March 2006
March 2006
Mar 30 — Unbelievable, the FlexBar team released an update today and it works just fine! I registered at their forums just to say “thanks.” I helped Henry get Trelane’s Wand from the Ogres, and then we joined a group to go get the Azure Agate from the OTHER Ogres. No one in Azeroth takes care of their stuff… it’s always being stolen by ogres or trolls or raptors… Recorded Chapter 10 of Heidi last night, and edited it today during Henry’s science class (er, the science teacher was sick so it was a Spanish class instead). Henry and I are proof-listening The Little Lame Prince.
Mar 29 — WoW is back up, but the patch broke some of my add-ons, argh. Did I ever list my favorite add-ons? I’m not going to bother linking them… you can google and find a download site.
Auctioneer — A must-have if you want to make Big Bucks at the Auction House
Auto-Repair — Never forget to mend your stuff again (even stuff in your bags)
EquipCompare — Mouse over an item and see how it compares to what you’re currecnly wearing/using
FlexBar — Adds infinitely configurable extra button bars. I can’t live without FlexBar.
Gatherer — Helps you remember where that patch of Kingsblood was, or that Tin-Mine
GuildAds and GuildAdsPLayerTracker — Lets your guild members know what materials you’re looking for or have extras of… besides a lot of other cool features!
MapNotes — Adds notes to your map (so you can remember where the Greenwarden is)
MOnkeyQuest — Pop-up questlog, see all your quests all at once, or choose the ones you wish to see
Shardtracker — Keep track of your soul shards
Titan — Helpful bar showing free bag slots, coins, ammo, loot type, lag, honor, location, etc. etc.
Itemized Deductions — Titan plugin, shows the most worthless item in your bag (for those times when you need to drop something FAST)
So anyway, my MonkeyQuest broke, but I was running a very old version — installing the newest version fixed it right up. And FlexBar broke. :( No update yet…
Mar 28 — Bayshore photo day. Henry wore his hand-knitted stripy pants and his shiny blue stretchy diving shirt and looked adorable. After that it was Musicla Theater rehearsal, and then home. Big WoW patch today (1.10) — they’ve added weather effects and we’re eager to see them… except the servers were down all day so we haven’t had a chance to actually SEE the weather yet :)
Mar 27 — We’re defragging my desktop tonight! YAY! It’s super-fragtastic so I’m really happy that we’re taking care of it. Henry and I went to LegoLand today, cold and crowded but very fun :) Henry is the best little boy in the world. And Dan is the best husband. I am lucky! Oh hey I got two cool extensions for FireFox today — DownThemAll and Fuzzy Time. No time to make links here, go google them and install, very handy.
Mar 22 — Henry and I played World of Warcraft for a long time today (after chores, grocery shopping, and handwriting practice) and we took Zinny and Animala to the Badlands to find some guy there and deliver a message. While we were there, and annoying high-level dwarf came riding up on his stinky ram and pestered us — bounced around on top of us while we were trying to kill bad guys, and drew even more monsters over to where we were fighting. Animala died. On my run back from the graveyard I said, in party chat, “idiot dwarf” and Henry said “I am almost livid!” His vocabulary is better than mine ;-) We had a great time playing togther, as usual. He hit level 39 so he’s all excited!
I haven’t given you any awesome links lately, but that’s about to change. Dan and I have been watching eposides of the Channel Frederator podcast — think Festival of animation in the palm of you hand, and for free, and on demand. Anyway, one of my favorite cartoons is Joel Trussell’s “War Photographer”. I really can’t get enough of this one. Love that BS&T remix! Vikings, roadies, a marching band, and a Japanese-style giant robot fight! My other favorite is “Skippy” by Amanda Spalinski. Can’t find a link to that one online so you’ll just have to go the the Channel Frederator website and watch Episode 11. It’s a little more than halfway through that episode. Charming is an understatement!
Mar 21 — Henry, Dan, and I watched The Hunt for Red October tonight. We explained a lot of the plot to Henry ahead of time, so he wouldn’t feel mystified. He LOVED it and said afterward that it was one of his favorite movies. We didn’t tell him that the cook was the saboteur, but after the movie was over he said he had noticed that the cook was listening when Ramius took both keys. I didn’t even notice that until tonight, which was about the 3rd time I’d seen the movie. He’s a smart little monkey.
Mar 18 — Dan worked with power tools all day so no quiet recording time for me. But I had fun playing World of Warcraft and there might be a chance for me to do some recording tonight a little later. I’ve just signed up for a section of Fanny Hill and I’ve got to record it before Henry gets home tomorrow, heheheh, it’s on the racy side, to say the least…
Mar 17 — The house was quiet for hours this afternoon so I recorded three chapters of Heidi and one of The History of England. Then I listened back and discovered that my mic is having some kind of a problem and I’m getting a peaky distortion sound all over the place but my levels weren’t actually peaking. Very very frustrating. I don’t know when I’ll have that much quiet time again and it’s horrible to know I wasted it. Dan came home early and we had dinner and then we built a fire in the big teaching room and sat in tehre together in the quiet for hours. Dan played his guitar and I read more of my Barbara Tuchman book, “A Distant Mirror”. I’m glad I live now and not in 14th century France. And then once again we stayed up too late talking :)
Mar 16 — Tired, tired. Dan and I stay up far too late talking every night. We could talk or not talk for hours. Henry and I bought crickets for The Turtle, and a new lightbulb for her to bask under. Librivox got a nice write-up on redhat.com! http://www.redhat.com/magazine/017mar06/features/librivox/
Mar 15 — Busy morning: we cleaned Turtle’s tank and sorted out Henry’s clean laundry, then went to Worst Buy and traded in the lame single-dvd Goblet of Fire movie that we bought by accident on Saturday for the 2-dvd Special Edition with deleted scenes and other extras. And picked up pills from Howard the Pharmacist, who very kindly printed out a list of all the stuff we’ve bought this year so we can fill in our HSA forms. Yay. And then we had time to play WoW together for ages. Henry’s Hunter, Zinny, and my Druid, Animala, have been questing in Strangelthorn Vale together for the last few days. Today we finished up the singing blue crystals (had to kill 238597857203 basilisks), and the whatever-it-is that the Geologists drop, and the Shadowmaw Panthers, and got started on the Stone of Tides and the Troll Legends, and handed in a couple of chapters for the book quest. We ran up and down the road between the Hunter Camp and Boooty Bay soooo many times :)
Mar 13 — Henry helped me clean the whole house all nice — he did the vacuuming while I mopped and de-cluttered. Yay for the Helpful Boy!
Mar 11 — Rain, hail, and freaking COLD weather! I went outside to drag the trashcans up to their little home in the driveway (we have this odd little trashcan pen — don’t ask) and I thought I’d get frostbite. Jo went home today, wasn’t feeling well, poor thing. We’ll miss her! She’s really fun to hang around with :) Dan and i dropped Henry at his dad’s house and then went to get key copies made at the Best Store in the World – True Value Hardware. They have everything, absolutely everything, and genuinely helpful employees. And then we came home and I played World of Warcraft until my eyeballs bled, and Dan built his new bandsaw in the livingroom with me (on account of the rain and hail).
I wonder if I’ve mentioned my HUGE OBSESSION with the Teaching Company’s lecture series on the History of the English Language. I have all 36 lectures loaded into my ipod and both computers AND on an mp3 cd in my car. I listen to some of it every day — driving, cooking, going to sleep, waiting around, playing WoW, etc. I’ve been listening to it for several months, and I’m only just now getting to the Modern English part. Old English and Middle English were so fascinating that I’ve listened to every lecture several times, some of them over and over and over. The lecturer, Seth Lerer, reads lot and lots of examples of Early and middle English literature and it sounds so beautiful, so very beautiful. I highly recommend this course. It’s ridiculously inexpensive if you want to purchase it as an audio download — only FIFTY BUCKS for 18 hours of wonderful lectures… you can’t beat that.
Mar 10 — Rain, rain, rain. The fingerprint-recognition doorknob fell apart so H and I went to get a regular old key-lock doorknob at True Value, and I installed it without a hitch. And then we sat in the teaching room in front of the fireplace and I read him a few chapters from our history book, about Alexander the Great and the Rise of Rome. Dan and Jo and I stayed up WAY too late watching fun tv. :) She got us hooked on CSI and House!
Mar 08 — Henry heard a Scary Noise last night, poor boy. We think it was our neighbors having late visitors, but to sleepy Henry it sounded like knocking and loud voices on _our_ porch… he was shaky and all upaset, so Dan took him on a walk around the house with a flashlight, to check for Bad Guys, and they didn’t find any. And then we made him a cozy bed on the couch right outside our room, and I put a soothing audiobook (my recording of The Secret Garden) on my iMac, and then he fell asleep and was ok for the rest of the night.
Henry and Sal played racquetball this morning, and then Henry and Jo and I ran a bunch of errands (my blood tests, hardware store, music store, mailbox, and Trader Joe) and then I worked on the Beatrix potter project and played a bit of WoW :) Dan’s new MacBook Pro arrived at work and he brought it home for us to admire. It’s luscious and lightning-fast.
Mar 07 — Took Henry to his Charlie rehearsal and got chapters 2 and 3 of Heidi edited. Northanger Abbey is in the “Proof Listening” phase, but should be ready to catalog soon. Beatrix Potter is still waiting for Marlo to record the Tale of Pigling Bland. I suppose I should start up a new collaborative children’s lit project soon… maybe some more Nesbit. I’m tired, tired, tired. Henry and Jo and I got pizza for lunch and lay around and watched The Sting together all afternoon.
Mar 06 — Jo helped me clean the whole house! It was wonderful. And then Henry and I sewed a “Winged Kariboh” toy. Here’s a photo. He’s made of brown stretchy fleece with felt wings and feet, and black button eyes. He’s soft and cuddly and Henry loves him! I made the pattern by looking at one of Henry’s Yu-Gi-Oh cards.
Annie released another chapter of Huckleberry Finn! YAY! I listened to part of it last night but fell asleep right when Huck washed off the raft, so I’ll start in the middle tonight and find out what happened next. Today I recorded “The Emperor’s New Clothes” for Librivox’s Hans Christian Andersen project. I picked that one because I knew it wouldn’t make me cry.
Mar 04 — We watched a suprisingly good movie tonight: “Airport” (1970). I told the tivo to get it for us, thinking it would be a typical all-star 70s disaster movie but it was really actually good, very entertaining, compelling, not 100% predictable, and fun to watch.
Mar 03 — Field trip in the morning to a Visual Arts studio, a little family-run business that makes movies and stuff. We had fun seeing all the equipment and watching one of their short films, which stars two of the kids from Bayshore! Henry was supposed to start in a homeschool soccer team today but they got rained out. He was really disappointed, poor boy. We got to the field and it was just pouring… So we came home and hung around with Dan and Jo (Dan took the day off today!) and Dan played guitar with Henry until it was time for me to take him to Karate. Oh, and Henry and I went to the fabric store to get material for a new little Yu-Gi-Oh monster that he wants me to make, a Winged Haribo, or something.
In the evening we watched Survivor — Bobby got voted out, yay! And then an episode of The Office, and then Best In Show. :) And after Jo went to bed I got my chapter of Ulysses recorded!
Mar 02 — It was “Read Across America” day at Bayshore, in honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and they had some special activities planned so Henry stayed for the whole morning. So I went home and recorded a chapter of Heidi. And at night we all went and picked up Dan’s mom, Jo, at the airport! She;s here for a week, at least, and maybe longer. She needs to get away from the NY winter for a while and soak up some sunshine. So of course we’re expecting rain tomorrow, argh.