Halloween Costumes

Do you see Mark?? Yes, his costume is a tree. His idea and my pocketbook. But it did come together very nicely.

He was quite the hit, though by the time I left there were leaves all over his classroom.

He wants to go trick-or-treating to Keely's house. We'll see. The deal is he can pick out the candy he wants and I don't have to take him door-to-door.

National Nerd Day

Tonight Mark and I went to Wal-Mart to shop for his costume for Halloween. All of a sudden he starts tucking his shirt into his pants, hiking them as high up as they will go. He also rolled up his pant legs.

He informed me it was National Nerd Day. He was quite proud of himself.

Never a dull moment with Mark.

7284 and Counting!

For several years I've saved my sent work emails in individual folders for one year. For the purpose of back up information. Many of my emails are responses to people asking questions or for help.

The past year I've been involved with the Eiro project and I sent out many emails. However, until today I didn't realize exactly how MANY emails that was. The chart below is from Excel showing the monthly breakdown of emails sent. It's an average of over 560 emails a month. No wonder I don't want to write emails when I get home!

Thoughts on Prop 2?

I couldn't believe the deplorable conditions I found at Disneyland of all places!! The below picture shows the horrendous conditions these chickens are in? Two large birds shoved into this small crate.

It's absolutely unbelievable!

Yet these birds seem happy. They seem quite content in what we would consider horrific conditions.

Prop 2 deals with the treatment of farm animals that are raised strictly for food. I have mixed emotions about the Prop 2. Having grown up on a farm where we raised pigs, cows, chickens, and rabbits for the purpose of food. They weren't pets we didn't name them. However, the cattle had 80 acres to roam, the pigs had plenty of room as well. Chickens were free to roam outside the hen house during the day and were only penned up at night to protect them from coyotes. Rabbits were kept in cages that were large enough to move around freely.

Proponents of Prop 2 say that the animals in California are being treated inhumanly. Inhumanly means "not human." Well they're animals not humans, so do they need to be treated humanly? They are animals being raised for food, not humans with souls.

My concern is that passage of Prop 2 will end up costing the consumer more in the stores and restaurants.

I'm not sure what is right in this situation. Not sure how I will vote on this come November 4.

It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, at least the Lego Version.

Saturday after the football game (which I'm happy to say we beat the dreaded Seminoles) Mark and I headed to Legoland for Brick or Treat.
It was a VERY busy day. A lot of people taking advantage of the event and the night time part as well. I think we had fun, I did at least and the coolest thing was Mark wanted to ride Knights' Tournament. I need to find the video of Erwin on that ride, because words can't really describe what it's like.

I ended up getting 4 new bricks for my wall. Though two of them I still haven't gotten from Mark yet, they were the ones he received on the Brick or Treat Trail.

See all the pictures I took from the day (there are some pictures Mark took of me, but I didn't post those. Click here for pictures

Brick or Treat and other things Neat!

OK, so I'm not being very poetic at the moment. But who cares, who reads this craziness.

I received the picture on the left via Facebook and found it simply HILARIOUS!

I am truly a sick mind. Anyway if all goes well Mark and I will head down to Legoland tomorrow after his football game and spend the day and evening at Brick or Treat! This year Legoland is doing a special evening event so for $5 we thought we would do it.

Hopefully, I'll get some pictures up on Sunday of our time there.

OK, I am a Geek!

For over a month I've been having problems with my desktop at home. I tried to get it going and failed miserably. Last week I was able to get a copy of Windows XP Media edition and thought I had it made. Since my product key was for that version. However, I ended up in this endless loop between the log in screen, the message telling me I needed to activate, having the machine tell me the copy was already activated and the log in screen again. It was actually quite funny! In a sick sort of way.

So I decide it is time to switch to some time of UNIX/Linux something. Long story short I finally figured out how to create a bootable CD with LinuxMint on it and got it installed on my home machine. I was also able to install a program called Wine that will let me run a lot of the windows programs. Of course, it didn't run Mark's Lego Island 2 game, but oh well. It does appear to work on his social studies program which is way more important to me.

I still have a lot to figure out but at least Mark can surf the web and has sound again.

Mark's football team won again today. They're 2-1 for the season. Mark didn't do anything spectular but he didn't do anything stupid either. And again he had fun which is the main thing.

San Dimas Western Days' Parade

Saturday morning I got up entirely too early for a Saturday and went down to help with the Band Review for the San Dimas Western Days Parade. I knew last year when I walked the parade with the band it wouldn't be my last time. Not as long as Ed Wolfe and Thersea Bruns are around to run it!

It was a nice day with thankfully only a few sprinkles during the review.

San Dimas was first, of course, as the host band. Asst. Drum Major, Wendy, was the leader. She is a very talented sophomore musician. And as par for the course of the past 3 drum majors on their first time out, she dropped her mace. It's best she gets it over with now.

The band sounded pretty good and look pretty good for October. Of course, Riverside King as last year's sweepstakes winner was the final band to participate. And they sounded AMAZING and looked AMAZING. In front of them was the Notre Dame High School band from Sherman Oaks. They also looked very good and sounded very good. I thought they might actually beat Riverside King out for sweepstakes, however, within the first measure it was clear how good Riverside King is.

I didn't make it to the high school to hear what San Dimas' scores were or who did win Sweepstakes.

I didn't see any of the parade, but then again in Tim's 4 years there I never watched the parade, but I did march in it with the band at least 2 of those years. To me that's the best part, I figured I marched 11 parades and/or band reviews with the kids. Tim has his first parade as a college student, next weekend in Azusa. Haven't figured out if I can march in that one with them or not!

A Day at Disneyland

Yesterday we sent the afternoon at Disneyland. This picture is from Tom Sawyer's Island. Of course it's not called Tom Sawyer's Island, but the Pirates Liar or something like that. It will always be Tom Sawyer's Island to me.

You can see most of the pictures I took down below.

Disneyland - October 2

Tomorrow is the San Dimas Western Day's Parade, if it doesn't rain. There's a chance of rain. I'm suppose to be helping out with the Band Review up on Gladstone. I'm looking forward to working with Ed and helping him out. Not sure if I'll be able to get many pictures but I'll have to try. It will be wierd not to be a part of the band as a parent.

Next Saturday is the Azusa parade and Tim's first parade with APU. I jokingly asked him today at lunch if they needed any band moms. He humored me and said probably. It will probably depend on Mark's football game and the time fo the parade.

Happiest Place on Earth

Maybe yes, maybe not so much! I do enjoy Disneyland and it was fun to be there after 5 MONTHS! I think that's the longest stretch in 19 years of not being at Disneyland.

Had to buy Mark a new pass today since his expired in May. We have the cheapo Southern California one, but it's ONLY $180. DCA was nice, not too crowded (like it ever is). Rode Soaring over California, such a cool ride. Then we rode Grizzly Rapids, oh my heavens! I got drenched!! I was wet for the next two hours.

The big news, Mark FINALLY rode California Screaming. He didn't hate it, he even said he liked it other than the fact it made his head hurt. Not sure why, but my hurt too. Actually, I think mine hurt because of my neck and I didn't have my head back when we were shot out of the cannon.

I took quite a few pictures and tried the video setting. We'll see how that turned out eventually. I'll probably load pictures tomorrow night. Too tired now, and I have a very busy day tomorrow.