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Last night Dan took a look at my corrupted savegame situation.  He noticed that the OTHER save slot (where I saved once accidentally, on the 2nd day of Spring) would load successfully.  After some tinkering, he figured out how to make my bad savegame load again, by starting the 2nd savegame and then loading the first one from there!  It was a miracle, I tell you!  He had to have my little guy walk a certain distance before trying to load the other save or it didn’t work.

I was going to play Harvest Moon DS today while Henry was in his Theater class, but my savegame wouldn’t load. SIGH. I guess I’ll have to start my farm all over again. It’s not that bad to have to start over, I was only at the end of the first summer, but now I’m wondering if I’ll lose my next savegame at some random time. Bah.

I feel nervous and jumpy today, for no reason. Very annoying. I’m cooking dinner right now, just taking a little break while the pasta sauce cooks (one red bell pepper, diced, some chopped green onions, two crumbled-up hamburger patties, half a jar of marinara sauce). I’ll serve that over 4-color vegetable radiatore (a.k.a Brain Pasta) with chard sauted with garlic and chicken broth. I may be nervous and jumpy but I can still cook a nice dinner.

Harvest Moon for DS was released on the 15th.  Dan had pre-ordered it and, the day it came out,  brought home a copy for me for a late birthday present!  I’ve been playing it a lot over the last few days and I can safely say that it’s an excellent game.  Gone is the annoying 5-item rucksack limit!  You start now with a rucksack that’ll hold 15 items, and like items will STACK (up to 99 per stack)!   You can carry all your tools with you at all times.  You can wander about and pick up 16 bamboo shoots, a handful of red grasses,  some Pink Cat flowers, and a stack of chopped lumber, without running home constantly!

The graphics are Friends of Mineral Town style, with nicely-updated large portraits.  The touch screen is used to great advantage — you can be looking at a map (zoomed in or distant) while you’re running around town.  You’ll never get lost (I get lost a lot).  You can select or stack items (or split stacks with rapid taps! Thanks, Dan :) in your rucksack with the stylus.   Eventually, animal care can be performed on the touch-screen but I have no animals yet so I can’t comment on that aspect.

Your bookcase at home now holds many helpful books — the business hours of all the stores, for instance, and the growth cycles of all the possible crops.  Most purchases are made over the telephone in your house (you’re ordering from the stores in Mineral Town).

It’s a tremendously fun game.  The only thing I really wish for is a notification of the selling price of the items you drop in your collection box (c.f. Magical Melody).

Man, I still feel worn out from Henry’s party.  I think next year we’ll limit the guest list to 5 kids and skip the pinata.  I hate pinatas. Didn’t sleep well last night from leftover party anxiety.  Henry’s edgy and worn out, too.  He’s interesting.  He enjoys groups but is noticably drained and frazzled by too much socializing.  He’s more extroverted than me — copes with groups better for sure — but still quite an introvert in some ways.  He’s definitely happiest spending time with one friend at a time, and even then needs considerable alone time to recharge after the friend goes home.

Today was Henry’s Birthday Party. It was very nice — 10 fun and friendly children (including Henry), swimming, general playing, pizza, cherry pie, ice cream, a pinata. I think everyone had a really nice time. It only lasted from 3 to 6 but wiped me out completely. I’m a typical introvert — it makes me feel exhausted and rather ill to be in a crowd of people for any length of time, no matter how pleasant they are. Henry’s dad took Henry and Fargo back to his house to spend the night so now I’ve got some quiet again. Maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Read this article from boingboing.net and see if it makes you want to buy a movie from Amazon Unbox…

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/15/amazon_unbox_to_cust.html

Or maybe it makes you want to vomit, and then make sure everyone you know reads that article as well. Pass it on.

I just found out that the beautiful Miss Hazel Margaret Berner was born on my birthday (Aug 27th)!  Welcome to the world, Hazel!

The new iPod nanos are cute! Colorful aluminum is much better than black or white plastic. I might be tempted by the 4-gig green model if I didn’t already have a perfectly good green 6-gig mini, heheh :)  I don’t need a color screen badly enough to spend $200 and lose 2 gigs. I love my mini, anyway, and it’s only 13 months old and works perfectly. Seems like apple would be wiser to wait a little longer between new product releases.

I finished cataloging the second half of Our Island Story, which Jim and I read as a duet, each of us taking every other chapter. Here it is!

Our Island Story, part 2

And now I need a new solo project to work on and I’m open to suggestions. Here are my criteria:

• The book must be in the public domain (published before 1923 in the US)
• The book must be children’s literature
• No Oz (I’m tired of Oz)
• No collections of fairy tales
• Nothing really “cute” (no Raggedy Ann, for instance). No Happy Rabbit’s Adventures in Candyland.

I’ve done a lot of girl books (Heidi, etc.) and I’d love to do a boy book. Something adventuresome? Please post if you have a book meeting these critera that you’d like to hear!

Any opinions about Kim, by Rudyard Kipling?  I’ve never read it but I love the Just So Stories (which are also tempting).

Busy and fun day.  Henry and I went out to do errands, including returning a book to the library.  While we were there he asked a very nice children’s librarian for recommendations. He told her his favorite books and she led him around and helped him pick out a good stack of the dark fantasy books he loves so much.  He’s a reading machine lately.  He started on A Wind in the Door right away in the car (lucky guy can read in the car without getting sick).

In the afternoon I helped him record more Pirate’s Chorus parts for librivox’s Pirates of Penzance production.  I tried again to record Ruth but my voice is just not good enough.  Sigh.  So I gave up on that and passed the part along to someone else.  Before my students came we baked a cake, too.  Then I taught, then took him to karate and watched the class for a change, then came home and made dinner, which was brown rice, stir-fried veggies, and Trader Joe’s Hawaiian Beef, yummy!  Plus cake for after of course :)

Dan and I started watching Survivor Thailand last night so tonight we get to watch the second episode.  It’s wonderfully soothing bedtime television.

Woke up way too early but lay in bed and dozed and listened to the Efren Ramirez (Vote for Pedro!) episode of loveline. By the time it was over it was a decent hour, 8 am, and I got up. Worked on LibriVox stuff for a while, fixed some screwy non-English characters in several long posts. By the time I was done with that my voice had woken up too and I recorded my last seven chapters of Our Island Story! Jim already finished his and spliced the last chapter together (we alternated reading the List of Kings) so after Anna proof-listens it, I can catalog it! Wooohoooo!

Also beat the Boss in the Wavy Beach world in Super Princess Peach. Oh, what a good game!

The weather has changed!  Autumn is on the way!  It’s still mainly warm in the daytime but I’ve been taking a sweatshirt with me when I go out because it’s chilly (to me) in the shade sometimes, and the nights are cool.  My feet are cold all the time again, and I’ve been wearing the brown wool toe-up socks I made last year.  I finished one of my blue and white cotton socks this afternoon, too tired to get up and take a picture though.  And now I suppose I should make the other one to match, except what I really want to do is use some of my new green Jawoll sock yarn and make some nice wool socks, maybe lace or cable for a change.  but I really should finish the cotton socks.  Here’s what I hate: self-patterning sock yarns.  Eww.  I’ll do my own patterning, thanks.  My nearest LYS has a big basket full of nice skinny wool-blend sock yarns — but not a solid color in the basket!  All nasty self-patterning stuff.  Bleah. So I went to the further LYS for nice solid Jawoll.

Tired tired tired.  The budgies went bananas early this morning and woke Henry and me up, but we had a nice morning anyway.  Made him a blintz and read The Talking Parcel to him on the porch until his dad came to pick him up for the weekend.  Then I came in, put the birds in the laundry room, re-installed my USB mobilepre drivers (trying to get rid of obnoxious clicking — it worked!), and recorded 4 more chapters of Our Island Story.  Jim is done with his half and I just need to read 7 more short chapters and then we’ll be done!  So exciting.  Henry started listening via my podcast the other night, and got up in the morning brimming with excitement.  He loves it!   He was telling me all about Vortigern’s exploits :)

From Boingboing.net:

The Section 115 Reform Act (“S1RA”) is back, and its provisions smashing Internet fair use are as bad as ever. Among many subtle, dangerous changes to copyright law, the bill implies that licenses from copyright holders are needed for every digital copy made in the transmission of digital media — including cached copies on servers or on your hard drive, and even temporary copies in RAM. The bill is coming up for a key vote in the next two weeks.

Take action now by visiting EFF’s action center and help stop S1RA. More info on the bill here.

Please click the EFF link, get your representative’s number, and CALL.

This morning Henry and I went out to get something to paint blue swirly designs on his body, so he could be a Celtic Warrior (Last night he followed directions in the Story of the World activity book for a double-bladed axe, a dragon brooch, and a cloak.) We thought of blue body paint, but the costume store didn’t open til 10 and we were out at 9:30. So we went to Target and bought Crayola washable markers. They worked great. Henry drew blue swirls all over himself and posed for photos in his Celtic Warrior costume:

A nice fellow from Channel 10 news, Kyle Majors, came over this afternoon to do a quick interview about LibriVox for the Tech news spot. He was super-nice and geeky enough to know what archive.org is. Also he’s a Mac guy, heheh, so he gets automatic cool points. He asked better-than-average questions. The spot will probably air on Monday or Tuesday. I’ll let you know how it turns out…

This afternoon Henry and I did a lot more projects out of the History activity book! I read him the first chapter, Fall of the Roman Empire, and the rest of the second chapter about the Celts and how Vortigern invited the Angles and the Saxons to Britain. Then we made a cookie-dough Ruined Roman Column (and some cookies, too) and colored a map page. Henry likes the little tests so we did a couple of those too. We had so much fun doing projects together! I’m really tired now, but at least I had enough energy to do projects for a few hours :)

Mom took me out birthday shopping today! We had a great time. We went to Common Threads (1996 called, they want their website back, but the store itself is wonderful) in Encinitas to look at yarn and things, then we got a little bit lost on the way to Barnes and Noble but we found them eventually. Mmmmm yarn and books!
This aftenoon there was some actual quiet, except for the budgies, so I recorded my part for Twelfth Night (The Sea Captain, lol) and two chapters of Our Island Story. Getting some annoying clicking with my new mic setup, even after a reboot, grr, but the sound quality between the clicks is very nice so I guess I can put up with a few clicks. Sigh.

Henry and I were looking through his educational materials and he spotted the Celtic Brooch pattern in the Story of the World activity book. And then he saw the Celtic Double-Bladed Axe project! Go read his blog (spaceman3000.blogspot.com) and he’ll tell you all about it. I also read the Ancient Celts chapter of the history book to him, so we covered a lot of edumacational ground today, and will have some “work samples” to give to Karen. Lol, “work samples”. So lame, so pointless. But we play the game nicely because Henry likes the people and classes at Bayshore ;-)

This afternoon, Henry and I went to a really fun gathering of homeschoolers who like Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. While the kids played, I got a lot of knitting done! Turned my heel and began the leg ribbing. Here are photos:

Snazzy, huh? :) I’ll probably work a solid-color ribbing band soon and stop.

Notes to self: work 9 white stripes, then start heel flap. Inc one st so heel-stitch looks nice. Work 4 rows per stripe, 3 stripes each color.  After third white stripe, turn heel in blue (6 st. each side).  Pick up side stitches with blue, dec at sides every other round back down to 44 st total.

Felt pretty good today, did a lot of stuff — errands, housework, even some recording! Now I’m tired and ready for bed but I just wanted to mention that greencine.com sent us a wonderful documentary about Mister Rogers: Fred Rogers – America’s Favorite Neighbor. Henry and I watched the whole thing after dinner. We loved it. Mister Rogers was a great person.

I’ve started some cotton/acrylic toe-up socks. I actually started them a few days ago, but I wasn’t happy with my first few tries and kept starting over. Now I’m on the right track, though.
Materials:

• Plymouth Yarn Wildflower D.K. 51% cotton/49% acrylic 1 skein dark blue, 1 skein cream, each color divided into two equal-sized balls.
• Skinny gray little dp needles

Pattern: adapted from Footed, Toe-Up Socks and Denise’s Toe-Up Sock.
Here’s what I’ve done so far, just to help me remember and make the other sock the same – not a good idea to try to follow these directions if you’re a beginner! BLUE: CO 8 w/ loop method. K8, turn needle over, K8 in the back of the loops. (16 st)
Inc (twisted YO technique) both sides every round, two times. (24 st). Inc one side only, every row, to 38 st. Then inc same side every other round to 44 st. End of toe.

Start stripe pattern: 3 rows each color. K2P2 rib on top of sock. (K the first round after color change, then rib 2 rounds.)

Here’s my progress so far:

To be continued…

What would have happened to the folk music explosion in the mid-twentieth century if Barbara Allen, The Erie Canal, and We Shall Overcome (etc.) had been under copyright?