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Henry passed his belt test! He’s now 4th Kyu — purple with a black stripe (crossways, at the end of the belt). I’m very proud of him.

After Henry’s test, I came home and sat with Dan on the couch for hours. He did something to the server and I studied my Filemaker Pro book (on safari.oreilly.com). I’m determined to make an awesome client/gig database for Chloe in the near future. Filemaker is certainly complex, but I’m getting the hang of it and it’s fun.

And I put on National Velvet (thanks TiVo and TCM) this evening and worked on my second green sock. Yes, I finally finished the first one! Pictures soon, if you’re lucky. Anyway, National Velvet is a fantastic movie, if you can put up with an overdose of Elizabeth Taylor being Breathy, Eager, Idealistic, And Passionate About Horses. The supporting cast is amazing, especially Mrs. Brown and young Donald, who steals every scene he’s in. The race scene is absolutely thrilling.

Oh, and I did a little googling and found that Titan Panel has been released for WoW 2.0! Hooray! Now I can play in comfort; I have all the necessities.

A few days ago Henry and I were listening to the “A Way With Words” podcast, which is one of our favorite podcasts. A woman called in to discuss the common and irritating substitution of “less” for “fewer.” As soon as she mentioned her peeve, but before she described it, I hit pause in iTunes, turned to Henry, and said, “I have less socks than you do.” He groaned, rolled his eyes, and said, “FEWER! FEWER SOCKS!”

So what if he doesn’t know 7×8 yet? He hears the difference between “less” and “fewer.” That’s my boy.

A Way With Words can be found here: http://www.kpbs.org/words/

Tonight I made a HUGE pot of split-pea soup. I want to be able to freeze several portions for days when I crave a good thick hot soup but don’t have the time to make it. I really love good soup! While I was cooking I put on my Christmas playlist on “shuffle” and lots of good stuff came up — Dylan Thomas reading “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” the Brian Setzer/Ann Margret “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” some Sneak’s Noyse, a couple of the Phil Spector Christmas songs, a little Pete Seeger, etc. etc. A nice mixture of the sublime and the corny :)

I took Henry to the dojo this morning so he could have a little extra one-on-one coaching on his three katas to prepare for his belt test tomorrow. He’s so excited! I think he’ll probably pass his test, if he stays focused and doesn’t space out. He seems to be doing really well to me at least :) And if he doesn’t pass it’s not the end of the world, of course, though he’ll be terribly disappointed; kids who don’t pass always get to test again in a couple of weeks.

Time for a bowl of pea soup with a big glob of sour cream!

Boy, you don’t fully appreciate your WoW add-ons until they’re gone. This morning I went hunting and found that, although they won’t release a stable version for another two weeks, the developers of Auctioneer and Informant have an alpha version that works with WoW 2.0!!! I backed up my accounts and installed them, along with Enchantrix, which is handy for enchanters. Informant is possibly even more useful than Auctioneer.
Here: http://auctioneeraddon.com/dl/AuctioneerComplete/

Please back up your accounts before installing!

I’m headed to the IF auction house now, to see how this Auctioneer alpha works. But even if it’s buggy I’m still happy to have it.  Informant seems to be working perfectly so far.

I wasn’t happy with the new collar I knitted onto my red sweater, so I ripped it off and tried again.  Still not happy.  But I have another idea…

I sat on Henry’s bed and knitted while he cleaned his room this morning.  He got rid of a lot of cruddy old junk, yay Henry!  Then we started all the computers downloading the most recent WoW patch, and then we went to Margaret’s ranch for one of her Christmas Craft Days.  She sets up tables outdoors with a variety of high-quality craft kits on them, and charges a dollar or two for each craft.  It’s a lot of fun and a great way for  Henry to make gifts for his friends and relatives!  We had a RIOT making a tiny little nativity scene together.  :)

Then we came home and I fixed lunch while Henry filled in a few more squares on our big multiplication chart.  After lunch we settled down to play a little WoW.  The patch broke ALL my add-ons.  I found updated versions of Monkeyquest and EquipCompare, but nothing else, groan.  I need Titan Panel!  I need Auctioneer!  Anyway we played together for a long time.  Went to Aerie Peak and found a new Draeni NCP questgiver!  He gave us three quests so we worked on those. Henry’s character, ZInny, hit level 50 last time we played, but it took all his gold and lot of mine for him to train, so now I’m going to help him grind and make money for a while.  But I depend on Auctioneer to help me make a killing in the Auction House, so I do hope that developer will update his add-on soon.

I felt better today, a bit less tired, and I got a lot done!  I faded a bit in the afternoon and I’m very tired now, so this might not sound very enthusiastic, but I really did have a nice, fun day.  Henry and I went to  karate first thing.  There were three new little Tiny Tigers in class.  They’re soooooo tiny!  They only come up to Henry’s elbows.  He’s got a belt test coming up on Saturday, so we asked if he could come in for a little extra help brushing up the three Katas that he needs to know.  Sensei Michelle made time for him on Friday, very nice.

Then we went to the dentist for his cleaning and appliance-check up.  He’s doing fine. He is to start turning the bottom front crank at the same time as he turns the top cranks.

Then grocery shopping: TP, Lunesta, dental floss, and baking supplies at Stater Brothers, and everything else under the sun at Trader Joe’s.  Henry carried everything in for me, and then ate french break, garlic and herb Boursin cheese, and applesauce for lunch while I put everything away.  Then I took a 15-minute email break (for the first time today).  Then I helped him bake his fabulous lemony cheesecake.  While it baked, we played music together.  He showed me a cool rhythm to play on the drums while he played the bass.  We sorta re-created “Drive My Car” a little bit :)

Then it was off to the passport office. Then I dropped him off at his dad’s house and did a little Christmas shopping.  Then home, internet, and dinner, which was rotelli with about half a bag of wilted spinach and some red bell peppers in the sauce. And Henry’s cheesecake for dessert!
I’m trying to finish my re-worked sweater collar tonight so I can wear it again tomorrow.  Brr.

Hilarity:

Mary Poppins Re-Mix

Slept until 10:30, amazing! Dan and I sat on the sofa in our jammies with our laptops for hours and hours today, very lazy and relaxing. We went through the 300 photos he took at the gig last night, separating out the interesting ones, and I did LibriVox work and started editing my recording of Barchester Towers, chapter 11.

This evening we watched the first episode of “The IT Crowd” but it was just stupid so I don’t think we’ll be watching any more of it. I heard a lot of good things about it, but I guess that “Green Wing” and “The Office” have spoiled us and we can’t watch stupid sitcoms anymore.

Our reader Mark has completed another Jeeves and Wooster book — this time a whole novel, rather than a collection of short stories. Download it (for free!) here: http://librivox.org/right-ho-jeeves-by-p-g-wodehouse/

It’s a classic, featuring Madeline Bassett, Tuppy Glossop, Cousin Angela, Gussie Finknottle, and assorted Aunts :) I think Mark does a great job reading Wodehouse. Henry and I will be listening to this one tomorrow, for sure.

Our David in England found a short and hilarious public domain Cornish Christmas Play (published 1833, but it feels a LOT older). He posted the project this morning, had it fully cast within 5 hours, and I think almost all of the parts have already been submitted. I grabbed the role of The Dragon (I speak about 4 lines and am then slain by Saint George) and David asked if Henry would read the role of Father Christmas. I asked him when he was here for a while this evening, and he said yes so we worked on our lines and took turns recording them. It’s going to be so cool when David gets it all pasted together!

I had lots and lots of Alone Time today — Henry was at his dad’s house all except for a few hours in the evening, and Dan was out helping with a Rockola gig all day. I did luxurious things like reading, uninterrupted, and knitting while listening to audiobooks, uninterrupted, and recording for LibriVox, uninterrupted :) But it was kind of weird, too, so I’ll be glad when everyone is home again tomorrow!

I made the knitty.com “bpt” sweater a couple of years ago. I wear it constantly, but the hood kind of bothers me. I almost never use it (’cause I’ve made myself an assortment of cute warm hats) and it’s lumpy when I lean back in my seat. So today I RIPPED it off while listening to LibriVox’s lovely free audiobook of The Awakening. Ripped it all the way back to the neckline, picked the neck stitches back up and started knitting a little standup collar. The sweater is rather poorly designed at the neck — the front is as high as the back, so it rides down in back and is too high in front. In an attempt to make it fit better, I’m doing the collar with short rows in back to make the back higher. Let’s hope its a success! I took a “before” picture which maybe I’ll post tomorrow.

Oh, and here’s an old photo of the sweater in its still hooded state:

I’d also like to make it longer and less tapered, so I might be doing some more alterations after I fix the neck.

Took Henry to his classes at Bayshore in the morning, and spent my free time shopping for black jeans and shoes for Dan (Do you have any idea how hard it is to find good supportive ALL BLACK sneakers?) and I picked up a replacement power supply at Guitar Denter and, while I was out in San Marcos anyway, bought him some helicopter fuel. Picked up Henry, got the mail, came home, vacuumed and mopped all the floors, and then collapsed, pretty much… I had planned to make stuffed peppers for dinner and started a pot of rice, but when it came down to it I decided I didn’t have the energy, so I opened a can of black beans, mixed them with the rice (first setting aside enough so I can make the peppers on the weekend) and served it with sour cream, homemade salsa, and shredded cheese. Easy, fast, and tasty.
Sat in and watched Henry’s karate class tonight and he got his belt-test form! When he passes, he’ll be 4th kyu — purple with a black stripe. He’s been longing to test, so we’re really happy that Sensei thinks he’s ready :)
Henry played on the electric drums for a couple of hours today in the afternoon and had a ton of fun!

The roofers woke us with much incredible banging and stamping at 7am.  Henry played with Nathan and Laura, and then we went out to do errands.  Too tired to do much else.  Oh we played a bit of WoW together — Zinny helped me find the Witherbark Cages in the Hinterlands.

Are you tired of hearing about how tired I am? Still worn out from the weekend, plus I woke up way too early ’cause my stomach hurt.  Bah.  Basic Tuesday: Karate, groceries, home, mythology class, musical theater, home, muppet show, dinner, bedtime routine.   I had planned to get a little bit of LibriVox recording done during the hour and a half of quiet I had this afternoon while Henry was in class, but instead I had to fix LibriVox problems, and I was too tired to record well anyway.  Maybe tomorrow.

I was too tired today to do much of anything. I dumped the concert photos out of my camera and got them sorted and cropped and uploaded to my gallery. And I cleaned Henry’s computer area. But that’s about it, productivity-wise. Lay around with Dan and watched a lot of TiVo: Survivor (merge!), House, The Soup, and two episodes of season two of the Office (USA version). And two episodes of The Muppet Show with Henry before bed. I love the Muppet Show. We watched the first two episodes of Season One, which I’d never seen. I probably saw later seasons. I remember Loretta Swit, Harry Belafonte, Debbie Harry, Alice Cooper, Senor Wences (I think), Johnny Cash…

Oh yeah… I took a short video of Henry and Celia dancing on stage during Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. If you are a family member and want to see it, drop me an email and I’ll send you the link. My camera takes video in some funny way that separates the audio and video (I think it’s called muxed) so when I try to export the .mpg to a smaller, web-friendly .mov in Quicktime (or any other video program) I lose the audio. It’s really delightful, I’ll tell you. But there is a way to get the audio and video glued together.

Run Toast Titanium, tell it you want to make a video cd, and add the video. Then click that file in Toast’s window and tell it to export to .dv, which will take approximately 100,000 years. When it’s done you’ll have a HUGE .dv file – but this file can then be opened in Quicktime and exported to a small, web-friendly file without losing the audio. Why can’t Quicktime do this on its own? Why why why?

Yesterday (Saturday) was the big concert! Dan, Henry, and I arrived at the theater at about 10:20am. Dan immediately started setting up equipment, while I showed Henry around the theater. It’s really fun to see the backstage area and the dressing rooms and everything! Then we staked out a spot in the hall and amused ourselves until Chloe and Bob and the rest of the band showed up. There was much setting up and testing of equipment. Henry and I read and drew and knitted and talked and played nintendo and just watched the activity on stage. I ran out to the drugstore for bottled water. Henry was so good all day long. I know he got a little bit bored at times but he never complained. I tried to notice when he needed help finding something to do so I could suggest something. Eventually the band started to rehearse, so that was entertaining! I took Henry across the street to the Claire de Lune coffee place for breakfast pastry, and then later for a bagel. The orchestra kids got there in the afternoon, and their conductor ran through some of the material, and then the band joined them. And then Henry finally got to practice Penny Lane with the band! I taught him the part (whole note keyboard chords during the chorus) at 8pm the night before and he’d never played it with the band, but he did fine during the run-through.

At 5 or so Chloe and I walked over the the near-by pizza place and ordered 12 pizzas and 8 six-packs of soda to feed all the musicians and crew, then Henry and I went back to pick it up in time for the 6 to 7pm dinner break. Lucky they had a trolley and helped us wheel all that food back to the theater!

At a little after 7 Henry changed into his show clothes (nice dark pants and his tie-dyed t-shirt) and we found our seats and got ready to watch the show. Chloe had set aside three nice seats for us, and joined us just before the show started. It was sold-out, or very nearly so! Rehearsal was a little bit rocky (but what rehearsal isn’t?) so we were kind of nervous, but when the band began to play it was obvious that everything would be just fine! They were AWESOME. They started out with songs from the Rubber Soul single, and then performed the whole album. It was just indescribably good. We loved it and the crowd did too!

At intermission I took Henry backstage. Chloe offered to walk him up to the stage when it was time for Penny Lane, but he preferred to wait backstage because it was “fascinating”. So I went back out with Chloe and we watched the second set, which was all Beatles music of course, with the Magical Symphony Youth Orchestra helping out on songs such as Eleanor Rigby, Here Comes the Sun, Something, Revolution (the slow on, yay!), etc. For All You Need Is Love, Bob asked for some children from the audience to hold the signs. Celia and Henry helped, too. It was too cute!

(sorry for the blurry band, but you can see the kids and the signs ok)

The crowd loved it. After that came Penny Lane, for which Henry stood front and center at Bob’s keyboard and played his chords during the chorus. He did a wonderful job! I was so proud of him :) He ran back out to the audience and sat with us after his song was over.

(That’s Henry in the center)

After the last song, “The End,” the audience leapt to its feet and gave the band a huge standing ovation. And then they played a few more songs! Henry and Celia went back onstage and danced to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, and the audience just ate it up. They played until 10, I think, or a little after. Man, what a show, what a show! Rockola rocks!

After the show, Dan helped tear down for a while, and then we finally left maybe around 11pm or later, I’m not sure. It was a long but wonderful day. We all slept late this morning :)

I just discoved Star Trek: New Voyages!!! It’s a fan-created continuation of the original Star Trek series, with all the same beloved characters — Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Uhura, McCoy, etc. — but played by different actors. They use the same costumes, the same props, the same background music and sound effects.  I’ve just downloaded the three available episodes and watched a few minutes of the pilot.   It made me giddy with glee!  Sure, some of the acting is amateurish, but so was most of the acting in TOS, heheh.   It’s so much fun to be back in that good old Star Trek universe again.  Here’s some more information from wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Voyages

I can hardly wait to watch these three episiodes, and I hope more will be on the way.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

I sat in Dan’s workroom and played WoW on my new laptop (it works acceptably well if you turn the graphics settings all the way down) and we listened to Loveline.  I made a feast in the afternoon — mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce (homemade, not the stuff in a can), stuffing, and a couple of cornish game hens.  Yummy.  And then a bit later we drove down to Chloe’s house for a visit and to help them get ready for the show.  We listened to music (FabFour Christmas stuff, hilarious) and talked, and I worked on Henry’s cloak and my green sock, and Dan changed guitar strings and went over the technical things he’ll have to do at the show.  We had a wonderful time with them as usual.  It’s nice when family members are also really good friends.  Stayed there until about 1:15 and then drove home on the nice empty freeway.

Yesterday I didn’t write about anything but my lovely new macbook, so I’ll catch you up:

Woke up, developed a migraine which lasted all day, went to thyroid doctor in the morning, blood tests (ouch), then drove to Fargo’s house, brought him home with us, went to the bank and the mailbox, then came home, taught students, then lay around feeling crappy and doing LibriVox work. Then Dan got home and gave me my macbook :)

Today was busy but I felt ok again so that was nice. Karate in the morning, then groceries and pharmacy, then home for an hour, did laundry and chores, then out to Mythology class. I sat and played Harvest Moon DS while the boys had fun in class. I unlocked the second Hot Spring and found my first Cursed Tool. I’ll ask Flora to marry me as soon as I unlock a few more Sprites (I already have the blue feather and her heart is red, so I’m pretty sure she’ll say “yes” ;-)

Then took the boys to the trading card store, then home and taught a student, then did Librivox work for a little while and then made lasagna for dinner. And have been enjoying my lovely MacBook all day. The glossy screen kind of bothers me but I’m certain that I’ll get used to it in time. It’s different, but it’s no worse than a DS screen, which I got used to just fine. It’s so nice and fast, and Dan bought me some extra ram so now it’s even faster! And I have TWO processors ;-) And my iBook’s display was noticably fading, but the colors on this one are nice and bright. And the battery lasts forever and ever and ever.

Time to read a bedtime story (Greenwitch)!

Dan said he’d buy me a new battery to replace the dead one in my 3.5 year old iBook today. Instead, he came home with an early Christmas present for me — a brand new white MacBook! He says he did buy me a new battery, he just wrapped it in a new laptop :) Dear dear Dan :) It’s just lovely. I’ve been working on getting it all set up properly. Dan copied over my Mail and Firefox settings (including all my extensions – Foxmarks, DownThemAll, Fuzzy Time, Google Notebook, TabMixPlus, FlashBlockM, adblock), (updated April 3, ’08: super drag and go, quickdrag(Aug 2008, works with FF3), FoxClocks, and the PMOG extension), and I’ve been installing my favorite Mac OS X software (most of which is free!):

Firefox (web browser. Free!)
Jumpcut (clipboard buffering: copy many items, then choose which ones you want to paste. Free!)
Quicksilver (indescribable but indispensable. Free!)
SoundStudio (audio recording/editing. Overpriced at $80 and has many flaws, but the nicest editing interface I’ve found)
Smultron (lovely text editor. Free!)
MenuMeters (shows cpu, ram, network traffic etc. Free!)
bean (lightweight basic word-processor. free!)
cyberduck (FTP client. Free!)
colloquy (IRC client. Free!)
vlc (media player. Free!)
twhirl (twitter/identi.ca client. Free!)
Adium (AIM/iChat client. Free!)
NeoOffice (MS Office replacement. Free!)
seashore (lightweight GIMP-based image editor. Free!)
Skype (telephone client. Free!)
pandora boy (pandora standalone player. Free!)
GrandPerspective (Helps you find wasted disk space, and looks like yummy candy. Free!)
FizzBall (pinball/breakout game, adorable and well worth the $20)
Skitch (amazingly wonderful screenshot tool, free beta right now (Aug 2008)

Still need to install:
World of Warcraft (Best. Game. Evar.)
GraphicConverter (very useful graphics program)
scanner drivers
tablet drivers
MobilePre USB drivers
And probably other stuff I can’t think of right now but I’ll notice someday.

More tomorrow!

How the Nintendo Wii will get you emotionally invested in video games:
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/11/a_console_to_make_you_wiip.php