Back in Action!

I've been frustrated in my blogging by a bug somewhere between Picasa (the program) and PicasaWeb (the service) and Blogger.com --- all Google properties, so one might hope they would play well together. When I first took up Picasa it was great: I could select some images, click on one button and it would resize them all, upload to Picasaweb, and open a blog post editor. For a year or more, though, this workflow has been broken. I've been searching for alternatives for a long time. Finally yesterday I realized that by replacing the very limited (and limiting!) Picasaweb, I can almost recreate my workflow, using free and Open Source tools! I'll be using mapivi to select images; and simple shell script (that I wrote) to resize the images using ImageMagick; and scp to copy them to a webserver where they'll be accessible to blogger.com. The script will also print out a snippet of HTML that I can cut-n-paste into the blogger.com post editor - this is the only step that's not as shiny as the old Picasa-based workflow but I can live with it. Long live Open Source!

Seven Years

We recently celebrated Son turning Seven. We do these things up right, with usually a whole week of festivities between family, school and friends. The first few images here are from the family dinner party, then we switch over to the friends party at Pump It Up, a party place with lots of giant inflatable stuff to romp around on. Even Son's parents got into the act a little, tho mercifully I omitted those pics. (I'm trying not to be so photo-obsessed lately, but sometimes I can't help myself: I apologize for the quality of the images :-)
p.s. Do you like the new square image format?

Cat Missing, Found Again

We have a cat, a fun and patient black-and-white. We got her from Bonnie Hays Animal Shelter the day after we moved in January last year, and we've been keeping her an indoor cat for her health and safety. She doesn't agree with us on this point, and tries to sneak out at every opportunity. She's succeeded a few times, once for a few hours. That time, I found her a couple houses over walking along without a care in the world.

Yesterday she got out again. As before, the back door was closed but it didn't latch. When we noticed the door ajar, we turned the house upside down to make sure she wasn't inside, then walked around outside calling her name to no avail.  At bedtime, Daughter was very worried but did settle down to sleep. Feeling guilty because I'd been the last to use the door, I stayed up late in case she came back, but eventually had to go to bed.

I woke up about 3:15 for no reason that I'm aware of. I slipped out of bed, crept downstairs, and opened the front door "just in case". To my astonishment, there was Cat! She immediately walked in past me. She was trying for nonchalance but I wasn't deceived, she was relieved to be back inside.

I need to be more careful with that door!

Gainful Again

Okay, okay, mea culpa for not posting more frequently, you know how it is. If you want to hear more from me, comments are always encouraging --- even if as brief as a "keep going"!

At any rate, my last post (months ago!) noted that my job and in fact the whole company had expired. This time I get to say I'm gainfully employed again, much closer to home. I'm back at my old company, this time working directly on a production, a short 20 min commute from home. I get to have dinner with my family every night!

I enjoyed having a few months off between jobs, to reconnect with the family. I plan to continue to walk them to school every morning, as my production has a late "call time" of 9am --- I really enjoy this part of the day. Between wake-up and walk, though, can be challenging, as both kids want to spend the whole time on Netflicks or over electronic entertainment, which I'm coming to consider a scourge. Any suggestions for some sort of daily "curriculum" would be appreciated, since the school doesn't send nearly enough homework with them.

One final observation for this post: I think of myself as a pretty independant, non-joiner, self-fulfilled type of person, and yet I noted a distinct feeling of relief and belonging when I got my company desk and login and cardkey with my picture on it. It's a little disturbing how strong that need to belong is ....

I'm Home!

As you probably know, I've been working in Calif for over a year, flying home to Oregon on the weekends. That job expired Friday (with the company, sadly for my friends who really were hoping for some stability there).

Today for the first time I got to walk the kids to school! Everything went well and they were happy to head off to their classes. There's a great energy at the school in the morning, everyone bustling around and greetings and so on.

conversation via book

I've posted quite a few of my letters home, but I always admired the example of Hugh Lofting whose letters to his children from the war formed the beginning of his Dr. Dolittle books. So recently, after a couple false starts I sent home the story of Jack Crow and his friend Sara, hand-written, folded and stapled to form a small book. At the end I wrote that if it was liked, I would continue the story.

Over Thanksgiving weekend, both kids presented me with books of their own making! Here are scans of the covers, Daughter's:



and Son's:



At the end of hers, Daughter wrote "continued if you like it"!, so I'm very encouraged. This week I wrote the second Jack Crow adventure, adding illustrations this time because Daughter's effort convinced me of their importance, and you can read the whole thing (pdf):



Of course I wouldn't put myself in the same league with the great children's authors but maybe in some small way I've contributed to the storytelling tradition ....

some more "letters home"

Here's one from a few months back, when we were to meet on the weekend in Canyonville in southern Oregon. Simple mirror writing, and I don't think they even needed a mirror to read it ...



A word-find --- these seem to be the most popular:



This one took a bit longer. Those are thin strips of green paper, woven into a larger sheet of yellow with slits cut into it. I've lined up the first three numbers of my phone so you can see that the letter starts with "DEAR S". The recipient would have to know my cell phone number to read the letter!