Lisa, Emily and I went camping over this past weekend. Incidently, the weekend also included my birthday. We had a great time! It was fun because it was the church campout, so we arranged to be next to all the other families with small children. The adults got to hang out while all the children ran around and played together. It was a blast!
On my actual birthday (July 16), I got up early and went crabbing in Newport harbor. (We were camping at South Beach, just south of Newport.) We caught 9 large sized (a.k.a. legal size) dungeness crab and 19 red rock crab (no legal size minimum). That evening we boiled them up and ate them along with my birthday cake. Delicious!
Emily took to camping pretty well. She woke up a few times crying for "Mommy" and "Daddy", and of course she wanted to sleep right next to us. Overall, Emily loved playing with all the other kids, running around as much as she wanted, and eating camp food.
The only question I have now is when can I go camping again?
After Mozilla Thunderbird started misbehaving on me, I renewed my quest to find a good RSS reader. Thunderbird would add all the articles (seen and unseen) to the feed list; this resulted in massive duplication. Quite annoying. I've found two RSS readers that look good: RSSOwl and Liferea.
RSSOwl is written in Java and seems to have all the features I want. The only downside I've found is that I can't simply emerge a Gentoo package to get it installed.
Liferea is written specifically for GTK and Gnome. It seems to have good integration with other Linux programs such as Mozilla's rendering engine. Offhand, it doesn't seem as featureful as RSSOwl.
Anyone out there have an experience with either they want to share? I'll post back later with my reviews.
It started with a shriek as Emily came tearing through the kitchen and dining room to where I was sitting in the living room. The rumble of the ice maker had freaked her out. I picked her up, let her sit on my lap for a while, and tried to comfort her. Finally I asked, "Do you want me to sing you the ice maker song?" "Sing the ice maker song, Daddy!" Go ahead...listen to it.
After a while, Lisa poked her head down the stairs and asked why the cat was yowling. I said that it was just Emily and I going "Aaaaaaaah!" Lisa said, "No, it's the cat." Right about then, the cat came wandering down the stairs and was milling around my feet. I decided to go for another stirring chorus of the Ice Maker song. Every time Emily and I went "Aaaaaah!", the cat yowled--predictably. It was hysterical.
So now there is a new favorite song in the house--both for Emily and the cat. Although, Lisa doesn't seem to find it as hysterical as I do. Probably because Lisa's trying to sleep.
I hope you had a good Independance Day yesterday. It's sobering to reflect on the high price our founders paid to establish the United States of America. I hope you had a good celebration with good friends and good food.
We spent our July 4th by BBQing, spending time with friends, and shooting off lots and lots of fireworks. I'm particularly pleased that fireworks are legal in Oregon, so naturally I must exercise my legal right to the fullest extent of the law. :-) And thanks to Costco for providing me with a great deal.
I throughly enjoyed grilling at home after not doing so for over a year. It was high time I bought a grill, so I picked up a nice, but not too expensive, grill at Sears during their 4th of July sale. We grilled up some top sirloin and corn on the cob. Of course, I plan to be grilling as much as possible all summer long.
May you continue to enjoy the summer always cherishing the privilege you have living in the United States. Happy Independance Day!
Lisa, Emily and I are back from our vacation down to Southern California. We rolled in at 1:20 AM on Thursday morning. We drove back in one long day on Wednesday. With 15.5 hours of driving and 18.5 hours for the whole trip back, we were ready to be home.
Primarily, we went down to So. Cal. for my cousin Amy's wedding. Yes, it went off with a hitch. ;-) We also got a chance to see family, relax and have some fun. This trip was also the first time I was able to get down to So. Cal. since my grandmother died, so the trip was a bit emotional for me at first.
One highlight of our trip was taking Emily to Disneyland. She's just old enough to enjoy the kiddie rides in Fantasy Land. We pretty much wiped her out after about 3 hours in the park. The rest of the day Emily was very, very mellow just taking it all in. To give you an idea of how exhausted she was by the end of the day: she fell asleep in my arms during the fireworks show. Check out the pictures of Disneyland. Note the point in the day when Emily really mellows out.
