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Today Dan took me out to buy birthday presents! I decided that I wanted a better recording setup (inspired by the equipment we ferried to Hugh) so we went to Guitar Denter Center. Dan helped me choose a condenser mic and a usb audio interface, so I can avoid my soundcard when recording. I hate Guitar Center. It’s loud and the salesguys are pushy. When we got home and set everything up, it turned out that my mic was probably a returned model (though not sold as such), and the threads were stripped. Nice. So we went back and exchanged it for a shrink-wrapped model, which was suprisingly easy. The whole affair was exhausting, but I did eventually manage to make a couple of sample recordings and I think my new mic is going to be really nice!

Also tinkered with my blog for hours, also listened to Pandora at all times (when I wasn’t recording)!

Oops. Let’s catch up, shall we? :)

Our Island Story, chapters 6 – 15:

The Last of the Romans
The Story of St. Alban
Vortigern and King Constans
The Coming of Hengist and Horsa
Hengist’s Treachery
How the Giant’s Dance was Brought to Britain
The Coming of Arthur
The Founding of the Round Table
Gregory and the Pretty Children
How King Alfred Learned to Read
(though there’s really no need to depend on my memory… you can get the entire first half of the book by following this link: Our Island Story, Part 1)

I tried several different methods of importing my blogger.com posts into wordpress.  None worked.  But there are only 24 or so blogger posts so I’ve started pasting them in by hand.  I’m keeping the timestamps exactly the same as the original posts.  I’d hate to rewrite such important history.

WordPress has this “press it” thingy that lives up in the browser toolbar. Click it when you’re on a nifty page and it starts a wordpress post (in the same tab! beware!) which has the url of the nifty page in it. Like this:

Pandora Internet Radio – Find New Music, Listen to Free Web Radio

I discovered pandora yesterday and listened to it all day! It’s an amazing service. I adore it. Pick an artist or two and it starts a “radio station” for you in your browser. It selects songs by the artist(s) you picked, and adds songs by other artists that it considers similar in style. Every song, at any time, allows you to “thumbs up” it, in which case it knows you like it and it will tend to pay songs by that artist more often, or “thumbs down” it in which case the song stops playing and it remembers that you didn’t like it. You can ask “why did you play this song?” in which case you’ll get a popup something like this:

“Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features folk roots, acoustic sonority, majoy key tonality, melodic songwriting, and acoustic rhythm guitars.”

That was the popup for a Leadbelly song on my Pete Seeger station :) Now I’ll mark it “thumbs up” and I’ll get more Leadbelly in the mix. It already played me some Pete Seeger, a little Dylan, a Woody Guthrie song, and a couple of songs by artists I hadn’t heard of, two of which I really liked (Stan Rogers and Bob Gibson). You can “bookmark” a song or artist, and it’ll show up in your profile where you can listen to a sample of it, or buy it from iTunes or Amazon. Handy for remembering new and cool songs and artists! Bob Gibson’s “Erie Canal” is on right now. He’s obviously heavily influenced by Pete — who better to be influenced by? So I’ve bookmarked him and I can consider acquiring a cd of his later.

Pandora is SO COOL!!!!!! Also, it’s completely free if you don’t mind a few advertisements in the tab (and possibly audio ads later?) or $36/year for the ad-free version. Hmm, it’ll let me add my favorite songs, artists, or stations to my blog. Let’s see how that looks…

i’ve fiddled with this thing long enough.  i’ll try to make it conform to my expectations tomorrow.  also i’m hungry.

working on my own wordpress installation.  while it’s still ugly and unkempt, you can read my temporary blogger blog here: kayray.org/blog.html

So! Now that blogger.com is working again and I can reliably create a post, here’s a link to the NY Times article about LibriVox that was published today:
Public Domain Books, Ready for Your iPod

To misquote Larry David: “Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty cool!”

Dan was up early, went out and bought the paper, and left our story on the bed for me to find when I woke up :)

Interesting. I got fed up with blogger not publishing that last post, and not letting me remove 3 duplicated posts, so I went into the html file on my server and poked it with a stick. Added some plain old text at the top to let people know I knew it was broken. And now it seems to be working again, go figure. But still, now that I know I enjoy the new-fangled blogging experience, with the comments and the feed and the web-based posting, I will install my very own wordpress and not have to rely on blogger.com anymore. Probably work on that tonight.

Yeah blogger.com has been broken to a greater or lesser extent all day. As you can see, i’ve got some delightful duplicated posts that I CAN’T GET RID OF! They don’t show up in my “edit posts” screen. Sigh.

This morning I cleaned the fridge, since there was barely any food in it anyway, and re-arranged the shelves a little bit. Then Henry and I went Out on Errands. First to the bookstore. Henry is into a series called The Deltora Quest, and had enough allowance money saved up to buy the next book in the series. But our local B&N didn’t have #6! The nice clerk called the Encinitas branch, which had it and set it aside for him. So we headed down that way, first stopping for ribbon to lace up my Petit Chou (whch fits perfectly, by the way). We’ve been buying quite a lot of books lately, to keep up with Henry’s newly voracious reading appetite, so I decided to spring for the B&N member card — and since he saved 10 percent, Henry had enough allowance to buy #6 and #7! Yay!

So then we headed back to Trader Joe’s and stocked up on groceries. Also picked up a week’s worth of bills and junk mail from the mailbox place. Bah. Henry carried everything upstairs for me when we got home and I put it all away, checked on librivox, and then it was time for some World of Warcraft! Henry’s highest character, Zinny (lvl 48 Night Elf Hunter), led my lvl 45 druid, Animala, through the Burning Steppes and into the Searing Gorge, where we picked up several of our favorite type of quests – “kill x number of x creatures”. Great for parties, since everyone gets credit for every kill. Heh.

It is later and, as promised, here is more.

A few weeks back, you may remember, a freelance writer, Craig Silverman, called me for a phone interview about LibriVox. He planned to pitch his article to the NY Times. Last night, in the middle of the night, when we had finally reached the US and it no longer cost a dollar a minute to check my voice mail, I found a couple of frantic messages from a woman at the Times who wanted to know if she could set up a photo-shoot so they could get some pictures of me and Henry for the article. The article, it seems, is scheduled to be printed on Friday!

After I’d woken up a bit this morning I called her back and found that it was not too late, if they could get photos TODAY. So a really lovely photographer showed up this afternoon and took pictures of H and me outdoors, under the tree. She had Henry swing on his rope swing part of the time. I know they also took photos of Hugh today, and I think they’ll only need one and he’s the logical one to show — it’s his thing, after all — so we might not be in the paper after all. But we might! Check the NY Times on Friday…

Boy, we were only traveling for, um, 14 hours or something but it felt like much more. I hate being in airplanes SO MUCH. Hate, Hate, Hate. Hate the cramped seats, hate the dry air that’s always either too hot or too cold, hate the tiny little cups of water they dole out like they’re worth their weight in gold. D’ya think maybe Evian or someone could get some publicity by providing us beverage-deprived travellers with a whole bottle of water EACH or something? By the time we got to San Diego I felt like I would scream if I didn’t get out and move around soon. All folded up in that tiny seat with hardly room to breathe, ugh. All in all, though, the journey went quite smoothly. We had some unfortunate delays but did, eventually, arrive home in the wee hours of the morning.

Yawn. So tired today. Dan and Henry helped me clean the disgusting house, oh the dog-hair buildup you would not believe. Ugh. And one of the mousetraps that I forgot to disable caught a mouse in the kitchen candles-and-matches drawer at some time in the past week. I’ll let you consider that for a few moments. Yes, a dead mouse in a drawer for several days. In summer. It was SPECIAL. Dan dumped the drawer in the garbage and hosed out the maggots.
He also vacuumed and de-cluttered our room. Henry did some vacuuming and redistribution of items, I did vacuuming and mopping and dusting. Now I think I can stand to live here again.

Gotta teach piano students now, more later maybe.

Today we leave Montreal. Sigh. It’s such a beautiful city and we had the best vacation ever, mostly because Hugh and Christine were here but also because we just love Montreal. Can hardly wait to come back again someday soon. Slept rather late, since we were up so late last night. Did computer stuff with Hugh, geekifying his macbook pro (quicksilver! menumeters!), and admired Christine’s knitting progress — she’s learned so fast! Packed, called a taxi for 2pm. Sigh.

Nice lazy day. Dan and I went down to Steve’s Music to return the rented guitar, and then over to a liquor store, Saq, for fancy Scotch. The liquor store was right next to the Basilica so there were a lot of touristy shops. We stopped in one for water and found nice t-shirts to take home to Henry and Sal. Also bought some much-needed candy. It was cooler today and very pleasant.

In the evening, Hugh cooked a fantasic dinner. Oh my goodness that man can cook. He made beans with onions and tomatoes, fresh salsa, and chicken, and wrapped everything up with sour cream in tortillas. And there was salad of course. YUM. Nice friend Mike came over for dinner too, so that was fun. He whipped up an interesting dessert of strawberries and custard and something. After dinner Christine left for her shift at the hospital, and we set up Hugh’s new recording equipment and the three of us recorded chapter 10 of Ulysses. We stayed up wayyyyy too late :)

It started raining last night and rained all day, too! Woohoo! Since we had three rather busy days in a row, we decided to just loaf for our remaining vacation time. Christine had the day off today and she hoped I’d teach her to knit, so in the afternoon we went on a Yarn Store Pilgrimage through the rain. It was much easier for me to walk a long distance, today, in the cool rainy weather. Tried three different yarn stores – the first one looked great through the window but was closed on Sundays until September. The second one looked not-so-good and was also closed. The third one didn’t seem to exist! The address was number 80 on some street or other. We found 78, and next door was 82. But no 80! *hums Twilight Zone theme* So we decided to give up and head home, but we walked past a dollar store and checked to see if they had any cheap-ass acrylic yarn — and they did! So I built Christine some needles from my 15-year-old Boye Needlemaster kit and got her started. She learned so fast, and has knit quite a long swatch already with sections of garter, stockinette, and various ribbings. Yay Christine!

Dan and I vegged this evening with delivered Italian food, two episodes of Survivor and one new Mighty Boosh.

Today was the last day of our 3-day museum passes. We went to the Stewart first. It was really hot and humid today and it was kind of a longish walk from the metro station, but it was well worth it! Lots of fascinating historical objects. Dan especially enjoyed the interactive miniature model of old Montreal! After we’d gone through the whole museum, we lay on the grass for a bit and thought about what to do next. I had planned on going to the botanical gardens today but it was just too hot, so we decided to head to the Chalet Ramazey, since it sounded like fun and was also very close to a metro station, heheh. Also a very enjoyable and educational experience! We haven’t been disappointed in any of Montreal’s tourist attractions :)

After that, we were worn out. Got home, ate a cheap but tasty pizza from the corner pizza stand. Hugh got home from his rugby game, also worn out. We rented and watched Peter Jackson’s King Kong, which was hilariously bad. As Hugh said, it was not so much a movie as a collection of things that happened. Lol. I had my knitting to amuse me during the half-hour gorilla/dinosaur battles. Oh my, it was bad bad bad.

Dan and Hugh went off to Hugh’s office so they could work on Collectik and Librivox stuff, so I took myself to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. I really wanted to see the exhibition of “Italian Design and Avant-Garde in the 20th Century”! I had a few small annoying panic attacks on the way, but I forced myself to calm down and managed to get there ok. The museum was wonderful! I went through the Italian exhibit first. I loved it. There were paintings and sculptures, of course, but my favorites were the beautifully-designed everyday items. Olivetti typewriters from the early 30s, a little 1957 Fiat, an early-50s taffeta gown, silverware, advertising posters. After that exhibit I went though the Monet to Renior gallery. Also wonderful. The museum is huge, far too much to see in one visit, and by then I was very tired so I headed home.

In the evening, Hugh and Christine had some friends over, very nice friends, but I was completely exhausted so I just stayed up in our room and read and knitted.

After breakfast etc this morning, Dan and I walked a few blocks to the nearest Metro station. Easy to find, clean, bright, airy. Took the metro to the old part of Montreal, got off, walked downhill to the Science Center. The Science Center sold us a couple of Montreal Museum Passes, which will let us ride unlimited public transportation and visit 32 different museums, for three days. Neat! We’ll probably not get quite $40 worth of use out of them, but the convenience of being able to hop on and off the Metro at will, without worrying about fares, is really nice. We spent a long time at the Science Center, then took the Metro to the Olympic Park and went through the Biodome. I’d heard some slightly negative things about the Biodome, but I enjoyed it a lot! It took about an hour to go through. If you’re expecting the San Diego Zoo you might be disappointed, but take it for what it is and it’s lovely. Like walking through a giant terrarium.

Then we took the metro home again. I’m tired. I’ve been lying down for a couple of hours now and I don’t plan to do anything more today :)

Hey look at that, blogger.com is working and I can make a post. Chalk one up on the “drawbacks of blogger” side. This is the first time in two days I’ve been able to access my blog. Could have something to do with the slow internet, of course. But anyway here I am and here we are in beautiful Montreal!

Tuesday was our flight. Uneventful, long and tiring. Note: you MUST have a birth certificate or passport to travel from the US to Canada. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Lucky for us, we brought our birth certificates or it would have been a non-existant vacation. We were at the airport three hours early, and breezed through the security checkpoint. They double-checked Dan’s eyedrops but let him keep them. We watched two or three episodes of Survivor on Dan’s laptop on the flight from SD to Chicago, which passed the time nicely. In Chicago we had about 1 hour between flight. By the time we found our gate and ate a pretty-good sandwich, it was time to board. We were pretty sleepy by then (got up at 5am). I put my head down on the tray and listened to Martin’s recording of Crome Yellow. He’s got a very soothing voice and I think I slept a tiny bit.

Going through customs in Montreal was easy, though a bit stressful at the time. Then we found a taxi and got to Hugh and Christine’s house, which is narrow and beautiful, on an old and interesting street. They have a spare bedroom just for us, far nicer and more comfortable than any hotel.

Yesterday (Wednesday) we slept late, then walked around the neighborhood in search of batteries and food. It was quite intimidating at first, not knowing who spoke only French and who could help us in English, but we managed. Every sucessful transaction felt like a triumph! Then we hung around and ate our sandwiches and a wonderful apple tart on Hugh’s back patio. Then we took a long walk to a Steve’s Music Store to rent an acoustic guitar for Dan to fiddle with. And then we just relaxed the rest of the day.

Today (Thursday) we were up a bit earlier and walked out to find breakfast food for Dan. Went to Fruit Folie, yumyumyum, then a leisurely walk through the neighborhood and home. Soon we’ll go out and go to some museums!

Henry and I did a lot of erands this morning. Bank, library, bookstore, music store. The bookstore was, of course, the most fun! Henry is reading a new paperback fantasy series and needed book two, and I needed something to read on the plane. I got “The History of the World in Six Glasses” in paperback, and also a book about the seamy underside of the Victorian Age, can’t remember the title and it’s packed already. Looks goood though!

In the afternoon I read 5 more chapters of By the Great Horn Spoon to Henry. Such a marvelously enjoyable book!

Dinner at Chili’s (yech, but Dan loves it there. I must admit the Margaritas are very good).

Bed early, Canada tomorrow!