kayray.org

Updated October 17 2008 with better edging instructions!

I had about 38 grams of a 50-gram skein of Knitpicks’ Shadow merino laceweight leftover from my sister’s Print o’ the Wave stole, and I wanted to whip up a bit of lace to enter in our fair this summer. So I planned out an easy little lace scarf. I knit the edging on the long sides as I went along, so I was able to use up almost all the yarn and then just save a little for the edging on the two short sides.

Yarn: any leftover laceweight, 30 grams or more (less is fine but will make a rather short scarf)
Needles: your favorite lace needles. I used Knitpicks Harmony circs size 2, but I am a notoriously loose knitter, and I think it would have looked better if I’d used bigger needles anyway. You’ll probably want size 3 to 5, or even larger if you knit very tightly. Larger needles = longer/wider scarf.
Finished Dimensions: Mine turned out to be about 9 1/2″ x 52″ after blocking. Yours will surely vary somewhat!

Ok, think of this scarf as being made of several columns. The right-side edging is the first column, then a 2-stitch always-purl garter column, then a fern-lace column worked over 16 stitches, then another 2-stitch column of garter, then another fern-lace column, then another garter column, then the left edging. If you want a wider scarf or a stole and you have plenty of yarn, you can work more fern lace columns separated by garter columns. If you want skinny, just work one repeat of the fern lace (just like the chart).

Wrong sides: always knit the wrong side of the edging, always purl the wrong side of the fern lace and garter columns. I’ll say this again later on so you don’t forget.

Start by casting on using your favorite provisional cast-on. I prefer this one.

You’ll need 4 st for the right edging, 2 for the first garter column, 16 for one fern repeat, 2 for the garter column between fern repeats, another 16 for the second fern repeat, 2 more for the last garter column, and then 4 for the left edging. Which makes, um, 46. Yes, cast on 46! Place ring markers between every column so there’s never any doubt what’s what and where you are. Seriously. I don’t usually have to do that, but I messed up a lot until I gave in and placed markers.

Now begin following the chart. Chart shows only odd-numbered right side rows (if I’d remembered to write the numbers in they’d be 1, 3, 5, 7, etc.) Go ahead and write them in :) For even-numbered, wrong-side rows, KNIT the edging stitches and PURL all the other stitches.

(D’OH. I forgot a symbol key. Circle = YO. Dot = purl. Right edging dec: ssk. Left edging dec: k2tog. Right side of fern lace dec: k3tog. Left side of fern lace dec: sl1, k2tog, psso) (Another note: the edging is an 8-row repeat. The fern lace is a 12-row repeat. The chart shows 24 rows so the two patterns work out even.)(Chart shows only odd-numbered, right-side rows)

Casting off for pointy edging:
When you complete the 7th row, you’ll have 8 edging stitches on each side. On the 8th (wrong-side) row, cast off the first 4 stitches so you only have 4 stitches remaining before the first marker. Work across. When you turn to begin the 9th row, immediately cast off 4 stitches (4 stitches remain before first marker) — then follow chart for row 9 (k1, yo, ssk, yo, k1).

Ok, so keep working until you’re nearly out of yarn. End after having cast off the edge stitches so there are 4 stitches remaining on each side next to the purl columns (you might have to fudge this a bit). I put my working stitches on a string after a while and worked the edging across the cast-on stitches using the other end of the yarn, and then I knew I really only needed a little bit left for the last short edging.

To work the short-end edgings:

If you’ve ever knit an edging onto a piece of lace, you know what to do. If you haven’t, well, I’ll do my best to explain :)

Hold the scarf right-side facing you, and cast-on edge up. Slide a needle through 6 cast-on loops from left to right – 4 loops for the edging and 2 loops for the garter column. The tip of the needle will be pointing toward the rest of the cast-on loops. Ok. Now, slide the other end of your circular needle through the rest of the loops from right to left.

Start working from the point between the needles, toward the left . You’ll be working the garter column and edging according to the left side of the chart. Always SLIP the first stitch of EVERY RIGHT SIDE row. So, for the first row: sl1, p1(place marker here to divide edging from garter column), k1, yo, k2tog, yo, k1. Turn, work wrong-side row: K5, slip marker, p1 — NOW ssk the last st together with the first stitch from the other needle. Drop the right-most loop of the ssk’d stitch but leave the left-most loop on the needle, and use it next time to help the corner lie flat.

Turn, work next RS row from chart: sl1, p1, slip marker, k2, yo, k2tog, yo, k1.
Turn, work next WS row: k6, slip marker, p1, ssk with the stitch you didn’t drop last time to help the corner lie flat. Drop the whole ssk’d stitch this time.

Next RS row: sl1, p1, slip marker, k3, yo, k2tog, yo, k1. Turn. WS row: k7, slip marker, p1, ssk (drop only right loop of ssk’d stitch again, and save left loop for the next ssk)
RS row: sl1, p1, slip marker, k4, yo, k2tog, yo, k1, turn.
WS row: this is the 8th row, the one where you cast off four stitches to create a point. CO 4, k4 (make sure you have only 4 loops left before marker), slip marker, p1, ssk with leftover loop of last ssk.

Keep working edging and purl column, decreasing away stitches from the original cast-on stitches on every wrong side row (don’t double up ssks anymore) until there are only 8 cast-on stitches left. (Better put a marker 8 stitches in from the other side so you remember that that’s the time to double up your ssks again (ask me how I know that you’ll forget otherwise… )

For the last repeat, double up the decreases again so the corner lies flat. That will eat up two of the last 8 stitches.

Then when you’re all done, weave the 6 remaining cast-on stitches together with the 6 working stitches. Voila!

Do the same thing with the live stitches at the other end of the scarf.

Gently wash and block your scarf. Enjoy!

UPDATE (July 8 2008): At our County Fair this year, my scarf won first prize and a special donated award — a $50 gift certificate to a local yarn store, Common Threads, in Encinitas.

Here’s Marlene‘s scarf:

Yesterday we drove up to the fairgrounds in Del Mar (it’s the racetrack, really, but they do lots of other things there when it’s not racing season) to pick up our fair entries — Henry’s dragon collection and my sweater and fern lace scarf. We both got blue ribbons, and I got a fancy yellow rosette because of my Donated Award from Common Threads, a $50 gift certificate.

Also went to another doctor for a second opinion and more tests. She thinks my Strange and Very Painful Condition is shingles, which is what I think too because it makes more sense than anything the first doctor suggested, and that’s also what my ER doctor friend thinks. Ugh. Whatever it is, it hurts like hell. The first doctor I saw (who was open on the Fourth of July, thank goodness, which is when my Strange and Very Painful Condition erupted) didn’t think of shingles so now I get to go get my blood drawn again. Hooray!

After a long hot weekend, yesterday was a perfect summer day, and it looks like we’re headed for cooler weather again. Good. Summer is bad enough here without it starting in May.

Sorry I haven’t been blogging much… I haven’t been feeling well for the last couple of months and it’s hard to do much of anything. It kind of snuck up on me gradually, until I suddenly realized that I had many symptoms of bad thyroid levels again. I saw my endocrinologist last week. I hope it’s my thyroid levels, ’cause that’s very easy to fix with an adjustment to my synthroid dose.

So, yeah. I’ve been very slowly knitting a lace scarf to enter in the fair. It has to be delivered next week, but I’m almost out of yarn so I should be finishing soon. I used a fern lace pattern and knit a sweet pointed edging along the sides as I went, ’cause I didn’t know how far the yarn would take me. I already knit the edging onto the cast on edge.

I’ve been reading a little bit, though it’s hard to concentrate on anything but the most compelling stories, and I do find myself reading the same page several times. But Anna Maxted is always good, and I’ve just started The Country Wife by Dorothy Van Doren. I’ve been reading Everything Bad is Good For You to Henry for his bedtime story. :) When we’re done with that, I’m going to try him on some Agatha Christie.

Also, TV has been pretty entertaining lately. I discovered http://hulu.com/, where you can watch full episodes, clips, and a few movies for free, legally. Sure, the selection is limited and there are a few short ads, but if you want to see last night’s Family Guy without bothering to find a torrent and download it, hulu does the job. Also http://watchtvsitcoms.com is handy — we’ve been working our way through Seinfeld in order on the weekends :)

The Office season finale was excellent. Survivor is over now, sigh, but we have next fall to look forward to. We’ve been catching up on House — the current season is quite good. And The Tudors is great. Poor Ann. And last week we finally had a good episode of Battlestar Galactica! FINALLY! Things happened and it wasn’t boring! Dancing With The Stars ends tonight. We can’t wait for next season.

Oh, and my night-elf druid hit 70 last weekend :)

Poor Henry woke up with a bad sore throat :( Poor, poor Henry! We’ve been watching the behind-the-scenes appendices from The Two Towers all day.

Because the edging instructions for my Leftover Laceweight Scarf pattern confuse just about everyone, I knit a sample scarf end, worked the edging, took lots of photos and made lots of notes, then re-wrote the edging instructions in my pattern. I hope it helps!

Henry and Dan and I went to the Fair for a few hours last night, got there around five and stayed till around eight. I love the fair, and Henry does too. I don’t think Dan loves it quite as much as we do, but he does enjoy the crazy fair food a lot! :) We went up to Home and Hobby first and found out that, although my Cobblestone Cardigan didn’t win anything,

my Leftover Laceweight Scarf won first prize and also a donated prize from a local yarn store. There’s an award ceremony on Wednesday the 25th, so I’ll find out what my special prize is then. So exciting! My knitting has won a few 1sts and 2nds, but never anything extra.

We stopped by the yearbook competition and saw that Bayshore’s yearbook won 3rd! Yay Bayshore!

The we saw the Design in Wood building, and then we went over to the Kids’ Best tent and saw Henry’s Dragon Collection, which won 1st prize! Yay Henry!

Then we went over to the slicer-dicer tents so Henry could buy a cool leather bracelet that he spotted on Saturday when his dad took him to the fair, then we went over to the photography display, and by then it was nearly 8 and we were worn out so we came home, and then Henry and I popped over to Bob and Chloe’s house for a bit and watched “Barberland“, a great documentary on barbers and barbershops. Really, it was fascinating and very touching, and there was a marvelous mix of accents among the elderly barbers they interviewed. Highly recommended. Barbering is an ancient and dying art. Support your local barber!

It is so nice to be feeling better. A couple of weeks ago I couldn’t have managed the Fair at all.

Henry and I went to the zoo today! We left at about 10:40 and zipped down there — almost no traffic, amazingly — and got there are 11:20 or so. First we walked through the reptile house and visited the komodo dragon (Henry’s favorite today!) and then through the lovely new monkey exhibit, which was built last year to replace the ancient monkey house. It’s one of those beautiful modern exhibits, with two levels of walkways between large airy mesh enclosures, so you can see what’s going on at the top of the forest as well as the bottom. It feels lush and spacious, and the monkeys have huge natural-looking homes filled with live trees, branches, climbing ropes, hiding places, rock pools, etc. We spent a long time watching a family of Wolf’s Guenons. The little one was performing amazing feats of acrobatics while the mother worked and worked to try to crack open a walnut. After about 20 minutes it slipped out of her hands (or maybe she dropped it in disgust) and the father sprinted for it and grabbed it. He took it away to the top of a tree and eventually got it open. They were wonderful to watch.

We wandered through the new exhibit and reached the Gorillas, and spent a lot of time there. Saw two gorilla moms with little infants riding on their backs :) Then down to the bonobos, and then Chloe called (we’d invited them to come and meet us) and we headed back to the beginning of the monkey trail to meet them. Meanwhile they headed down a different trail to the gorillas to meet us :) But we finally met up, and walked all the way back through the monkeys, taking the lower trail this time and encountering lots of interesting wild pigs on the forest floor. Then we popped back to visit the kkomodo dragon again, then took the Sky Buckets over to the polar bears. We watched them for ages. One was rolling around, and the other was chewing on carrots. Arctic carrots, I guess.

Then we went down the hill and past the raptors to the pandas, and watched the 15-month-old cub cavorting with his mom. Because the pandas are so rare and secial, they have a zookeeper sitting near them all the time. She fills the crowd in on their personalities, histories, behaviour and other interesting facts. Neat.

And then we headed home at about 3 to try to beat the rush-hour traffic. It was slow for a while but wasn’t all THAT bad.

So tired now, so tired. But it was worth it! We had a perfect day :) And I have a tub of Trader Joe’s Pfeffernuesse here that needs my attention.

Whoa, I just noticed that our Zoo has little guided-tour podcasts for some of their exhibits! Each episode tells about one of the animals or plants. Check out this link to the podcast for Monkey Trails! http://www.sandiegozoo.org/podcast/monkey_trails/monkey_trails.xml

You can paste that link into your podcatcher and learn about our Flamingo Lagoon, Mandrills, Wolf’s Guenons, Wild Pigs, Bog Garden, and more! So cool. We’ll load some guided tours into our ipods for our next visit! Here’s their main podcast page: http://www.sandiegozoo.org/podcast/

August 2005

29 — Lots of housework and piano students but also had time to play WoW with Henry, and Monopoly, too! He’s a fun guy to play games with. We played time-limit Monopoly and he beat me by about $1000 dollars, and I didn’t go easy on him at all. He faked me out in several auctions — I know how far to push a computer opponent but a small intelligent boy is harder to manipulate, heh, and I ended up spending more than I wanted on worthless properties. Tired, tired, tired, stayed up WAYYYYYYYtoo late with dan last night heh. Early to bed tonight by god!

28 — Dan and I had fun out shopping this afternoon, when he took a break from setting up a laptop. We went to Fry’s where I bought a super-excellent iSkin case for my iPod and a pair of retractable headphones. The case is perfect for me, and I highly recommend it. I wanted a case with no giant belt-clip apparatus permanently poking out. The iSkin’s belt clip is entirely removeable, leaving only a perfectly smooth back. I got the translucent white one, so the nice green finish of my iPod shows through. The case is very well designed and comes with a sturdy, clear LCD-cover. Now my little iPod is completely protected from bumps and scratches :) Is there any joy greater than the joy of finding the PERFECT case for a new gadget? :)

After Fry’s we went to the loathesome Guitar Center for a cable. We planned to look at instruments but the store is so horrible (crowded, noisy, obnoxious) that we fled as quickly as possible and went to Buffalo Brothers instead. Buffalo Brothers is the opposite of Guitar Center — a quiet, spacious, pleasant store. Dan looked at acoustics while I browsed through their excellent selection of banjo books :) Then home again where I played with my toys and read while Dan continued to set up that laptop. Oh, and he made time to test my new digicam and told me I should set it to sharpen less. And he was right, the images look a lot better now. Wonderful Dan :)

27 — Today was my birthday! Everyone was sweet to me all day and gave me luxurious gifts — an amber pendant, a pair of decadently comfortable sheepskin slippers, and a green iPod mini! I love everything :) Henry and I picked up breakfast for everyone at Einstein Brothers, and then we had a relaxing afternoon watching old movies (Fantastic Voyage!) and playing with my new toys. Dan’s been asking me for years if I wouldn’t like an iPod. I never wanted one until recently, when I _finally_ made peace with iTunes, and even began to (*gasp*) enjoy using it. So I hinted that I’d like an iPod and my dear family gave me a lovely little green one! I’m really enjoying it so far :) Also love all my other presents. My alarm went off at 12:50 while we were watching the movie, and Henry and I looked at each other… and realized that he had a Karate workshop at 1pm! Eeek. So we raced over there and got him to the dojo on time, thank goodness. Then I came home and got dark clothing for him — the summer camp kids went to play laser tag after the workshop. We brought Henry’s friend Cierra home with us to play, so that was a nice treat. In the evening Matthew picked up Henry, and Dan and I had a quiet evening together. Very nice day, very happy birthday :)

26 — Tired, so tired, but got a lot of housework done, played with Henry, went to the library, and made a good dinner. I don’t usually get all mushy here but I feel awfully mushy so go away and come back tomorrow if you don’t want to read mush! I’m just so happy with Dan. He is so wonderful, so good to me, so loving, so much fun, so generous, so sweet, so caring, so extremely intelligent. I feel amazingly fortunate to be with him. Well, I’m not doing a very good job of expressing myself but you get the idea. Hey Dan if you’re reading this — I love you :) :) :) Here’s one of my favorite things about Dan — some nights when we go to bed, we’re both so tired we plan to fall asleep immediately… but then we start talking. And before we know it, hours, literally hours, have passed, and we’ve been laughing and talking and enjoying each other’s company, and yeah we’ll be tired the next day but who cares. It seems like we never run out of things to talk about. He is the most fun person to be with and he makes me laugh and I admire him so much. Plus, we both like soup.

25 — Finished “All About Eve”. Great movie!!! Henry watched part of it with me, enough to get the general idea. He said Eve was Evil heheheh :) The review I linked to is from www.filmsite.org, which I found today while hunting for a list of great movies. I realize it’s a horribly ugly and outdated website (hello 1996!) but their Top 100 list seems pretty good, better than the AFI one, although I do disagree with a few of their choices, e.g. “Vertigo” (sorry, it’s just not that good a movie although it has all the components of a GREAT one). It occurred to me that it might be fun to try to watch all 100 greatest so I might print out a checklist to keep near the TiVo. Between Henry, Dan, and me, we’ve seen a good many of them already! Hmm, never realized that Billy Wilder directed not only “Some Like It Hot” but also “Sunset Boulevard” AND “Double Indemnity”! Wow. Maybe we need to watch some more Wilder films. Those three are some of our favorites!

24 — Tired. Cut out some new purple velour shorts and stretchy pants for Henry this evening whie watching part of “All About Eve”. Ooooo creepy. I had to turn it off just when Bette Davis started getting bothered by Eve’s creepiness, so have more to look forward to tomorrow! Henry worked on “Roundabout” on his guitar while I hemmed Kirsten’s black pants, which are made of a difficult synthetic. I did an ok job, good enough I hope. Henry and Mom took me to Legoland this morning to buy me a membership for my birthday (to go with Henry’s membership, heh). Nice place, and I’ll look forward to spending a few hours there with Henry now and then!

23 — Took Henry down to the bagel store this morning for a half-dozen to go, then over to the bookstore to find the new Knights’ Kingdom books he’s been longing for. When we got into the bookstore, he suddenly wondered where his Bionicle toy was, the one he’d brought with us. He was afraid he’d left it at the bagel store, so I went out to the car to look for it whlie he asked a pleasant clerk for help finding the books. I found Takanuva under the bagel bag on the floor of the front seat and brought him back into the store, whew, no need to drive back to the bagel place. Henry and the nice clerk had found two of the books, the first two in the series. They were only $4 so I bought them both for him. Yay for a boy who yearns for books! Then I dropped Henry off at his dad’s apartment and they went to the movies etc. I went home and lazed around a lot — was pretty tired today so I didn’t accomplish much more than the usual basic daily stuff. Taught a couple of students, tested out the new Oster clippers. I think they’ll work great. Made shrimp and snow-pea stir-fry for dinner.

22 — Henry and I finished “State Fair” this afternoon. He liked the dress with the red velvet bodice and the white pleated skirt and the artificial cherries — said I should make one for myself :) And we did the shopping this morning and I made vegetable beef soup in the crockpot for dinner, delicious.

21 — It was a great weekend! Friday night Dan took me out shopping for a new digital camera (I left the charger and spare battery to my old Canon in Iowa) and we eventually chose a Sony DSC-P200. It’s a very good camera. I wanted something with some manual controls (not just a point-and-shoot), and the Sony has lots of options of that sort — manual focus, manual shutter seed, manual aperture, manual iso, etc — AND is pocketsize. And it has lots of other fun settings to tinker with. I practiced with it a lot this weekend, and got a few very good photos! Henry and Dan and Sal played racquetball on Saturday and I was able to get a few interesting action shots of them. See my gallery if you’re interested — haven’t cropped and uploaded all the good ones yet though, so check back.

Henry came home on Saturday morning and was with us for the rest of the weekend! We all watched Napoleon Dynamite on Saturday night. Henry loved it, so we watched it again on Sunday, heheh. And we worked on my Magical Mystery Tour puzzle, and played a lot of Animal Crossing, and read, and ate. Sunday morning I was about to make a nice breakfast for everyone when I discovered that the dishwasher detergent had clumped up and stuck in its little tray the night before, so the entire load of dishes was still dirty. Ugh. So we went out to breakfast — McDonalds for Dan and Einstein Brothers for Henry and me. Mmmmmmm pumpernickel!

Sunday afternoon the guys played racquetball again. Usually I watch them play, but this time the gym lackeys noticed that I wasn’t a member so I wasn’t allowed to go over to the courts, but there was a comfortable chair in the lobby and Dan lent me his Treo 650 so I could read Greenwitch, and I listened to The Goldberg Variations on my Zire 71. So it was really quite pleasant. Sunday night Henry and I started watching State Fair — very good so far, hope to finish tomorrow. Love the costuming!

18 — Finally got my XM Online trial membership thingy to work on my iBook. It was broken in different ways in every browser, and kept claiming it couldn’t find “the plugin” although I had both WMP 9 and Flash 7 installed. I tried various fixes and nothing worked until I reinstalled WMP — then all of a sudden everything was happy and content and played nicely. So I listened to the 1940s station, mostly. Sally and Henry went to Legoland, where they had a fine time and Henry got his face painted like a tiger, as you can see :)

16 — Henry and Dan played racquetball this evening! It was Henry’s first time and he really loved it, and I enjoyed watching them. After I got Henry to bed tonight Sal, John, Dan and I watched the first two episodes of the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sooo funny. Dan and I have seen them all already, but John and Sal hadn’t and they liked them.

14 — Rockola concert in PB this afternoon! Henry and I went together, left around 2:30 and got there just after 3, so got a good parking place, yay. Rockola played an excellent show, as usual, and the crowd loved them. And Bob let Henry borrow an acoustic electric bass and play with the band on “Summertime Blues”! Very exciting :) Henry says he wasn’t nervous at all, just happy.

13 — Bought Animal Crossing for the gamecube. We rented it for a week and really wanted to keep playing after it was returned, and it was only about $15 for a used copy. Gosh it’s a fun game!

12 — Gerry finished painting the big teaching room! It’s beautifully red, just luscious. I started working on the puzzle Mom brought me from Yosemite while we watched Zoolander tonight. Zoolander was better than I expected. I had the TiVo get it because of the cast (Ben Stiller, Jerry Stiller, Will Farrell, Owen Wilson, etc) but I didn’t expect much. It wasn’t GREAT, but we were entertained.

11 — Henry and I watched “The Towering Inferno” this afternoon and finished our map of the world puzzle. We had so much fun together! We decided that an alternate title for the movie could be “What Not To Do In A Fire”, or “The Tower of Idiots” hehehehehe. It really was entertaining, though. Henry said the sleazy son-in-law deserved to be punched and we cheered together when William Holden punched him. And of course Steve McQueen and Paul Newman were manly and heroic, and the 1974 interior decorating made us gag. All that harvest gold and little stairways to nowhere… Henry is old enough to be a really fun movie-watching companion, yay! He understands basic plot conventions and can prdeict the plot with me :)

09 — Danny picked up my car and changed my oil and rotated my tires etc. Wonderful Danny! I played some WoW while Henry was at camp today and got my warlock to lvl 43, woohoo! Amazing. Also I worked on that map of the world jigsaw puzzle that Henry and I started and got a lot further, made all the continents and even filled in quite a bit of ocean. Jigsaw puzzles are so relaxing and fun for me, I don’t know why I don’t do them more often. Fargo spent the afternoon with us. He and henry are completely obsessed with Yu-Gi-Oh cards, my goodness. Henry asked me to draw one for him afterdinner. He found a good picture online of the one he wanted, some kind of rare ferocious dragon, so I drew it for him and colored it in, and we pasted it to one of the cards he never uses. He loves it so much, he took it to bed :)

08 — Watching Adam Carolla’s new show “Too Late”… so far it’s fairly entertaining but he’s really just doing the same bits he does on Loveline… but I’ve laughed heartily a few times so I’ll give him another try tomorrow. And now it’s time for Jon Stewart! This afternoon, when Henry got home from karate camp, we started working on our big world map puzzle. Difficult!

07 — Picked up Henry from his dad’s house in the morning and took him to the morning karate class, and then we came home and did stuff :) Henry and I watched the first episode of “Cosmos” And Dan cleaned our bedroom!!!

05 — Art camp for Henry, then I went home took care of plants and things, taught, then picked Henry back up. He had a wonderful day, and came home with lots of clay projects that he’d made over the week — a box, and a bowl, and a parrot. Then we came home and Henry played Animal Crossing (fun game!) and worked on more house stuff and started sewing Sal’s new curtains. Then another student, then took Henry to his two karate classes, then dropped him at his dad’s house (in Carlsbad now, not Lemon Grove anymore!). Came home, talked to mom (home from her road trip). She likes the color I chose for the teaching room (red!!) and the one set of curtains I got mostly finished. And then I was hungry and too tired to cook, so Dan took me out for Greek food :)

04 — Picked Fargo up this morning when I dropped Henry at his art camp. Fargo hung out at our house while Henry was in class, playing gameboy and eating toast and moving all my LPs from my bedroom to the sitting room, where my record player lives now. Helpful boy! Then we picked up Henry and I took them to Matthew’s new apartment, then came home and did stuff… moved all the small things out of the big teaching room, plants, chairs, etc, so Gerry could start painting it today. And I cleaned Mom’s room really well — she’ll be home tomorrow. And Gerry lent me his cordless drill and brought a ladder upstairs for me, and I installed Mom’s new curtain rods. Yay me!!

03 — Extremely busy day. Dropped Henry at art camp, went to Home Depot to choose paint for the big piano room, came back and discussed things with Gerry, did housework, took down some of the nasty old curtain hardware from mom’s windows, then picked Henry back up, got lunch at Del Taco and went straight over to Vista for his computer class. Then I got to sit outside in the shade for a few hours and read, which was lovely. Oh and I played a little Mario and Luigi, but I got stuck on killing the plant monster on the runway, argh. After his computer class, Henry played with a bunch of nice kids for a while and then we raced back home, picked up our prescriptions, got home just in the nick of time for my 4:45 student, and rushed off to karate the moment I was done teaching. Then home by about 7 and I just had to lie down for a while. Dan just moved all our recent Loveline recordings from one computer to another (the one that stays on all night) so now I get to fall asleep to the soothing sounds of an episode I’ve never heard before, YAY!!!

02 — I spent the entire morning hunting for decent curtain hardware at a variety of stores. I finally found some good stuff at Bed Bath and Beyond, and on sale, too! So I got everything we need for Mom’s curtains, and now I just need to install the hardware and sew the curtains, heh. i was hoping to have them done by the time she gets back from vacation, but… well, maybe.

The Hendrix family came over to swim this afternoon but Gerry had to put extra chemicals in the pool and anyway it was COLD, so we went to the playground at Holiday Park instead and the kids had lot of fun climbing all over the tall spiral slide. And we devoured a bag of chips and a container of salsa :) I made dinner for everyone later and was SO TIRED by the end of the day. But it was a good day. The Hendrixes are going home to Germany in a couple of days so we won’t see them again for a while. But they might come back again in a couple of years!

01 — Henry started his art camp today — for a whole week he gets to do clay-related activities from 9:00 til noon! He seemed to enjoy the first day very much. It was strange to have him gone for so many hours on a weekday, but I got a lot of housework done, watered the roses etc.

March 2005

31 — This morning I looked in the Oceanside library catalog online and saw that THEY have Absolute Zero! (Henry and I are both enjoying Ordinary Jack so much that I want to get the next book asap) So we took a drive out there and got AZ, and Bagthorpes Unlimited, and Bagthorpes vs. the World. YAY!!! And we stopped and bought Trader Joe food on the way home, and got some cheap paintbrushes so Henry could paint his model submarine. When we got home Henry helped me bring in all the food and then I helped him paint his model. Really, he did all the painting, I just opened the jars for him and held the sub steady while he painted. And then I did the decals for him (he wanted me to) and now his sub is done! I’ll offer to help him blog about it tomorrow :) And then we sat on the balcony and I read two more chapters of Ordinary Jack to him.

It’s a santa ana all of a sudden and my hair is all crackly and dry. Ugh. But the warm weather is kind of nice for a change. And my lovely new car has real actual air conditioning so it’s not grim running around doing errands in the heat :)

30 — Went to the Carlsbad Library, hoping to get Absolute Zero (the next book in the Bagthorpe Saga) but they don’t even own a copy. Boo, hiss! But I got a good stack of other books:

1215: The year of Magna Carta (history — started this one already and it’s excellent)
Bergdorf Blondes (fiction)
Revolutionary Mothers: Women and the Struggle for America’s Independence (history)
The Best Awful (fiction)
The Children’s Blizzard (history, about the same terrible winter as “The Long Winter”)
The Island at the Center of the World (history, about the settling of Manhattan)
Hissy Fit (fiction)
Reproduction is the Flaw of Love (fiction)

The books were just jumping off the shelves at me today!

28 — Extremely busy day. Did all the dusting, mopping, vacuuming, and decluttering in the morning after I made pancakes for the boys (Fargo was home from school all day!), and then built boxes for the auction stuff i had to ship, and dealt with the payments and the printing of shipping labels etc, which took FOREVER. Then had to drop everything off ot the UPS dropoff place, and rented a game for Henry with one of our free coupons, and stopped by the bank for cash for Grandma, and then taught two students. Oh yeah I managed to get dinner started in the crockpot at some point also. Then came home, fixed dinner for Henry, read him another chapter of Ordinary Jack, and put him to bed, then sat here in my nice chair listening to the Brandenburg Concertos and working on my flash animation assignment, which you can see if you wish to. It’s nothing special, just an exercise for attaching actionscript to buttons etc. Here: facefacts_fade.swf. Don’t complain to me about the ugly buttons, I whipped them up really fast to replace some even uglier ones. They don’t bother me, because I know exactly how to fix them to make them look good. What does bother me is the brief preview you get sometimes of the text that’s about to fade in… it’s very annoying and i’m not sure what to do about it. Grr.

26 — Last night I dreamed about loading and unloading a dishwasher. It just doesn’t get much more exciting than that, I tell you!

This evening Mom and I drove down to Viejas to hear Rockola and hang out with Chloe. We had fun! The band had to go on late because of a poker tournament, so Bob bought us dinner while we were waiting, very sweet of him. Chloe and I danced and danced! And they played “I want you to want me” at my request :)

25 — This morning Henry and I worked through a couple of the lessons in my Flash book. You can see his work if you go to his blog :) Chloe flew into town today for her spring break! She’s staying with Bob, of course, and flying to Florida with Rockola next week, but we got to see her tonight at The Steely Damned show at Humprey’s. Kirsten and Marcos and I drove down together and Dan went there after work, and we all got to hang out with Chloe while the band played! It was really wonderful seeing her, and being with K & M, but the best part was getting to meet up with Dan after work, sort of like a date :) Which is silly because if it had been an ordinary night I would have seen him just as much. It’s the Going Out thing, I guess. He says I’m a good dancer!

24 — Jeeze where does the time go. What have I been doing lately? This has been a busy week I guess. I signed up for one of those Cnet classes for beginning flash animation, and the first couple of lessons were fun so today I helped Henry go through them. He seemed to really enjoy working with flash! It took us about 3 hours to go through the first three lessons and I thought he’d get sick of it, but he kept saying he wanted to continue. The result is an animated face, which you can see if you go to his blog. Ok well I’m tired so I’m going to bed now!

20 — Set up a couple more auctions today, and they’re all going well. I played WoW for many hours and got my Warlock up to level 24! Also cleaned and decluttered my sewing/office area, got rid of the crappy white plastic clutter-trapper rack thingy and sorted out my thread and notions and stuff. I’s SO much better now! And I threw away a whole big bag of stuff and gathered up some more giveaway stuff too. Now we’re going to bed early to watch 7 episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm :)

19 — Still feeling sick but had a nice day with Dan anyway. Mom came over in the evening and we watched the two episodes of Survivor that were in the Tivo. Very entertaining! The good team (Koror) won a reward challenge and got a new shelter, and the bad team (Ulong?) quarreled amongst themselves and voted off Kim (no great loss) and Angie, who seemed like one of the smartest, strongest people… So entertaining!

18 — Feeling a bit better already! Fargo was home from school today due to car trouble so he and Henry played allllll day. Fargo broke his right arm on Monday so they are a matched set, heh. He says his break is just a crack, and he had a splint, no cast. But still, they’re two boys with broken right arms. It rained this afternoon when I took Henry to karate, and the Tiny Tigers class was so crowded I sat in the car and listened to NPR and played Minish Cap, but then during Henry’s class I sat in the dojo and watched/played gameboy/read Smokescreen. Dan and I are on a serious Dick Francis kick. We got two more Curb Your Enthusiasm dvds in the mail today!

17 — Sick. And Henry’s still coughing, too, so we stayed home and had Movie Day. First I put on Some Like It Hot, then Henry chose A Mighty Wind, and then we watched Best In Show. Funny movies, all three. We lay around on the couch together and played on our gameboys some of the time. It’s not bad feeling semi-sick when you have a sweet 9 yr old to watch movies with.

16 — Last time I went to the library I got “Freddy and the Ignormus” (audiobook) for Henry. He was playing it on his computer in the livingroom yesterday and I started listening, and it was really entertaining! Quite a funny story, really, with a delightful old-fashioned vocabulary and good “lessons” that don’t seem “lessony” at all. We played all five cds over the past two days, and, although I wasn’t paying 100% attention every minute, I’ve been laughing out loud at it quite a bit. We did a bit of math today for about 10 minutes (adding single digits to 9 and 8) and then played WoW together for a long time — Zinny and Ramona in Redridge, mostly. And this evening I read TWO chapters of Ordinary Jack to him for bedtime :) Dan had to work very late tonight and I miss him but he’ll be home soon.

15 — Henry made me laugh so much tonight! I was reading “Ordinary Jack” to him (which he loves, btw) and we got to the part where Jack creates a Mysterious Impression by accident, and all of a sudden Henry sang, to the tune of “I Won’t Grow Up” (from Peter Pan)

“A Mysterious Impression (a mysterious impression)
and he didn’t even try! (and he didn’t even try!)”

(if you dont know the song, the original words are “and a serious expression (and a serious expression) in the middle of July (in the middle of July)) I love fitting new words to old songs, and Dad did too (5 foot tree, don’t blame me, if it’s so tiny that you can’t see — has anybody seen my tree…) So I was delighted :)

14 — Now we are home. We drove home yesterday. It was funny — Idyllwild was completely clear and sunny, but right when we drove out of town there was all this thick fog that didn’t clear up until we got almost down to Hemet. The first time we reached Hemet, I realized we’d left my sweater, Dan’s coat, and our hats on hooks behind the door of our cabin, argh! So we turned around and drove all the way back up the hill, heh. But then we eventually got home. We were so tired last night. We put Henry to bed at 8 and just went straight to bed ourselves.

Today I did a lot of Stuff that had to get done… packaged up my auction stuff for UPS, picked up Kirsten at the airport, did laundry, did half the weekly housecleaning (Henry did all the bathroom windexing for me) and, um, other stuff which I can’t think of right now. And taught four students. And Henry and I had a little time to play World of Warcraft together, and I read him two chapters of Ordinary Jack for his bedtime story.. gosh I love that book and Henry seems to like it too! He laughed out loud at “I see dot dot dot, I see dot dot dot…”

12 — Slept late, made breakfast, hung around in our nice cabin. We played with our cameras and got lots of good photos which I’ll post when we get home. We just had dinner at the Greek place again — we went around to other places and looked at menus but nothing looked as tasty as Greek food, so that’s what we had! now we’re in the internet cafe catching up on email etc, and then we’re going to go home and lie around some more :) We got our wet firewood to burn last night by using FireLog(tm). Immediately upon use, FireLog increased our fire efficiency by 364%. I highly recommend FireLog to anyone. (Note: The Duraflame Company asks that you respect their products by ignoring proper article usage in language, so you must never refer to FireLog as “the firelog” or “a firelog”. It is simply FireLog.)

11 — I woke up pretty early this morning, read for a while, then got up and had a shower and made coffee, and then walked into town to the market for juice, salt and pepper, a newspaper, and a shady hat. We didn’t expect it to be so sunny here and I got a little sunburn just from walking around yesterday. Then I came home, put our wet firewood on the porch in the sun, and sat in the open doorway reading. When Dan woke up he had no internet, of course, and he usually wakes up by reading his email and looking at his websites, so I pretended to be the internet and I told him he had 7000 new emails, and that cnn.com said there was trouble in the middle east, that boingboing.net reported on a new Monkey Attack and people being upset about the government censoring bloggers, and that slashdot reported that Microsoft Sucks, that someone made something cool out of legos, and that someone made something new that does something interesting in an overly complicated way. So then he was happy :)

And then I made him breakfast (I brought ingredients and my lovely cast-iron skillet) of scrambled eggs, toast, sausage, and juice, and then we sat around reading together for a long time. After a while I wanted to go out so I walked to the library and browsed around there for a bit. It’s a nice library for such a small town! And then I came back and we read some more… and then we took a walk into town again. We had a good time browsing around the tourist stores and Dan bought me a silver and garnet necklace :) Also looked around for a present for Henry but couldn’t find anything really neat. But it was a good long nice walk in the fresh air under the beautiful trees. Now we’re back in our cabin. Dan’s reading some more and I’m typing up this post in textedit on my laptop so I can post it quickly next time we go to the internet cafe place. I imagine we’ll go find some dinner pretty soon… This is the nicest honeymoon anyone could ever possibly have, just doing almost nothing in the quiet, taking little walks, and being together.

10 — Today we drove to Idyllwild for our honeymoon! It was a nice drive and only took about 2 hours. We’re staying at The Manzanita Cabins which is a wonderful place! Our cabin has a little front room with a daybed and a little table with two chairs, a little bathroom with a shower, a little kitchen complete with gas stove/oven, small fridge, coffee machine, toaster, and microwave (and helpful accessories such as a corkscrew, cheese grater, dish drainer, dish soap, hotpads, and some dishes and silverware!), and then a large main room with a queen-size bed at one end and a fireplace at the other, and a couch and tv right in the middle. And there are lots of windows and a front door and a back door. It’s extremely home-like and comfortable and we are very very happy to be here!

After we got here, checked in, unpacked, and lay around for a while, we took a walk into town. It’s only a block or two into downtown Idyllwild — past the library and the propane supplier, around the corner, and there’s the town. We got some lunch/dinner at a fabulous Greek place, walked around a little more, and then came back to our cabin. Then we watched a couple of episodes of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (brought our latest greencine dvds along for entertainment), and then drove over to the Java Lounge which is an internet cafe with free wireless! I bought Dan a couple of pastries and we checked our email, etc. (that’s how I am able to post this, of course) And then we went home again and lay around and watched more dvds and had fun using Dan’s digital camera and laser pointer to make light- paintings — example soon :) Also tried to build a fire in the fireplace but the wood we brought is so wet it won’t really burn. but Dan had fun with matches and paper trying to help it along. We’ll get some dry wood or a fake log or something tomorrow. We are having the BEST TIME already. It’s so beautiful and quiet here, and the air is fresh and everyone smiles at us.

10 — We’re leaving today for our honeymoon! We’re going to Idyllwild, to stay in a little cabin and relax and do nothing. We probably won’t have internet access so I’ll post again when we get back on Sunday :) Have a good weekend everyone!

09 — Dan and I got married today! It was a tiny civil ceremony at the County Clerk’s Office. Here’s one photo for you, and there are a few more in my photo gallery. We had a wonderful time. Mom and Henry were there, and Dan’s good friend Midori. And afterwards we went to the Maritime Museum and walked all over The Star of India and the H.M.S. Surprise. It was a wonderful day!

08 — My wrist is hurting, argh. It hurts even though I wear my wrist-support thing all the time. I’ve been crocheting a lot of lace, lately, also playing the piano a lot the last couple days, so it’s probably all that activity that’s causing the pain, darn it. Yesterday I taught one of Mom’s students and the little girl played an arrangement of the old doo-wop song “Come Go With Me” and I liked it so much I brought a copy of the book home to play here. Henry likes it too and started doubling the melody way up high on the piano. I jazz up the rhytym a lot and it sounds really good. But anyway that’s probably why my wrist hurts. Sigh. Henry and I watched the Antiques Roadshow together today. Love that show! I learn so much every time. Dan and I are getting married tomorrow yay! Hope it’s not raining :) (when have I EVER said that before? heheh)

I’ve been obsessed with a great old tune lately: The Darktown Strutters Ball. It’s one of my favorites on my old Benny Goodman 1935 album. This morning I decided to try to find an mp3 of it (since I can’t digitize my LPs) and found a (differnt) Benny Goodman version, an Ella Fitzgerald version, and a Boswell Sisters version. (ever heard of The Boswell Sisters? Me neither, but they’re good!) All three are great, and now I know the words too. Dance all over my shoes when the band plays the jellyroll blues!! Speaking of acquiring music, I went to the used record store across from karate today, just looking. I found a New Christy Minstrels record for $.50, which I bought because I’ve never heard them but Mom says they’re the group that The New Main Street Singers are based on, so I thought it would be fun (or possibly agonizing) to hear the real thing. Too bad when I got it home I noticed that the wrong record was in the jacket, heh. Oh well. But while I was there I bought another Benny Goodman LP for $7 and an album of Rush doing cover songs for Dan. And then I was wondering — why doesn’t the RIAA crack down on people reselling used records and cds? The artists and labels don’t get any money from such sales. Why is _sharing_ music wrong but _reselling_ it is ok? Hmmmmmmmm… Yeah, I know, it’s because sharing creates copies. Tough, technology marches on. Sigh. I will reiterate what i’ve said many times before — the ability to get a taste of new music via p2p filesharing has caused me to actually purchase far more (NEW) cds in the last couple of years than I would have ordinarily. And hey, sharing is nice! Some stranger today provided me with some music that makes me extremely happy, and now I’ll be looking for a Boswell Sisters cd to buy. RIAA, you can go jump in a lake.

07 — I made an almost-sleeveless chemise to wear under my Romantic Blouse which I will wear under my Romantic Jumper, which I washed and ironed today. So all my wedding clothes are all ready for Wednesday :) Henry helped me with the housework this morning and then we played together, and then I taught three students this afternoon. I had to renew my domain registration for kayray.org today, so you can enjoy this blog for yet another year, lucky you! And now I am tired and going to bed.

06 — Dan was using our main WoW account today so I started a character on the 2nd account — all my other chars there are ones I use when I want to play with Dan or Henry, so I don’t like to use them to play solo. So I started a night elf Druid (Animala) and got her to lvl 7. Fun! It’s nice to have healing spells. And in only three more lvls I’ll get to learn how to take an animal form. Cool.

I have figured out the perfect way to listen to Loveline while I go to sleep. We record them from the internet stream so we have a huge archive of old shows. So I run one on my laptop, turn the brightness all the way down, and plug in my earbuds. Then I get in my comfy sleeping position, on my side, and put one earbud in my ear, and turn the volume almost all the way down. When commercials come on I take the thing out of my ear for a few minutes, and usually I fall asleep pretty quick. Very relaxing and soothing.

04 — This morning Henry and I worked on his bookshelf a little bit, and he came up with some things to give away/throw out! Yay Henry! Then we worked on his Math-u-see for a while, which was fun. It’s a nice system. The early stuff is quite simple for Henry so we just do a few excercises until he’s sure he knows it. And then we played WoW for a while (Mooly and Yry went to Oggrimar together and then took the zeppelin to The Undercity), and then it was time for karate. Matthew picked him up from karate and I went to the fabric store for embroidery floss for the vintage stamped-for-cutwork linen napkins I got on ebay, and while I was there i bought a fabulous encyclopedia of needlework (used the gift cards mom gave me for Christmas). I’m planning to take my linen napkins to Idyllwild to work on. (We’re getting married on Wednesday and going to Idyllwild on Thursday for a long weekend honeymoon!)

03 — Claire (Fargo’s mom) came over with a borrowed sewing machine for me to thread for her. I threaded it and tested it out but it was having some kind of bizarre tension problem. I fiddled with it for quite a while and then gave up and sent Claire home with my old Kenmore machine, which I haven’t used since Dan and Mom gave me my Pfaff last year. I tested it and showed her how to use it. The sound it makes is so comfortably familiar. Nice. And then Henry went home with Claire and little 3 year old Max to play for a while, and I set up some auctions on ebay — getting rid of STUFF yay!

Oh I also went to the post office to pick up the math-u-see stuff I bought for Henry, and to the pharmacy to pick up our prescriptions, which I had refilled online yesterday. And they actually filled them all with no problems! amazing. Then Henry came home and we played a little WoW together (Zinny and Ramona this time, collecting red leather bandanas in Westfall) and then went over to Sal’s to teach. We took our new math stuff and watched part of the video in Sal’s VCR. Looks good! Henry understands about place value now, and is eager to do more.

Then we went to karate for the fist time since Henry broke his arm. He did well in class, but came down with a migraine at the end and turned all pale and ill. Took hime home, tucked him into bed, and waited for him to puke, which he did eventually and then felt immediately better and got up and had a little dinner before I put him back to bed for the night. And then Dan and I watched Survivor and I finished sewing buttons on my blue dress :)

02 — Doctor appointment for Henry today, and they x-rayed his arm and said it’s healing well, yay! He gets to go back to karate as long as he’s careful :) And he also can sleep without it being elevated which means he can sleep in his own room again so I am going to go clean it and make his bed all nice before he gets home (He’s hanging out with Matthew right now).

01 — I’ve started to feel a little bit hyperthyroid again… it’s very very subtle but annoying. Yesterday I called the doctor, prepared to argue my way into a blood test again, but amazingly enough they didn’t argue and gave me a lab slip that very day. We’ll see… The last time this happened I felt even more hyper thank I do now but the test showed me being only slightly above “normal” so I would not be surprised if this test shows nothing. But at least I tried.

This morning Henry and I went down to the free museums in Balboa Park. The free ones today were the Science Center, the Model Railroad Museum, and the Natural History Museum. We had a nice drive down and parked as usual in the lot off president’s Way and took the tram into the park. Then we walked up to the Model Railroad Museum, which was crowded but fun, and then to the Science Center but there were 989349389170 school children on field trips and the noise was unbelievable. So we only walked around a little bit and then went for lunch at the Park Cafe instead :) We had a good time together!

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.