kayray.org

Somehow I got enough sleep last night and I felt good all day and got a lot accomplished! I wish I knew why I slept well so I could recreate the conditions and sleep well on other nights. Not only did I sleep well, but instead of waking up suddenly way too early, wide awake with no chance of falling back asleep, I woke up slowly and drowsily around 9:30. So that was a very nice way to start the day. I made a nice late breakfast for Dan, and then he went off to the RC aircraft field and I stayed home to get things done! I did two more LibriVox recordings and got all four recent ones edited, proofed, tagged, and uploaded AND got Joy’s 43-file collection of English Fairy Tales cataloged, AND did the Wii fitness test for the first time — fitness age = 57, lol. And I practiced baseball for a while too. I stink at Wii baseball.

Dan took me out to dinner at Anita’s, a nice casual Mexican place down on the coast. I had a great thing made of corn tortillas layered with cheese and beans and chicken with sour cream and guacamole. Usually I just have a few sips of Dan’s margarita, but tonight I ordered my own — not fruity, not blended, the way I like it. Except I’ve never drunk an entire restaurant margarita before and I really felt it, bleah. I need a child-size one next time ;-) It was a lovely dinner! I couldn’t finish, as usual, so I brought half of mine home so I can finish it before bed.

And now we’re watching TV while I compute and Dan works on his helicopter — last Thursday’s episode of The Office (Michael is back from Jamaica). Oh how I love that show. And the Soup Awards episode, very entertaining as usual. And a dull episode of South Park. And now a re-run of the Office, “The Convention” (for the third time, heheheh, that show is good over and over and over).

Oh my god, we’ve been watching Survivor: Australia on my laptop in bed at night — it’s great relaxing bedtime TV. Last night was the episode where Michael fell into the fire and was airlifted out. Man. We really liked him, too. How can you not like a man who chases down a wild pig with a knife and stabs it to death to feed his tribe?

Now I’m nice and sleepy and Dan is going to bring me my leftovers and then we’ll go to bed and maybe if I’m very lucky I’ll sleep well again. Cross your fingers.

Dan took this photo of me a couple of weeks ago:

Shows off my enormous teeth and knobby nose to great advantage. :)

If you were watching TV commercials in the 70s, you probably remember this wonderful stop-motion Levis commercial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBYgbeT6ciI

(I’d really like to embed that video but youtube’s “embed” code breaks my blog. Can anyone give me a hint?)

The song has been popping up in my head every so often ever since I was a child. I remembered every note; the visuals not so much, but they’re still familiar, especially the bit with the tag travelling around the pocket seam. Is it odd that watching a 30-year-old commercial fills me with so much joy?

Handwriting — thank-you letter
Zelda
math

Math at aleks.com
built card-stock castle!
The Grey King
grocery shopping
Zelda

Woke up before 6, couldn’t get back to sleep, so it was a tired day and I didn’t get much done.  But I read two chapters of Story of the World to Henry, and encouraged him to do a bit of math.  And beat the second dungeon in Twilight Princess (I have 6 4/5 hearts!).  Henry’s got a little sore throat.  Dan’s tired too so we’ll watch an episode of Survivor Australia and go to bed early.

Aleks math — finished assessment, worked on addition
drilled 4-times table
Story of the World: Islam
Story of the World: Islamic Empire
Guitar Practice

Vacation is over — back to Regular Life :) Normal busy Tuesday morning — fixed yogurt-banana-strawberry smoothies for breakfast, got Henry up, got to Karate in time, then over to Bayshore for our consultation with Karen. We told both Michelle and Karen all about our Wii, heheh. It’s the most awesome console ever! Forgot to mention that on New Year’s Eve we visited Bob and Chloe again and took the Wii with us so we could all bowl some more. Bob’s parents showed up right before we left and Bob got them bowling and playing tennis and they were laughing and having a great time. That’s one of the amazing things about the Wii — middle-aged non-gamers are able to jump right in to the sports games with a minimum of explanation and demonstration, yet it’s still tremendously fun for us experienced gamers (I played tennis against the AI for quite a while yesterday, two kayrays against two random players, heheh). And Twilight Princess is good beyond belief. I worked my way to the miniboss in the second dungeon today and was constantly amazed by the creative new twists I ran into. I’m taking it kind of slow on purpose — I don’t want the game to end. Hooray, Nintendo!

Yeah so anyway on the way home from Bayshore we stopped at the Mailbox place so Kevin could notarize my request for a new copy of Henry’s birth certificate. Not taking any chances when we head back to Canada. Got home, sifted through the bills, fed Henry, read email, fixed librivox problems. Then we called Grandma (my Grandma, Henry’s Great-Grandma) to chat and thank her for the present she sent — one of thoe felt roll-up puzzle-keepers, very handy. I took snapshots of Henry on the phone with her, and then we went down to Kinkos to get a print made and tucked it into a package with a little late-Christmas gift for her — a copy of LibriVox’s “A Girl of the Limberlost” on 10 audio cds (which I made yesterday while the guys were at the flying field), then mailed that to Grandma and an embarrassingly-late Christmas card to Hugh and Christine (which was actually meant to be a thank-you card after our last visit. Talk about embarrassingly late…)

Then home again and time for some Zelda! Henry watched and advised me. Then I made a simple but tasty pasta dinner — stirred chunks of leftover New Year’s Turkey into the sauce. And now I’m blogging while Henry plays his guitar and Dan takes his bike apart and puts it back together :)

Karate (Tiny Tigers)
grammar (prepositional phrases)
4-times multiplication drills
science program about the sun
Castle

Kri suggested that we librivoxers with blogs get accounts at technorati.com so we can all find each other. I’m supposed to post this link: Technorati Profile

Here’s where you can find the LibriVoxers: http://www.technorati.com/blogs/librivox+blog

I got such a nice email this morning:

Dear Kara,
I wish You a Happy New Year! You don’t know how grateful I am, when I listen your works on sound books. I have to tell You, your pronounceation is much more clear and familiar to me than others. I’ve just began to listen The Secret Garden, while I go to run. Every second week I check the new realesis on a Librivox homepage, and I collect in my PC the worths. Thanks for again, and I hope, your life is so succesfull as your precious job. Best wishes from Marianna (hungarian fan)

So sweet!  Happy new year, everyone!

Now that there are no surprises to spoil, here’s a round-up of a bunch of stuff I made for people for Christmas:

A knotwork bookmark in cross-stitch, for Henry. I drew the knot, translated it into chart-form (using Andy Sloss’s awesome book) and worked it while watching two movies and a couple of episodes of Seinfeld one night when I was home alone:

I drew and embroidered this knot onto a pillowcase for Dan (and I gave him a new pillow to put in the pillowcase):

I designed and made this hooded cloak for Henry. He chose the fabric — a green linen blend for one side, and a soft brown plaid flannel for the other side. The cloak reverses from Elven to Celtic. I put a silver knotwork button at the throat. It’s cut in gores so it flows and hangs nicely:

Henry and I were driving around, planning presents for people. I suggested a Dark Side of the Moon T-shirt for Sally, and Henry said he thought we could MAKE one for her. So I bought a plain black T-shirt, blew up the Dark Side logo nice and large, and traced it off my laptop screen onto thin paper (carefully!), then transferred it to the fabric. I backed the design area with a scrap of woven cotton to keep the stretching and puckering under control, and worked the design in a quilting hoop. It’s outline stitch with split-stitch filling the colored areas.

The ginormous Stater Brothers grocery store around the corner has a tiny pharmacy counter near the front of the store.  Between the two of us, Dan and I need about 6 different medications every month, and they never all run out at the same time, so I’m at the pharmacy a lot.  Two friendly fellows work there — Howard, who’s middle-aged, and Jeff, who is late-twenties-ish.  They never goof up our prescriptions, they recognize my voice when I call for refills, and they’ve always got friendly conversation for Henry.  The reason I mention this today is that Jeff just called me to ask if I left my gloves there today!  He said they’re small knitted gloves, and he knows I’ve got small hands and wear knitted gloves :) They’re not mine (turquoise, ick), but I was really touched that Jeff thought to call me and check.  Happy new year, pharmacy guys!

Woke up around nine, not quite enough sleep considering how late we stayed up last night. Lazed around on the couch doing nothing. Finally figured out how to get our Wii to let us message our friends’ Wiis, and trade Miis, etc. BOTH parties must register each other as friends. Liwii registered me, I registered him, and voila — we were able to trade Miis and send messages! It’s different when you want to register a friend with a regular email address — you register him, and he gets an email asking if it’s ok for you to message him. So now I don’t have to obsess over this anymore.

Dan woke up eventually, I fixed him eggs, and he played Twilight Princess until Henry got home, and then we went down to visit Bob and Chloe and Celia. We brought along the Wii and we all had a lot of fun playing. I’ve become very fond of the bowling game, surprisingly! And we played a lot of music, too. Bob showed me some simple patterns to play on the drums and he played along with me on the bass, which was wildly fun!

Henry got up early and played Twilight Princess for a couple of hours before his dad came to pick him up for their Christmas. He took his Transformers and his cloak with him :) I’m so glad he likes his cloak! He’s been wearing it every chance he gets. I’ll post pictures eventually…

So after Henry had gone and while Dan was still sleeping, I finally got a chance to start my own Twilight Princess game! I had watched the guys play, obviously, and it seemed like it would be pretty fun, maybe not great, though they were both raving about it being the Best. Zelda. Evar. Once I started my own game and got past the training stages, I was in total agreement. OMG. I played for 4.5 hours straight, all the way to the point where Link gets his green hero outfit. It’s so good, so good. I love riding the horse! And the Wii controls work beautifully.

In the evening Bob and Chloe came over for a visit. We watched some SNL Christmas sketches and then Pulp Fiction, and then we showed them our Wii. They made a couple of Miis (oh, the Wii UI is so darn good. We gave them a wiimote and a shove in the right direction, and they had great Miis in no time. Then we played Wii sports until 1:30am, heheh. A great time!

Merry Christmas, everyone! Here are some presents for you!

For those who like Christmas carols, here’s a collection of public domain carols sung by an assortment of LibriVox volunteers:

http://librivox.org/christmas-carol-collection-2006/

For the audio-book lovers, here’s a great collection of short Christmas-themed works — poems, stories, essays:

http://librivox.org/librivox-2006-christmas-short-works-collection/

(Don’t miss Henry playing Father Christmas in the Cornish Christmas Play!)

And here’s an oldy-but-goody — LibriVox’s first version of A Christmas Carol, recorded a year ago:

http://librivox.org/a-christmas-carol-by-charles-dickens/

We had a wonderful day. Henry woke up at 6, opened his “open me now” present (Yoshi’s Island for DS), played for ten minutes, and fell back asleep until after 9, so we had a blissfully late start to a long and lovely day. Henry gave me two new Tony Hillerman novels and John Hodgeman’s “Areas of my Expertise” which I’ve been wanting for a long time. I started reading it already and it’s just about the funniest thing I’ve ever read. Dan gave me a delicate necklace of little square topazes set every 1.5 inches on a very fine white-gold chain. It looks like a little chain of stars, kind of. I adore it — it’s feminine but not girly. And Dan picked it out for me himself! Oh, and March of the Minis for my DS Lite — super-fun game! And a little 2g USb flash drive which should come in handy. OH! And a CD which I LOVE — “Across The Western Ocean” by John Roberts and Tony Barrand. I heard one of their songs on my Pandora folk music station, looked up the CD, heard some samples, and added it to my Christmas list. It’s soooo good!

And Santa brought the whole family a Nintendo Wii (scroll down to Dec. 17 for the full story), which, at the time of this post, has been in use almost constantly for over 12 hours. It’s THAT MUCH FUN! Henry and I must have played tennis together for a couple of hours, spaced throughout the day. That’s our favorite of the sports games, though baseball is fun too. We can be on the same team in tennis, which makes it more fun. He and Dan started Twilight Princess and have both gotten pretty far. I’ll start my game tomorrow maybe. If you have a Wii, and I know you, or you’re a nice homeschooling family or some other non-creepy person(s), email me your Wii’s number and we can exchange Miis :)

I woke up too early so I’ve been tired all day, but it’s been a nice day anyway. I did all the rest of the wrapping so we’re all set. I have one more present (for Mom) that’s not finished yet but everything else is done! And I worked on Mom’s present this afternoon for a bit while we finished watching Rudolph. Henry and I drove Dan to Escondido to pick up his car, and then after that H and I played WoW for a while. Then we ate frozen things and leftovers for dinner, and now the guys are baking a batch of chocolate/chocolate-chip/peppermint cookies, and they say they will vacuum and mop for me tomorrow :)

Dan and I have been watching the US version of The Office. The first season was not very good, but second was excellent. We watched the first two episodes of the third season last night and it’s as good as the second so far.

Dan and Henry keep telling me that Christmas is tomorrow but I know better!

Tonight Henry and Dan and I went down to Chloe and Bob’s house for music and fun. Sally and Gary came too. We played Christmas music and sang and watched The Grinch (the real one). Mom played the piano for us; Gary, Henry, and Bob took turns on the drums; Henry played a bit of bass, and we all sang. We had a great time :)

On Dec. 18th David (Earthcalling) had the crazy idea  the maybe we LibriVoxers could put together a performance of King Lear in time for Boxing Day 2006, the 400th anniversary of Lear’s first performance.   I can’t believe how quickly it’s going together!  As of right now, all parts are cast and only 6 roles have yet to be submitted.  Henry and I each had a small role, which we’ve already sent off to David.  I think we’re going to succeed!  Here’s the thread:

http://librivox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4679

If you read through ot to the end, you’ll bump into some teaser links for a few of the already-pasted-together scenes.  Go, David, go!

From news.cornell.edu:

Fans and bloggers are planning a worldwide blog-a-thon to commemorate the life and legacy of Carl Sagan — consummate scientist, communicator and educator — on Dec. 20, the 10th anniversary of his death. Sagan was Cornell’s David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences.

So I just thought I’d say a few words.  In 1980, or so, my parents bought our very first color TV so we could watch Cosmos in color. I have vivid memories of watching Cosmos all together, once a week.  It was a big deal!  I remember enjoying it very much.  Thanks, Carl :)