Author: m

Reiley hits the big SEVEN

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Reiley decided to have her first sleepover for her seventh birthday. Mom, being rather naive in that department, suggested no more than FIVE guests. Well, we survived it – in style! There was clay modeling, treasure hunts, and a 2am bedtime followed by pancakes at 6:30am… it was a blast. When the last friend left, Reiley says “WOW, THAT sure went fast!” as Mum and I rolled our eyes at each other… we’d do it all over again in a heartbeat, tho! :>

9.0 High Fidelity

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Jammed with wit, Ferris-Bueller-protagonist-as-narrator-style, and a running alternative-music subtext perfect for those of us reared on the late-70’s punk rock thingee. GREAT supporting characters, too, including John’s ever-present sister, Jack Black (whooop!), and extended cameos by Tim Robbins and Lisa Bonet. All that is mere icing on the cake of the main storyline, John Cusack’s study of the long line of girlfriends that have dumped him (at least in his mind). ’nuff spoilin!

A Soccer Star Is Born!

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Reiley finished up her first soccer season with a perfect record! She got not one but TWO trophies, one for regular season and one for the tournament. Her coaches were great, being patient with her, and getting her in the game even at first when she ran more away from the ball than towards it. :> She really has improved a lot, learning from her teammates who were generally older, larger, and playing for several years together. She’s ready for next season! Go girl!!

Reiley and Wrenny are both going to a soccer clinic each week, as well. Wrenny is the youngest member, and doing great, too!

9.0 White Oleander

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Intense bittersweet movie about a girl who gets manipulated equally by her imprisoned mom desperate for control and the foster home environments she parades through. Great supporting characters along the way. There’s a lot of ground covered so there’s not room for too much depth, but watching Astrid strengthen while finding her confidence was inspiring.

War. Great.

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News sources you can actually get to:

— BBC RealOne video feed
— Effnet IRC channel #cnn-live

Some info from other than typical news sites…
(from slashdot…)

— Debka (Middle East News) [debka.com]
— Official Iraqi News [uruklink.net]
— Where is Read? – Iraqi Blog [blogspot.com]
— Kuwait Blog [qhate.com]
— Back to Iraq Blog [back-to-iraq.com]
— Iraq today [einnews.com]
— Warblogs.cc [warblogs.cc]
— Kevin Sites [kevinsites.net]
— Sky.com [sky.com]
— BCC News Live Feed [bbc.co.uk]
— Agonist [agonist.org]

CBSnews also has a beautiful high detail webcam without all the crap on the bottom of the screen.

Update: If ya are getting the feeling that you should maybe voice your protest, but you’re not sure where to start, try MoveOn‘s “virtual march”. Here’s the statement I submitted:

I originally approached the subject of the threat of Iraq and its leader with an attitude of “the Bush administration has more information than me, and should know best.” But before beginning war and escalating the situation to its current state, the administration had a responsibility to PROVE its case with overwhelming evidence, e.g. providing concrete evidence of the existance of WMD’s, first. The arrogance of the administration, both in not disclosing more information (if it exists), and in its acts of aggression, is intolerable. You have sent the country into WAR, it should be justified, even if that means disclosing information you would rather keep secret. *You*, the administration, represent *us*, the American people. Now we have no choice left but to question your motivation. Hopefully it is not too late for some rectification, but it will be a matter of getting the genie back in the bottle, this late in the game.

Return to the Homeland

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The family and I had a great time in sunny Florida seeing all the Miller relatives. Saturday was beach day. I swam with 5 or 6 dolphins off the coast of Sanibel Island’s Lighthouse beach – that alone was worth the trip! Lily, our youngest pup, decided to take a swim or two as well – she was great fun to have along.

That night, we set off to Macaroni Grill to celebrate Pappa’s birthday.

The girls have been (re-)bonding every day with their cousin Bailey, and loving every minute of all the attention from not one but two grandmas. We took them to the tennis court at Grammie’s condo, and Andrea and I ended up playing a rowdy set or two – she can really hit the ball! – while the girls chased lizards with Gram. We played until we nearly had heat-stroke.

My brother and I got some much-needed hang-out time late Saturday night, getting a Redhat 8 box up and running from scraps in his garage. Corey was along for the ride as well, VNC’ing to the box as soon as we had it up and running. We have moved his HighTechGeek site over from Windows and it is humming now instead of crashing every day (his Windows machine has an overclocked AMD chip, which does not do well in the Florida heat in his garage :> ). We also hooked up with John Carpenter, who served us up some amazing home brews, which we drank while discussing the status of our never-ending side projects. It was good to catch up with him.

The rest of the family is doing great, and we were long overdue for hanging out with them. Sunday was great, with Mum doing her thing serving a spontaneous 15-course lunch. I don’t think we stopped eating all day, going from there to Dan and Val’s for Val’s famous tofu pot pie. Tammy and Diane joined in to make it a fairly complete family reunion.

We finished up on Monday with another great session with Poppa reading excerpts from “Riding the Rails”, the novel he has been working on throughout 2002. It’s been great fun for all of us to share in his obsession. He hopes to have it published this year. Dan and Corey worked on a great birthday present – a mockup of the first release of the book.

How did I fit that all in a weekend!? Can’t wait for the next get-together!

A project gone SO wrong

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Found on the web…

Don’t you just love it when teachers’ good intentions go a muck?

An elementary school class started a class project to make a planter
to take home to their parents. They wanted to have a plant in it;
that was easy to take care of, so they decided to use cactus plants. The students were given greenware pottery planters in the shape of a clown, which they painted with glaze. The clown planters were professionally fired at a class outing so they could see the process. It was great fun.

They planted cactus seeds in the finished planters and they grew
nicely… but unfortunately the children were not allowed to take them home…