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Switched on the radio on the way to fetch Henry from Kung Fu tonight and caught the middle of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. I’m not a big Vivaldi fan, but a couple of facts floated up out of my subconscious to the surface of my thoughts: red-headed priest, music master for girls at an orphanage in Venice. Don’t know why I remember that from long-ago music history classes, but I checked wikipedia after I parked and it’s all true.

Brenda Montiel, you were a good teacher!

• Just helped someone from Perth, Australia with a question about *Books* …on Aardvark! http://vark.com/t/c7ab34 #
• RT @SnappyTouch: Space Miner Lite is now available on the App Store! –Absolutely must play! Dl now if you haven't played it yet. #
• RT @FakeAPStylebook There are always nine plus signs in "A+++++++++ WOULD BUY AGAIN". #
• My recording of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is finished: http://bit.ly/aVhk0A (free, public domain) #
• Recorded last three chapters of Alice (without mishap other than suddenly loud cat); editing now. #

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My recording of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is all done. I’ll be adding it to my podcast feed, but if you want to hear it right now, here it is:

http://librivox.org/alices-adventures-in-wonderland-by-lewis-carroll-4/

(As always, all LibriVox audiobooks are in the public domain and free to download, share, remix, whatever.)

This was so fun and easy that I got it done in record time.

• Tiny sliver of moon http://twitpic.com/1990di #
• Aperture 3 is super-annoying. Keeps setting sort order to manual. I tell it to sort by date. It resets to manual. Over and over and over. #
• Oh how I love Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. I love love love love it. #
• Oops. Thought I recorded a whole chapter but had forgotten the very important step of pressing the "record" button. D'oh! #
• Hey Guildies! @knitngeek: Play WoW on NA/Oceanic server & 18+? New survey for researching what WoW behavior reveals: http://j.mp/c6wOpS #
• RT @DrSamuelJohnson St PATRICK'S Day (n.) Bacchanalia where the World's Peoples celebrate the Irish by emulating their worst Characteristick #

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• I think a large owl flew over us on a walk through suburban San Diego. Is that possible? #
• Just helped someone from Portland, ME with a question about *toddlers* …on Aardvark! http://vark.com/t/8e7d6a #
• Amusing duck! Lay egg is true! http://bit.ly/chwZDP #
• Oooo tempting! RT @thegadgeteer: posted: Yurtopia Yurbuds review http://bit.ly/d8i7qN #

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• 2 mile walk, yay me! #
• Finished recording ch. 5 of Alice's Adventures just before the yard work and police sirens started, yay! #
• Just rescued tiny bird from porch light: http://bit.ly/cPCzbU http://bit.ly/cCLHLF #

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Yesterday (3/14) was Pi Day, so I baked a pie. We loved the apple-blackberry boysenberry pies we bought in Julian last weekend (did I tell you we drove up to Julian in the pouring rain and walked around and had lunch and bought wine and pie and had a lovely time?) and I wanted to make something similar but couldn’t find fresh or frozen blackberries boysenberries so bought raspberries instead.

I made the pie similar to my regular apple pies but left out one apple, added an entire bag of frozen (thawed) raspberries, and skipped all the spices.

So: five apples peeled and chopped, one bag of raspberries, mixed with a cup of sugar (this made a VERY sweet pie, could probably cut back on the sugar), a half-cup of flour, a half-teaspoon of salt (or so).

Pour into pie crust (I use a Trader Joe’s frozen crust). We like crumb topping: 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup flour, a bit more than an 1/8th cup cold butter. Cut everything together as if making pie crust; sprinkle all over pie.

Bake at 425 F for 15 minutes, then for an hour at 350. Cover with foil towards the end so it doesn’t burn.

It turned out AMAZINGLY delicious.

21 The Story of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe – 00:7:15

• homemade apple-raspberry pie: http://bit.ly/9H5OoG #
• Just tasted pie. Resounding success! #
• Pie is in the oven. It's apple-raspberry, for an experiment. #
• Ooo it's Pi day! I shall bake a pie. #
• ughhhhh time change #

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• RT @DrSamuelJohnson Eurostar (n.) continental Carriage, so asham’d to link England unto France that it does so ‘neath the Ground #

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• Is there a way to export a single photo from Aperture 3 to flickr (using built-in exporter) without messing with sets and albums? #
• We watch an episode of Peep Show every night before bed. At end of S6 we start over with S1 again. Love Mark & Jez & Super Hans! #

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• OMG. I recorded three chapters of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland today and I was reading from an abridged version! ARGHHHH! #
• Also I held down BOTH buttons for a long time and my iPhone came back to life! #
• "The Secret of Kells" was absolutely lovely. Parents, it's the antidote to Disney crap. Some scary wolves and Vikings, so pre-screen. #
• huh. my iphone won't turn on :( #

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I’ve had such a hard time picking a book to record next. I’m still in the middle of the giant kids’ US history book, but I wanted to do some fiction at the same time. I finally decided on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (in English this time), and I’d like to do Through the Looking-Glass as well, and then maybe Tom Sawyer after that. Yes, we already have a few versions of each in the librivox catalog, but none of them are read by me, plus I love all three books and would just really enjoy recording them! :)

So today I got my Alice project set up (well not quite all the way, but it’s in the database anyway) and downloaded a copy of Alice into Stanza on my iPhone. And then I recorded the first three chapters. And just now I sat down to start editing them and got to the part where Alice doesn’t want to drop the empty marmalade jar for fear of killing someone underneath her… except the part about not wanting to kill someone wasn’t in my recording. So I double-checked against the text — had I imagined that part? No, there it was in the version I had been looking at on the web. But it seems that I had put an abridged version on my iPhone! It doesn’t SAY that it’s abridged anywhere, but it clearly is. Sigh. So that’s three chapters wasted. I thought they seemed kinda short…

Now I’ve got the proper unabridged version in Stanza so I’ll start over tomorrow.

• Yay, muting! RT @brizzly we released Brizzly for iPhone! It's free and has fancy features like news, lists, etc. http://bit.ly/ctfoA9 #
• Cramps. Also, we did the taxes. I hate you, IRS. #

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19 Bacon’s Rebellion – 00:19:01

• I just saw "American Idol" written somewhere and thought it said "American Idiot" #
• At Fairmount Diner, my favorite sandwich place in SD (across from Home Depot, only open weekdays) http://twitpic.com/17m06g #
• Working. It's nice to be feeling better. #
• Yay!! RT @hughmcguire #LibriVox funding drive reached its target, now closed. Thanks to all our supporters: http://bit.ly/c8fFj6 #

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Hooray! In only about two weeks we at LibriVox.org achieved our goal and can now shut down our fundraising campaign.
http://librivox.org/2010/03/09/funding-goal-achieved-thank-you/

We raised $23,000 from 433 donors, in 13 days, averaging $1,769 in donations from 33 people every day. We had a couple of big donors, who gave a few thousand dollars each, and many more smaller donations which all add up to: everything we asked for.

A big thank you to everyone who donated!

• The census wasted a sheet of paper, envelope, stamp, to tell me that next week they're sending out census forms. My tax dollars at work. #
• Wondering why the BBC's "A History of the World in 100 Objects" podcast feed hasn't been updated since February. #
• Excellent comparison of Avatar and District 9: http://bit.ly/9H408L #
• RT @DrSamuelJohnson Avatar (n.) whereby Mister Jas. CAMERON employs great Buckets of WOAD to cover great Holes of PLOT #

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Our own Adrian Praetzellis was just the subject of a very nice article in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat:
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20100306/LIFESTYLE/100309770/

Way to go, Adrian!

19 The Coming of the Cavaliers – 00:11:30