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august 31 -- ken's birthday is in two days... must not forget to send greeting! i began teaching henry to play settlers of catan; he's getting the hang of it quite quickly, and i think that someday soon we may have an automatic third player :) sally took him to lunch and to the park for a bike-riding lesson. i got out my knitting needles and wool today -- i need more wool socks. this has been an oddly cold summer; tonight i am wearing my wool thermal pants and a thermal shirt to bed. in august. weird. but i like the cold so i am happy.

august 30 -- i taught dan to play "speed" which is a card game i used to play when i was 9 or something. and we watched electric company with henry. he's getting better and better at reading!

august 29 -- we took henry to matthew's and picked up henry's bike so we can maybe take a bike ride sometime. then we had to go to la jolla, then we went back to hillcrest to a Fancy Neighborhood and picked up dan's friend leah (in town for a month) and took her to the wild animal park and rode the monorail, which was really nice. we saw a 10-day-old rhino! it was charging an older rhino child. then we took leah back to hillcrest. she was really nice and fun. then we drove back home. drive drive drive. but i got to use my new riovolt in dan's car so i could listen to my cd full of kayray mp3s, which doesn't work properly in his in-car player. gosh i love my riovolt!

august 28 -- we played settlers of catan with sally tonight. i won! also we had a barbecue and everything turned out really good.

august 27 -- i had a lovely birthday today. in the morning henry and dan gave me my presents; henry gave me a picture of Space that he drew, a hand-made fan; henry and sally gave me a batik scarf and a cd of the brandenburg concertos; bob and sally and dan gave me a riovolt; jean gave me two more bach cds; matthew gave me a nice gray hat. we took a walk on the beach tonight and henry and i jumped over things!

august 25 -- here's a book that henry wrote and illustrated: power rangers in space! enjoy :)

august 24 -- we took henry to the park today, and he and dan played with some water-powered rockets, and we scooted. one of the rockets got stuck in a huge tree, but a nice man came along with a fishing pole and got it down for us. sally and henry set up a little office for him, and he did WORK for hours. we watched the micheal keaton batman movie at night -- henry and dan seemed to like it a lot but i thought it was kind of dull. i guess i prefer the old "BIFF!! BAM!! POW!!" batman. :)

august 23 -- we just got back from the library. henry chose about a thousand books, and we got two new cd-roms for him, and four audio books. he's listening to "the phantom tollbooth" right now. we got so many books that we filled up my huge backpack completely, and the librarian gave us a paper bag for the ones that wouldn't fit. earlier today i worked on scanning in these photos (still not uploaded, sorry) while henry played The Incredible Machine on his computer next to me. he's getting better at solving the puzzles with only a little help. oh, and we let the bird fly around the room with us :)

august 21 -- henry was playing rollercoaster tycoon while i was making dinner and he came running downstairs shouting "Kara! I read two sentences!" and then he took me upstairs to show me. he read "i feel sick" and "rollercoaster 2 is a really good value" :)

august 20 -- we made more prints and got some really good ones. i'll scan and upload soon. henry is doing really well with his reading!

august 19 -- this was a nice day! i made lasagna for dinner and we watched the season finale of six feet under, which was rather tense and stressful, especially the first hour. the second hour was less so, in hindsight, but we kept expecting something terrible to happen. dan made some more prints from the last couple of rolls we shot, and i made one too!

august 18 -- do not, repeat NOT, go see "jay and silent bob strike back". kevin smith owes me $8.50. on a happier note, henry's gymnastics recital was great. all the kids got little medals to hang around their necks. :) we took a walk on the beach tonight!

august 17 -- dan developed a roll of b&w film that i shot, and it looks like it turned out well! tomorrow we'll make some prints. i got chloe's prom photos in the mail! she is incredibly beautiful. the dress rehearsal for henry's little gymnastics show was tonight -- his little group does a routine to "car wash" and they wear jeans rolled up and white t-shirts and baseball caps. the show is tomorrow. they are so cute! we bought more film at oceanside photo and telescope which is a short drive away. the Annoying Man said "hey kids!" to us...

august 16 -- i finished my latest website job a while ago, for a girls' surf store here in oceanside... www.wahini-bikini.com. this was a fun one! by the way, if you haven't yet seen the humanclock you ought to. henry wanted to know how a lock works, so i found this for him: inside a lock.

august 15 -- henry invited me to take a walk with him at guajome park, so we waited 'til about 4:30 (it has been really hot lately) and then we went and we had the best time! we hiked along a nice little flat trail along the lake, and found little shady secret places under the trees, and watched dragonflies and ants. dan developed his first test roll of B&W film and made a few prints (he got the garage dark enough to use as a darkroom)!

august 13 -- henry and i went to charlotte's going-away party (she's off to college). there was this really good lemon cake, and charlotte had thinned out her closet so we had fun going through these big bags of clothes and picking things out that i liked! dan and i played rummy tonight for a while -- lots of fun. :)

august 12 -- on friday night we went to the san diego junior theater production of "guys and dolls" and it was so amazingly good! we had a great time. yesterday we sharpened the lawnmower and i mowed the lawn, and we bought and installed a bike-rack for mom's car, and we pumped up her tires for her. harry potter got too scary for henry so he asked if we could finish reading it when he is seven. sweet little guy! the sopranos are on tonight, and six feet under!

august 10 -- while fishing around on the internet for information about The Electric Company i ran across this 70s children's TV page. remember those commercials? "honeycomb's got a big big bite!" this guy has a neat 70s page too.

august 9 -- we discovered that they show electric company every night on noggin, so i started recording them on the dishplayer and henry and i watch them together. it's so much fun to see electric company again! i love that show. today we saw that wonderful thing which is hard to describe but i will have a crack at it: the visuals are close-ups of unrelated words from city signs, and the audio is a funnily stilted song made up of these words. it goes, "i... like... fish... food... you... do... too.../ don't... look... now... your... hair... is... blue..." man i loved hearing that song again. i knew every word and every note and i probably saw it 20 or more years ago. i actually recognize every single little skit but some are more intense memories than others.

august 8 -- we drove down to horton plaza and walked around and looked at things. there's a chocolaterie or something called Godiva. we bought two pieces of fancy chocolate (mine was espresso truffle and dan's was a milk chocolate truffle) for $3 and it was actually worth it! :) also looked in the game store for a long time. i'm thinking about getting henry a magic-the-gathering starter deck set for his birthday. i don't want to let him loose in *my* magic cards just yet, and the starter deck set should make it easy for the two of us to play together and for him to learn the basics. but maybe he's too little still. i dunno. when we got home we played settlers of cataan with sally and it was great fun! i hope we can play again soon. also i worked a lot on the website i'm making for lynette. it's almot done and i'll post the url here when it's ready for the public.

august 5 -- last night we finished watching "some like it hot". heheh, love that movie. "Well, nobody's perfect!" we also got the scanner working yesterday. getting the scanner working (working with my linux box i mean) involved recompiling my kernel... well, i watched, followed orders, and tried to learn something. today we drove up to palomar mountain and took a little hike and looked out at the lovely view. and six feet under was on tonight!

august 4 -- (later) i just went to www.lileks.com for the first time in a long time... he's got new stuff up -- everyone should go there.

august 4 -- oops i missed several days again. sorry! last night dan and sally and i watched part of "some like it hot" (marilyn monroe, tony curtis, jack lemmon) until sally got too tired. we're going to finish it tonight. it's one of my favorite movies, so i was a little nervous about watching it with them (what if they hated it?) but they both like it a lot so far. gosh it's a funny one! we went to the library a couple days ago (that's where i rented that dvd) and got a huge stack of books. henry is interested in bats, so i showed him where the books about bats are and he got a bunch, so now i've been reading them to him and now i know a lot about bats. :) fruit bats pollinate crops such as mangos and bananas, and insect-eating bats help keep insect pests from taking over the world. insect eating bats (microchiroptera) use echolocation to hunt insects but fruit bats (megachiroptera) use sight. now you know something about bats, too! sally bought a really nifty electric "rota-dent" toothbrush and there are several interchangeable heads so henry and i have been using it. my teeth feel almost dentist-clean!

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2004

jan