kayray.org

I had a sewing festival today. As I mentioned before, yesterday I cut out three pairs of underwear (blue cotton velour) and one pair of pants (green striped cotton). This morning I cut out a pair of shorts for Henry (same brown/tan stripes as my other pair of pants, had leftover cloth) and then I had a sewing marathon. Listened to three and a half episodes of loveline (Eric Balfour, just Drew, Danny Bonaduce, Carson Daly) and had a fine time. Ran out of elastic but luckily there’s a JoAnne’s practically around the corner. I actually completed all five garments! Woohoo! Having everything cut out ahead of time and ready to stitch together in an assembly line was a real time-saver.

After dinner, Dan and Henry and I played Settlers of Catan — Henry’s first time playing for real, instead of the 2-man version we sometime play. Dan won! Fun :)

Forgot to mention that while I was watching Wives and Daughters yesterday, I cut out three pairs of underwear and one pair of pants. So I think I’ll go sew them all together now!

But first: I’ve just made an excerpt from the librivox anniversary show — the bloopers! The mp3 is about 3 minutes long. Enjoy :)

http://kayray.org/audiobooks/librivox/librivox_bloopers.mp3

Couldn’t get to sleep last night until about 2am. No idea why, I usually listen to a Loveline episode on my iPod, set for a 15-minute sleep timer, and drop right off. And then I woke up around 6am for no reason. So I felt pretty crappy all day. Took Fargo home, dropped Henry off at his dad’s, came home, did some Librivox administration, and watched Wives and Daughters all afternoon.

Did I link to the amazing LibriVox 1-year Anniversary Special yet? I think not. So here it is:
http://librivox.org/librivox-anniversary-2006

Amazing. I heard it Thursday for the first time, proof-listening it, and it blew me away. So creative, so well put together. Please listen. If interviews bore you, start at about 15 minutes from the end and listen to the blooper reel, the poem, and the sampler!

Haircut in the morning, new stylist ’cause Dee quit. But it turned out ok! New stylist (Esmerelda) did a good job. My hair is short and straight and tidy now. Wish it would STAY straight and tidy, but it’ll puff up again after I wash it. I just don’t have the patience to spend a half-hour restraightening it very often.

Then to fabric store, looking for fabric for one more pair of comfy pants for myself like the ones I made yesterday so I have something comfortable yet un-ragged to wear on vacation. Got some good green cotton striped stuff. Thought about a linen/rayon blend but they only had solid colors. Stripes will camouflage the inevitable tiny stain better. Also found ONE bolt of mostly-cotton velour, picked up half-yard for a couple more pairs of underwear.

Then to Fry’s for an external hard drive and a headphone splitter/booster.

Then to Guitar Center (bleargh) for Hugh’s mic and mixer. Ernie cut me quite a deal, since they didn’t have exactly what I was looking for. Hideous store. It seems designed for maximum discomfort.

Then to the Barnes and Noble in Escondido for a moleskine notebook (graph-paper style!), and French phrase book, a Montreal guidebook, and a map of Montreal. I’d never been to that store before so I printed out directions from maps.google.com. But for the first time ever, as far as I can remember, google failed me. They suggested a bizarre circuitous route with non-existant streets. Eventually I gave up and found the place by instinct alone. Going home, I found that had I only switched freeways and gone one exit further, I would have landed in the parking-lot. Well, now I know.

Then home, finally.

On Monday I read some .gov webpage somewhere that said that travelers re-entering the US from Canada will have to show proof of citizenship, and that a driver’s license is not good enough.  (Sorry, forgot to mention, we’re going to Canada next week.)  Anyway.  The .gov said a birth certificate is good.  Dan has his, but mine was lost long ago.  So on Tuesday morning early I called the Health Department in the state where I was born (Indiana), and they said I’d have to order a replacement through the mail.  This was exactly one week before our departure date.  So I overnight Fed-Exed my form and my check, and enclosed a return overnight Fed-Ex envelope and crossed my fingers.  Best case scenario, it would get to Indiana on Wednesday, they’d ship it back the same day, and I’d get it Thursday (today).  I figured only a minor miracle would allow that to happen, but that I’d still have Friday and Monday as buffer days before our trip.

Imagine my shock when a Fed-Ex envelope showed up today!!  And the good people of Indiana enclosed not only my certified birth certificate (a certified certificate??) but also a smaller one in a plastic cover, also certified and embossed and all.  Small enough to fit in my wallet when we travel.

So that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about anymore.

Well, I’ve just had my first Nasty Comment, about one of the sites I link to.  Delorted.  If this happens often, I’ll turn on comment moderation and vet comments before they post.  Which will be obnoxious.  So cut it out.  If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything.  I’m not interested in flamewars and this is not a democracy :)  kayray.org is my happy little spot on the internet. If your comment is mean, I’ll delete it.

Good morning. I’ve just created a feedburner feed for this blog, so you can subscribe that way if you wish. Hit the square orange icon on the right. I don’t actually use a feedreader, so let me know if it doesn’t work or something :)

I’ve been doing LibriVox work in bed all morning, since I woke up at about 6:45am . I had two or three recordings submitted so I had to download and organize those. Also had to read through most of the new forum posts and make sure everything was going well. Checked on a reporting of a corrupted file, which must have been user/download error, sounds fine to me. Answered an emailed question from a listener who couldn’t figure out how to download our mp3s. Made a Happy Birthday LibriVox blog post. Yes, LibriVox is officially 1 year old today! I didn’t discover Hugh until September, and that’s when we created the forum and the podcast and things really took off.

I changed the link colors. Dark green for visited links and orange for unvisited, same as the mouseover color. And I added a bunch of links on the side, and my pretty chicklets.

Ok, maybe it’s time to stop fiddling with the layout. Good enough. So here’s some actual blogging.

I finished reading Dragonsinger to Henry a few days ago. He loved it as much as, if not more than, Dragonsong! I checked out Dragondrums for him to read to himself (I’m not crazy about that one. Piemur is not as appealing to me as Menolly is.) and we started By The Great Horn Spoon for bedtime a few days ago. (Note: I can’t decide which cover art is the worst on those four books. Lord.) I loved this book and read it several times when I was a child, and I was delighted to find that it’s still just as enjoyable! And the chapters are just the right length for a bedtime story. We read chapter five tonight.

I was very tired again today and I promised Dan I’d try not to work too hard. So I went out early for groceries and to mail the Nautiloid to Wastrel. Henry carried everything in for me (including all the water I bought yesterday) and, after I put everything away, I settled in on the couch to do nothing. I watched Henry play The Hobbit and worked on knitty’s petit chou (more about that tomorrow, probably), which, now that I’ve charted it out and started over for the third time, has stopped being frustrating and started being extremely fun!

Hey I haven’t tried linking a picture yet. Here’s the Nautiloid:

I found a template that looked pretty good. The really plain one, obviously. I just changed the link colors from a lavender and blue scheme to the same green and blue as my former blog. And I changed the font from serif to sans-serif. (Kept the orange mouseovers, I kinda like them!) And I got rid of most of the forced uppercase. And now it’s looking pretty good! Oh, it was really really white so I just changed the background to a pale green. Let me know if it’s hard to see.

I must say… it is nice to be able to post without ssh’ing into the server. Although I want to hit esc : wq when I’m done writing.

I was poking around on the internets today and discovered that google’s blogger will let you publish a blog in your own webspace. So I thought I’d just try it out. I’ve been fiddling with it for a couple of hours and this is the result. I’m not happy with any of the templates but this one is fairly inoffensive, for now, and I can create a better one if I decide to stick with blogger.

Reasons to switch to an actual blogging system:

• Comments (or is that a drawback?)
• xml feed (has been requested by some of my readers)
• web-based posting
• email posting
• searchable
• something new to try

Reasons to stick with the old-fashioned, hand-coded-in-vi kayray.org:

• everything is entirely under my control
• all subpages match (can I do that with blogger? Maybe if I create a separate blog for each subpage, i.e. audiobooks…)
• I’m the only blogger on the planet who doesn’t use a System. kayray.org = special

Mmkay well I’m hungry. More later maybe.

August 4, 2006
I’m obviously having a hard time remembering to update this page :) I do remember to update my actual podcast, but this page just slips my mind. Sorry ’bout that. Anyway… the current podcast is Our Island Story, by H. E. Marshall. It’s a children’s history of England. Great stuff! Here are the first 6 chapters:

Introduction
The Stories of Albion and Brutus
The Coming of the Romans
The Romans Come Again
How Caligula Conquered Britain
The Story of a Warrior Queen

The only other thing you’ll miss if you’re not a podcast subscriber is the little message I sent out last week or so… here’s a link. Message from Kara, July 23, 2006. There. Now you’re all caught up. I hope you enjoy Our Island Story!

July 2006

31 — Dan had Lasik eye surgery this morning, down in La Jolla. We left the house around 8:30am and arrive a bit after 10:30am. It’s a 30-mile drive. That’s right, it took 2 hours to drive 30 miles. When do you suppose the developers will stop building new communities? Anyway… his surgery wenrt fine (you can read about it on his blog, IT Obsession. Then we drove over the Thornton Hospital for my 6-month pulmonary check-up. We got there a little bit early and hung out in the car, Dan just resting with his eyes closed, and then I went in and got examined. They say I’m doing ok. The 6-minute walk seemed more tiring than usual but my doctor didn’t seem concerned about it, so that’s good I guess. In addition to the Tracleer that I take twice a day, he wants me to try Viagra (scroll down to “other uses” heheh) three times a day to see if that will reduce the arterial pressure and *maybe* someday make it possible for them to close the hole in my heart. Stopped by the pharmacy to get my prescription filled and Howard the Dear Pharmacist said my insurance wouldn’t cover Viagra, which at $10/pill, 3x/day comes to quite a total. But he’s going to contact my doctor and see if he can convince my ins. people to cover it. I’m sure they will.

Now we’re finally finally home. What a long day. Dan’s asleep and I’ve been catching up on librivox and webstuff, but now I’m hungry. What oh what shall I eat? Oh, last night Annie pointed out that her, my, and librivox’s podcasts were on the iTunes “Featured Podcasts” page! I don’t feel like posting an actual thumbnail here, so a link will have to do: Kara, Annie, and LibriVox are Featured!

30 — While Dan and his friends played music, I worked through an online traffic school, what FUN! But it only took a few hours. Now I just have to take the final exam to a notary and fill it in in front of her. Funny. Bought Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (used) for Dan to play on the DS, since he prefers handheld games and was dying to play some harvest moon :) Tired, tired, tired, tired, so Dan bought us a frozen pizza from Trader Joe’s and cooked it for us. So nice to have someone bring me dinner!

26 — A discussion of quilting came up on librivox, and I realized that I didn’t have any photos of the quilt I made for Dan. So, I took it out to the lawn and took some photos. And while I was at it I took a picture of the purple cotton Nautiloid I made for Baby Wastrel. (pattern at http://www.knitty.com/issuespring06/PATTnautie.html Isn’t he cute? He has a charming smile. Let’s see, what else… Oh, Dan’s Cool-or-Heat seat pad (which he sleeps on) died last night. I called the company this morning and spoke to a friendly and helpful woman about it. She’s going to send a new one out right away! Apparently there’s a known problem with the pumps, so she’s sending me one that might be fixed (so Dan can have one right away), and then if that one goes bad she’ll send us one from the next batch which will definitely be fixed. Hooray for Cool-Or-Heat!

25 — A bit little cooler today. The house was quiet (Henry’s off rock climbing) so I got a lot of librivox work done. Recorded a chapter of Limberlost and a couple of Our Island Story. In the morning I did errands, took back Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, checked for a used copy of HM:MM (no dice), bought groceries, picked up medication, etc. When I picked up Henry he decided to use his own money to buy HM:MM (he loves it as much as I do) so we went back out to Gamestop. Henry had enough for more than half and I made up the difference. Now we can continue farming and fishing and raising livestock! He’s courting Maria, the librarian (good taste, Henry) and I’ve got my sights set on Alex the doctor.

24 — Today was Henry’s much-anticipated first day of Karate Camp (9-3:30, no “camping” involved). Today they had a Newaza seminar in the morning, then bowling and laser tag. After I dropped him off I came home and waited for a fellow to call me for another phone interview about librivox (of course). This guy is going to pitch his article to the NY Times for Librivox’s 1-year anniversary. If they turn it down, he’ll get it published elsewhere. I’ll let you know :) He was very nice and easy to talk to, and I felt more comfortable that I’ve felt in any other interview. His questions seemed more interesting than usual, too, and were a little different from the usual questions. For instance, he asked if my husband was supportive of my librivox work. No one else has ever asked that! And of course the answer was a resounding “YES!” :)

It was hotter than ever today. So hot that even I felt a bit uncomfortable and turned on the AC in the bedroom in the late afternoon and took a little rest.

23 — Hot, hot hot, and humid too. Mostly I like it, as long as I don’t have to be out in the sun, but it makes Dan miserable. It was realy too hot to do much this weekend, but we have a great time just hanging around reading, playing videogames, trying to keep cool. I played Harvest Moon: Magical Melody for hours and hours and hours. It is a superb game. There are always so many fun tasks to work on, and a lot of choices to be made. Should I hoe up some land and plant some onions? If I do that, I’ll be low on stamina so if I want to fish afterward I’d better find some food to eat… Ok, maybe that sounds dull, but trust me, it’s a fun and charming game. I can find fault with nearly anything, but HM:MM is nearly faultless, unlike Harvest Moon: It’s a Wonderful Life, which we also rented but found to be nearly unplayable and no fun at all. HM:MM is more like a descendant of the wonderful Friends of Mineral Town. I do wish I could turn off the music but I have Known Issues with videogame music.

20 — This morning I took the boys over to the Krikorian Theater for the dollar kids’ movie, which happened to be the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp, Tim Burton). It was, most surprisingly, excellent! I was thoroughly entertained. Every facet of the movie was superb — casting, directing, visuals (dark and surreal, as they should be) screenplay (stuck very close to the book, added elemements were non-jarring and actually added depth to the story and characters), and especially the soundtrack. Good job, Hollywood, you made a non-sucky adaptation of a favorite book! Dropped Henry at his dad’s, drove Fargo home to Laguna Niguel, went home for a quick rest and then off to dentist to have four cavities filled. Ugh. He’s a nice good dentist, but still. I amused myself with “Fanny Hill” in my ipod. Dan was at the dentists office at the same time, for a checkup :)

I thought Dan would really enjoy Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I wanted to see it again, so we we went out in the evening to rent it :) I rented Harvest Moon: Magical Melody, too, and we got some take-out dinner because I was feeling ill from all the anaesthetic. So we lazed about and watched Charlie (which was even better the second time, and Dan loved it) and ate. Such a nice evening.

19 — The boys played all morning, I tried to catch up with LibriVox work, the little neighbor girl came over to swim with the boys. OH and I discovered an insanely useful little OS X utility: http://grandperspectiv.sourceforge.net.
GrandPerspective is a small utility application for Mac OS X that graphically shows the disk usage within a file system. It can help you to manage your disk, as you can easily spot which files and folders take up the most space. It uses a so called tree map for visualisation. Each file is shown as a rectangle with an area proportional to the file’s size
I ran it on my iMac and discovered about ten gigs of garbage! TEN GIGS!!! Then we went to art class and looked at works from Picasso’s cubist period, then tried to emulate cubism ourselves. Tricky. But we all had fun.

18 — This morning after Henry helped with the Tiny TIgers karate class we went back to our dentist for a Braces Consultation. We saw Dr. Modi, the owner of the practice, a sweet middle-aged woman. She looked at Henry’s mouth and recommended that he get remoable appliances to expand his little jaws, so his teeth will have room to fall into place and his jaws will align properly. Sounded like a good idea so they took an impression of his mouth and gave us an order to go to a special x-ray lab for special x-rays, heh. IN the afternoon Fargo arrived for a visit, and the boys played and played all the rest of the day. while I read a book from cover to cover — “As Hot as it Was You Ought to Thank Me” by Nanci Kincaid. When I started it, I thought, hey this is really good. I should stop reading it now and buy a copy to take on vacation… but it turned out that I COULDN’T stop reading it, and read all 355 pages in one day. So, on reflection, I guess it’s good that I didn’t try to take it on vacation ’cause it wouldn’t have lasted long ;-) I loved it, obviously.

17 — Henry and Sally are swimming and playing and laughing and shrieking and having a great time :) I went to the library today and got a lovely new stack of books, and I recorded my lines for Hamlet (I’m Rosencrantz), and I did the laundry, and I read one of my new books, and I sewed a pair of shorts for Henry, and I listened to Loveline, and I did librivox work. Busy day, very fun. Dan beat New Super Mario Bros (DS) last night!

16 — Lovely Sunday. Dan had some friends over to play music and I sewed three more pairs of green velour underwear while listening to Annie’s Huck Finn and Loveline. Now Dan and I are hanging out in the cool bedroom. We watched a Robot Chicken and a Family Guy, and now he’s playing New Super Mario on the DS and I’m catching up on my blog. And we’re listening to Loveline. I adore Loveline. It’s so soothing. I’m pleased with Stryker as the new co-host. He’s not trying to be Adam! When I rented Pirates yesterday I took a quick look at the Gamecube shelf to see if there was anything new and interesting. I saw a new Harvest Moon game called, I think, Magical Melody. I loved “Friends of Mineral Town” but “Another Wonderful Life” left me cold. So I did some googling today. MM gets great reviews, and I think it would be fun to try! And I also found out that there’s a Harvest Moon game for DS coming out in August. So that’s very tempting, more tempting that the gamecube version. Portable is good. So here are the DS games I’d like to own: Princess Peach, Harvest Moon, and of course Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (when it’s out).

15 — Henry’s with us today! He and Dan ran ethernet cable up to his computer so he’s got wired instead of wireless internet access now and the microwave won’t knock him off anymore. It was a big job and they had a drill a hole in the house, very exciting :) And of course they took a lot of breaks to sit in the bedroom and cool off in the air conditioning. While they were working, I went to the fabric store to see if I could find fabric for some more pants for Henry (I recently made a pattern for elastic/drawstring-waist pants with nice deep pockets for him, and made him two pairs already which he wears every single day). The fabric store had all the clearance fabrics at 60% off (so I only paid $.80/yard for some of it, and $1.20 for some!!), so I found some good and very cheap stuff! Got two nice plaids for Henrypants, some strawberry-print flannel for comfy pants for me, and some lovely ivy-print lightweight cotton for my stash. Maybe a blouse? Also got lots more elastic for more underwear for me and for the waists of Henry’s pants.

And Dan and I cleaned the bedroom today! Well, Dan did most of the work but I helped get him started. We filled Canny the Helpful Trashcan half full with bedroom garbage! And our room is all nice and uncluttered now, So peaceful and nice. After dinner we all watched Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl (or whatever it’s called). Henry’d seen it a hundred times but Dan and I never had. It was entertaining enough, but long, jeebus. Lots of eye make-up and skeleton swordfights. Too many skeleton swordfights for my taste. But it was fun anyway :) I don’t understand the appeal of Johnny Depp. Whatever.

14 — More lovely quiet today, mostly. Sal taught piano lessons all day but now Dan’s computers go to sleep when they’re not being used so our bedroom is quiet enough for me to record in! So I recorded the first letter of two brides, which was long, long, long and contained a lot of French. Ugh, I’ve never studied French and I find it very difficult to deal with. Just from being observant and watching foreign movies I have an idea of how it should sound, more or less, but I’m terribly insecure and I know I pronounce things very badly a lot of the time. Give me German. No silent letters, everything is pronounced exactly how it looks :) Well, I did my best, and i posted the file in the Help Wanted section to see if a French speaker would check it for me and give me some tips. And I finished the last few chapters of Our Island Story and started the big upload! Jim wrote me a great little summary, too. Oh, and all my underwear is old and wearing out (I made it all about two years ago, after I got my Pfaff) so I found the perfect pattern I made by cutting apart my favorite store-bought pair and cut up an old pair of green velour pants to make some new ones. Love that Pfaff!

13 — Henry had karate this morning, and afterwards his dad picked him up so I went home and had the whole house all to myself! I did a lot of LibriVox work. We’ve finished the Pride and Prejudice podcast so I set up the xml file to send Country of the Pointed Firs out next. I’m nearly finished with the first half of Our Island Story (54 chapters) so I put the completed chapters up for proof-listening. Should be able to record the rest tomorrow! Dan and I have been watching Survivor Africa every night before bed. So very very entertaining!

12 — Our World of Warcraft guild held a meeting tonight on a branch in Darnassus. They’ve been planning it for some time and Henry was really looking forward to attending but they scheduled it at a time when he’s usually at karate, so I let him stay home from karate this evening. Our guildies are really nice, and they know he’s a youngster so they look out for him. One of his RL friends is a new guild member (one of the items on the agenda was to promote him from newbie member to real member) so Henry phoned him to invite him to the meeting, and he showed up! Fun :) (Yes, I know it sounds nerdy, and not every parent would let a kid skip karate to attend an in-game guild meeting… but our guild members are a pleasant bunch and the meeting was very important to Henry. So, y’know, once in a while…)

11 — The little kids didn’t show up to class this morning, so Henry had a half-hour private lesson. Pretty nice! And then we went to the dentist to have his cavities filled. He survived. Very nice dentist. In the afternoon we watched The Sound of Music. I wanted him to be familiar with the music for when we go see it live at the Moonlight, so I was prepared to fast-forward the boring talky bits, but he really liked it so we watched the whole thing.

Goodbye, Roger Keith Barrett.

10 — A guy who writes for Wired called me for an interview about LibriVox. We must have talked for an hour. Look for our article in the October issue!

08 — Last night Dan and I took our two Nintendo DSs to bed and played 40 rounds of Tetris against each other! Not 4, not 14, — 40! It was so much fun!

06 — Henry and I went to a new dentist. It had been a few years since we went, so we were pretty nervous, but he and his staff were really nice! Henry has three cavities and I have four. So it could have been a lot worse.

05 — We were just about out of water so I loaded up all the bottles and bought more (28 gallons), came home, Henry and piano student Laura helped me unload them, then I drove down to the fairgrounds to pick up our Fair exhibits. Traffic was horrid, surprise surprise, but I had Loveline on my iPod so the time passed pleasantly. I really enjoy dropping off and picking up exhibits from the fair. Driving around on the fairgrounds, watching the workers setting up or tearing down, it’s really neat. In the afternoon Marcos took a look at one of my recordings and advised me as to the best post-processing techniques! Yay! And some of the librivoxers decided to do Pirates of Penzance and I grabbed the part of Ruth. Heh. Not at all sure if I can sing it well enough but I can sure try! And Henry wants to be in the Pirate Chorus.

04 — Marcos came back for a few days and Kirsten had the day off, so we all hung around. Henry and Marcos swam in the evening, and then we went out to the beach to see fireworks. Stopped at Los Tacos for delicious picnic food, yummy yum yum, then over to the beach by about 7. Sat on our comfy chairs (which Henry and MArcos carried for us), ate, read. Henry found a nice out-of-town family to play with, who shared their noisemakers and glowtubes with him :) There weren’t as many illegal fireworks as last year (sigh) but there were some, and we were able to see the official show being shot off near the end of the pier at 9.

03 — Dan took the day off! YAY! We hung around and did not much :) Very nice. I recorded two more chapters of Our Island Story (41 and 42), and asked Jim if he wanted to split the second half of the book with me — and he said yes so that’ll be really fun! Reading “Dragonsinger” to Henry for bedtime. He seems to like it as much as I did at his age (and still do).

02 — Dan and I started watching Survivor Africa (3rd season) tonight. Did I mention that we watched the first season over the last couple of weeks? It was entertaining but pretty rough and low-budget, not the slick helicopter-shot-filled show we’re accustomed to. But Africa feels more like “real” survivor. It’s edited better so there are no boring bits.

01 — I got my hair cut! I got my hair cut! i called Vanity Salon, or whatever it’s called, and Dee had an opening this afternoon. She did a great job as usual. I love my shortyshort hair! Henry came home for a while this afternoon so we played our mages for a long time. His, Teldarin, is only lvl 10 but mine, Glorin is lvl 16, so Glorian helped Teldarin with a lot of quests in Elwynn Forest. Fun :) Dan and i went grocery shopping at night, which was really nice. He carried everything and it was pleasant and cool outside. Oh, and then before bed I took my laptop onto the porch and recorded a couple of chapters of Manfield Park. Very luxurious. Did I mention that yesterday I watched the last dvd of The Forsyte saga? Irene finally ended up happy, thank goodness.

Oops. Well. If you’re subscribed to my podcast feed, you’ve already heard the end of the book. If you depend on downloading the chapters from this page, well, I apologize for forgetting to update here! Instead of my pasting a dozen links here, just click this link: Heidi, by Johanna Spyri. You can get all the chapters you missed there.

I’ve been working hard on recording my next book for you. It’s a children’s history of England, told through little stories. A little fact, a little fairy-tale, a little legend. It’s old, of course, written in 1905, but still mostly relevant and very entertaining! There are 111 short chapters, and I’ve just recorded number 45. I’ll be splitting the book in half — the first half read only by me, the second half alternating chapters with my LibriVox friend, Jim. I’ll start podcasting and posting chapters here in a week or two.

June 2006

30 — Henry finished Eregon last night, so this morning Kirsten and I took the boys to the bookstore so Henry could buy the next book in the series (Eldest). He was tremendously eager, but it turned out that they didn’t have the book in stock, due a reprint problem of some kind. Henry was most upset. We put his name on a list for when they do get the book in stock, also called the library to put his name on a list for one of their 8 copies (all of which are out). Went home and let the boys swim til Henry’s dad came to pick him up at noon, and then I drove Fargo home. He planned to lend Henry his own copy of Eldest but couldn’t find it… Henry called at 9:30pm to let me know they’d finally tracked down a copy of the book in San Diego! Yay!

29 — Kirsten and I took the boys to the dollar kids’ movie at the Krikorian this morning. We got there nice and early and got the perfect seats. The movie was Wallace and Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit, very adorable and funny.

28 — Henry was busy reading when it was time to go to art class, plus he was tired. So I went by myself :) Also I recorded two more chapters of Byways Around San Francisco Bay this morning. And this evening Fargo came for a visit! He’s staying until Friday morning. The boys are having a wonderful time swimming and playing and reading.

27 — Tonight was Preview Night for family/friends of the cast and crew of Seussical, at the moonlight Amphitheater in Vista.. Henry and I went and had a great time!

23 — Here’s a lovely blog post outlining all the reasons you should not use Real Player: Real Obnoxious. I bumped into it when looking for an alternative to Real, so I could view some stuff on the BBC’s website. No luck, though. Anyone know an OSX alternative? I can’t bear to install the disgusting thing on my lovely macs.

22 — Kirsten and Marcos arrived sometime in the middle of the night last night, so we had a great time hanging out with them today! I wasn’t feeling very well (still didn’t get enough sleep, also anxiety) but after I did some absolutely necessary errands, I spent the rest of the day on the couch. Dan stopped off and got groceries after work. My hero! :)

21 — Rather difficult day. I woke up at 3:30am, and lay there til 5 before deciding to take some benadryl and try to get something like enough sleep. So then i slept until after ten and had a hard time getting my act together in time to leave for Bayshore and Art at 11:30. Couldn’t find the acrylic paints I’d bought, so had to stop and get some more. Grr. Then we went to Bayshore and picked up Henry’s yearbook, and hung around with the kids while everyone signed yearbooks. Nice :) Then to Art, which was really very fun. We looked at Peter Max’s dreadful artwork and then made posters inspired by his style. Henry did a terrific one of fruit laid out on a purple checked background with “Eat Your Fruit!” as a message. I did a librivox promotion, with an open book in the forground and a Peter Max sunset behind it. Looks nice, actually. I’ll try to get our posters scanned in chunks and stitched together soon so you internet people can see them. Henry came down with a headache while we were there and felt all droopy, poor boy, so when we got home he lay on the couch and watched cartoons for the rest of the day. And I felt pretty crappy and not-enough-sleepy too. Bleah.

20 — Henry’s Karate DemoThe fair, the fair! Henry and I got up early and left the house before 9:00. Got to the fairgrounds at about 9:45, and, since we had a performer pass, were admitted before the fair officially opened at 10. Fun to be there before the crowds! We strolled through an animal barn and saw guinea pigs, calves, rabbits, and a little pen full of baby chicks and ducklings. By then the fair was open for real, and there were a lot of school groups, since Tuesday is Kids Get In Free Day. One kids spotted a dead duckling in the pen, and suddenly that was the most popular exhibit in the barn. Nothing cooler than a dead duckling. Henry and I preferred the large furry cow with the red tag in his ear. :) So we made our way to the Ralphs Stage in the infield, and took a look in the Kids’ Best tent (right next door) where Henry’s Purple Knitted Belt was on display with its blue ribbon. Yay Henry! We also spotted Brooke’s lovely painting of a Blue Chicken, which also won a blue ribbon! Way to go, Brooke :)

Henry’s purple knitted beltThen at about 10:30 all the kids started showing up, so Henry helped me choose a spot to sit in the audience where I’d have a good view, and went to mill around and warm up with the rest of them. And at 11, the demo began! The kids (and adults) did a wonderful job. I think it was better-organized than last year. It went very smoothly, and was very entertaining! They didn’t have a dedicated photographer so Michelle asked parents with cameras to take as many pictures as they could. I filled up my sd card and killed my battery, pretty much, and got several very good photos. Henry was in the middle of the group so it was hard to get a clear shot of him in action, but I got a terrific photo of Sensei Michelle tossing Sensei Paul through the air, also of Jackie and Blake in midair kicks. Henry did a wonderful job, of course. After the demo, we found a place for him to change into his regular clothes and went off to enjoy the rest of the fair. We looked at goats and dairy cows, sat in the shady arena and watched the horse show through the hottest hours of the day, and drank lots of lemonade from the lemon-shaped “Squeezers” stand (refills are only $2.50 so I brought along the cup Dan and I bought last weekend heheh). We spent some time looking at slicer-dicers and things in the big commercial buildings. I bought a miracle fiberglass ironing board cover. Well, our old one was shredded anyway :) Henry is SO much fun! We had a blast watching the pitchmen giving their demos. We also saw the gemstones display and especially enjoyed the dark room filled with flourescent minerals! When we walked through Design in Wood, we stopped to talk a nice old gentleman, Wendell, who was demonstrating woodcarving. We admired his wooden chains (finished, and in progress) and he gave Henry a little stylized carved owl! Henry was ecstatic. And then we bought some Mackinack Island Fudge (a box of chocolate with nuts for Dan, and a box of Plain Chocolate for ourselves) and headed home. Boy were we tired. But we had a wonderful day at the fair together!

Oh, yeah, Dan brought home two Nintendo Ds Lites and a handful of games to play. We’re all enjoying them a LOT!

19 — Henry’s Karate Demo at the Fair is tomorrow, so, after his karate class tonight I thought I’d better wash and iron his uniform all nice. So I tossed it in the washer with… the green plaid pants I made him. Which had already been washed TWICE in hot water. You guessed it… his gi turned an interesting pale lime green. GAHHHHHHH. This was at about 9 at night. Dan ran to the store for bleach while I hunted up Henry’s old, outgrown gi and washed, dried, and ironed it, just in case I couldn’t get the green out. When Dan got back with bleach (after the little gi was finished in the washer) I put the green gi in with rather more than the recommended dose of bleach. *nervous waiting, time passing* When it was done washing it looked more yellow than anything, but after going through the dryer it looked *almost* perfectly white again. And after ironing it looked fine, if just a trifle “off”. *Whew*

18 — Tired and headachy, blah. Watched the second DVD of The Forsyte Saga. Great stuff, nice and soapy, but with substance. We had a sudden problem on LibriVox but Dan came to the rescue and fixed everything for us. I started a book called The Mennyms, which I found in the children’s section of the library, and it was so good I read the whole thing by bedtime. Looks as if the author has written more about The Mennyms, hooray!

17 — Saturday. Karate rehearsal for Henry at 9. Cleaned the upstairs bathroom and kept Dan company while he cleaned his wood shop (huge job), making it ready to be a guest bedroom next week. I think the sawdust got in my eyes and lungs or something ’cause i started feeling really bad right after we were done. We went out and got a pizza and ate while watching House and The Soup. Also tried to watch Sleeping Murder, which is one of my favorite Marple mysteries, but the writers butchered the story. Um… Helen was not an ACTRESS. Dr. Kennedy was not Gwenda’s mother’s brother!!! I gave up before it was over and decided to re-read the book instead, casting Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple in my mind, of course :)

16 — Recorded chapter 11 of Ulysses… it was long so I divided it into 25-page chunks — the first was 45 minutes and the second was 55. So then my voice was too tired to record anything else.

15 — Busy day! Took Henry to the ice rink for Brooke’s 10th birthday party. The kids skated for almost four hours, round and round and round. I read and did sudoku and listened to Loveline on my iPod. What was I reading, you ask? “The Christmas Guest” by Anne Perry. Not, um, my style of mystery, but better than nothing. After skating, Henry and I picked up a couple of burritos and headed for the Moonlight Amphitheater in Vista to meet up with some more Bayshore friends and watch the kid’s performance of The Wizard of Oz. We got a great parking space and hiked down to the gate, met up with Stacie (science teacher, she set up the group), waited around a bit for the gates to open, then charged down and staked out a great spot for everyone to sit. The Moonlight provides low lawn chairs for the people with lawn tickets now, very luxurious! So we sat and ate and waited for more Bayshore friends to show up — Tawni and Raven and Brooke and Adam – and then the kids ran around and waited for the show to start. Oh and Sal came too! The show was excellent, excellent, excellent. So many talented kids! Dropped Henry off at his dad’s after the show, then came home to Dan. <3

11 — International USB Condenser Microphone Research Day. I read every review of the Samson C01U that I could find, and in the process bumped into a mention of the Blue Snowball mic, another USB condenser mic. So, I read dozens of reviews of each. The Snowball costs a bit more but looks infinitly cooler. Also, it seems to get fewer negative reviews. Also, the manufacturer, http://www.bluemic.com/ has a support forum where they seem to actually answer questions and help solve problems. Also worked today on EQing the dozens of “scratchy” sounding files I’ve recorded with my Logitech headset. The trick is to lower the three highest frequencies, dragging the highest one down furthest, in a sort of curve.

10 — Opening Day for the San Diego Fair! Dan and I went and had a great time. It was super crowded! We had to park in the middle of nowhere in a dust farm, but there was a nice tram to take us to the gate :) First we sat in the blazing sun and listened to the Dixie Hasslers — a wonderful band of old men who’ve been playing at the fair for 52 years. Seriously. Then we walked through one of the slicer-dicer buildings (nice and cool in there), then went to the Home and Hobby building to see if my shrug was nicely displayed (I wasn’t expecting a ribbon) and when we found it, we saw that I’d won third place in that class (hand knitting, women’s slip-on sweater with sleeves)! What a nice surprise! It’s very loosely based on knitty’s “I Do” shrug… I did use the same lace pattern and general proportions, but other than that I changed it a lot. Anyway, then I looked at every single thing in the Home and Hobby room while Dan rested his feet. Then… let’s see… I think we went to look at animals, and then over to the arena to watch sheepdogs herding sheep! We sat there for ages, and then we went to see the hypnotist. Then looked at the Design in Wood building, and then headed home. Oh yeah, and in between all that we ate fair food and got Dan his special lidded lemonade cup that he’s been waiting so long for! When we got home we were BEAT and collapsed on the couch and watched House. Oh, House, wonderful House.

09 — Microphone misery today. I finally got fed up with that “scratchy” or “prickly” sound that my logitech headset makes. Grrrrr. So I spent hours online researching alternatives. Dan suggested an Mbox (USB audio interface dealie) and a regular old condenser mic. I REALLY like using my headset, but I guess I’ll have to go back to a desk mic to get the better audio quality that I long for. But I can’t buy anything right now, so Dan fiddled with one of my dozens of “scratchy” files and showed me who to use the 10-band equalizer to make them sound about a million times better. I was soooo frustrated before, but after EQing my files they sound Good Enough that I don’t feel I need to record them all over again with a better mic, thank goodness. But I still think I want a good condenser mic. Anita suggests the Samson C01U. I’ll have to do some research.

08 — Today was Henry’s last Bayshore Day until next fall. Like last week, he decided to stay the whole time (9-1), so I came home and recorded chapter 50 of Sense and Sensibility — had to record it twice, actually, since I guess my mic wasn’t plugged in properly the first time and I got a crackle through my entire file — then edited and uploaded 49 and 50. And signed up for another two (37 and 38). And then I went back to pick up Henry. He had a great morning, and told me all about the things he’d done — bottle rockets in Science, signature and memory books in Writing, and an accordian-book in Art! Oh, and he took the artwork he did yesterday at Margaret’s to show to his Bayshore Art Teacher and she knew right away that he’d been inspired by Mondrian, so he was very happy :)

Then I took him to his dad’s house to spend the weekend, and I came home for MORE lovely quiet! I recorded chapter 37 of S&S but somehow my input got turned all the way up so the whole thing was peaky and nasty, so I’ll do it again tomorrow. Tonight Dan and I watched the first dvd of the 2002 miniseries The Forsyte Saga. It was AWESOME! I loved every minute of it. Dan was also playing Civ IV, but I think he enjoyed what he saw of the Forstyes, too :) Pretty funny — I recognized a great many actors from other wonderful British literary adaptaions: Mister Robert Martin, from the Kate Beckinsale “Emma”, Aunt Gardiner, from the BBC “Pride and Prejudice”, Miss Browning, from “Wives and Daughters”, and of course sad-eyed Anne, from “Persuasion.” I can hardly WAIT to get the next DVD from Greencine.

07 — Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog! http://houseoffame.blogspot.com/. Alex linked to it in our Canterbury Tales thread. I nearly fell out of bed this morning, I was laughing so hard at the TOPPE FACTES AND DEEDES CONCERNYGE THE MIGHTI KYNG RICHARD (step aside, Chuck Norris!) Whoever writes this blog is brilliant! In between chores this morning I managed to read a bit of Idea for a Poeme of the Tales of Canterburye and fell apart laughing again.
“-The Wyves Tale of Bath: stele sumthynge litel from Boccaccio? None of the chambre knightz and merchauntz do reden of italien ficcion, so ich am soooo yn the clere”
BSL, all the comments are in the same style. O wonderous internette! Thank you, Geoffrey, for the blogge!

Art Class at Margaret’s today! Very very fun. We had barely gotten started when Henry told me he was already looking forward to next week’s class :) We looked at some of the works of Piet Mondrian, then created two art projects — first using cut paper squares and thick black markers, then using primary color acrylics and simple shapes. It was extremely fun and relaxing.

06 — At Bayshore today my beloved Zire 71 slipped out of my purse and hit the carpeted floor. It has a sturdy aluminum case, so I wasn’t too worried, although it hit hard enough to knock the SD card out of its slot. At the grocery store (trying to use Minder to record my purchase) I realized it wasn’t accepting screen taps — ugh, I thought, frozen. Needs a soft reset. Got home, did the soft reset — still not recognizing screen taps. UGH, I thought, ok, time for a hard reset, good thing BackupMan does a backup every morning. Did the dreaded Hard Reset. Got the “Please use your stylus to tap the screen” screen. Didn’t recognize stylus taps. So then I thought somehow that impact knocked the digitizer connector loose, or something. Emailed Dan, who said he’d look at it when he got home — maybe he could take it apart and reconnect whatever got disconnected. But when he got home and picked it up to see how it came apart, he noticed that SQUEEZING it made it act as if the screen had been tapped. HMMM. Digitizer not broken after all. So, brilliantly, he peeled off my screen protector — and the problem was solved! All back to normal! WHAT YOU SAY??? Yes… somehow an edge or corner of my vinyl screen protector got wedged under the edge of the screen, causing great confusion for the poor digitizer. We restored from BackupMan, carefully re-applied my screen protector, and my little Zire 71 is back to its normal cheerful self. And so am I. :)

05 — I noticed that sections of Denny’s “Good things to Eat” project were going fast, and it looked like fun, so I signed up for the “sauces” section and managed to record, edit, tag, and upload it today! Yay me! Maybe I’ll have time to record my last two chapters of Sense and Sensibility tomorrow. Henry’s Zire 22 arrived today and he is overjoyed to have his OWN little pda! He spent hours loading demos of Astraware games onto it and of course playing them. I went out to the fabric store for screen-protector vinyl and found some more lightweight cotton plaid stuff on sale for $2/yard so I picked up enough to make Henry another pair of pants, so I can finally wash the ones I made for him last week. He never wants to wear anything else. I invented a new dinner for Dan and he loved it! (chicken, red bell peppers, grated cheese, sour cream) also had time to work a couple of sudoku puzzles. I’m sure they’re good for my brain. I’m way better and faster at them than I used to be. OH! After Karate we stopped at the bookstore and Henry used a mystery Barnes and Noble giftcard that he found under his desk to buy the new Junie B. Jones book — Aloha-ha-ha. He read it until bedtime, and then I read the first two chapters to him all over again for his bedtime story, and then he took it to bed with my booklight. I’m sure he’s finished with it by now. We love Junie B. Jones! Another wonderful day in the Happy Life of Kayray :)

04 — Henry played Grandpa Joe in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” today. He did great! Remembered his lines, spoke up loud and clear, sang and danced so nicely :) I took lots of photos which are still in my camera. Yay Henry!

03 — A few days ago I read a review on Julie’s site of the Macally FM Cup, an FM transmitter for iPods. I read several other positive reviews of it, and decided to splurge and get one for my Scion XA so Henry and I can listen to our iPods while we drive around. Dan and I went to Fry’s today to get one. Tested it in the parking lot and all the way home, and it works really well! I have an iSkin case, so I just kind of pull the case up around the bottom of the pod and it works fine that way! The sound is nice and clear, works great even though we’re in a city with a radio station on almost every frequency, AND it charges my iPod while I’m driving.

02 — Rockola played at a parish festival down south somewhere. Dan and I went and had a great time! It was so nice to see Chloe again.

01 — Julie shipped Henry’s z22 today, so he should have it in a few days. He’s so excited!

May 2006

31 — We’re finally having normal, June-like weather — gloomy mornings which burn off to clear and sunny afternoons. Just lovely, not too hot yet. Henry and I went to the thrift store to find a good Grandpa Joe costume (He’s going to be Grandpa Joe in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Sunday) and we found him a red sweater vest and a blue dress shirt, just perfect with his old man pants. Turns out Julie does still have that z22 that she reviewed and is selling it to Henry for a VERY generous price :) He’s so happy!

30 — Henry’s last rehearsal (before the final run-through on Sunday). He knows his lines! After class we went to Fry’s to look at the Zire 22 in person. Henry fell in love. It’s so tiny and adorable! But the model at Fry’s wasn’t actually working (just had a screenshot pasted to it, LAME) so then we went to Circuit City to see if they had an actual working demo model and they did! Jeepers, though. Last time we went PDA browsing, the PDA counter was in the front of the store, right in full view, easy to find, loaded with various PDAs and accessories. Now the PDA section is a floor-level locked cabinent, about 2.5 feet wide, in the furthest back corner of the store. Sigh. But a nice clerk unlocked it for us and Henry got to test an actual working z22, and he fell more in love than ever. Here’s a review, courtesy of the-gadgeteer.com. Hmm… I wonder if Julie still had that z22… Migraine tonight. Ugh. H8N.

30 — I helped Henry set up Palm Desktop on his computer, and showed him how to install new apps on the IIIc. He’s delighted! but it’s kind of annoying how many developers no longer support antique PDAs like the IIIC (no Bejeweled!!) Henry decided he wants to buy a new Palm of his very own. We checked out the current crop at palm.com, and the Zire 22 looks like a great choice for a boy with limited income and small hands, who doesn’t need his PDA to play mp3s, take photos, or talk to the internet. So he’s planning to save up for one :)

29 — Henry and I cleaned the Sitting Room (which is what he named the room off the kitchen where his computer, my sewing area, and the printer are) this afternoon. We actually had lot of fun, and got it all tidy and nice. Now that my comfy rocking chair is downstairs, there’s room for the ironing board to live in front of the window in the Sitting Room, so we can leave it up permanently. And my sewing area is so much cleaner and nicer that I can actually SEW again!

Henry found the charger for the IIIc (my former PDA, now his) and charged it up, but alas, it had gotten so dead that it forgot everything it ever knew.

26 — Headachey and tired all day, bah. Henry and I went out early and bought tickets for the 6:10 showing of X-3 (the third X-men movie, whatever it’s called). We prefer the newish Krikorian Mulitplex in Vista. It’s very clean and every theater has stadium seating, so Henry can always see over whoever is in front of us, and comfy seats with rocking backs and liftable armrests. Henry and I pretty much lay around all day, watching Mister Rogers and doing sudoku puzzles until Dan came home. Then a quick dinner and off to the movies! Weve all been looking forward to this movie so much! Dan dropped us off so we could get good seats while he parked, and we got PERFECT seats, center, a couple rows back from the front aisle. And Dan managed to park and find us before the movie started, though he had to park pretty far away!

Previews: Some dreadful thing about a ghostly motorcycle rider. Some dreadful thing about a guy trying to break up with his superhero girfriend. Some dreadful remake horror movie. A Kung-fu movie that might be rentable. And ONE review for something that actually looked worth seeing — a new Superman movie! We are excited about that one.

Now a few words about X-3. I don’t want to spoil anything for those of you who haven’t seen it so I’ll be vague. I enjoyed it very very much! Lots of tragic moments which, amazingly, hadn’t already been given away in the trailers. Nobody, but nobody, kicks ass like Magneto. The scene of him and his band of mutants striding over the Golden Gate bridge was quite thrilling. Um… not much I can say without giving anything away. If you liked the first two movies, you should like this one too :) We certainly did. There’s a HUGE GINORMOUS FATAL plot flaw… but if you just sorta ignore it it goes away and the movie is thoroughly enjoyable :)

Today was Dad’s birthday. I miss him so much. I think about him every day still. It seems as if every day I read about something that I’d like to talk about with him, or see a cool show on PBS that he’d have enjoyed. I know he’d love Sudoku. We used to sit on the couch together and work Picturelogic puzzles and cryptic crosswords. MIss you, Dad.

25 — Henry found the charger for my old IIIc, which became his IIIc when I got my Zire 71 a few years ago. Alas, the IIIIc died so thorougly that it forgot everything. So I helped Henry set up Palm Desktop on his computer, showed him how to find and download apps or his palm. He’s so happy and excited! but a little bit bummed because the IIIc is so very old that it won’t run some of the new versions of his favorite games, so he’s thinking about saving up to buy a new Palm of his very own. My wonderful geeky boy.

While we were poking around on astraware I noticed a sudoko game for palm. And suddenly I remembered that I’ve been hearing about the addictive fun of sudoku puzzles for quite some time. So I installed Astraware’s sudoku on my palm and fell in love. It’s $20 to register so I tried a few other versions just to make sure I found the very best. Astraware’s has the best interface, but TopSudoku is pretty good also. Clunky interface but once you get used to it, it does the job ok. Also I found a really great version for Mac OS X: unisudoku. Excellent interface, sleek and simple. I’ll be registering this one for sure. SUDOKU!!!

24 — House. House, M.D. Best TV show since Foyle’s War. The season finale aired last night, and we figured out what was going on before the ending. If you saw it, you know what I mean. I generally have a problem with “dream sequence” shows but there was a good reason for this one, and it was extremely well done, with just the right touch of surreal creepiness. Also they didn’t leave us hanging in dreamland until next fall or whenever the new season begins; we know all the nuttiness wasn’t real and that he hasn’t lost his mind. Now we must content ourselves with watching the first and second season — hardly a consolation prize. We enjoy it so much that we have a hard time stopping after one episode and usually end up watching two or three or four until it gets just too late.

Henry had lunch today with some of the Bayshore faculty and all the kids who submitted designs for the yearbook cover. I dropped him at the restaurant and spent a happy hour wandering around in Fry’s all by myself. Lovely, and Henry had a great time at his lunch, won a tie-dyed t-shirt, and ate plain noodles and applesauce. Henry food! :) Also he learned to dive today (Sal taught him)!

20 — Library this afternoon, then to the guitar store for strings and then to Dan’s Place of Employment for a little while. I got a book off the New Books shelf, “Family and Other Accidents,” which is soooo good. I read most of it already. We watched Lost in Translation again this evening (excellent movie) and took another late-night walk on the beach. A very nice day :)

19 — Henry and I went to the Wild Animal Park again for a while this afternoon. It’s been gray and gloomy here on the coast (May Gray and June Gloom is typical here) but it was warm and sunny, with a pleasant breeze, at the animal park. Very nice, though a little hot for us since we’d worn jeans! We rode the tram first, then had Haagen Daas ice cream bars (oh well, all purchases support the conservation efforts ;-), walked through the Lorikeet exhibit, then up through the conifir forest to Cat Canyon, where we saw a pair of lions sleeping in the sun. The lions have a huge canyon to live in, and lots of bushes to hide in so it’s rather rare to get such a good look. Oh, and when we rode the tram, we watched the male lion strolling up the hill to join his mate in a clump of bushes. What a treat! And it was extra lucky for us, because Henry really wanted to see lions today. (Maybe because we watched an episode of Nature about lions recently?) This evening I tried out my new headset mic. I think I’m getting a bit more noise that I got with my desk mic, but it is so very convenient. I was able to take my laptop into another room for recording without having to build a stack of books to get my mic up to the right height. In the evening Dan and I took a 2-hour walk on the beach! I had to rest a lot, but still got a lot of good walking and fresh air. And Dan carried me up four flights of stairs to street-level on the way back to the car :)

18 — Everyone was GONE for 1.5 hours this morning so I got a ton of recording done — 6 more chapters of my chidren’s history solo project! Pediatrician appointment for Henry this afternoon. When we got there he decided against having the wart on his thumb frozen off, so Dr. Wood suggested over-the-counter stuff and duct tape. And as long as we were there she looked and his throat and listened to his lungs etc (he’s still mildy sick) and said there’s nothing to worry about. Just a bug. This afternoon I did MORE recording — O! Joy! — one more chapter of history and two of Sense and Sensibility. Tonight after dinner we all three watched X-2 together. Fun movie. We’re pretty excited about X-3, which comes out a week from tomorrow! Whoopee! Oh, and I finished (the the third and final time ;-) my green shrug! I wore it around for a while and I am completely satisfied, at last. Just need to wash and block it and deliver it to the Fair next Wednesday. It’s sad that I won’t get to wear it again until I pick it back up in July, but I enjoy contributing to the Fair anyway.

17 — Henry’s still a little bit sick — juicy cough — so we’ve been skipping all our activites this week. So no park day this afternoon, no karate tonight. Don’t want to spread the bug around. He and Sal worked for hours cleaning up the back yard.

16 — Happy birthday my sweet Dan :)

12 — Henry woke up with a sore throat poor boy, and I’ve been horribly tired all day. I spent hours lying in bed listening to loveline on my iPod, and Henry spent hours watching cartoons. Dan’s coming home tonight, late. YAY!!!

. 11 — Save the Net NowRight now Congress is pushing a law that would abandon the First Amendment of the Internet — a principle called “network neutrality” that preserves the free and open Internet. Congress needs to hear from you today or they will hand over control of what you do online to companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast. Politicians are trading favors for campaign donations from these companies. They’re being wooed by people like AT&T’s CEO, who says “the Internet can’t be free.” Sign this petition to tell your elected representatives to protect Internet freedom now. Click the image and sign the petition!

09 — I love it when listeners send me feedback and fan mail! I received such a sweet email tonight, from Patti of South Dakota:
Greetings! I am dropping you a note from chilly South Dakota. Since I am the one who downloaded the Secret Garden to listen to at work (all my friends are fighting over who gets to listen to it next!) I volunteered to write and tell you how much we are enjoying your efforts. It is wonderful! I work for Wells Fargo Processing here, hundreds of us in numerous buildings all processing and taking care of our customers. Someone has to change all those names when people get married, or sadly divorced! We listen to alot of audio books, and trade from cubical to cubical. We have decided your voice is lovely to listen to, and you do such a good job with each character. I thought you might enjoy something that is happening, the people who are enjoying it the most, are the ones who have immigrated here as adults. They love the story, the simplicity, and of course how it is presented by you. It is so understandable for some of them, their English and comprehension is minimal sometimes. So thanks again from all of us in Name and Title at WFB, keep up the good work, and we are looking forward to Heidi! (yes, I read a bit of your blog!) Oh yes… I am a foster parent, and you can bet that all the children that pass through my door will get to listen to these wonderful audios, along with their reading.
(I hope you don’t mind being quoted, Patti!) The wonderful Anita wrote me a great summary so I was able to finish cataloging Heidi today: http://librivox.org/heidi-by-johanna-spyri-solo/. I started working on my next solo project this evening, a History of England written for children (“Our Island Story”). The 110 chapters are short, so I recorded the first four already!

07 — Dan flew away to Georgia this morning, to learn Python at the Big Nerd Ranch. I miss him already but I had a nice semi-quiet day on my own (Henry’s still at his dad’s). Too many piano lessons going on to allow me to record, but I chose a new solo project — a History of England intended for children, in 111 short chapters. Mercy. Also finished my green shrug (loosely based on knitty’s “I Do” shrug) while listening to librivox’s collaborative “Pride and Prejudice” which rocks, of course.

06 — Heidi is finished! I recorded the last chapters yesterday, then edited them today, and our fabulous proof-listners checked them over so now all I have to do is upload them to archive.org and make the catalog page etc. Hooray! Now I need to choose a new solo project. And I suppose I ought to start a new collaborative children’s book also.

Dan and I went to the Wild Animal Park again today, specifically to tride the tram since we missed out on that last time. Today they weren’t doing the lame “pay extra and get priority boarding” thing so the regular line moved extremely fast and we were on the tram in no time, looking at baby mouflon sheep and rhinos, wild cattle and elephants, sage brush and mule deer. It was lovely, as it always is.

After we got home I checked the mail and found THREE movies — two from greencine and one from The Film Connection. I put on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” which was ok. Nothing to write home about, but pleasant enough to watch once. Interesting premise, anyway, and good acting. And then at night we cuddled up in bed with the entire first season of House. Ah how we love House! We watched the pilot, which had moments of hilariously obvious exposition and not-yet-developed characters, but was overall very entertaining and better than the average pilot I’d say. Ahhhhh HOUSE!

05 — New obsession: Zoo Tycoon 2. It runs on both my macs and is so much fun! Golly. I worked through the tutorials and then started the campaigns. I expected that they’d be difficult and frustrating and planned to move to Sandbox Mode, but the campaigns are actually simple and fun, and least the easy level ones. I bought some penguins and put them in with my polar bear (who didn’t eat them, thank goodness) and the zoo guests seem to like that a lot. Henry loves to watch me play and gives good advice.

I’ve really enjoyed listening to the recent Loveline episodes in which Joel McHale is the guest, so tonight we watched “The Soup” (his show) for the first time. Very very funny! Hey Dr. Drew, I suggest you hire Joel as your permanent co-host!

02 — Karate this morning, then home for a few minutes, then off to musical theater rehearsal. We planned to go to Legoland this afternoon, but when we got there we discovered that they’re closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, whoops :) We thought it was Wed and Thur. So we ran back home, got Henry’s bike and my book, and went to that new little park in Carlsbad (just east of El Camino off Carlsbad Village Drive). He biked around on the winding paths for 2 hours and I read my Gerald Durrell book (Marrying Off Mother). Our library has disappointingly few Durrell books. Sigh. Also finished Betsy and the Great World this morning, so that’s two books in one day, heheh. I hope I can find some QUIET soon so I can finish recording Heidi for librivox. I only have another chapter and a half to go!

01 — Checkup for Henry this morning — he’s just fine of course. Then we went to the library to pick up the books we’d sent for from the other branch, then to the mailbox place to get the package with Sal’s ipod case in it. (Her shuffle was stolen, so we found a nice factory refurbed silver 4g iPod Mini at powermax, which arrived last Wednesday while she was out of town. I ordered her a purple iSkin case to go with it.) Then, uh, housework and librivox work and students and dinner and more housework etc… Got Black Beauty cataloged finally! And we started reading Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang for Henry’s bedtime story. Very entertaining and as good as I remember! I think I had my very own copy when I was little and read it over and over.

April 2006

30 — We went to the Wild Animal Park for a little while today! It was really crowded… I’m spoiled because Henry and I usually go on weekdays. Dan dropped me off at the gate so I wouldn’t have to hike up the parking-lot hill. We strolled around, looked at the gorillas, and watched the new bird show, which we all really like! We miss Lolita and Bruce Nadell and Clarence and Maxwell, but the new birds are wonderful too. Then we got in line for the tram but it was tooooo crowded and the line moved too slowly so we came home for some nice quiet time. Bob and Chloe came over in the evening and we ate pizza and talked, etc. Very fun.

29 — Busy stressful day.

28 — Library in the morning YAY! Got a huge stack of books and picked up a flyer for a new park that just opened in Carlsbad, so we headed over to check it out. Sweet little park and very close to home, with a great big play structure and lots of winding paths. We’ll go back with Henry’s bike soon! In the afternoon we went to Nathan and Laura’s park day at Poinsettia Park, another park we’d never been to before. We took Henry’s bike and were happy to find that there was a big loop to bike on, with some fun bumpy hills at the top. Henry has been enjoying his bike very much lately, wants to ride every day. And we live in an impossible neighborhood for biking so it’s good that we’re discovering some good bicycling parks.

25 — Alarm went off at 9, karate at 9:20 — so I hd ten minutes to wake up, wake Henry up, get us both dressed, put toast in Henry and coffee in me. And we made it to the dojo on time :) Tired tired tired. And you’re tired of hearing me say how tired I am. Then it was back home to check email, then out to Bayshore for Musical Theater. It’s going to be an adorable play! I helped Henry learn his Grandpa Joe lines yesterday, so he was all prepared. Tonight after dinner, while Dan was playing Oblivion on his laptop on the couch and Henry was lying around, I put on chapters 2 and 3 of Dracula for proof-listening. Laura read ch. 2 and Gord read ch. 3 and both sounded so good! Very impressive. Henry wanted to hear more but by then it was past bedtime, so I told him we’ll listen to some more tomorrow.

24 — Yawn. Never get enough sleep, never never. Uh… typical Monday except I was too tired to do the usual housework so the house is looking pretty gross. Maybe tomorrow. Henry and I watched “1776” which we both liked a lot! And I taught three piano students and took H to karate and all the normal stuff. Boosted the volume of a bunch of Black Beauty files which are too soft. Just waiting for the last four to be recorded and then I can get started on the next phase of the cataloging process, so we should have that one done eventually.

23 — Woke up before dawn, so I was pretty tired all day. I lay down for a bit of a nap at 4:30 and slept on and off til 6. I’ve been craving loveline lately. I’ve tried listening to Adam’s new show but it’s just not so good. Adam is still funny but his co-hosts, or co-radio-personalities or whatever they are, are just obnoxious. Since our friend Eric got fed up with no-Adam loveline and stopped providing us with hot fresh podcasted episodes every morning I haven’t heard a single show. I went looking for other downloads today and found an awesome page with not only new episodes in podcast form, but a huge archive of older shows. I’m allowing myself a few old shows at a time, kind of rationing them, heh. And now at least I’ve got new Dr. Drew to listen to.

18 — Henry and I went to the Wild Animal Park this morning and stayed til 2:30. It was kind of crowded, but of course the Animal Park never really FEELS crowded. Lots of open space. We wandered around, walked through the temporary butterfly aviary (it’s only there for three weeks or so ever year), looked at the orchid display, saw the new Bird Show (it’s quite different from the old show, but very good!), and walked on the hiking trail for a while. We had a wonderful time together!

Dan and I have really been enjoying “House” — a TV doctor show starring Bertie Wooster, I mean Hugh Laurie. The plot is pretty much the same every week. Someone shows up at the hospital with bizarre symptoms. He will die in less than 24 hours, no on can figure out what’s wrong, there’s some bickering among the staff, House limps around whacking things with his cane, making snide remarks, and figures out the diagnosis at the last minute. But it’s very very entertaining, and often poses ethical and moral questions with no clear answers, and it’s fun to try to guess the diagnosis, or at least guess which clues the writers drop actually mean something.

17 — Tired, tired, tired. I wonder if my thyroid hormone levels are off again. Or maybe it’s just because I did a million things today. We bought water at the water store, then went to Stater Brothers for Household Necessities — TP, paper towels, razor refils, kitty litter, etc. etc. Swiffer pads now come with a new and improved Scrubbing Strip(tm). What will they think of next. I wonder if they considered adding the Scrubbing Strip(tm) to the original product, but then decided to hold off until later when sales needed a boost. What delights are in store for Swiffer users in the coming years? It’s not like I care either way; it’s not like my buying decision was swayed by the awesome power of the Scrubbing Strip(tm). I didn’t even notice until I was cleaning up the orange cheese stain left by Sal’s macaroni and cheese wrapper, which usually ends up on the floor for some reason. After the errands were done I washed and hung out two loads of laundry, watched Henry swim, let the turtle play in the wading pool which we found on the curb down the street (Henry dragged it home), cleaned up, cooked meals, taught three piano students, helped Dan and Henry move Sal’s bedroom furniture, cooked more meals, cleaned up more messes. Gah, no wonder I’m tired.

16 — Tired, oh so tired. Yesterday I had stress in me so I didn’t sleep that well last night. One of the librivox forum members has always been a giant PITA, and yesterday he reached the Limit of my Tolerance so I’ve decided not to read his posts anymore and let the other mods can handle him. Luckily 99.9% of our members are awesome! We’ve invited three of the regulars to be mods and they’re doing a fantastic job.

15 — I think I’ll make Mom a knitted, felted purse to replace the one that was stolen. I just got Stich ‘n’ Bitch Nation from the library, and the Candy Stripers purse is pretty cute! I asked Mom is she’d like it and she said yes, in a solid color. So I went to the yarn store this morning and bought 4 skeins of lamb’s pride bulky in a beautiful purple. I knit a square swatch and felted it and it turned out really cool, so I think Mom’s purse will be really awesome. I found some photos online at craftster.org in the “stitch’n’bitch” section of the same purse. So I’m confident it’ll turn out nicely. This afternoon I cut apart a pair of Sally’s old velour pants and made Henry a pair of nice stretchy shorts with pockets. Henry and I played World of Warcraft for a while after dinner, and completed four quests!

14 — And today it’s raining raining raining. But I like it. All too soon it’ll be hot and dry for months on end. There is a seriously funky smell in the living room. Sort of a cat-food smell, but of course there’s no cat food down down here… what can it be? Sorry I’ve been kind of lame about blogging lately, have just been really busy with librivox… Did I mention that I recorded Caedmon’s Hymn? That was super-fun!

13 — Absolutely beautiful spring day! I washed the sheets and hung them to dry in the sun. The sky is clear, the birds are singing, the breezes are cool. Recorded chapter 11 of Heidi, and chapter 2 part 6 of the History of England. Mom’s car was broken into while she was hiking. Ugh. We tried to cheer her up tonight with pizza, ice cream, and Survivor. Yay Survivor! But I’m bummed that they voted Austin off. I kinda liked him. Shane is clearly insane. I hope Terry or Sally or Cerie wins the million.

09 — *yawn* lying in bed, just finished reading “Everything Bad is Good For You” by Steven Johnson. Fantastic book, highly recomended. The author suggests (and conclusively proves, in my humble opinion) that popular culture, overall, is NOT getting dumber and dumber over time, as is the common myth, but is actually, in general, growing more and more complex, challenging, and mentally stimulating. In one section, he compares the plot outlines of an episode of Dragnet (one plotline, beginning to end), Starsky and Hutch (one main plotline with a secondary comic plotline thrown in at the begining and end), Hill Street BLues (several plotlines), and The Sopranos (many plotlines, overlapping in intricate ways). I’m simplifying, of course. I got the book from the library but I think I’ll actually go BUY a copy to keep! It’s that interesting. I’d like to re-read it and lend it out.

07 — Happy Birthday Kirsten!

Henry decided that soccer is just Not His Thing, so we didn’t have to go anywhere today, yay! So we went to the library and got a HUGE stack of books. Henry found one full of little crafty project ideas all relating to KNIGHTS so he got all excited about making a sword. We cut a couple of swords out of cardboard, but when Dan got home he suggested making some wooden swords, so he and Henry worked on that for the rest of the evening. They got Henry’s sword finished and are working on one for Fargo, who, we’re hoping, will come visit next week.

05 — Still raining, on and off. Margaret held her parkday indoors, and Henry had a fine time playing games with the girls, and I had a fine time knitting.

04 — After Henry’s rehearsal we went to the Wild Animal Park and had a great time. We had some lunch and then rode the tram, then walked around a bit. They have a new little water play area, and Henry played and played until he was soaking wet. It was windy and he started to freeze, so we headed home. I love the Wild Animal Park. I hope we can go again soon! On days when we’re at Bayshore anyway it’s only a half-hour drive east. On the way home it started to just pour rain! It rained and rained and rained all the rest of the day, and I think we even had a bit of lightning at night!

02 — I hate the time change. I hate it.

I’ve been longing for a new knitting project, so I’ve been searching through knitty.com for ideas. It’s still very cold so I’m tempted to make something thck and warm, except that it’s sure to warm up any day now. Last night I realized that If I unraveled the scarf I made out of the leftovers from my BPT sweater, I’d have the perfect yarn to make knitty’s coronet hat. And I need a hat anyway. So that’ll be a small quick project that I don’t even need any supplies for. I ripped out the scarf last night while we were watching Antiques Roadshow and prepared the yarn for re-knitting. But I also want a more intricate and interesting project, so I finally settled on the I Do lace shrug. It’ll be nice to wear when I’m reading in bed and the chilly air freezes my shoulders, and it’ll be good even in summer over tank-tops and little dresses! I went to Common Threads today to choose some yarn. They have a truly hideous website but a wonderful store packed with luscious natural-fiber yarns. I was there for about an hour and a half, considering this yarn and that… finally settled on a 89% cotton/20% merino wool called Cotton Fleece in a pale green called “peridot” (probably color 44 on that page). I knit a swatch in the store, to see if I’d need different-sized needles, but it worked up to nearly the same gauge as the pattern yarn, close enough anyway. I charted out the lace pattern tonight, cast on a sleeve and knit the first 3 rows.

01 – Henry is staying with us this weekend, YAY! He and Dan did lots of woodworking together, and went to the hardware store for supplies so I had enough quiet time to record my last section of Fanny Hill. Sal’s out of town so the upstairs is quiet and lonely for Henry, so we worked out a good compromise. He has his bedtime as usual, and spends an hour or two in his own room, reading or listening to audiobooks, and then when Dan and I are ready for bed, Henry moves down to our part of the house to a little cozy bed on the couch. So Dan and I have some nice quiet time to ourselves, but Henry gets to sleep down where he feels safe and happy :)

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.

February 2006

Feb 28 — Busy day! Henry helped me clean the fridge, and then we went grocery shopping and filled up the nice clean fridge with good food. I paid a million bills, and mopped the kitchen floor, and my mop broke so I had to go to Target and get a new one. The Giant Rainstorm that was predicted was a bit anti-climactic… there was some rain overnight and a bit this morning but by afternoon it had cleared up again. Typical.

Feb 27 — Have I linked recently to my completed solo book recordings?
The Secret Garden
A Little Princess
The Road to Oz
These audiobooks are free. I hope you enjoy them! My next project will be “Heidi” — I hope to get started on that this afternoon.

Feb 26 — Yawn. We stayed up too late last night (but for a good reason) so we’ve been tired all day today but that’s ok, we had a great day anyway! We went out shopping for an elliptical trainer for Dan so he can exercise without leaving the house and had a good time together, and got a good machine for a VERY good price. Dan drives a hard bargain. :) And then we had to make room for it in our room so we got rid of the giant horrid ugly oak legal-size filing cabinet that I’ve been using for a nightstand and replaced it with a piece of Quality Swedish Crap from Dan’s desk area, so I spent the afternoon sorting through four or five years of papers and threw away most of them and I can store what’s left in a small plastic box. YAY. And Dan sat on the couch and worked on his guitars while I was sorting, and we watched some of the olympics. We would pay GOOD MONEY if we could see the Olympics broadcast without any TALKING. Shut up, sportscasters, we don’t need to be told how to feel and what to think!

Feb 25 — We got up pretty early and had a really terrific day! I got my Wind in the Willows chapter recorded, edited, tagged, and uploaded, and spent a lot of time working on my librivox wiki page and also added Sound Studio to the software page. And we set up Sally’s new TiVo, which took approx 1000 years, and dan had a guitar lesson, and we sat around and watched the Olympics and stuff. We had a full and fun day together, as usual.

Feb 24 — The Rockola George Harrison Birthday Concert was tonight, and I went to the 7pm show. It was FANTASTIC. Chloe saved me a seat right in front and it was so much fun!

Feb 21 — Got my hair cut! I went to a different place and it’s much better than last time. Much, much, much better. Henry found out this morning that he gets the role of Grandpa Joe in his Musical Theater Class production of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. I think he’ll be a wonderful Grandpa Joe!

This morning when I plugged my iPod into my iBook as usual, I noticed that the settings were all wrong… It suddenly thought I wanted to manage playlists and podcasts manually, which I don’t and never have. So when I fixed that, it informed me that my iPod was synced with a different library… Um, what? I don’t HAVE a different library… So I said ok, oh well, sync anyway. Problem was, my laptop was not connected, at that moment, to the compter where I store my music… So iTunes decided that none of my music or audiobooks existed. Lovely. I fretted over it for some time, because after I connected to my music server everything still had the “I don’t exist” exclamation mark, and the only way I could figure to fix it was to double-click EVERY SINGLE FREAKING FILE. But then p3 told me to just quit iTunes, make sure I was connected to my server, then restart iTunes. Ha! Fixed. Thanks, tweenbot :)

Feb 20 — I recorded the very last chapter of The Secret Garden tonight! I’ll be able to edit it tomorrow during Henry’s theater class, and then upload it to the proof-listeners, then get the whole project cataloged etc. Then I can catch up on some of my other reading commitments (Canterbury Tales! Wind in the Willows!) before I get started on my next solo, which will be Heidi.

Feb 19 — Slept in, worked on Grimms’ Tales, edited two of my Secret Garden chapters. Dan worked for hours setting up a new server so we have a better backup/storage/firewall box. It’s quite a loud machine so it lives in our newly-clean closet. Now I have a place to store my librivox recordings so they don’t clutter up my iMac.

Feb 18 — We had a lovely long nice Saturday together. I recorded another 3 chapters of The Secret Garden and worked on cataloging Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Dan cleaned out our closet! It’s a nice big walk-in closet and it was so packed with stuff that I couldn’t get to my clothes anymore. But Dan cleaned it out and got rid of two trash-cans full of stuff, and a big give-away pile as well, and it’s so nice and clear in there now that sometimes I just go in and look around at the emptiness. And I re-organized our dresser, and got rid of two paper-bags full of stuff! We watched another chunk of Othello tonight but got too tired to finish it. Tomorrow.

Feb 17 — Started watching the Kenneth Branagh/Lawrence Fishbourne (sp?) movie version of Othello tonight. Soooooooo good!

Feb 15 — Look what the amazing Annie made for us: http://librivox.org/poetry-story-index/ — now it’s easy for listeners to find specific poems! Yes, our catalog is still hand coded, though I think some kind people are working on making an automated database-driven catalog system for us. So this page was a lot of work for her to make and will need to be updated by hand every time we get new poems submitted. Awesome, Annie!

Feb 14 — Henry made me a Valentine and presented it to me with a great flourish this morning, and Dan came home early from work and brought me a lovely pot of flowers and a whole BOX of my favorite chocolate — Scharffen Berger 60% Dark Chocolate. Yum :) I got two more chapters of The Secret Garden edited during Henry’s Theater Class this morning. And Henry and I read a chapter in his history book about Crete and the Minoan civilization, and we did the Insane Druids quest in Ashenvale together! So it was a good day. Oh and we watched the olympics for a while tonight.

Feb 10 — Oh! Forgot to mention that the new season of Survivor started last week. I realized this yesterday, so I set the Tivo to record the rest of the season and Dan acquired the first episode for us, which we watched on his laptop in bed last night. And we watched last night’s episode tonight :) Ahhhhhhhh Survivor… so soothing, so entertaining, so trashy! Stacie the Science Teacher held a little beaded jewelery workshop at Bayshore this morning and Henry and I had a great time making things with beads and wire! And this evening I recorded my section of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” (letter G). Now I’m going to set up librivox’s next podcast. Woohoo!

Feb 09 — Henry had fun at Bayshore this morning, and decided to stay for the Computer and Art classes after Science and Creative Writing, so I went home for a couple of hours and finished editing my chapter of The Origin of Species! Go Team Kayray! If you want to hear it before the entire book is finished, you may: Variation Under Nature. This afternoon Zinny helped Animala with a few quests in Ashenvale. Ten-year-olds are fun :)

Feb 07 — Remember a few weeks ago when Cyrus Farivar interviewed me for “The World” on NPR? The story aired today! I sound totally nerd-tastic, but oh well, the piece was good and we’ve got a swarm of new forum visitors and volunteers! Here’s a link to a Windows Media file of the 4 minute story: Librivox on PRI’s “The World”. SO. TIRED.

Feb 04 — Hugh was interviewed on the CBC: Librivox Interview on the CBC. Nice interview! Since the CBC doesn’t make their programs available for download, Hugh recorded that snip himself — so sorry about the static.

Feb 03 — I started reading Barbara Tuchman’s wonderful book “A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous Fourteenth Century” a couple of days ago. It’s very very good. The book has been in my family as long as I can remember. I supposed it was Dad’s. Anyway, when I was little I used to read the chapter about the Black Death, but I never read the rest of it, so I took it with me the other day when I took Henry to his favorite Homeschooler Park Day. I can’t put it down!

Dan and I watched the last episode of Foyle’s War Series 2 tonight. The episode was “The Funk House” and it was extra-good! I hope PBS will run the first series soon. And I hope series four is in production… hmm, the internet could probably tell me… Oh my, Series Four has already aired in England and they’re working on Series Five!!!! This is good news indeed!

Feb 02 — Here’s what I like: “Aperture”, Apple’s new software for digital photographers. I hated iPhoto and never used it, but relied on graphicconverter and photoshop to manage my digital photos. Aperture is amazing. Amazing, I tell you! It’s extremely easy to use yet very powerful. It keeps your original photos untouched, while you crop, straighten, white-balance, etc. etc. to your heart’s content on a version of your original. You never have to save — it just remembers your changes on the fly. If you want to go back to the original photo, it’s still there. If you want to try some different changes, you can just make a new version. I took 94 photos of Henry’s karate class the other day, when he was awarded his Purple Belt. I used my camera’s “burst” feature to ensure that I got several good photos in between the camera shake and action blur. Aperture allows you to make stacks of photos which have been taken within a certain amount of time — so it was very easy to compare photos within a stack and discard most of them, then edit the remainder so they look better. Now all I have to do is export the best ones and upload to my gallery.

Feb 01 — Yesterday Xeni Jardin interviewed me on the phone for a little story about podcasted audiobooks on the NPR show “Day To Day”, which aired today. Here’s a link: Amateur Audio Books Catch Fire on the Web. There’s a “Listen” link but I haven’t tried it… Henry and Sal and I listened to the show on the actual RADIO, believe it or not. It was a good little piece.

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.