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october 2002

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

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

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

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

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

oct 26 -- i really wish i had some sparkling apple juice right now but we don't have any ... ahh dan brought me some grapefruit juice -- almost as good :) have you seen the viking kitties singing the immigrant song? heheh. we're having a super-nice weekend. henry and i played mariokart in the morning, then i took him to gymnastics and watched him tumble and bounce and fly through the air :) as a surprise i made him The One Ring out of yellow glass beads and hung it on "an elven chain, light yet strong" (blue embroidery floss) and gave it to him after his class and he was delighted. sweet little boy! then i took our little budgie to the vet -- her beak and legs were looking oddly crusty. turns out she has mites, poor little thing. but the vet says she'll be fine. we have to go back for more medicine at 2-week intervals for a while. she's the dearest little bird in the whole world -- we all love her so we're relieved that there's nothing terribly wrong with her! then dan and i went out to the field and he flew his helicopter and i made more lovely snowflakes and played mario brothers 3 on dan's little laptop. and then we came home, and finished watching the apartment and now i'm watching holiday (one of my all-time favorites) and eating noodles with cream-cheese garlic sauce. my goodness katherine hepburn sure has a sparkle, but dan says he likes my sparkle better :) :) :) have i mentioned lately how wonderful he is?

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

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

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

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

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

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

oct 18 -- i'm learning a little fiddle tune on my banjo -- "hop high ladies" it's called. it's in my ken perlman book and is the first piece in there that i've really loved. i think i have it memorized now, and i also printed out some staff paper and transcribed it out of tab into standard notation, just for fun :) dan might give me his clie n760c! he isn't using it since he got the treo, and he'd rather give it to me than sell it. so i've got all my programs loaded on there and am trying it out. listening to mp3s on a palm is pretty cool :) so far i like it a lot! but i'm very sentimental about my iiic so we shall see... i finished all my books and didn't read at all today (except to henry -- we're on chapter 12 of The Fellowship) and no got no headaches! yay!

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

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

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

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

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

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

oct 05 -- took henry to his gymnastics class this morning and started reading "travels with charley" by john steinbeck. i just picked it up to see how for i'd gotten, and accidentally read another ten pages without realizing it. what a book! anyway he's in maine, talking to the canadians who harvest the potato crop. yesterday i had a migraine, bleah, not terrible but it made me feel pretty crappy all day. henry and dan took good care of me, though. henry and i have been reading his beautiful hardbound birthday copy of Lord of the Rings every day. we're up to chapter VII -- the Tom Bombadil one. We're going to skip Fog on the Barrow Downs, though -- that chapter scared me when i was little and it's boring, too. heheh. this morning i'm working on henry's computer some more. we got him more RAM and a new cd-rom drive for his birthday, and i'm donating my old 6 gig hard drive. so right now i'm fixing up the hard drive with a ncie clean installation of win98se and all his good henry software etc. he's been longing to have room for mp3s on his computer and now he will!

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

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

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2004

jan