorded the Weekly Poem for librivox. I got the nicest comment on the forum:
I have just finished listening to your wonderful reading of A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett! It has inspired me join this forum just so that I can post here to thank you. I will recommend this site, and your reading of this book in particular, to my family and friends, many of whom have little daughters. I am uncle to two of them and was delighted at some of the parallels, “the rich, bachelor uncle”. Well, bachelor anyway, heh.
I tutor young people, particularly those who are struggling with learning English. I was looking for web sites that had stories that could be read and listened to at the same time for their benefit when I stumbled upon Librivox. Perhaps in time I can contribute to this beautiful effort in some way.
Again, thank you, and I look forward to more of your readings.
Well, my goodness, that makes all the work and effort and stress worthwhile :)
03 — Felt peculiar on Dec 31 and Jan 1 — lightheaded, thumpy heart, and I almost fainted once. Scary. On Sunday Dan called the on-call Pulmonary Hypertension doctor at UCSD and he said I should go to the ER and be evaluated. UGH. So we went to Tri City. There were like 400 people in the waiting room but they took me right away and started running tests. It was fairly awful. Sally and Jack and Susan and Chloe drove right up from San Diego to take care of Henry and cheer me up, which was wonderful. Eventually they decided I should be transfered to Thornton Hospital (UCSD) to be observed overnight. So some nice EMTs showed up and put me in an ambulance. They let Dan ride in the back with me, thank goodness. We got there about 7 or 8pm I guess. The night nurses were very sweet and found Dan a cot to sleep on, and got us some sandwiches and water and juice. They ran more tests on me and decided my blood pressure was kind of low and that I was maybe a bit dehydrated, but couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with me, other than my known health issues. It coule be a funny virus, too, they say. We got about 4 hours of sleep because they did a catscan of my lungs at about midnight, and then woke us up to check on me at 5:30. Monday they watched me and monitored me and made sure I drank a lot and put a liter of saline into me via IV. I took a little walk in the afternoon and didn’t feel lightheaded so they said I could go home YAY. Jack, Susan, and Henry picked us up at 5 and we were never so glad to get home to our own bed. Slept 12 hours last night. I still feel funny today, but at least we know it’s nothing serious. Dan stayed home from work today to take care of me, and he and Henry catered to my every whim, ran errands, and brough me food and drink.