Yesterday was a wonderful day. Judi and I got up late and had peaches, apples & cashews for breakfast. We went on a walk down the residential drive and back again. Then we goofed off until noon. At noon, I started the rice and then the fire and we awaited the rest of our party. By 12:30, Elsa pulled up in the car and another 10 minutes saw mom & dad drive up too.

Alas, Elsa had left the mango required for the shrimp & mango spring rolls at home, so we postponed that until later. But when everyone was here, I vinegared & sugared the rice, made the wasabi paste, and grilled the tuna steaks. Mom chopped up some veggies (onions, zucchini, butter squash, green pepper, and grape tomatoes (not chopped)) and we grilled those as well. We sat outside at the picnic table and had the tuna, rice, wasabi, ginger, and some German potato salad that Elsa had brought. Folks enjoyed my tuna & rice, so I was happy. And the wasabi just took our breath away! Every so often, someone would say “wheee!” or similar as they were hit by the heat.

After we cleared away the lunch plates, we got out the piece de resistance – Elsa’s pineapple upside down cake! Oh yeah, and the homemade pineapple ice cream that I had made. (Judi and I sampled it the night before and she approved.) Judi took a number of photos of the cake, which will be on elsaf‘s LJ later today.

After lunch, our scullery maid (judiang) cleaned the dishes. And we all vegged. The ‘rents sat & read (and napped), the girls worked on their laptops. I read more from Ivanhoe and tried to nap. And we just had a nice lazy day at the lake.

At 5:05, Judi and I did the transfer of gold from my Kings of Chaos account to hers. (In other words, she attacked the hell out of me once I sold all my weapons). She stole 62million gold from me and only had 17mil of that lost to vultures in wait. So now I am FREE of Kings of Chaos – woohoo!

Around 6pm, Elsa made up the shrimp & mango spring rolls and we sat at the picnic table again. They were wonderful! And I got to eat the leftover mango, too. Oh yeah, so where did the mango come from? No, Elsa didn’t drive all the way up and all the way back to get it, she just went to Wagner’s in Minster.

At 7pm, Judi and I started the fire. It’s just amazing to see how Judi has improved around campfires. Back in ’98 when we had our first gathering, she wouldn’t get within 6 feet of the fire. Now she helps me to make the fire and even reaches in to move twigs back into the flame. Our little city gurl is growing up!

Elsa, meanwhile, was rubbing a rub on the flank steaks that she brought. When the fire was ready, she grilled them and then cut the steaks thinly. This time, we sat in the three-season room (pictures of which can be found here at Elsa’s website). Flank steak with chipotle butter (that Elsa made) and three bean salad and potato salad (again, all Elsa made). Peaches or apples for anyone who wanted them. Tasty tasty eats! Elsa is a goddess in the kitchen or at the grill!

Alas, the girls just lost a photo op as a resident heron just flew off.

The folks left after it got dark and the three of us sat around and watched the penultimate episode of Angel intending to watch the last ep afterwards. Unfortunately, the VCD that Elsa brought didn’t work! So we’ll never know how it ends! 😉 Also, we finished off Elsa’s pineapple upside-down cake and my ice cream. Actually, there would have been one piece left, but Judi (the big pig) ate it after she finished her other piece.

Judi complained that we hadn’t communed with nature enough, so we started up the fire for the third time that day and sat outside enjoying the fire. The website that I posted earlier from Elsa’s site also has photos of us around the fire. Get a bunch of geeks together around a campfire and what do they do? Take photos of it with their digital cameras, of course. (I’d left my camera at home, alas!)

We went to bed after the fire died out and didn’t get up until around 8am. I made mom’s sour dough coffee cake and we’re munching on that now. Yum!

Today’s our day to go see Shrek 2. Should be fun! Will post about that later.

The fire is started, the rice is cooking, Judi is sleeping, and I’m online… Yup, sounds like an ideal Saturday morning.

Despite having no internet access here at the lake, we’re online. Judi’s laptop with its built in 802.11g wireless card is great at Wardriving. First it jumped on the network of some guy in her apartment complex. Now it’s connected to a wireless network from someone here at the Lake. I figure it’s the folks from a few houses down.

We’re still waiting on Elsa and my folks to arrive, but the fire will be ready for them. We’re grilling tuna steaks which have been marinating overnight in a soy sauce/garlic/honey marinade that I made. We’ll have sushi-style rice, wasabi, and pickled ginger, along with the appetizers that elsaf mentioned in her journal – the shrimp & mango spring rolls. Mmmmmm! Looking forward to it!

Anyhoo, I’d best go check on the fire. I’ll LJ later!

judiang‘s here next to me as I type this. Picked her up from the airport around 4:30 and then took her to BW3s to meet some of my co-workers. I had an Amaretto Sour (no surprise) and she had a Mudslide (no surprise – she added sugar to it too, again, no surprise). She had wings and I had a chicken tender wrap. And she finished it all with a strawberry margarita (frozen). Quite fun – and it was nice for my friends to finally meet this Judi that I’ve been talking about. Gary insists now that Judi must go to Charlie Trotters and report back to him. She says it’ll be months before she’ll be able to get in, however. 🙂

We’re going to head off to the Lake as soon as we update our LiveJournals. Time for a fun weekend with the girls! elsaf drives down tomorrow and we’ll grill out lots and sit out lots and go see Shrek 2 and all sorts of fun stuff. Homemade pineapple ice cream and pineapple upside down cake AND fresh pineapple. Gee, think maybe Judi’s with us?

BTW, Drake – we’ve had to reschedule the “money transfer” until later since You Know Who used up all her frickin’ attack turns!!!!

Had the oddest phone message today when I got home from work. It was a lady from the Michigan University (Michigan State? Don’t remember exactly) Law School. Apparently, they’ve received a package that was supposed to go to me. And it’s been a number of places so far, she said, according to the invoice. They’re going to mail it on. Hopefully this is, indeed, the Big George tape that I ordered and *not* another 6 volume set of Great Expectations!

I’ll keep you posted as I find out more.

(It’s storming again here – hope the power doesn’t go out again! I’m getting tired of resetting my clocks!)

At least three of my LJ friends have birthdays today. So Happy Birthday to alryssa, indefatigable42, and nexstarman! Hope y’all had a great day!

This cake only works if you’ve got fixed width fonts… So I’ve tried to switch this to one of ’em. Anyhoo, let’s hear it for ASCII art!
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Since yesterday I spent my LJ entry talking about my Quest for Yet Another McCoy Audio, I neglected to write about my Exciting Adventure with No Electricity!

Sunday night, around 1am, we got a storm from hell. So I got up and shut all the windows, turned on the A/C, turned off my computer (after checking on Kings Of Chaos and my little elves) and returned to bed. I tried to fall asleep and after awhile, noticed that, between the lightning flashes, it seemed darker. Maybe the streetlight across the way was out? I looked behind me, and sure enough, my clock was out too. Since we’d had a bout of no electricity recently (welcome to Spring!) I still had my emergency flashlight and travel alarm by the bed. I set the travel alarm to ring at 6:15am and tried to sleep.

The morning comes and I awake to a phone call. Mom’s on the line and tells me that the power is out and she was afraid I might not wake up in time. I said that I’d set my travel alarm when the power went out. “Oh, for what time?” she asked. I told her and she replied “But it’s after 6:30 now.” I thanked her and checked my travel alarm. Gee, I’d set it an hour early, apparently, the other night. It said it was 5:40am. So I get up and get into the bathroom. Leo reluctantly followed (which should have been my second giveaway) and as I sat on the toilet, I looked at my watch. It seemed to agree with my travel alarm. Oh… A final check was in the kitchen – I couldn’t read the numbers on my bathroom scale (surely you keep *your* bathroom scale in the kitchen?) which I usually can at that time of the morning. “Ah, thanks mom” I thought, as I chuckled and headed back to bed.

A bit before 6:15 (the *real* 6:15) I got another phone call. “I’m sorry,” she says as I answer. I just laughed. She tried to blame dad, but he did tell her it was 5:30 when she woke up and asked him for the time. She figured it couldn’t be that early, so he said “well, then it’s 6:30” and that’s when she called. Still, I’m glad she called – it’s nice that she thought to help out.

I got up for real this time. And got yet another phone call. I thought, as I was heading for the phone, “bet this is Mary Jo, telling me there’s a delay.” Sure enough, we were on a 2 hour delay. It was nearly 7am and there still was no power at the school or throughout most of town. I finished getting ready and decided, since I had no computer to occupy myself, I’d go next door and chat with the parentals. Turns out, since dad couldn’t make mom coffee without electricity, they were going out for breakfast. I’d already had breakfast, but I couldn’t say no to second breakfast. We went to Steak and Shake and I had an egg, cheese & bacon sammich on a bagel. And water. It was yummy.

We got home and found that the power was back on. So I raced home to check on my Elves and spend my gold, then I headed on to the school. Where I had 3 servers off, 1 with a hard drive error message (even though it really didn’t have a hard drive error) and the other two servers OK. I got everyone running again and had to stuff some people’s quick launch icons back into their accounts because they were lost when the user logged onto the computer before the servers were running. I really need to look into getting a better UPS – one that can talk to my servers (even the Linux box) and turn them off properly when the power goes out.

We’ve still got another week and a half before school is out, so anything can happen, stormwise. But I think we can (heh) weather it out.

One of these days I’ll write a fascinating entry about addiction and obsession, but for now, I’ve got a side-story about it.

As many of you may suspect, I am a bit of a Sylvester McCoy fan. So I have a tendency to seek out things that he’s performed in and, if I can purchase it, I will. When I discovered that he’s gotten into reading children’s books, I was most delighted. His readings of Philip Ardagh’s Eddie Dickens Trilogy made me into an Ardagh fan. I was also able to buy his reading of Let’s Do the Pharaoh by Jeremy Strong. However. my luck in obtaining Big George, as written by Eric Pringle and read by Sylvester McCoy, has been nil. Couldn’t get the book from Amazon.co.uk or another UK online bookstore which listed it. So I went to the source. To Chivers Press.

Well, to tell the rest of this story, let me paste, for your enjoyment, the e-mail which I sent to Chivers today. (BTW, they are also known as Audio Book Collection and they’re located in Bath, UK.)

On 12 Feb 2004, I ordered the audio book BIG GEORGE from your company. On 20 Feb, US$30.13 was charged to my credit card by your company. However, I never did receive the item in question. A month later, I wrote an e-mail via your contact page regarding the lack of the audio tape. I was assured by Peter Royle that the parcel left the warehouse on 26 Feb and to wait another 10 days or so. I was given ref #227715 in that e-mail.

On 7 Apr 2004, I e-mailed Peter Royle to say that I had still not received the package. I asked what the next course of action was. He responded on the 20th to say he would send another. I confirmed the shipping address and waited yet again.

About the time I thought I should send another e-mail (that is, last week) I received a phone call from WorldNet Shipping which said that they had a package for me but to an address that was undeliverable. Rather odd as I have many packages delivered to my address, but I gave them my post office box number and that seemed to satisfy them. I was informed the item was an audio tape. I was excited – maybe I’d finally get the tape!

Well, today there was a package for me at the post office. Strangely enough, there were two addresses on it. Mine, obviously, but also a Mrs A Harmon of [address cut from LJ for privacy reasons]. I opened it on the spot to discover it was *not* BIG GEORGE as I had ordered but a 6-tape set of GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Argh!

So now, Mrs A Harmon is probably waiting on her set of GREAT EXPECTATIONS and may even have my BIG GEORGE. And I’m still without the original item that I ordered. Do you folks actually *have* BIG GEORGE? I see that it’s still listed in your catalog. Is there any way that I’ll be able to get it? Or will you refund my money? What should I do about the 6-tape set of GREAT EXPECTATIONS? Has Mrs A Harmon contacted you regarding a lost package yet?

I hope that someone will be able to help me out here. My main goal is to get the original tape that I ordered, but if that is an impossible task, I would like my US$30.13 back, please. Thank you.

*sigh* I’ll be interested to know what they’ll do next.

I planted flowers today! I have window boxes – one long one in front of the large picture window in front and two smaller ones on two back windows. On the way home from church (dad was preaching at the Unitarian Universalist church in El Dorado) dad and I stopped at Walmart and I bought a flat of Petunias. I got a variety of colors and I don’t even know which ones I got. But at least I got purple in the mix. 🙂

It’s a bit early yet for me to get photographs, but if they survive the next few weeks, I think they’ll be very pretty. I’ll admit, I got the flowers to impress judiang and elsaf when they’re here next weekend. But as dad says, if I pretend to be a good house owner, I’ll eventually become a good house owner. 🙂

Two of our high school teachers are expecting little ‘uns to appear this summer. So today, we had a baby shower for the pair of them. Kim is expecting her second child in August, but as we missed out on her first baby shower (because she was off having the baby prematurely) it seemed appropriate to have a shower for her second. She brought little Kaden with her (he just celebrated his first birthday on Monday) and he was awful cute. Ann is expecting her first child in July. So this was also her first baby shower.

It was held at one of my co-workers houses off on the other side of Troy. I hadn’t been to her house since I was a senior in high school. We had a cast party for our play there. But I did remember how to get there. I was the second person to show up. The media center lady was the first and I was right behind. Once everyone had arrived, we played a standard Baby Shower Game(TM). They brought out a tray full of baby items and went through them all. Then it was taken away and we had to write down everything that we could remember. Of the 25 items, I was rather pleased with myself for remembering 17. I did the worst in the room! My memory sucks. 😛

Thank goodness they didn’t make us taste different baby food flavors and try to guess what they were. Deanna, my cousin, devised that game for the baby shower she held for one of her sisters-in-law. Blech – I really felt bad for my cat after that. I figured if the food we’re giving babies tastes that bad, cat food must be even worse! (No wonder Leo loves raw tofu, something with practically no flavor must be better than cat food.)

The ladies opened their presents next. I went in on a group gift for Kim and that was a stroller to hold two little ones. So Kaden will be able to keep an eye on his younger brother. I got Ann’s little one some classic baby toys: a Rock-A-Stack and Baby’s First Blocks. I also got a little toy monkey that was very soft to the touch. And it’s good that I thought to get Kaden a little soft teddy bear since he was also at the party.

After gifts, we had lunch – egg salad mini-sammiches, broccoli salad, cheese ball, pretzels, etc etc and “pretzel salad” for dessert. Mom’s the one who called it that – I didn’t even know there were pretzels in it. (They were the crust that I thought were crushed nuts.) Heh – and I just found the recipe with the first page that Google gave me. Here is someone’s pretzel salad recipe. Sounds like the one we had. Oh, and there was lemonade too – which I spilled on the carpet right as we were going to start the game. Ann was pleased since that’s usually her, she said. Glad I could help. 🙂

Around 2pm the party broke up and I drove back home (stopping briefly at Staples). And then I ripped my two new George Harrison CDs (which I got from the post office before the shower) into MP3s. And am listening to Cloud 9 now. (Coincidentally, my favorite tune from the album is playing now. And no, there wasn’t a whole lot of gossip going on at the party, which is what the song is about.)

Every year around this time, I ponder my senior year in high school. If I weren’t a teacher who taught physics to seniors, this might be rather unusual behavior. But as I watch these young men and women sign each others senior books¹ and invite each other (and me) to graduation parties², I remember my own time doing much the same. So, since I’m in the process of cleaning out my closets (and not in an Eminem³ way), I got out my own senior book and looked through it.

I noticed that I didn’t have a lot of notes from classmates, but at least had some from the girls that I knew the best. And I reserved one quarter page just for Amy to write on. She read through the others and so started hers with “I can’t believe we’re seniors!” She was, at the time, in 8th grade. She’s so funneeeee!

Didn’t have a boyfriend, so the page reserved for one’s significant other was plastered with pictures and comments about Eric Idle. (Yes, Sylvester McCoy was barely a glint in my eye at the time!) No football at Newton, so the football page was covered in band photos.

When I looked in the pockets in the scrapbook, I found several senior photos. And the very first photo I looked at, I had *no* idea who the girl was. So I turned it over and read what the girl had written. “To a really smart, interesting kinda gal, who has great taste in music! I wish the best to you in everything you do! Good luck with the men in your life! Don’t forget me!” Sorry Randi! I well and truly forgot you! I feel so bad! At least the other photos in my pocket were of folks that I remember. But, GAH, the 80s hair styles!!!! It’s like watching one of those evil 80s teen movies!

My final comments on the scrapbook are about The Future???
What I might be doing next year at this time: Taking finals at Wright State University That was probably correct…
5 years: Still taking finals (with a double major I may need more than 4 years) That was definitely *not* correct. I didn’t have a double major. I started out in physics ed but quickly switched to chem ed and was done in 4 years. By 5 years hence from graduating, I was done with my first year teaching at Eaton.
10 years: Be teaching and maybe even visiting England By golly, hit that one spot on. Not only have I been teaching all this time, but I’ve been to England. Yup, six times… three within 10 years of graduating HS, IIRC.
Career goals: Become either an English or Physics teacher. As I mentioned before, I became a chemistry education major – while I was teaching at Eaton, I took extra classes to get my physics certification. So now I’m certified in both chemistry and physics and teach both. I notice how computers were nowhere in my vision at the time.
Outlook on Marriage: I’d rather not, at this point & time. I’ll wait until I’ve seen the world. Yeah, that one still sounds good to me.

Heh – it’s interesting for 33 1/3 year old treen to read the ramblings of 18 year old treen. Might not have been as interesting to you, but hey, there ya go. 🙂

¹ Since high school yearbooks don’t come out until the following year, there’s a tradition in our school to purchase a prefab scrapbook for your senior year. We get ours from Jostens, a company that specializes in removing money from the parents of seniors.
² Alas, I don’t usually go to the graduation parties. Most take place during Memorial Day weekend and I’m busy hangin’ with the girls (elsaf and judiang) at mom & dad’s cottage at Lake Loramie. The one exception was the year my cousin, Deanna, graduated. I left the girls at the Lake and went to Deanna’s graduation and then hung out with the family at Granny’s for awhile. Actually, now that I think about it, she had her party a different weekend – this was just for the graduation.
³ “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” by Eminem is *not* about housework.