Saturday Afternoon

Drove the kids to Diane's house and got home about eleven. Trimmed the rose in the front, trimmed the pine tree, trimmed the bougainvillea, transplanted the shrub that smells like fresh laundry and planted a rose I had in a container. I think I dug it up from the front last spring or two springs ago. Cleaned up the corner area and added some outdoor soil I bought @ Home Depot the other day. Dug that in. Transplanted the volunteer tomato from last year which had been in the planter box. Transplanted a small tomato that had been growing under the larger of the two tea roses. Excavated the tenacious geranium which had been ensconced next to the stairs. Transplanted the smaller tea rose over a bit. Then I transplanted the other one. And watered outside. Took a shower and watered the front lawn area. Feels good to sit down.

Maybe I'll watch a movie and take a nap. Or I could start on dinner. Build a fire and brine the pork tenderloin I bought yesterday. I also have a whole chicken. I was going to roast the chicken tomorrow.

Have a lot of garden debris to dispose of.

I ought to brine the pork and start the fire... then watch a movie. Or not. I have ironing to do and Cassidy's clothes haven't been put away in a while. I get stuck putting laundry away for some reason.

Dozing off in my chair. My back hurts.

Friday Morning

LOTS of birds @ the bird feeder starting @ 5.45. Hungry birds. Many hungry birds. They've been EMPTYING the bird feeder once a day. I had no idea there were so many different kinds of birds around here. I've started buying the 20-pound bags of bird seed.

Friday. I need to get to the market today.

Mac OSX "Tiger" ought to arrive today
Have a new HD
Have a Firewire cable to digitize the camcorder tapes
Have new CDR media and cases
Graphics tablet and Painter on the way
Macromedia Studio MX on the way

At long last ALL the software I have on the computer is 100% legal. Aren't I a responsible citizen!

Donated $250 to Wikipedia the other night. It's tax-deductible. I like Wikipedia. Do I have them on my links page?

Ordering some clothes for Cassidy. She's wearing size 7 and size 8 clothes now. Her shoe size is about 1 1/2 or 2. Flynn is wearing a size 7 or 8 adult shoe now.

Posting through MacJournal 3.1, the new, improved version. Try this with an image and see what it does.

Heavy rain started just after I got home with Cassidy. Just pissing down. Lasted about half an hour, heavy rain. Excellent.

The license plates arrived for the Prius already so I put those on the car. Buying a new car was far easier than I'd imagined it might be.

I'm surprised at the cars I saw advertised in the newspaper that were the same price or less than the Prius, big SUVs or manly pickup trucks... I think the Mini Cooper was cheaper. But the Prius gets excellent mileage. And has a LOT of interior space. Quite pleased with the Prius.

Even though I may have to buy a third tank of gas... eventually.

Rain

Nice surprise. Pretty good rain, too.

Cassidy asked for her green umbrella while we were walking to school. She said that the clear umbrella with polka dots is too small. I had bought the green umbrella for her. Flynn said he can't find his umbrella. Again. I broke out the big automatic umbrella. Got to use the little rear-window wiper on the Prius.

Mac Office arrived in the mail yesterday, along with my license plates, which were a surprise, it took months last time to get the plates. So put those on the Prius later on.

I've been having a difficult time getting out of bed for weeks. Once upon a time I'd jump out of bed at the first alarm. Now I'm resetting the alarm time over and over again until it's nearly six o'clock. Yipes.

Made sausages and hash browns and toast for the mice this morning. A good breakfast.

Scan in the last paper clutter and drawings. Save the kid's artwork. Throw out more stuff. Found some books that got the boot last night. A few I'd like to keep. I threw out my copy of Deadbase. You can access Deadbase on the net, now.

I definitely get the feeling that life is a matter of taking care of the kids and planning for them than it is anything else. I'm excited about the Mac OS revision and getting to see another Dodgers game on television on Friday. I'm very pleased with the lawn. It's felt good to throw things out. Finally part with clutter which had become meaningless over the years. Whitney's notes. Everything goes.

Scan in a LOT of photographs. Then sift through the CDs and get rid of the first iteration of those. Keep photos and music. And drawings/artwork.

I'd like to do something with the drawings. Leave them in a nice complete set. What I saw, what I had to say. Someone might enjoy looking at them someday.

Develop a cartoon strip and submit that. I love to write and that would be an ideal outlet. Tons of money and a tiny bit of graphic design.

Something to consider. The Tiny Islands.

Tempted to get another graphics tablet and Painter. Kind of the final jewel in my software. Excited about winning the Macromedia Studio MX suite later today. Hope my bid is high enough. Retail is nearly $1000. My bid is about $600. The suite includes Flash. Always wanted to learn Flash. And it sounds like Dreamweaver is much better than GoLive.

Digitize the camcorder tapes and see if I can't digitize some old MNF games. Virtually all the movies I like are available on DVD, either commercially or as a hobbyist/collector DVD. DVDs are convenient. Less bulky than tapes. Glad to see the tapes go. The cassettes and tapes got out of hand long ago. I had lots of great stuff. Too much to possibly listen to. I found a web site that archives Dead shows and downloaded 841103 from the Berkeley Civic Center or some small room. Sounds great.

Last week I snagged "Real Cool Yule" and "Papa's On The Housetop" from a Dr. D. site and edited those using a demo version of Peak. I had a commercial copy of Peak for OS9. I wanted those two songs in particular from the cassettes.

Still raining. Pretty hard. Nice rain. I love rain.

What else? Need to look at some bills.

 

A lot of stuff arrived yesterday. New hard drive, CDR media, CD cases... looking forward to receiving a copy of the latest revision to the Mac OS, Tiger, on Friday.

Received a new Firewire cable, digitize the camcorder tapes and get rid of the old camcorder. Don't delete the support files this time, idiot.

Light rain this morning. Baking some sausages, making some hash browns. Feed the mice.

Bidding on a copy of Macromedia Studio MX on eBay. Ordered a couple of books on Flash and Dreamweaver, which sounds superior to GoLive.

Time to go attend to the mice and all that real-life stuff.

 

Monday

Expecting a Firewire cable to be delivered tomorrow. I'll use that to digitize the camcorder tapes. I'm also expecting a file cart with folders to be delivered tomorrow. Made a list of household accounts. Left the $20 filing cabinet out for the recycling. An actual filing cabinet will be useful to keep things organized.

Have several piles of bills and papers on the floor near my desk. I have virtually no clutter left at all. A drawer in the tool chest full of product manuals, another drawer full of photographs and negatives and slides. More photographs in other drawers. A LOT of photographs. A big drawer full of data CDs. But I've really been ruthless about getting rid of stuff this time around. The most productive cleaning frenzy I've ever been in.

The cassettes are going or gone along with a lot of videotapes. I've ordered DVDs of most of the movies I like well enough to want to watch again. Shitty science fiction movies aren't worth collecting or having around. I don't need all kinds of weird clutter. I don't need ANY weird clutter. I could have used a larger trash can.

I didn't put the trash can out last Monday since we were going to go visiting. So I put out some regular trash in a plastic trash bag. And some recycling. Today the trash can was full and heavy. Lots of videotapes and cassettes on top of it.

Looking forward to having the Firewire cable and getting the camcorder tapes digitized. Then get rid of the camcorder and the tapes. Looking forward to the filing cabinet arriving and filing all that stuff away once and for all, logically. I just don't need to save a bunch of weird stuff. And now most of it is gone. Get rid of stuff. Don't acquire more stuff. Have what we need and that's more than enough. No more clutter. Ever.

Scan in the photographs.

Have an external 80Gb drive arriving. The internal HD is nearly full. Amazing. Digitize more photographs. Get rid of the paper photographs.

Still have more cleaning to do in the yard and garden.

Expecting the newest revision to the Mac OS at the end of the week. Play with that next Saturday. Also ordered 100 blank CD-Rs and 100 cases. Go through old CDs and evaluate what I have on them, burn new CDs without the useless crap.

Go through the video games and get rid of the ones the kids don't play any more. Get rid of that clutter. Keep what we use and what we need. Get rid of the rest. We don't need a larger house, we need less clutter.

I set aside a few VHS tapes with MNF games on them, try digitizing those and burning them to DVDs. THEN GET RID OF THE TAPES. Definitely sick of seeing stacks of videotapes and/or cassettes around. Digitize it, takes up no real space that way. Maybe a DVD as a backup. No endless boxes of clutter. No one puzzling about what to do with this trash when I'm dead.

Nearly time to go and collect Cassidy.

 

Mowed the new lawn for the first time. It looks really good. The bare patches hardly show. I re-seeded those patches and added Kellogg's Topper sprinkled over the new seeds. Overall the lawn looks very good, I'm pleased. My suburban lawn.

Diane unfortunately showed up at ten o'clock this morning and collected the kids, they were going to have brunch @ the pancake house with Mike and Pat and then go to Diane's house. So I will collect them at six o'clock from there. I'd rather be at home on Saturday at six. Listening to Garrison Keilor on the radio and watching the Dodgers on television.

Bid on and won a copy of MS Office for Mac OSX. Didn't really need it but at least I'll have an OSX version in my name.

I seem to have erased the support files I needed to play a movie I'd made out of video clips from the ancient camcorder. I'll re-digitize those tapes and put it back together.

Yesterday I moved the blue ice chest out to the garage. The trash can is full of tapes and trash. I plan on emptying the blue ice chest into the trash can once the trash is collected on Monday. That will be it for the cassettes.

Maybe I'll find time this afternoon to attack the filing cabinet and the tool chest and try and get rid of more clutter. And the pile of stuff in the garage. Go through that as well.

Five hours and twenty minutes until I pick the kids up.

 

I'd emptied the tapes out of one of the ice chests before visiting Mom and I sifted through the pile of videotapes and cassettes last night and pretty much all of them are stacked on the washing machine pending transfer to the trash can. I just don't need all those cassettes and tapes. Most of the old science fiction movies I love are available on DVD. I don't have time to digitize and tweak hundreds of Grateful Dead tapes.

I'd rather have the empty space -- I'd rather have nothing instead of having tapes. I don't want things. I'd like to digitize the old camcorder tapes, I worked on a couple of those when I first got the iMac.

I tossed the stereo equipment. I guess I could use the Walkman to output the cassettes. But when? And why? Can't I just buy shows from dead.net? I recently bought 5/19/77. The car doesn't have a cassette player. The thirty-gig iPod has 2.5 gigs left. I just have too much stuff available. I just don't need it. I'm tired of it taking up space and being something "that I'll get around to eventually." Like the '65 bus. I had it for five years. Well, I was busy with the kids, and I will be for the next ten years or so. The bus had to go. The '76 had to go in favor of a never-fix car with A/C and a heater. The guitars went. The exercise equipment went, took up too much space and it made too good a coatrack. Get RID of stuff. Empty the space I have available.

Go through the filing cabinet. Pick out the important bits. Get RID of the rest of it. Just get RID of it. I got rid of the VW tools after I realized that I no longer needed them. I got rid of the remaining shed -- I didn't like the way it looked. I only needed it for Diane's dog circus stuff. There's some stuff from Flynn's room in the garage that I want to get rid of. I got rid of the camping stuff after the final sour camping trip. Things have changed. Time to drop some ballast.

I want to drag the kids to the market and Home Depot this morning whether they like it or not. Buy groceries for the weekend. I want to buy more lawn seed at Home Depot along with some amendment and some flowers to plant this weekend. Clean up the front garden area if possible this weekend. Clean things up. Transplant the fresh-laundry-smelling shrub closer to the house. Rework the bricks near the air conditioner, remove and replace those after digging the soil up beneath it... improve drainage.

Get rid of the rest of the debris from the lawn project. CLEAN IT ALL UP. Get rid of stuff.

Plant some flowers near the black gate. I had sown some seeds there but there's enough space to add flowers.

The lawn looks pretty good, it could stand a first mowing. Very pleased to look out of the window and see green and not brown.

 

HEY! I found a Better Homes & Gardens web page about sowing a lawn from seed and THEIR lawn also looks somewhat splotchy... this is a photo with the caption "lightly mow when seedlings reach 3" tall" ... in comparison, my new lawn doesn't seem all that scraggly and splotchy, that's great news. Great news.

Cannot wait to go get the kids. Pacing the house and looking at the clock all the time. Time to go yet? Time to go yet? Time to go get the kids yet?

 

I'll leave to collect the kids in forty minutes. Diane materialized about noon without having called first. She took the kids to her house, her unwanted tenants apparently gone at last. She was talking about driving to Balboa Park. I asked if there was anything in particular to want to make such a long drive. I don't like her driving the kids anywhere at all. I don't like her watching the kids without myself or her parents being in the same room with her.

I also don't like driving to collect the kids on a Saturday evening. I don't like to go out on Saturday evenings, or any other part of Saturday. Too crowded out.

Dug up, amended and re-filled the bed near the kitchen door. Planted the "blondie" impatiens there. Hopefully they will do well.

Did partial water changes in both tanks. Moved some fish to the smaller tank. An algae eater and a bottom feeder. The water has cleared enough to feed them. I'm sure they'll be happy to eat.

Glad that the Salvation Army collected the clutter that was set out yesterday. Still annoyed and disappointed that people will pick through stuff you have out for a charitable donation. Shame on them.

Glad the big bedroom is empty. Enough empty space to walk into and stretch in is always a good thing. A little elbow room at last. Some SPACE.

I think I'll try and investigate what a two-week old seeded lawn ought to look like. Did I really manage to leave such gaps when I sowed the grass seed..???

 

Moving slowly. Kids are playing another fucking video game. They seem as happy as clams.

Took me a while to get the charcoal lit last night, ate fairly late, the kids ate macaroni and cheese instead of steak and mashed potatoes. Delicious, worth the wait. Have some London Broil left over for sandwiches.

I'd like to sift through clutter in the filing cabinet and the tool chest today. Divide stuff up into keep, scan, file and trash piles. The Salvation Army picked up some clutter yesterday. Glad to see it go, as always.

Happy to see the large bedroom empty except for my futon, two lamps and the television stuff. I love an empty room. Hung up my clothes. Nice and neat.

Have the sprinklers connected to timers which appear to work. So the lawn will be watered while we go and visit. I may have to reseed parts of the lawn, coverage doesn't seem even, though I'd hand-cast seed in two passes. Fix it when possible. Get more grass seed and a broadcasting device and do it again. Do it over until it's correct.

Cleaned up by the side of the house the other day. Some "blondie" impatiens arrived from Burpee, live plants, which I'd like to plant today. I have some chicken manure and some topsoil to amend the bed near the kitchen door. Dismal, sour soil, needs work. A couple of the cheerful shady-area plants I'd planted a year or two ago have volunteered. Gave up on that area during the dog era.

No word from Diane. She may or may not materialize today to visit with the kids. It would be fine with me if she didn't.

Two more bootleg movies arrived from eBay yesterday, "The Giant Claw" and "This Island Earth," wonderful old bad movies from the 1950s that are not available on DVDs from studios. Real treasures, I love old science fiction movies.

Contacted the cable company yesterday about getting HDTV via cable including the Padres games (at least the nine games they play against the Dodgers) and it seemed fantastically expensive, just not worth the money. Why can't I get the games on satellite? I don't want a cable connection that's going to duplicate the satellite. The Padres games aren't available over the air with any kind of antenna, it's a cable-or-nothing situation. Not impressed with that at all.

Several football games are not available on satellite, you have to watch those from a "broadcast affiliate" which means crappy reception, non-HD reception. It seems like broadcast and cable have purchased politicians who are defending their little pieces of bandwidth and programming whether it makes sense or not. I just want to see the games, and ideally in high definition. I don't want to pay $50 or more a month for cable television, and that's WITHOUT any "premium" channels, not that I ever watch any "premium" channels. We used to get HBO because they had a good football show, "Inside The NFL," which was watered-down when they got rid of two of the older commentators and replaced them with morons like Dan Marino and some short little asshole from CBS golf -- the program was no longer worth watching, and HBO was nothing that we wanted otherwise. We subscribed to HBO for that one program!

I watch NFL Network a lot, I like to hear what's going on. This weekend is the NFL Draft, I'd like to watch part of that. I want to see where Mike Williams from USC ends up. I'd like to see the Rams rebuild their special teams, I'm not sure that's going to happen.

My left wrist hurts a lot all of a sudden. I've gotta scare up another wrist brace.

I need to take care of the aquariums today. Aquaria. I'd also like to clean up the front garden area, it's been neglected while I've been working on the lawn project. Two weeks since I seeded the lawn area.

 

Tired. Snoozed through most of the Dodgers game. Fed the mice delicious grilled halibut, mashed potatoes and grilled vegetables. They were more impressed with the chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies I made earlier.

I almost have the sprinklers figured out. One more oscillating sprinkler and that ought to do it. I have two timers to operate spinklers attached to two hose bibs. Test that out over the weekend.

The first little green tips of the new lawn appeared last Saturday. There are still some spotty areas, but it's looking more like a lawn and less like groomed dirt. A good thing.

Cleaned up the back area near the barbecue a bit. Some "Blondie" impatiens arrived today from Burpee, live plants, so I'd like to get those planted this weekend. Amend the soil in the bed under the kitchen windowbox. Lots of clean-up gardening to do, I've been concentrating on the lawn exclusively for a long time.

Tired. Time to sleep again. It's not possible to get up at 4:30 and stay up very late. Can't have both.

Excited and pleased that the lawn is coming in. I like my suburban lawn and I resented the dog(s) peeing on it and otherwise destroying it.

I'm tempted to contact the Salvation Army and have them pick up various things that I'm not using. Definitely another get-rid-of-everything period. I hate feeling cluttered. Get rid of things. Keep what I need, scan things into the computer, but otherwise get rid of things that I don't use. Don't let clutter possess the house. There's a bunch of clutter from Flynn's room in the garage and the stuff from the Rubbermaid storage shed which I took apart.

Warm today. Not looking forward to the endless summer heat. I like the winter and the cool weather and the rain. We had some pretty good rain this season. Not enough, but I enjoyed what rain fell. Never enough rain.

Back to bed. It will be time to get up again soon enough. Cassidy has a field trip tomorrow. It might be a good day to drive to the fish store. Perhaps by some miracle they'll have green neon tetras available. Or not.

 

Time to think about what I can feed the mice for dinner. They must be hungry. Maybe I'll fire up the grill and cook hot dogs and the chicken I bought at Bisher's this morning.

Dropped the kids off at school and went to Stater Brothers, the produce place and Bisher's. Unpacked the groceries. Commenced to make some red beans, still simmering on the stove.

Dodgers come on at 6:30, hope we get the game here. They're playing the Diamondbacks.

Drove around in the Prius today. Seems to work ok. Kind of like driving a golf cart. Held all the groceries. Ordered a cargo net for the cargo area. I liked the cargo net in the Santa Fe.

Checked the tub the grass seed came in and it says that it ought to emerge in ten to fourteen days, so I have another four to eight days to wait, I guess. Anxious to see some signs of life from the grass seed. Nothing so far. At all.

I need to investigate a hose-based sprinkler and timer system if we're going to go visit Mom week after next when the kids are on Easter break (a month after Easter). Bring her some of that good salsa (Salsa Chilena) and some steaks from Bisher's, the beef there is incredible, better than any I've ever tasted anywhere else.

What else? That's about it. Glad it's Friday. Clean house and keep the lawn area watered this weekend.

Television in the kitchen just had the audio come on, half an hour until game time. Hooray! GO DODGERS!!!

 

Went with the kids today to buy a new car. Flynn was on a field trip until about one o'clock this afternoon and we went from school by home and then on to the Toyota dealership in Escondido at the east end of the 78. It took a couple of hours (we were tired and burned out) but eventually we drove off in the Prius, which is like driving a golf cart until the gas engine sees fit to kick in. My eyes don't feel right from the new-car chemicals. The car smells. I hate new-car smell.

Kind of sorry to see the Santa Fe go, it was an OK car. Nothing special. I liked the way it looked. I like the idea of 60 miles to the gallon better, however. The Prius is an UGLY little car. But gas is $2.50 a gallon. Enough to motivate me. And there's up to a $2,000 tax credit. So there we go.

Glad to be home again. Didn't enjoy sitting at the dealership. The kids were pretty good, but that's a long time to sit still. Glad to be home.

Kind of impressed that I bought a new car. Hooray for me.

 

Wednesday. Flynn is at sea.

Well, on a ship in the harbor, anyway. He's on an overnight field trip. I'm home with Cassidy. Dodger game starts in twenty minutes.



Listening to "Assembly of Dust"'s "Roads" over and over again.

This is a song about lifestyles
decisions that we make
Roads that we abandon
and other that we take
We take - roads we take

I feel like I'm going in the right direction and taking care of the kids. Having Diane fall apart last summer and fall and then having her REALLY go crazy after that was disconcerting at the very least. Roads that we abandon. Yet I seem to be going in the right direction, things are holding together.

I applied for a car loan and got it, which kind of surprised and impressed me. The dealer made some comment about "with your credit..." and it was favorable. I'm trading in the Santa Fe and buying a new Prius, a Toyota that gets really good mileage. I filled the Santa Fe today and cheap gas was $2.50 a gallon. Ouch. The Santa Fe only gets about 15 mpg. I like the way it looks. But I was getting that kind of mileage in the bus. Ah, my beloved old bus. Why did I part with you? That was a great vehicle and one I strongly identified with. The Prius is an unlikely little thing with a hybrid gas/electric engine. So that ought to be fun.

Wonder if we'll get to keep the house and continue living here? Something I worry about. Also concerned that the lawn hasn't come up yet. How long does it take!? Do I need to cover more of the seed than I did? Keeping the lawn area moist.

 

Monday.

Dodgers play the Giants tomorrow at one, start of the season. The Yankees played the Red Sox last night, watched part of that game.

Court appearance moved to the 24th of May. The kids could be grown and moved out by the time the divorce is final at this rate.

I ought to think about making dinner. It's 5:20. First weekday afternoon of daylight savings time. Seems unusually light out. I do not like daylight savings time.

Been watering the lawn a lot. Watching for signs of germination and growth.

Unsure if I can leave the fledgling lawn to visit Mom in the desert. Saw some timers at Home Depot. Arrange some kind of sprinkler system to operate on a timer while I'm away? Might do.

So this is it, eh? Crash-landed on some distant planet with no hope of rescue. Marry a local and breed. Make the best of it. Enjoy the local spit beer and barbecued iguana. Learn to love it here. Do your duty and raise the mice. Chat about shit I couldn't possibly care less about. Watch cartoons. Be with them. Be real and spend genuine time with them. Something Diane was never able to figure out.

I remember camping at Mataguay and having kids come up to me with various fishing issues, remove this fish, can you bait my hook? Can you help me do this or that? I mentioned it to Kelly. I felt like I was wearing a shirt that said "Official Helper Parent." Kelly explained that kids recognize a helpful grown-up, someone that won't blow them off. Feather the warp drive, Scotty, we'll be crusing at kid-speed for the duration. Lay your power by.

Time to cobble dinner together. Not in a terrific mood this afternoon. Not sure why, exactly. Life has a kind of cut-and-dried quality today. Here's what you'll be doing for the next ten or fifteen years... pretty much what you've been doing for the past ten years... while Diane was never very good with the kids nor much help, I didn't anticipate doing it all by myself.

Cleaned Cassidy's room this afternoon, looks much better. Washed her sheets, made her bed.

Certainly hope that the grass seed germinates and grows. Wait and see. Keep it moist.

GO DODGERS!

 

Lawn is planted.

Very tired and sore. Left knee and left elbow and throbbing. Definitely weary of digging chicken manure into shitty soil. Maybe shitty soil less shitty by adding shit, I suppose is accurate...

Diane is over. She said something stupid that I imagine she was 100% unaware of which REALLY pissed me off, I felt like I was packed full of hot embers. I can't remember being so angry. I was glad to go outside to do the final preparation and then the sowing. Dead tired now. Good effort. Somewhat cloudy out, but warm. Watered thoroughly, I think. I'm going to have to stay on top of the watering to get the seed to germinate and grow. Figure six to eight weeks.

I'd like to get one of those little robot lawnmowers -- the idea cracks me up. Either that or a couple of goats to eat the grass. The robot is probably going to be more money but it won't shit on the lawn.

It's about four, in twenty-four hours it'll be about five due to daylight savings time. I'd like to feed the kids dinner and go to bed. I'll sleep like a rock tonight.

I've gotta go find some Icy Hot or Tiger Balm or something, I ache.

 

Friday night.

Prepared the future lawn area. Cassidy wants a story.

Read a bit to her. Tired. I think the lawn area is ready to plant. Bought grass seed this morning. The lawn area seems semi-level.

 

Get up and go. It's another day.