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march 2002

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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2004

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