kayray.org

oct 31 — yesterday was henry’s karate dojo halloween party — he decided to be peter pan, we took him, he had a great time. we hung out at the starbucks and played with the Blazer browser on my IIIc via dan’s cellphone :) a couple of days ago we installed the extra 17GB hard drive in my desktop computer (strangelove) so now i have a little elbow room (i had 6 in there before). i’ve had linux on it forever, and windows on my laptop, but now i have enough room on here to put windows on, too, so i can play games on a better machine. today is halloween so i’m wearing my 1809 dress — the only chance i ever get to wear it, really, and it is quite lovely.

oct 29 — mmm grilled cheese on sourdough. yesterday was sunday, i dunno what we did. hmmm… slept really late, oh yeah we went to the movies! we saw “K-PAX” which didn’t suck and was actually really good. shock, shock. we figured out that it was the only GOOD movie we’ve seen in the theater together, which is pretty pathetic. we barely ever even go because everything sucks so hard. sigh. anyway,go see K-PAX.

oct 27 — we went to the wild animal park today! it was cold and foggy here on the coast, and i was hoping maybe it would be similar weather inland but of course it was clear. but luckily it wasn’t too hot and there were nice cool breezes. we went up on condor ridge, where we’d never been before and saw a roadrunner and parrots and porcupines and prairie dogs and a ferret and magpies and a tortoise, and of course the california condors! and there was a beautiful view out over the valley from there and we saw the lions asleep in the shade. it was lovely :)

oct 26 — hmm… wednesday we taped enterprise again and i watched it after i got henry to bed. that episode (the one with the lost colony people who lived underground) sucked less than any previous episode, it really did. it was actually… pretty good, relatively speaking. yes, it had plot holes, but they were only big enough to drive a VW bus through, as opposed to the plot holes in the previous episode (the one where Trip gets impregnated by an alien) which had plot holes big enough to drive an ocean liner through. and some of the charcters are levelling out… the doctor and the captain are likeable, and the vulcan girl was less annoying and emotional, though i’d still like to punch her in the mouth. henry and i are reading “the mouse and the motorcycle” which i read to him a couple years ago but he doesn’t remember it. he loves it, and i am enjoying it too. thank goodness for beverly cleary! i’ve been beta-testing this new RPG for palmOS, aldon’s crossing, and a new version came out yesterday. this is the best palm rpg i’ve ever played! it’s still very much a work in progress, but it’s going to be amazing when it’s done. since i’ve been testing it for a long time, i’ve played the same quests over and over — but it’s still enjoyable!

oct 23 — yay i found my headphone Y-adapter!! it was in my I Love Lucy lunchbox. i feel a lot better today, just some sniffles and nasty phlegm in the morning. i slept great last night but had the world’s strangest dreams all night long — the kind of dreams that are so strange you just can’t even describe them ’cause they won’t go into words. wierd, loud, long, bright dreams. i bought some Burt’s Bees Orange Oil Facial Cleanser today, ’cause i tried kirsten’s and liked it a lot. nice stuff, smells good, makes my face feel nice.

oct 22 — last night a dragonfly got into the house. a HUGE dragonfly. it was about 4 inches long and bright blue, and it was hovering around the lights in the room by the kitchen. dan was planning to smash it but that would have made a huge mess so i managed to trap it in a laundry basket and get it outside.. was this easy? no! :) but i managed to rescue the poor thing. i mean, the enormous, buzzing, flying, scary, monster-sized thing!

oct 21 — yesterday was another wonderful day. i’m still sick so i felt sniffley and yucky all day but we had such a nice time anyway. the ham radio people were packing up by the time we got there, but there were a few tables left so we walked around and collected flyers and leaflets and looked at equipment… and then dan took photos of a WWII tank that was parked at the national guard armory right nest to the rec center where the ham radio thing was. and then we went to compusa to look at ethernet cables, thinking they might have better prices than best buy, but NO, they are just as terrible so we’ll get them from outpost.com or somewhere. and then we went to starbucks ’cause we were thirsty, and then we went home and i was feeling pretty worn out by then so dan took care of me and brought me juice and went to the store for Vicks Vaporub and we watched part of SNL but it was awful so we switched to the dog show on the animal channel. very soothing :) anyway yesterday was wonderful and i am very very very happy.

oct 20 — bah i’m tired. i have a cold so i didn’t sleep very well, had a couple nightmares, woke up too early ’cause the dog went bananas, and i couldn’t get back to sleep. oh well, i had a shower and now i’m going to work on cleaning up the terrible tv room which looks like a hurricane went through it, and then later we are going to some ham radio event in san diego. that should be fun! i don’t care much about ham radio but dan does and it’s fun to go to stuff like that together.

oct 19 — henry and i have the sniffles and i felt pretty bad yesterday but i think i feel better today. i’m reading “busman’s honeymoon” and it’s SO GOOD. henry’s getting better and better at reading. a couple days ago we worked with his magnetic words for a while and i made mixed-up sentences for him to unscramble. that was fun :) today he has gymnastics and karate and i’ll drive him down to matthew’s in the evening. oh, after visiting gilrain.com i decided to post a favorite song now and then for your listening pleasure.

oct 16 — a few days ago dan cut my hair for me — it was getting long and straggly so he cut a couple inches off the ends and now it is much easier to brush. he did a good job! this morning henry and i watched “the magic flute” which was absolutely wonderful. he liked the dragon and all the little animals, and he says he wants to be papageno for halloween. until he thinks of someone else to be, of course :)

oct 14 — yesterday was a perfect day. dan coded most of the day and i read (finished “thrones, dominations”) and played rollercoaster tycoon and went to the store, and in the evening we watched “castaway” which was pretty good and very intense. but the movie skipped over what i was most interested in seeing — namely, how does a person react to being rescued after four years alone on an island? they skipped from when he saw the boat that presumably rescued him to like two weeks later. anyway… yesterday was wonderful and i am very very happy :) today has been good too! i went to the other branch of the carlsbad library, the one on Dove Street or Lane or Way or whatever. big lovely airy library! i got The Magic Flute on dvd — the ingmar bergman one i had on beta many many many years ago :) and i got “busman’s honeymoon” which was the real reason i went to that branch anyway.

oct 13 — hmm, missed some days there. yesterday i found an extremely delicious flavour of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream called “from russia with buzz”. ate a pint for dinner. well, i gave some to dan too. we took a walk at the beach last night — very peaceful and pleasant — and we stayed up very late and this morning i slept very late and dan is still sleeping and we are going to have a wonderful day! ooo i just got a screenshot of our other humanclock photo. heheh. oh, my birthday present from susan arrived — a pair of black leather clogs from hanna andersson — and they are lovely :) henry has really been enjoying his karate classes. here’s the website for his dojo:goju karate center. if anyone is interested in karate classes in north san diego county, i’d highly recommend them.

oct 09 — yay we are on humanclock! we have been on for quite a while but i kept forgetting to check. we should be on at 11:50amand 11:51am, and today i happened to remember to check at 11:51!

oct 08 — henry and i just made a mancala game with an eggcarton, two bowls, and 48 almonds. it’s really fun! here are the rules: mancala rules. we play with the egyptian rules, because henry had a computer game once which played that way, so it is familiar to us. i won the first game, and henry won the second because he forced me to empty all my cups, and was then allowed to place all the remaining stones in his mancala. neat game!

oct 07 — yesterday i dl’d “shrek” off morpheus… took 300 minutes or so but i did it overnight and when i woke up, there it was! and then the trick was to figure out how to play an .avi file in linux… it took me a very long time to figure it out but i did. in case you have debian linux and you want to play an .avi file, here’s what you do: apt-get install avifile-player and then run aviplay. :) simple as can be but it sure was hard to find out how. well, now henry can watch shrek on my computer. the one i got has chinese subtitles, oddly enough. i took henry to the library today and showed him how to find books about cowboys — his latest obsession.

oct 05 — i think i am coming down with something… i feel funny, sort of that “i’m getting sick” feeling. ugh. well, i went to the store and got lots of juice and instant soup.

oct 04 — we took henry to his first karate class today, and he really enjoyed it.

oct 03 — happy birthday kathy! last night we were watching next generation and dan said,”riker is just a big sissy — picard can take him on any day!” and somehow that struck me as extremely funny.

oct 02 — yesterday i was extremely productive. first i cleared out a lot of space in the garage, and then i moved my desktop computer and henry’s desktop computer down from our bedroom to the garage and set both up in the Command Center, and then i cleaned the bedroom very well (ugh the computer desk was just horrid) and then i created a bed for henry on the computer desk! it’s very large and stable, and he’s delighted and slept on his new bed last night. well, i guess that all doesn’t sound like THAT much work but it really was. :) it’s so nice to have a clean bedroom and have henry’s bed up off the floor. today we watched a few episodes of Next Generation (TNN is having a marathon) and henry and i started building a motorcycle with his erector set. oh, and i made banana muffins.

oct 01 — well, i updated the “about me” section of this page. there’s still some work to be done but it’s better. i sound slightly less airheaded. i also moved henry’s book page over into kayray.org, and began updating it. more to come!

sept 30 — we cleared off a long low wide shelf in the garage for henry to use as a desk/play area, and showed it to him tonight. he likes it! i am thinking about bringing his computer down here, too, but i haven’t decided yet. dan and i just watched the sopranos. it’s so nice at night, when everyone else is asleep and the house is quiet, and we cuddle up on the couch and watch tv or talk. my life is so good and i’m so happy :)

sept 29 — do you like graph paper? here’s a freeware program for windows that lets you make just about any kind of graph paper you want: gpaper. lol here’s a good article: enterprise.

sept 28 — yesterday was henry’s 6th birthday and we had a great day. i picked him up from matthew’s at 1:00, and he opened his presents right when we got home. he liked everything! he and dan played with his erector set for hours, and we watched his new 1960s batman movie, and read some of peter pan. :) today henry and i played with his erector set most of the day, and we built a working crane model, which raises and lowers and has a gripper thing to pick up cargo. super neat! also took him to his friday gymnastics class, which was nice. and we played with his Gross Soap kit (from wonderful susan) and made many Gross Soaps with rubber bugs in them :)oh, last night dan and i cleaned and re-organized the garage and it is much better now. i’ve got “robot parade” in my head… robot parade, robot parade, wave the flag that the robots made…

sept 26 — mom and i had our second gymnastics class today! something in my leg still hurts so that i couldn’t even attempt a cartwheel, and my muscles are still tired and sore from the last class so it was hard to keep my balance on the beam. but we did backward rolls, which was hard but not painful, and the best thing was we got to do vaults! now THAT was fun! run run run run boing JUMP! first we did straddle jumps up onto the vault thing, and then straddle jumps over it so our feet never touched it, and then squat jumps both ways. it was great! i hope we get to vault next week. matthew picked up henry after his class, so tonight i wrapped henry’s birthday presents in purple paper. oh, and we watched and taped “enterprise”, the new star trek series. it was pretty good, except for having the worst possible theme song. god.

sept 24 — ok finally i am getting around to writing about the tmbg concert we went to on saturday! it was wonderful. dan and i drove up to LA around 3:30, got a little bit lost in the city but found ourselves again, drove into the wiltern theater parking garage around 6, and then walked over to a mcdonalds for dinner. the parking garage was only $8, which was a nice surprise. after we ate we went back to the theater and stood in line outside until they let us in. the crowd was a mixture of older people and younger people, geeky-types, goth-types, and really normal looking people. :) the theater was a lovely old restored 1930s movie palace. i got the t-shirt i wanted while we were waiting for the music to start. the first opening band was “the amazing moses leroy” and they were ok. the second was “bicycle thief” who sucked. imagine, as turok said, woody allen as a hippy, playing folk guitar. whine, whine, whine. well, eventually TMBG came on and they played for almost two hours and everyone in the audience stood up and i danced the whole time and they were SO GOOD! they played so much good stuff… here is the set list. we had a great time!

sept 23 — article about afghanistan. i hope someone is paying attention to what this man says.

sept 22 — tonight we see they might be giants! yesterday we dropped henry off at matthew’s and then went to fry’s to get a scsi cable so i can put zeppelin’s old 17 gig hard drive in strangelove. so we wandered around fry’s for a while… i was drooling over the color clie — the only real drooling i’ve done over any of the latest palmos devices. it’s little, very high resolution, beautiful color screen… but $399 :) well, i’m still very happy with my iiic :)

sept 21 — last night we watched “rear window” with sally. fun to see it again. we stayed up really really late… where’s my coffee? muscles are still sore.

sept 20 — oh my god my entire body is horribly sore. everything hurts. i am dl’ing the “numb” video (U2) and it is taking all day but what i have so far is fun to watch. i tried to find some TMBG videos on kazaa but could not. if anyone knows of a source, please email me. we have the garage door open, and we can see night falling on the street outside, and the night air smells wonderful.

sept 19 — my first gymnastics class was today! sally and i went together; henry’s gymnastics place started offering adult classes. it was fun but very difficult and exhausting and my muscles started feeling really sore in the afternoon. henry had a dentist appointment which was good, no cavities. we got boston market food for dinner ’cause i was too tired to cook. we watched star trek IV with henry! that was really fun. he’s old enough to watch good movies with us, now. :)

sept 17 — henry had a burning desire to make a piggy bank, so we made a lovely little one out of a water bottle and some cardboard ears and legs, covered with papier-mache and painted bright red! it is SO cute. :) we watched episode 6 of first-season sopranos tonight. oh, a very nice man came to fix the dishwasher.

sept 16 — went to the library, got a big giant stack of books plus “rear window” to watch with mom sometime. also we went to OPT and got lots of film for mom and some more developing chemicals. i think mike and carol (my grandparents who have been visiting) are going home tomorrow — it seems their flight is scheduled as normal. i will miss them. i got to know them better, this visit, because of the WTC tragedy. we spent a lot of time all together watching the news, which we wouldn’t have if it hadn’t happened.

sept 15 — i figured out how to make the dishplayer search for certain types of shows, and i told it to record a few interesting-looking things that we can watch with henry — something about pyramids, something about moose, etc. i finished “strong poison” (great book). we bought this excellent belgian milk chocolate and had that plus wine, cheese, apples, and crackers for dinner. pthree paints like thomas kincaide!

sept 14 — photos from all over the world

sept 14 — i took henry to brian’s to play… long hot drive and difficult visit. brian is so horribly rude, cruel, and uncivilized that it is difficult to be around him. he attacked henry with a stick in a frighteningly violent way. we won’t be playing with brian anymore. sigh. however, i did not stare at CNN all day so i managed not to spend the day crying. yesterday was hard, watching the friends and families of missing people begging for any information at all. one thing that really strikes me in a positive way is the thousands of people springing into action to help, from firefighters to just ordinary people. the news just showed the tremendous pile of bottled water that has been donated for the rescue workers, for instance, and they have so many volunteer workers they had to start turning them away. when we went to the drugstore yesterday, the donation jars for the red cross were stuffed full of cash. seems like i’ve never seen so much GOOD stuff happening on the news. it’s encouraging to see how people can be so generous and selfless.

sept 11 — terrorists hijacked airliners and crashed them into the world trade center and the pentagon. we watched CNN all day.

sept 10 — i turned the heel on my gray sock and am decreasing now. i found several sources for cleckheaton yarn online, so if the place in PB doens’t carry it anymore i can get more. cleckheaton is the nicest yarn i’ve ever worked with — 100% wool, but very soft and washable, and it never felts. we ordered an erector set for henry’s birthday, and one of those little potholder-weaving looms, with the little loops. also got him the 1960s batman movie, and a lovely hardbound copy of “peter pan” with beautiful paintings. so we’re all set for his birthday! i made a bunch of prints this morning, all on my own, and they turned out great!

sept 08 — last night macinjosh IM’d me and said that turok wanted to know if i’d tape conan o’brian, since TMBG was a guest. so we set up the dishplayer and i just watched the show and it was great. they played “man it’s so loud in here”. i can hardly wait for the concert! (we’re going to see them in LA on sept. 22)

sept 07 — i took henry to torrey pines and we went on the nice little guy fleming hiking trail and we had a wonderful time. henry says he loves being alive. ok, time to go do some errands.

sept 06 — happy 18th birthday chloe! busy day — we had to drive to the colo and swap a bunch of computer hardware around but now dan has his desktop machine back and i might be able to use the extra 17 gig hard drive in strangelove. cross your fingers :)

sept 05 — henry and i made a cheesecake this morning, and a batch of cookie dough! the cheesecake turned out wonderful and the cookie dough is still chilling in the fridge. we’ll bake some cookies tomorrow — they are cinnamon-sugar cookies. henry’s thursday morning gymnastics class got cancelled ’cause the other kids all went to school, so now he’s in an afternoon class, and the first session was today. he’s got mr. philip for a coach — very jolly and playful. henry smiled the whole time as usual. oh, yesterday i upgraded the firmware in my riovolt and now it is even cooler than it was when i got it!

sept 04 — today was wonderful. we got up pretty early ’cause the phone rang and woke us, but that was ok. wedrove down to torrey pines state reserve park and hiked along the guy fleming trail and took lots of photos. dan is developing them right now, but in the meantime you can see some really terrible photos here.

sept 03 — we took some photos for humanclock today… hope they turn out good enough to submit :)

sept 02 — this morning i finished reading Betsy-Tacy to henry. he loved it. he’s with matthew now, but i think i will go to the library and try to find the next book in the series to read to him when he gets back. i don’t know if i believe this guy, but it’s an entertaining story: rocket car legend. ok here’s one you have to see: extreme ironing! look at the gallery pages.

sept 01 — ugh i have sort of a stomache ache tonight but i had a great day. i cleaned up the back yard,practiced my bach invention (#8, two parts), played a duet with mom, and took henry to the park (we rode scootersand we helped him practice bike-riding). also henry and i listened to the first few tapes of “Matilda” byraold dahl, read out loud by some wonderful englishman, and i started knitting a gray sock with some cablesdown the side.

june 30 — i helped kirsten and marcos move and clean their old house… big job! and my bad ankle started hurting again. rats, i thought it was all better. i just finished reading little house in the big woods to henry, and we are starting farmer boy (for the third time) at his request.

june 29 — took henry to visit his friend brian in lakeside… it was in the mid 90s there and dry and so horrid. karin and i just lay on the couch while the kids played. they played relatively nicely today. i got photos back — several good ones of henry in his costumes. i’ll scan them asap.

june 28 — got up early (7:30) to drive down to SD and pick up henry from matthew’s and to get a stack of divorce papers. cindy “served” them on me, and i haven’t seen her for a while so it was nice to hang out and talk and admire her house, which she has fixed up really nice now. cindy is great! anyway i spent the rest of the day filling in my half of the divorce papers. damn complicated, but i think i figured it out. kirsten and marcos and marcos’s niece taylor were here all day, and henry and taylor played and played. they all went to the mall and still aren’t back yet. !oot sknits eerhtp

june 27 — henry has made a lovely series of “cat” drawings — a cat in a turtleneck, a cat with a beard, a cat in a suit, etc. — and very soon my wonderful friend dan will be here with his scanner and i will scan in henry’s artwork so everyone can admire it! yesterday i got to talk to chloe and help her with her laptop and that was so very nice :) my life is so happy right now and getting better all the time.

june 26 — it’s HOT. we walked down the the bagel store after we read a couple more chapters of Little House ( we’re about halfway through already) and it was terribly hot. i protected myself from the sun with henry’s purple umbrella, which he says i can keep :) oh, by the way, i’ve got a new web browser called konqueror running on my linux box now, and except for a couple of little Issues, it’s really nice, much nicer than netscape in almost every possible way.

june 25 — my wonderful dr. martin’s sandal broke today, but i fixed it with a pipe-cleaner — yay me! henry and i started reading Little House in the Big Woods today.

june 24 — Duct Tape is like the Force… It has a light side and a dark side and it binds the universe together.

june 23 — (again) — look what i found! a list of the actors who do the voices on the simpsons. and as a side benefit, you can enjoy the rainbow-colored, animated “hr”s :) we finished reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader today!

june 23 — it is 2:30am and i just found rottentomatoes, a nifty movie review site. check it out :)

june 22 — it was hot today. i filled up henry’s wading pool for him and then, since i was hot and cross, i put on my bikini and got in with him and splashed and played and cooled off. i finished a roll of film — need to buy more. i think i’ll get a roll of B&W. tired tired tired. i started a new rollercoaster park today, one that starts off with a small grid of piers over water and you have to build coasters around them and stuff. fun, a bit tricky to get the coasters positioned properly.

june 21 — sally took henry to the fair today, and i stayed home and held down the fort. in the evening i took henry to the beach and we had the best time! he played in the waves in all his clothes and got thoroughly soaked and we saw dolphins swimming past! henry quote of the day: “I have a completely-wet suit!”

june 19 — we had a VERY nice day. after two days of difficult behaviour, henry was good as gold. we read out loud a LOT, went to his gymnastics class, and went to see Atlantis. dreadful movie, but it was fun to take him. he enjoyed it :)

june 18 — happy 15th birthday torquil! henry has been working on turning cartwheels and today i saw him land on his feet for the first time! we were going to go see atlantis today, but too much naughtiness occured and i got too cross with him to go do something like that. so we are going tomorrow night, if good behaviour continues (and i think it will :)

june 16 — a nice saturday. went to the library, helped write a paper, hung out with my irc friends… “DOH!” was added to the OED!

june 15 — we went to the del mar fair today! we saw the cows and henry petted a very friendly big red cow, and another was mooing and mooing. we watched the horse show for a long time and chose our favorites. we looked at the hobbies and collections and children’s art, and henry got to make some paintings to take home! there was a little farm where he was alllowed to ride around and around on a little green john deere pedal tractor and pretend to be a farmer, and there was a maze made out of a little cornfield — he ran through it many times while i rested my feet. :) we had a lovely day!

june 14 — we finished “the magician’s nephew” and started “the dawn treader”! it was sunny and nice out today; henry had fun in his wading pool. we mowed the lawn just before it got dark. no sunburn for kara. i just tracked down a java version of an OLD ascii game i used to play (for hours) on our kaypro in the early 80s: ladders. it’s so much fun to play it again :) thanks, gilrain, for reminding me of its name! i’ve been going crazy trying to remember.

june 13 — I WON! i won a gamepad in the wednesday #palmchat giveaway: 09:48PM the second winner is kayray! … i read to henry for hours today — we only have two more chapters left, and we’ll probably finish those before breakfast tomorrow.

june 12 — i made the mistake of placing a raised path around the perimeter of my square of land (rollercoaster tycoon). i thought the little people would enjoy walking all around but it only confused them and made them “lost” and suddenly my park rating plummetted. so i had to tear it down, very slowly, so the people didn’t fall off onto the empty land… took forever but i did it and now my rating is back up to around 960. :) we read five more chapters of “magician’s nephew” today!

june 11 — warm enough today for henry to play in his wading pool! and i sat nearby, in the shade, and read my book. and we played with his pattern blocks for ages, and we read the first two chapters of “the magician’s nephew” for a bedtime story.

june 10 — henry and i had “dr. seuss night” tonight. we have Cat in the Hat from the library, and we own Grinch, so we read both of them for bedtime. i really enjoy reading those two books. not all dr. seuss is of such high quality — some books have too many “silly” words and not enough story, but those two are just lovely to read. the poetry just falls off my tongue in an elegant way.

june 9 — lovely relaxing day today… slept late, stayed in my room all day helping a friend write an english paper. i’m learning more about Poe than i ever wanted to know… hmm here’s another link for you — politicalcompass.org. here’s where i fall: karagraph.

june 8 — i’m cleaning our room… what a project. and henry is playing with talon; they seem to be having a nice time together, swinging on henry’s Bat Rope and playing hide and seek and stuff. have you ever heard “kompressor does not dance”? i think it’s more or less legal for me to give it to you because it’s readily available on mp3.com anyway; this just saves some time. :) YOU DO NOT USE A MACINTOSH INSTEAD YOU USE A TANDY; KOMPRESSOR BREAK YOUR GLOWSTICK, KOMPRESSOR EAT YOUR CANDY! pthree got me into this song and then i got a bunch of other people hooked on it, and now it’s your turn :) lol @ turok: 08:36PM next on Ford’s recall list: the slogan “quality is job 1” since it was actually found to be job 145 … another little morsel for you: costume guy! wow, this guy knows what he likes :) thanks matthew :)

june 7 — go to this illusion and see if you can find the missing people. i found 8 of them right away but #9 took a while. lots of fun :) the main page, grand illusions, looks like fun too but i haven’t had a chance poke around much. email me if you find anything neat there! i ate a funny dinner — one slice of turkey ham, three slices of french toast, one entire can of pineapple chunks, and some raw peas. we improved henry’s robin costume today — i made a new yellow cape and a mask and some green boots, and we trimmed the bottom of his robin vest so it looks proper. he was robin all day and fought sofa-cushion bad-guys for hours.

june 6 — henry’s last junior theater class was today, so the parents were allowed to go in and watch their performance and it was a wonderful little folktale from india, and every kid had a little part and it was just so much fun to see. henry’s role was “a washerman who breaks a pot” and he did it very nicely and spoke loudly so we could hear. afterwards we played with his friends and i read, and then we waited til matthew got home and helped him clean up and now i am home.

june 5 — i bought these little cubical italian lemon-cookies from trader joe and henry and i ate so many we didn’t want any more :) we also went to the fabric store for elastic and yellow cloth. henry wants a Robin Cape, and i want to make him a few extra capes with random cloth from my cloth box. also bought him a little inflatable wading pool ($8 at target) and blew it up for him but by then it was dark and too cold for water play. he’s all happy and can’t wait for the next warm day :)

june 4 — well, i got 4 hours of sleep last night (insomnia is no fun at all) but i feel pretty good today, considering. i read the rest of “the lion the witch and the wardrobe” to henry today and i think tonight we will go to the library for “the magician’s nephew”. i was just playing the piano for a while; it’s nice to play again, haven’t played much in ages. i really enjoy playing little folk songs for henry, and he likes it too, and we sing and then he picks out the melodies for himself sometimes. we watched last night’s futurama and simpsons today; so entertaining :)

june 3 — turok recorded himself singing “i’m a believer”, and it sounds great! you can download his .mp3 (and also his cover of “til my head falls off”) at loonquawl.com. he can carry a tune :) this evening i got out my book of children’s songs (illustrated with lovely artwork) and played the piano for henry for a long time and we sang together. his favorite is the “skye boat song” and mine is “oh dear what can the matter be” (a song about worrying — how appropriate :)

june 2 — the phone rang at 9 this morning and woke us up, but we weren’t quite ready to get up so i read to henry for a long time — first “stellaluna” (oh how i hate that book) and then three chapters of “the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe” (oh how i love that book). and then matthew showed up to pick up henry and we got up and i made oatmeal and got henry ready to go. he went to the Fern Street Circus last weekend so he needed to be a clown today; i drew a red nose for him with a felt pen and he wore brown tights and a black shirt and mis-matched socks and was a wonderful little clown. i wish i could go back to NY… (later) i found a refill for my fisher space pen online, from a great site called thewritersedge.com. i’m sending you to the page with my special pen on it — the shiny chrome one with no clip. i ordered a refill with brown ink. gosh it’s such a nice pen.

june 1 — ok now i’ve got my weblog on the front page here. don’t bother going to mylife.php anymore — it’ll redirect you here anyway. i had a nice day today. i actually have an appetite since i got home from my trip. i ate more than usual while i was away and i guess it changed my metabolism or something. it’s nice to feel hungry. henry and i rented a movie last night (treasure island) and we bought some donuts and we snuggled up together and watched our movie and ate donuts until we got sleepy and then we went to bed. so today we finished our donuts and watched our movie, and we played rollercoaster tycoon for ages, and we had noodles with butter and peas for lunch. yum!

Old Blog, May 2001:

may 31 — i’m home. i flew to Albany NY on wednesday the 23rd, dan picked me up, we hung out with chloe a bit on thursday, drove to philadelphia on friday (that was a fun drive!) and hung out with our interweb friends (ranc0r, jrray, macinjosh, quasar, pilot518 and his wife denise, and donut) all weekend. it rained and rained! the best part was when dan and i went to the philadelphia zoo in the rain, and the second best part was when a bunch of us hung around for hours in macinjosh and ranc0r’s room, all of us on the lan and playing on our laptops. gee that was fun! :)

may 22 — well i got 4.5 hours of sleep so i felt disoriented all day. but i got all packed and scheduled a shuttle and set up a wake-up call from mrwakeup.com (the shuttle is coming at 5:05am so i’m getting up at 4:15am. w00ty w00t!) well, time to read another chapter of narnia to little henry and put him to bed.

may 21 — this morning was henry’s last trip to the dentist for fillings! yay! next appointment is in 6 months. *whew* glad that’s over, and so is henry. :) the thiles left this morning. it was so nice to have them here; they are a lovely family and henry just loved playing with daniel and i loved hanging around with john. now i’m moving mp3s around so i’ll have all my necessary music on my laptop, and also i need to make an mp3 cd of my good stuff. i figured out how to do it with symlinks last night (austin helped). neato :) I LEAVE DAY AFTER TOMORROW! YIPPEE!

may 20 — well i woke up feeling awful again and had to go dance at the fair again which was rather un-fun, except that my nice friends were there and we had appreciative audiences. and we wound the maypole, which was fun. :) anyway i came home a bit early ’cause i was feeling crummy but being all alone in my nice peaceful room with no people in it made me feel better eventually. i think i had people-overload this weekend, plus not enough sleep, plus general female discomfort. i am not happy about having a whole week of PMS every month… on to more pleasant subjects! my nice nephews came back again tonight so i got to hang around with john a bit and henry got to play superheros with daniel. :) and in three days i get to go Out Of Town!

may 19 — i feel to crappy to write. more tomorrow.

may 18 — my sister kathy, her husband, scott, and two of my three nephews, john and daniel, came to visit from kentucky! daniel is 10, and he and henry ran around for hours playing superhero and i don’t know what. they seemed to be having a wonderful time. john is 17 and a computer geek, so we played on my computers and i beamed him a bunch of neat palm software (from my iiixe — iiic has broken IR still, since the refurb palm tech support sent me has the brightness bug and i’d rather have no IR than be unable to enter grafitti with the contrast turned up. jesus, palm tech suport is run by retarded crack monkeys) anyway john and i had lots of fun and then we went over to kirsten’s house and watched Holy Grail but i got really tired and fell asleep.

may 17 — we played rollercoaster tycoon so much today, and henry made a coaster all by himself! and i made killer soup for dinner and we read chapter six of “the lion the witch and the wardrobe” at bedtime. had to read it on my iiic ’cause we couldn’t find the paper copy. how could it disappear overnight? i solved level 21 of “Tumble” and i am quite proud. oh, and i finished “Angela’s Ashes” last night. great book.

may 16 — we had a nice day, an ordinary wednesday, first henry’s junior theater class and then he and jake and talon and sasha played for a couple of hours while i read my book (angela’s ashes) , and then we went over to matthew’s place and played rollercoaster tycoon on my laptop, and then spike came over to play and i read my book some more, and then i came home and went shopping for some food and talked to my irc friends for a bit, and now i am very tired and will go to bed, if i can avoid reading for another few hours. :) (happy birthday dan!)

may 15 — turok and i just had an enlightening converation with our russian friend eugen:

eugen: are there tourist attractions where you live?
10:27PM nope too many
10:27PM Novosibirsk is industrial city :)
10:27PM we have splendid Zoo, miseums, circus etc
10:28PM and a few Luna-parks too
luna-park?
10:28PM where wheels, “american hills” etc
10:28PM i dont know how you call that place
10:29PM amusement parks?
wow i have no idea what you mean, describe further
10:29PM “American hills”
10:29PM American mountains”
i am stumped :)
10:30PM where you sit into vagon and being curried in various tangled ways
is it an outdoor thing?
10:30PM outdoor :)
10:30PM i hate them
10:30PM eugen: is it full of rides? do they charge admission?
10:30PM yes
rollercoasters!
10:30PM amusement park
up and down and round about?
10:30PM rollercoasters!
yes!
american hills!
10:31PM ok ok seems so
10:31PM yeah!
10:31PM makes sense!
omg that’s SO cool
10:31PM heh, i doubt
10:31PM hahaha, is that the name for it in Russian Eugen? “American hills”?
ok they are now called american hills forever and ever :)

may 14 — this was a nice day :) we went legoland again, and this time we went with talon and his mom, chris. we had such a good time. we found a part of legoland we’d never been to — a building where you can check out lego kits and just sit and build them! first we made a dinosaur that really walked when we hooked up a battery, and then we made a windmill that really spun, and then a little gyro with gears and a crank to turn to make the propellers spin. it was so pleasant! oh and this morning i actually reached palm, inc. and they are shipping me a refurb. and tonight i dl’d “khroma” off pghq. khroma is a freeware app that lets you make color schemes for your palm, so instead of the default blue-white-black scheme, i’ve now got a lovely calm mostly-green scheme that i made myself! it’s a great little app and i’ll add it to my palmstuff page soon. oh i read my lovely first-edition of “84 charing cross road” (mom gave it to me) while we were at legoland. (legoland affords many opportunities for reading since there are a lot of things the kids can do on their own)

may 13 — i am SO tired right now, and i’m feeling very stressed. i guess it was a long day. the ren fair was nice today. it’s funny, the nicest part of it is sitting with my friends in the shelter and eating (everyone brings food and we eat constantly) and reading my book. i read an entire trashy mystery this weekend :) anyway i don’t care at all about the actual fair, and the dancing is fun but my ankle still hurts, but i do really enjoy being with my friends. a lot of my meat-space friends are on the morris team and we have a lot of fun together :) oh and henry is all better now, not sick at all, and he gave me a rose for mother’s day. he and matthew spent the day together, and went up to see matthew’s mom in temecula. oh i updated my palmstuff page so if you have a palm you should go there and try out some of the new games i have. there were actually THREE things worth downloading today on PGHQ — unbelievable. none of them are good enough to make my page, but still it’s nice to have some new things to try out. ooo i have to call palm tech support in the morning about my IR.

may 12 — mmmmm, instant bacon-flavoured mashed potatoes and ice cream for dinner! ;-) we went to the renaissance fair today but henry started feeling yucky pretty soon after we got there, so we sat in the shelter all day and he napped. he’s got a headache and a fever, poor child. i kept asking him all day if he wanted to come home but he didn’t want to leave til afternoon. he’s sleeping again now. i just hard-reset my iiic to see if, by some odd chance, that would fix the IR problem. it can receive beams from other devices, but not actually BEAM. hard reset didn’t help, though, so it’s palm tech support and refurb hell time. maybe i’ll get lucky and they’ll send me a good unit on the very first try. :)

may 11 — ranc0r suggested a website with video drivers and i got one and it was the right one and now henry’s got 16-bit color and everything is peachy :) and i got some good software on there and his brainsBreaker jigsaw puzzle game, and we went and dl’d a bunch of batman and robin .jpgs and we turned one of them into wallpaper for him and made puzzles out of the rest. he’s so happy! and i’m proud of myself for making his computer better for him.

may 10 — well i reformatted henry’s computer and after i did so i remembered that dan and i had a hell of a time finding video drivers for it, originally. so i have to hunt them down all over again. and windows didn’t want to find the ethernet card but i found drivers and triumphed. it’s HOT in here. renaissance fair this weekend and next (morris team is performing so i have to go — not many dancers left) and i’m taking henry with me so tomorrow i have to remake his costume for him.

may 9 — took henry to his junior theater class — he loves it! and afterward he played with his friend talon for a long time, and then we ran errands in san diego (took darren a cd, dropped off charlotte’s bodice, etc.) and then hung out waiting for matthew to get home. he’s there with matthew now, having a nice time i’m sure. :) i need to go to bed so i can get up early and fetch him.

may 8 — got new music! ranc0r and pthree gave me pretty hate machine and irq gave me the joshua tree. listening to that now. yay for new good music! i fixed charlotte’s bodice (it needed an expansion panel in the front) and stuffed it in my backpack so i won’t forget it tomorrow. the f*cking flea guy STILL didn’t come and henry and i are being eaten alive. i’m going through the solarcaine really fast. i felt extremely pissed-off, worried, and tearful this afternoon, but much better now.

may 7 — well we picked up everything off our floors so the guy could come treat the carpets for fleas (we are being eaten) but he never showed. sigh. henry had to go to the dentist again today and he did NOT want to go — he hid when it was time to leave, but then he was a very good boy when we got there. after we got home we sat together and watched our batman tape, and at night we went to morris dancing practice. we practiced jockey-for -three. that’s a fun dance. there’s a fair the next two weekends in del mar so we’re getting ready for that.

may 6 — another nice day. :) i taught some students for sally, and re-organized my gigantic mp3s directory, threw away some junk that i never listen to, and when henry got home i let him type my commands in for me while i ripped some more .wavs and converted to .mp3. we read another chapter of Prince Caspian today — almost done now. only one more chapter to go!

. may 5 — ah this was a nice lazy day. i slept late, hung around, talked to my packet friends, taught a piano student, went to the store… oh at walmart i got two more little black tank-tops — they finally had my size. and i got some more skinny jewel cases at best buy. and i did laundry, and some house stuff, etc.

may 4 — we drove all the way out to bates nut farm to see this neat historical re-enactment group called the red company. they had set up a camp as if they were a group of mercenary soldiers in 1471, and they led us around and explained how life was then, and answered questions, and were all so nice! we went with a group of homeschoolers (the entire day was set aside for homeschool groups). the kids got to try on pieces of armor, and we learned all about bow-making and arrow-making and just so many interesting things. it was great. in the evening we mowed the lawn, and read another chapter of Prince Caspian, and went to the grocery store. henry has become an excellent grocery helper. i can send him all over the store to find things, and he is even learning how to pick out produce properly — i let him choose the tomatoes and he was very careful and picked good ones.

may 3 — we went to legoland! it was great, not crowded, not too hot, and we had a wonderful time. :) there’s a special deal that gets us in for $15 each in may, so i think we’ll go again in a couple weeks. there’s a new roller coaster there and we loved it so much we went on is about 20 times! at first henry was scared but then he decided he liked it and we went around and around and around. he’s a brave little guy — it was more scary than any ride he’s ever been on.

may 2 — henry had his second junior theater class today, and he really enjoyed it. it was COLD today; i had to bundle up in my coat while i was waiting for him and afterwards, while he was playing with talon and sasha. i was so tired today. going to bed early tonight. i’m listening to huddie ledbetter and really enjoying it. donut gave me this music i think.

may 1 — we had another science class today and it was really fun! we got to play with dry ice and we made film cans go POP with water and alka-seltzer inside. we had a GREAT time! we went to the store for tomatoes and things tonight, and i bought marshmallows and toothpicks for henry to use a building toy. :)

Old Blog: April 2001
april 30 — we cleaned up the back yard and ran errands… and we listened to TMBG together and watched that great simpsons episode from sunday night a couple more times (the one where marge accidentally cuts off homer’s thumb) and we went to morris dancing practice at night. i was really tired, though, and my ankle is hurting again.

april 29 — today was a happy day! i got 10 hours of sleep last night and i felt wonderful all day. i found the tripod and took some photos of myself — we’ll see how they turn out.

april 28 — i cleaned our room very well today and learned some more about my camera (nikon N70). my monitor is getting worse and worse.

april 27 — henry and i played “amazing labyrinth” twice this morning, and we went to the zoo in the afternoon before i took him to matthew’s house. the reptile house was cool and shady, so we went in there and we saw the blue-tailed monitors climbing around in their house.. it was neat. :)

april 26 — i’ve been working on getting my blackbox windowmanager set up and i am SO happy with it! i’ve got lots of keyboard shortcuts, a full-width toolbar, my wmcalclock up in the top right, and i created nice tasteful tiny-plaid wallpaper and i figured out how to set it as wallpaper (that’s a pre-screenshot-shortcut screenshot :) and today i found a great B&W photo of the johns from tmbg, and i messed with it in the gimp until it was just the right size for my screen (that’s my current desktop) and oh my i am happy!

april 25 — henry’s first junior theater class was today! he loved it and had a wonderful time. after the class we played in the park with talon and henry’s new friend sasha, a very sweet little girl who is in the class too.

april 24 — busy day! i felt as if i spent the entire day on the freeway. first, in the morning, we drove to serra mesa for a nifty home-schooler science class about acids and bases. we got to do all kinds of fun tests and experiments, and henry loved it. we get to do another class next tuesday. then we raced back up the freeway to be in time for henry’s gymnastics class. he spends the entire hour of that class smiling — it’s wonderful. :) then we raced back down the freeway to the airport to pick up grandma jean and her friend, and then we crawled up the freeway in the pre-rush-hour rush hour to get home. and then i taught a student for sally. *whew* busy day! oh and at night kirsten and i watched “bringing up baby”. it was kind of funny to see katherine hepburn playing a ditzy-girl character.

april 23 — this afternoon i suddenly felt human again! i took henry to the bank to deposit his $3.91, and he asked for a sewing lesson so i cut a little square of stiff white interfacing and drew dots on it and showed him how to stitch up and then down, on the dots, and he went all the way around the square and now i have a nice coaster for my desk! and then he wanted to make a blanket for mary doll, so i gave him a piece of gray felt and punched holes around the edge, and he went all the way around in blue yarn and it’s a lovely blanket. :) and then later we mowed the lawn and watered his little garden. we made vegetable barley soup for dinner. he’s dressed in his “gentleman” clothes; little jacket, white shirt, trousers. :) gonna go read to him now. oh, also, i’ve been messing with a windowmanager called blackbox (i have been using windowmaker) and today i finally got it configured enough to be non-annoying and actually pretty good. i have no icons at all on my desktop.. just how i like it.

april 22 — i feel a little better today.

april 21 — i have the flu. i need someone to bring me soup and juice and rub my achy muscles.

april 19 — oh man have i had a busy couple of days. yesterday took henry to dentist, took him to play with nicolas, took him to matthew’s, went to susan’s, and then susan and charlotte took me to a play (dinner with friends — great play) and then they bought me ice cream ’cause i’m so thin, and then i spent the night at their house and read “the horse and his boy” before i went to sleep, then this morning picked up henry, took him to the zoo, bought gas (jeeeebus it’s expensive), got water from the water lady, ran more errands, come home, fixed 45 meals for various people, made a loaf of bread with henry, went to the store… and i felt pissy and frazzled all day too. :)

april 17 — we cleaned our room today! got it all picked up and vacuumed and nice, washed the sheets and everything. and i took the suspect cd-rom drive out of henry’s computer and put it in strangelove, to see if it was REALLY broken and sure enough, it is. but pthree might have one that he can spare, and irq found me some good cheap ones on the interweb, so either way i’ll be able to get his computer all better for him soon. we found him a neat freeware little-kid version of Space Invaders today; it’s easy enough to be fun for him. we’re up to chapter eight in “Prince Caspian”! oh, and i bought a little piece of narrow brown ribbon to hang my locketwatch from. the chain broke ages ago and i’ve been using a nasty bit of red yarn. i feel quite elegant now.

april 16 — yesterday i had a terrible migraine. it got better, a bit, in the afternoon and i went to the movies with my mom and we saw “o brother where art thou” which was pretty good! and then that evening my migraine came back full force and i felt really horrible. but mom and i watched part of “quiz show” and that distracted me until i was tired enough to sleep. this morning my head still hurts a little. henry and i have to go grocery shopping in a little while. (later — my headache is all gone and i bought lots of nice food and i am making chicken and rice and broccoli for dinner and i am a very happy girl!)

april 14 — yesterday we had such fun at the park! henry and brain played for four hours, and i read almost all of Prince Caspian and while we were waiting for brian i read a bit out loud to henry and he really liked it. i’m very pleased. i’ve been waiting for 5.5 years for him to be old enough to enjoy narnia. today we read a lot more, and we cleaned the pool cover (henry is a good helper) and we went to the airport to pick up sally. oh and i got to talk to chloe on the aim — she’s been flying all over looking at the colleges she might go to, and she was at grinnell, so she came on from the library computer. it was so nice to talk to her. :)

april 13 — i feel very happy today! henry is watching disney “peter pan” one more time before we take it back to the video place. i got enough sleep and we get to go to a park today so henry can play with brian. hmm, i think NOW is a good time to play nethack! heheh, it says, “watch out! bad things can happen on friday the 13th.”

april 12 — we had a busy day! we went grocery shopping, first to boney’s but the union workers are still on strike there, so then we went to ralph’s but everything was so expensive ($1.29 for ONE head of lettuce), so then we came back here to stater brothers where no one is on strike and things are more reasonably priced ($.99 for lettuce). and when we got home we dyed easter eggs. and we did yard work, and played on our computers, and fixed meals, and made yummy-good veggie-barley soup, and did lots of nice things. and i played nethack too much again, but i did better than ever. :)

april 10 — ok, someone take nethack away from me now… ;-) henry and i took a nice walk all the way down to the walmart today, and i bought him some sidewalk chalk.

april 8 — henry’s loose tooth fell out, so he is all excited, waiting for the tooth fairy to come! i got a new game — nethack — for my linux box and my it’s fun. it’s an ascii rpg, rather complicated with lots of commands to remember. i played a lot today, and tomorrow i’m going to show henry. i think he’ll like it.

april 7 — i finally figured out how to make my own coaster in rollercoaster tycoon! henry and i have been playing for days, but we just couldn’t seem to make a coaster that worked, but today we finally did. go team kara and henry!

april 6 — too tired to write stuff.

april 5 — my wonderful mom drove to san diego this morning to fetch henry from matthew’s house so i could sleep — i slept ’til 10:45 and i *finally* feel like i got something like enough sleep. it’s such a relief to not feel horrible all day! henry and i played rollercoaster tycoon for hours and hours today and we had such fun! it’s a great game. we still haven’t figured out how to make our very own coasters from scratch but we will try again tomorrow. i’ve been clicking through an addition to lileks.com that i’ve never seen before: “ugly rooms for the beautiful people”. god. i am really enjoying this. go back to my main page for the link, or see funnystuff. i remember rooms like these in Other People’s Houses. shudder. well, i was gonna be lazy and not include a link here, but oh well, here’s an example of what i’m enjoying tonight: saturday morning

april 4 — i took henry to play with his friend talon at the park today (a strange swarm of bees drifted across the park near our blanket and we ran away until they blew further down the park), and then i took him to chula vista to play with nicolas, whom we haven’t seen in ages. it was really nice to see nicolas and alina again. i almost went to sleep on alina’s couch, i was so tired. henry had a really great time playing with his friends. he wore his superman costume all day.

april 3 — well, i was SO tired all day yesterday that i went to bed at 10pm… but still i could not sleep, so i got up again at 11:15 and stayed up for another hour. when will i get enough sleep? henry is working on his blue’s clues treasure hunt cd-rom and having such fun! it’s a great game. bah, i’ve got the hiccups. :(

april 2 — still not sleeping well. henry went to the dentist today and was SUCH a good boy.

april 1 — bah, i did NOT get enough sleep last night. i couldn’t sleep and was up ’til around 4. and now because of the silly time change, instead of being 10 it’s 11. yuck. but oh well. at least i feel pretty good again and my sore throat is mostly gone. henry made me a lovely present on saturday while he was with matthew at lucille’s house — he colored some popsicle sticks green, cut some flowers out of a magazine, taped the flowers to the sticks, and put the bouquet in a little glass dish for a vase, and it’s just lovely. :) he’s a wonderful boy!

Old Blog, March 2001:
31 march — feeling much better today. i slept very late and stayed in bed most of the day and now i’m feeling pretty good again. yay! i still feel kind of odd and weak. i wish someone would bring me some more grapefruit juice. i finished the whole tank.

30 march — i woke up at 5am with a bad sore throat. went back to sleep, had wierd dreams and woke myself up several times by talking in my sleep. i still feel awful. i had to cancel henry’s playdate with brian, and he was terribly disappointed, but then it turned out sally has free time today and karin is going to drive all the way up here to oceanside and meet her and henry somewhere so the kids can play. last night i added a bunch of software to my palmstuff page and now i’m going to work on that some more. thank goodness for my laptop and my ethernet. ow my throat is burning. :(

29 march — i got up at 7am and drove down to SD to get henry and fell asleep again while i was waiting for him to wake up. when we got back to oceanside we went to einstein brothers bagels and bought two nice fresh chewy bagels — chocolate chip for henry and plain for me. mine was still warm from being in the oven. i gave henry a bath, a hairwash, and a haircut today and he looks really nice. ok, time for yardwork.

28 march — we had a busy day! we ran errands for sally in the morning, and met talon and his mom at the mcdonalds at lunchtime and the boys played on the play structure for hours. in the afternoon we loaded some more kyle’s quest levels on my palm and then drove down to matthew’s house so henry could spend the night there. i came home and was SO tired i went to bed at 10:30.

27 march — henry had his first gymnastics class today and he loved it. and i loved watching him! he liked the balance beam best, he says.

26 march — i taught my mom how to use pine (linux email manager) and she likes it. yay!!! henry and i had a great time looking at his new “incredible cross-sections” book and playing kyle’s quest. he loves to watch me play kyle’s quest. it’s an RPG for palmos — we get to wander around hunting for treasure and killing monsters and buying better equipment and it’s lots of fun to have an enthusiastic watcher/helper like henry. we’ve finished two levels (“rat-trap” and “pirate”) and we are working on “no bones about it” :)

25 march — we had a wonderful time at “gondoliers” last night! henry was good as gold through the whole 2.5 hour opera. we got home at about 11:30pm and we were both wide awake, so i let him play his anatomy cd-rom and he built a whole body, and then we went to bed very late. but i couldn’t sleep so i got up after a while and stayed up til 3:00am. i thought i’d be all tired today but i woke up at ten feeling good. time to run one MILLION errands.

24 march — jrray and i saw “best in show” last night and it was really good! very very funny. christopher guest played a southerner with a bloodhound, and i almost didn’t recognize him because he sounded SO different from nigel in “spinal tap” and the very gay character he played in “waiting for guffman”. several others from the cast of “guffman” were in “best of show” and it was fun to see them all together again but playing different characters. tonight henry and susan and charlotte and i are going to see gilbert and sullivan’s “gondoliers” live at the san diego comic opera!

23 march — i am grouchy today. grrrrrrrrrr. for no reason, either. but i have had a nice day anyway. henry and i slept late and then we went to lunch with kirsten, marcos, sally, jean, carol, and mike (all my relatives) and then i ran errands and henry hung out with joe-the-handyman who is doing work for my mom. i made new vinyl screen protectors for both palms today. argh, i got bumped down to #6 on the bejeweled high- score page. but at least i am still there. going to the movies with jrray tonight.

22 march — i just got home. last night i stayed over at susan’s house so i could get henry in the morning before matthew had to go to work. henry and i then drove up to the oceanside farmers’ market to buy fruit and things, and then we came home and put everything away and made lunch and everything. and now i get to play on my computer for a while! yay! henry and i are sharing some cauliflower, and he is playing his curious george cd-roms while i do my computer stuff. henry is wonderful.

21 march — henry and i went to a place called giminny kids to see about gymnastics classes for him. the place was really nice, with lots of fun equipment and a pleasant-seeming staff. we enrolled henry in the “super-crickets” class — his first session is next tuesday at 1:30 and there will only be 6 kids in the class. he is looking forward to it very much and keeps asking me when tuesday will come. :)

20 march — well we went to henry’s dental appointment only to find that the rolling blackouts had affected that part of town and our appointment had to be cancelled. so we’re going to try again tomorrow. and then we went to the library and got a video of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta we are going to next weekend (gondoliers). it is HOT today. yuck. i have to do laundry, too.

19 march — henry and i had a busy day! we ran errands for my mom (bank, PO, costco, grocery store) and made lunch, and then we went to family fun center and played miniature golf together (both courses!) and then we came back and made dinner and watched the simpsons and then we went to morris practice! and we just got home and now i must put him to bed. oh, irq taught me to play bzflag today! it’s a tank battle game… senseless and entertaining. we had fun playing.

18 march — i slept REALLY well last night. i was totally worn out from all that hiking. i finished my pizza today and taught some little piano students for my mom, so she could hang out with my visiting grandparents. i felt quite happy today. last night i stayed up late working on a little php project that worked beautifully. i’m all proud of myself. oh, i found a new app for my palm! it’s called tidetool and it gives you detailed info about the high and low tides on your area. i am happy to have it; i think it will be fun to take henry to the beach at various tides so he can see how different it is sometimes. if you really care, you can go read about it on my palmstuff page.

17 march — went for a two-hour hike with darren, in the cuyamacas. it was really beautiful there, with patches of snow under the trees still. man am i out of shape! i ordered a papa john’s pizza over the interweb for dinner — it was ok but not great.

16 march — i had dinner with the selvigs and spent the night at their house. very fun! susan made this good thing with mushrooms, shallots, garlic, and port. after dinner i watched “birth of a nation” with charlotte (man, it was wierd) and cleaned out my laptop. and i finished rat-trap (great kyle’s quest level) before i went to sleep!

15 march — well, i got my DSL rebate… let’s see if the check clears. don’t hold your breath. henry and i started reading “henry and the paper route” by beverly cleary. my how he loves the henry huggins books! and i like them too.

14 march — today is pi day. henry and i walked to the store to pick up our photos but they haven’t come back yet. grrrrr. they were supposed to be in before 4 yesterday. why do they bother to post drop-off/return times when they have to relation to reality? henry was very good on our walk and did not complain or whine at all. we bought some strawberries on the way home and, my, they were good. we like to make strawberries-and-cream.

13 march — last night at morris practice we taught henry to dance “country gardens” and he did really well, for a total beginner. today i cleaned up the back yard; it was quite a big job. and we went to the library at night and got tons of books and a couple of new books-on-tape for henry — “mary poppins” and “wind in the willows”. henry is singing his own version of “in the pines” and it goes like this: “my girl, my girl, where did you sleep, don’t you know that it’s poisonous?”

12 march — henry and i went to a really great park near here. it’s in an old eucalyptus grove, and there’s a playground by the parking lot but then trails leading through the grove, all over a hillside and in some canyons. henry goes there with sally a lot, but i’d never been exploring there before today. we walked all over, and henry showed me a rope swing tied to a tree on the side of a hill — some big kids must have made it — and he swung there for ages. it was much more fun than anything in the actual playground. :) and we took a long hike and saw a big lizard basking in the sun on the side of a tree. tonight we are going to go to morris dancing practice! oh, and we watched sunday night’s simpsons twice this afternoon (i always tape it) and we both laughed really hard. it was the one where lisa isolates poindextrose, the bully-attracting pheromone. lol!

11 march — i got kayray.org! yay!

10 march — i have several new .mp3s that make me very happy, stuff like “sh-boom” and “crazy ’bout ya baby” and “step by step” by the crests. nice old corny mushy music. i dunno, it just makes me feel better somehow.

9 march — cold and rainy! yay! we went to the pacific bell switching station for a tour with some of the homeschoolers. we saw lots of cool equipment and learned things about the phone company. henry liked going down into the cable vault — he said it was like a subway tunnel without the trains. and he got a piece of purple phone company wire to take home. :)

7 march — i bought new super-innersole things for my boots, and my feet actually hurt less. henry and i went to the zoo this afternoon and had a lovely time. we saw the gorilla family right up close to the glass, and we went through the new aviary and saw lots of lovely birds, and we rode the skyride and it was COLD :)

6 march 2001 — henry and i went to the Museum of Making Music this morning with a group of other homeschoolers. they had about 100 years worth of musical instruments, plus music-making stuff like player pianos and victrolas and a theramin and Moog synthesizers! it was super-neat.

5 march 2001 — this morning we went to swami’s beach in encinitas and met a small group of homeschoolers there and explored the tidepools. the day was beautiful and sunny, and not too hot. we found little hermit crabs and the shell of a large crab and part of a lobster shell and some barnacles and a little shrimpy-thing, and we had a great time. :)

4 march 2001 — torquil and i have been watching the harry potter trailer obsessively. you can get it from www.harrypotter.com. we are so excited! it looks REALLY good; there only a few minor flaws, and they seem to have gotten a lot of things right!.

2 march 2001 — i just went to www.emotioneric.com and just about died laughing. go there go there go there now! i went to bed early but i couldn’t sleep so now i’m up too late again. oh well.

1 march 2001 — nutella is a good food. grapefruit juice is a good drink. i wish i had some grapefruit juice right now.

28 feb 2001 — henry and i went to the zoo today in the rain and it was lovely. we saw the monkeys and all the snakes and lizards and things like that. i liked the little monitor lizards. henry has his first loose tooth. :)

26 feb 2001 — i bought fresh blueberries but they are kind of sour. i also bought instant mashed potatoes in little cups.

25 feb 2001 — ok still working on this webpage. it’s getting better now. my ice cream was too hard but now it is all melty.