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June 30 — Henry swam twice again today :) Dan came out with us the second time and it was really nice to sit with him and watch little Henry swimming and playing! Hmm what else happened today… Dan taught me how to play Starcraft, which is pretty fun, and I cut out all the pattern pieces for my new shirt. There are 11 or 12 of them… I started laying them out on the cloth and then decided to practice my banjo for a while. I’ll work more on my shirt tomorrow. Oh I also unloaded all the digital pictures from the fair, so one of these days I’ll make a nice webpage with thumbnails. I think Henry would probably enjoy helping me write captions for them!

June 29 — Lovely summery day, but not TOO hot yet. Took Henry swimming twice when he looked out his window and saw fun kids in the pool. I hid in the shade and knitted (working on a little project in “domino knitting” which is new to me and kind of fun) and read my book. When Henry wasn’t swimming, I worked on a vest for him, a vest for his Morris dancing costume. He’s getting good enough to perform with the team, so he needs a vest :) I did a good job, if I say so myself. I made a good pattern, and then after I got the main pieces sewn together, I understitched all the way around, which is a pain but absolutely necessary if you want smooth nice edges. I did a good job topstitching and doing the buttons and buttonholes, too, and it looks really great on him! Ok time for a little food and then early to bed.

June 28 — Henry and I spent all day at the fair! We had a wonderful day. Henry won a blue ribbon in the “Best Animal Noise” contest, we watched some “Botbash” robotic combat and the Team Penning, looked through the commercial buildings, looked at the horses, hung out with Sally for a little while, watched the amazing Hypnotist… It was a lovely day :)

June 27 — I spent an hour and a half at the fabric store today, thinking and planning and browsing. It was lovely :) I only spent $13, too! I got some black batiste for a new shirt — I bought the pattern years ago but it’s really complicated so I got scared and never used it. I think I’m brave enough to give it a shot now; I’m a better dressmaker than I used to be. Also got some darling green batiked fabric for a pair of drawstring shorts. I think I’ll add pockets this time. And I got half a yard of iron-on interfacing just to be sure I had enough. I must have looked at every piece of cloth they had! It was very relaxing and fun :) Henry came home in the afternoon, and we played a little Zelda and then watched some TV together. He’s into The Justice League which is a cartoon full of all the superheroes you can think of, so of course he thinks it’s the best thing EVER. Also worked a little on a new web design project. (I think KC can guess… :)

June 26 — Dan took me out to dinner tonight — a nice treat :) I worked all day on a new sleeveless blouse. I started it a long time ago, trying to recreate a lovely blouse I saw in the J.Jill catalogue but didn’t want to pay $70 for :) Well, something went awry, and I gave up temporarily. Today I dug it out and figured out how to salvage it by changing the front slightly, so I did that and it turned out great. I almost gave up again, because I didn’t think it was turning out very well, but Dan said it was looking really good and that I should finish it so I did! Here’s how to draw a dragon! Check out all his majesty!

June 25 — Hmm, did a lot of stuff today… groceries, started making a new LoTR tape for Henry (one of his old ones broke the other night and he was tragically sad, so we’re re-recording that section of the book), also sewed a tough apron-thing for Dan so his clothes won’t get destroyed while he tinkers with his helicopter, um what else… taught piano students, took Henry to karate, picked up a library book that Wastrel recommended, unjammed Dad’s printer, took H down to SD… and tonight I lazed around on our giant bed and played with Dan’s Powerbook while he did helicopter stuff. And we listened to Loveline :) Chloe if you’re reading this my email to you is still bouncing and yes I’m sure I’m using the right address (just hitting “reply” to your letters)… I’ll try again tomorrow :)

June 24 — After Karate, we went for a little walk on the beach. Today was the first day this year that really felt like summer, and the beach was so lovely! Henry played in a giant hole, and I walked back and forth in the soft sand for a little while. We didn’t stay long… I didn’t have a hat or sunscreen or anything so i was afraid I’d get burned (yes, even at 6pm). We have a plan to go back again on Friday, after work! Picked up some sturdy denim at the fabric store for a work apron for Dan. Lots of lovely stuff is on sale this week so I’m planning to go back soon :) I’m really enjoying sewing lately because I have this nice large work area! Kirsten came over tonight and we introduced her to homestarrunner.com. Heheheheh.

June 23 — H and I went to the wild animal park tonight! They’re open at night for summer. We got there about 6, and went on the monorail tour right away which was great — the animals were very active and there were only about 15 people on the whole train so when our driver stopped so we could look at things, it was very quiet and we could hear the animals making neat animal noises. There were also tons of native bunnies and mule deer running around :) Then we ate our picnic and ran back to the car for my coat because I was freezing, heh. Then we saw the nifty African Acrobats show, and then Henry played with some nice kids and then we headed home. It was really super-fun, and we’re looking forward to lots more night-time visits this summer. Dan sent me this article about the guys who do homestarrunner.com. Good article, smart clever guys, great website :)

June 22 — Henry’s home! He’s such a sweetie. He helped me make lemon cupcakes for dessert! And his wiggly tooth FINALLY fell out, so the tooth fairy can come tonight. I started reading a very interesting book: “I Want That! How We All Became Shoppers” by Thomas Hine. It’s kind a cultural history of shopping and it’s really neat so far.

June 21 — Ugh nyip’s colo had serious connectivity problems and Dan had to deal with it all day… We had a good day anyway though :) I finished my plaid pants! I made bias binding for cuffs, very cute. Dan took pictures… here’s one of me looking pretty normal and here’s one of me striking a goofy model pose. Yes it was a royal pain to get the plaid matched. I basted it all by hand, before I machine sewed it. Tonight we watched all six hours of the BBC Pride and Prejudice! I hadn’t watched it in a long time and it was really fun to watch it all in one day.

June 20 — I worked on my long plaid pants! Got them cut out (took forever to match the plaid), basted, sewn, edges finished, zipper installed. Will finish hem and waist tomorrow. It will be a cold day in hell before I make anything out of stretchy plaid again! Heheheh :) Very late, time for bed. Except I’m hungry and I won’t sleep well so now I’d better find some food.

June 19 — I just saw the most amazing segment of Antiques Roadshow. This nice old guy brought in an old Navajo blanket… and it turns out to be worth possibly a half a million dollars — it’s extremely rare, and a National Treasure. You can read the whole story here. I was glad that such a pleasant old gentleman got the good news, and not one of those know-it-all bitchy old women who bring in their stuff and then argue with the appraiser ;-) It’s pretty funny when they do that… they start giving the appraiser lots of “facts” about whatever-it-is, and then the appraiser tells it like it is and the old women look like they bit a lemon. Anyway, reading the article about the navajo blanket was fascinating — I never went to the Antiques Roadshow website before but it’s really neat. I spent a ton of time today reading reviews of portable mp3/cd players… there are so many, but I’m thinking the iRock “bling” is a pretty good choice. Terrible name, but it looks like it does everything I want and it’s < $100. Hmm, I’d better make a birthday list ;-)

June 18 — It’s been a good couple of days for movies. Thanks, TCM and the TiVo :) Yesterday I watched “It Happened One Night” (1934, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) and finally got to see the end! That’s an excellent movie. It does teach one important lesson: if you go somewhere unexpectedly, leave a NOTE! And today I finally got around to watching “Guys and Dolls” (for the umpteenth time). I don’t care much for Sky and Sarah, so I tend to fast-forward their scenes and get straight to Nathan and Adelaide. “Yes, it’s good old reliable NATHAN! Nathan Nathan Nathan DETROIT!” There are some killer songs in that show, the kind that you keep singing for three days :) Henry and I sing “Adalaide’s Lament” in the car a lot.

June 17 — Tonight Dan gave me the most lovely ring I have ever seen. It’s white gold, with delicate little patterns carved into it, a dark-blue sapphire in the center, and four little diamonds on the sides. It’s so beautiful. Thank you Dan — I love my ring and I love you :)

June 16 — Henry and I went for a walk on the beach this evening, when I was done doing stuff at Mom’s house. It was very gloomy, but not very cold, and I took a good fast walk for about 20 minutes, while Henry dug in the sand and buried himself :) I walked back and forth near him, 100 feet in one direction and then 100 the other. Very nice! I read “The Mirror Crack’d” by Agatha Christie a couple days ago… I remembered it as being pretty good but really, it wasn’t. There were a lot of odd plot holes and stuff that the author never explained. There are a few more of her books in the same volume, so I’ll give another one a try… Also I have a book of short stories by Dorothy Sayers to work on. I finished another pair of shorts today, so next I will work on my long plaid pants and a Morris dancing vest for Henry.

June 15 — Watched “Father of the Bride” tonight (1950, Spencer Tracy, Liz Taylor). What a treat to see such a fine movie… well acted, well written, delightful dialogue, not a single clunky moment. I wonder if any movie made this year will hold up so well in 53 years… Somehow I doubt it.

June 14 — Well, since I goofed up my plaid pants and had to buy more cloth anyway, I used the pieces I had already cut and the leftover cloth and made the World’s Cutest Shorts. They are short and tight and stretchy and plaid! We rented “The Rock” tonight (Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage). It was pretty good. It would be good if action movies would concentrate on action, plot, and story, and forget about being heartwarming and/or funny. Also, skip the long, pointless, boring car chases and just make the movie shorter. That will be fine. But Sean Connery makes any movie good. :) I’m very tired tonight so I’m dictating this to Dan (hi!) :)

June 13 — We had a great day at the fair. :) Tickets were only a dollar at the grocery store, for opening day, so it was totally crowded. Mercy. We parked in the far-away, park-for-free lot and waited more than an hour to catch the shuttle, but we finally got there and had a great time together. My afghan won 2nd place in my division!! And Henry’s collection won 2nd place in his!! So that was very exciting to see :) We also looked at the animals, and some of the other crafts and hobbies, and took a quick walk through the Design in Wood room. We had to leave pretty early so there’s a lot of stuff we missed, but that’s ok — as exhibitors, we got two free tickets so we can go again before the fair is over :) Maybe we’ll go in two weeks, when they are doing the Team Penning in the arena. I think Henry would enjoy that! We took lots of other good pictures and I just thumbnailed and uploaded them but I’m pretty tired so I think I’ll fix up my picture page tomorrow sometime. Hmm, maybe I can get Dan to take his laptop to the field and I can do it from there! Dan has been working for _hours_ tonight on my old Riovolt, which completely quit working a while ago so I’ve been musicless in my car. He’s got it all taken apart, and he’s not sure he can fix it but he seems to be having fun, trying. Wonderful Dan :)

June 12 — Late night I slept well and didn’t wake up ’til the alarm went off. And my neck is almost all better, too! It was a very pleasant day. I took henry to play with Mom, which made him extremely happy and joyful. He’s so lucky to have such a fun grandmother! While they played I did a few errands, came home, deleted my spam, took a shower, and then went back to pick him up. After we got home and I made lunch for everyone, I read him another Junie B. Jones book (Junie B. Jones and the Ucky Blucky Friutcake) which had us laughing out loud! And then I took him to gymnastics and then went over to Dad’s house and then home again. Henry and I are going to the FAIR tomorrow! We’re very excited! We’ll probably go see his collection first, and then my afghan, and see if we won ribbons!

June 11 — I woke up yesterday with a horribly stiff/sore neck and shoulders… also slept badly and woke up too early so I felt pretty crummy all day. That’s why I didn’t post an update here yesterday. Today my neck is a bit better. Woke up with a headache (blah) but I had a good day anyway. Henry helped me with the grocery shopping and all, and he and Dan were extra-sweet to me :) I went in our room and closed the door and had some lovely quiet time this afternoon which was really nice — I lay there in the cool quiet dark room and listened to my new audiobook, which RULES. It’s so funny — I was lying there laughing out loud! It is “Notes from a Small Island” by Bill Bryson. I can hardly wait to listen to the next disk!

June 09 — Caring for your Introvert — interesting article. I think a lot of the people in my family are introverts. (Understatement) This morning I took Henry to the zoo, and we had a fine time! We watched the Sea Lion show (as usual) and walked around the Hoof and Horn mesa to see the zebras and giraffes and things, and then down into Cat Canyon to visit the Panther, and then up to see the new orangs-and-siamangs exhibit which is awesome!

June 08 — I spent hours and hours today planning my new plaid pants and matching up the plaid and cutting out the fronts… and then, as I was laying out the back pattern I realized that I’d cut the fronts out with the stretch going the wrong way — up-and-down. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr! Dan was very very sympathetic and offered to buy me more cloth! I’m so glad that fabric was on sale. Boy I would have felt terrible if it had been more expensive. I stopped at the fabric store and bought another two yards so I can get it right this time :) After I picked Henry up he ate his dinner while I played a little more Zelda. I think we’re nearly to the Boss in this dungeon. Eeek! Let’s see what else happened today… I started watching “June Bride” (a Bette Davis comedy) and am enjoying it a lot. Thank goodness for TCM — one of the few stations that ever plays anything worth watching.

June 07 — Lovely day :) I slept very well last night and felt good all day! I watched “The Miracle Worker” which was an excellent movie, and set up a bunch of auctions, and hung around. Dan treated us to pizza from That Pizza Place (best pizza around) for dinner and I made a chocolate mousse for dessert, and we watched FotR (extended version) up to the part where Frodo gets to Rivendell but we are sleepy now so we’ll finish tomorrow. Wowee wow wow, the extended version is AMAZING! It doesn’t have that feeling of rushing through the story as the theater version did, and all the tiny little “unimportant” bits that got cut out really add a lot to the feel of the whole thing. I just updated my crafts page so take a look :)

June 06 — Tonight I watched “Dial M For Murder” which I’d never seen before! Good old Hitchcock. Henry and I delievered his Tiny Vehicle Collection to the Fair today! He set it up in the display case himself and did a great job. The nice lady who stood with him (parents had to sit elsewhere so they wouldn’t help) chatted with him a lot and told me afterwards that he’s an exceptional child. Yes, he sure is! The kid ahead of us in line was delivering some lego figures that he’d made… After looking at them for a minute it slowly dawned on me that they were homestarrunner characters! He’d made Homestar, The King, The Cheat, and Strong Bad! What a cool kid! I hope the judges know about homestarrunner.com :)

June 05 — Henry’s home! Yayyyyyyyy! I didn’t sleep well last night for some reason, so I felt tired and gritty all day, but I still had a nice day. I mended my pants and the nightgown with a torn strap, and _finally_ chopped the tight long sleeves off my flannel dress and gave it sensible short sleeves so now I can wear it! Forgot to mention yesterday that I cleaned about four boxes of junk out of our closet and gave/threw it away so I’m really proud of myself. Today I did a similarly good job in Henry’s room so that’s a lot of clutter eliminated.

June 04 — Dan took me out to dinner! We went to the Greek Corner Cafe, which we really like. I had moussaka (I think that’s how you spell it) and this really good soup. We had such a nice time! While I was out grocery shopping this morning I stopped at the fabric store to see if they had any incredible bargains, ’cause I need some more shorts and summery pants. I found some darling tan-black-red plaid fabric for less than $3/yard! It’s poly/rayon/spandex and has a little stretch, so it will make very cute pants. I’m going to use the pattern I made for my other pants but make them a little tighter, because of the stretch. I bought the zipper, too, and all for less than $8. And now I have a new sewing project!

June 03 — I’m keeping Dan company while he works on his helicopter… I just did a puzzle in my new GAMES magazine, and read a long article about a cool-sounding game called “Puerto Rico”. Like Settlers, it takes at least three people to play and it’s very complex, so we’ll have to wait until Henry gets a little older. Or we could find some game-playing friends!

June 02 — Henry left for a little trip to SF with his dad… it’s kind of quiet around here now! Dan and I drove around doing errands and stuff for a few hours this afternoon which was unusual and pleasant. And I spent a while at popcap.com playing games. It’s a nice site — the games are java so if your browser will do java, you can play. I like Candy Train a lot, and also Tip-Top which is ODD but strangely addictive and very fun! And if you don’t have a palm you can play Bookworm and Bejeweled there, too :) Kirsten came over tonight and we sat around and I showed her how to play Worms World Party (we’ll do a three-player game next time maybe) and we watched Malcolm in the Middle which was ok… not as good as last time. Still, a nice change from Seinfeld and Simpsons. I happened to notice an Antiques Roadshow getting recorded! YAY for the Roadshow!

June 01 — It’s June already? When did that happen? Today was a very very good day. First I didn’t hear my alarm go off, well, actually I heard it and it made me dream about a garbage truck backing up, heheh. But Dan heard it and kindly woke me up! And then I took the acura to San Diego to pick up Henry, and since the acura has a radio I listened to the “A Way with Words” show on NPR, and then part of PHC on the way home, which was fun! And then Henry kept me company and helped while I played Zelda for a while. I finished the Temple of Earth part (the boss was EASY!) and started the Temple of Winds part. Henry is tremendously good at helping me remember where I’ve been and where I have to go next, and he helps me remember the little tunes that I have to conduct, and he has good ideas for solving puzzles. And then the three of us went to see the 4:00 show of Finding Nemo but when we got there we discovered that not only was the 4:00 show sold out, but every show up to the 6:50 show was too! Crazy. We went to see Matrix 2 on opening day and it wasn’t sold out. Of course, Finding Nemo was _good_… Anyway, we bought tickets for the later show and went home, and passed the time most pleasantly — Dan worked on his helicopter and we kept him company while I read two Junie B. Jones books out loud to Henry. And then we went to the movie and had a great time all together! We took rice cakes, homemade popcorn, girlscout cookies, and water. We’re always paranoid that they’ll search my backpack so we hide a few things in pockets too, just in case. They never seem to care though. Finding Nemo was good, very enjoyable. Good job Pixar!

May 31 — Mom came over tonight and we lounged around and talked and played Palm games and kept Dan company while he worked on his helicopter. I finished my current little stiching project, which will make a nice bookmark I think. Oh this morning I turned my torn linen pants into cute shorts, yay!

May 30 — Henry and I went to the 8pm performance of the Fern Street Circus tonight! It was amazing. We’ve always gone in the afternoon before, but we agree that we will go at night from now on. The lighting effects made it extra magical, plus we didn’t get hot and sunburned :) Gosh all the performers were great. Henry’s favorite was the stiltwalker- spaceman. He’s already dreaming up a similar costume. :) He shook the spaceman’s hand after the show, which was a huge thrill! One of my favorite acts was the acrobat-guy who got stuck in his own ladder while trying to impress the girl from the audience. I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much! The “Rings of Saturn” hula-hoop girl was fantastic, the spanish web girl was lovely, the tumblers, acrobats, and jugglers were exciting! What an amazing show. We sat on the grass right up next to the ring, so the performers were, at times, just inches away from us. Thrilling :)

May 29 — I delivered my afghan to the fairgrounds today! It was neat walking around the place with all the workers setting things up for the fair. Well, my afghan was just as pretty as anything else that I saw being dropped off… so wish me luck! They gave me a free ticket for the fair and a magnet reminding me what day to pick it up again, too. I can hardly wait to go see it displayed with all the other lovely things in the home arts show!

May 28 — I’m making some soup right now — barley, garlic, potato, tomato, zuchinni, and a few noodles. Yum! I love a good hearty soup. It smells really good. I can hardly wait ’til it’s done! A few days ago I foudn (gasp) a couple of fun Palm games that I’d never tried before. They’re all astraware games. Bookworm is fun and rather relaxing, since it’s not timed. I like the non-traditional stacking of the letters. Text Twist is much more challenging, and also very fun. I can usually find the 6-letter word, but I have yet to find _all_ the smaller words. Bounce Out is pretty good too — it’s a Bejeweled-type game, but not quite as pretty. It’s entertaining enough for me to have played it every night since I got it :)

May 27 — Mom took me to the Good Feet store today and she bought me a whole set of their nifty arch-support things. The saleslady was really nice and took lots of time to fit my feet just right. I think they will be really good! I wore them all day (switching from pair to pair as directed) and my feet don’t ache or feel tired. My feet don’t always ache at night but they usually do so I think it’s a good sign. I read another Junie B. Jones book to Henry tonight. I’m really enjoying that series! I think there’s only one more in the house that we haven’t read yet, so it’s time for another trip to the library. Arghhhhh I was in linux all weekend but jkust now I had to reboot into windows so I could use Quicken and it’s sooooo aggravating. Soon I am going to make Quicken work in linux (Dan says wine or vmware will do it) and then I will stay in THE LUNIX!

May 26 — Happy birthday Dad!

May 25 — Henry’s been having a little bit of trouble falling asleep lately; I think it’s the same overactive brain problem that Dan and I have. So I’ve been trying to think of calming things that he can do to pass the time and distract himself from thoughts of “why am I not asleep yet?” etc. Today I got out my first palm, my IIIxe, and put fresh batteries in it and loaded it up with Henry-games, and then at bedtime I told him he could play with it as a special bedtime toy. I think it worked! Palm games are usually not terribly exciting or stimulating, so they’re a good way to relax before sleep. As soon as he’s a proficient reader he can read himself to sleep, too.

May 24 — We went out to the field today and I listened to my wonderful audiobook and drew knots. Very pleasant and I finished my book! The reader, David Suchet, was amazingly good. He made Poirot seem likeable.

May 23 — I finished my lace edging and washed and ironed it and sewed it to my pillowcase this morning. Very pretty — I’ll post a photo one of these days. Right now I’m keeping Dan company while he cleans up his worktable in the bedroom. I finished weaving the ends into my afghan so it’s all done! Hmm, gotta post a photo of that, too. Man, I’m sleepy.

May 22 — Just watched the season finale of Enterprise. It’s the first one in a long time that didn’t make me wish I was doing something else, so that’s a good sign I guess. Maybe the next season will suck less than this one did :) We went to the Wild Animal Park with some homeschool friends and had a fine time, but it was HOT. And I got sunburned _through_ the long-sleeved shirt and giant hat that I wore all day. Grrrrrr. So does this mean I have to apply sunscreen under my clothes? How delightful. Oh yes, my face and neck got sunburned through sunscreen AND under my hat. Stupid sun. Mom gave me the cutest black rayon embroidered peasant top today! I adore it and washed it so I can wear it tomorrow. I wonder what it will look nice with… jeans shorts if it is hot again, or my black miniskirt, maybe. If it is cold, black leggings? Definitely jeans. After Enterprise when I gave Henry an extra goodnight kiss, and he gave me a Christmas ornament and a necklace that he made for me out of pipe-cleaners and beads! He’s the best, dearest little boy in the entire world.

May 21 — I’ve been reading the “Junie B. Jones” books to Henry (he chose a big stack of them at the library yesterday). He loves them, and I enjoy them too. They are written as if by a 6-yr-old, with some pretty ghastly grammer at times… I sort of edit some of that into proper English while I’m reading. Not all of it, just the parts that I really can’t force myself to SAY.

May 20 — Happy birthday Dampeoples ! And happy LATE birthday to Darren — hope you had a good day, Dui!

Dan has been spending a lot of time at homestarrunner.com lately and of course he shows me the funniest stuff… the best part, I think, is the Strong Bad Email section. There’s a new email every Monday. Some of them are really entertaining! A couple of the best ones are “techno” and “guitar”.

Later… Kirsten came over tonight and we watched Star Trek Nemesis, which was very entertaining and chock full of Star Trekky goodness!

May 19 — This evening Dan was working on his flying wing thing at his long worktable in the bedroom, so I sat in there with him to keep him company. I put on an audiobook and worked on weaving in the thousands of little yarn ends on my afghan and made good progress! The book is good, too — it’s Agatha Christie’s “Evil Under The Sun” and it’s read by a very good reader — David Suchet, I think. He’s fabulous and does all these different voices and reads it juuuuust right. I think Dan was enjoying it too. Maybe I can get him addicted to reading murder mysteries, the way I got him addicted to Tolkien and sci-fi :)

May 18 — My mom gave me an Ionic Hairbrush and it’s so nifty! I’m keeping it at my desk here and I brush my hair with it now and then… I can tell that it’s making my hair all soft and glossy. What a cool gadget! Speaking of gadgets, we went to Circuit City yesterday so Dan could spend a gift certificate that he got for his birthday, and we had a great time looking at stuff there. I’m kind of drooling over the new Palm Zire 71 … it’s the first palm I’ve really been tempted by since my IIIc. It’s small, light, really pretty-looking, fast as lightning, and has a beautiful bright crisp high-res color screen. My IIIc is still going strong but when it eventually dies, I think the Zire 71 would be a fine replacement :) It was also fun looking at the games for Gameboy and Gamecube… After we beat Zelda we’ll probably rent some and see if any are worth buying. I know Henry’d be excited to play the Lord of the Rings games but we’ll have to see how violent they are. I hear good things about Super Mario Sunshine and Animal Crossing, too. They had Metroid running on a new Gameboy and I played for a while (all stooped over — the display was not meant for tall people) and it was quite fun. I’m nearly done with Warioland 4… I’ve beaten all 16 regular levels and one Boss, so there are just three more bosses left, I guess, and then whatever happens after you beat them all.

May 17 — There was a helicopter fun-fly thingy out at the field today, the Hirobo Cup or some such name. While Dan was doing helicopter things and talking to helicopter people, I sat in my comfy chair and crocheted some lace (I’m making an edging for my silk pillowcase (by the way, those instructions have a typo — ignore the “work 13 dc in next sl st” part)), played Warioland 4 (I beat two more levels and a boss!), and listened to an audiobook. Sounds dull, maybe, but really it was quite relaxing and pleasant. This evening we ate two heads of kale and I played Zelda for ages. I’ve got 8 3/4 hearts and I’ve doubled my magic meter!

May 16 — Happy birthday wonderful Dan! I love you so much :) Last night Sally looked after Henry so we could go with Ken to see the 2nd Matrix movie… Going out all together was lots of fun, but the movie was only so-so. It had some cool parts and some long boring pointless parts but nothing really special. Oh well, that’s about what I expected so I wasn’t disappointed. :) We stayed up way too late last night and I am very tired but I only have two students later so I guess I’ll survive. I need 12 hours of sleep again.

Later… Henry and I hung out with Ken after I was done teaching; we ate pizza and watched cartoons on Nick. And while I was teaching, Ken and Henry dug for treasure in the back yard :)

May 14 — Ken came to visit! YAY! I did eight billion things today and now I am exhausted. Henry and I watched Mister Rogers togther and he visited George Roades , the sculptor who makes those amazing kinetic sculptures. There’s one in our hideous Mall, and one in Port Authority. It was really cool seeing his workshop and craftsmen! Hmm, the website is down right now, but it worked earlier. Maybe it got Mister Rogers’d :)

May 13 — When the fan blows on the windowshades in our room it makes a sound like typing. Last night it was worse than usual and woke me up about 6 times, arghhhhhhhhhhh. It sounded like there were TWO typists in the room, which it never did before. I’ve got to figure out a way to keep them from rattling so much. I think with a couple of cuphooks or thumbtacks and some elastic I could rig something up… Got a new color cartridge for Dad’s new printer and now it prints in color, yay! I guess the one it came with was all dried up or something. I finally got a chance to play Zelda for a while today, and I got the third pearl and the 5000 rupee wallet and the special elixer AND I got “swordsman” status from Orca the sword guy.

May 12 — Hey Melissa, watch the mail! ;-)

May 11 — Slept late (9:30), went to the movies and had an all-around Good Movie Experience! We saw “X-Men 2”, which was really quite good, much better than the first X-Men movie. The opening sequence was extremely cool (very good use of Mozart in a movie)! Plus the movie theater was neither too hot nor too cold, and the seats were the comfortable reclining kind, and we got there a little late so we missed all the stupid “trivia questions” and lame commercials, but were there in time for the previews. It’s nice to see a movie and not feel ripped-off afterwards. Doesn’t happen very often.

May 10 — I’m feeling quite a bit better today :) We went out the the field for a few hours, and while Dan flew I listened to my audiobook (Under the Tuscan Sun) which is dull but pleasant, and crocheted a couple of doilies just for fun. I was using this extremely fine crochet cotton and a tiny little hook, and then tonight when I started working on my big afghan the hook felt as big as a garden hoe. Heh. Tonight we watched “Catch Me If You Can” which was pretty good… not great, but still better than your average Hollywood drivel. We finally had a night when Dan didn’t have to work late and I wasn’t feeling sick and horrid, so it was a real treat to spend some time together :)

May 09 — Worked on my afghan a lot today, while I was teaching and then later on while I was watching “Manor House”. I think I will actually have enough black yarn to finish it! I wasn’t sure… but then I found another skein in the closet and now I’m fairly confident that I will be able to get it done soon! I’m so excited to have an entry in the Del Mar Fair. I’ve gone to the fair every year since we moved to San Diego, but have never entered a thing! Henry’s going to display his collection of tiny vehicles in the Kids’ Collections display, too :)

May 08 — Ok I got about 9.5 hours of sleep last night so I do feel a bit better :) I’ll just catch up a little bit here. Yesterday I realized that I’d better check the deadline for Fair entries if I want to enter my afghan — turns out the deadline is May 9! *whew* just made it. So I printed out the form and got it all ready to mail today. Now I just have to finish my afghan! I still have to go around the edge with circles, and then single crochet (I think) and then weave in all the thousands of ends. I have to deliver it to the fairgrounds on May 28th, I think, so I’ll have time if I hustle along a little bit :)

Later… mmm a nice evening. Henry’s in bed, I just played Zelda for a while, Dan has been keeping me company and giving me excellent Zelda Advice, and now I’m going to have some soup, watch a little Seinfeld with him, and go to bed in our nice cozy comfortable bed. Ahhhhhhhhhh.

May 07 — Ugh. Still sick. Long day. Going to bed.

May 06 — Hmm, what did I do today… helped Henry play Zelda, watched Dan play Zelda, played a little Zelda myself. :) I need to take in my new pants a little bit.. which means I’ll have to pick out the zipper etc. I think the fabric stretched out a little. Bah. Oh, well, it won’t be too much of a pain. And I’m also going to patch my worn-out favorite linen pants and make them into shorts. I was thinking of embroidering some flowers around the hem or something, just for fun :)

May 05 — Finished “Julie and Romeo” today. Lovely book! I hope Jeanne Ray will write lots more. Between Dan, Henry, and me, there was hardly an hour today when *someone* wasn’t playing Zelda :) What a game!

May 04 — Still have a little cough, but I feel better. I cleaned up a monstrous pile of junk from the place where a table used to be before it got moved yesterday, read my book (“Julie and Romeo”), and played some more Zelda. I got past the Forbidden Fortress and on to the island where I have to buy a sail, and then I saved so Dan could have a turn, and drove down to SD to get The Atomic Monkey. He is extremely excited about Zelda, and started playing before bed. Before that, while he was watching Dan play, he ran to his room for a few minutes and came out in a Zelda costume! (Well, a Link costume really). Oh, my hardback copy of “Betsy, Tacy, and Tib” got here today! It’s a library discard, so it was only $2 or so, and although it is a bit worn it is far superior in every way than the cheap, disgusting, tacky paperback they had a Bookstar. Yay for quality hardbacks! I hope I can find the rest of the series in similar editions.

May 03 — I’m a little bit sick… a little cough and a little sniffle and I feel a bit run-down, so I had a nice lazy day doing nothing and watching Dan move furniture around to make more room for tinkering with helicopters. He brought me English muffins and juice, and tonight he ran out to the store before they closed to get me a hot water bottle for my chest. And this afternoon he went out for a while and came back with a gamecube and the new Zelda game (Wind Waker) for me, just as a surprise treat! So of course I played for quite a while, heheh. It’s a little hard to get used to the 3-D, since I’m used to nice flat “Link to the Past” Zelda but I’m finally getting the hang of it I think. It’s a very fun game, so far! When Henry gets home tomorrow he’s going to be rather excited, too :)

May 02 — Last night Dan showed me the most amazing, creative car advertisement I have ever seen. You must see it. Now, keep in mind that it’s REAL, not computer animation, not spliced-together camera trickery. It took 606 takes to get everything to work perfectly. You’ll need flash6 to view the ad here: http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html. After you’ve watched it go read the news article at The Daily Telegraph and be amazed! This morning I showed it to Henry and he loved it too — watched it over and over and we talked about all the little parts and stuff. Wow :) Heh, the first time I saw it, I said to Dan, “This can’t have been made in the USA. Has to be from Europe or England.” Bingo. Today Henry and I found a nifty little mini-cache near the pier, and then we took a walk down the pier and found that a large pelican was sitting on the railing near a fisherman, hoping for handouts. We watched him for a quite a while. The friendly fisherman said they call him Charlie, and he hangs around the pier a lot. A couple of tourists got a little too close, trying to get a picture, and Charlie clacked his rather fearsome beak at them. We stayed a respectful distance away. Dan and I rented the first X-Men movie tonight and we’re going to watch it now :)

May 01 — Henry and I went to see the Red Company this morning, way out in Valley Center. It was great! We had such a nice time together. Well, it’s eight o’clock and I’ve already tucked Henry into bed and now it’s bedtime for us, too… we’re both so tired, been woken up by the phone at the crack of dawn every day this week. And so goodnight unto you all.

April 2003

April 30 — I just updated my books page. Mmmmmmmmm, books. Oh, last night Dan realized that a couple of grocery stores around here will allow you to order your groceries online and will then deliver them to you — what geek could pass up trying that at least once? :) So we went to to www.albertsons.com and I did my weekly shopping online. (Vons does it too but I won’t shop at Vons because of the damn Club Cards) The Albertsons website was well-made and easy to manage and I found everything I needed. It cost $9.95 for the delivery — that’s for any size order — and you get to choose a 90-minute delivery window. When the Albertsons guy came today, he brought all my groceries upstairs for me, and they were nice and cold from the refrigerated truck. It was so luxurious! So the only shopping I had to do today was the Trader Joe stuff :) We’re watching Enterprise right now… every week they reach a new low! It’s almost impressive.

April 29 — Went to the library and got a stack of tempting new books, yay! I got another by Jeanne Ray, and I looked for more Mark Dunn but they didn’t have any. And I found a huge book full of the artists’ sketches and designs and stuff for TTT, which thrilled Henry completely.

April 28 — We finished “Little House on the Prairie” today! At bedtime we started “On the Banks of Plum Creek” (we’re skipping “Farmer Boy” because I’ve already read it to Henry two or three times). We curled up on my big cushy bed (we have a new thick featherbed) and I read to Henry for hours. It was lovely :)

April 27 — Henry and I went geocaching again today and had a great time. We found the cache, and then went back to the playground where we had parked and he played for hours with a ton of little kids who were there for a couple of birthday parties, and I read my book (“The Sticklepath Strangler”). We didn’t get home ’til about 6! While he was eating dinner I finished hemming my new pants and they are so cute! I practiced my banjo for a long time tonight, too. I’m working on “June Apple”.

April 26 — Spent most of the day making a pair of pants out of some nice brown & tan plaid cloth I bought ages ago. I made the pattern myself – they’ve got a faced waist (I love faced waists) and a side zipper and they fit very nicely! I wore a hole through my favorite linen pants and wanted some new good pants for work. They’re almost done — just have to handsew the hems, which I was going to do before bed but I think I’m too tired now. So I’ll finish them tomorrow. Tonight Dan and Henry took things apart and played with electronic stuff for a long time, while I sat on the sofa and read. It was so nice hearing the two of them chatting and looking at capacitors and resistors and whatnot :)

April 25 — Took Henry geocaching today! We found two caches and had a great time hiking around. I lost my shoes today. I had them last night, and then this morning I couldn’t find them anywhere. I’ve looked and looked all over the house! WHERE ARE MY SHOES??? I must have done something really insane with them like stuffed them into a pillowcase and shoved them in the freezer or something… They’re red, too, so it’s not like they’re hard to see or anything. Grrrrrr.

April 24 — Started “Little House on the Prairie” with Henry today and read him the first six chapters. It’s so much fun reading great stuff to him. His dental checkup went great and the lovely hygenist said he has been doing a really good job keeping his teeth clean, so that was a relief. We went to the bookstore for a little reward — wanted to get a hardback copy of “Betsy-Tacy and Tib” but all they has was crummy paperbacks so we got a Harry Potter TCG booster pack instead and come home and admired the new cards and played a few times :) Kyle came over tonight for dinner and hanging out, very nice.

April 23 — We got a giant box of girl Scout cookies from the UPS man today! I don’t like the peanut buttery ones but we got Thin Mints which are good and also “Samoas” which I’ve never had before but they get the Kayray Stamp of Approval. Oh I practiced my banjo tonight for the first time in a while! I think I might need new strings. The three tunes I had memorized are still memorized and will sound good again very soon. I didn’t work on anything new because my fingers started hurting very quicky (lost my calluses), but I probably will tomorrow! ok now I swore I would get to bed by 10 so if I start doing my teeth now I can just make it!

April 22 — Henry and I finished “Betsy-Tacy” today! Now we need to get the second book, and I want to find “The Betsy-Tacy Companion” at the library too, so I can show Henry photos of the people and places that the Betsy-Tacy books are based on. I made two pairs of nice stretchy little shorts for Henry today, out of a couple of thick soft sweatshirts that Mom didn’t want. Oh, Dan fixed my car audio problem! A little background… my car originally had an AM radio which stopped working many years ago. About 5 years ago, I acquired a second-hand tape deck and Darren hooked up some speakers for me. So I had tapes for a while, but then the tape player went bad a couple years ago. So then a year and a half ago, for my birthday, Dan and my parents gave me a Riovolt (spiffy mp3/cd player) and a cassette adapter thing that let me send sound out the riovolt, into the cassette player, and out the speakers. Nifty! but then several months ago one speaker quit working and then the whole thing developed a horrid loud staticky buzz, so I was music-less again. Well, Dan checked everything out a couple days ago, thinking maybe the speaker wires had become messed up or something but it turned out that the tape player was unfixably dead. So wonderful Dan created a solution for me! He took a pair of his computer speakers and created a cable that would power them off the cigarette lighter in the car, and of course they plug right into my Riovolt! We tested it out today and it works wonderfully well. Yay we have music and audiobooks on our long drives again!

April 21 — I just put Henry to bed. He asked me to read his copy of “Betsy-Tacy” that I gave him for Christmas! Oh how I love those books. We read the first three chapters tonight, and we plan to spend most of the morning tomorrow reading it too. Dan and I took him geocaching today, to let him find the nice easy cache that we found a couple of weekends ago. We let him hold the GPS receiver and decide which way to hike and everything, and he found the cache right away. Fun :) I’m kind of tired right now. I might work on the pants pattern that I’m making, or I might play games on my computer, or I might practice my banjo. Or i might invite Dan to watch Seinfeld with me. Hmm…

Later… Kirsten came over tonight and we ate and watched a James Bond movie (The Living Daylights) :) Fun!

April 20 — Hmm, what happened today… well, I started some auctions for some of Mom’s old stuff, and drove to Temecula to pick up Henry, and Dan and I finished watching the “Dune” miniseries thing. It was pretty good, quite entertaining. The set designer guy used too many colored lights, though :) I got tired of all the fights-to-the-death. Seems like an unsound survival policy for desert dwellers who probably need as many able-bodied men around as possible.

April 19 — Henry and I watched Looney Tunes together this morning until Matthew picked him up. Lots of them were bad but some were really funny :) Went with Dan to the RC heli field and had a lovely relaxing time watching him fly, reading my book, listening to music (made a new mp3 cd and took along my riovolt and my super-nice padded headphones), doing puzzles in my GAMES magazine, and playing Warioland 4. I beat another level (toxic landfill) but am stuck on the darn “40 below fridge” level. ARGH. Tonight we rented the Sci-Fi channel “Dune” miniseries/movie thing on DVD and watched the first three hours of it. Pretty good! Started getting a migraine in the videostore and by the time we got home it was bad but Dan took very good care of me and made me feel better :)

April 18 — Henry, Sal, Jean, and I (four generations!) took a trip down to San Diego on the coaster today. (The Coaster is a double-decker commuter train which runs along, you guessed it, the coast) It was lovely. We got on at the station in Carlsbad, rode down to SD, hung around in the station for about half an hour and then rode north again. It has rained quite a bit lately so the canyons were lush and green and flowery. Really pretty. Now I want to take a real train trip!

Later… Well we just watched Enterprise. Here’s a tip for all you writers-of-episodes: have SOMETHING happen. Thank you. What else… oh yes last night I finished my book “Step-Ball-Change” which was one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a long time — and i’ve been reading a lot of excellent books lately. I can hardly wait to read her other novel; I sure hope they have it at the library. Tonight I started a murder mystery about a chef called “Beat Until Stiff” but I don’t think I’ll be able to read much more of it. Not very good. I had my doubts on the very first page when Character 1 said to Character 2, “You’re the pastry chef at the hottest restaurant on the West Coast… I’m merely the controller.” Maybe you don’t see what’s so bad about that but it seems like an extremely lazy and bad way for the author to let me know what these people do. There’s got to be a better, less awkward way. Now I’m not fussy enough (barely) to let that stop me from continuing, so I read another chapter or two. The stylistic irritations and unlikable characters have piled up deep enough that I don’t think I can go on, but I have several more tempting new books on the shelf :)

April 17 — Henry and I took turns playing Warioland 4 on the gameboy today after he got home, and I read several chapters of his Henry Huggins book to him. Very pleasant. Mom came over tonight and we watched “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” together. Lol :) I really want to see “A Mighty Wind” (the new Christopher Guest mockumentary). It’s only playing in 130 theaters in the country but lucky for us there’s a theater in San Marcos playing it so I’m hoping we can go on the weekend sometime. Slept in this morning but I’m super tired so it’s bedtime. Goodnight!

April 16 — The TiVo got an episode of the Antiques Roadshow that I’ve never seen before! Oh, that’s a fun show. As I was driving home tonight I watched to full moon coming up all huge and orange. Does everyone feel happy when they see the moon or is it just me? I started reading “Step-Ball-Change” last night and it’s wonderful so far. Another lucky pick from the “new books” shelf, where I stand and judge books by their covers, usually with quite a bit of success.

April 15 — Mom came over tonight and we watched her “Bagdad Cafe” dvd together. That’s a good movie, except for the lame part when everyone starts singing near the end. Anyway we had fun!

April 14 — It rained all day. Really odd for April, and it was cold too. It was the kind of weather we wish for at Christmas time, and instead we get hot summer weather. Crazy. The rain was so beautiful and smelled so good! Henry helped me with the housework and then we played a game and did a puzzle and he read me “Chicken Little” and I read him “Henry and the Paper Route”. His reading is getting so good! Tonight Dan and I are watching Saturday Night Live and it’s actually pretty funny so far. They did a “Wake Up Wakefield” sketch (Megan and Sheldon). We always like those!

April 13 — Dan and I went geocaching this afternoon! It was great. We found the first cache right away, after a short and pretty hike. The second one we looked for turned out to be on the OTHER side of a lake… so we gave up on hiking around it (it was a lot bigger than it looked) and we’ll try again another day and try to park a little closer to the proper side :) Six Feet Under tonight was kind of blah again.

April 12 — I just added Henry’s new doll to my crafts page! This morning I drove Henry down to SD and then came back up here and spent the rest of the day with Dan out at the field. :) I read my book (“Money for nothing” — lol!) and played Warioland 4 on the gameboy. I beat The Doodle Woods! I was stuck on that level FOR-EV-ER but I finally did it! Oh also we went out for dinner and conversation with Rod, a super-nice heli-pilot-friend of Dan’s. That’s something we don’t do often (understatement) and it was a very pleasant experience. On the way home some idiot almost ran a red light as we were driving through the green, jammed on his brakes, and narrowly avoided broadsiding us. Next time, dude, DRIVE SLOWER and WATCH THE LIGHTS!!!

April 11 — It was a good day. I did a lot of stuff. Took Henry out first thing to rent the 2nd Harry Potter movie and let him watch it twice. While he was thus occupied, I cleaned all the kitchen counters and inside the microwave etc and the kitchen looks great! Makes me happy to be able to walk in there anytime and not stick to the floor and be able to find clean dishes and to have counter space for cooking. Also finished the dress and pinafore for our new doll. I’ll try to take a picture tomorrow! And, hmm, what else did I do… well, more house stuff, laundry etc, and did a bunch of math worksheets with Henry. I printed them out for him a few days ago and he adores them. We did a page of number line problems, and then a page of greater-than/ less-than ones, where it’s like 4+5 ___ 6+7 and you put the appropriate symbol in the blank. Man, he thought that was just great! These worksheets are intended for 3rd/4th graders, so I think it’s pretty neat that a little guy who’s only 7 and hasn’t ever been to school or had any formal lessons understands and enjoys them. Oh, and I made good stir-fry for Dan for dinner! oxoxoxoxox :)

April 10 — Bah, tired. Got some Wodehouse at the library, yay! I just started “Money for Nothing” and it’s lovely so far, heheh. Henry chose some Henry Huggins books and I started “Henry and the Paper Route” tonight for his bedtime story. Makes a nice change from Tolkien, although I’m enjoying TTT more now that we’re past the super-epic Helm’s Deep part and are back with the hobbits who speak nice plain english… Wierd weather today, cold then hot then cold. I was wearing the wrong thing at all times.

April 09 — We finished our little rag doll! She is super-cute and I will post a picture soon, after I get her clothes made. I need a new bedtime book, so I hope I get a chance to go to the library soon. Maybe Friday. I started reading “Catch 22” on Dan’s recommendation, but it’s wayyyyyy to tragic to make good bedtime reading. I think I’d better get some Wodehouse or something. I’ve got “Catcher in the Rye” in my palm and that will tide me over until I get something else, not that I don’t like Catcher but I’ll be done with it pretty soon. It’s short. Poor Holden, he sure hates those phonies.

April 08 — Whew it was hot today again. Henry and I worked on our little rag doll — got her sewn, turned, stuffed, and assembled! Now we just have to do face and hair and make clothes for her :)

April 07 — Happy birthday Kirsten! She came over tonight and we had a great time watching wierd tv (Gidget, Kids in the Hall, Futurama) and discussing the relative merits of all the Star Trek movies :) Henry and I met up with Schmit family at the ice arena, and the kids skated for hours and had a great time, and I worked on my afghan a ton — I’m probably about halfway done with the final step of connecting all the flowers together with black. It looks so good!

April 06 — Ah such a nice day, even though the time change makes me feel disoriented. I hooked up Mom’s new cassette deck for her, and picked up some new shirts and things for Dan, and did two loads of laundry, and tried out quite a few super nintendo roms to see if they might be fun for Henry. Super nintendo seems to have much better games than Sega Genesis did (sonic the hedgehog is really the only fun sega one that I’ve found). The Super nintendo batman game seems pretty good, and Bomberman, and Lord of the Rings, and several others that I tried today. Tonight I worked on my afghan while we watched Six Feet Under. I was able to distract myself from the creepy poser lame-o art “teacher” guy enough that I was less homicidal than last week. I also found a pretty-good cd ripper/encoder for linux (“grip”). There doesn’t seem to be a Debian package for the lame encoder thingy anymore, so I tracked it down and compiled it myself — a simple task but very satisfying — and then ripped and encoded the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band cd for Henry.

April 05 — Spent the day at the helicopter field with Dan — very pleasant and relaxing :) I finished my book (“Backpack”), played Warioland, or whatever it’s called, on the Gameboy, and worked on my afghan. You can see a photo of it in an incomplete state on my crafts page. It’s now further along than that though — I worked on joining two more rows of flowers with black circles today, and discovered that I can get thirty black circles out of one 50 gram ball of yarn. So, theoretically, I could figure out if I have enogh yarn to finish :) We went to have dinner with Chris and his parents at their house tonight (Chris is a super-nice kid whom Dan’s been helping with his helicopter). Very nice evening. Oh yes, MANY thanks to kc for the hilarious weight watchers’ cards link! ROFLMAO!

April 04 — We had a great time in the park this morning with LaRaine and the girls! I made the last flower for my afghan, and then laid them all out in a pleasing arrangement and marked them so I’ll know in what order to attach them all together. Hmm, what else… I know there was something else I was going to say. Oh well, it’ll come to me later. Oh I know! The other night we were watching Lucy, or something on TvLand, and there was an add for “Gidget” and we realized that it was something we’d never seen before so I told the TiVo to record it for us. And then last night we watched it for the first time. (“Gidget” is a sit-com from 1965, which shows you how barren of decent tv the world is, for us to get excited over it) Well, we actually enjoyed it. The plots are thin and predictable, but some of the dialogue is decent and young Sally Field is too cute for words. And I totally drool over every single one of her outfits! Oh the little green-and-blue plaid pants… the little sailor-collared dresses… mmmmm. Give me the Gidget clothes!

April 03 — Well that dear sweet pthreebot sent Henry a sound card, and a video card, and a couple of cds full of emulators and roms! Henry was SO excited to get a box full of computer parts, and he helped me install the sound card right away. Now he has sound and he can play his games again. I set up zsnes for him so he can play Mario and Megaman and his other favorite Super Nintendo games, and then after he went to bed I set up the Sega Genesis emulator and tested out some games… Sonic the Hedgehog brings back some memories! Damn that purple goop in the Chemical Zone! Man, what a cool game. I think Henry will really like that one. Tried out a Power Rangers game and a Batman game and they both pretty much stank, heh. Hard to believe they are for the same system as Sonic.

A few days ago Mom gave us a couple of kits to make lovely little old-fashioned rag dolls. They’re really intended for people who want a doll who looks like a genuine antique, so the kits come with tan dye so you can dye the doll and his/her clothes to make them look old and dirty and “played-with”, and sandpaper to wear down the cloth, lol. But we will skip that part because these dolls will look played-with really fast without any artificial help :) The kits are super-high-quality and the lady that makes them gives some hints I’d never thought of — for instance, tracing around the doll pattern on doubled cloth, then sewing on the tracing line BEFORE cutting out the fabric. That way you get a very precise seamline and you don’t have to match and pin tiny little pieces of cloth. Today I showed Henry how to wash the bits of cloth in the sink, wring them out, and iron them dry. He thought that was just great :)

April 02 — Right now I’m watching “The Man Who Would Be King”… I’ve been watching it a little at a time for about two weeks, heheh. Good movie. Christopher Plummer plays Kipling and it’s quite entertaining to see him being someone other than Captain von Trapp. And I could watch Sean Connery and Micheal Caine any day. I feel better today, almost normal.

April 01 — Bah I have a little cold and I slept extremely badly. It did not help that the sun smacked me in the face at about 6, with the brightness and intensity of a floodlight. Gotta remember to turn the blinds around the right way tonight, not that they block much anyway. I finally got all the photos unloaded off the digicam, the photos of my little cousins who came to visit and had such fun playing with Henry. Lots of great pictures. Dan found the USB cable so I can download directly off the camera and use the software that came with it, which seems pretty useful and makes more sense than firing up Photoshop for cropping and rotating :)

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March 2003

Mar 31 — It was summery again today, but they say we might get drizzle later this week. Good. Too soon for real summer. But it was nice wearing my summer clothes, and eating my dinner on the balcony in the warm evening breeze. Henry has been asking me to make some more clothes for his doll, so today I made her a nice nightgown out of some red flannel we had hanging around. I let Henry iron it, and let him sew some of the short seams by turning the wheel by hand. But mostly he watched and bounced around. I was able to use the sewing machine when I was his age, but I had spent hours watching my mom sew… but I’ll probably let him use the sewing machine for real on the next outfit. Why not? It doesn’t matter if things turn out perfect. *chants to self* Do not be a perfectionist, do not be a perfectionist! Oh, I used non-sew-on snaps to finish the nightgown, the kind you need a pliars-like tool to affix. Henry thought that was GREAT and I let him squeeze the pliars to set them in place! Boy that sure beats sewing on all those little snaps. He also had a fun time making a Potion in the sink, consiting of sudsy water and lots of plastic toys. Yum! And of course he did it in the dark, because he was in a dungeon :)

L.O.L James Lileks on pizza.

Mar 30 — We just watched Six Feet Under. Meh. Whatever. Hate Brenda, hate fakey-fake poser art teacher, hate Nate, hate Lisa, hate Ruth’s kleptomaniac friend. Hate the way Claire blinks. The new apprentice guy seems cool in a very odd way, though. I think he and Ruth will get along just fine. But it’s always lovely to lie on the couch and watch it with Dan, no matter how blah the episode :) Henry and I went to the beach for a couple hours, until the sun started to go down. He dug a big pit, and I admired it and read my book. Lovely :) And I installed a bunch of Necessary Software on Henry’s computer — ncftp, secureCRT, irfanview, winzip, winamp, simcity2k, the incredible machine, worms world party, and zsnes. It’s so fast! pthree’s going to mail us his spare sound card soon, right pthree? :) What a nice good tweenbot he is. <3

Mar 29 — I did lots of errands in the morning — post office (the line was incredibly long), drug store, returned a video, etc. Man it was HOT today. After I got home I did all kinds of nice things. I watched a movie, “The Heiress”, which was great but unfortunately then end was cut off! So the last thing I saw was Morris pounding on the door and Katherine not letting him in (good for her!). If anyone knows how it ends, please email me :) I also de-cluttered Dan’s desk area, and vacuumed underneath it and it’s so nice now! And I worked on Henry’s computer and, by bedtime, I had windows re-installed and everything running fine. It turned out that his hard drive had a lot of bad sectors and errors and stuff that wddiag said were not repairable, but luckily Dan had a spare 13-gig drive hanging around unused so I put that in and everything is fine now! Now all I have to do is find him a sound card and install all the things he needs… Dan’s helicopter friend Kyle came over for dinner and to hang out, which was really fun!

Mar 28 — Yesterday Henry and I got out our watercolors and made some lovely paintings together. I showed him my tube watercolors and showed him how to mix colors, and we had a great time. This morning I took him to his dad’s house and we got to take the Acura because my car is still in the shop, so we had air conditioning (it’s hot today) and a real stereo! We listened to the BBC radio play of LotR on the way down, and I listened to NPR on the way back. When I got home I was really hungry so I made my latest favorite lunch: rice, black beans, and diced tomatoes heated up with a couple of big spoonfuls of cottage cheese and a little soy sauce stirred in. Sounds odd but it’s really quite good. Pretty soon we are going to pick up my car, yay!

Later… yes I’ve got my car back now. It’s so nice to drive it again. The Acura is luxurious but my car feels so good to drive. The seats are really upright or something, I don’t know. Dan just read “Catch 22” so tonight we rented the movie and watched it together. Help the bombardier! It was pretty good, beautifully directed, but I think it would have been pretty confusing if Dan hadn’t told me all about the story already. I have this vague feeling that I watched it a long long time ago with Darren but I don’t have any clear memories of it except the “help the bombardier” parts… Odd. Anyway I felt proud to have identified the guy who played Orr as the guy who played the guy who ran the dog show in “Best of Show” :) (I had a feeling that he was also in Close Encounters and the imdb proved me right)

Mar 27 — Henry is exactly 7.5 today. Sally took him ice skating! I did icky errands all morning. I need to install windows on henry’s computer again but I’m kind of putting it off. Poor kid. his computer got all unstable again so we rounded up enough leftover parts to rebuild it (Dan’s old motherboard and my old videocard) and I put it all together and it should be fine, and better than before, but we need to get him a sound card because his crummy old motherboard had one built-in. Maybe pthree has an extra one…

Mar 26 — My book is so good! Here, the editorial review on Amazon sums it up pretty well.

Mar 25 — Mmmm another lovely spring day. I wore my yellow pillowcase skirt — still haven’t posted pictures of on my crafts page because I can’t figure out where, in which partition on which computer, I stored the photos! Henry took them for me and I remember cropping and rotating them… but where they are now is a mystery. Well, I’ll ask him to take some more. This morning I did the laundry and all the floors and wiped down the bathrooms. The house looks great! I’m so proud of myself for changing the habits of a lifetime and learning a better way to keep house. Go team me, and thanks Flylady! Henry and I played Rivers, Roads, and Rails today, and I read him another chapter of Fellowship… I realized that we’ve been reading it pretty much non-stop since Christmas, when my parents gave him a nice hardback of the whole trilogy. We finished Fellowship already, got about halfway through Two Towers, and then started the Fellowship over again for some reason. Can’t remember why… Frankly, I’m getting a little tired of it but Henry loves it so much that I don’t have the heart to insist on something ELSE for a change. We do read the occasional picture book or whatever from the library, but the default bedtime (or anytime) book is always Tolkien. I’m writing this while waiting for my 6:15 student to show up. Oh I bought 9 gallons of water today too.

Later… Bah my clutch cable broke AGAIN tonight, as I was getting on the freeway to go home. Dan came right away to rescue us, and Triple A sent out a nice tow truck guy. We had my car hauled to Danny’s and I’m sure he’ll fix it right up. I sure am tired of broken clutch cables, though.

Mar 24 — Cold and damp today. Quite a change from the sunny weekend! We took Dan’s car in for an oil change this morning. After we got back I found that I’d left MY lights on and my battery was dead but Dan rescued me. :) This afternoon I cleaned up the crud under the table where the TV lives and it looks so nice now! A couple days ago Dan moved the gigantic speakers that we didn’t use anymore, and now the table is so much less cluttered and more light comes in the window behind the table and it just looks so much better. Got a letter and a lovely card from Melissa today! Hooray! Melissa if you are reading this (and I hope you are) I will write soon!

Mar 23 — This weather was lovely this weekend — sunny, warm, nice cool breezes. Henry and I went out to the helicopter field again to watch Dan fly. We took some good toys for Henry and also there were a couple of nice kids for him to play with — he loved that. Oh and we took his RC car along and he drove that on the new dirt RC car track which is right next to the helicopter area! And I *finished* the book I started yesterday, and began a new one that is excellent so far — “The Natural History of the Rich” by Richard Conniff. I have a little problem with really good books… I want to read them as quickly as possible to find out what happens, but I want to read them as slowly as possible so I can make them last longer. Quickly usually wins, since I’m an insanely fast reader anyway. When I put Henry to bed tonight he decided to listen to his Mister Rogers cd (the Bedtime one) and after I came out to the living room i could hear his little piping voice singing along :)

Mar 22 — Henry and I went to the library this morning and I found three books on the New Books shelf that looked very tempting! One of them, “The Nanny Diaries” looked so good that I started it when I got home and I’m halfway through already. Helped Henry find a stack of books about Robin Hood, too — he just watched the old Robin Hood movie with Errol Flynn in it :) We drove out to the helicopter field to watch Dan fly for a while, and then I let Henry rent a movie and watch it while I read my book.

Mar 20 — Did my taxes (Dan made my computer talk to the printer!), paid the bills, did grocery shopping, hung out with relatives, took Henry to his new Thursday gymnastics class, etc. A couple days ago I got Bridget Jones’s Diary from the library (read it before in a badly-scanned, completely unformatted e-text) so I’m reading it all over again and laughing so much! Love the lovely Bridget :) My 6:30 piano student cancelled so I came home early and made a good dinner! Mashed potatoes, mixed vegetables, and chicken for the IRQ.

In the afternoon today I tried to make the TiVo talk to the VCR so I could bounce last weekend’s Six Feet Under episode onto a tape for Scott. Before I started moving cables around, it made perfect sense — TiVo –> VCR –> TV. Well, I switched all the cables around but couldn’t manage to get the VCR to let the TiVo signal through to the tv! It was very frustrating. I eventually gave up and re-wired everything the way it was originally. When Dan came home he explained the problem! I hadn’t noticed the tiny little “INPUT” button on the VCR remote — pushing that would have done the trick. I totally understand now!

Mar 19 — Finally finished reading the Tom Bombadil chapter to Henry tonight. I really dislike Tom Bombadil. That sing-song way of speaking he has just makes me want to scream. I suppose it’s clever or something but it drives me nuts. I don’t like the Barrow Downs chapter either, but after that it’s smooth sailing until the long talky Rivendell chapter. We went over to Sal’s house this morning and Henry played with the little cousins in the backyard and garage for hours! They played Swordfight and Secret Club and Archaeologist and had a fine time. Scott and Kirsten and I watched the pre-war coverage on some news channel, and Scott made me a kick-ass cup of coffee.

Mar 18 — Went to zoo with all the nice relatives. It was crowded for some reason — odd on a wintery weekday. Good for our lovely zoo, but I hate crowds. Very very tired tonight.

Mar 17 — Spent the entire day at Legoland with my relatives — lots of fun, too tired to write much more. The boys are great, really nice, Henry had a marvelous time and so did I! I knitted a sock for Henry while we waited in line for things. Bought some 80% nylon/20% wool for cheap cheap cheap just to have something to work on. It’s nice to work with and very soft. Bedtime.

Mar 16 — My Uncle Scott, Aunt Jennifer, and their three boys (my cousins Daniel (9) Mark (7) and Luke (5)) are in town for about a week, staying at Mom’s house. Today when Henry got home (noonish) we went over to meet them! I’d never met Jennifer or the boys. They’re all super nice. Henry and the boys played and played and played. We went over to the little skateboard area by the pier and they skated and scooted for ages. Dan came too! It was so nice hanging around with them all. Oh, Kirsten and Marcos were there also, so it was a whole lot of my family all in once place :)

Mar 15 — Oh, it was a nice lazy day for a change. It rained most of the day, and Dan was out, and Henry was at Matthew’s so I had a very peaceful, quiet day. I listened to NPR, did two loads of laundry, played NWN for hours, and dealt with a bunch of digital photos. See the bottom of my photos page. Oh, I did my taxes, too! I didn’t wait ’til the last minute, hooray for me :)

Mar 14 — This morning we went to play at LaRaine’s house! They have the coolest house ever. Henry and Anna played while I gave Ella a little sewing lesson — she wants to learn how to make doll clothes so I showed her how to make a simple pattern, cut it out, and start hand-sewing it. It was really fun! I took my old Mandy doll’s patterns (the ones with all the interchangeable, color-coded pattern pieces) but Ella’s Felicity doll (an “American Girls” doll) is a lot bigger than Mandy. But that’s ok, it’ll be fun showing Ella how to look at the little patterns, and figure out how to make them fit HER doll. Afterwards I took Henry to Matthew’s house, then came home, did some house stuff, hemmed Dan’s blue pants, put together a lasagna for dinner tonight (super easy and good recipe: mix 1 1/2 jars of sauce with one tub of ricotta, and add some garlic powder and/or Italian seasoning. Layer 9 cooked lasagna noodles with 1/2 pound grated mozzarella and about a cup of romano. (sauce, noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese, noodles, sauce, cheese) and bake for about 45 minutes at 350. Yum!). IN the evening I taught my students and took my Grandma to the store. Good deed :) At night we went out and rented “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and bought some CANDY and went home and ate lasagna and candy and watched it together. It was really pretty good… not perfect, and the sound track was appalling, but it was quite enjoyable.

Mar 12 — We did the groceries today. I made a list and planned ahead and I don’t think I forgot a single thing, yay me! Dan went out to r/c helicopter meeting thing tonight, so after I put Henry to bed I watched part of “Thoroughly Modern Millie” (musical, 1967, Julie Andrews, Mary Tyler Moore). Meh. It wasn’t that good. I haven’t finished it yet, but I started ff’ing the tedious parts, especially the Carol Channing parts. *shudder*

Mar 11 — Hey take a look at Dan’s new blog. Looks nice, eh? I might tinker with the blogging software he’s using. (It does comments, Caysie :) I don’t know though. I’m really fond of typing in my little entries right on the server in vi… I’m not sure how I’d feel about doing it a more fancy windowsy way.

Henry’s Junior Theater performance was this morning! LaRaine and I hung out and talked in the cafe before it started — really fun :) And then the performance was so wonderful! The kids acted out several aspects of medieval life — nobles, peasants, knights, swordfighting, dancing, etc. They all did such a good job! Henry was an Archer/Knight/Dragonslayer. I took lots of photos but I don’t have the ambition right now to select, crop, resize, upload, etc. Er, well, maybe I should anyway… hang on. Ok, here you go! Here’s Henry-the-Archer, here’s Henry-the-Knight, and here’s a Battle-scarred Knight! Notice the nice green wooden sword that Dan made for him, and that curious golden ring on an elvenchainlightyetstrong around his neck!

Mar 10 — I guess I didn’t mention that Henry and I washed my car on Saturday! We took it to the self- service car wash, and scrubbed it well. Then we cleaned three bags of garbage out of it and vacuumed it with the impressive carwash vacuum. The thing grabbed my shirt and didn’t want to let go, and it sucked up all manner of disgusting things out of my car. When we got home I Windexed the windows and the dashboard and everything. It looks so nice now, and it even smells better (go figure). We’re not going to let it get that bad every again. I had to scrape an antique, mouldering cookie out of the floormat with a stick.

How does this look with a little separation between thoughts? Ah, good, looks nice. So this afternoon Dan and I took Henry down to the baseball field on the corner so he could drive his RC car. That’s a great place for him to drive! He seemed to have a ton of fun, and Dan and I got to take a couple turns too. Dan brought his battery charger along so we could charge up the batteries when they died! We all had a great time.

Also I injected new ink into Dad’s color printer cartridges, which was lots of fun! I just love doing that. My fingers are multi-colored now :)

Mar 09 — I got almost 10 hours of sleep last night. I feel good again! Henry and I just got back from a trip to the video store so he could spend the gift certificates that Kathy gave him for Christmas the last two years! He picked out two superhero movies, both animated. One is Spiderman vs. the Green Goblin and the other is something about The Justice League (Superman, Batman, and Wonderwoman?). While we were out we walked up to the other end of the parking lot to the grocery store to get some canned spaghetti and meatballs for Dan (he loves that stuff!). Well, that store is usually really expensive so I only took three cans, but then when we paid it turned out they were on sale for $1 each, plus the checker gave us a coupon for $.40 off 4 cans. So we went through again and got four more cans, and then we got a coupon for $.45 off 5 cans… so we went around again :) And then we figured 12 cans were enough! Now Henry is watching one of his movies, and I am going to play Neverwinter for a while :)

Mar 08 — Henry’s with us this weekend! Dan was at the field all day with his helicopter, while Henry and I did things together. We vacuumed the whole house, finished “Ramona’s World”, and did some watercolor painting together. Henry did a still-life of my vase of flowers, and I did a still- life of two tomatoes and a pepper on a plate, and a portrait of his spiderman doll :) After our paintings were dry, we hung them all on the wall! Henry also played outside in the sand with a bunch of kids and I kept an eye on him from our balcony while I read my book. Oh, the appleseed we planted has sprouted!

Mar 07 — Now I’m reading “My Family and Other Animals” by Gerald Durrell — I’m crazy about him but I never read this one before! I’m enjoying it so much. It’s the story of the 5 years he and his family (very English and eccentric) spent in Greece, starting when he was ten. Wonderful story :) Something I noticed: my grandma looked so pretty tonight — she was going out with friends and she had on a purple velour pantsuit and a pale pink sweater. Well, it doesn’t sound so good but trust me, she looked great. Poor Henry — his computer died AGAIN today. The thing gives us so much trouble, ’cause it’s built with old spare parts I guess… Dan keeps fixing it for him, though. Henry and I went out scooting and skateboarding this afternoon before I left to go teach. It was a nice sunny cool day, and we had a good time together. We go down to a dead-end alley in the apartment complex — not much traffic and some good gentle hills for swooping down. While I was teaching, he and Dan watched several episodes of the 1960s Batman tv show together. I’m glad there’s a show that they both enjoy! POW! KRAK! ZAM! Oh, I was just writing to Chloe and that reminded me that I should mention here that I am knitting a cute little cap. I got the pattern from knitty.com . It’s this one. But I’m knitting it in some natural-colored wool that my grandma spun a long time ago, and I’m doing the ties in I-cord and the edges nicely chained.

Mar 06 — Did all the grocery shopping this morning, put everything away, etc. I had to buy gasoline and didn’t have enough to go to the good gas station, so I had to pay $2.15/gal (for CHEAP gas) so it came to $26 to fill it up. Bah. Now I am going to play my game for a few minutes before I leave to pick up Henry, go to the yarn store (some of my yarn came in!), take Henry to karate, help my dad, and teach Elizabeth.

Mar 05 — I woke up really early because little kids were shrieking outside our window. Bah. But, I got a lot done today! I did the flylady’s kitchen mission today (shove stuff over and wipe down all the counters) and my kitchen looks great :) I also read two chapters of Ramona’s World to Henry, and played a game of Streetcar with him (excellent boardgame), and sat on the porch in the sun and finished my book, and talked with Chloe on the AIM again, and taught my students, etc. Oh and Dan and I watched an episode of Seinfeld that I’d never seen before! That’s always a treat.

Mar 04 — I’m reading “To Love And Be Wise” by Josephine Tey. Terrible title (doesn’t it sound like a romance novel?), great book! I read during Henry’s class this morning, during his karate this afternoon, while I was waiting for my students to show up this evening, and as much as possible before bed. Oh, and in NWN I did the thing where you talk to all the henchmen in order to get their quests… they talk WAY too much and I got kind of burned out. When I go back again (I have to be at a higher level in order to actually find out what I have to do for them) I will not try to talk to all of them in one day. Blah, blah, blah. It was gray and rainy today :)

Mar 03 — Nice Monday. We went to the library in the evening and got four NEW audiobooks for Henry so he’s really happy! And a stack of real books for him to practice reading, and a Ramona book that neither of us has read (I guess Beverly Cleary has written more since I was a Ramona fan!), and of course I got a stack of books for myself. After chatting with Chloe about books on Sunday, I decided to read some Josephine Tey — and I found one that I’ve never read! Oh JOY!!! Tonight Dan and I watched yesterday’s brand-new “Six Feet Under” episode. Ok, I won’t give anything away for those of you who haven’t seen it yet… but boy oh boy was it stressful. But VERY good. So nice to see something of genuine quality on TV for a change! I let Henry listen to his new audiobooks at bedtime so of course he was up very late… old favorites help him get to sleep but the new ones are so exciting they keep him awake. Oh, well :)

Mar 02 — Well! I slept for 10 or 11 hours and I feel great :) YAY for Sunday. Dan’s off flying again today but this time I stayed home to do some Kara stuff. I did the laundry, caught up my books page, and now I’m going to play Neverwinter nights for a long long time. But first I’m going to call the yarn store and see if my yarn is ever going to come in!

Mar 01 — So sleepy this morning I could barely get up. I had to wake Henry up, too in time for his gymnastics class which is unusual ’cause he’s almost always up by 8 or 8:30. He was going hand-over-hand on the rings in class and he looked exactly like a little gibbon :) After I got home we went out to the flying field so Dan could fly his helicopter. Kyle was there, and he’s a super-nice kid, and Rod was there but he left a bit after we got there. I read “Girl Talk” by Julianna Baggott and wrote letters. It was cold and windy so I stayed in the car a lot of the time, heh. Really nice day :)

February 2003

Feb 28 — We met my friend LaRaine and her two little girls (Ella and Ana) at the Wild Animal Park today! We all had a great time. The weather was gorgeous — it was still raining a little bit when we got there, but it cleared up right away, except for occasional tiny sprinkles. Cloudy, cool, wet, and lovely. We went on the hiking trail, up to the condors and then down to Kilima Point and then around to the playground. Everything smelled so delicious from the rain! The gibbons over by the playground were hooting and swinging all around! Then in the afternoon I had a few students and Henry went to karate, and we came home and I made dinner and put him to bed and then played NWN and talked to Dan and then we watched Enterprise together and ate ice cream and now it is bedtime!

Feb 27 — Last night I cleaned my desk. I took everything off and put it in a huge box, vacuumed, and then put everything back in the right place, and threw out the junk. It took 2.5 hours but boy it’s really nice now! Today is grocery day, so I have to go make a list now, and then play Neverwinter until the stores open! More later… Mister Rogers died today. I feel so sad. He made the world a better place. There were many thoughtful columns about him online today… one that I liked particularly well was this one, written by a woman who really WAS his neighbor when she was a child. I liked her stories about him, and the photo at the top is wonderful. Here’s another lovely article. I did lots of stuff today but I don’t feel like writing any more.

Feb 26 — Yesterday, Dan installed Neverwinter Nights on my newly-upgraded computer! I gave him NWN for Christmas, and he’s been playing almost daily ever since and hasn’t finished yet. It’s a nice big game! I started playing today and it’s just amazing. I created my character last night. The character creation system is excellent — very detailed, but for every option there’s a “recommended” button so if you’re not sure how you ought to divide up your points, or whatever, you can just take their recommendation. I am a female half-elf fighter, chaotic good alignment. My name is Amoniel Willows, I think. I’m terrible at thinking up names so it’s lucky for me that the game will randomly generate one if you want it to ;-) Playing is really bringing back memories of playing pencil-and-paper D&D ever so many years ago, except this is a lot more fun. Speaking of fun, I’m still thinking about how much fun we had up at pthree’s house. That was really great. He even gave us his bedroom, and slept on the couch in his computer room! What a sweet pthree :)

Feb 24 — Finished “The Professor and the Madman” today. Good book! Henry helped me do a Five Minute Room Rescue in his bedroom this morning, and then we took about ten minutes to tidy up the bathroom (mopped it too!) and then I mopped the kitchen and vacuumed my room. And, thanks to the flylady (and me!) everything was pretty clean already, no big disasters, so it didn’t take long at all to make most of the house look great! Now, this week, accordning to the flylady, our Zone is the livingroom. Now that’s the biggest challenge in the whole house, because of the piles and piles of boxes and helicopter stuff and other hobby stuff and desk messes of four people… But tonight after I get Henry to bed I will declutter for a few minutes and see what happens :) Henry and I played Worms together several times today. We play as a team against the computer. Henry’s really getting pretty good at it, too! We like to use unlimited Ninja Ropes (all three of us love those Ninja Ropes) and unlimited, high-explosive DYNAMITE! Pretty soon we’re going to play as a team against Dan :) OH! Last night Dan and I played and I won THREE games! I only won once before when he let me have extra life to start with, and last night I didn’t have any extra life or anything. What a great game :) I’m trying to find a decent radiostation on shoutcast…

Feb 23 — Last night we played Worms a lot with the pthree! Lots of fun :) Today we got up early and drove home. It was a nice drive, and it only took us 7 hours to get home, amazingly. No horrible traffic in LA this time. We really like the long straight stretch of I-5 between LA and SF. It’s easy to drive, non-confusing, and when you need gas it’s very simple. Lots of nice bathrooms too :) We listened to out audiobook almost all the way; oh, actually, we listened to NPR for a while until we got on 5 and lost the station. We heard LeAnn Hansen and Will Shortz and most of Car Talk. Oh what a nice little vacation we had :) Pthree didn’t mind it that we didn’t want to go places and do stuff. We just had such a nice time hanging around his place! The cows that live across the street from him came up close to the fence yesterday, and we walked over and said hi. Cows look so peaceful, and these cows were very shaggy and cute. Pthree has daffodils growing in his yard! I’m tired so this is pretty random… just writing down a few thoughts. Yesterday we went to Penngrove Park so Dan could fly his helicopter. We could see sheep in a distant field. And the ball field we were in was actually soggy. It RAINS up there in Penngrove. Everything was green and lush and beautiful. Well, anyway, we had a perfect little vacation :) Hey, in other news, my nephew, Chris, and his band won a GRAMMY! Yay!!!

Feb 22 — Last night we drove drove drove to Vacaville to meet pthree’s girl, Steph, and have dinner. It was nice; Steph is very sweet and I had good clam chowder. When we got home we sat in a row on the couch with our laptops and talked and laughed and played games together. That was GREAT :) We played Worms World Party which is really fun :) We slept nice and late this morning, and I made pancakes for breakfast/lunch. Now we’re going out so Dan can fly his helicopter and show pthree how cool it is. And I will walk around the little town and read my book. I read “The Miss America Family” yesterday and today I’m going to read “The Professor and the Madman”.

Feb 21 — We’re here in Penngrove at pthree’s house! We drove for ten hours yesterday. Boy oh boy that was a long drive. We stopped in Buttonwillow at a Denny’s for dinner — it was a really nice Denny’s and the food was good! And then we drove for hours and hours and hours… But it was a really nice drive and we had fun talking and listening to music and a little bit of an audio book (but then we got tired of it). When we finally got to pthree’s road, which is just a little rural one-lane road with a few little houses and lots of cows, we almost missed his driveway (it was dark) but luckily he had stuck a “P3” sign on his mailbox :) So we knew we were in the right place. :) His house is so cool; it’s nice and old and solid and calm. It’s really great to finally get to met p3 in person! We’ve been friends for, oh, three years or so and have never met. He’s at work today, so we’re just going to hang around and relax and maybe take a walk and read and stuff.

Feb 20 — It is a blue sky, green hillsides, BEAUTIFUL day! We had a little lightning storm last night and we were afraid it might rain today. We’re going OUT OF TOWN for the weekend, yay! We’re going to visit pthree! Ok we’re leaving in less than an hour so I have to go pack.

Feb 19 — I make pancakes for Henry almost every morning. I mix some flax seed meal and some coral calcium into the batter, for extra nutrition! They do turn out tasty. So anyway today after breakfast we did the banking and grocery shopping. Henry is such a great helper! When we put the food away we did it in a new and different way: he unloaded the bags onto his skateboard, and sent it scooting across the kitchen to me, where I was standing by the fridge. Then I took the food off and scooted his skateboard back to him with my foot. Very entertaining! Henry’s like Jem Finch — he’ll always have an idea :) (I think that’s what Atticus said) Lordy, I’m tired. Going to collapse on the couch for a while and then go to bed. Leaving on trip tomorrow, which is great but I get all nervous thinking of things I might forget to do/take/remember. I’d better make a list.

Feb 18 — Lovely morning at cafe writing letters while Henry was in class. And then I dropped him off at Matthew’s and took myself to the library! We’re going out of town this weekend so I got a stack of audiobooks for the drive, plus some stuff to read! Sometimes while we are driving Henry reaches over and pets my shoulder. Sweet little boy. We listened to The Phantom Tollbooth on the way to SD. Oh, heheh, on Sunday we finished up The Hobbit, so then last night we had to look around for another book for bedtime. So we were browsing over the bookshelves, considering this and that… and then Henry decided on The Fellowship of the Ring (again). So we started it all over. :) What is it about those books that he finds so incredibly satisfying? Well, whatever it is, it’s fine with me. I can deal with The Fellowship again :) Tonight we read about the Party, and the bit where Bilbo finally gives up the ring. That’s a very good scene. There’s a spot where you can just tell that the deciding moment has just passed, and Bilbo will be ok. Henry made some kind of comment right then that let me know that he felt the same way. Neat. He’s got the little boy desire for Heroes, and up ’til he discovered LoTR it was always Superheroes he was crazy about. But I think he finds the LoTR heroes to be just as good, which I think is wonderful because they really are HEROES, and are heroes in many ways (and none of them can fly or shoot webbing out of their wrists). I’m finding Sam to be one of the most heroic characters in the story. At Sal’s house this afternoon I started a sock for her (so she didn’t have to deal with casting on and dividing the stitches over three needles etc) which was fun. I love how my fingers just KNOW how to start a sock without much guidance from my brain. And Susan read “A Bargain for Frances” to Henry and me :) WE LOVE YOU SUSAN! Dan’s almost finished building his latest heli so I think we are going to watch SNL together in a while :)

Feb 17 — Henry and I made a neat Star Ship out of his K’Nex today. And he helped me clean my bedroom and flip over the mattress. Henry’s monitor was kind of fuzzy, so it was hard to read small text. So we swapped it for my old monitor today, which is more convex but doesn’t have the fuzz problem. It’ll be better for a beginning reader to not have to deal with fuzzy text! Tonight we’re going to pick up beautiful Susan at mom’s house (she’s visiting from NY) and bring her home for dinner! We can hardly wait to see her :)

Feb 16 — I practiced my banjo a lot last night and tonight. Sore fingers! Finished reading The Hobbit to Henry! Now we get to pick out a new book. Hmm… Maybe Dr. Doolittle. We went to the beach this evening to watch the sunset. It was really really cold so I took the icky blanket out of the car and wore it like a shawl and watched while Henry played in then sand, digging TRAPS. The sunset was pretty, nice and orange, though not spectacular. When we got home, we watched another episode of The Crocodile Hunter together. Dan and I like that show almost as much as Henry does, I think! Ok, now I have to find something to eat and go to bed.

Feb 15 — Henry gets to stay with us this weekend! YAY! We did some errands this morning (elastic, new gas cap, stuff for dad, etc) and I rented “Lilo and Stitch” for Henry. It was fun watching that one again; it’s not too terrible and it’s actually funny in some places. The sci-fi elements are great. Probably let him watch it again tomorrow. I wish I had some Blackberry Avalanche ice cream right now.

Feb 14 — Happy Valentine’s day! I had a great day :) In the morning, Henry and I drove down to San Diego for a homeschooler little kids’ Valentine’s Party. Henry’s best friend, Nicolas, was there and we set up a big table of craft supplies and everyone made valentine bags and then the kids exchanged Valentines and we ate snacks and stuff. Lots of fun! Henry read part of “A Bargain For Frances” while we were driving, and we sang “There’s a Moon Out Tonight” over and over. Henry sings the backup vocals (Whoa-oh-oh ooh) and fills in the chord at the end with me. He has incredibly good pitch. I taught a bunch of piano students in the afternoon, and Michelle took Henry to Karate (lovely Michelle!). Then when we got home I made a heart-shaped pancake for Henry’s dinner, read him some more Hobbit, and put him to bed a little early. Dan rented “Minority Report” for us, and we ordered dinner from Oggi’s (our favorite Italian place — they deliver!) and ate and watched our movie and just had a lovely, relaxed, perfect evening together :) :) :) “Minority Report” was pretty good, if you don’t look too closely at the plot flaws and stuff ;-) Very entertaining. We like to pause the movie from time to time and make guesses as to what’s going to happen next, whodunnit, etc. :) After Agatha started running around, I realized that she looked terribly familiar. Couldn’t figure it out, though, until I looked her up on imdb.com. She played Harriet Smith in “Emma”!

Feb 13 — I’m feeling relatively healthy again, yay! Woke up wayyyyyyy too early and couldn’t get back to sleep, thinking about all the millions of things I have to do today. So I decided to get up and do some of them. Except that I feel so tired and awful I don’t know how I’m going to get everything done. Blah. I’d better make a list so I don’t forget anything important.

Feb 10 — Flu. Or something. Blah. Dan and Henry took good care of me today. Henry read me lots of stories and Dan went to the store for graham crackers and they both brought me things to drink all day.

Feb 09 — It’s 7am — I just got back from taking Tab to the airport (She’s going back to NY for a visit). We got up at 4:30am! It sounds horrible but it was actually rather fun to be up that early. It was pitch dark when we left, with stars and everything, and it was still dark when we got to the airport. Boy, 5am on a Sunday is the time to drive! There was NO traffic and it only took 40 minutes to get all the way to the airport :) Oh, I acquired Quicken, which so far seems to be MUCH better than MSMoney. It hasn’t done anything offensive or inexplicable yet, which is more than I can say for MSMoney. Ok now I will clean my desk! Or possibly I will sit here reading back issues of the backfence and giggling :)……(later) Well, I read the backfence for a while and then my lack of sleep caught up with me, and I lost all ambition. So I lazed around, and then slept for a couple of hours in the afternoon, and then did some laundry. It’s only 8:30 but I think I’ll go to bed pretty soon… Exhaustion… creeping… up… Productivity… failing… Where’s the remote? I will lull myself with some mindless entertainment for a while. It’s Seinfeld time! (We miss you, Tabatha!)

Feb 06 — Last night I tried to balance my checkbook (which is now kept by MSMoney) and created a total disaster, due mostly to MSMoney’s incredibly bad interface. I worked on it for 5 hours and it got worse and worse and more and more snarled up until I finally just gave up completely. Today I deleted EVERYTHING and started over from the beginning. Luckily, MSMoney decided, this time, to download all my bank transactions since mid-December, so it’s got to be up-to-date enough. I wonder how much Quicken costs. Tonight I realized that I had not informed MSMoney of my recurring transactions (e.g. rent, car payment) So I went back to the earliest rent payment and told it to make it recurring. So then it told me I was late paying rent in January. So I told it it was paid, and then it stuck that payment in twice. Gee, thanks, that really helped. So basically, I have two months of information which I can’t organize in that way. Maybe there’s a way to trick microsoft into doing what I want it to do, but I can’t figure it out. Grrrrr. This morning I did all the grocery shopping, and then fixed up MSMoney, then drove down to pick up Henry, then we drove back up to Carlsbad and were an hour early for Karate so I took him to the park for a while and he found a nice little guy to play trucks with while I lay on the grass. Then we had a little snack at the coffee place upstairs from Karate. We agreed that we should do that more often — it’s a very pleasant place. I told him that when he starts reading chapter books, we can go there, have a little something to eat, and read together :) I practiced my banjo for a long time tonight! Beautiful Susan sent me the newly reprinted Pete Seeger banjo book (which you can get from homespun tapes)! Pete starts you off in C tuning, which is new for me, and I also worked on a couple of tunes in my clawhammer book that are in C — “flop-eared mule” and “molly hare”.

Feb 04 — Blah I’ve got a headache. I read a lot last night and today. I think I’m getting headaches from reading again. Odd that they stopped for a while. But anyway I read a really good book — “Bridget Jones’ Diary” by Helen Fielding. I enjoyed it tremendously and it was worth the headache. I read it on my palm, and the scan was really bad — there were tons of errors such as the recurring “fudge” instead of “fridge” heheh. I figured most of it out anyway :) I just read a few reviews on Amazon, and thought it was funny that no one realized that Bridget’s mom was a parody of Lydia Bennett! They all seemed to think she was meant to be like Mrs. Bennett, which she was, as well, but her main function in the plot was as Lydia. I wonder how the movie version is. Bad, probably, but Colin Firth is in it so maybe it’s worth a try :) Ooooo I just discovered that there’s a sequel. Hmm…. I already have the headache, so maybe I should read it tonight if I can find it in e-text ;-)

Feb 03 — Last night when I went to bed I was certain that it was Monday night (actually TODAY is Monday) and I even set my alarm early so I could get up in time to take Henry to his Tuesday class. Just before I went to sleep I suddenly realized that I was all mixed up, and re-set my alram to the right time. And then when I woke up this morning and looked at the clock I was convinced for a second that I’d overslept! Goofy :) We went over the Kaylee’s house to play — a nice little homeschooled girl just Henry’s age. Her parents are extremely nice, and I had a great time chatting with them while the kids played. They’re really relaxed and pleasant. And then when we got home we all four (Dan, Kara, Henry, Tabatha) went to the beach for a while!

Feb 02 — Slept late (10:00am). Did some regular Sunday stuff (laundry, bills, etc.) also just lazed around for a while. On the way down to pck up Henry, I stopped at the yarn store and got some more yarn for my afghan, plus asked them to order some more green and black. On the way back up here we stopped at the park and took a little walk while the sun was setting, and Henry swung on the swings. Tab found this fun little typing test online; we all took it a few times. My best was 51 WPM, which isn’t that great but oh well :) Dan was like 400 WPM or something :) When he types it sounds like someone shaking a can full of teeth. Heheh. OK I’ve GOT to go to bed so I can get up early tomorrow.

Feb 01 — The space shuttle “Columbia” exploded this morning. I don’t usually look at any news sites in the morning, so I didn’t even know it til someone mentioned it on irc. :(

January 2003

Jan 31 — Henry’s last big awful dental appointment was this morning. He’s been such a good patient boy during all this dental torture that I took him to the toy store and let him pick out a toy — he chose a neat grabber-claw thing :) So anyway his mouth is decay-free now! Our dear dentist was so sweet to him and answered all his questions and did such a lovely job on his mouth. They’re all so nice at that office — I’m actually looking forward to my next cleaning :) I think it is time for some dinner now. Mom bought me these really good tomatoes from the Farmer’s Market so I’m going to make one of my favorite dinners — a Big Salad and a pile of corn tortillas, cooked in butter. Mmmmmmmm! Dan’s dad has been visiting, but I’ve been so busy that I’ve barely seen him at all. I think we’re goin to the beach tomorrow, so that’ll be nice :) It was 88 degrees here today, and it’s still hot at 8:30pm. Jeeze.

Jan 30 — Henry helped me clean his room. He ACTUALLY helped! I gave him the assignment of finding ten things he could throw away — including little bits of crud off the carpet. He found so many nice bits of crud that we eventually lost count :) He also found something he could GIVE away! It’s a little Spongebob guy… he says he doesn’t even like Spongebob so that thing went in the give-away bag. And he did most of the vacuuming, too, which he seemed to enjoy a lot. And I cleaned our bedroom, and wiped down the bathroom (it’s not a disaster yet, so it was quick and easy. Henry did the counter.) the flylady (recommended by my lovely sister Kathy) is helping me change my attitudes toward cleaning and de-cluttering and my apartment looks better and I feel a LOT less overwhelmed! It was just plain beautiful out today… Tab and I went to the Goodwill to shop for Thrift! It was so much fun :) I love going places with her. Ooooo I also practiced the piano for about an hour today. I’m working on the Bach 2-part invention in E, the one with the neat syncopation.

Jan 29 — I just watched the Antiques Roadshow. That show is so enjoyable. It was Good News day for almost everyone, it seemed, except for one poor guy who brought in a paint-by-numbers painting :) He was really cheerful about it, though. I feel kind of strange tonight… I hope I’m not coming down with something. My knees feel achey and I feel bone tired. Blah. I think I’ll have some soup and watch Seinfeld.

Jan 28 — The electricity was off when I woke up this morning. It’s back on now, yay! Since I couldn’t read my email this morning, when I got home there were 65 new ones. And only about three were spam. (the majority of my spam gets filtered out by SpamAssassin). Tab and I did a couple errands this afternoon, including going to the craft store for more beads! We figured out how to make daisy-like flowers, and we’re going to sell them, and other beaded things, on ebay. Ok I am incredibly hungry. Time for FOOD. (several hours later..) We made so many lovely beaded flowers today! And while we were beading, we watched “Shall We Dance” ( Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers) It’s the one with the rollerskate dance (Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off) and “They Can’t Take That Away From me”. Great movie — the plot is thin and goofy, but Fred and Ginger are marvelous. Dan made a photo series of our Tiny Bird having a BirdBath. She’s the cutest pet EVER. When she gets in the mood to have a bath, she really goes to town, and splashes everywhere and gets soaking wet, as you can see. She looks funny when she’s all bedraggled and wet, but she’s really quite elegant when dry.

Jan 25 — (again) We went to see The Two Towers with mom tonight — I actually enjoyed it a LOT more this time that i did the first time I saw it. A) I was prepared for the major deviations from What Actually Happened, so there were no nasty surprises. B) I was not miserably sick. C) Eh I’m too tired to think of what C is but it has something to do with how amazing Gollum was, and all the other incredible special effects too. Oh, heh, go here and prepare to laugh :)

Jan 25 — Well the internet broke for a while there (thanks, Microsoft) but it seems to be working again. More or less. Shall we file a class action suit against Microsoft for the pain and suffering and loss of business they cause with their shoddy products? Well it’s another beautiful day here! I think it’s about 80 degrees outside, clear and sunny. After Henry’s gymnastics class I bought some water and mailed a package for tab, and then she and I cleaned up the apartment! It looks really nice now. You can actually walk down the hall without tripping over stuff :) I like to listen to audiobooks while I do housework, if the apartment is quiet enough. I’ve been listening to “To Kill A Mockingbird” read by Sally Darling (Recorded Books, Inc.) when Henry’s not here (it’s a bit much for a 7-yr-old I think, but I can hardly wait until he’s old enough to read it) and a Jeeves and Wooster book when he is. Now I’m going to see if there are any movies coming up that I’d like the TiVo to record for me, and then I think I’ll make a skirt out of a pillowcase that I bought at a thriftstore last weekend. It’s happy yellow, with little embroidered flowers at the hem. I think it will be adorable :) Oh, I’d better update my books page again — I read another good one yesterday. Oh, I almost forgot! Mom bought me some shoes from L.L. Bean for Christmas but they were backordered and they JUST arrived yesterday and they were a total surprise and I LOVE them. They are the most comfortable shoes I’ve ever had. I have a lot of trouble finding shoes that don’t hurt my feet. Let me see if I can find a picture… Yes, here you go: red shoes. They’re the L.L. Bean “Comfort Mocs”, if you want some too :)

Jan 23 — Happy Birthday Mom!!! We met Sal at the skating rink and she and Henry had a fine time ice skating together. I took the digicam but I think the photos are probably all too dark. I dunno, I haven’t looked at them on a big monitor yet. I have been reading so many good books lately! My eye problem seems to have gotten better, which is a little odd but very nice :) Yesterday I read a novel called “Must Love Dogs” which was really enjoyable — I don’t remember the author right now but tomorrow I’ll update my book page and add that one. Today I started “Quite A Year For Plums” by Bailey White and it’s good too, and I’m re-reading “The Mockery Bird” by Gerald Durrell at night. I like to keep a non-disturbing or funny book by my bed to read at night, and I read the more serious ones in the daytime. I read another chapter of “Prisoner of Azkaban” to Tab tonight — that’s fun, ’cause I don’t remember the plot very well at all.

Jan 21 — Tab and I walked around Balboa park and went to the Mingei Folk Art Museum (free today!) while Henry was in his class. We saw these lovely embroidered silk ceremonial gowns and fancy silver headdresses from some little area of China, and the antique toys upstairs and the Goulden Baby House, which is this fabulous dollhouse from 1750. I never get tired of looking at it. My nose is cold. I can smell cigarette smoke drifting in through the screen door, probably from the neighbor’s balcony. GROSS.

Jan 20 — All four us took a walk on the beach this afternoon. It was cooler than the last few days, but still warm enough to go barefoot and wade in the water. We walked a long way, looking at the fancy houses. Henry took his big dump truck and pushed it for a while and then I carried it for him while he ran through the shallow water in absolute Henry-style joyfulness. :) The tide was way out. It’s nice that way. Seems like the tide is always way out when we take a walk… I know it gets high sometime, though, because we could see the tideline way up near the walls :) Hmm also I cleaned the kitchen, the back bathroom, and our bedroom today. I’ve been trying to get things cleaned up BEFORE they turn into hideous disasters :) Tabatha made brownies for us tonight! I’ve been reading several good books… check my books page if you’re interested!

Jan 19 — Henry and I went to the Wild Animal Park all day today! (mouse over the numbers on the map for a few photos) The weather was perfect, we took a picnic lunch, we rode the monorail, we saw the bird show, we hiked around, Henry played for an hour and a half at the new play area, and we just had an all-around wonderful time together :)

Jan 17 — I can’t tell you how lovely our dentist is. She’s an angel. We went in yesterday to get some more of Henry’s teeth fixed, and she was so sweet to him, and took care of his teeth so well. He was so good. It’s awful to sit there with your mouth open for so long with people fiddling around inside, and he was almost in tears by the end, but he never wiggled or fussed. After we got home I let him watch two movies (Toy Story and Toy Story 2) so that was a nice treat for him, and cheered him up. Dan took care of him for me while I went to the store and did a Big Shopping — now we have food again yay! Dan and Tabatha are the Champion Milk Drinkers of the world. We played Settlers of Catan on Wednesday night and I won! That is the greatest board-type game EVER. I think we are going to play again tonight. Now that Tab is here we have the necessary third player :) Hmm, what else is new… it has been 80 degrees the last couple of days. I think we are going to go to the beach later, and lie around. But we have to go to the library first because I ran out of books! Hmm, I’d better go update my books page.

Jan 15 — While I went out to do some errands today, Henry made me a story tape! He read a few of his easy-reader books out loud for me. It’s a treasure. He even read a book that he had never read before, and since I wasn’t there to help him with the hard words he figured most of them out by himself. He reads with nice expression, not just “word word word”. I’m so happy that he knows that he can read, and I’m glad I didn’t push him to learn earlier. I knew he’d just figure it out one day.

Jan 14 — We had such a nice day today :) Got up early, dropped Tab at school, and drove down to Junior Theater class. While Henry was in class, I walked around the MOPA (the website seems to be down right now) and read my book. Balboa Park is a beautiful place. After class we walked over to the zoo, and walked all over and ate our picnic lunch in front of the hippo tank. We had so much fun together :) There’s a big construction project going on where the flamingo pond used to be, so we peeked through the fence and watched the construction for a long time, and then we rode the sky ride over to the other side of the zoo, then walked down the hill and stopped by the polar bear exhibit. One of the polar bears was swimming and playing and diving, so we watched him for a long long time, and then we headed down the hill again, past the wild cattle and wild boars and peccaries and so forth, and ended up in the Ituri Forest, where, as I said, we ate lunch by the hippos. Then we said “hi” to the pandas — there are several new signs up telling all sorts of panda information. I read them all to Henry and he was fascinated. On the way home, we listened to my old mp3 cd… the one I made in spring of 2002, I guess. It’s fun to hear those old songs again :) Henry is especially fond of “Nouns” (Schoolhouse Rock) and “Down In It” (Nine Inch Nails) so we listened to those, over and over. On long car rides I like to let him be in charge of the music.

Jan 13 — What was it, Monday? Got up at 6:30am to take Henry to the dentist who takes his insurance. Traffic STANK and it took an hour and fifteen minutes to get there, and that dentist’s estimate was twice as much as our lovely non-insurance-taking dentist. Bah. Well so we’ll just take him to the nice local dentist and forget about the insurance. Argh. And we went to the library today too! Henry has gotten much more confident about reading so we got him some more EZ-Reader books; his favorite is “NO NEW PANTS!” which is a really funny little rhyming story about a little boy who doesn’t enjoy shopping for new pants. Henry read it out loud to me while we were driving! What a treat :)

Jan 11 — I’m up to page 6 of the “What if LoTR had been written by other people” message board… Here we’ve got Kafka, C.S. Lewis, Led Zeppelin, and a fabulous Rock Opera featuring The Who, The Beatles, Blondie, Queen, the Shangri-las… I don’t know when I’ve been so thoroughly entertained by anything :) OMG the Matrix one on that page is GREAT. “Galadriel: I’d ask you to sit down, but you’re not going to anyway. And don’t worry about the mirror. Frodo: What mirror? [Frodo knocks Galadriel’s mirror off its table, spilling water everywhere.] Galadriel: That mirror.”

Jan 10 — Hmm, what did I do today… I gathered up a whole bunch of trash and took it out, and cleaned the kitchen really well, and some of the rest of the apartment too. I feel very virtuous! And I went to the bank (again) and bought water from the water store, and taught my little piano students, and made a good dinner for everybody. And I untangled some nice yarn that my grandma spun a long time ago. I think I might knit it into a lacey scarf if there’s enough. Ok, bedtime!

Jan 09 — busy day — this morning bank, farmers’ market, stater bros, trader joe’s, then home, put groceries away, feed Henry, shower, play RC cars with Henry, then off to dentist for filling, then race back home to collect Henry, zoom off to karate, then back home to collect forgotten DVD player for Dad and Kathy, then wolf down canned soup, then teach student, then HOME. And it’s almost 8:30pm. I’m HUNGRY! hey here’s a message board with a long thread in which people are submitting examples of “what if LoTR had been written by other people”. LOL! Don’t miss P.G. Wodehouse, Gene Roddenberry, Choose Your Own Adventure, Homer (The Frodyssey), John Cage, CNN, Shakespeare, Ogden Nash (“…That being said, it seems to me that to accept a ring from the likes of Sauron/ You’d have to be a mauron.”), Dave Barry, etc. etc. You’ve got to go read them :)

Jan 08 — I went to the dentist today — first time in about 4 years. I was very pleased to find out that my teeth are quite healthy, on the whole! I do have one cavity, a big one, but that’s it. They’re going to fill it tomorrow. I go to the nicest dentist in the whole world — Dr. Kim Corrigan of North Coast Dental Group. Everyone there is lovely. If you’re looking for a great dentist in North San Diego County, go there :) On Tuesday, while Henry was in his Junior Theater class, I finished “Lady Knight”! Wow, what a book. Really good. Last night I felt really awful, so Dan read some of The Gallery Of Regrettable Food. So funny! If you don’t own the book yet, you can read a lot of it online.

Jan 05 — Last night I started reading “Lady Knight” — the fourth book in the “Protector of the Small” series by Tamora Pierce. It’s excellent! Here, read the editorial review at Amazon. This morning I got about halfway though. I can hardly put it down! HOORAY for Tamora Pierce! What joy to read an interesting, exciting, well-written series which features a courageous, and very human, female protagonist! Ok, I’d better go clean Henry’s room before he gets home ;-)

Jan 04 — We went to the beach again today… I’ve been to the beach more since Tab got here than in the last year, I think :) We just lay around and read… it was very relaxing. I finished “Nightbirds on Nantucket” which was pretty good. We’re going to take Henry to the beach next week if the weather stays fine!

Jan 03 — We took my car in today for its oil change/water pump/checkup. It’s doing fine :) Good old car. I updated my crafts page today! Added mittens, socks, and the hotpads that Henry and I made. After we picked up my car in the afternoon, we went for a walk on the beach. The water was icy cold, but I waded anyway because it was warm and sunny. The tide was way out, which is nice ’cause there’s so much shallow water for wading. The water was so cold it was actually painful for a while, but I got used to it and then it was just refreshing :) Ok, gonna go pick up Mom at the airport now. Oh, here’s Samuel Pepys diary online!

Jan 02 — Hmm, what did we do today… Tab and I went to a hobby store in Escondido to pick up a part for Henry’s RC car, and then we went to the Goodwill there. Fun :) It was HOT out today! 72 here, and probably close to 80 inland. Oh I know, we took the Christmas tree down today and cleaned up really well. It’s nice and tidy in here now, well, as tidy as it gets. Heheh :)

Jan 01 — Happy New Year everyone! Henry and I made two potholders with his new wool loops — man they turned out beautiful! You can buy them from liveandlearn.com. Yes they are more expensive than the cotton ones, but the colors are rich, and they are all the same size, and they feel SO GOOD! I taught Henry how to finish the edges with a crochet hook and he was so pleased and proud when he got the hang of it. We also played his new Spy Fox Dry Cereal game (lots of fun as usual) and in the afternoon Henry and Tab and I took a nice walk out on the Pier. We saw sea lions and pelicans out in the ocean! Tonight Tab and I watched “Clueless”. What a fun movie! I had forgotten how funny it was. It’s a perfect modern version of “Emma” — almost verbatim. While I was watching it, I kept thinking, “Hey that’s the part where Harriet meets the farmer… that’s the part when she burned the sticking plaster… that’s the part when Mr. Knightly danced with Harriet… that’s the part when Emma and Mr. Elton were in the carriage together… ” When I can borrow a VCR again I’ll see if Tab will watch the Kate Beckinsale version of Emma with me :) It was a lovely day.

Dec 31 — Happy New year’s Eve!We’re watching Some Like It Hot. Great movie :) I bought some engineer-striped overallsfor Henry from ebay ($10 including shipping!) last week and he loves them so much that he doesn’t wantto wear anything else! And they look so darn cute on him. He hates pants that are tight around thewaist (he’s SUPER sensitive about it) and I thought that overalls should solve the problem!

Dec 30 — I’m making this fabulous soup right now. You saute some onions (and garlic if you have any)in butter for a while, and then you add some chopped potatoes and carrots, saute for a while, add some water and simmer til the veggies are done. Then you run the soup through the blender with some cream cheeseand milk (or cream) and then you reheat and stir in some grated cheddar cheese. Lord it’s good. Andvery rich. I helped Tabatha open a savings account at our bank today. They’re SO NICE there! (MissionFederal Credit Union) I really like having Tab here… She fits right into our funny family and is reallyeasy-going and flexible, helpful, and good company! Henry and I got this super-cool book from the library — let’s see if I can find a link… here you go! Art Fraud Detective. I love looking at art with him, and the puzzle-format of the book makes it extra fun for us to examine the paintings and talk about them.

Dec 29 — Mmmm slept nice and late. The AI beat me again at Freeciv… I don’t know how it managesto be building a spaceship when I haven’t even discovered electricity yet! Pretty soon I’m going overto Dad’s house to help him out, and then I go to SD to pick up Henry! Yay!

Dec 28 — My new monitor is so nice! Windows decided not to work on this machine after we put inthe new motherboard (Dan can fix it after I have enough money to buy another part) so I’m having funwith linux. I’d gotten lazy and was using windows for tasks I used to use linux for… but boyit’s nice to be forced to stay in linux and get comfortable with it again! Freedom from Windows!I spent 4 hours this morning trying to get my freeciv client updated… (note: remember to get freeciv-gtk if you want the client!) Thanks, liiwi, for straightening me out :) I’m using 1.13 now and it’s really nice, but has anodd bug (“feature”?) where if it gives you a few popup windows at the beginning of your turn youhave to close the back one before you can close the front one… other than that it’s good.

Dec 27 — Whoops I fell behind :) Let me bring you up to date! Christmas was lovely. Since Henry was with Matthew, we all slept very very late, and then we opened presents! Tabatha gave me a big pyramid of myfavorite candy – Ferraro Rocher hazelnut dealies. Yum!! Dan gave me the MOST BEAUTIFULdark blue real silk nightgown and robe… There is no way I can describe how elegant they are but I will try!The nightgown is longish and slim, and cut on the bias so it fits like a dream. Every edge is perfectly boundand the seams are French, and the straps are even adjustable. The robe (it really needs a fancier name…”dressing gown”, “kimono”?) is just as perfectly made, with an inner tie as well as a belt AND a side seam pocket! I feel like a princess, or a movie star from 1930, in them, I really do. AND he gave me a 15″ LCD monitor! Talk about luxury! Ok, it’s TON bigger than my old monitor, it’s crystal-clear, it’s beautiful :) And he thinks it will be better for my eyes too.My motherboard died right before Christmas but Dan found me a new one that would work (no small feat) and fixed up my computer yesterday, with hours of sweat, pain, and toil, and so today I got to enjoy my lovely monitor all day :) So then on Christmas afternoon we went for a walk on the beach, which was fun. Someone had made a sand-snowman with driftwoodarms, holding some balloons, with pebbles for a face, and someone else had made these amazing stacks of beach rocks, balanced on top of each other in seemingly impossible ways! We wished we had taken the camera. There were lots of people out enjoying the lovely weather. I made kayray’s special pastafor dinner and we lounged around :) On Thursday I picked up Henry from his dad’s house and brought himhome and he got to open his presents! He was so happy with everything, such a cheerful excited joyfullittle person! We all had fun playing with his new things with him :) Today… um what happened today…well my mom is out of town and a tweaker stole her car and crashed it so we had to deal with the police andall… I was the prime suspect since my grandma told the cops I had keys (which I don’t), heheh, but after they talked tome they decided I hadn’t done it! I’m not exactly the tweaker-car-thief-hit-and-run type… so thatwas a little more excitement than we all needed. Mostly I played with Henry and cleaned up my deskand enjoyed my new monitor and stuff… Oh yeah I’m knitting new mittens for Henry, and finally finishedthe first one today. I started on Christmas eve but miscalculated and had to rip back a few times. Theywent a lot faster after I had him here to try them on! I’ll post photos to the crafts section soon. Alsoneed to add the socks I just finished, and his OLD mittens, and a couple of cute hats!

Dec 24 — Happy Christmas Eve! Yesterday in the morning I took Henry ice skating at the Ice-o-plexin Escondido with the Kenyon girls, and they all had a great time. In the afternoon we went over toMom and Dad’s house for an early Christmas with them — Kirsten and Marcos came over too and we all hadfun opening presents. Kirsten gave me the most beautful little handmade cross-stitched old-fashionedSanta ornament. It’s so pretty! She finished it in a really creative way, with little bows of bluefloss and rustic-looking twine for a hanger. She and Marcos gave Henry two really neat toys fromDiscovery Toys — a sort of helicopter-like toy (pull the string and a 8″ disk shoots up really highinto the air). We tried it in the street and it was so cool! Henry was thrilled. And they gave him akite that pops open like one of those car windshield sun-protectors… Boing! We can play with bothtoys down on The Prairie (a big vacant lot near our building). And Grandma Jean gave Henry a LegoSkateboard Park kit which he LOVES. He put it together right away and Kirst and I played with it withhim. Mike and Carol sent him two Hardy Boys books and a neat t-shirt with a drag-race car on it. Again,he was thrilled :) I read the first chapter of the first Hardy Boys book to him last night and he just loved it! And Daniel Thile sent him a Klutz Body Crayon book/kit which is so cool! He had me drawa flying-saucer tattoo on his arm and showed it off to everyone. :) Grandma gave me several pairs ofnew pretty hair-sticks (to stab though my hair to make a bun or whatever) which are lovely, and Momgave me the pretty, blue-flowered, Duofold thermals from LL Bean that I was wishing for so much! Iwore them to bed last night :)Oh, and Mike and Carol sent me some new dark blue towels with fish embroidered on them — very cute!I’m sorry if I forgot anything! On the way home we stoped at the pet store for bird food. I gave Henry the money and he ran in and bought it all by himself. I think he felt very proud :)Last night I felt SO exhausted. Did too much all day and I’m stillrecovering. So we all collapsed on the couch and watched Best In Show again — great movie. Tabathahad never seen it before and she liked it! She’s really fun to hang around with. AND she did the dishes yesterday without even being asked to — I told her she can stay here forever :) This morningMatthew picked up Henry and I went out to the bank and the water store and two grocery stores. Whew.Everyone in San Diego was out this morning, I think, doing last-minute errands. But I’m home now and it’s going to be a nice day :)

Dec 21 — Dan and I have the funniest conversations sometimes! The night I made the latkes, he was asking me how I made them. He said they seemed less homogeneous than regular pancakes, almost asif they were woven. So with a perfectly straight face I told him that I had woven them on my LatkeLoom, out of potato fibers which I had spun, and he said, oh, and then did you bake them on the Latke Loom and then peel them off? And I said yes! And we laughed until we almost fell out of bed. :)Someone on the homeschooling list sent us this url: looney labs. It’s a little company thatmakes very cool-looking games! I’m going to keep them in mind for next year’ birthdays and Christmas!In other news, my cold it a bit better today, and I felt well enough to do laundry, whee. Henry hadsome major dental work done yesterday, and he was feeling sick and awful all day and this morning, butnow he has perked up, eaten some soup, and is playing Worms World Party — his new favorite computergame. I read him all of chapter 9 of TTT yesterday, and today we started chap. 10 — The Voiceof Sauruman. Yesterday when he was feeling so completely awful I asked if he wouldn’t like me to readsomething a little more comforting, but he wouldn’t stand for it! Still haven’t decided if I should lethim see TTT in the theater… There’s so much chopping and hacking and scary loud stuff. I think he could probably handle it, but do I want him to see all that fighting and heads being swoppedoff and all? And do I want to sit through it again? I dunno…

Dec 19 — I’m a little bit sick today. Little cold, little sore throat, nothing serious. I went tothe farmer’s market this morning but now I don’t have to go anywhere until 4 so I’m just beinglazy, watching “Pillow Talk” (1959, Doris Day, Rock Hudson, Thelma Ritter, Tony Randall). Sofar it’s quite entertaining. Luscious costumes too :) On Tuesday night we picked up Dan’s littlesister, Tabatha, from the airport — Henry entertained her with pleasant conversation all the wayhome. He’s such a little ambassador! Tabatha is really sweet! We’re glad to have her stayingwith us :) Last night we saw The Two Towers! It was pretty darn good… They re-wrote the storyquite a bit, more than the first movie, but I guess they had too, in order to fit everything in.I don’t remember Aragorn falling off a cliff into a river and nearly dying and being rescued by a horse that Arwen sent… But oh well. Gollum was excellent, Gandalf was amazing! The Pippin/Merry/Treebeard part was kind of weak, andI got tired of hearing icky things roaring and seeing people hacking at each other, but on the whole i enjoyed it very much! I could have done without Gimli’s comic relief, and Legolas snowboardingdown a flight of steps, but they made up for it by letting me watch Legolas shooting arrows ;-)

Dec 16 — I had really freaky dreams last night and then when the alarm went off I almost didn’t hearit. Stayed in bed for a long time… I felt really odd today, and after I cleaned both bathrooms and made breakfast, I went back to bed for a while and just rested and read my book. Both Henryand Dan came in to check on me a lot so i didn’t get lonely :) In the afternoon it got really windy,super windy, and the big eucalyptus trees outside were actually swaying! And later we had a little rainstorm too. Henry and I watched “The Prince and the Pauper” (1937, Errol Flynn) and he proclaimedit to be “First class entertainment” :) And we made some home-made applesauce, and I made latkesfor dinner and EVERYONE LIKED THEM! It’s pretty amazing when I make something that all three ofus actually like ;-)

Dec 15 — Hmm, what’s been happening… Yesterday I mailed a bunch of Christmas stuff to people. I feel good that I didn’t wait til the last minute. I sat out at the helicopter field with Danwhile he flew, and I finished the two books I was reading — “Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at theTurn of the Century” and the first half “All Creatures Great and Small”. Toward the end of the dayDan crashed his Freya, bummer, but it wasn’t a terribly bad crash and now he has the fun of tinkering withit which is one of his favorite things to do ;-) Ok I’m going to see if the TiVo has gotten anygood movies lately, and if not I will read the second half of “All Creatures…”. Oh wait first I haveto hang up the laundry. Also considering mixing up some gingerbread dough so we can make cut-out cookies…we’ll have to see how ambitious I feel.

Dec 12 — This morning we met Mom at the skating rink in Escondido, and she and Henry ice skatedtogether for a 2 1/2 hours! My mom is great. She’s almost 60, looks about 20 years younger, andhas more energy than I do! She and Henry looked so cute together, but I forgot to take a camera.Next time I will. I sat there and read my book (“The Edge” by Dick Francis) the whole time, which was lovely. Ok now I absolutely must do Christmas Cards or my friends andfamily won’t get them until 2003!

Dec 10 — Mmmm, noodles and butter for dinner! And I think I’ll have some grapefruit juice too — beverage of the gods. At Henry’s bedtime I read him another chunk of The Two Towers. Gandalf showedup and told about his fight with the Balrog. I’m finding this book to be a little more fun to read than Fellowship — I’m way less familiar with it and I really don’t know what’s going to happen next.Henry does, though — he knows the BBC radio play backwards and forwards, and he’s always fillingme in on the plot and chiming in on some of the dialogue. Ok I’m going to go cut out mitten shapesfor our christmas cards and watch the Antiques Roadshow!

Dec 09 — This morning we went to the library and I got a stack of good-looking books!After I write this I’m going to go read for a while. And then we went to radio shack to buy somebatteries, ’cause we didn’t have to get involved in a big Shopping Center Nightmare in order to get there. And then we went to Mom and Dad’s house so we could give Dad his batteries and helphim with his printer. His printer was acting up, so we swapped it for Mom’s printer but I thinkOS/2 didn’t like it very much. We never did get it working, bummer. It’s rough to be without a printer when you really need one! And then we went to the water store and bought 10 gallons ofgood, tasty, pure water, and now we’re home and Henry is playing his new Freddi the Fish game (from the library) and I made garlic toast and mini pizzas for lunch. Mmmm :) Ok, reading time!

Dec 08 — Ok, I finished my How to Make Beaded Snowflakes page!I got up this morning and added those variation photos at the bottom. I also uploaded a couple ofphotos of our Christmas Tree! You can see several of my snowflakes,and the paper chain that Henry and I made, and the pipe-cleaner helicopter that Dan made,and Henry’s Gymnastics medals, and the beaded candycanes he made, and the cross-stitched ornamentthat Kirsten made, and some of my needlepointed soldiers, and one of the Celtic Knot ornamentsthat Chloe and I made one year, and the little painted wood Santa that John made (lower center, KC ;-)and my little wooden nativity scene, and and and… ;-) Can youtell how how fond I am of all our special decorations?

Dec 07 — We bought our tree today! Henry and I went after his 9am gymnastics class, and we got a nice noble fir. Then we came home and cleaned the living room for ages in order to make room for it!We moved a shelf full of videotapes that was on the big table next to the tv, and we put the tree thereinstead. It almost touches the ceiling. And then we did the lights and decorated it and it looks sopretty! Dan took the digicam out to the heli field, but when he gets home I’ll take some pictures!

Dec 04 — I feel a lot better today. Hmm, what did we do… well, Henry and I went grocery shopping,whoop-dee-doo, so now we have food again, yay! Oh, we popped in to Cost Plus and lookedat all the fabulous Christmas ornaments they have there. That was so much fun! They have so many prettyand interesting ornaments. I liked the embroidered silk ones from India — they reminded me of the ones my mom bought at Cost Plus when I was very small — the little velvet rabbit, the elephant, and the pinkhorse with the fuzzy mane. Oh how I loved hanging those ornaments up every year!

Dec 03 — I got 9 hours of sleep last night but still felt strange and tired all day. Took a napin the afternoon while Henry was at his piano lesson and playing with Sal. Wierd, maybe I’m comingdown with something. Ugh. Let’s see what happened today… Henry helped me with the laundry –we attached a rope to one of the laundry baskets and he dragged it down to the laundry room for me :)I have two laundry racks so I can actually dry three loads at once — I hang all the shirts on hangars and they dry in the bathroom. Drying stuff in the house is a combination of thrift and laziness.I save $.75 per load, and I don’t have to walk all the way to the laundry room TWICE :) Also I never haveto worry about stuff shrinking! I found an extremely super-neat website today (thanks to kc :) — knitty.com. I’m in love with the “Vegan Fox” design (in the “patterns”section.) Where would I wear it? I have NO idea, but I still want to make one so I can look like a cruelty-free 1930s movie star ;-)

Dec 02 — I just found getcrafty.com! Neat stuffthere. I’ve got to try making that T-Shirt underwear! They’re holding a scarf drive, collectinghandmade scarves for homeless women in the NYC area. Deadline is Dec. 15… If I hurry I could knit one! here’s a link to the thread: get crafty scarf drive thread.

Dec 01 — Happy December! Check out my new crafts page! Mom and I went on a trail ride at a stable down near Poway today! We rode for almost 3 hours, in Rancho Penasquitos Canyon. I think that’s the name — it’s a big nature preserve down there, a canyon between suburbs. It rained a couple days ago (we even had lighting — very rare) so the canyon was green and had that nice moist smell, and a couple of little run-off streams and a little waterfall, even! We had a great time. Our guide, Lisa, was super-nice, and the horses were nice too. I haven’t ridden in so long. My muscles are protesting and I know I’m barely going to be able to walk tomorrow :)

Nov 30 — We went out for milk and zip ties, also got Dan’s car washed and waxed, and went to the craft store for more pipe-cleaners for Henry, and some embroidery floss for me and new rulers for Dan.Yesterday Dan made the CF card reader work in linux for me, so now I can unload photos off thedigicam without bugging him! So now I’m really inspired to set up my crafts page (inspired byKC’s Craftbox. So after the digicam battery charges upI may go take a bunch of photos of my crafty stuff — maybe. Or maybe I’ll sit around and watchold movies. Or play my banjo! Who knows… (later) Ok I got my crafts page up! It’s very much unfinshed, but at least it’s a start. I also added a few pictures to the photos page. Ok time to do dishes and go to bed!

Nov 29 — Henry and I worked on our long paper christmas chain for a long time, and listened to the “Over Sea, Under Stone” audiobook that we got from the library. I’m glad he likes it, ’causethat’s one of my favorite books, and maybe I can read the whole series to him soon. Our chain is getting really long! We’re using my good artist-quality spectra fadeless colored paper. If you want to makea chain like ours, just cut a lot of circles out of folded paper — make sure about 1/2″ of the edge of thecircles are on the fold. Cut the center out like a donut. Then link them together like this. Then chain ends up to be very flexible and drapable, and you can coilit up into a nice flat pile when you want to pack it away, and you don’t need any tape or glue!I practiced my banjo a lot today, and played the piano, and cleaned the kitchen very well and the livingrooma bit too, and read to Henry, and played rummy and spyfox with him. At night Dan and I watched the rest of “It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World” and laughed and laughed :)

Nov 28 — Happy Thanksgiving :) Henry and I watched the Macy’s Parade together. Lotsof fun! He liked the Rockettes :) I made apple pie and stuffing and green beans and cranberry sauce (well Henry helped me make that a couple days ago) and turkey and gravyand mashed potatoes today and Dan said everything was really good. *whew* It’s the first time I ever made a traditional-type Thanksgiving feast so I was nervous. We had such a niceday, all together! Dan took Henry out for a while to drive Dan’s old RC car, and Henryloved it, and we played Rummy together, and Henry and I played a Spy Fox game, and we hung around.And I sorta cooked on and off all day and then when everything was done we ate and then we walked around the apartment complex. And now I’m terribly sleepy so I’m going to go reada little Dick Francis (large print! no headaches!) and then go to sleep :)

Nov 27 — Another fairly good episode of Enterprise tonight! I started teaching Henry howto play Rummy today. We play with our cards down on the table, so I can help him with hisstrategy and he can observe mine. He’s catching on fast. I realized it was time to teach himto play rummy while we were playing zelda one day — he was guiding me around on the world map,telling me where I could buy a special shield or whatever, and I thought, man, this kid’s got a good memory! Time for RUMMY! Oh, and speaking of zelda, I’m nearly to the end of the game.I just need to rescue zelda AGAIN, and then fight the Big Boss — “ganon” is his name I think.

Nov 26 — Antiques Roadshow — yay! Just imagine owning a mourning maternity dress wornby your great-grandmother in 1850. Man. Sensei Paul gave Henry his orange belt at class today.I’m so proud of my little boy! I fixed him pancakes for dinner, and we watched a little moreof The Music Man while he ate. Then we did the Teeth Routine (I floss and brush his teeth, andhe yells) and then the Bedtime Routine (we scrape the toys off his bed, I read to him ’til 8,then we put on one of his audio-books, and check to make sure he has his brown monkey, his graymonkey, his spiderman doll, my old german shephard toy, and Mary Doll. Then we give each othera million kisses and hugs and then I turn out the light for him :) And then I made cheese blintzesfor Dan and me, and now I’m watching the Roadshow and writing my blog! I’m tired of this layout.

Nov 24 — It’s Sunday — the house is quiet, I’m listening to NPR and cleaning the kitchen.Sounds like Prairie Home Companion is starting up — neat, I haven’t heard that show in a couple of years! Last night I watched the Ken Burns’ American Experience biography of Mark Twain –I guess it was part two of a three-part series. Bummer that I missed the first part, but part two was fascinating. And after that I finished watching a Nova episode about Venice.Venice is sinking, the ocean is rising, and poor Venice is flooded an awful lot of the time.Great show. Yay PBS! Yesterday we spent hours and hours out at the flying field, and I tookmy Spencerian Writing stuff and worked on it for ages. I’m getting a lot better! I reallywant Michael Sull’s book, though — I think it will be more useful than the books I have. Oh, and a few weeks ago I started teaching Dan to play the piano. He loves to play,and since he and Henry both wanted to be able to practice at home instead of driving to Sally’s,we decided to rent a piano. So we found a nice Yamaha, and it was delivered on Friday! Wemade room for it in the bedroom by packing away my trains (I never worked on my layout after we moved, for some reason… I think I do better with hobbies that are portable, such as knitting,writing, beadwork, needlework, etc.) and shoving all the servers into a corner. And now ourroom is less cluttered and we have a lovely piano in there! OK, I guess I’d better get back to the kitchen ;-)

Nov 22 — I slept really well for about a week, but the last two nights were bad. I woke up atexactly 7:41 both mornings, with that “impossible to fall back asleep” feeling that I haven’thad in quite a while. Oh well. And last night, while I was doing the dishes, I breathed wrong,choked, and coughed for ages — now my throat feels all messed up. Bleah. Ok, that ends thecomplaints section of the blog :) Yesterday I made room on my deskfor the scanner, so I can scan some examples of my Spencerian writing copybooks for KC. I had a horrible time finding drivers for the thing. Umax doesn’t seem to have them available for download anymore. But I eventually found them on someRussian site. And then I realized I didn’t have the power supply! Heheh. But I’ve got it now andI’m going to see if I can make the thing work before everyone else wakes up.

Nov 20 — It’s hot. We just watched “Enterprise” (the episode entitled “Singularity”) and I’d say it was the best episode so far. It was very tense and not entirely predictable, plus we got to see a Vulcan Neck Pinch and the invention of the “Red Alert” system :)Yesterday Henry had his Junior Theatre performance! Heplayed the Lord of Night and was adorable. He sure does love that class. We’ve been playing withthe digicam and I have a few photos that I’ll put up soon — a couple of our Tiny Bird ™ playing in her birdy bath, and a couple self portraits that Henry and I took of ourselves :)I photoshopped the thumbnails tonight but I’m too tired to ftp them and fix up the html and everything, so come back tomorrow :)

Nov 18 — I cleaned the back bathroom today — YAY! I hate to sound like a commercial here, butOxyclean is really good stuff. It cleans well, and doesn’t remove the skin from my hands or cause my eyes and lungs to burn. Henry has been dying to watch Star Wars Episode II with me, so werented it today and I watched it with him. Yes, I watched the whole thing. I am a good mother.Henry says it is the best movie ever, but actually it is possibly the worst movie I have ever seen…I’m trying to think of a worse movie… Oh yes there was that one in which Patrick Stewart played asenile paranoid spy or something. That was also very very bad. Oh, Waterworld was also comparablybad. But back to Star Wars. I would like to mention to moviemakers everywhere that special effectsare not enough. A movie requires a plot. A movie requires decent dialogue. A movie requires at leastone main character about whom we can care, even just a little bit. Actors who can ACT are also a plus. (Samuel Jackson and Christopher Lee were the only ones, and they weren’t in it much)Ok, ok, it’s just a movie. Henry loved it. I endured it. Yick!

Nov 16 — It has been hot lately, in the mid-80s much of the time, and dry dry dry. Crazy. Where is WINTER? We were out at the flying field for hours today. Dan flew 5 times and was ecstatically happy.I played lemonade tycoon for ages. Great game,but now that I have all the useful upgrades (ice freezer, juicer, cash register, fancy stand) I’m wishing there were more. And I also worked through the fist two of my Spencerian Copybooks! I learned all the “short letters” plus “d” and “t”. I need a finer pen for the third copybook, though. My medium Shaeffer was good enough before but the lines are ruled much closer together in the next book. Hmm… I may finally get around to making a pen out of the feather I have here. We saw Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tonight. It was pretty good! Quite enjoyable. Kenneth Branagh as Gilderoy Lockhart was absolutely perfect and a pleasure to watch. They did a fine job on Dobby, too. I was afraid they’d make him too cute, but he was perfect. Henry was with Matthew — we wanted to see the movie first to see how scary it was. Definitely too scary. We’ll let him watch it at home if he wants to see it, so we can warn him of scary stuff ahead of time and fast-forward if he wishes. Oh yes, I would like to mention the previews. Yeah. Ok. Well, there was one which we found quite shockingly bad. It seemed to be about a black guy and a white guy, friends, both disgustingly stereotyped, who go to Australia for some reason and encounter there a talking kangaroo who fouls up their plans in some way. Wacky hijinks ensue. I really can’t describe to you how truly dreadful this movie looked. It seemed as if they had gone out of their way to make a movie that would be offensive to pretty much everyone who saw it, whether they be man, woman, or kangaroo. After the preview was over, we just stared at each other in horror. Who came up with this idea? WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?

Nov 15 — We joined a few extremely nice homeschooling families at our local ice-o-plex for a morning of ice skating! Henry said it wasthe most fun he ever had, so we’ll definitely be going back soon. I have three tunes memorized on my banjo! I tried “Soldier’s Joy” tonight without looking at the music and was amazed to find I remembered almost all of it perfectly. My Spencerian Writing books arrived today, but I’m too tired now to learn anything new, so maybe I’ll take them to the heli field tomorrow. Oh, my brother (a.k.a. King of the Freaky Websites) gave me this url, which should be entertaining for anyone who has ever fiddled with a Rubik’s Cube — astronauts and rubik’s cube (you’ll need flash, and it’s perfectly child-safe)

Nov 14 — I took my banjo along to homeschooler park day today, and practiced for about an hour and a half! My fingers are so sore now. Henry dug in the sand with his friends and had a great time. :)I thought I had lost my little pile of needlepointing stuff, including my current project, but I found all at Sally’s house! Yay! I thought of a MySQL and php project I want to make (a movies database)and Dan says he’ll help me with that soon. I need to get out my big red php book and remember what Iused to know… It’ll be a LOT easier than a comments system for my blog, so it’s less dauntingto get it started.

Nov 12 — Emotion Eric goes on adventures! I’m tired today,and it took me WAY TOO LONG to figure out that there is more than one picture in each adventure :)I just practiced my banjo for ages, until my fingers hurt too much to continue. I have “Hop HighLadies” and “Red-Haired Boy” completely memorized, and I’m working hard on “Soldier’s Joy” whichis a super-nice tune. It’s the hardest one I’ve worked on, and I have to play up high on the neckin one place, and in third position for a while. It took a lot of work to get my fingers to find just the right spot on the neck, but I can do it almost every time now. Tomorrow I’ll probablywork on memorizing it, and then I’ll have three tunes memorized! I recently became interested in learning to write with beautiful penmanship, so after doing a lot of online research, I decidedto order this set of instruction books from an extremely christian site. Hey, they had the best price :) It’s nearly impossible to find good examples of Spencerian writing online. spencerian.com has a small example. Pretty, huh?

Nov 11 — Nice day. I finally got the neckline of my plaid flannel dress lowered. Big job, took forever, turned out nice. I still haven’t decided if I should shorten the sleeves though.They’re so pretty long, and they were tricky to make, and they have elbow darts and little zippersat the wrists (I made this dress from a 1963 dress pattern), but it’s almost never cool enough towear long sleeves all day, and they bother me if I have to cook or do dishes or anything like that.So I don’t know. I’ll probably end up chopping them short.

Nov 10 — I slept until 11:00 — YAY! I think today I will finally alter these two dresses I made. I made them with a rather high neckline and I think I’d like them a lot more with a lower neckline. It’s a little tricky to change a neckline after a dress is finished… but I can do it. I’ll just have to be very careful. I think I will also turn the long-sleeved dress into a short-sleeved dress. Looks like it’s sunny out there today, which means Dan can fly his new heli again! I made some really good soup last night — a little sauteed onion and green pepper (in lots of butter), some chicken stock, a can of black beans, and a can of italian plum tomatoes, with a lump of cream cheese flung in at the end. Mmmmm!

Nov 09 — it rained all day again, plus heavy fog at night! Very unusual. I drove Henry downto Matthew’s house (the new place he rented is really nice!) and it was raining on and off the whole way and my left windshield wiper decided to freak out. It flips itself off the edge of the windshieldand gets stuck, and I have to open the window and push it back onto the glass, and keep my hand thereso it doesn’t flip off again. LOTS of fun.

Nov 08 — Little Henry felt much better today, but we stayed at home and had a quiet day justto make sure. We cuddled on the couch and I read to him a lot — some Harry Potter, and some ofa neat book we got from the library called “The Secret Garden Cookbook” which has recipiesinspired by “The Secret Garden” and also LOTS of information about Victorian foods and cookingand meals and stuff! It rained all day today — amazing! I literally can’t remember the last timeit rained for more that a couple of hours. It was so nice to get to stay home and be lazy andlisten to the rain. Hmm, which founding father are you most like? I am similar to Alexander Hamilton, it seems… Oh I played Zelda for a while today. I conquered the wizardbut he sent Zelda to the Dark World so I’m there now, looking for the 7 princesses or something :)

Nov 07 — Henry’s sick today, poor fellow. So we’re hanging out on the couch. He’s nappingright now. Earlier we watched an episode of Mr. Rogers and one of Leave it to Beaver (thank youTiVo!) and then I read him the next chapter of Chamber of Secrets. We’re about to start Chapter 6. It’s been a while since I read the Harry Potter books, and I had forgotten how funthey were. Yeah there are plot holes and inconsistencies — but the author is so creative andimaginative that you can just ignore the little annoyances and just enjoy the fun. In othernews, Dan has finished building his Freya helicopter! He’s planning to fly it for the first time today. Cool :)

Nov 06 — Um heh I was going to write something but I’m too tired to think of anything. Bedtime!

Nov 05 — Election day. I voted — did you? Took Henry down to JT this morning, hung out, came back, went to bank, deposited money, transfered money, came home, paid bills, etc. Taught mystudents this evening, and during a little break I installed zsneson Sally’s computer, and found roms for Zelda, Super Mario All-Stars, and a couple other games.So now we can play SUPER NINTENDO over there while I wait for students or Henry waits for me :)Matthew dropped Henry off while I was still teaching, and Henry discovered SUPER NINTENDO onSal’s computer and figured out how to start it and get Zelda running and was playing happily whenI went to check on him — even though we have no gamepad over there. He figured out how touse the keyboard instead. Last night we read the first chapter of Chamber of Secrets, and tonightwe read the second. Those chapters go by pretty quickly, compared to Tolkein. :) … Heheh I just found the rom for “Donkey Kong Country”. It’s thecutest game I have ever seen and it’s FUN!I think Henry will love it. I’ll show him how to play tomorrow, after his piano lesson :)

Nov 04 — Played Zelda all morning, then Henry and I went out to do errands — groceries, water, etc.He’s a good little helper. Oh we went to the library too, and got Harry Potter and the Chamberof Secrets, so I can read it to Henry before the movie comes out. We have about 10 days…

Nov 03 — I got the second Pendant in Zelda today! Dan had to kill the awful sand-worms for me. He’samazing! We had a nice lazy relaxing day today… Dan worked on his Freya all day, and I practiced my banjo(worked on Red-Haired Boy, Arkansas Traveller, and Bill Cheatham), made apple turnovers, and playedwith Henry-Pie. We made a neat carnival-ride thing out of K’Nex, and played Zelda for ages, and watched a good episode of “Nature” about deep-sea exploration.

Nov 02 — Happy birthday John! We just finished watching “The Farmer’s Daughter” (1947, Loretta Young, Joseph Cotton, EthylBarrymore). Super-good movie. Today we spent most of the day out at the helicopter field. They’re holding a Fun-Fly out there this weekend, so there were dozens of pilots flying all day. I sat,watched the flying, and worked puzzles in my latest GAMES magazine. Henry played with the other littlekids who showed up, and Dan hung around with the other pilots :) After it got dark and the other little kids went home, we all sat together and watched the night flying, which was neat. People put light-wireand glow-sticks and stuff on their helicopters and they look amazing! And one crashed HARD into a million little pieces which sucks of course but is still entertaining (Schadenfreude). We sure had a great day :)

Nov 01 — I decided I could maybe stop being lazy and actually use capital letters once in a while ;-)We’ll see how long it lasts… I had a nice day today! Henry and I played Zelda this morning and he cheered me on while I obtained the Pendant of Courage and was rewarded with another heart and the Pegasus Boots. Yay me!! And then we went to Circuit City to buy a new little tape recorder. Henrylikes for me to tape myself reading his bedtime story every night. We have four tapes of me reading “Fellowship of the Ring” so far, and he listens to them again after I’ve kissed him goodnight andturned out the light. He says they soothe his soul. ;-) Anyway, last night the motor in his oldwalkman finally burned out. The thing was about 4 years old and had been used fairly constantly all that time — it’s a wonder it lasted as long as it did. So, since I understand how truly important it is for Henry to be able to record my reading, we went to Circuit City and got an old-fashionedtape recorder. That’s all it does — it records (and plays) cassette tapes. It’s pretty much thesame machine we had in 1978, and it has an AC adapter so we no longer have to worry about batteries.Yay! Henry and I had a great time kicking around in the store too, playing with demo models and looking at software and stuff. And we poked around in a craft store called Value Craft too –it’s nearer to our house than Michael’s and it’s way better too! They even have fabric and sewingsupplies!

oct 31 — happy halloween! hmm what happened today… i woke up with a headache and it didn’t go away until i was walking around outdoors with henry tonight. funny, ’cause i was walking a lot at the park in the afternoon and that just made it feel worse. hmm. anyway henry played with sally this morningwhich always fills him with joy, and i stayed home and played zelda and did laundry etc. i found a very good walkthrough for the zelda gamethat we are all playing (a link to the past) and i think maybe i will be able to beat those awfulmonsters soon. mm so anyway i also made corn muffins (thank you trader joe’s mix) to take to the homeschooler park day halloween potluck, which was delightfully fun! henry has met a dear little boy named tim there and they like to hang out together and play “spy fox”. let’s see and then i went toteach a piano student, and then eventually we came home and went trick-or-treating. dan answered the door and gave out candy while we were out, and then henry took over after we got home. and we watched mr.rogers together before bedtime. lovely day :) i’m trying out galeon tonight and so far it seems to be the best graphical browser for linux that i have ever used!

oct 30 — the tivo got the antiques roadshow for me! yay! what a fun show. i watched about half of it just now. i took henry to hiskarate halloween party earlier today. he’s a sheriff — jeans, cowboy hat, vest, boots, sheriff’s badge.oh and i drew a big black handlebar moustache on his face :) TOO CUTE. he had a great time at theparty and i had fun watching the kids. oh he won a prize in the costume contest –“most entertaining”.i spent a little time in the library this morning while henry had his piano lesson, and found a couplebooks that look interesting — one about optimizing web graphics with photoshop, and the other aboutREALLY learning flash 5. i think i have flash 5… well anyway i’ll learn something. i haven’t been reading somuch lately because of the headaches, but i have found that if i take a lot of breaks it’s ok. ooo i forgotto mention how much fun we’ve been having with the super nintendo emulator! we’ve been playing zelda a lot…henry likes to play, and he likes to watch me (or dan) play so we all have a lot of fun. great game! i’mstuck though… i have to beat some big fierce monsters and i just keep getting creamed over and over.ok i’m tired — bed!

oct 29 — we watched “powder”. ehh. not that great a movie, but not that bad either. entertaining enough :)what made it wonderful and special and super-enjoyable was cuddling up under my old quilt and watching it together. finally it’s not so HOT all the time and we can actually sit next to each other without dying in a puddle of sweat!

oct 28 — h and i went to the wild animal park this morning! we had so much fun :) rode the monorail,walked around, ate sandwiches, talked, fed the lorikeets, watched the elephants. what a lovely placeit is. nice day too — not too hot, not too cold.

oct 27 — dan and henry and i went to see the san diego junior theatre performance of rogers and hammerstein’s cinderella! we had a great time! my excellent nephew john has got his website back up. don’t forget to visit hissilica gel page… everyone else in the entire world has a blog with a commentsystem… i’m getting jealous. dan says he’ll help me make mine have comment capability too…stay tuned but don’t hold your breath ;-) i really really hate the time change. yeah i got an “extra” hour of sleep this morning but it’s not worth a) feeling tired even EARLIER in the evening and b) feeling like crap for a week because my body clock feels confused and c) feeling even worse when we “lose” an hour next spring. stupid daylight savings! </rant>

oct 26 — i really wish i had some sparkling apple juice right now but we don’t have any… ahh dan brought me some grapefruit juice — almost as good :) have you seen the viking kitties singing the immigrant song? heheh.we’re having a super-nice weekend. henry and i played mariokart in the morning, then i took him togymnastics and watched him tumble and bounce and fly through the air :) as a surprise i made him The One Ring out of yellow glass beads and hung it on “an elven chain, light yet strong” (blue embroidery floss)and gave it to him after his class and he was delighted. sweet little boy! then i took our little budgieto the vet — her beak and legs were looking oddly crusty. turns out she has mites, poor little thing.but the vet says she’ll be fine. we have to go back for more medicine at 2-week intervals for a while.she’s the dearest little bird in the whole world — we all love her so we’re relieved that there’s nothingterribly wrong with her! then dan and i went out to the field and he flew his helicopter and i mademore lovely snowflakes and played mario brothers 3 on dan’s little laptop. and then we came home, and finished watching the apartment and now i’m watchingholiday (one of my all-time favorites) and eating noodleswith cream-cheese garlic sauce. my goodness katherine hepburn sure has a sparkle, but dan says he likes my sparkle better :) :) :) have i mentioned lately how wonderful he is?

oct 25 — i went to michaels (a craft store) this morning! they had some good glass beads onsale so i bought a bunch more, plus another little compartment box to keep them in. i made severalmore super-pretty snowflakes yesterday. i keep my beading stuff in my Lucy Lunchbox, along with mylittle needlepoint projects, so i can carry it along with me and work on my snowflakes while i’m waiting for henry at karate or gymnastics or wherever. ok the dishes are stacked up mighty high in thesink so i’d better take care of that now, and then i should have time for some banjo practice before it’stime to leave again for piano students and karate. oh i forgot to mention what incredible strengthof will i used at michaels. they had so much cool stuff there and they had some christmas stitchery kits on sale that i really liked… yet i managed to buy only what i went there for. amazing! :)

oct 24 — i forgot to mention that we are hosting julie’s site now, and in exchange for a bunch of workdan did for her, she gave him one of her spare digicams :) it’s really amazing! dan took this photo of me last night.

oct 23 — went to the library after henry’s piano lesson and got some cool books! henry’s getting a lot moreinterested in learning to read, so we picked out a few picture books with few and simple words. he read oneto me tonight entitled “big pig and little pig” and needed help with only one word (“going”). he wasEXTREMELY proud of himself. all he’s been needing is a little confidence. pretty soon he’ll be a fine reader, i think :) i made a bunch of really pretty snowflakes today using the new beads i boughtat The Black Bead in ocean beach. hmm, they don’t have a website but they RULE. also playedsuper mario brothers 3 with henry (he loves watching and coaching me, and he takes a turn sometimes too). played “worms world party” with dan again too, lots of fun. :) and i just practiced my banjofor AGES. i’ve got “hop high ladies” memorized and i learned a new one too — “red-haired boy”. it’sgot a couple of tricky chords in it but i can do it!

oct 21 — what a day. but hey, life is good and the weather is cooler :) dan’s been playing “worms” lately and today we played against each other — fun little game! and i got a new game for my palm — variegate. see my palmstuff page for details. also updated my bookspage. set up dad’s new remote-controlled heater, made apple turnovers. took henry to the playgroundand he met a nice little girl and they played while i made a few more snowflakes. ok time for bed andsleeeeeeeeeeep.

oct 20 — just woke up. 10 hours of sleep! yay! we watched SNL last night and most of it was quite funny!”America needs another great lake.” ok there are a lot of things i want to do today so i’d better get started!

oct 19 — spent hours at the helicopter field while dan flew and helped kyle with his heli. i played on the clie, listened to music, did puzzles in GAMES magazine, and made a couple more beaded snowflakes. reallypleasant and relaxing :) i was just cleaning henry’s room — ugh! i have to do it when he’s not here or he won’t let methrow away even the tiniest scrap of paper. oh yesterday we went on a homeschooler field trip to the rokenbok company headquarters (in encinitas). it was pretty neatbut more of a sales pitch than anything. pretty boring for the little guys to have to listen to a speech abouttheir marketing strategies. but we got to meet some of the designers/engineers and see where they test the toys andstuff, and , best of all, we got to play with the toys before the tour started ;-) but it was henry’s least-favoritefield trip ever, poor child. they really need to re-think their tour plan and make it a lot more interesting for little kids, if they are inviting little kids to go on the tour.ok time for some apples and cottage cheese. that’s a good bedtime snack.

oct 18 — i’m learning a little fiddle tune on my banjo — “hop high ladies” it’s called. it’sin my ken perlman book and is the first piece in there that i’ve really loved. i think i have itmemorized now, and i also printed out some staff paper and transcribed it out of tab into standard notation, just for fun :) dan might give me his clie n760c! he isn’t using it since he got the treo, and he’d rather give it to me than sell it. so i’ve got all my programs loaded on there and am trying it out. listening to mp3son a palm is pretty cool :) so far i like it a lot! but i’m very sentimental about my iiic so we shall see…i finished all my books and didn’t read at all today (except to henry — we’re on chapter 12 ofThe Fellowship) and no got no headaches! yay!

oct 16 — finished my book today. wow! that was a good one. dan wrote a review of his nifty newcellphone/palm (handspring treo 300). you can read his review at the gadgeteer. i love the way he writesabout it — so full of enthusiasm, facts, and extra information! that’s the kind of review i’d like to read if i were thinking about getting one. and i got to proofread it for him, which i love to do. whoopsi just found one more comma that should be a semi-colon. oh well ;-) i’m glad i finally know what’swrong with my eyes. it does seem to help the jumpiness to hold my book as far away from my face as possible,and when i feel a headache coming on to rest my eyes completely for a while.

oct 15 — took henry down to his theater class and took myself to the art museum and the mingei :) nice andpeaceful, no one talking. they have antique dolls and toys at the mingei (folk art museum) and the “goulden baby house” which is a dollhouse built in 1750 and still containing the furnishings of the first owner and her great-grandaughter (c. 1820). it’s wonderful but i can’t find a picture online for you,sorry :( hmm then i came home, bought milk, took myself to the library and got this book called “dresscodes of three girlhoods: my mother’s, my father’s, and mine” by noelle howley. i’ve been reading itat every spare moment all day (e.g. at stoplights) and i’m about halfway through. it’s really interesting and well-written, and i’m enthralled. here, read the reviews on amazon. they put it better than i can :) get it from the library and read it!

oct 14 — jeeze i need to catch up here… let’s see… today’s monday… on saturday i had another migraineand did basically nothing all day. bleah. sunday i got enough sleep (finally) and felt good all day!we went out to the field so dan could fly his helicopter, and i read my incredibly good book “The Battleof the Villa Fiorita” by Rumer Godden. and we went up to john’s house in temecula so dan could fix up hisnetwork etc and then we went over to the ben and jerry’s in temecula (that’s the closest one to our house)and dan bought me a cone and two quarts to take home :) and we hung out for a while and then picked uplittle henry-monkey at matthew’s mom’s house and took him home with us. also fixed up the nyip website butthe new version isn’t up yet so i won’t url you. today i went to get my eyes checked… i’ve been having a lotof headaches and funny vision things going on lately. turns out i have something called “convergence insufficiency” which there is prettymuch nothing they can do about unless i am a zillionaire and/or have vision insurance to pay for visiontherapy. but oh well at least i know what’s causing the headaches and funny vision things! plus i cansay i have “convergence insufficiency” which sounds impressive ;-) ok i have brought you my loyal fans up to date and now i can get back to my incredibly good book (which i bought for $.50 at a garage salealong with a wonderfully tacky 8-book set of 1964 cookbooks.) p.s. the sopranos last night was… better.

oct 10 — i don’t believe i ever mentioned how truly terrible last week’s episode of The Sopranos was. now,The Sopranos has always been a pretty good show, and we look forward to watching it together every sunday.it has always been well-acted (except for Silvio — where did they dig him up?) and well-written, and usually the plot makes sense. but last week’s episode was a disaster. it seemed as if the writers suddenlyran out of things to write about, and were grasping at straws, trying ANYTHING to fill up an hour. a familyof blind, elderly, and/or deranged hitmen? Furio, pining for the good old days when he was a gardener??Ralphie, apparently shrugging off the fact that janice dumped him and shoved him down the stairs? Melfi,complaining to her shrink about her son’s lack of ambition? (that one REALLY seemed out of character to me).the astonishing yet pointless coincidences of meadow meeting melfi’s shrink’s son/daughter (we never decided whether it was male or female) AND malfi’s shrink encountering tony in the parking garage? did tony stop seeing melfi?isn’t that what the show is BASED ON? and that last scene, where we were obviously supposed to think that carmellawas hearing “furio music” in her head… but it was really meadow’s stereo. what was THAT for? the whole thing wasa mess. and did they forget about the GIANT BUILDUP toward adriana getting picked up by the feds… well,now what? gripe, gripe ;-) well, sorry, but sopranos was really the only tv show worth looking forward toanymore so it’ll be sad if it’s going to start to stink. let’s hope the next episode is better.

oct 09 — finally got to see “gosford park”! excellent movie, lot of familiar faces in it that i have to lookup on imdb now… helen mirren and steven fry are the only two that i can put names to right away… but i thinkthe girl who played anne elliot in a recent version of Persuasion was in it. dan looked up the actress who playedeliie-the-maid for me, ’cause she was driving me crazy — turns out she played the blind girl in Red Dragon. heheh.i NEVER would have placed her if not for imdb.com. and george-the-footman was played by the actor who played sewell in the-movie-where-van-helsing-teleports, aka NOT bram stoker’s dracula. anyway i’m going to eat myenglish muffin now and go to sleep. if you want to see a good english-country-house-murder-mystery, go watchgosford park!

oct 07 — i’m making some of my good veggie soup for lunch — lots of barley, potatoes, carrots, a bit of celery andgreen pepper, minced onion, and a can of plum tomatoes in their juice. yum! it’s starting to smell good already. this morning henry and i made a rocket ship ride with his K’Nex! K’Nex gets my coveted firstannual Coolest Toy of the Year Award. i practiced my banjo for a long time this morning. i’m working on somerather difficult exercises in my lesson book, and also on the lovely little songs in the booklet that camealong with my Happy Traum Beginning Banjo video. :) forgot to mentiont hat we went to lisa’s birthday partyfor a little while on saturday (happy birthday lisa :) and then to horton plaza to see The Red Dragon. It was good, better than i was expecting. a lot better than Hannibal. ralph fiennes is AMAZING — we’d just watchedhim being charles van doren in Quiz Show, and he was almost unrecognizable in Red Dragon.

oct 05 — took henry to his gymnastics class this morning and started reading “travels with charley” by johnsteinbeck. i just picked it up to see how for i’d gotten, and accidentally read another ten pages withoutrealizing it. what a book! anyway he’s in maine, talking to the canadians who harvest the potato crop. yesterday i had a migraine, bleah, not terrible but it made me feel pretty crappy all day. henry and dan tookgood care of me, though. henry and i have been reading his beautiful hardbound birthday copy of Lord of the Ringsevery day. we’re up to chapter VII — the Tom Bombadil one. We’re going to skip Fog on the Barrow Downs,though — that chapter scared me when i was little and it’s boring, too. heheh. this morning i’m working onhenry’s computer some more. we got him more RAM and a new cd-rom drive for his birthday, and i’m donating my old6 gig hard drive. so right now i’m fixing up the hard drive with a ncie clean installation of win98se and allhis good henry software etc. he’s been longing to have room for mp3s on his computer and now he will!

oct 03 — happy birthday kathy! oh this change in the weather is so nice. i’m so glad fall is finally here. somepeople say there are no seasons in southern california, but that’s not true. there are no obvious, dramatic seasonalchanges — the trees are not turning color or anything, and it’s still sunny all the time, but the air feels and smells different and the sun is not as intense as it is in summer. it’s much more pleasant to be outside, now that the heat and sun are not so oppressive. i practiced my banjo last night and dan said he wasreally impressed at how fast i’m improving! i sure love playing it. it has such a friendly, joyful, soothingsound.

oct 02 — henry bought a bionicle board game with some birthday money and we just played it — it’s pretty fun :) ok time for shower and doing stuff… the kitchen floor is driving me crazy so maybe i’ll mop it today… maybe ;-)kirsten came over monday night and we watched “witness for the prosecution” which was really good! charleslaughton is so cool, and tyrone power was amazing! it is actually a little bit cooler lately… i have been using both my blankets at night and now my feet are cold. yay!

sept 29 — last night was so nice — we took a walk in the evening, and hung around in the quiet together for ages and then we drove down to the baskin-robbins for ice cream but when we got there we realized we were really hungry so we ZOOMED over to the mall because dan wanteda Quiznos sandwich but they had just closed (at 8:30 on a saturday? we thought the mall was open til 10…). sothen we headed back to baskin-robbins and had ice cream. never again! they have HORRID ice cream. the only decentice cream place is Ben and Jerry’s i guess. but we had a lot of fun anyway, driving around at night together. :)and today has been wonderful too! i had the house all to myself for hours this morning, and then after dan gotup we went to lunch and i bought beading wire. and then i made another snowflake, and now i’m going to clean upand practice my banjo and then go pick up our dear little henry-pie.

sept 28 — we had henry’s birthday party today. ohhhhh how i hate birthday parties. his two good friends,spike and nicolas, came and i think everyone had a good time, but henry was a basket case,compared to his normal, easy-going, relatively calm little self. being the center of attention is too much for asensitive little kid to handle, i think. after the party i went to the bead store for more beads so i can makemore snowflakes for christmas presents!

sept 27 — happy 7th birthday darling henry! we had a fun nice day doing henry birthday things — lookedat his new books, played with his K’Nex (he loves them), played his new computer games, etc. he seemed really happy all day, and he got to play with sally for an hour this morning, which filled him with joy :)we were there when 11am came, the time when he was born, and sally ran to get a big brass bell for him toring and we all cheered :)

sept 26 — the rush concert last night was fun! it was at the coors amphitheater which is a really nice outdoor concert place. our seats were good, it was not too cold, there was no opening band, and we hada good time :)

sept 25 — i bought ingredients for henry’s birthday cake today. he wants lemon cake, and he doesn’t like frostingso i bought lemon marmelade to stick the layers together, and blue sprinkles for the top (his favorite color isblue). tonight we are going to the Rush concert… I don’t like Rush, but dan does so i am going with him to keep him company :) ok now i have to call the damn DMV and see where my registration stickers are…

sept 23 — it is hot. hot hot hot. made apple pie again yesterday and it’s all gone already :) i found a really fun little space invaders clone for henry — if you set the speed to slow, it’s just right for a little kid with no1980s videogame experience. he loves it! here you go: buggers.i’m reading such a good book: “Squire” by tamora pierce. in fact i’m going to go read some more now.

sept 22 — happy birthday pthree! C A N… ok i had a really goodday yesterday! watched two of the banjo intructional videotapes that my dear sweet aunt susan sent me (she works forhomespun tapes) and practiced and improved some more! and we drove down to the Borders bookstore down in SD so I could get books for Henry’s birthday. got him a nice hardback of “dr dolittle”and a german picture dictionary (he wants me to teach him german) and we went out to dinner. and it was a lovely day :) now i’m going to go clean henry’s room before he gets back!

sept 20 — dropped henry off at sally’s for his piano lesson and playtime this morning, and then went to do a little birthday shopping for him… bought him a big K’Nex kit which looks like lots of fun! you can build lots of neat things with it. dan and i can hardly wait to play with it with him. :)also looked at bookstar for good books for him but couldn’t find anything so i willgo down to the big borders bookstore on sunday i think. yesterday my beaded snowflakes kit finally arrived!i made a snowflake right away and it was so much fun! henry helped me sort and choose and string the beads.and also yesterday i practiced my banjo for a long time and dan said i was noticably improved and that it soundedlike real music :) :) :) ok now i am going to go make another snowflake.

sept 19 — last night i dreamed that dan and henry and i moved into a little house in a little town where icould walk to the library and the store. nice dream :) and then i dreamed that some friends and i were performing “much ado about nothing” — my friend martha played bianca, and i think i played hero, and keanu reeves was there ;-) last night we watched the season premiere of “enterprise” and it was actuallyGOOD. whoa. and i realized that my feet were cold so i put on a pair of henry’s socks that were on the couch.cold feet mean summer might finally be almost over! if they remain cold (without socks) i will know for sure.this morning henry and i are planning to go to the bank and the library and the farmers’ market. fun :) we want to buy some tomatoes that have a TASTE, and i’m hoping the tamale lady will be there.

sept 17 — i keep thinking of all this stuff i want to write about and then when i finally get to my computeri forget everything. argh. oh well. windows is all nice and useful on this computer now. i’m still booted into windows because i’ve been getting a bunch of mp3s with kazaa lite. i haven’t found a goodp2p file sharing program for linux yet, and kazaa lite is really excellent. i installed the german version, just for fun :) “audiodateien suchen”. henry has been listening to “99 luftballon” a lot, and i realizedthat i can understand a lot of the lyrics, which is really cool. here’s a list of my indispensible windows programs: securecrt, winamp, kazaa lite, trillian, ncftp, irfanview, photoshop, flash, audiograbber, and nero.trillian is new for me… it’s an aim client. i like it a lot! all right, i guess i’b better go buy somejuice. heheh i just walked down the hall to the bathroom… austin is sleeping in henry’s room since henryis down at matthew’s. austin has the door open, so i’m sure the sounds of my typing and rummaging in the kitchenare clearly audible in henry’s room, AND the window blinds are wide open and the sun is shining full in austin’s face. yet he can sleep. amazing.

sept 16 — nice day today! henry and i took a nice walk on the beach (well, a wade-and-walk) and played”streetcar” (excellent board game). oh that pie i made yesterday turned out perfectly and it is already completely gone. tonight we’re going to take henry to matthew’s and pick up austin from his uncle’s place. i’m still waiting for my banjo case and my book and my beaded snowflake kit to arrive!

sept 15 — last night we watched “it happened one night”. that is one incredibly well-written/directed/actedmovie. but the damn tivo cut off the last few minutes of it so the last thing we saw was Ellie walking down the aislewith the WRONG MAN. grrrr. we’re going to rent it soon so we can watch it all over again and actually see the end this time. also installed the winders on Strangelove’s other partition yesterday… this morning i spenta few hours installing software and stuff. i think i’m all set now so i’m going to go practice my banjo andthen make an apple pie for dan, who is absolutely LUSTING for pie. allrecipies.com rules :) congratulations john and kc!!! we love you :)

sept 14 — we just took austin down to his uncle’s place in lakeside. on the way we stopped at the wonderful computercirculation center and bought some more parts for henry’s computer. dan discovered that the fan was failing, and he thinksthat might be contributing to the instability problem. and we got a new slotket. ok i am ravenously hungry so i amgoing to make my favorite lunch (big salad wrapped up in lots of soft buttery corn tortillas) and watch a fred astaire movie.i think it’s “follow the fleet” and i’ve never seen it before!

sept 13 — i can play “buffalo gals” pretty well! slowly, but nicely. i bought a banjo instruction book on amazon (used) so pretty soon i will be able to make sure i’m not learning bad habits. i read a lot of good reviews of ken perlman’sclawhammer banjo book… i hope it gets here soon! last night i watched “breaker morant” — excellent movie. i watched it years and years ago, and i was glad to see that it was as good as i remembered.

sept 11 — last year on this date, dan and i were sound asleep when my mom pounded on our door (we were still livingthere) and said there was something terrible going on in NY and she, my grandpa mike, grandma carol, and grandma jean couldn’t get the tv to work. i went downstairs, fiddled with the cable, made the tv work, and sat there glued with them,watching when the second plane hit the tower. after a bit i went back up to get dan thinking he’d better know what was going on.we were all very worried about my brother, who lives in NYC, and his wife, who is a flight attendent. turned out theywere just fine. henry was with matthew that day, so all we did all day was watch CNN. today, everything was normal inmy world. everyone i know and love is safe and well.

sept 10 — we all went down to SD tech books so dan could get an Oracle book.and then we stopped by giacoletti’s (the local music store) and dan bought me my banjo! it’s so lovely. it’s the deering goodtime that i linked to on the 8th. i didn’t buy a case for it — i’m waiting until i can afford a hard case.i can probably get one on ebay for < $100. now i need an instuction book -- i have been reading reviews online and i think i know the one i want. luckily there are lots and lots of fine banjo websites -- i was fooling around onuncle ben’s banjo page and actually made somethingthat sounded a little bit like music! oh, and i had a new adult student today — she’s so sweet and enthusiastic. she’sgoing to be fun to teach!

sept 09 — took henry down to balboa park to play with nicolas. alina had some free passes to the science museum,so we all went there and it was really fun! my parents used to take us there when we were little. it’s all differentnow, much much bigger, way more exhibits, but a few of the old ones that i remember are still there. :) at night kirsten came over and we watched “double indemnity”. great old movie!

sept 08 — i got sally’s computer all fixed up with a nice clean install of win98 and all the software she needs,and I took it over this morning and set it up for her. it was fun! henry and i played one of his pajama samgames all the way through — it took about 2 hours and was really quite enjoyable! for the past couple of daysi’ve been surfing for information about banjos… i’ve wanted to learn to play the banjo for years and recentlydan said he wanted to buy me something very special and i think a banjo is what i want! this is theone i’m looking at: deering goodtime…

sept 07 — our friend austin has come to visit for two weeks! before we picked him up at the airport (the adorablelittle carlsbad airport) we went to computer circulation center (the BEST computer stuff store in san diego) forparts for mom’s new hand-me-down computer and for henry’s birthday upgrade. we got a stick of ram for each of them, a new cd-rom drive for each, and a video card for henry-pie. i’ve been working on sally’s computer now for a long time…installing windows updates now. whee. oh, i went to the library this morning, and also stopped by the goodwill for fun –i bought an adorable striped spandex/cotton shirt, and a plaid wrap miniskirt for a total of $5.28 :)

sept 06 — happy birthday chloe!

sept 05 — dan’s parents sent me a big box of jellybeans and a lovely enormous wooden cuttingboard for my birthday!it was such a nice surprise :) today was a good day. it was a little cooler and cloudy, and it even rained just a tinylittle bit a couple of times. it was so exciting to smell rain again!

sept 04 — ok well i was going to write while i was watching a movie (“my sister eileen”) but it’s really goodso far so i can’t really watch and write at the same time… ok now i paused it. thank you mr. tiVo. i’vebeen commanding the tivo to record a lot ov movies lately and some of them have been pretty good! let’s see…in the last couple weeks we’ve watched The Graduate, The Great Escape, Airplane, and The Spirit of St. Louis,all of which were really good! Watched Spirit of St. L. with henry and he loved it too, and has been playing “charles lindberg” with a funny knitted cap of mine that looks a little like an aviator’s helmet. and speaking of henry i wanted to write down a little song he composed while we were camping: “imagine a berryas big as a canary, three thousand miles in length! imagine a grape as big as an ape, three thousand milesin length!” so anyway about my day today. it started out great — watched a wonderful episode of “nature”with henry, all about the birds and beasts of iceland, and then i read to him, and then i helped him clean hisroom, and then he helped me carry out loads of garbage, and then i cleaned my sewing table and unloaded and cleanedthe long bookshelf, and vacuumed under the coffee table, and then i was planning to finish sewing that blackshirt i am making but i got a bad migraine and just lay on the couch for a few hours. ugh. i still feel kind of bad but not as bad as i did this afternoon. ok back to My Sister Eileen.

sept 03 — we had fun camping. it was VERY hot and dry up on the mountain, though — i don’t think we will camp upthere again at this time of year. the hot dry dusty weather was exhausting. but we had a great time! henry and i gotthere at 1:30 on sunday and set up the tent and walked around and ate. and then saly got there later and we walked aroundand ate some more. :) after the sun went down we took another walk (it was just as hot but without the glaring sun)and looked at the stars, which was amazing. i had actually forgotten what a night sky full of stars looks like! darncity lights :( after we got home yesterday henry and i watched most of “spirit of st. louis”, a good old movie aboutcharles lindbergh starring jimmy stewart. it was REALLY good! we’re going to finish it this morning. i guessi’d better go unload the camping stuff out of the car before it gets too hot and miserable out there. i wish winterwould get here. i wish i lived somewhere where there actually WAS winter, heheh.

sept 02 — happy birthday ken!

sept 01 — went to bed very very late last night, and woke up very very early because i am excited about going camping! so i’m kind of tired this morning but oh well at least i will probably get to bed early tonight. our parakeet is so delightful! she is very tame and gentle, and just so adorable. we leave the top off her cage allthe time, with a 5′ long walking-stick-like branch that henry brought home across the top for an extra-nice perch for her.she is a very very sweet little bird.

aug 31 — drove up to van nuys for an RC Helicopter fun-fly thing. I watched some of the stunt-flying, but mostlysat in the shade, finished reading “persuasion” and played an entire game of kingdom :) very pleasant!traffic was AWFUL on the way home. we just finished watching The Graduate. great movie. i thought i spotted a VERY young richard dreyfuss — looked him up on IMDB and i was right! he’s the guy in the boarding house whowants to call the cops. i was trying to watch Cabaret (another one for when henry’s not home) but lizaminelli is just too annoying and i can’t stand her anymore so i’m going to bed! taking henry camping on the mountaintomorrow :)

aug 30 — i was working on my aldon’s crossing module yesterday and was totally perplexed by the fact that my actors were only giving half the experience points that they should be… i stewed over it and posted to the forum and fretted…and finally tony pointed out the fact that when you have a pet, he takes half the experience too… D’OH! boy did i feel foolish! bought push-pins recently and hung henry’s posters up, finally. he nees a little bookshelf and a little dresser for his clothes, but that will have to wait for another month until i have money again :)

aug 27 — happy birthday to me! i’m having a lovely day. henry gave me a big set of colored pens, and dan gave me two wonderful coloring books, dr. strangelove on dvd, and a james hogan paperback (the Giants trilogy).

aug 26 — whoops missed some days there. sorry! we had a great weekend! Henry’s gymnastics recital was on saturday,so that was fun and exciting. he had a wonderful time. let’s see what else happened… i worked on my aldon’s crossingmodule quite a bit. it’s slow though… i need to think of some more quests! oh and last night dan and i watched some of “the great escape” which i told the TiVo to record for me. we’ll probably finish it tonight. good movie! today we met nicolas and alina at mission bay park and we all had such a good time! henry and nicolas get along great together, and alina and i get along great together too :) it was lovely — we were there for hours!

aug 23 — josh just url’d me freeciv for palmos.oh my god. it looks amazing! i hope they complete it someday — i just emailed and volunteerd to beta test :) lookat the screenshots!

aug 22 — woke up at 6:45am for some reason. argh. yesterday i was cleaning henry’s room, and dealing with this horrible old vacuum that we got for free, and something inside me just SNAPPED and i decided to go spend some ofmy savings on a brand new vacuum. so i ran down to the Denault’s True Value Hardware Store and bought a nice littlehoover upright.(mine was on sale for $79) a nice grandmotherly sales lady let me try it out and everything, and told me all about the Denaultfamily — how the first store was started in 1950 or something, and the grown up sons manage the stores and the grandkids work in the office, etc. brought my nice new vacuum home and it works wonderfully. yay! …later that same day… well since i was up so early i decided to use the quiet morning to find/install/test/use a new aim client. i use gaim, which is an aim client for linux. well, lately gaim has been exhibiting some undesirable behaviour (e.g. showing me chinese,nothing, or large bars of blue instead of whatever text people are trying to send me). I tried ntaim (non-graphical)but it leaves a LOT to be desired. so today i tried everybuddy and kopete, both of which i have heard good things about.well, everybuddy segfaults whenever i run it. i even got the latest version from their website, compiled it(which took forever because i had to track down a bunch of extra libs and stuff)… and boom, it segfaults every time. ok so i thought i’d try kopete… well, kopete depends on a bunch of kde stuff that apt never heard of (i don’t use kde, but i do use konqueror so i thought maybe kopete would work too… no such luck.) so at this point, 14 hours later (well i didn’t spend the entire day on this project but it kind of feels as if i did) i’m back to semi-good old gaim.

aug 21 — mom and dad gave my birthday present early, since mom will be out of town on my actual birthday. theygave me a beautiful pair of zeeta shoes! i love them.

aug 20 — last night i slept well, and went all night without coughing. yay :) i have found two new GOOD palm games: Kingdom and Timebomb. see my palm stuff page for details.

aug 18 — yesterday i felt ok in the morning but crummy again by nighttime. went out to the flying field with dan to watchhim fly his RC heli and started reading “Persuasion” again (the penguin classics edition he gave me for christmas).after flying, we picked up Sal and went to see My Big Fat Greek Wedding which was absolutely wonderful. (that review gets a couple of details wrong, but you’ll getthe idea) go see it go see it go see it. by the time we got home i felt awful so i lay on the couch and watchedNick at Night (a couple of annoying Lucy episodes and a couple of pleasant, early, Leave it to Beaver episodes). I feel a bitbetter again this morning — i’ll try not to over-do it again today. have you ever been to villainsupply.com?

aug 16 — finally started feeling better yesterday. i still have a bit of a dry cough, but my appetite is back and i feel human again! yay for good health! i just discovered that kayray.org is listed in the “recommended” catagorynycteris.net — the lovely site belonging to my dear nephew’s g/f. i feel honored :)hope to meet you someday, kc!

aug 15 — henry invented a wonderful game today. i sent him off to wash his hands, and after a while i realized there wassinging coming from the bathroom. he was in there a long long time and then he came out and said he’d invented a game,ao i went with him to see. the game is called “Boiling Lake”. you fill up the sink to the very brim with hot water,and you sing the Boiling Lake song (“the boiling lake will make you go insane, everyone wants to see that groovy thing”to the tune of “Spiraling Shape” by TMBG) and then you dunk toys in it… apparently it is extremely fun! yay henry :)

aug 14 — sick. but taught my wednesday students anyway — there were only two today. henry is home! yay!!! he had a busy day — first a grappling seminar at the dojo, and then he went to an indoor rockclimbing place with his friends, and then he played with them, and then they dropped him off at sally’s when i was done teaching and then i took him to gymnastics. and then we lay on the couch and watched two mr. rogers episodes (how people make balloons!)and it was lovely and relaxing.

aug 13 — sick. lay on the couch all day, napped, listened to bach. dan took good care of me.

aug 12 — woke up feeling bad… i can feel a sore throat starting and i feel generally crummy. blah. lay aroundmost of the day, and then dan drove me around to do errands and stuff.

aug 11 — my birthday wishlist is up! i did a little shopping for henry’s birthday today. i bought him a couple of cd-roms at costco — the I Spy Treasure Hunt (he liked the I Spy Schoolhouse game a lot) and a three-pack of Spy Fox games, which I hear are good, and they are made by the same company that makes pajama sam,freddi the fish, and other favorites.

aug 10 — yesterday i worked on my little mod all day (when i had time) and late at night my modmaker crashed and ilost everything i’d done all day (which wasn’t much — i’ve been fighting with an actor script). grrrr, learn to savemore often, kara :) i made my fabulous casserole for dinner again — here’s the basic recipe: make a big pot of polenta (2 c. polenta, 6 c. water, some salt) when it’s done, stir in a lot of grated parmesan, romano, or asiago cheese. meanwhile,saute some onion, garlic, diced peeled eggplant, carrots, red/green peppers, and zuchini in a big pot in olive oil, orwhatever is handy. when the vegetables are nice and tender, add a big can of diced tomatoes and some basil and oregano, and salt and pepper, cook it down a little, and stir in a lot or grated cheese, again. pour the polenta into a LARGE casserole, and then pour the vegetable mixture in on top, gently. sprinkle a lot of grated mozzarella on to, and bake at350 degrees for about 45 minutes, or until the cheese gets bubbly. let it rest a while, and then devour it. yummmm!today has been lovely so for. got up pretty early, and henry and i played on our computers next to each other untilit was time to take him to gymnastics. read my book while he bounced around. then we came home, and i read him three more chapters of swiss family robinson, and then we watched “splash”, and then took himswimming so he could be a merman. and then read to him some more and then matthew came to pick him up. and nowdan and i are sitting together — he is working on his helicopter, and i am going to tinker with my mod!

aug 08 — yesterday the LotR dvd arrived! henry and dan sat down to watch it together right away — i had to goteach my little piano students. henry loved it! today i took henry to the 10am karate class, then we ate pastry at alittle cafe, then we drove though horrid traffic to encinitas to meet a little homeschol boys playgroup at the beach!henry’s dear friend nicolas was there, and some other nice fun guys. h rode his little kickboard in the waves, and then ran off with the boys and dug complicated canals and pits in the sand for a few hours. :) i hid from the sununder my hat, long sleeved shirt, long pants, and umbrella, and read “little lord fauntleroy”. read the first coupleof chapters to nicolas, too. he’s a shy fellow, and was hanging around the grownups, for a while, just like i used to do.he’s a very pleasant little fellow, and really enjoyed fauntleroy!

aug 06 — just installed xmcd so i could play audio cds, and i’ve got the Italian Concerto in right now. ahhh, bach.started reading Swiss Family Robinson (unabridged, of course!) to henry last night, and he loved it and begged for more!read him four more chapters this morning. :) i’ve been waiting and waiting for him to be old enough to enjoy the SwissFamily with me. i got the troublesome script in my little AC mod working perfectly! now i feel inspired to start thinkingof a story for REAL mod. i’m going to start VERY small, just to make something, so i don’t get overly ambitious andend up with nothing. now i have to think of a story…. hmmm…

aug 04 — on saturday henry and i watched “bicentennial man” which was surprisingly good. i wasn’t expecting much, but it looked like something we might both enjoy… we liked it a lot! i don’t remember the original Asimov storyvery clearly, but i don’t *think* the movie altered it beyond recognition. this evening henry and i went to nighttimezoo! we entered the hula-hoop contest and did very well. henry lasted longer than i did! we also saw a tiny babygorilla being carried by its mom, and we watched the orangutans for about half an hour. henry climbed on the gorilla statues, we looked at some beautful birds, and we saw the sea lion show. then we rode the sky buckets to the otherside of the zoo, and then back again, and then we looked at some of the snakes, and then it was late so we came home.also henry had a churro and i had some coffee, and we shared. (henry is telling me what to write :) we had a great time!

aug 03 — oh, strangelove (my desktop) is so nice now. i have 256mb of ram now and it seems lightning-fast! yesterdayi played with racuum for hours and hours… i added a map to an existing mod, with spawning monsters, a signpost, and a little man who tells you something when you tap him. and everything worked! at night randy came into #aldonscrossingand he explained various scripts from AC to me for hours, and now i understand so much more than i did and i’m all eager to add stuff to my little mod. i’m going to just practice adding and changing things until i feel really comfortable,and then i’ll try my hand at making an actual, playable mod! yay! the $5 clothing store is going out of business, andi stopped by there yesterday, sifted through the piles of super-tacky polyester, and came away with brown bike shorts,a little black skirt, a pair of olive-green linen drawstring pants, a little green stretchy top, and a long slim browntencel skirt, for a TOTAL of $3.23 :) :) :) the linen pants are my new Favorite Pants — wore them all day yesterdaywith my mustard-yellow plaid vintage camp shirt, and felt beautiful and comfortable.

aug 02 — yay linux is all happy and nice on my desktop now! eventually, i’ll put windows on the other partition…dan helped me SO MUCH last night. we tried to rescue stuff off my old hard drive but to no avail… but oh, well,there were not many irreplacable files, and it’s my own fault for not backing stuff up. i do wish i had myjohn linnell/john flansburg wallpaper, though. i made it ages ago and it was a pain in the neck to get it just right.can’t seem to find a copy on any other box. i’m reading “inherit the stars” by james p. hogan and it’s so good!thank you rob for telling us about these books :) yesterday i made racuum work! racuum is an aldon’s crossing modmaker for unix, and it took me a LONG time to compile it, becausei didn’t know what i was doing. but i finally managed, with only a little help (thanks worf :). if you want to compileit on a debian box, and you, too, don’t know what you are doing, the packages you want are libgtk1.2-dev, autoconf, and automake :)

aug 01 — nice and cloudy this morning! took henry to the 10am karate class (they got to do point sparring, which he loves, and the three little girls he likes so much were there too :), then drove him down to matthew’splace. happy birthday matthew! on the way home i went to costco for 32x cd-rs for dan, and got one of their big2.75 lb boxes of fabulous fresh blueberries. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm :)

july 31 — henry and i watched three mr. rogers episodes today, off the TiVo. in one of them, we saw how people make combs, in another we saw how people assemble traffic signals, and in the third we saw how people assemble computermice. we love mr. rogers!

july 30 — the hard drive in my desktop box (strangelove) finally failed… so we bought a nice big one (40 gigs! i used to have 20) and finally got around to hooking it out a few days ago. and then i had floppy drive/cable problems so we couldn’t boot off a floppy so the project was delayed… so finally last night i borrowed dan’s floppy drive and cable, andwe finally started installing the lunix! YAY!

july 29 — i picked henry up early in temecula, and gave him the “NO!” cd i bought for him at the concert. we listenedto it all the way home, and he listened to it for most of the day, as well. he loves it :) and i haven’t even shownhim the interactive animation on it yet.

july 28 — last night we went to hear They Might Be Giants in anaheim, at the house of blues. we had a kind of a hard time finding the place — it’s in this horrible disney-kitsch shopping/restaurant mall thing. you can’t see it at allfrom the road we were on, and we had bad directions, so we went past it and had to call the place. but we got there okin te end. TMBG was wonderful! they are SO GOOD live! they did lots of songs from “NO!” (“NO!”is their new kids’ cd which is very good, by the way, and you should BUY IT for your kids (or yourself)). my favorite was “violin”.

july 26 — lego fun — great site, go there NOW!

july 25 — last night i had a really great dream. i dreamed i had this great job working for a scientist. my job was tokind of make things easy for him, take care of little ordinary tasks like the phone, and the mail and stuff… i had this nice reception room/office place, all pleasant Ikea-style furnishings and lots of plants, and the scientist liked it that Henry came along with me, and we made a little place for him to play and we listened to audio-books, and i would cook lunch for the scientist and make sure he didn’t forget things and keep people from bothering him. the scientist had a BIG room next to my office,with giant tables and stuff, and his science friends would go in there and talk to him. it was a good, happy, fun dream :) and then i woke up and it was 5:45am and i never did get back to sleep.

july 24 — taught jonathan how to play legato today, and he picked it up in no time at all. he’s a nice kid :) henry went swimming twice today, and went to his new “handstands” gymnastics class today, and loved it. it’s more of a challengethan his old class. tonight dan let me practice docking in jumpgate! he offered to let me play when he saw how muchi like Elite, which is kind of the ultimate ancestor of jumpgate. i can hardly wait to play some more!

july 23 — took henry to the park this morning, the nice big one in carlsbad, and we shot off his water-rocket things for a long time, and then he played in the sand with his dump trucks and i read my book… i finally bought a couple of thosenice collapsible comfy chairs, so i took one along and was all happy in the shade. and then we went to the libraryand got him a giant stack of books about knights, two new computer games, and three books-on-cd!

july 22 — beatlefair was yesterday! henry and i were there all day and had a great time :)

july 19 — lazy morning, then i picked up henry in SD and brought him back here for his gymnastics class. traffic was horrendous. some day i’m moving somewhere where the rush hour parking lot freeway doesn’t start at 2pm. it took me an hour and 20 minutes to drive about 40 miles. in the evening we took henry geocaching — it was a cache that dan had found already, so we thought it would be good for henry’s first time. he LOVED it. before he went to bed he told dan that that was the most fun he had had in his entire life so far :) after henry went to bed we listened to the next CD of “black sunday”, while dan worked on his helicopter and i charted a new needlepoint design onto canvas. oh the book i’m reading, “code of the lifemaker” by james p. hogan is SO GOOD!

july 18 — had a great day today! woke up early, took henry to the beach around 9:30. it was all overcast and cloudy there(that’s the way i like the beach) and the water was 70 degrees, and the tide was out, so every time a wave came in therewas lots of shallow water to wade in. henry played on his kickboard, and bodysurfed, and bounced around in the waves, and i waded. and then when he turned blue and freezing, we sat on the beach. i read my book (code of the lifemaker byjames p. hogan — good sci-fi) and henry played in the sand for AGES. it was just so nice! and then we went home and got all the sand off, and i made a good lunch. and then in the afternoon i had a piano student (cheyenne, who didvery very well today) and then took henry to karate. matthew picked him up there. and then i went back to sally’s to teach elizabeth, who is also doing very well, and then eventually i came home. and then dan took me out todinner at ruby’s, on the pier!

july 17 — last night i finished reading “time and again” and i was kind of disappointed. so, exactly HOW did itbecome safe for them to go back to 1882, when the cops were supposed to shoot them on sight??? anyone who knows whythis makes sense please email me. the author seemed to say that because they knew carmody’s real identity, he wouldn’t harm them… um, doesn’t that make him MORE LIKELY THAN EVER to want them killed?? if the rest of the book was bad, i wouldn’t mind so much… i just feel as if the author got lazy and didn’t feel like coming up with a convincing ending. grrrr. in other news, henry and i made blueberry muffins this morning and they turned out great! the batter seemed kind of dry, so we added an extra glug of milk. oh, and we used frozen berries.

july 15 — we had such a nice time in berkeley — we stayed with our wonderful friend david (“wastrel” on the irc) whom we had never met in real life before, and he was absolutely great, 100%! We felt really happy and comfortable at his place.we got there after 9pm sometime on friday, and wastrel wasn’t home yet so we walked around berkeley for a while, and then after he got home we went out to dinner at a nice diner-type place. wastrel has a great fat orange cat named george (a veryfriendly cat) and a fishtank with fish, frogs, and a sinister-looking small eel. on saturday i got up early and walked down to the corner for coffee, and locked myself out of the apartment. so i sat on the porch tapping “SOS” in morse onthe window til dan heard me and let me in. i lay around a lot of the day, just reading in wastrel’s quiet, pleasantapartment. he and his g/f amy have several LARGE bookshelves filled with wonderful books. and we dealt with the server, and walked around berkeley, and ate pizza, and went to a fabulous independent bookstore where i bought a present for henry — a nice new copy of “animal fair” which is a book i loved when i was little. sunday we drove home…left nice and early, and the drive only took 7.5 hours. we listened to an audiobook (Black Sunday by thomas harris)all the way and it really helped to pass the time. it was nice to be away together :)

july 12 — we’re driving to the bay area today, as soon as dan gets the new server up and running (we’re taking itto a colo in SF). i’ll be back late sunday, probably…

july 10 — yesterday our power was out from 8:30am til almost 10pm. candlelight, lantern, propane stove :) this morninghenry and i took a long walk on the beach — it was all foggy and gloomy and lovely. henry collected gull feathers…i think we came home with 30 or 40 tattered, sandy old feathers :) i made a pen out of one feather for him, athis request — not an old fashioned quill pen (he gave me a big feather, and i’ll make a fancy pen for myself out of it),but a nice easy pen for a little boy — i took apart a ballpoint pen, took out the inside part with the ink and the ballpoint tip, cut it to the right length, and shoved it up inside the quill of the feather. he was delighted, and it worksvery well :)

july 08 — i’m reading a really good book with a terrible title (girl from the south). can’t put it down! tomorrow the power company is doing some major work near here so our power will be out all day, pretty much. whee :)

july 07 — feeling better finally! just a stuffy head now. we all went to the movies today — dan and court sawmen in black 2, and henry and i saw lilo and stitch, which was pretty good :)

july 06 — still sick. ugh. i’ve been lying here watching “one hit wonders” on VH1 all day… best thing on, believeit or not. we picked up dan’s friend court at the airport last night, and now they are out flying dan’s RChelicopter.

july 05 — i still have a cold. yuck. today i did pretty much nothing, which was nice… oh, if you are looking for me on IRC, i’m not on openprojects anymore — all my channels there moved to a more stable, less annoying network, oftc. connect to irc.oftc.net and /join #palmchat or /msg kayray if you are looking for me.

july 04 — happy independance day! this morning henry and i drew some flags and stuck them on the windows,and then we went for a walk all around the apartment complex, and looked over the edge at the view, and henry playedin all the little play areas and climbed trees. and then we watched 101 dalmations (original), and then matthew cameto pick him up. and then i hung around, and cleaned the living room pretty well (vacuumed and everything!) and spent hoursreading. the bird is so nice! she climbed in and out of her cage all day and walked around, and sat on my leg and my ethernet cable. sweet adventure bird!

july 03 — woke up in the night with a little sore throat, yick. but this morning it’s much better, just a littlebit tender. i’ve got a whole bag of lemon-mint ricolas to suck on. warning: mushy stuff ahead… one year ago today, dan moved to CA so we could live together, and it has been a wonderful year, and we have a great life together, and i love him so much. thanks for being here, my dan :)

july 02 — the most interesting thing i saw at the fair yesterday was the collection of lovely art deco stovetop saltand pepper shakers, the large ones that came with the new modern white enameled stoves of the 30s and 40s. the collecterhad typed up information labels about every set of shakers, pointing out design details etc, and also a couple of big pages about the art deco movement and everything. i never knew that stoves used to come with salt and pepper (and sometimesflour and sugar) shakers for the cook to use.

july 01 — we’re probably going to go to the fair today! more later… well we went to the fair, henry and i,and we had such a nice time! we met up with lisa for a while, which was really fun, and went to the design-in-wood and gemstones exhibits with her, and looked at some of the widgets. and then henry and i went off together and looked at hobbies and cakes and animals, and just really had a great time together.

june 30 — slept nice and late, hung around, read one of my new books, then drove down to SD to pick up henry-pie, then wentto a party at the selvig/greenblatt house which was their usual type of really good party — lots of terrific food and nicepeople. we got there plenty early so we had a chance to talk with susan and charlotte. it was lovely! oh, heh, yesterdaynight we watched “bram stoker’s dracula” which was absolutely horrendous… they changed every character in the bookbeyond recognition and twisted the plot around so it was almost unrecognizable. ugh! but we enjoyed making fun ofit, anyway. read the book, don’t watch the movie.

june 29 — we played freeciv together twice yesterday — i won once and dan won once, but each game was VERY closeand nerve-wracking towards the end. very fun :) henry’s had a bit of a cold, not a bad one, just the sniffles and a littlecough, so we stayed home from all our activites yesterday and thursday, and did lots of reading and talking… finishedsecret garden and read lots and lots of picture books. this morning i’m going to the library for more. we madekiller-diller banana muffins!

june 26 — well, a couple days ago my desktop started acting… funny. it exhibited a few odd behaviours, and dan thinks maybe my hard drive is failing. so i started backing things up and burning my mp3s onto cds and suddenly my cd burner seems to be malfunctioning. and yesterday my laptop hard drive began making a grinding noise… today the grinding noise seems to have stopped — but i’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop. henry and i have only one more chapter of secret garden to read! i’m reading =tepper isn’t going out= by calvin trillin — enjoying it very much :)

june 23 — yay i slept ’til almost 10:30. last night i started yet another freeciv game and i did WAY better — the trick is to produce settlers as fast as you can and found lots and lots of new towns — and become a monarchy ASAP. i gotto Alpha Centauri in 1970! i think next time I play, i may play against an AI now that i have some idea of proper strategy.and if i play against dan i may have a chance of actually winning this time :)

june 22 — a pleasant saturday. went to bed around 3am, woke up at 7am. WHY??? why can’t i sleep in on the weekends?i sleep til the alarm goes of on weekdays, and as often as not on weekends i wake up early for NO REASON. sigh. but i’m having a nice day anyway. took myself to the library this morning, then finished my freecivgame — got to Alpha Centauriin 2186 A.D., which is better than ever before, i think. i forgot to incite a revolution, though, and was a despotismuntil the 19th century, which really hindered my progress. so next time i’ll do even better! dan gave me this link:villainsupply.com. funny funny funny. i liked the evil lairs and bases sectionvery much — each one includes a “convenient, obvious self-destruct mechanism” :) click the evil realtor ad too!

june 21 — first day of summer and it’s gloomy and even raining a little bit! yay! i played freeciv for hours today.

june 19 — we finished our monkey toy, and he’s adorable. henry carried him around all day, along with his big stuffedspiderman doll. i like the spiderman doll MUCH better than his action figures. a nice soft comfy spiderman just seems more pleasant than a muscle-bound hard plastic one. we read chapter 17 of secret garden for bedtimetonight — the chapter called “a tantrum” — we were both looking forward to it so much! he knows the whole bookby heart from listening to the audio-book so much, and he recites along with me once in a while. that’s a great chapter:) i’m feeling really proud of my little piano students lately… everyone is doing so well, and they’re all sopleasant.

june 18 — henry and i started to make a monkey toy today. he’s been wanting one of those stuffed monkey toys withlong skinny arms and legs, and velcro on its hands and feet. so i thought it would be fun to make one! we’re usingsome old gray velour pants for the fabric, and we bought some wire so we can make his tail bendable. today we made a pattern and cut out the pieces, and sewed the arms and legs together.

june 17 — watched “the great race” with henry — he loved all that wacky 60s mahem. dan liked it too! funny movie.

june 16 — happy father’s day, dad :) nice lazy day today. goofed around all morning, watched movie version of”84 charing cross road” (wow they turned a great book into a movie and didn’t ruin it!!!). we pickedhenry up in temecula, bought helicopter fuel… nice day. ooo here’s a photo of that eclipse.

june 15 — after matthew picked up henry at gymnastics this morning, i went to the library, and then when dan woke uphe called me and i went home and then we went geocaching which was fun, butgosh it was hot and sunny and dry out there. while we were hiking around we noticed smoke rising over the hills and soon we saw that there was a wildfire burning a couple hills away from us. by the time we had reached the car, the sky was filled with smoke and the fire engines were showing up. whee!

june 14 — the little homeschool boys’ playgroup, the firebirds, met at the zoo this morning and we joined them, for the first time. everyone was REALLY nice and we had a great time! but gosh i hate summer. i have to keep applying layersand layers of sunscreen or else i burn, and i have to wear long sleeves if i can bear it, and then i feel all sticky and hotand it makes me feel tired and cross, and my eyes always hurt after being out in the bright hot sun. ugh. i wish winterwere here again. this is now the time of year when i have to try to never go outside in the daytime, which is impossible.i read three more chapters of secret garden to henry today. that’s a wonderful read-aloud book; the language is lovelyand the story is interesting even when you’ve read it 75 times already. :)

june 13 — my book came today! i won a book on ebay called “how to design your own dress patterns” by adele margolis, and it got here today and i am delighted! i bid on it, thinking it looked old and cool, and HOPING it was the same book i checked out of the jackson library in 1979 (or whenever that was) when i was little kid. and today when it got here i discovered to my INTENSE delight that it is the same book :) :) :) it inspired me greatly back then, and now i actually own it. yay!!!!! oh, yesterday we noticed a nice old lady putting a pile of goodwill-type things out in her driveway, and there was a vacuum there, so i asked her if we could have it and she gave it to us! she said it was broken, but i cleaned out a big clog of gunk and it seem to work just fine now :) torquil made a new website!!

june 12 — henry and i went to see “spirit” today, and it wasn’t that bad! it wasn’t boring, and it wasn’t 100% predictable, andthe scenery was lovely. the opening sequence, the eagle soaring around, was breathtaking, actually. and we snuck candy in withus and had a good old time :) the moviemakers had a fine disregard for Facts, however… so if you see it you’ll have to suspend your disbelief. i really liked the bit when the steam engine slid down the mountain!

june 11 — josh gave me a link to a not-quite-finished palm game called kingdom. looks GREAT and i can hardly wait til it’s done! i brought my blender home yesterday, and dan made smoothies for breakfast. they were SO good. he is amazing :)

june 10 — my hand still has this mysterious pain… dan went out this morning and got me a brace so i can immobilize it. seems to get worse when i use it lot. got a migraine this morning too, lots of fun. took henry down to SD to play with nicolas, whom we haven’t seen in maybe two years. they ran around in a park for two hours and had a wonderful time. it was great to see alina again, too! then i took henry to circus practice for the first time and he LOVED it. they had different areas set up so the kids could learn juggling, tumbling, tightrope, trapeze, trampoline, etc. henry stayed in the trapeze area the whole time. he can’t wait til next monday! while circus practice was going on, some of us kept going outside to check on the eclipse. i showed some kids how to make pinhole cameras so we could look safely, and then someone brought out two welding masks so we could stare at the sun. it was neat seeing the sun with a big bite taken out of it. :) FUNNY STUFF: “things my girlfriend and i fight about”. apparently there are people in the world who are more stubborn and fight about stupider stuff than we do… amazing :)

june 08 — another lovely saturday. i did two loads of laundry already, and got my redesigned website up, as you can see. thank goodness for php… i use it in a very simple way to make redesigns easy. i keep the main design of the page in a top.php file and a bottom.php file, then simply include them with the content on all the pages. so to change the look of the entire multi-page website i only have to change two main files. last night i watched dan play Final Fantasy X for hours… it’s the only one of the FF games i’ve been tempted to actually PLAY. And i probably will, when he’s all finished. ok i’m going to go eat a tomato/avocado sandwich now, and think about maybe baking a lemon cake. EVERYONE should read james lileks’ backfence from time to time. here’s a funny joke for you (thanks gar)

june 07 — built a new shelf out of some pine planks and big old cinder blocks. it fits perfectly behind the couch, and now i have room for the books that were still in boxes, yay!

june 06 — we were listening to our Caddie Woodlawn audio book in the car today, and when we got home and had to turn it off itwas right at a very exciting part — the part where Caddie is trying to get Indian John to understand that he and his people need to escape before the white mob comes to kill them… then we had a conversation that struck meas 100% adorable. kara: don’t worry henry, it all turns out all right in the end! henry: oh i know, these children’s books always do.

june 05 — it’s only 12:30 and i’ve done a lot of stuff today… made waffles for dan and henry for breakfast (ok, well, i thawed them out anyway ;-), read two dr. seuss books to henry (scrambled eggs super, andthe one about the pale green pants with nobody inside them), made some REALLY good chocolate chip cookies, and cleaned thekitchen floor. and now henry and i are going to do a Project — make a paper plate monster. he loves crafty Projects,just like i did when i was little :)

june 04 — henry’s last junior theater class was today. they performed a delightful abridged, narrated version of midsummer night’s dream. it was absolutely adorable. henry was one of the Pucks (there were six, appearing in pairs) he was great!

june 03 — henry and i went to the library and came home with a lovely giant pile of books. sometime soon i will improve henry’s book page, and make one of my own. one of the best ones we got today is “tomas and the library lady” — a picture book, with lovely language and beautiful artwork about a little boy, the son of migrant workers, who befriends a library lady in iowa and falls in love with books. it chokes me up every time i read it.

june 02 — just got back from camping at cuyamaca over the weekend. it was SO nice! we left fridayafternoon and got there in plenty of time to set up camp while it was still light. it’s still spring up on the mountain,not too hot in the daytime, not too cold at night. and it stayed light til almost 7. things are still pretty greenup there, not too dried-out yet, and there were even a few wildflowers. we had a lovely hike on saturday, and rented a boat at the lake and just had a wonderful time. marshmallows do interesting things when thrown into a campfire :)

may 29 — woke up at 3am with a story in my head, got up at 4am to write it down. it’s not good, but at least it’snot rattling around in my head anymore… been pretty tired all day. ugh. our little bird is SO sweet. it’s easy to takethe top off her cage, so she can go i and out at will. she’s pretty timid, so she likes to stay in her cage mostof the time, but a little while ago she fluttered out and landed on my leg (cage is on sofa next to me), hopped around,and then fluttered back home. what a sweetie she is!

may 28 — free ebooks! www.baen.com/library/

may 27 — boy oh boy this has been a nice weekend! let’s see what did we do… well, henry was with us for the whole weekend since matthew was out of town, so on saturday i read to him a lot (we got a big stack of books about parakeets from the library and i read them all to him) and i took him to see the fern street circus down in san diego. it was GREAT! yesterday we went with dan to the airfield to fly his helicopter, and i don’t know what else, but it was a lovely day. today henry is playing with sally all day, and i’ve been doing house stuff… bought water from the water store, and did a bunch of laundry. i can hear the kids in the apartment pool, shouting and laughing and having fun. :) oh i’m reading a REALLY good library book called “meditations on middle-earth” which is a collection of essays about tolkein by several well-known authors. here, you can read the reviews on amazon and that’ll give you some idea of what it’s about. if you like tolkien, go get this book.

may 26 — happy birthday dad!!

may 23 — got my subaru back with its nice new clutch AND a working window! i’m not happy with this webpage anymore… going to redesign soon. it was a lovely day today! for the world’s best, custom-made sheepskinslippers go to clobberleather.com. their customerservice is EXTREMELY good, and the prices are very reasonable. i ordered a pair for dan for his birthday (through onlyslippers.com, which also has excellent customer service)but they were too narrow for his feet, and clobberleather is making him a new pair, from his foot measurements!

may 21 — all day sunday i worked on sewing my new dress — i worked at it literally from 9am til 3:30pm, and thenin the evening i basted in the zipper while we watched tv, and then yesterday i finished it. it turned out EXTREMELY nice! fitted bodice with french darts, short sleeves, slim skirt with slight gathers in front and darts in back, just below knee length. and i made a little belt to go with it. and i wore it yesterday wheni went to teach my students! i’m really proud of the way it turned out. i’ll try to post a picture soon.

may 19 — it’s 11am on sunday… i’m listening to my pride and prejudice audiobook and planning out mynew dress. last night i found a couple yards of tomato-red rayon in the closet, and now i’m layingout the pattern pieces. there’s not QUITE enough cloth, but i think if i piece the sleeves it’ll work out.this cloth is sorta lightweight — i’ll need to wear a slip under it. hope it hangs ok. yesterday was wonderful.cold and cloudy, and we went for a walk on the beach. the last episode of SNL was on and will farrell is leaving!noooooooooo! who will play george w. bush?

may 18 — i forgot to mention that last sunday, on mother’s day, we watched a canyon fire near us. a firefighter plane was swooping over our building for hours. it was neat! and we rented phantom menacefor henry and realized that it it thoroughly unwatchable. ;-) ok now you’re all caught up! yesterdayhenry tested for his yellow belt in karate, and he passed. we’re all very proud :) now it’s saturdaymorning, and i’m about to take him to his gymnastics class.

may 16 — happy birthday, dan :)

may 15 — had a great day today! i woke up insanely early (6:45) but felt ok anyway, and had a couple of quiet hours alone, and then dan got up and i made him breakfast, and then we just hung around.. i playedrollercoaster tycoon (installed the expansion packs and they’re SO COOL) and cleaned up a bit and did laundry.sounds dull i guess but it was really nice. then i taught my little students (just alyson and jonathon today)and then we went out to dinner and had really good greek food. :)

may 14 — well, it got hot. i need to make some more summer clothes! i made a really great dress a fewyears ago, from a vintage 1963 pattern, and i started wearing it again. i love it, and i have beentold i look “stunning” in it :) so i’m thinking about making another one. my little piano students are sonice. i really enjoy teaching them to play! it’s very satisfying and pleasant, for the most part. i’ve got a nice free evening now, so i’m going to go install the rollercoaster tycoon expansion packs and play for a while :)

may 11 — we finally decided to sell the honda and keep the subaru, instead of the other way around. i’lldrive the accura when i go to SD. so yesterday henry and i washed the honda so the autotrader guy could take a picture. if you want to buy a really excellent 1996 honda accord, email me ;-) last night i had a dreamabout getting my subaru fixed up… at gymnastics yesterday, tehy said henry was ready to move up to thenext level, to an all-boys class, so we’re going to try out the 9am class today. neat :)

may 08 — last night we saw spiderman — pretty cool movie. nice to see a movie and not feel cheated out of $15 afterwards. definitely NOT going to take henry to see it — way too scary/intense. he’ll be sad, but we’ll rent it for him when it comes out on video and fast forward the scary stuff…. funny error message (thanks autumn)

may 05 — ok this a completely cool site: the baldwin project. it’s kind of like project gutenberg but for kids, and the texts are formatted nicely and they even include the original illustrations for some of them! we had a great day today. made cookies in the morning, finished reading “miss happiness and miss flower” to henry (one of my favorite books and he LOVED it), and then we took henry to play with sally in the afternoon while we went to the library, and then we all went out to the airfield again and i videotaped dan’s helicopter for him and shot a roll of film too. :) and henry ran around and played in the dirt.

may 04 — well we were GOING to go see spiderman today while henry was with matthew (so we can decide if it’s suitable for a 6-yr-old) but all the afternoon shows were sold out at every theater. jebus. so we went out to the airfield instead to dan could fly his RC helicopter, and i read an entire book from start to finish (one of the mitford books my jan karon — light, pleasant, a little too churchy but quite readable). i really need to get to the library tomorrow. techtv started running “max headroom” and we watched the first episode tonight. pretty good, didn’t suck, has a sort of eerie british feel to it for some reason. the little computer hacker kid was cool :)

may 03 — hmm what did i do today… oh, cleaned the fridge (it was nearly empty anyway), cleaned the kitchen, bought groceries (i think i remembered everything except dan’s wheat germ, and we’re not out yet anyway) oh i finished reading “ill met by moonlight” and it continued being readable and non-annoying and enjoyable all the way to the end! now i’m out of books and need to go to the library this weekend. oh, to my great delight i found that james lileks actually writes a column! rapture!

may 02 — last night pthree helped me javascriptify my webcam page,so now it doesn’t need the tacky meta refresh tag to reload the image. much better, as long as your browsersupports js… also yesterday i got out my sewing machine and did some sewing… made some of henry’stoo-short pants into nice little shorts for him, and altered a too-big skirt (it was size 8, i’m size 4) so itfits me perfectly now. it’s a great skirt — knee length, plaid wool, cut on the bias. it’s muted purpleand green, and the mossy green exactly matches my green frye’s boots. oooooo! lileks.com has a new look and a new section!!

may 01 — i just read a fairly mediocre book called “bad heir day” by wendy holden. the frequency of badpuns got kind of annoying after a while, and i didn’t like the heroine much, but it wasn’t so bad i couldn’tfinish it… now i’m reading what seems to be a very very good book, so far, called “ill metby moonlight” which is, well, sort of historical/fantasy/fiction based on william shakespeare’s life… sounds terrible, i know, but it’s actually quite interesting and fun to read :)

april 27 — it’s juxtaposition time! here we have two pieces of music which i am listening to a lot lately. the first, which i would classify as “terrible, tasteless pop” is the oddly catchy i saw the sun by ace of base. i think they are swedish or something, which would explain the odd accents and the incomprehensible lyrics: “life is demanding without understanding…” huh? i’m not even sure what this song is about, except that someone saw the sun. oh well, turn off your brain and dance around the room :) ok, now turn your brain back on for a lovely french song of the 15th century, the indescribably beautiful adieu ces bons vins de lannoys, a rondeau by guillaume dufay. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. “farewell to the fine wines of the laonnais, farewell ladies, farewell townsmen, farewell to her i loved so much…” as an extra added bonus, you can also listen to another rondeau by dufay: j’atendray tant qu’ll vous playra. enjoy :)

april 26 — goofy flash game i foundon dansanderson.com. how did i end up there? long story…but on the way i discovered that this german site links to kayray.org. scroll down :) i have no idea how i got there, but it’s kind of neat, huh?

april 23 — if you haven’t been to emotion eric lately, you should go! later… having a lovely day today. took henry to his class in balboa park and took myself to the automotive museum while i was waiting for him. they have a beautiful little car there, a 1916 Saxon model 14. it’s a lovely little car, marketed as a “ladies’ car” because it was rather small and “easy to handle and care for”. i’m looking for a photo of it online but can’t find one… ah, here we go: some other saxon 14; that one closely resembles MINE, the one in the museum ;-) MINE has wood-colored wheels, though. i stole that photo from this website… the other car those guys have is nice too. it made me feel so happy, looking at the old cars today. some of them are so beautiful, all shiny polished wood and brass lamps and so forth. most of my favorites are pre-1935. just added austin’s site to my list of friends’ links. see if you can find his custom error messages :)

april 22 — last night was Good Tv Night — six feet under AND sopranos. yay! we always look forward to cuddling up and watching sunday night tv together. today i got my car back from danny, all fixed up and running fine. i have an ’82 subaru wagon, rust red, and it has about 249,000 miles on it. it’s a great car :) henry swam in the pool twice today, and had a great time. he also played with three little girls (sisters) whom we know from the karate dojo — the eldest started piano lessons with me today and henry went back the their house to play while i taught. he had a great time! i’m rereading “the daughter of time” by josephine tey, which i read years ago on kathy’s recommendation. josephine tey is wonderful. ok dinner time, we’re having van de kamps fish sticks and a giant pot of steamed kale. yum! oh, henry’s little parakeet got brave enough to eat from his hand :)

april 20 — nice day today. henry and i watched the 1998 movie version of Midsummer Night’s Dream this morning, and then matthew picked him up and took him out for the day, and i sat in the quiet and talked to my irc friends and worked on kayray.org, and then went to two libraries to get two other midsummer night’s dream movies. one is the 1980s era bbc one, which i saw when i was younger, and the other is from 1968 and stars judi dench, age 34, as titania… i’m a fan of hers, but i’ve never seen her so young. she’s beautiful, then and now. oh, and a very young helen mirren is hermia. :)

april 19 — it’s 10am and i feel good. i slept pretty well, woke up before the alarm went off, and got a lot of stuff done today already. i helped henry hand-feed his new parakeet, cleaned the kitchen, made pancakes for breakfast, and started burning another copy of the lord of the rings radio play that my brother gave me! now i’m going to read to henry. friday is nice because we don’t have to go anywhere until the afternoon. ……. (later) we just made some really good cookies!

april 18 — well, as you can see, i got the new-and-improved kayray.org up and running. *whew* it’s not completely finished yet — need to add a bunch of links and stuff, and rewrite the “me” page. let me know if it breaks in any way. yesterday we went to monique’s house so henry and wesley could play together. that was really nice, and while we were there the ceramics lady dropped off our finished pieces! they look really great. last night we went to the library, and i got a good big stack of books, and it turned out i didn’t even owe a fine. i know i owe the carlsbad library a lot of money, though, for returning a cd-rom very very late. oh well.

april 15 — whoops missed some days there. i’ve been working really hard on my new kayray.org design. it’s looking good and i’ll probably have it up and running Real Soon Now! worked for hours and hours to make it work in older versions of netscape, so hey netscape 4.* users, be grateful! :) gosh i’m sorry i missed so many days. i’ll be mad at myself in a few months when i look back here… let’s sese, what have we been up to… well, scott (my wonderful insane funny uncle) came to visit mom over the weekend, and we got to hang out a bit, and he tossed henry around the way he used to toss kirsten and me :) scott rules. i have the coolest relatives in the world. and last wednesday henry and i got to paint ceramics in a park (homeschool field trip) which was lots of fun and we should be able to pick up the fired pieces this week sometime. tonight i’ve been sitting here working on kayray.org for hours and hours and it’s so much fun! i figured out some nifty things to do with php to make it extra neat :)

april 09 — yesterday morning henry announced that he LOVES music. he’s been listening to U2 (achtung baby), and this morning i had to go ask him to turn it down. (only because it is so early, not that it was terribly loud) and it made me think, well, he’s 6.5 now, so i’ll be asking him to “turn it down” for about the next 10-12 years, probably. i’m happy he has discovered music — he’s always liked listening to music with me but to decide to just put on music in his room when he’s by himself is new. still working on a new design for kayray.org… i’ve been fooling with css… we’ll see what comes of it.

april 07 — happy birthday kirsten! a couple of days ago dan helped me set up a message board. if you’re interested in model railroading, and you’re modelling the 19th century, you can go there and ask/answer questions :) http://trains.kayray.org. there’s not much activity there yet, of course. i don’t really care if it ever gets busy — i mostly just wanted the experience of setting it up. i think i’ll tweak the colors/fonts soon. also i want to re-design kayray.org… going to work on that a lot today i think. starting… NOW!

april 06 — henry is with us all weekend! today dan went to the flying field to fly his new helicopter, and henry and i went to the wild animal park, for a treat. we got there around 11, and sat by the entrance eating our picnic food and watching the people. then we wandered slowly over the birdshow and passed by the wonderful gorillas on the way, and then watched the birdshow at 12 and the hawk talk afterwards, and then henry played for several hours on the big climb-through fake hollow log and the rope-net tunnel and the life- size rhino statue, and i watched and played a little more aldon’s crossing. oh, and the gibbons were all swinging around their enclosure and we watched them for ages. and the lemurs too!

april 03 — pthree’s giving me his green translucent palm case ! it’ll fit my old iiixe. we did laundry tonight — ugh. dan’s mom wrote me a sweet email a couple days ago… really made me happy :) oh! i don’t think i ever mentioned the wonderful present dan gave me — an incase moya deluxe gearbag! i’ve wanted one ever since the gadgeteer reviewed it, and a few days ago he surprised me with one :) i love it. it fits everything i carry around all the time and it looks great and it has tons of pockets and my cellphone doesn’t sink to the bottom and get lost. i keep my riovolt in the mesh pocket on the back — it’s easy to grab when i get in the car, and throw back in when i get out. i bought 20 daffodils at trader joe’s and they are blooming on a cup on the counter. daffodils, tulips, and narcissus are some of my favorite flowers, and trader joe’s has a lot of them this spring. i bought a big bunch of yellow-orange tulips last week. lovely!

april 01 — we’re watching “back to the future” — it’s one of dan’s favorites, but i haven’t seen it since it was actually playing in the movie theater. fun movie :) and we now know EXACTLY what happens when you try to open a hard-boiled egg with a dremel.

mar 30 — if you’re online RIGHT NOW (11:20pm PST) you can see me live on the webcam. whoopee! don’t get too excited, i’m not going to turn it on very often so if you missed it tonight, goodness knows when it’ll be on again.

mar 29 — i found the webcam! i’m using it, connected to my laptop, as a large, bulky, inconvenient digicam. it’s better than nothing! here i am: me. and pretty soon i’ll start documenting the progress of my railroad layout! got all the turnouts wired tonight and bought sheets of styrofoam to go between roadbed and plywood.

mar 26 — woke up with line from a U2 song in my head… “in the daaaaaaaaaays we were swinging from the trees, i was a monkey, stealing honey from a swarm of bees…” round and round it goes. here’s a good looking unschooling website — www.unschooling.com/.

mar 25 — this morning i wired my remote turnout and it works! all i have to do is push a little switch near my power pack and the turnout automagically changes direction. when i find dan’s webcam (it’s in a box somewhere) i’ll be able to take some photos of my layout and make a train page here. anyway it was very fun doing that little wiring job, and i can hardly wait until i get the remote machine for my other turnout! and another turnout, so i can have a siding. oh my trains are so cool! i also built up the roadbed under the curvy part of one turnout.

mar 24 — got this one off rob’s page… redneck neighbors. my oh my :) and here is another lmao funny link i got from my brother — RealUltimatePower!!! go to the movies page and watch the stick figure one… omg :)

mar 23 — i went to the wonderful model railroad store in hillcrest today ( the whistle stop) and browsed around and bought a couple of atlas turnouts (remote left and manual right) and a length of cork roadbed to shim them up to EZ-Track height and the delightful little model light delivery wagon i’ve been drooling over. so now i’m spending a peaceful saturday fiddling with my track and doing laundry, and i think we will rent a couple movies later. i’ve cut the roadbed to the right shape and size, and now i’m cutting some cardboard to raise it up a little more, and then i’ll try it out! it’s going to be so cool :) and next i will work on my farmhouse. someday i’m going to order some farm animals and old-fashioned people from Preiser — their models seem to have wonderful detail but they are expensive. so it’ll have to wait a while. oh, i actually finished Aldon’s Crossing! wonderful game. now i want to make a module of my own… sometime, when i can think of a decent plot. in the meantime, maybe i’ll play all over again as a different guild (i played as a priest, but there are also fighter, mage, and thief guilds).

mar 21 — hmm, missed some days there. sorry! i took henry to see “ice age” a couple days ago, and it was surprisingly good. i actually enjoyed it! yeah it was formulaic and predictable, but still entertaining and, in places, very touching. best opening sequence EVER! lol. one thing that bothered me was that (as usual) there were no main female characters at all. there was a Mother, briefly, and two Desirable Chicks, briefly, and that was it. sigh. i’m level 18 in aldon’s crossing now, and i’m going to beat the whole game pretty soon i think :) things are good here — mom’s still doing better, my piano students are sweet, dan and henry and i are happy. what else is new… oh i’m going to try to get a turnout for my railroad today if possible. so that means i’d better jump in the shower and head for SD so i can get to the railroad store before it’s time to pick up little henry! here, play virtual poohsticks — www.poohsticks.com

mar 17 — josh came to visit for the weekend — we had fun. went to the MOPA in balboa park, and the model railroad museum and the wild animal park. also watched Hud and Forrest Gump. i discovered something interesting — when i wear my Frye’s boots (the tall green ones i got for christmas) i can walk and walk and walk and MY FEET DO NOT ACHE. after hours at balboa park and hours at the animal park, my feet (including injured ankle) DO NOT HURT. it’s amazing :) mom’s still doing better.

mar 14 — just got back from picking up henry in san diego. it’s a lovely day! windy and sunny and springy. mom gets to come home from the hospital today, if all goes well. she’s still weak and has to take these powerful antibiotics for another four weeks, but she’s really improving rapidly. susan had to go home but kathy and mike and carol are still here helping. on a completely different topic — dan and i have been playing aldon’s crossing for days. it’s the absolutebest, most enjoyable, funnest RPG for PalmOS. i was a beta tester, and i knew it was going to be good, but when they finally released it and i started playing, i was amazed at how good it was. yes, it’s $20 and worth every penny. the website is not complete yet, but the game is wonderful so go try it. you can play a long time before you decide to register, to make sure you like it. in fact you can complete all the quests in the first town. very fair.

mar 09 — my lovely aunt susan came from NY to sit with mom in the hospital and my grandparents came from florida to be with her and make her laugh (no one is as funny as my grandpa) and my sister kathy came from KY to help out with dad and keep him company and take care of things at the house. i have a wonderful family. mom’s still in the hospital but they are taking good care of her and we all hope she’ll be ok. even though it’s a scary time, it’s great to see everybody. susan is staying with us. she’s the most wonderful aunt anyone could have. henry came down with a typical henry-type illness thursday night — puking, slight temperature. he threw up every couple hours all night and all yesterday, but he was pretty cheery in between and didn’t seem terribly ill. he slept all night last night and is still sleeping, so i’ll bet he’ll wake up feeling good again :)

mar 06 — well mom didn’t have the flu, she had a bacterial infection in her blood and now she’s in the hospital on serious antibiotics waiting to see if she needs heart surgery (infection messed up a heart valve). scary. but the doctors say that otherwise she is extremely healthy so there’s a good chance she’ll be ok.

mar 05 — i’ve been feeling really happy and content lately. it’s really good to be with the right person finally. yesterday we went to the oceanside library — it’s a little bit out of the way of our normal track of errands and things, so i’ve never taken henry there, but i thought hey we might as well, it’s fun to visit another library and it’s not that far away. so we went there, and i was so happy we did! it’s a lovely library. we got stacks of good books, and i introduced henry to miss carol, the children’s librarian. she was the children’s librarian when i was a little girl and that was our main library. and a really nice woman named patty still works there too, and we said hi to her.

mar 02 — looks like a lovely day out there. when dan gets up we’re going out to the flying field so he can fly his helicopter, and then we’re going to clean up some and have a lovely day together. :) i saw a neat show on the discovery channel last night about madame tussaud’s wax museum. they showed a sculpter and other people making a figure of michelle kwan and it was really neat! oh, we finished reading To Kill A Mockingbird last night. my god i love that book. bumped into this girl’s website: couplandesque.net. i don’t know her, but i like her. two of her top ten books are also mine (if i ever got around to making a top ten list) — mockingbird and catcher in the rye. she seems to have pretty good taste in books, art, music…

mar 01 — our 42 boxes of girl scout cookies arrived! mostly thin mints and a few boxes of trefoils. most of them were in trade for computer services; oh it’s good to be able to trade for cookies!

feb 25 — we went to the beach this morning with a very nice homeschool family and had a great time! here’s an interesting article on public education. we are expecting 42 boxes of girl scout cookies to arrive in the mail sometime this week!

feb 23 — was talking to some friends and remembered that my first irc experience was on the undernet, and i remembered playing in #acro and #riskibus for hours (back when i used mirc — this must have been back in very early 2000, before i got the lunix). this was before i discovered the openprojects network… so anyway last night i got on the undernet and played acro and riskibus for a while and had a lot of fun! played riskibus again this morning and actually won a game. (acro is a game of creating phrases based on random acronyms; riskibus is a jeopardy-like trivia game) went to bed WAY TOO LATE last night; this is not the irc’s fault, it’s just dan and i were just having such a peaceful pleasant evening just talking and watching tv and using our computers that we sort of forgot to go to bed. the TiVo recorded another episode of California’s Gold about Alcatraz Island — fascinating! today is saturday; i woke up before 7am again for some reason so i am t-i-r-e-d. looks like it’ll be another hot one after the fog burns off. we’re going to check out some hobby stores in escondido and bring the photo development stuff over from sally’s house and try to set up a darkroom in the bigger bathroom. also need to get the library — running out of books! henry did really well at karate yesterday. he seems to focus and concentrate very well, and he really tries his best. they were working on the kata and henry carefully observed the senior students and corrected his own mistakes. proud of that boy :)

feb 22 — yesterday it was HOT and dry, so i aired all the blankets on the balcony and did laundry. i picked henry up from matthew’s at 3, so all morning did house stuff and played on my computers and started work on the farmhouse model. it’s got dozens of pieces and is really tricky. i built the front porch already, and listened to the end of Dragonsong (audiobook). dan and i watched Califonia’s Gold together — huell was visiting the salt farms in san francisco and it was really neat! the TiVo is 10000 times better than the dishplayer was. it actually records the things you tell it to record. amazing.

feb 17 — forgot to mention that the nice weather service guy showed us a computer monitor which indicated the humidity levels over different areas, and he said it looked as if we might get some rain on sunday or monday. well, today is sunday and i just got up, looked out the window, and saw the beautiful rain! hooray for miguel the weather guy :) i’m sitting here on our sofa, looking out at the rain over the balcony, and i think i’ll treat myself to my special coffee drink (2/3 cup coffee, one large spoonful of sugar, 1/3 cup heavy cream). yum :) called mom first thing and she’s doing a bit better. i’ll go keep her company for a while later on. also after my coffee i think i might build another of my farm buildings. last week i made the machine shed, the corn crib, and the piggery.

feb 16 — poor mom is sick with stomach flu. i spent most of the day sitting with her, giving her chips of ice. i finished my cow picture and started a bookmark for henry — it has his name in big block letters and i’m filling them in with blackwork, in blue floss. he’s SO CLOSE to being a confident reader and i’m going to give him this special bookmark to encourage him. :) did you hear about the canadian warship?

feb 15 — i cleaned both bathrooms and the kitchen very thoroughly, even washed the floors on my hands and knees (like a little orphan girl, said henry) and now it is so much nicer! this apartment is really lovely. oh, on tuesday after junior theater we bought henry a nice little thick foam bed which folds up into a little chair. he is delighted, and loves having his own room.

feb 13 — the field trip to the national weather service was really fun! and it was a lot cooler today which was nice. the last few days were really hot. i landed wrong on my bad foot (and forgot to wear my brace) at gymnastics today… had to ice it and sit out the rest of the class. but philip said my cartwheel was “a little better” :) finished “dark nantucket noon” which is a mystery by jane langton. it was pretty good, not too bad, kind of predictable.

feb 09 — we just got back from the video store — lucky for us there’s a Hollywood Video just down the street. they have a very good selection, much better than crappy wherehouse or blockbuster, and they are not too expensive. we got “the sting” because dan’s never seen it and i think he’ll like it. i am very very happy today. henry and i went to the library yesterday and got a pile of books, and i started reading “the long winter” to him and he loves it. we read a few more chapters this morning before i took him to matthew’s house. that’s my favorite of the whole series so i’m delighted to get to read it to him! i also stopped by the model railroad store this morning while i was down in SD, and bought a magnetic uncoupler, and also went by the needlecraft cottage in PB for more yarn. and it was HOT today, mercy, nearly 80. i hope winter comes back tomorrow.

feb 07 — we went to scripps aquarium this morning with a homeschool group (celia sets up lots of great field trips for us) and we got to touch a brittle star, a purple urchin, some isopods, and some hermit crabs. it was neat! our apartment is so lovely. when i get up in the morning it is very quiet and peaceful.

feb 05 — picked up lela-the-cat from the vet… poor thing, her bad eye is stitched shut and she looks like frankenstein, and her belly is shaved and she has stitches there and a cone around her neck. poor little lela. she needs antibiotics and painkillers twice a day for 12 days, so that’s an extra trip to sally’s house every day for a while. we have our DSL again! and it’s super-speedy, way faster than it was at sally’s. dan laid out miles of ethernet cable tonight and we are all hooked up. i’m on the sofa with my laptop right now :)

feb 04 — still no DSL… we had a nice day today; we walked down to the park across the street (well, henry rode his scooter) and explored down there, and found that down on a mesa below the park is a huge wild open vacant lot kind of area, with a hard-packed trail around the perimeter suitable for scooting and biking! so dan took his helicopter down and flew it around. rob has a nifty page now; his “trash tv” story makes me think of watching bad daytime tv with darren years and years ago :) oh, forgot — henry lost both front top teeth — looks so adorable.

feb 02 — hello again! we love our new apartment (X). but we are sharing dial-up until the DSL gets installed so i’m not on much. still moving stuff out of sally’s house too. henry has his very own bedroom and he is so happy! he spent a long time today hanging his shirts in his closet and putting things on his shelves, and listening to “the cricket in times square” audiobook on cd.

jan 26 — boxes… i need boxes… henry got to use all of his new sparring gear at karate yesterday! he was so happy. i’m goint to try to take him to the friday class, which sensei paul teaches, every week.

jan 24 — well! things have been happening. we decided we can afford our own place now (dan’s working full-time and i have quite a few piano students) so we looked at a few, and we applied for one we saw yesterday and they accepted us and all of a sudden we are moving. whee! stress. i hate moving. but it’s a nice place, a very nice 2/2 in a big complex on a quiet street across from a park. here’s an url that donut sent me: video game character quiz. if i were a video game character, i would be a light-cycle or a breakout bat, it seems :)

jan 21 — where does the time go? missed a bunch of days again… saturday was nice — henry was with us all weekend and we took him out to the airfield where dan flies his helicopter and dan flew and we watched and amused ourselves with coloring books and so forth and had a lovely time. i discovered that they play monty python’s flying circus on bbcamerica, so i’ve been recording it :) also we’ve been watching bill nye the science guy with henry lately, which is fun. he’s such a sweet wonderful child. tomorrow is his junior theater class, and we are planning to go to the model railroad museum afterwards, too.

jan 18 — yesterday i went down the stairs wrong and fell and hurt my right foot in the same way that i hurt my left foot in august of 2000 — it took a year and a half to get better. i can barely walk. :( but before i hurt myself we had lots of fun at homeschooler park day! and i won an auction for a bunch more train track :)

jan 15 — during henry’s junior theatre class today i went to the mingei folk art museum and the fine art museum, and had a wonderful peaceful time. and then after henry’s class, which he loved, we went over the new Niki de Saint Phalle dragon sculpture and he climbed on it for ages, and then we went into the mingei together so i could show him this neat sort of fairy-palace-castle thing, and then we went to the museum of man and looked at the Bones exhibit which was so cool! and then we looked in the fishpond, and shared a cheese danish, and came home. and it was all cool and cloudy, and we had so much fun together :)

jan 11 — i happened to glance at my access logs, and i noticed that someone reached my page by googling for “knitting sock robot home built”. this cracked me up! i can see why they reached my page but i really have no idea what they were looking for. a robot who knits socks? fascinating :)

jan 10 — yesterday was gymnastics, and i managed to do two or three pullovers unassisted. but i’m so bony that it hurts a lot when my hip bones bang against the bar. i finished my second train car and did a tricky thing with the couplers — the little stock car dan gave me has the old hook horn couplers on it, and they are permantently attached to the car so i couldn’t switch them for knuckle couplers like the rest of my train has. so i put one hook horn coupler on each of the models i built, and now the stock car can attach between them, and they can still connect to the rest of my train. so now i have engine and tender plus 6 cars, so my train looks really neat. now i need to plan out some more interesting track and landscaping. kathy is here for a whole week! and mom left today for jon’s wedding in NY so i will be doing a bunch of teaching for her.

jan 08 — henry’s homeschooler junior theater class started today. while he was in class i went to the museum of photographic arts and saw a great exhibit with lots of old old photos. the new building is lovely. so i had a very nice relaxing time all by myself in the quiet museum, and henry had fun at his class. he says his teacher is really nice. my new boots arrived from j. jill today. mine are olive green, unlike the photo there. i like them very much. ok now i think will glue some more bits onto my little train car.

jan 07 — i finished reading the book henry gave me for christmas (“the bad beginning” by lemony snicket). good book! i used the dremel to smooth out the pieces to my second model train car kit and did the painting and tonight i got some of it glued together. time for futurama!

jan 05 — helicopter day! dan’s getting quite good at flying, and i enjoy sitting there and reading or sewing or whatever. also stopped by the hobby store on the way home and bought another train car kit. :)

jan 04 — my brother ken came to visit from NY! he’s lots of fun. on thursday when i picked up henry in san diego we went to The Whistle Stop, a wonderful model train store, and henry and i browsed around for a long time and looked at everything, and then i bought a kit to build a “36′ old timer milk reefer” which is a charming little refrigerated milk car with ice hatches that will go nicely with my steam locomotive. i’m building it right now — waiting for glue to dry.

jan 01 — happy new year! we had a nice quiet night last night, talking, computing, and watching “blazing saddles” which was odd and funny. i searched around on ebay looking for neat train stuff. and i fixed one of myk new skirts. this morning henry and i watched the end of the parade together, which was fun, and now i’m going to get a shower and clean up this horrid messy room!

kayray’s christmas wishlist

dec 31 — this guy is obsessed with Dr. Nick: Dr. NIck page. good audio clips :) mom went to a sale and bought me several nice skirts! i’m so skinny i have to take some of them in to make them fit properly but i’ve got them pinned already and it won’t be hard. all of a sudden i have lots of pretty things to wear! hmm, i just happened upon another good Dr. Nick site: www.hums.homepad.com. no audio, but lots of cool pictures and some wallpaper. Bye bye everybody!

dec 29 — i had a funny dream last night — i was at some dance studio and three of the guys from Led Zeppelin (not john paul jones for some reason) were there and they were learning little goofy dance moves because their agent said they had to in order to be popular. and they didn’t look like themselves… it was odd and funny :)

dec 28 — whoops missed some days there :) christmas was lovely — everyone had fun, henry loved his presents, dan likes the stuff i gave him, i like the stuff he gave me (a new locketwatch, and the rest of the jane austen novels so now i have a complete matched set, plus early presents of a cellphone and the LoTR card game :). i helped henry put together his moccasin kit, and now he runs around in these little green and tan moccasins looking adorable, wreaing the new stretchy pants that grandma jean gave him. today we finished the last of the little wooden model kits (there were four — helicopter, biplane, jeep, and 4×4 truck) — we had so much fun putting those together. now he gets to paint them all himself. he painted the heli already and made it look a lot like dan’s RC heli. yesterday (or was it the day before) dan bought me plywood and a table and we cleared enough space in the garage for my 4X6 foot train layout! i need to save up money for some more track, but not much as it’s a rather small layout. i think i can do an inner loop and some siding. today i started a big tunnel-through-a-mountain out of cardboard and papier-mache. got the form built, made it mountainous with crumpled brown paper, and covered it with the first layer of papier-mache. it’ll be NEAT! my cousin ashley and her friend christine came to visit for a couple of days — they are nice girls :) oh henry’s harry potter TCG turned out to be really fun! i love playing it with him, and we are saving up for some booster packs.

dec 24 — this morning i woke up way too early (well it’s more like i went to bed WAY too late last night) but no one else was around so i had hours of nice quiet computer time and i created some neat gifts for my dad (no details yet in case this page falls under the wrong eyes) and got a lot of good stuff off morpheus. kinda tired tonight (5 hours of sleep will do that to you).

dec 23 — man we did a lot of stuff today. first cleaned the house like crazy under mom’s command, then went out to hobby store so i could spend my birthday money. bougth a beautiful HO scale model train set, with a lovely intricate green steam engine. dan’s going to help me make room in the garage for a really big table and i’m going to make a nifty layout and get more track someday and make it all fancy. it’ll be super cool! i’ve been reading model train books for a long time now and getting really interested in the whole thing. we were supposed to go get ken and eiko at the airport at night but they were on standby and couldn’t get here (sad :( ) but then it turned bout mom needed help collecting her new dog from the airport in the middle of the night so we went along with her, then when we got home we set up my trains (on the floor for now, ick) and they are so wonderful! i can hardly wait until i have my benchwork in the garage and can make a permanent layout.

dec 21 — please read the chaca-chaca review on bad-candy.com. warning: it may cause extreme laughter.

dec 20 — yesterday henry and i strung our popcorn and draped it on the tree. also we had gymnastics (i did a better cartwheel). at night while henry was at matthew’s house, dan and i went to see The Fellowship of the Ring! we got there a little after six for the eight o’clock show, and it was good that we did –we were second in line but right after we got there the line started growing really fast and it was a packed house. and the movie was wonderful! funny how much aragorn looks like my friend darren… they did a really good job turning an extremely long and complex book into a movie — they left out an awful lot and made some changes of course but it was still really good.

dec 18 — oh our christmas tree smells so good! i figured out how to do htaccess stuff so i was able to password protect some of my web directories. it almost wouldn’t work but then i figured out the problem and made it work, yay for me! i popped a bunch of popcorn but haven’t gotten a chance to string it for the tree yet.

dec 17 — we got a tree for mom and set it up in the big piano room and decorated it beautifully for her. oh and i bought a vaporizer at horrid Wal-Mart because the air is SO dry. we use it in our living room in the day and in our bedroom at night. yay for the vaporizer!

dec 16 — here’s a little christmas present for you — dylan thomas reading a child’s christmas in wales. it’s about 18 MB so it’ll take a while to download. enjoy!

dec 15 — 06:21PM <torquil> kara i have been noticably absent from your website as of late
06:22PM <torquil> i see no torquils on the page!
(there you go, torkle :)) we went out to the flying field all day so dan could pick up his new helicopter and fly it a bit :)

dec 14 — turok came to visit yesterday — he drove down from the bay area. he’s staying all weekend! today henry and i went to the storage unit and got sally’s christmas stuff, and then we bought a tree for ourselves for the downstairs living room and we set it up and decorated it and everything. it’s just lovely! here’s something funny i found while searching around on the internet: SPT research. this is what i was really looking for though: twinkie research

dec 11 — henry and i made lots of gingerbread cookies yesterday, and today we iced them and used the other batch of dough (we made two) to make the parts for a gingerbread house!

dec 09 — we just watched the Making of the Lord of the Rings special on the Sci-Fi channel and it was really good — much better than the corny thing on fox a couple weeks ago. gosh i can hardly wait to see the movie! turok has a brand new website: celebritykidneys.com. go there. go there now.

dec 06 — we had a nice busy day! first a homeschool field trip to hear the westwind brass quintet at the art museum, and then a nice docent lady took us on a tour or the museum, and then we drove back up here and went to the homeschool park day at guajome park — henry played for hours with some nice little boys and i lay in the grass and read my book. and then i took kirsten to the train station, then made dad’s dinner, then taught my two thursday students, then got rid of some duplicate mp3s, then had a nice hot bath (dan put henry to bed for me tonight so i could a have a little quiet time) and now i’m eating dinner and watching lame tv with dan. :) we bought LotR tickets yesterday — we’re going on dec 19 at 8!

dec 04 — went to lileks.com last night and found NEW STUFF! such as this: BBQ Ages Men Before Your Eyes. lots more new stuff in the gallery of Regrettable Food, too. here’s another song for you! iko_iko.mp3. i really love this song! it took me a while to find it… there are a lot of different versions and i wanted THIS one. but i found it eventually. anyone who can tell me the artist gets a cookie. i have no info at all.

dec 03 — ordered a moccasin kit for henry for christmas last night. :) we went to the library tonight and got lots of good stuff — “the dark is rising” for me (i always read it around christmas time) and a linux book that’s about 5 inches thick, and a bunch of audiobooks and picturebooks and “building big” by david maccauley (sp?) for henry. dan and i made prints tonight, and by that i mean i made prints and he ran the timer for me. got seven made fom my last roll, all good, and there’s only about six left to do, and then i can maybe catch up on the other three or so rolls i have to do. contact prints are so useful — without them i would be totally lost and would never remember which rolls i hadn’t printed yet.

dec 02 — i showed henry how to make paper snowflakes this morning, and he just loved it so we made a lot. we used my good tracing paper so they were easy to cut even when folded into 6 layers. also steam-cleaned the living room carpet and made pancakes and loafed on the internet a lot today. tried to get some online christmas shopping done for henry but i’m not sure what to give him… guess i’ll start with some nice books.

dec 01 — happy december! i started a page for henry’s artwork. not much there yet; i need to scan a bunch of stuff. we went out to the palomar rc flyers airfield today so dan could get a lesson flying an rc helicopter like the one he’s planning to own someday soon. we got to help mark out circles and level them for some new helipads :) i read about half of northanger abbey, finished my horse needlepoint, and drew a celtic knot on my palm and transfered it onto a piece of canvas and started filling it in. looks neat, but it’s very tricky to get the curves right. went to emotion eric today for the first time in a long while and laughed my ass off :) hope he gets more t-shirts in stock soon!

i’ll put neil young down here for now: don’t cry no tears.mp3. enjoy :)

nov 30 — henry and i made a cell phone out of erector set pieces! it was his idea, and his idea to make it fold up. it’s really neat :)

nov 29 — george harrison died today, of lung cancer.

nov 28 — in gymnastics today i got to try a back handspring, and i almost achieved a pullover. :) here are the winners of the 2001 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest! lol @ the star trek ones and oh so many others. golly it was cold last night! i wore my wool thermals and had my big feather comforter but i woke up in the night from cold, anyway, so tonight i think i might sleep in a sleeping bag UNDER my big feather comforter.

nov 27 — henry lost a filling so i took him to the dentist this morning so they could fix it, and then we went to the wild animal park together and saw the wonderful bird show and rode the monorail, and had a lovely time together. in the afternoon dan and i picked up karen-the-cat from the vet — she is doing well and is not picking at her incision. she is a lovely, elegant, sweet-natured cat.

nov 26 — took karen-the-cat to the vet in the morning for her anti-kitten operation, then went to trader joe for blintz ingredients, then made blintzes for breakfast (i will post my recipe soon; they are delicious and not difficult at all), then henry and i went to the bank and the other store, then we went home and made lunch, then went back out for the mail, then did all kinds of things for the rest of the day. :) we’re so glad henry is home! i found a couple of wonderful links — one is a list of links for paper models to print out, and the other, from the same site, is a list of paper doll links! i surfed around here for ages last night, wishing for a color printer.

nov 24 — we just got back from camping at silverwood lake recreation area — we left early because it became brutally cold and began to rain harder and harder. but we had a good night there last night and fun there this morning. but lordy it was cold last night! we’re going to wait til spring to camp again i think, and we’ll go back to cuyamaca instead of silverwood lake. cuyamaca is prettier and more peaceful and has better hiking. and its closer. it’s pouring rain here this evening. we’re going to install linux on my new big laptop hard drive and watch seinfeld.

nov 23 — here’s another song for you: aretha franklin — mr. bigstuff. groovy! is it possible not to dance when you hear it? :)

nov 22 — happy thanksgiving! oops, missed a few days there :) been really busy. on the 19th we saw U2 in los angeles! lots of fun. “no doubt” was the opening band and they sucked rocks, but U2 made up for it. we had a great time! we found the staples center without getting lost, we parked, we were plenty early. they wouldn’t let dan take his camera into the show, but we pretty much expected that. the staples center was huge and clean and they had about 3 women’s rooms for every men’s room, which shows that someone was thinking when they designed it. U2 was great — what more can i say! all the same, there’s something unsatisfying about arena concerts… they’re just too big or something, too impersonal. but if you want to see U2, that’s where you go. yesterday henry went off to san francisco with matthew and his parents for the holiday, so things are pretty quiet around here. we got the U2 elevation tour concert DVD yesterday so we watched that (really wonderful DVD) and also rented “double indemnity” with fred macmurray and barbra stanwyck — great old movie from the 40s. tomorrow we’re going camping with sally so i have a lot of stuff to do today!

nov 16 — we took henry to the park yesterday and today! got his bike seat raised up and he is getting really good at starting and steering and everything :) the three of us went to see Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone tonight and it was great! amazing! they did a good job and made it not suck. yay!

nov 14 — we took henry to the park yesterday to practice riding his bike and he totally got the hang of it! he did better than ever before. we need to raise the seat for him, which is hard as the nuts are rusty, but dan thinks he can do it with the help of some WD-40. we were really proud of him. he did great in his karate class too. i’m still thinking about maybe taking karate, but my schedule is so busy that i’m not sure if maybe having another thing to be on time for wouldn’t be an extra stress. i don’t know. also thinking about finally spending my birthday money on a 20 gig hard drive for my laptop and dual booting into the lunix and the winders.

nov 13 — well sally got two cats on saturday… a mama and a kitten. henry named the mama “karen” and we named the kitten “lela”. she has only one eye, due to an ongoing infection — we took her to the vet for it and now she needs oral antibiotics and eyedrops, poor lela! they are nice cats. so far we are keeping them indoors so they don’t run off before they know this is home. on sunday when we went to SD to pick up henry we stopped by the needlecraft cottage in PB and i bought a nice pattern and supplies to make needlpoint christmas ornaments! they are nice folk-arty animals, not too cutsie-pie. i’ve got one almost finished already.

nov 10 — yesterday henry and i finished our little cross stitch kit. my eye hurts today for some reason, but otherwise i feel great! got lots of sleep and had a happy good time last night watching seinfeld together, etc. ;-)

nov 09 — oops, missed a few days there. i was really busy. let’s see… i discovered a new game called freeciv — i played solo, figured it all out, and just won my first game. it took four days :) here’s a screenshot of my game: the mighty english. we went to a classics for kids production of “the magic flute” yesterday and it was great. henry and i are making a little cross-stitched christmas ornament — i do most of the work, but he does the second half of the stitches now and then, and keeps me company. :)

nov 05 — camping was wonderful! the new tent was fine (huge compared to my old one) and it was just lovely up in the mountains. it rained all saturday night but we stayed dry. :) today henry and i went to the library and got a huge pile of fascinating books… we found the section of folk and fairy tales and found several good ones there, and i remembered a book i liked when i was little called “the boy who drew cats” and they had it! i’ll read it to him tonight. happy late birthday gilrain!!

nov 03 — we’re going camping today, up at cuyamaca state park. i’d better see what the weather will be like… we’ve been reading lordoftherings.net and getting really excited about the movie :) here’s another song for you — henry and i love this one. i think ken gave it to us originally: moxy_fruvus-king_of_spain.mp3

nov 02 — took henry to see “monsters, inc” today and it was really good!

nov 01 — wow it’s november! amazing how that happens. i finished reading “clouds of witness” last night, and planned a new skirt in my head… i think i’ll make it plaid, cut on the bais, and slightly flared. i saw some subtle green & brown plaid cotton at the fabric store the other day but it was rather thin so i’ll need to line it. the reason i went to the fabric store was to buy some stick-on velcro for my riovolt attachment system — i made a place to attach my riovolt to my dashboard, in front of an air vent, so i can see it while i’m driving and it doesn’t fall of my lap. works great!