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About meArchives for December, 2005
San Rainy Rafael
Back at the family estate . . . It’s raining non-stop and flood watches are in effect all over Northern California. So there you have it. I have some pictures to upload of the newly remodelled house but that will need to wait for me to figure out how to get more than one machine onto this network. Stupid Comcast modem thingy.
We did some Christmas shopping (well, post-Christmas) and got some things for Enchante and for our place. We also looked through some boxes of books from the Grandpa Swenson collection. Amazing things coming out of there . . . A whole bunch of issues from the first few years of Fantasy and Science Fiction magazine, including the very first isue, a first printing of an old Steinbeck book, and an 1832 book on the history of the Jewish people translated from the Hebrew. Very dusty and brittle. Probably worth tens of thousands of dollars, or perhaps 75 cents. Who can tell?
Wrapping things up
A few quick things to do at the office this morning, and then we jump in a cab for Tokyo Station and the Narita Express. Airplane time!
Next post to come from a different time zone. And country.
Randomness
I posted this elsewhere already, but I feel like posting it here too, since it was such a noble episode in my life and it should be shouted from mountaintops etc.
In 1982 I took second place in the Oregon state spelling bee. It was a written test, rather than a “stand at the mike and spell things aloud” deal, so I can’t tell you which word got me. I took part in some spelling contests on the radio, too . . . Send in a postcard and if they pick your card they call you up at home and have you spell a word on the air. One year I got the word right and went in to the radio station’s championship match—this time a “spell aloud” contest. The word that got me then was molasses. Later I didn’t even make it to that contest when I spelled assassin wrong on the air. My family called me “the molasses assassin” for a while.
Tomorrow Megumi and I will go to work for the morning and then head out to Narita to hop a plane and go to California for the New Year break. Champagne time! Well, Korbel time. If you call it champagne les Français get all snippy with you. We sent our bags to the airport a couple days ago via ABC, so it’s just us and our carry-ons until our joyous reunion with that luggage.
This last weekend was a three-day deal in Japan. All hail the emperor and his wondrous birthday! We cleaned the house up a bit and then went out shopping with Tomoya. He walked away from that encounter with a new iBook, the better to do his homework in this coming term. I gave him an old used Lombard a while back but the screen on it died, and there’s only so much one can do without visual feedback. Anyway, yes, I know there’s a Mac show early next month and new gear is coming out and you’d have to be mad to buy into this dying PPC platform and all that. But he needs a machine in early January, not in March when they finally start shipping whatever gets announced.
That’s when I get my new computer, you see. 
Stupid upgrading
Just got the Movable Type install up to version 3.2 here, but I’m having trouble getting everything to realize that it’s been installed. tap tap Is this thing on?
Both wiped out
Nora Lynn Lattin poses with Dad:
Both wiped out (Originally uploaded by adurfee).
Congrats to David and Lisarae! Just trying to turn this into a “cousin baby blog” for as long as possible.
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