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Karate (Helping the Tiny Tigers)
Did verbal multiplication tables
Musical Theater show!!!

10 – Father William; The Nightingale and the Glow-worm
11 – Jack Frost; The Owl; Little Billie

I’m really tired so I’m lying around, waiting for it to be time to go to Henry’s show, and thinking about my next pair of socks. Going to knit some nice thick ones for Henry to wear in Canada. I want to knit them toe-up, I think, and I really liked the Round Toes on my dark green pair. I actually knit those toes in the ordinary direction, but started with a provisional cast-on, then picked up those stitches and knit the rest of the foot in the toe-up direction. But it will be easy to make those toes backwards — I’ll just do the tiny-circle cast-on of 8 stitches (like the center of a shawl) and work increases at the proper intervals instead of decreases. And then I’ll do a Dutch heel — not reversed, just normal, with the heel flap on the bottom of the foot. I don’t like short-row heels, and it wasn’t much fun to do reversed Dutch heels.

Probably.

Ok, time to go see Henry’s show!

Theater rehearsal
Math Club – graphing
“What if You Met a Knight?” by Jan Adkins — great book!
Karate

My Jawoll Sock Yarn comes with a little tube of fine matching nylon yarn with which to reinforce the toes and heels, very handy — but the thing is, you gotta remember to use the yarn when you make the toes and heels :) I was turning the heel of my second sock today and thinking, hmm, why does this look different from the first sock? And then I realized why, heheh. So I ripped the whole heel flap back, picked up the reinforcing yarn, and re-knit the heel during Henry’s karate class.

Busy day… Dress rehearsal for Henry’s play from 10-11:30 while I went to B&N in Escondido to get a new Moleskine notebook for Dan, then over to Encinitas for Henry’s Math Club (they graphed candy, I think), then home by way of Staples, who didn’t have what we needed. Then I lay down and rested for an hour and made a salad to go with the leftover pasta I planned for dinner, then piano student, then karate, then home by way of Target to look for a pack of Valentines, but they were sold out of everything nice so we decided to make our own. After dinner we cut pretty patterned origami paper into 2×3 rectangles, and wrote Valentine’s greetings on them. We needed 34 but it didn’t take too long. Finished “What If You Met A Knight,” by Jan Adkins, for bedtime, very good book!

Somehow I got enough sleep last night, not sure how that happened. It poured rain all morning, very cozy. I hemmed Henry’s cloak while watching several episodes of the Antiques Roadshow, and Dan worked on his helicopter. When the rain stopped I ran out and bought groceries, and then cleaned the fridge (yuck) and the whole kitchen. Made a humongous thing of pasta for dinner so there will be leftovers tomorrow night.

I read chapter 4 of Silver on the Tree to Henry for bedtime. I guess I only read that book once, a very long time ago, because I don’t really remember it at all. I’m happy that there are several scenes about the big happy Stanton family. I wish the author would write a non-fantasy book about the rest of the Stantons!

Michael J. Nelson, of MST3K fame, has a site called rifftrax.com.

At RiffTrax.com, you can download Mike’s feature-length commentaries and listen to these “RiffTrax” in sync with your favorite, and not so favorite DVDs. It’s like watching a movie with your funniest friend. And it’s super easy to do! Just play the DVD and RiffTrax MP3 together and Voila! The Matrix, Star Wars and others just got way funnier!

I first read about RiffTrax on The Daily Bleat (Lileks and Nelson are friends) and headed right over. The only riff available at the time was Roadhouse, so I put Roadhouse in our greencine queue, and kind of forgot about it. Well, the movie arrived here last week so I headed back to RiffTrax to purchase and download the commentary, and found that there are many more movies to chose from now, including Fellowship of the Ring, The Matrix, and X-Men.

We watched Roadhouse, with the RiffTrax commentary, last night. It was wonderful! The movie is so, so, delightfully bad, and the commentary track worked perfectly and was truly hilarious. And the mp3 commentary track is DRM-free, yay MIke!

We hope to try another of the RiffTrax soon — probably Fellowship — how can we resist? If you’re a fan of humorously bad movies, and/or MST3K, I highly recommend trying a RiffTrax commentary track! At least go watch some of the samples. (Note: Roadhouse is definitely not suitable for children, good lord, no. It was almost not suitable for ME.)

06 – The Boy Who Never Told a Lie; Whatever Brawls Disturb the Street; Bluebell of Scotland; Two Little Wings; Farewell

07 – Casabianca; The Captain’s Daughter

08 – The Village Blacksmith; Sweet and Low; The Violet; The Rainbow

09 – A Visit from St. Nicholas; The Star-Spangled Banner

Today was my 6-month checkup at the UCSD Medical Center, which I always dread. We left at 8:30-ish, got down there at 9:30-ish, checked in, got my new ID card thingy. Around 10:15 I had my echocardiogram, which only took about half an hour (usually takes closer to an hour). I think the guy really knew what he was doing. A medical student came in to observe, so they were talking about my heart functions and everything, which was kind of neat, I guess. Mostly I just listened to my iPod. Then I went downstairs for the 6-minute walk, which is a test they give people with pulmonary hypertension. You literally walk up and down a hallway, as fast as you can, for 6 minutes. You wear a monitor on your ear or finger, (always finger for me, ear never works) and a technician walks behind you and measures your heart rate and blood oxygen level and total distance covered, and asks how fatigued and breathless you feel afterward. It’s an oddly low-tech test. I covered 660 meters and felt mildly breathless and fatigued afterward, which is pretty good, no worse than last time. Then after that I saw my actual PH doctor and he said everything is stable and I can just stay on all my medication as usual. Asked him about those funny episodes I have and he has no idea what could cause them. I’m supposed to go in for another appointment for them to hook me up to a heart monitor to wear for 24 hours, but since my episodes are rare and random, it’s unlikely that one will happen during those 24 hours. Oh well.

After we got out of the hospital I was so glad to be finished! We were already halfway down to the zoo, so we went there and had a nice lunch and walked around and looked at all the monkeys and apes, and then on the way home we stopped at the yarn store and I bought red and black NatureSpun Worsted wool for a hat for Dan, and blue Lamb’s Pride Superwash wool for socks for Henry. And then we went home, all tired out.

Tonight was the first episode of the new season on Survivor, so that was fun, though it’s never that interesting until you get to know the people. Also a new episode of The Office. Also we watched last Tuesday’s episode of House, which, again, wasn’t up to par. It was the one with the gypsy kid and the parking space. Meh.

Silver on the Tree
Drawing Dragons
Trip to library (komodo dragon books)
Reading

Photo time!

The finished Dark Green Socks:

The finished Scarf:

(Seed-stitch, Baby Alpaca Grande)

Both together:

The first Light-Green Sock:

(The “Child’s First Sock in Shell Pattern” from Knitting Vintage Socks, by Nancy Bush. It’s an 8-stitch, 10-round lace pattern that works up very quickly and is easy to memorize.)

The beginning of the second Light-Green Sock:

Went to the zoo!
Karate
Math
Reading
Brain Food Science Podcast
Away With Words podcast

We all woke up bright and early, feeling pretty good. And it was a lovely sunny breezy day. Henry’s dental appointment was cancelled, so we decided to go to the zoo. Henry made us some PB&J sandwiches, traffic was light, and we got to the zoo about 10:45. First we visited the Komodo Dragon for a while (Henry’s current favorite animal) and then we watched the dear little Sea Lion show. Then visited the Hummingbird house and the Komodo Dragon again — found out that his (?) name is “Sunny.” Then we took the Sky Buckets over to the other side of the zoo and watched the polar bears for a long long time. The keepers threw some vegetables and fruits into the deep end of their pool, and one bear jumped in and was swimming all around and playing. They’re HUGE and so graceful underwater. Then we looked at some more arctic animals, then walked down the canyon to the pandas and saw both pandas out and eating their bamboo. Then up the walkway to the monkeys, out through the new Monkey Trails exhibit, and then to Sunny for one last visit.

Henry carried the backpack for me the whole time and we went nice and slow, but I still had one of those funny episodes when we got to the car… it happens sometimes, I feel like there’s not quite enough air, my head feels hot, and I feel generally “funny” in an unpleasant way. Sometimes my heart races like crazy. I’m seeing my doctor again on Thursday and I’ll tell him about this again and see what he thinks… he wasn’t concerned last time I told him about it. But it’s very frustrating.

When we got home, I rested for a bit and then taught a student, then rested some more, and then Dan drove us to Henry’s karate class, and then took us out to dinner at Anita’s so I didn’t have to cook :)

We’re all feeling more-or-less healthy again, with coughs, though Henry and I go through funny tired phases from time to time. I read the first two chapters of Silver on the Tree to Henry this morning, and another long chunk of Beowulf tonight (the Seamus Heaney translation). The part we read tonight contained the battle with Grendel — wonderful stuff! I went searching for audio of the original Old English and found a few short passages here: http://www.beowulftranslations.net/benslade.shtml !!! So beautiful. I finished the first light-green lace sock today while Dan and I were watching last week’s episode of House (not a very good one, too much out-of-character talking and not enough vasculitis). Photo of the sock soon. (I keep saying that…)

Helped with RC helicopter
Read more King Arthur
Beat dungeon in Zelda
Reading

Read two chapters of Silver on the Tree
Math
Read more Beowulf
Read more King Arthur

Bayshore Day
Science – States of Matter
Art – Still Life
Writing – Speeches
Karate
Read about Leonardo
Read about King Arthur