August 2005
August 2005
29 — Lots of housework and piano students but also had time to play WoW with Henry, and Monopoly, too! He’s a fun guy to play games with. We played time-limit Monopoly and he beat me by about $1000 dollars, and I didn’t go easy on him at all. He faked me out in several auctions — I know how far to push a computer opponent but a small intelligent boy is harder to manipulate, heh, and I ended up spending more than I wanted on worthless properties. Tired, tired, tired, stayed up WAYYYYYYYtoo late with dan last night heh. Early to bed tonight by god!
28 — Dan and I had fun out shopping this afternoon, when he took a break from setting up a laptop. We went to Fry’s where I bought a super-excellent iSkin case for my iPod and a pair of retractable headphones. The case is perfect for me, and I highly recommend it. I wanted a case with no giant belt-clip apparatus permanently poking out. The iSkin’s belt clip is entirely removeable, leaving only a perfectly smooth back. I got the translucent white one, so the nice green finish of my iPod shows through. The case is very well designed and comes with a sturdy, clear LCD-cover. Now my little iPod is completely protected from bumps and scratches :) Is there any joy greater than the joy of finding the PERFECT case for a new gadget? :)
After Fry’s we went to the loathesome Guitar Center for a cable. We planned to look at instruments but the store is so horrible (crowded, noisy, obnoxious) that we fled as quickly as possible and went to Buffalo Brothers instead. Buffalo Brothers is the opposite of Guitar Center — a quiet, spacious, pleasant store. Dan looked at acoustics while I browsed through their excellent selection of banjo books :) Then home again where I played with my toys and read while Dan continued to set up that laptop. Oh, and he made time to test my new digicam and told me I should set it to sharpen less. And he was right, the images look a lot better now. Wonderful Dan :)
27 — Today was my birthday! Everyone was sweet to me all day and gave me luxurious gifts — an amber pendant, a pair of decadently comfortable sheepskin slippers, and a green iPod mini! I love everything :) Henry and I picked up breakfast for everyone at Einstein Brothers, and then we had a relaxing afternoon watching old movies (Fantastic Voyage!) and playing with my new toys. Dan’s been asking me for years if I wouldn’t like an iPod. I never wanted one until recently, when I _finally_ made peace with iTunes, and even began to (*gasp*) enjoy using it. So I hinted that I’d like an iPod and my dear family gave me a lovely little green one! I’m really enjoying it so far :) Also love all my other presents. My alarm went off at 12:50 while we were watching the movie, and Henry and I looked at each other… and realized that he had a Karate workshop at 1pm! Eeek. So we raced over there and got him to the dojo on time, thank goodness. Then I came home and got dark clothing for him — the summer camp kids went to play laser tag after the workshop. We brought Henry’s friend Cierra home with us to play, so that was a nice treat. In the evening Matthew picked up Henry, and Dan and I had a quiet evening together. Very nice day, very happy birthday :)
26 — Tired, so tired, but got a lot of housework done, played with Henry, went to the library, and made a good dinner. I don’t usually get all mushy here but I feel awfully mushy so go away and come back tomorrow if you don’t want to read mush! I’m just so happy with Dan. He is so wonderful, so good to me, so loving, so much fun, so generous, so sweet, so caring, so extremely intelligent. I feel amazingly fortunate to be with him. Well, I’m not doing a very good job of expressing myself but you get the idea. Hey Dan if you’re reading this — I love you :) :) :) Here’s one of my favorite things about Dan — some nights when we go to bed, we’re both so tired we plan to fall asleep immediately… but then we start talking. And before we know it, hours, literally hours, have passed, and we’ve been laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company, and yeah we’ll be tired the next day but who cares. It seems like we never run out of things to talk about. He is the most fun person to be with and he makes me laugh and I admire him so much. Plus, we both like soup.
25 — Finished “All About Eve”. Great movie!!! Henry watched part of it with me, enough to get the general idea. He said Eve was Evil heheheh :) The review I linked to is from www.filmsite.org, which I found today while hunting for a list of great movies. I realize it’s a horribly ugly and outdated website (hello 1996!) but their Top 100 list seems pretty good, better than the AFI one, although I do disagree with a few of their choices, e.g. “Vertigo” (sorry, it’s just not that good a movie although it has all the components of a GREAT one). It occurred to me that it might be fun to try to watch all 100 greatest so I might print out a checklist to keep near the TiVo. Between Henry, Dan, and me, we’ve seen a good many of them already! Hmm, never realized that Billy Wilder directed not only “Some Like It Hot” but also “Sunset Boulevard” AND “Double Indemnity”! Wow. Maybe we need to watch some more Wilder films. Those three are some of our favorites!
24 — Tired. Cut out some new purple velour shorts and stretchy pants for Henry this evening whie watching part of “All About Eve”. Ooooo creepy. I had to turn it off just when Bette Davis started getting bothered by Eve’s creepiness, so have more to look forward to tomorrow! Henry worked on “Roundabout” on his guitar while I hemmed Kirsten’s black pants, which are made of a difficult synthetic. I did an ok job, good enough I hope. Henry and Mom took me to Legoland this morning to buy me a membership for my birthday (to go with Henry’s membership, heh). Nice place, and I’ll look forward to spending a few hours there with Henry now and then!
23 — Took Henry down to the bagel store this morning for a half-dozen to go, then over to the bookstore to find the new Knights’ Kingdom books he’s been longing for. When we got into the bookstore, he suddenly wondered where his Bionicle toy was, the one he’d brought with us. He was afraid he’d left it at the bagel store, so I went out to the car to look for it whlie he asked a pleasant clerk for help finding the books. I found Takanuva under the bagel bag on the floor of the front seat and brought him back into the store, whew, no need to drive back to the bagel place. Henry and the nice clerk had found two of the books, the first two in the series. They were only $4 so I bought them both for him. Yay for a boy who yearns for books! Then I dropped Henry off at his dad’s apartment and they went to the movies etc. I went home and lazed around a lot — was pretty tired today so I didn’t accomplish much more than the usual basic daily stuff. Taught a couple of students, tested out the new Oster clippers. I think they’ll work great. Made shrimp and snow-pea stir-fry for dinner.
22 — Henry and I finished “State Fair” this afternoon. He liked the dress with the red velvet bodice and the white pleated skirt and the artificial cherries — said I should make one for myself :) And we did the shopping this morning and I made vegetable beef soup in the crockpot for dinner, delicious.
21 — It was a great weekend! Friday night Dan took me out shopping for a new digital camera (I left the charger and spare battery to my old Canon in Iowa) and we eventually chose a Sony DSC-P200. It’s a very good camera. I wanted something with some manual controls (not just a point-and-shoot), and the Sony has lots of options of that sort — manual focus, manual shutter seed, manual aperture, manual iso, etc — AND is pocketsize. And it has lots of other fun settings to tinker with. I practiced with it a lot this weekend, and got a few very good photos! Henry and Dan and Sal played racquetball on Saturday and I was able to get a few interesting action shots of them. See my gallery if you’re interested — haven’t cropped and uploaded all the good ones yet though, so check back.
Henry came home on Saturday morning and was with us for the rest of the weekend! We all watched Napoleon Dynamite on Saturday night. Henry loved it, so we watched it again on Sunday, heheh. And we worked on my Magical Mystery Tour puzzle, and played a lot of Animal Crossing, and read, and ate. Sunday morning I was about to make a nice breakfast for everyone when I discovered that the dishwasher detergent had clumped up and stuck in its little tray the night before, so the entire load of dishes was still dirty. Ugh. So we went out to breakfast — McDonalds for Dan and Einstein Brothers for Henry and me. Mmmmmmm pumpernickel!
Sunday afternoon the guys played racquetball again. Usually I watch them play, but this time the gym lackeys noticed that I wasn’t a member so I wasn’t allowed to go over to the courts, but there was a comfortable chair in the lobby and Dan lent me his Treo 650 so I could read Greenwitch, and I listened to The Goldberg Variations on my Zire 71. So it was really quite pleasant. Sunday night Henry and I started watching State Fair — very good so far, hope to finish tomorrow. Love the costuming!
18 — Finally got my XM Online trial membership thingy to work on my iBook. It was broken in different ways in every browser, and kept claiming it couldn’t find “the plugin” although I had both WMP 9 and Flash 7 installed. I tried various fixes and nothing worked until I reinstalled WMP — then all of a sudden everything was happy and content and played nicely. So I listened to the 1940s station, mostly. Sally and Henry went to Legoland, where they had a fine time and Henry got his face painted like a tiger, as you can see :)
16 — Henry and Dan played racquetball this evening! It was Henry’s first time and he really loved it, and I enjoyed watching them. After I got Henry to bed tonight Sal, John, Dan and I watched the first two episodes of the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sooo funny. Dan and I have seen them all already, but John and Sal hadn’t and they liked them.
14 — Rockola concert in PB this afternoon! Henry and I went together, left around 2:30 and got there just after 3, so got a good parking place, yay. Rockola played an excellent show, as usual, and the crowd loved them. And Bob let Henry borrow an acoustic electric bass and play with the band on “Summertime Blues”! Very exciting :) Henry says he wasn’t nervous at all, just happy.
13 — Bought Animal Crossing for the gamecube. We rented it for a week and really wanted to keep playing after it was returned, and it was only about $15 for a used copy. Gosh it’s a fun game!
12 — Gerry finished painting the big teaching room! It’s beautifully red, just luscious. I started working on the puzzle Mom brought me from Yosemite while we watched Zoolander tonight. Zoolander was better than I expected. I had the TiVo get it because of the cast (Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Will Farrell, Owen Wilson, etc) but I didn’t expect much. It wasn’t GREAT, but we were entertained.
11 — Henry and I watched “The Towering Inferno” this afternoon and finished our map of the world puzzle. We had so much fun together! We decided that an alternate title for the movie could be “What Not To Do In A Fire”, or “The Tower of Idiots” hehehehehe. It really was entertaining, though. Henry said the sleazy son-in-law deserved to be punched and we cheered together when William Holden punched him. And of course Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were manly and heroic, and the 1974 interior decorating made us gag. All that harvest gold and little stairways to nowhere… Henry is old enough to be a really fun movie-watching companion, yay! He understands basic plot conventions and can prdeict the plot with me :)
09 — Danny picked up my car and changed my oil and rotated my tires etc. Wonderful Danny! I played some WoW while Henry was at camp today and got my warlock to lvl 43, woohoo! Amazing. Also I worked on that map of the world jigsaw puzzle that Henry and I started and got a lot further, made all the continents and even filled in quite a bit of ocean. Jigsaw puzzles are so relaxing and fun for me, I don’t know why I don’t do them more often. Fargo spent the afternoon with us. He and henry are completely obsessed with Yu-Gi-Oh cards, my goodness. Henry asked me to draw one for him afterdinner. He found a good picture online of the one he wanted, some kind of rare ferocious dragon, so I drew it for him and colored it in, and we pasted it to one of the cards he never uses. He loves it so much, he took it to bed :)
08 — Watching Adam Carolla’s new show “Too Late”… so far it’s fairly entertaining but he’s really just doing the same bits he does on Loveline… but I’ve laughed heartily a few times so I’ll give him another try tomorrow. And now it’s time for Jon Stewart! This afternoon, when Henry got home from karate camp, we started working on our big world map puzzle. Difficult!
07 — Picked up Henry from his dad’s house in the morning and took him to the morning karate class, and then we came home and did stuff :) Henry and I watched the first episode of “Cosmos” And Dan cleaned our bedroom!!!
05 — Art camp for Henry, then I went home took care of plants and things, taught, then picked Henry back up. He had a wonderful day, and came home with lots of clay projects that he’d made over the week — a box, and a bowl, and a parrot. Then we came home and Henry played Animal Crossing (fun game!) and worked on more house stuff and started sewing Sal’s new curtains. Then another student, then took Henry to his two karate classes, then dropped him at his dad’s house (in Carlsbad now, not Lemon Grove anymore!). Came home, talked to mom (home from her road trip). She likes the color I chose for the teaching room (red!!) and the one set of curtains I got mostly finished. And then I was hungry and too tired to cook, so Dan took me out for Greek food :)
04 — Picked Fargo up this morning when I dropped Henry at his art camp. Fargo hung out at our house while Henry was in class, playing gameboy and eating toast and moving all my LPs from my bedroom to the sitting room, where my record player lives now. Helpful boy! Then we picked up Henry and I took them to Matthew’s new apartment, then came home and did stuff… moved all the small things out of the big teaching room, plants, chairs, etc, so Gerry could start painting it today. And I cleaned Mom’s room really well — she’ll be home tomorrow. And Gerry lent me his cordless drill and brought a ladder upstairs for me, and I installed Mom’s new curtain rods. Yay me!!
03 — Extremely busy day. Dropped Henry at art camp, went to Home Depot to choose paint for the big piano room, came back and discussed things with Gerry, did housework, took down some of the nasty old curtain hardware from mom’s windows, then picked Henry back up, got lunch at Del Taco and went straight over to Vista for his computer class. Then I got to sit outside in the shade for a few hours and read, which was lovely. Oh and I played a little Mario and Luigi, but I got stuck on killing the plant monster on the runway, argh. After his computer class, Henry played with a bunch of nice kids for a while and then we raced back home, picked up our prescriptions, got home just in the nick of time for my 4:45 student, and rushed off to karate the moment I was done teaching. Then home by about 7 and I just had to lie down for a while. Dan just moved all our recent Loveline recordings from one computer to another (the one that stays on all night) so now I get to fall asleep to the soothing sounds of an episode I’ve never heard before, YAY!!!
02 — I spent the entire morning hunting for decent curtain hardware at a variety of stores. I finally found some good stuff at Bed Bath and Beyond, and on sale, too! So I got everything we need for Mom’s curtains, and now I just need to install the hardware and sew the curtains, heh. i was hoping to have them done by the time she gets back from vacation, but… well, maybe.
The Hendrix family came over to swim this afternoon but Gerry had to put extra chemicals in the pool and anyway it was COLD, so we went to the playground at Holiday Park instead and the kids had lot of fun climbing all over the tall spiral slide. And we devoured a bag of chips and a container of salsa :) I made dinner for everyone later and was SO TIRED by the end of the day. But it was a good day. The Hendrixes are going home to Germany in a couple of days so we won’t see them again for a while. But they might come back again in a couple of years!
01 — Henry started his art camp today — for a whole week he gets to do clay-related activities from 9:00 til noon! He seemed to enjoy the first day very much. It was strange to have him gone for so many hours on a weekday, but I got a lot of housework done, watered the roses etc.