New blog (again)

Blogger.com doesn't work very well lately, so I've installed Wordpress on my server and copied all these blogger.com posts over. This blog will now be discontinued. Please visit my new and improved blog at http://kayray.org/

Thanks! See you there!

New York Times!

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

To misquote Larry David: "Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty cool!"

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

Hmm...

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

blogger is being lame

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

Errands with Henry

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

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

NY Times??

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

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

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

Home

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

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

Gotta teach piano students now, more later maybe.

Going Home

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

Recording with Hugh

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

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

Nice and Rainy!

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

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