Coast to Coast

well

2009-02-05T08:59:00.000-08:00

well brown eyes really are nice aren't they?

Wicked quote

2008-06-23T09:20:00.001-07:00

"Don't wish, don't start
Wishing only wounds the heart"

Training

2008-04-30T09:43:00.001-07:00

Woo hoo I am starting up my Marathon training today after work! I am pretty excited about it! :)

Belgium

2008-02-28T07:51:00.001-08:00

Saw In Bruges movie and must say Belgium looks like a place worth visiting.

Cold

2008-02-14T13:43:00.000-08:00

It has been so cold and so much snow lately and I am tired of it!
The feet still hurt though are healing, it is frustrating as I have not been able to run, and the dotor said it likely will be anothe 3 or 4 weeks before the left foot is healed completely.

Took N&J to a father/daughter dance for their girls scouts troop and also to see the new Hannah Montana Disney movie, they had fun.

I got the dvd set of Torchwood though have not yet found the time to watch it, maybe tonight I will hopefully.

ok

2008-01-17T12:33:00.000-08:00

Everything is ok at the moment, had an infected ingrown toenail and had to go get that taken care of. N&J are in the process of trying to get their merit badge for selling girl scount cookies, need to sell 100 boxes each, which I think is insane.

NY EVE

2008-01-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

It was quite a NY's Eve extravaganza, great to see friends (including Leezy)and others I do not see very often. R's apartment is wonderfully decorated and it was wonderful to hang out there with him and B. Dinner was amazing, four course meal and lots of very funny moments, sometimes I thought I would never stop laughing.

Things have been good lately, it was a nice discovery that there is a free gym I can lift weights and run on an indoor treadmill during the winter. And N&J are doing great, we checked out the Star Wars exhibit at the Museum of S&I the other day and there were many many cool things there, including the actual Yoda puppet and the actual landspeeder from the original Star Wars movie.(There also were some impressive gigantic Christmas trees in the lobby)

I would have loved to spend more time there reading and soaking it all in, though that rarely happens when with the little ones! :) We all picked out small keychains and we got three miniature Yoda glass baubles(kinda like those Xmas ones, snowglobes that you shake and make it snow).

Next week I register for the next programming class so that is exciting, and other than that I have been enjoying trying to advance levels in the World of Warcraft game. N&J love this game and actually J now calls me every day to ask what quests I did, what level I am, what treasures I found, etc. It is very funny to me all of the questions she asks! She definitely thinks of good questions, she continues to surprise and impress me often.

We are planning on doing something together tomorrow which will be fun. I wish there were more movies out right now suitable for kids because every time we go to the movies we all have such a great time. And I think we have seen all there is to see for the moment......

OK my goals for 2008 are to continue with the long distance running, and do the Chicago Marathon for a fourth time, to take at least three more programming classes, to hopefully find a new job, and to put into practice a heealthy diet instead of always talking about it, as I typically do! Too bad I love food so much!!!

All for now, happy New Year to everyone and may you have a truly blessed and wonderful year ahead in 2008!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :)

Snow snow snow!

2007-12-28T12:44:00.000-08:00

Cold and snowy day out here, did have a nice evening last night with R.

Planning on watching the BC Bowl game tonight and playing some World of Warcraft.

Not a lot to report other than I got my haircut today and I like how it turned out.

Looking forward to Sunday (taking N&J to see the Star Wars exhibits at Museum of Science and Industry).

Holiday

2007-12-27T07:24:00.000-08:00

Another Christmas in the books. It was a fairly quiet one this year, N&J like the Red Sox Monopoly game, and we also watched the Pirates of the Carribean dvd (they said it was not too scary, which is good). N. made me a Santa decoration and J. amde me a lithograph of a Christmas tree, really beautiful things, and they make me smile thinking about them!! I got them both littl stuffed animal penguins and they liked them a lot.

In other news, I ran yesterday on my birthday (two more years 'til the big four-oh), it felt pretty good, I might try again today or tomorrow. I tried to go see the new Juno movie but it was sold out.

Sunday afternoon will be fun- I am taking N&J to the museum to see the Star Wars exhibit and they have 80 actual props from the movies, we are hoping to see Yoda!! :)

It feels very weird to be back at work after getting to sleep late and enjoy the last few days. I am on the verge of level 11 in WOW which is cool, and I have been reading a bit lately too.

Holiday break starts soon

2007-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

Last day of work, Friday, then have next 5 days off- weekend, Monday (Christmas Eve), Tuesday (Christmas), and Wednesday(my 38th birthday).

I have a few deliveries I need to pick up (hopefully it is Christmas presents sent my way), and I might do laundry tonight, also likely will play W of W!!!

I have had a dry cough for almost a month now, if it does not go away soon I am afraid I am going to need to visit my doctor.

Thursday Fun!

2007-12-20T11:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight:

Sushi and "I Am Legend"!!! :)

tell it Jimmy!

2007-12-19T10:06:00.000-08:00

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." -- Former President Jimmy Carter in an interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper.

"Once"

2007-12-19T08:11:00.000-08:00

Well I watched the dvd "Once" yesterday when I got home from work....and I was so surprised by the sheer raw emotion of the film that I watched it a second time before going to sleep.

The lead character is Glen Hansard the lead singer from the Irish band the Frames, and he was amazing. Made me recall taking N&J to see the Frames at Lollapalloza in Grant Park two summers ago.

Seriously, there are some scenes in this movie that were so powerful I honestly was blown away. Highly recommended and my Mom evidently got me the motion picture soundtrack cd for my birthday, so woo-hoo!!! :)

W.O.W.

2007-12-18T08:02:00.001-08:00

I think I am addicted to playing "World of Warcraft". :)

the Call of the Wild

2007-12-17T13:36:00.000-08:00

I want to see this movie:

"Retraces the travels of Chris McCandless, a 24-year-old "aesthetic voyager" who starved to death in the Alaska wilderness in 1992. Over the course of his journey, through thirty U.S. states, two Canadian provinces and Mexico, filmmaker Ron Lamothe encounters an entire cast of McCandless-inspired characters--some who knew Chris, some who didn't, some who respect him, others who disparage him, all of whom become part of a larger non-fiction mosaic. In Alaska, following in McCandless's footsteps all the way to the abandoned bus where he died, the film uncovers never-before-seen evidence that sheds new light on the case, and directly contradicts both best-selling author Jon Krakauer's ("Into the Wild") interpretation of McCandless's death and that of Sean Penn's film "Into the Wild". "

Good Luck

2007-12-17T09:23:00.000-08:00

Last Friday December 14th was a lucky and good day. I actually won a prize ($25 gift card to a local restaurant) at our company Christmas party, I got to visit with B, my sister J got us free tickets to go see Duran Duran, and I even got to see lots of friends I had not seen in ages( though briefly as it was before the concert) at a Christmas party!

Duran Duran was great as usual, those guys never seem to grow older!!

Then the weekend was great with N&J, we watched the new Harry Potter dvd (it was just ok), and we did lots of "projects", I ahd them draw Christmas cards, do math problems, and read books for school.

In other great news, the SQL class is finally over, no word yet on the final grade though will find out soon.

Weekend

2007-12-10T06:29:00.000-08:00

Had another fun weekend with N&J, we saw the Bee Movie starring Jerry Seinfeld, J and I liked it, but N thought it was a bit slow. Then I took them out for caesar slads and J also had her favorite soup, cream of broccoli. It has been terribly cold here, with lots of ice storms, constantly ice is freezing my car windshield, it is very annoying. It is times like this I wish I worked from home!

So trying to stay warm and figure out how to do some runs, might need to pause from running until it warms up again.

Travels with Nicki

2007-12-06T06:41:00.000-08:00

I think all of you know how much I hate my job. So it was a nice diversion when it turned out I had to watch my daughter Nicki all of yesterday. She was supposedly sick though a trip to her doctor proved she is fine, just tired and a slight cough. We did take it easy for most of the day and even had a nap but we also did small grocery shopping trip and when I asked her what she wanted to do she had two things that were important to her: taking a walk in the snow and going to the Apple computer store, we did both. It was a lot of fun, we did homework and read stories later too. It had been longer than I can remember since I had time with just one instead of two.

Weekend

2007-12-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

It was quite an intriguing weekend on many fronts. After church on Sunday we had "brekafast with Santa", the girls immediately told me it was not the real Santa, because J. said he had on brown shoes not his Santa boots. They did arts and crafts, N, Made me a Xmas card with a gingerbread man on it, and J. made me a gingerbread man on a popsicle stick, and she wrote her name on the stick. It looks beautiful. She also made an amazing angel.

Downloaded the ten day free trial for World of Warcraft and am trying not to spend too many hours on it, it is definitely an on-line version of Dungeons & Dragons, very cool and yes very addictive.

Tonight is the last SQL class so I am very relieved about that. Probably going to take C++ Data Structures next.

Oh! And the big news for me was Sunday I hopped on the treadmill and did a bit of running, first time since the Chicago Marathon way back on what??? October 7th? I decided it is time to stop talking and worrying about being a fatass and just get my body moving. When I run a lot I can eat a bit more, just need to try and eat healthier. And I drank tons of cold ice water all weekend. ANd N&J eat lots of apples now, it is cool.

As far as reading I am still slowly going through a bunch of Carl Hiaasen novels, good stuff.

Rose is Back

2007-11-30T08:57:00.001-08:00

Billie Piper to return to Dr Who

Actress Billie Piper is to return to Doctor Who, the BBC has confirmed. She will star in three episodes of the sci-fi drama, reprising her role as the Doctor's companion, Rose Tyler.

Rose's return will mean the Doctor has three assistants in next year's series - Donna, played by Catherine Tate, and Freema Agyeman as Martha.

The new series begins in March and will run for 13 episodes. There will be three special editions in 2009 before the show takes a break until 2010.

Update!

2007-11-20T05:38:00.000-08:00

Wow, a lot has happened since I last wrote. I ran 16 of the 26.2 miles for this year's Chicago Marathon, and it was cancelled due to extreme heat (and also they had no water on the course for me until mile 9 which was terrible). I have only two more SQL classes left to go, I finally saw Neil Young live again (last time I had seen him was in 1991 so it has been a while). He was wonderful, best songs played were "Ambulance Blues", "Heart of Gold", "Cinnamon Girl", and "Cowgirl in the Sand".

The big news for me was of course the Red Sox won the Championship again and I got to fly home to see the victory parade, which was incredible. And also later in the day I was walking near Fenway and saw a car that had both World Series trophies in the back seat, which was really amazing!

I have been to the twins school and met their teachers and they are both doing very well. J. loves reading and N. is very well behaved, they both act very good at school which is reassuring.

Due to school I have not read much for pleasure lately though hope to do so at some point.

Update

2007-09-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have not posted in so long but a lot has bene going on in mylife.

The Marathon is a week from Sunday, it is October 7th and I am very excited though a bit nervous, I did not have the time to do as much training as in past years and I sprained two of my toes on my right foot, so it hurts a lot.

The Red Sox are still doing really great!! And they will be in the playoffs, I can hardly wait to watch the games next week.

I really have been enjoying the SQL class Monday nights, though 6-10pm makes for a long Monday night and sadly I always miss Monday Night Football!

The girls are doing well in school and have quite a bit of reading usually for their homework. I am very proud of how they are doing, they are wonderful girls! :)

All for now.

Running update

2007-08-22T09:48:00.001-07:00

Ok well I did a nice 12 mile run in the rain last week and another 12 mile run last night (this time in some fairly awful nasty heat and humidity).

Next week I will try to do 15 or 16 mile run.

I am going to take N&J to see their first Red Sox game tomorrow night, and then Friday after work I will go to the game with B.

It will be Josh Beckett pitching tomorrow and then Schilling on Friday!

Rainy Weekend

2007-08-20T12:33:00.000-07:00

Quite the rainy weekend though still had fun, took N&J to see the new Simpsons movie(they loved when Bart rolled around on his skateboard naked),and also they played at the indoor play area.

Red Sox are now only 4 games ahead of the Spankees so I am nervous(for the first time all season by the way).

Update!

2007-08-13T09:22:00.000-07:00

I apologize for not writing for so long, well what can I say? Sometimes life really does get in the way of writing on my blog!

Things are going well, have been probably not doing as much practice runs for the Marathon as I would prefer to do, though am starting up again nw and should be fine for October 7th.

The girls are of course great, yesterday was lots of fun as we went to a birthday party for one of their friends and N&J proceeded to engage in a very long water balloon fight.

I finished that Harry Potter book and found it to be incredibly dark and yet very well done, certainly tied up a lot of loose strings quite nicely.

Sushi!

2007-06-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

Tonight is going to be a fun night and one I have been looking forward to for quite a while!!! Sushi with B!!!! :)

Polish "Anne Frank" diary

2007-06-05T13:42:00.000-07:00

Note: Not for the squeamish, this is disturbing.

JERUSALEM - The diary of a 14-year-old Jewish girl dubbed the "Polish Anne Frank" was unveiled on Monday, chronicling the horrors she witnessed in a Jewish ghetto — at one point watching a Nazi soldier tear a Jewish baby away from his mother and kill him with his bare hands.

The diary, written by Rutka Laskier in 1943 shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz, was released by Israel's Holocaust museum more than 60 years after she recorded what is both a daily account of the horrors of the Holocaust in Bedzin, Poland and a memoir of the life of a teenager in extraordinary circumstances.

"The rope around us is getting tighter and tighter," the teenager wrote in 1943, shortly before she was deported to Auschwitz. "I'm turning into an animal waiting to die."

Within a few months Rutka was dead and, it seemed, her diary lost. But last year, a Polish friend who had saved the notebook finally came forth, exposing a riveting historical document.

"Rutka's Notebook" . The 60-page memoir includes innocent adolescent banter, concerns and first loves — combined with a cold analysis of the fate of European Jewry.

Some 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis during World War II, after European Jews were herded into ghettos, banned from most jobs and forced to wear yellow stars to identify them.

"I simply can't believe that one day I will be allowed to leave this house without the yellow star. Or even that this war will end one day. If this happens I will probably lose my mind from joy," she wrote on Feb. 5, 1943.

"The little faith I used to have has been completely shattered. If God existed, He would have certainly not permitted that human beings be thrown alive into furnaces, and the heads of little toddlers be smashed with gun butts or shoved into sacks and gassed to death."

Reports of the gassing of Jews, which were not common knowledge in the West by then, apparently had filtered into the Bedzin ghetto, which was near Auschwitz, Yad Vashem experts said.

The following day she opened her entry with a heated description of her hatred toward her Nazi tormentors. But then, in an effortless transition, she described her crush on a boy named Janek and the anticipation of a first kiss.

"I think my womanhood has awoken in me. That means, yesterday when I was taking a bath and the water stroked my body, I longed for someone's hands to stroke me," she wrote. "I didn't know what it was, I have never had such sensations until now."

Later that day, she shifted back to her harsh reality, describing how she watched as a Nazi soldier tore a Jewish baby away from his mother and killed him with his bare hands.

The diary chronicles Rutka's life from January to April 1943. She shared it with her friend Stanislawa Sapinska, who she met after Rutka's family moved into a home owned by Sapinska's family, which had been confiscated by the Nazis to be included in the Bedzin ghetto. Sapinska came to inspect the house and the girls — one Jewish, one Christian — formed a deep bond.

When Rutka feared she would not survive, she told her friend about the diary. Sapinska offered to hide it in the basement under the floorboards. After the war, she returned to reclaim it.

"She wanted me to save the diary," Sapinska, now in her 80s, recalled Monday. "She said 'I don't know if I will survive, but I want the diary to live on, so that everyone will know what happened to the Jews.'"

Sapinska stashed the diary in her home library for more than 60 years. She said it was a precious memento and thought it to be too private to share with others. Only at the behest of her young nephew did she agree to hand it over last year.

"He convinced me that it was an important historical artifact," she said in Polish.

In 1943, Rutka was the same age as Anne Frank, the Dutch teenager whose Holocaust diary has become one of the most widely read books in the world. Yad Vashem said Rutka's newly discovered diary was authenticated by experts and Holocaust survivors.

Rutka's father, Yaakov, was the family's only survivor. He died in 1986. But unlike Anne Frank's father, he kept his painful past inside. After the war, he moved to Israel, where he started a new family. His Israeli daughter, Zahava Sherz, said her father never spoke of his other children, and the diary introduced her to the long-lost family she never knew.

"I was struck by this deep connection to Rutka," said Sherz, 57. "I was an only child, and now I suddenly have an older sister. This black hole was suddenly filled, and I immediately fell in love with her."

"I have a feeling that I am writing for the last time," Rutka wrote on Feb. 20, 1943, as Nazi soldiers began gathering Jews outside her home for deportation.

"I wish it would end already! This torment; this is hell. I try to escape from these thoughts of the next day, but they keep haunting me like nagging flies. If only I could say, it's over, you only die once ... but I can't, because despite all these atrocities, I want to live, and wait for the following day."

However, Rutka would write again. Her last entry was dated April 24, 1943, and her last written words were: "I'm very bored. The entire day I'm walking around the room. I have nothing to do."

In August, she and her family were sent to Auschwitz, where she is believed to have been killed upon arrival.

Ukraine

2007-06-05T10:57:00.001-07:00

KIEV, Ukraine - A mass grave holding the remains of thousands of Jews killed by the Nazis has been found in southern Ukraine near the site of what was once a concentration camp, a Jewish community representative said Tuesday.

The grave was found by chance last month when workers were preparing to lay gas pipelines in the village of Gvozdavka-1, near Odessa, said Roman Shvartsman, a spokesman for the regional Jewish community.

The Nazis established two ghettos during World War II near the village and brought Jews there from what is now Moldova as well as Ukrainian regions, Shvartsman said. In November 1941, they set up a concentration camp and killed about 5,000 Jews, he said.

"Several thousand Jews executed by the Nazis lie there," Shvartsman told The Associated Press.

Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said the finding was no surprise: "It underscores the enormous scope of the plans of annihilation of the Nazis and their collaborators in eastern Europe."

"The scope is enormous, the number of places where murders were carried out is very large and that is why even now at this point, so late after the events, graves are still being discovered," he added.

Yitzhak Arad, a Holocaust scholar and a former director of the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, said his research indicated some 28,000 Jews were gathered in the area from surrounding towns. He said 10,000 of those died at a rate of around 500 people a day.

Shvartsman said that Jewish community knew about the mass killing but did not know where the bodies were located.

Anatoly Podolsky, director of the Ukrainian Center for Holocaust Studies, said there are believed to be some 250-350 mass grave sites from the Nazi occupation, during which some 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews are believed to have been killed — including those massacred near their homes and those deported to camps elsewhere. He said most of the site have been discovered, many of them since the Soviet collapse of 1991, but others have not.

"Ukraine was an enormous killing field, hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered and the entire region is literally filled with hundreds of mass graves," Zuroff said.

Ilia Levitas, the head of Ukraine's Jewish Council, put the number of mass Jewish graves in the country at over 700 and said more than 100 are without monuments to the victims.

According to Shvartsman, the names of 93 Jews killed at the Gvozsdavka-1 site have been established. He said Jewish community members plan to conduct studies at the site to identify more victims.

"We must figure out their names. It is our debt before victims and survivors," he said.

Odessa's chief rabbi, Shlomo Baksht, hopes to fence the site off and erect a monument to the victims by the end of the year.

Ukraine's Jewish population was devastated during the Holocaust. Babi Yar, a ravine outside the capital Kiev where the Nazis slaughtered some 34,000 Jews over two days in September 1941, is a powerful symbol of the tragedy.

About 240,000 Jews were killed by the Nazis in the Odessa region, according to Shvartsman. He said a mass grave with remains of about 3,500 Jews was found in the region last year.

___

Associated Press writer Aron Heller contributed to this report from Jerusalem

Puppy setlist

2007-06-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

June 1st 2007 Chicago @ House of Blues

1. Intro/Anger (from Cleanse, Fold And Manipulate) Ogre behind screen.
2. Ugli (from Mythmaker)
3.Dog*hit (VIVISECTVI)
4. Tormentor (Too Dark Park)
5. Politikill (Mythmaker) Ogre comes out from behind screen.
6. Rodent (Rabies)
7. Pedafly(Mythmaker)
8. Worlock(Rabies)
9. Im'mortal(the Greater Wrong of the Right)
10. Dig It (Mind:the Perpetual Intercourse)
11. Amnesia(the Process)
12. Cellar Heat(the Process)
13. Hardset Head(the Process)
14. Fascist Jock Itch(Rabies)
15. Haze(Mythmaker)

encores
16. Social Deception (Bites)
17. Testure(VIVISECTVI)

Personal highlights for me were: Dog*hit, Rodent, Dig It. Never heard Rodent or Dig It live before!!

more Trot

2007-05-29T09:23:00.001-07:00

I really wish I had been there!

More here from the red sox web site:

""I've been looking forward to coming back here for some time," said Nixon. "I've got a lot of friends, a lot of special guys over there that I've been through a lot with."

A homegrown product of the Red Sox -- general manager Lou Gorman's regime selected him in the first round of the 1993 First-Year Player Draft -- Nixon made his mark with clutch hits and all-out hustle. He cemented it by being on the 25-man roster of the first Red Sox team to win a World Series in 86 years.

And Nixon left Boston on good terms following last season. Nixon's durability had failed him the last three years, and the Red Sox opted for a five-tool replacement in J.D. Drew.

Even after winter back surgery, Nixon found a very appealing new home in Cleveland, where a talented core of players looks primed to make a run at the postseason.

When the Indians and Red Sox converged on the field between batting practice rounds, the expected hug-fest took place between Nixon and several of his former teammates.

"He's a total baseball player," said Red Sox first baseman Kevin Youkilis. "If you're going to get a team together and you have one game to play and you want guys who give it their all and scrap, that's the guy you want. You want to bring him to the table when you have to scrap out hits and make plays on defense."

What did manager Terry Francona appreciate most about Nixon?

"The way he approached the game," Francona said. "His willingness to try to run through the wall, even sometimes when he'd probably hit it and bounce off and get hurt. He'd play hurt. He's down and dirty. You saw the pine tar and the helmet and his hat was always wrinkled up in his back pocket. He's kind of a throwback."

Nixon's work in Boston was hardly limited to what he did on the field.

Roughly 10 minutes before the first pitch, Nixon and wife Kathryn, standing in the grass area behind home plate, were presented with the 2007 Jimmy Fund Award. It was a tribute to the many years of service the Nixons' gave to the Dana Farber Cancer Institute and the Jimmy Fund. Red Sox owner John W. Henry and Francona both took part in the ceremony.

As the roars came thundering down from the sold-out crowd and a video tribute marking Trot Nixon's on- and off-field work in Boston was played on the scoreboard, Kathryn Nixon's eyes welled up with tears.

Trot Nixon simply smiled and took in the moment. There was still a baseball game to be played.

"I was spoiled for my entire career to play in this type of atmosphere, sellouts every night. I was spoiled," said Nixon. "Having the opportunity to win and have a winning record every season, I'm very fortunate. Even when we had our time in the playoffs, the biggest thing you want to do is take some of it in. At times, when we won [in 2004], you didn't take it all in."
"

Trot Returns to Fenway

2007-05-29T09:06:00.000-07:00

from the Globe:

According to the watch of Bob Ryan, the standing ovation for Trot Nixon when he stepped the plate in the second inning lasted 40 seconds. Nixon tipped his helmet to all sides of the park before digging in and promptly sending a single into right field for the first hit off Curt Schilling.

Brownies/BRMC

2007-05-24T13:30:00.000-07:00

In a few hours will be at BRMC show! First I need to go home and watch N&J at a "bridge cermony" for their Girl SCouts troop, where they will walk across the bridge which symbolizes how they are leaving "Daisy" scouts behind and now are "Brownies". :)

the Queen & the Doctor

2007-05-23T13:36:00.001-07:00

This is from a news item at www.outpostgallifrey.com:

"The Queen was left intrigued by the Tardis feature at the Chelsea Flower Show earlier this week.

As reported by Outpost Gallifrey last Friday, the Doctor's time-travelling police box - complete with light and sound effects - is the centrepiece of the display called A Garden In Time, which has been created by Cardiff Council landscape officer Mo Dorken and her team.

It shows the changes in the world since the start of the series in 1963 and includes a 1960s Cardiff rugby shirt and a Doctor Who annual with William Hartnell on the cover.

The Royal Family were exploring the Royal Horticultural Society's annual show on Monday and the Press Association reports that the Queen stopped off to look at the revolving Tardis.

It is in a "void" separating a 1960s urban garden from a modern one based around contemporary gardening ideas and styles, with an emphasis on sustainability, recycling and climate change.

According to PA, Dorken said: "The Queen was asking 'Why is there a Tardis there?'

"I was explaining how we were having a Doctor Who theme and a Sixties part of the garden because it was when the series first started." "

come from behind win

2007-05-16T06:05:00.000-07:00

Sox were down 5-0 and won with 6 runs scored in the bottom of the ninth inning!

Crack publicist John Blake, with the assistance of the Elias Sports Bureau, put the comeback in context yesterday:

"It was just the second time in franchise history the Sox have been shut out through the first eight innings, trailed by five or more runs in the ninth, and won. The other time was May 30, 1931, when the Sox, a last-place team, scored six times in the ninth to beat the world champion Philadelphia Athletics, 6-5, in the second game of a doubleheader."

holocaust documents released

2007-05-15T08:18:00.000-07:00

By ARTHUR MAX, Associated Press Writer

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Diplomats from 11 countries agreed Tuesday to bypass legal obstacles and begin distributing electronic copies of documents from a secretive Nazi archive, making them available to Holocaust researchers for the first time in more than a half century.

The decision was meant to avoid further delays in allowing Holocaust survivors to find their own stories and family histories, and for historians to seek new insights into Europe's darkest period.

The countries governing the archive maintained by the International Tracing Service approved a plan to begin transferring scanned documents as soon as they are ready so that receiving institutions can begin preparing them for public use, said a delegate, requesting anonymity because a formal announcement was due later Tuesday.

The decision circumvents the requirement to withhold the documents until all 11 countries ratify the 2006 treaty amendments that enabled the unsealing of the documents. Ratification is still pending in four countries, and Tuesday's vote was likely to shave several months from the distribution timetable.

Until now, the files maintained in the central German town of Bad Arolsen have been used to track missing people, reunite families, and later to validate restitution claims. The Tracing Service is an arm of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Three countries, the United States, France and Germany, pledged to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to offset costs for preparing and transmitting the papers, said the delegate.

But some U.S. survivors expressed dismay that the documents will remain restricted to a single place — the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington — and that they won't have unfettered access.

"I'm anxious, because 105 people from my immediate family did not make it. I am the only survivor," said David Schaecter, of Miami, Fla. "How do I obtain what I am rightfully entitled to obtain — (to know) what happened to these 105 people," he said.

The archive contains Nazi records on the arrest, transportation, incarceration, forced labor and deaths of millions of people from the year the Nazis built their first concentration camp in 1933 to the end of the war. It also has a vast collection of postwar records from displaced persons camps.

The name index refers to 17.5 million victims, and the documents fill 16 miles of shelves. But the archive is indexed according to names, making it difficult to use them for historical research.

Seized by the Allies from concentration camps and Nazi offices after of the war, the files were closed under a 1955 agreement to protect the privacy of survivors and the reputation of the dead who may have undergone humiliating medical experiments or been falsely accused of crimes.

Last year's amendments to the 1955 accords, reached after years of negotiation and resistance by several members, stipulated that some privacy guarantees remain. A single copy of the documents would be available for each of the 11 member states to be used "on the premises of an appropriate archival repository."

Each government was expected to take into account "the sensitivity of certain information" the files may contain, the new agreement said.

In addition to the United States,Israel and France indicated they also would seek copies.

The seven countries that have ratified the treaty amendments are the United States, Israel, Poland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain. Endorsement was awaited from Luxembourg, Greece, Italy and France.

Blood Diamond

2007-05-04T13:16:00.000-07:00

In college when I got my ear pierced, I remember I wanted a diamond stud for it. I never got one, and after watching "Blood Diamond" on dvd last night, I am kind of glad that I never did.

The girls had their soccer practice last night and it was really cool to watch them, J. loves playing defense and N. still has a very powerful kick with her left foot. I love that N. is a lefty.

Mom's visit is good so far, and tomorrow I think we both are going by bus to a parade with N&J.

I have been listening to the new Black Rebel Motorcycle cd lately in my car and it sure does sound good played loud, very bluesy and raw with great guitars.

Sports and Mom

2007-04-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

My Mom is in town now visiting and we are having lots of fun taking the twins to her hotel to use the swimming pool.

Red Sox beat the Spankees again today, that make 5 of 6 so far this season. And the other big news for Boston is they acquired Randy Moss from Oakland in a trade, I am stunned about this news. Tom Brady throwing to Moss is very intriguing and if it all works out the Pats might have another remarkable season.

N. had on her Big Papi jersey on today and we saw his home run on espn which made us all hoot and holler.

I finished my first running race of the season, the 10 mile Lakefront 10, body is sore but soul is happy. To celebrate, we of course had to go eat lunch at Chili's! :)

The professor in C++ class gave us all our current (almost final grades), and my average is 95 percent so I will get an A, as the final exam was all ready graded, and I only need to turn in one more homework assignment.

I started taking blood pressure medicine and a multivitamin every morning for health.

J. is really interested in playing marbles, so I need to do that with her at some point.

N&J are really enjoying having their Nana here, and it is very relaxing for me too.

Stephen Hawking Goes in Space

2007-04-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

I really really like Stephen Hawking and I hope he can get more fundinf for space travel. Below is what he said, very illuminating.

"Many people have asked me why I am taking this flight. I am doing it for many reasons," he said before the flight. "First of all, I believe that life on Earth is at an ever increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn't go into space. I therefore want to encourage public interest in space."

Update

2007-04-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Went to Chicago Wednesday night to meet P and M and see VNV Natin concert, which ended up not being very fun. I got down there early and so was able to pick up my wonderful race shirt for Sunday's 10 mile "Lakefront 10" race.

And I got to see some of the Red Sox game at a sports bar, which was nice.

P said there is a film he just saw written by Ishiguro, he ws going to email me the info at some point.

I am finally on the final episode of Twin Peaks, but have held back from watching it.

Family is doing great, N. lost both of her two bottom teeth and the tooth fairy left her $5 each time, so she is now rich. Did a cool homework assignment with J. lat night where she had to draw pictures after thinking about a word. One was - in, and she asiad "FIN" and she drew a shark, then she said I need to write fin somewhere but I don't want to write it in the water because that is where the shark is swimming. I thought that was hilarious.

We went Tuesday to their school for another family reading night, turnout was sparse and so they worked on the computers (applie iBooks just like mine) for about an hour and a half, then we read stories. I again met their computer teacher and she said they are really smart, which I all ready knews. N. kept using software to paint and create cool pictures wheich she printed out and gave me, and J. worked on writing sentences and then she even did some math problems.

Red Sox presently have the best record in the entire league which is expected but still nice.

Tonight is the final exam for the C++ programming class, I was up late last night studying. I believe I will do just fine.

All for now.

VT

2007-04-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

I really don't know what to write about the Virginia Tech killings, except to say that it is terribly awful and terribly sad. I remember telling my Mom that I was surprised when I found my daughters school for kindergarden hhas automatic locks on the door from the first bell until school close.

I found this eulogy bittersweet, due to all the things I learned about the Holocaust. Made me imagien that this person survived all of those horrors until to be killed years later in another horror:

"Liviu Librescu, 76, was a Holocaust survivor who, his son said, will be remembered as a hero. He "blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," Joe Librescu told the AP. "Students started opening windows and jumping out." The elder Librescu, a professor at Virginia Tech, was recognized internationally for his research in aeronautical engineering, the head of the Engineering Science and Mechanics Department at Virginia Tech told the AP. He was born and received his advanced degrees in Romania.

At age 76, Librescu was among the thirty-two people who were murdered in the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. He was killed during a class in the Norris Hall Engineering Building by a student (Cho Seung-hui, 23). Librescu held the door of his classroom shut while Cho was attempting to enter it; although he was shot through the door, he was able to prevent the gunman from entering the classroom until his students had escaped through the windows. A number of Librescu's students have called him a hero because of his actions, with one student, Asael Arad, saying that all the professor's students "lived because of him". Librescu's son, Joe, said he had received e-mails from several students who said he had saved their lives and regarded him as a hero whilst many newspapers also reported him as the hero of the massacre. He was killed on Yom HaShoah (the Holocaust Remembrance Day) in Israel and Judaism. He will be buried in Israel, where his son Arieh lives, according to his family wishes."

Visitors

2007-04-19T06:34:00.000-07:00

My Dad is coming to visit Saturday to Tuesday and then the subsequent Saturday my Mom comes to visit for a week and half or thereabouts.

And I am going to the doctor Monday for a complete physical since I have not been to the doctor in mnay years and my knee hurts a lot from the running.

update galore

2007-04-11T07:29:00.000-07:00

woke up to snowfall today yikes no wonder my run last night was so darn cold

my body does not recover as quickly any more, makes me feel old, truly does

my knees, legs, feet all ache and I got really stiff after the run

also went to local blockbuster and got two rentals- the holiday which we watched and was pretty good, light romantic comedy, and the pursuit of happyness which we wll watch tonight

in my fantasy soccer league my team is ranked in 61,653 place out of 1,256,314 teams/players, this is the highest ranking I have ever had this late in the season, a lot of the amazing score is due to having Cristiano Ronaldo from Man United as my team's captain, so he always gets me double points(captain is only player with this double points rule in the fantasy league)

after dinner we all had a bike ride, and it was cold but not as bad as it got later on in the evening, i am doing a minimun of 3 miles lately, but am thinking this cold is just no good, i want to keep my level of fitness up and start doing the much longer, fun runs but i hate this cold and am not wanting to get injured.

the family is all great we are in the process of renovating our big bathroom, hopefully this will begin next week.

the girls still are now reading stories to us at night which is very enjoyable, j. read me the book called "Snow" and she did a fantastic job. And I told N. to write me some more of her books and she said she will.

And I need to watch the last 3 episodes of Twin Peaks season 2, will likely do that Friday night.

Friday there is yet another exam in class, after this Friday there are only 3 more lectures and then the final exam, so I am happy. SQL and Java next most likely.

Opening Day

2007-04-10T13:45:00.001-07:00

Red Sox are leading in their home opener 14-1, amazing.

the other Julia

2007-04-06T06:44:00.000-07:00

When N&J went to preschool they had a friend named Julia and since there were two Julias in the same calss, the teacher taught them to sign everything as Julia W. and Julia S.

Well Julia S. had her birthday party last night and we all went, it was lots of fun, and I managed to spend quite a bit of time talking politics and history with Julia S's dad, which was really cool, he told me I was the first American he had ever spoken to that knew so much about history. I told him when I went to Auschwitz last summer I studied and read extensively about it all and that is why, it is all still fresh in my mind.

I ran three times all ready this week and I managed to get most of my work done for tonight's class. Contemplating taking an abbreviated summer class though not sure. I just don't like paying the full amount for a seven week course as opposed to 17 weeks.

I think with programming, the 17 weeks suits me better because I can really absorb it all.

Dice-K struck out 10 inhis debut, I went to a local sports bar, waitied until 1:20 to go from work, just to watch him. They had the Cubs and White Sox games on, I had to specifically ask for the manager to request they put the Boston game on, so I missed the first inning. But I saw the 2nd and 3rd innings. Dice-K looked impressive, his delivery always changes speeds and his footwork was very unusual, he definitely had hitters off balance, it looked like they have trouble figuring out his release point. Now, is Schilling can stay healthy and pitch as he is capable, and with Beckett settling in to the American League, I think the Sox have 3 good frontline pitchers. Wakefield remains an innings eater and will be up and down, and I assume eventually when he is fully receovered from his cancer treatm,ents, Lester will return and be slotted as the fifth starter.

Papelbon closed the game and had 2 strikeouts which was cool to see.

I keep wearing my red colored home jacket around town on the weekends, feel kinda silly but N&J like it. Oh well, people will know I'm a fan I suppose.

All for now.

Irish leaving Boston

2007-04-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

Boom times, crackdown slow emerald wave
By Kevin Cullen, Globe Staff | March 18, 2007

A couple of months ago, David Knox and his girlfriend, Elaine, threw in the towel. After seven years in the Boston area, they were tired of looking over their shoulders, tired of being told there was no way they could become legal residents, and so they decided to move back to Ireland.

About 100 of their friends gathered at Bad Abbots, a Quincy pub, to bid the couple farewell. A band, Tara Hill, serenaded them with the appropriately titled "Leaving on a Jet Plane." Knox hugged his teammates on the pub's soccer team. Elaine's eyes watered.

The bittersweet celebration, full of laughs, heartfelt toasts and not a few tears, was reminiscent of the "wakes" the Irish held for those sailing off to America a century ago, never to return. But these days, the wakes are held in pubs in Dorchester and Brighton, or in apartments in Quincy and South Boston, for those heading home.

Ireland's booming economy and the crackdown on illegal immigration that followed the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks have combined to produce a reversal of migration patterns for those who have long made up the biggest, and most influential, ethnic group in Boston.

Put simply, more people are returning to Ireland, and fewer are replacing them, reversing a pattern of immigration that was established in the late 1840s, when Ireland's potato blight killed 1 million people and sent 2 million others scurrying for the ships.

In one generation, Boston was transformed from an overwhelmingly Protestant city in which most of the inhabitants traced their ancestry to England, to a largely Roman Catholic city in which thousands had roots in Ireland. The Irish came to dominate Boston and the metropolitan area -- first its politics, then its commerce -- like no other ethnic group, putting their stamp on a place that is universally regarded as the most Irish city in America.

But today it is a paler shade of green; the city is fast losing its distinctive Irishness. Some will mourn the change, and some will not.

There are many immigrant stories in the new Boston. The Irish experience is one of them.

The successive waves that made Boston a famous outpost of Irish culture, from traditional music to Gaelic games, have suddenly ebbed. According to FAS, Ireland's training and employment authority, only 1,700 Irish went to the United States last year looking for work, many of them headed for Boston. That compares to 23,000 in 1990.

Trades once dominated by the Irish worker -- often undocumented, but who was checking? -- are increasingly the domain of other ethnic groups. The painters, roofers, house cleaners, and elder care workers who so often were Irish are now more likely to be Brazilian. And the number of Irish brogues that once greeted people at restaurants in the Boston area, and especially on Cape Cod during the summer, have dwindled, as the number of Irish college students taking summer jobs here has been halved since 9/11.

stormy weather

2007-03-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

Lots of rain forecast for the whole weekend out here, oddly enough the other day I was telling N&J about how as a boy I used to love laying in bed under the covers listening to thunderstorms and being soothed by the raindrops hitting the roof, my bedroom as a boy was on the far side of the house removed from the rest of my family so it was always very quiet.

Nice easy run last night kind of late and J. read me a few stories in the afternoon which was nice, including the infamous "Go Dog, Go!". Spent some time again trying to help out and clean up the house, scrubbing the kitchen and dining room floor. Not a lot of fun but needed to be done. Our cat was fascinated by all of this and watched me for most of the process.

Only 7 more friday night classes counting tonight so that is good. trying to check the schedule list and decide what to take in the fall.

Twin Peaks season 2 on dvd next tuesday I am very excited about it.

Listening a lot to the new Brett Anderson cd, it is very depressing but there are 4 songs on it I absolutely love (not in order of preference here they are):

Song for my Father
To the Winter
One Lazy Morning
Colour of the Night

honorable mentions to Dust & Rain and also the Infinite Kiss

so 6 of 11 decent tracks. What is funny is in my opinion the second best track called "Clowns" was not included on the full length album but is a bside to the single. Very funny, typical of Brett though he did that a lot before too with Suede.

I got a very intriguing email from a group called Rainbows, I ran a race that raised money for their charity a few summers ago, they are now involved with the Chicago Marathon. It is a charity that raises money for children of divorced parents, I find it worthwhile, and they only want a $500 donation, which is much easier than the $2500 I needed to raise for the Chicago AIDS foundation. Plus, I know I want to run the Marathon again, I have not signed up yet because I need to figure out logistics and babysitter. AS usual.

all for now.

miscellania

2007-03-29T09:36:00.000-07:00

well i never heard back about the twin peaks season 2 dvd contest so probably i did not win, shucks. those were awfully difficult questions though i still believe i got 5 of the 6 right. j. went with me after dinner last night so i could get new nike running shoes, the nike plus ones to use with my ipod nano, i let her pick out the color, she picked black with silver highlights and orange swoosh, they are nice, she also tied my shoes for me at the store when i tried them on, that was hilarious, after that we rolled over to the grocery store and got a few things like eggs and such.

the weather has noticeably cooled which has led to us mainly staying indoors and not practicing soccer, the first practice was cancelled yesterday due to rain but i thinbk the first match on this sunday is still on, not sure yet.

we did a good bit of reading last night after our expedition and it went well, every so often the girls will decide they want to read to me which is a welcome change.

A. and I have the new james bond dvd and also a dvd about magicians with bowie, hugh jackman and michael caine in it, we need to find time to watch.

over and out.

contest

2007-03-27T06:32:00.000-07:00

A while back I discovered a really nifty web sitr for Lynch/ Twin Peaks information. Last night I learned they are having a contest to win a dvd set of Twin Peaks season two. Unfortunately, all of the 6 questions are based on the second season and I only have a few of them on video because while in college someone stole most of them!

So here are the questions along with my answers. I think I got 5 of 6 right so hope I win the dvd set so I do not have to go buy it next Tuesday when it is released.

The only one I think I missed is questin 1. I know the 4 queens ar Audrey, Shelly, Annie and Donna. And I guessed Annie did not dance because Windom Earle abducted her to get her away from Agent Cooper.

Questions and my answers are below.

1. During the Miss Twin Peaks Contest, which of Windom Earle's queens did not dance on the stage? Annie

2. Who shot Agent Cooper in the finale of Season 1? Josie Packard

3. Name at least two ingredients that are suggested to Sheriff Harry S. Truman to cure his hangover. Raw meat, tomato juice with chestnuts, canadian bacon

4. Which character catches the eye of FBI Regional Chief Gordon Cole while visiting Twin Peaks? Shelly Johnson

5. What is the second penguin's response to the joke Cooper tells Annie? "Maybe I am"

6. According to Windom Earle, what is another name for evil sorcerors who cultivate evil for the sake of evil? Dugpas from Tibet.

outside

2007-03-25T15:31:00.000-07:00

hooray and hurrah it is warm out, mister sun decided to bless us, after mass we had a wagon ride around the neighborhood and then some serious soccer training in the backyard, J. is super fast and N. is devastating with her left foot kick. She will score goals. Best thing is the girls are asking me to take the cover off the grill...but I don't have food ready!

Wow we want bbq and outside time like you cannot believe.

busy bee

2007-03-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

sorry no post for a while family school work running reading library books has kept me very busy

it's all good though, just a bit tired lately

love that the weather is improving

twin peasks season 2 comes out on dvd very soon, I have been waiting for this for many years, I never understood why it took them so long, read somewhere thay Lynch remastered the dvd print so maybe it is worth the wait.

other big news is we just got our tickets for summer trip to poland, I will be there June 28- July 13 and the girls June 28 until August 7th. We are discussing if we will bring N&J with us to Zakopane (mountains) for our customary weekend getaway. We might take them this time to see the mountains, the views, the culture. We will see.....

spring has sprung

2007-03-13T07:04:00.000-07:00

rumor has it temp will be seventy today, it was in the 50's over the weekend, after Polish school we all went to the paek and played tag, on the swings, and slides- E and P visited so all ahd fun. We finally checked out most of "the Invasion", a Doctor Who dvd that my Dad got me for my birthday and just was released and subsequently just arrived in the mail. It has a great villian and the cybermen looking their vintage old school way.

Sunday was a relaxing day too, after church we read and played outside, the grass was too wet to play soccer. N&J keep making their books which are absolutely hilarious and very creative.

Tomorrow I am out with B&R for sushi.

Oh and we spoke with J which was great and also I finally was able to do a long run saturday morning because of the nice weather.

And I have attempted to clean both bathrooms twice now- nto a lot of fun but making the faucets sparkle and shimmy, oh yes.

suspect

2007-03-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

thumb through the courts
spill the gas
take a whiff
pick your cards
check your watch
take a risk
strike a match

the stitching in the pocket
wont hold
shake a fist
run and chase
check the list
take a blow to the face

stinger insects
enter subject
shot to the leg
never looking for a suspect
eyes to the conflict
run across the grass quick

insect inject
back to the subtext

second and 10
never less then perfect
it never failed
when the flag turns black
through the skin of a convict
born to harass
setting fire to the flags
but the thing never ends it

beg for the scraps
deck-em on, steal a gun
load-em up, no lead
skip a loop, just for fun

so you wanna be sick or just sit, take your pick
check the box near the top
find a window
throw a rock

so hard to look lost
show the tag, what's it cost
suck it in
spit it out
cinch the noose and the doubt
sleep in your dreams, ask your friends what it means?
find the gaps, overlaps, who you are in between
grab like a kid, pack your bags, slam the lid
take a hit off a smoke that you already choked back
like a dog you just scratch for an answer to anything
answers for everything buried in lies

March 5: to my sister on her bday

2007-03-04T12:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Jenney, we all love you. And I must again say to you, there is no one who makes me feel so good, when I am in your presence, I have felt invincible, bullet-proof, superman, good, sublimely happy. I never never can forget- it was you who started me with running. That, and just how your enthusiasm just always invigorates the rest of us.

N&J were saying "JENNIFER" how (your)A. does- the whole ride to Mass, it was funny. They are just 5 but they all ready see you how I do, and you know what, that makes me know I am succeeding as a Dad.

Neurotic

2007-03-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Post 501.
It truly is remarkable how good season 5 of sfu is after the challenged season 4.

One thing that stays with me is just how strong the parents performances are, losing a child that must be one of the worst things in the world.

Lucky 500th

2007-03-04T10:44:00.000-08:00

milestone alert- this is my 500th post. Kinda cool.

Everthing is smooth sailing- started running more and more and the body while noticeably slower to recover and taking longer to get loose- mainly the legs don't really loosen up until after a bit more than a mile- used to be just half a mile, the weather out here remains awful, it is funny I did a run yesterday morning timed on my iPod and it ended up being my fastest in the last two months Iand I know it is because AI ran harder since it is so cold outside.

The girls have been writing "books" lately, just another aspect of their creativity which is both wonderful and fascinating.

We have been up to tons lately, in door play areas, library expeditions, walks or as J. says "explores" where they still pretned all of the snow is another planet, we went to the new diner near us and all were not enchanted with it, we have been numerous trips to borders and got some decent books, I finally rewatched chariots of fire and realized while I will never be fast the long distance running still is meaningful.

School has been chugging along, learning more and more and happy about it.

And late nights I just rewatched all of season 4 of sfu- it had its moments though overall still is in my opinion the weakest of the 5 seasons, though worth watching primarily because I enjoyed witnessing how Brenda never gave up on Nate, even though he generally just uses her incessantly.

Oh and I ordered and received some "signature David Lynch coffee", lol the tagline printed on the cannister reads "It's all in the beans....and I'm just full of beans"- bringing said coffee to work manana for me andx B. to sample.

Oh and I need new nike + running shoes. Soon I will be making this a priority.

Still trying to figure out exactly why N&J became so fascinated with soccer. I signed them up for the "spring league" which starts in two weeks- hopefully indoors????

all for now. 500th post wow- this surprised me this morning when I discovered I am up to 500.

I like it and hope you do as well.

the ides of March

2007-02-28T19:35:00.000-08:00

Hey, really glad tomorrow is March 1st, means closer to spring ( if such a season exists in chicago) and then summer, which means the ability to journey outside without fear of the cold.

It's been quite a productive and enjoyable evening, after dinner N&J and I piled in the car and drive to play at an indoor play area, then went to borders bookstore, just to browse this time because we eaach picked something out there last Sunday, then home for bath and storytime, then after the girls are cosily tucked in bed, A. went to find something to watch on the basement tv while I did a nice run outside, thinkind during most of the run how refreshing it will be for the snow and cold to be gone- running in layers kinda makes me perspirean awful lot. I really love running though not so much in this weather.

Since I finished "the grays" i am now reading another library book, "terminal" by robin cook who is known for also writing 'coma", guess it could be described as a 'medical thriller'. It's good and some of it is set in Boston which I enjoy. Noticed most of the books I have borrowed from the library lately have been very quick reads but that is ok and exactly what I need since whenever I read my programming textbook I discover myself re-reading paragraph after pararaph.

the Red Sox tied the twins 4-4 in their first spring training game, Schilling pitched well.

My girls are always so entertaining, their new saying for tonight was "Dad I love you with all my heart". And N. amde it a point to tell me incessantly that she was very very good today. I told them they are great girls and me and mommy are really lucky they are our children, they like hearing things like this of course.

Three notable events in March are the birthday for my sister J. and also the celebration of St. Pat's Day, and...Brett Anderson's first solo album is released towards the end of the month, I just pre-ordered it and the single (with b-sides) today via amazon.uk ( he has no american record contract, surprise, surprise, why di I always love these artists with a cult following?).

Ok I am off to bed with visions of running wearing shorts and a sleeveless t, just can't wait...........

Holocaust survivors

2007-02-28T05:47:00.001-08:00

WARSAW (Reuters) - When Miriam Schmetterling left Poland in 1946, she had no idea if she would ever see her home country again or meet the people who saved her life during the Holocaust.

On Tuesday, the 82-year-old Jewish woman, in Poland for the first time in 60 years, took part in a reunion of 60 Holocaust survivors and their rescuers in Warsaw, in one of the biggest such gatherings in Poland.

She met Jozefa Czekaj-Tracz, who as a 15-year-old Polish girl helped hide her from the Nazis for almost a year. People hiding Jews risked a death penalty under the Nazi occupation.

"She was a little girl then but she already knew that she had to do everything not to let anyone discover the six Jews hiding in her house's attic," Schmetterling told Reuters.

"Jozefa played the piano each time visitors came to make sure they couldn't hear noises which came from the attic. She knew we could have all died."

Jozefa Czekaj's parents took Schmetterling and her family to their house in a town near the city of Lviv, now in Ukraine, to protect them from the Nazis, who invaded the city in 1941.

"Germans were killing people and we knew that is what had to be done," Czekaj said after the meeting. "If I was in the same situation now, I would do it again."

At the start of World War Two, Lviv, with the largest Jewish community in Poland, was controlled by the Soviet Union after a non-aggression pact between Hitler and Stalin.

Poland had the biggest Jewish population in Europe until the war but the murder of millions in the Holocaust by the occupying Germans and an anti-Semitic campaign by postwar communist authorities left only a few thousand Jews in the country.

Since the end of communism, Polish governments have tried to rebuild relations with the Jewish community overseas and many thousands of Jews visit the land of their parents and grandparents each year.

Many in Poland were incensed by accusations of complicity with the Nazis, who killed 3 million ethnic Poles and razed Warsaw to the ground.

UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS

Polish officials have launched a campaign to remind the world that while some Poles informed on Jews to the Germans in return for money, others risked their own lives to save them.

The biggest single group of the so-called "Righteous Among the Nations" at the Yad Vashem Institute are Poles.

But many issues between Poles and Jews remain unresolved.

On Wednesday, a delegation of Holocaust survivors will meet Polish government officials to press them to compensate them for property confiscated by the communists.

Poland, the biggest post-communist EU member, is the only country from eastern Europe, besides Belarus, which has not enacted a program for the restitution of property seized after the war. Several attempts to solve the issue after 1989 have failed, mostly on grounds of cost.

"It is a matter of fairness and just," Gideon Taylor, Vice President of the Claims Conference, which organized the meeting, told Reuters. "These people are very old and cannot wait. Time is not on our side."

Poland's ruling conservatives have promised to pass a new law to allow some compensation, but many claimants say that a government proposal to compensate only 15 percent of the lost property is inadequate.

movie night

2007-02-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

The whole family went to the movies tonight, we saw "the bridge to terabithia" it was very well done though most likely N&J are too young for some of the subject matter. J. had tons of questions and N was very sad.

I wish I could convince the whole family to go for a bowling and pizza night, maybe this will happen someday.

I am off to bed now.

Oh and it snowed again today, I am sick of shovelling.

When I close my eyes I can see me and the girls running outside and playing soccer. It will be here soon, yes it will.

power loss

2007-02-26T08:52:00.000-08:00

Snow,rain,ice,snow. Lots of shoveling and we lost powere at our house late Sat night/early Sunday morning, we had no power until 3pm, which meant we missed all the early masses and meeting P and E for brunch/play date.

N&J amused themselves they created more of their "books" and they wore sweatshirts and we got lots of blankets out of the closet.

We were so happy when the power was back, we drove to the grocery store and got some provisions, ate and read, relaxed. Got something new, an organic pot pie with broccoli and cheese, believe me it tasted wasy better than it sounds. I need to buy some more. Also stopped at the deli counter to get turkey slices and muenster cheese for lunches during the week.

I only have about 40 pages left in the grays novel which works out perfectly as it is due at the library tomorrow. Tuesday is now entrenched as our library day which is of course a pleasant diversion for all concerned.

Friday class was decent, we got back lots of our early scores for the first third of the class, and I got mainly A grades on my programs and written assignments and an 89 on the first exam.

A and I still have not watched the dvd of the prestige though hope to get to that this week sometime, I ran so many nights last week and whenever I returned home she was fixated on a different movie so no luch with the prestige yet. we figure we will like it since we liked the illusionist so much.

some cool highlights from the weekend were walking during the sat night snowstorm and the girls each took sticks and kept writing their initials and also arrows, when I asked them about it they said it was a map so we could find our way home.

and then yesterday morning they covered me with their bathrobes and we all staye together in N's bed for quite a while which ended up warming us all up, we talked, laughed a bit and were all content.

so all is well, back at work now and looking forward to friday, we are about to start object oriented programming supposedly whatver that means, we did functions last week and hopefully soon will do arrays, the prof keeps talking about showing us arrays but never does!

looking forward to summer for the warm weather and more freer running outside, and bbqs, just a few more weeks hopefully and we will be there.

Brett Anderson writes about his childhood

2007-02-20T17:21:00.000-08:00

Dog Man Star is my favorite album, Brett has a new album due out end of March. I found this article, the bulk of it written by the man himself. It is interesting, I knew he grew up poor, and I learned more by reading this:

A singer-songwriter with impeccable credentials, Brett Anderson remains one of music's heavyweight performers. Having spearheaded the 1990's indie scene with Suede's blueprint for Britpop and re-established one of the world's greatest song-writing partnerships with The Tears, he returns to the fore as an accomplished and independent new artist. On March 26 Brett Anderson will unveil his self-titled album via Drowned In Sound in the UK.

Before his several sold out dates take place across the pond, Brett sat down and wrote us an exclusive feature that talks about growing up in Haywards Heath, and the effect his family had on his art. This is a two-part piece, with an exclusive interview to follow.

+++

I was born just after the Summer of Love of 1967 in the upstairs bedroom of a tiny council house in Haywards Heath; a grey little train stop of a town between London and Brighton. To most people the 60's meant free love and mini - skirts but to my parents it was all rented furniture, Lino and pregnancy tests. My mum was a dressmaker and part time artist and my dad was a postman at the time but managed to drift from job to dead end job until he eventually settled as a cab driver.

It was a strange upbringing and one that didn't fit in with the usual class stereotypes (though whose really does?). We were an abjectly poor family but we lived in a safe and leafy part of England. Most of my friends' dads worked in insurance or something but mine was a swimming-pool attendant one week and a window cleaner the next. There was never any money around so it was the kind of house where if you wanted something you made it yourself. Our mum sewed all our clothes, made the curtains and blinds and painted the paintings on the walls and our dad busied himself making all the furniture. He even made himself a pair of speakers out of which blasted a constant rumble of Gustav Mahler and Hector Berlioz. We lived in a council estate by a rubbish dump so I spent most of my child-hood picking through other people's discarded stuff, climbing on their broken 'fridges and playing with their smashed TVs. there was always an obsolete household appliance to fuel our children's games. Someone even once dumped a knackered rowing boat, which my little friends and me spent most of the summer in pretending we were pirates.

My dad was a child of the Empire, born in the early 40's to a military family and very proud to be an English Royalist. As my granddad was stationed in India, my dad grew up in a very old-school colonial environment. He always wore a suit and tie, saluted the TV at the end of the night when they used to play the national anthem and even fixed a flagpole to our tiny council house so he could run- up the Union Jack. I even used to think that he secretly arranged my conception so that i was born on Horatio Nelson's birthday, one of his elite group of heroes which also included Winston Churchill and the romantic composer Franz Liszt. Every couple of years he would drive his ancient, tatty Morris Traveller (look it up on Google) to Hungary and bring back a bag of soil from Liszt's birthplace. Liszt was his religion. Once when on jury service he refused the bible and insisted on swearing his oath on a biography of his hero.

My mum was from a rural Sussex family and had more happily embraced the zeitgeist of the 60's. She learnt to paint and draw at an art college in Brighton and had much less conservative tastes than my dad. While he was downstairs engrossed in his Wagner Operas, she was upstairs painting or sewing and listening to the Rolling Stones on her tinny little plastic cassette player or wandering through the gentle Sussex countryside, documenting it's simple beauty with her brush.

I guess my path in life as an artist was very much a result of the synthesis of these two personalities and the unique world they created for me and my sister Blandine (named after Franz Liszt's daughter of course). It's easy to see myself as a blend between my father's obsessive love of music and my mother's creativity. But looking back there were other aspects of my childhood that I have learned to treasure. I am especially proud of the way we were never taught to worship money. Value was defined through art and beauty and even though life was a struggle for my family it was always something other than money that was the goal. In this crushingly greedy and materialistic society, I am honored to have been raised in this eccentric but precious way. My only regret is that I never managed to tell either of my parents that while they were still alive.

Well, I can't really think of a neat way to end this. I did enjoy writing it though. My dad died recently and it set me off on a huge emotional journey. After sorting through his meager possessions in the little house where we were raised and spending hours poring over old photo albums I had a period of intense reflection about life and death, my childhood and my place in the world. Years of being in a successful band keeps you in a state of emotional immaturity, your development on pause, and it is only recently that I have taken control of my life and felt the need to confront and ask questions of my self and my past, where I have come from and ultimately where I am going.

Brett Anderson, London, Feb 2007

Warm

2007-02-20T11:37:00.001-08:00

Supposedly it is 40 degrees outside right now. I am going to go out right now and confirm.

haircut

2007-02-19T13:52:00.001-08:00

It truly is amazing how much attention Britney Spears is getting for shaving her hair.

I tried twice ot get a haircut yesterday with no success- first time it was too busy, second time they were closed.

Italian Night

2007-02-19T13:17:00.000-08:00

At Mass on Sunday we learned there would be an Italian night, with spaghetti, salad, garlic bread, and a raffle.So N&J and I all went, J. loved the spaghetti and N. loved the salad. I lvoed everything, we all had lots of fun and then we took a long walk. The weather finally warmed up some.

I am about half done reading the new Whitley Streiber novel, "the Grays", it's good though fairly depressing....tonight we are all going out with A. for Polish food.

I ran sat and sun on the treadmill and drank tons of water, feeling a bit better though havin glots of recurring migraines for some odd reason. When this happened years ago it got so bad I went to the doctor and he prescriber some kind of medicine/tablets I took, I might need to do so again if this does not go away.

The first exam at schhol went fairly well I think, it was longer than I thought and had two parts- a written exam with word definitions and multiple choice followed by a programming exam where we had to write and compile a program. I know I got the program right and all the word definitions, but I think I missed one or two of the multiple choice, hopefully the exam will be graded by Friday so I can find out my score.

The replacement diner, Carriage House, which replaced the Fireman Restaurant, is now open and N&J are thrilled, it was way too busy Sunday so we drove by and decided we will try and go next weekend if possible.

The thing that is facinating me the most recently is the many carefully thought out questions that J. asks me. I really am so proud.

bitter cold/youtube/eraserhead/twins enjoy the snow

2007-02-16T06:47:00.000-08:00

It is -18 right now and likely was even colder when I drive to work. My hands hurt when touching the steering wheel so I wore gloves. It is awful. Typically I love winter though this year for the first time in my life I am not fully enjoying it and am eagerly looking forward to summer and baseball, tanning, and cookouts.

I am a huge fan of youtube! I watched quite a few short films of Lynch and Eraserhead on dvd, then proceeded to go to youtube and watch practiucally all of the final episode of Twin Peaks. Cooper's spirit possession still bothers me, but noticing the similarities between Eraserhead and the Black Lodge/ Red Room of Twin Peaks was fascinating- the floor in the lobby of Eraserhead is the same as the red room, that black and white zigzag pattern. And Jack Nance is the star of Eraserhead, a young 1977 Jack Nance, the same Jack Nance who discovers the body and has the first line in Twin Peaks. I found that very cool. I had never seen Eraserhead, watched it twice. It's fairly disturbing though a lot easier to understand than Inland Empire or some episodes of Twin Peaks. The thing I have discovered is not necessarily by repeated watching but by thinking about it I have figured out lots of the mysteries and I like to think meanings in a lot of this stuff. It's enjoyable.

First exam tonight at class so am nervous. Fortunate to get the "A" in the first class so the overall average will remain decent. If I can esacpe with a "B" in this calss I will consider myself fortunate.

N&J have so much homework! I do not recall ever having any homework to do in kindergarden, they have to read about 4 books per week on their own, and they have written assignments, mainly practicing writing the alphabet and also cutting and pasting pictures, checking that they match other picutres(example- rug/bug)

They have been enjoying sledding and playing in the snow. A. and I created a massive hill of snow in our front yard and when I shoveled the other day I kept adding more and more snow to it while N. watched in the window, she was very pleased about this.

David Lynch uses Macs!

2007-02-15T10:14:00.000-08:00

Yet another reason to love the guy! -CW

David Lynch launches new site with Macs and 4D
by Jim Dalrymple

David Lynch, director of Hollywood cult classics for TV and
the big screen,today officially launched his new Web site.
Lynch, a big Mac fan, utilized software from 4D Inc.,
Macromedia's Flash, as well as hardware and software
from Apple to build and maintain the Web site. With his
reputation secure as one of the most original and unusual
directors in film today, David Lynch's career spans three
decades. Lynch first came to public notice in the late 1970's
with the release of the cult film Eraserhead. His credits also
include the mid-80's film noir Blue Velvet and the offbeat
television series (and later motion picture) Twin Peaks.
Lynch's dark and often violent vision continued through the
1990s to today with movies including Wild at Heart, Lost
Highway and Mulholland Drive.

Lynch is running his site on 14 G4s using WebStar, 4th
Dimension database and the 4D Business Kit, all from
4D Inc. The WebSTAR Server Suite features Web, FTP,
Mail and Proxy servers integrated in a modular application,
with secure, IP-based remote administration. WebSTAR V
will take advantage of the speed and stability of Mac OS X,
according to Brendan Coveney, 4D president and CEO.
The recently released 4D Business Kit includes tools to
build online catalogs, shopping carts, payment systems,
tax calculation, shipping, customer management and
order tracking. The package includes two stores, with five
store expansion packs also available. 4th Dimension is
a relational database and the company's flagship product.

Eric Bassett, the designer of DavidLynch.com, spent some
time recently in Beverly Hills to talk to us about the project
and David's choice of equipment. Bassett has worked
very closely with 4D to create a site integrating all of the
company's technologies. "There wasn't anyone even close
to WebStar," Bassett told MacCentral. "I really like using this
software. "4D is great because of its scalability and the
application they created for us is just unbelievable."Other
companies were interested in working with Lynch to help
produce video for the site, stream content and setup
equipment, but they went with Apple because Lynch uses
Macs.

Lynch also learned how to use Final Cut Pro himself, so
he could edit video for the DVDs he will sell on the Web site.
All of the DVDs were made using DVD Studio Pro. "The
Internet is here, an infinite world of freedom. To express
ideas in the ether. Apple is also here and they have helped
us immeasurably. Apple products have been key for the
creation and maintenance of DavidLynch.com," Lynch told
MacCentral.

The Web site will also feature Pay Per View shows inside
the member's area. Some of the features will be shown
free for members. The shows will be streamed using
Apple's own QuickTime, another favorite of Lynch and
Bassett. "All of the video delivery will be in QuickTime
streamed over an Akamai network," Bassett said.

Polar Bear Story!

2007-02-11T17:48:00.000-08:00

from the Boston Globe Sunday February 11, 2007:

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - As first dates go, this one didn't end well. A male polar bear who was trying to court a female polar bear apparently pushed her over the edge of a 14-foot drop while playing this week, Memphis Zoo officials said.

Cranbeary, the 5-year-old female, had surgery Saturday to insert two steel plates and 26 screws to repair a broken leg.

Payton, the 3-year-old male, is on loan from the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois as part of a breeding program. This may be both bears' first romance, and it got a little awkward, said Matt Thompson, mammal curator.

Zoo officials said Cranbeary is in heat, which could have led to Payton's aggressive behavior. A visitor reported seeing him tussling with her atop the cliff before she fell.

Cranbeary will stay in her cage for at least 10 weeks until her leg is strong enough to return to the exhibit, zoo officials said.

Party girls

2007-02-11T17:22:00.001-08:00

Quite a busy weekend, after Polish school there was a bowling themed birthday party for one of N&j's friends, included pizza and cupcakes, they enjoyed bowling, it was their first time playing. Sunday we practiced numbers and reading and also attended a square dance which was fathers and daughters only for their girl scouts troop. It was lots and lots of dancing- outstanding cardio. We all enjoyed ourselves, and got lemonade and cookies too.

Personally, I read some stories from "Cathedral" Raymond Carver, finished the first 3 of 6 programs for homework, watched 5 of the 7 Twin Peaks season one episodes, three more Desperate Housewives with A., and finally, also saw Flags of Their Fathers- which I enjoyed though did not think it was as effective a war story as Band of Brothers.

Also, the girls and I worked on cleaning the house today to surprise A.

AND I ran on the treadmill both Sat and Sun, which really made me feel good.

I started to go through my closet to organize and also decide what I no longer wear so I can give it to a local charity.

hmmm, what else. Oh I know, and this is really really cool- N. has been writing more and more stories, she spells out the words and writes them as she hears them, for example, she spells "house" as "howse". It is really cute, she wrote me a story, and she wrote it all using green markers, she said it is because she knows I like the color green!

that's about it for now. Pitchers and catchers report really soon, I am very excited about the team the Sox have- their pitching looks like one of the most solid staffs they have had in recent seasons.

Chill

2007-02-08T11:02:00.000-08:00

It is -19 with the wind chill factor right now.

Yikes.

presents

2007-02-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

Just learned A. got me a new lamp and a frame for my marathon picture! Hooray! :)

desperate housewives

2007-02-07T07:24:00.000-08:00

We are now on disc 3 of 5, "Desperate Housewives" season 2, and the odd thing is that while I still like Susan(Teri Hatcher) she no longer is my favorite, she is just too scatterbrained. I like Bree and her inherent belief that all can be put to right by baking muffins or having a dinner party. And she took the time to make the bed after her husband died, she is just too much.

It is still terribly cold out here, we have tons of comforters, blakets, and pillow son the couch in the basement for our "housewives" viewing, and the cat hangs out with us which is comforting.

The bad thing for me personally lately is I am having daily headaches again- this happened a few years ago and it got so bad I had to go to the docotr who prescribed some special pills to alleviate it. NOt sure why it is happenening but it is very frustrating.

The good thing was A. had to do lots of shopping last night so after helping N&J finish their homework and reading them a story(about a dragon who learns how to blow bubbles) I hopped on the treadmill and did a bit more mileage than Sunday, so I felt kinda proud of myself. I just love these asics running shoes. I think they are better than Nike.

Oh and we watched Cinderella part 3 and the girls again were asking about going to Disney World for their birthday in May so A. and I need to figure out someway to make that happen. Jiminy Cricket is not around to help me by my wishing on a star!

All for now.

Freezing/super bowl/home

2007-02-05T20:40:00.000-08:00

Everything is cool lately, with the exception being J. has scarlet fever. WE went to a neighbor's house for the Super Bowl, and had a good time and lots of bowls of chili. The temps out here are awful, it has been about -25 with wind chill the last few days. My car has been having trouble starting. Home is good, A. and I have been watching tons of Desperate Housewives season two, so far so good. I re-read about all of my Raymond Carver stories as a reward for all the reading for school, and wow so many of them are such downers, I bet Carver was not much fun at parties, he has a very bleak outlook on life and relationships.

Last week I finally grasped lots of the basics for the programming language so feel more confident in it. It is a challenging though very interesting class. Lots of projects and tons of reading, but enjoyable. In addition to programming,many of the students are into online gaming, world of witchcraft, etc. I have not played any of these games so usually am pretty quiet during breaks and the hour in the lab, just focussing on writing the programs and trying to improve. 3 of the 15 classes are done, it is neat how fast a 3 hour lecture can go when the professor is on a roll, which was the case last Friday.

N. was unbelievably attnetive to J. this weekend, bringing her cold ice water, extra blankets, and even magic markers and paper to draw. Very thoughtful. J. was quite weak Saturday, seemed somewhat better Sunday and today went to the Doctor and got medicine/antibiotics for the scarlet fever, ten days worth of doses.

hmmmm what else? Not much really, things are good at home, we just all are hoping the weather warms up, supposedly it will be 10 degress tomorrow with possibility of snow, so we will see.

new music/inland empire/winter/the girls

2007-01-31T07:18:00.000-08:00

In addition to entertaining the girls, which lately has involved walks in the cold to the park to play freeze tag and get some exercise, a wonderful trip to the library to practice reading and play pre-school games on the computers and check out books, studying, working, and yes finally hopping back on the treadmill to start running again, there have been a few new releases musicwise that I have been enjoying.

Last week the new Shins came out and I of course got it immediately, it is really a good piece of music to listen, I absolutely loved three of the tracks immediately. I am still surprised that they were so poor live when we saw them at Lollapalooza in the summer. Also, yesterday the new Skinny Puppy was released and it is brilliant, many reviews are heralding it as their best album ever. I am not yet ready to state that though it is a bit more accessible than some past albums though still menacing and thought provoking. It definitely will be fun when they tour in April, their visual spectacle is always cool.

Things are going well, just very busy. It's been particularly cold recently which has kinda limited the family's outdoor exploits. Lots of practicing with numbers, letters, and reading at home, and even some board games such as monopoly, which the girls enjoy. Reminds me, I want to teach them how to play backgammon.

And the new Lynch film is in Chicago for only one more week! So I need to figure out some way to go see it. A. realizes how important it is to me (she knows quite well my Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive obsessions) and so I should be able to sneak out next week and see it. It is a bit frustrating knowing it is 3 hours long, but I am eager to see it, Laura Dern, rabbits, and Poland. Quite a combination!

All for now.

Pats quote

2007-01-25T11:03:00.000-08:00

"You can be a Super Bowl champion that wins an individual Super Bowl or you can be one of those teams that are always associated with being a dynasty. They used it for the Steelers, the Cowboys, the 49ers, the Packers and they used it with us. That means we were one of the best teams ever, if not the best. I'd put us up against anyone, but if you ask me, the best team to ever play in this league was the New England Patriots." - LB Tedy Bruschi on the Patriots three Super Bowl titles over the last six years.

the Horror

2007-01-25T08:29:00.000-08:00

This makes no sens whatsoever to me...how is this humanly possible?

LONDON (AFP) - Forty-one percent of Britons believe that an event like the Holocaust could happen in the country today, given the depth of intolerance and prejudice, according to a new survey.

Furthermore, 36 percent thought that most people would do nothing about it if it did happen, in a poll released ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day on Saturday.

The YouGov poll of 2,400 Britons found that 50 percent did not know that as well as Jews, homosexuals, disabled people and the Roma community were also targeted by Nazi Germany.

A further 79 percent were unaware that black people were persecuted and killed under the Nazi regime in Germany, which ruled from 1933 to 1945.

The "alarming" results beg the question "have we really learnt anything from the genocides of our recent past?", said Stephen Smith, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust chairman.

"With increasing levels of hate-crime, prejudice and ignorance towards those that are in some way different to ourselves, we really need to be vigilant in tackling prejudice and intolerance," he said.

"As genocides in Europe, Rwanda and Bosnia have shown, it doesn't take much to turn these negative conditions into something far more calamitous.

"We need to be constantly on our guard against this, which is why we are asking the public to show their support by lighting a candle to commemorate those killed in past genocides."

Holocaust Memorial Day, a day of remembrance across the world, marks the liberation of the Nazis' Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.

It will be marked in Britain at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle, northeast England. The national commemoration was to remember victims of the Holocaust and genocides since such as Rwanda, Bosnia and the ongoing situation in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Auschwitz survivor Alex Ward said of the survey: "These statistics emphasise it is not just about remembering -- it is also about learning the lessons to ensure the horrific experiences my friends, family and I endured are not repeated."

Freeze tag, class, and reading

2007-01-23T12:03:00.000-08:00

Lots of reading and freeze tag going on recently with N&J. Tonight we are planning an excursion to the local park to play some freeze tag. A and myself have been reading more and more often to them, they each just completed 6 additional hours of reading since January 1st in order to win free tickets to an amusement park. This is in addition to their reading homework and reading one book a night to win a free pizza! Sometimes my voice hurts believe me!

The football games were exciting over the weekend and we spent most of Sunday visiting P and E. The girls play with E while P and I drink coffee and watch football, it is actually a lot more fun that that sentence sounds! :)

Tough loss for the Pats but they have two yes two first round draft picks next season so they will be fun to watch and very good again next season.

Had my first class Friday night- it is four hours long, it is a C++ programming class, should be good though sitting through 1 3 hours lecture is not much fun, the hour long lab work is a catharsis to say the least.

And A I are working on a budget and have plans to remodel the house, save for the summer trip to Poland and buy a new tv, so it will be challenging but doable.

Pitchers and catchers report soon!

Goodies

2007-01-16T07:47:00.000-08:00

Lots of presents from Christams are finally arriving from Boston- lots of books for N&J including books about puppies and ballerinas, also N showed me a book about how to draw trains. And I think my Doctor Who gifts are due to arrive this week along with other boxes including books, clothes, and board games. So yeah!!!

We had a great Sunday visiting with P and E, the girls all watched Cars, drew pictures, colored, played hide and seek and learned they all love horses and unicorns. P and I watched football then I took N&J to a pool party for their daisy girl scout troop. Unbelievably the Pats won which really was a perfect example of sports uplifting your spirits.

Last night was great we went to the local park via sled, initially pushed both girls then they took turns. We played freeze tag and then went home where we read some more books , then bath, then bed.

Aga and I haven't seen anything decent filmwise since the Illusionist, we did watch a comedy show called Scrubs for the first time and we both liked it.

My second programming class starts this Friday night, 6-10pm. The new Lynch movie is out in Chicago, Inaldn Empire, this weekend but I doubt I will be able to see it sice watching N&J.

Since the Field Museum/Shedd Aquarium was so much fun look slike I will be taking N&J there again, though for next Sunday they have another play date scheduled with E.

Sebald

2007-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has been reading this blog and noted my Six Feet Under and death references will not be surprised to hear that my favorite part of the Oscars is the montage of all the people who died that year. So my apologies for again writing about a death, though I felt it important to comment on the fifth anniversary of W.G. Sebald's death. On December 14, 2001, he died in a car accident. He was 57, and had only started writing outside of academic work in his 40s, working in his native German even though he had spent most of his life in England.

How to describe his work? Haunting, digressive, melancholy, funny (which is often overlooked). Novels that read like odd memoirs or biographies, with indistinct photographs whose relation to the text is unclear but evocative. One of the most remarkable things about him was how quickly a writer so odd and apparently unapproachable was embraced. In only five years since his first book was translated into English, The Emigrants, he became acclaimed as the most significant writer of the day, the one readers and writers were passing on to each other as someone who had changed literature. His last novel, Austerlitz, was, amazingly, a New York Times bestseller. When people learned I was visiting Auschwitz last summer and struggled with comprehending its horrors, this book was recommended to me, and it did indeed help.

Unfortunately, not much notice has been taken of this anniversary. The best piece on Sebald I can find on the web is the collection of responses to his death (by Sontag, Geoff Dyer, and others) in The Threepenny Review, and there was a good obituary in The Guardian. There's also an interesting interview on The New Yorker site, and an audio interview with the intense literary oddball Michael Silverblatt on his Bookworm show, both from the Austerlitz tour. And here's a passage from Sebald's "The Emigrants'...I have often wished I could write as effectively as he does so effortlessly.....please enjoy!

"It had always been of the greatest importance to him, Ferber once remarked casually, that nothing should change at his place of work, that everything should remain as it was, as he had arranged it, and that nothing further should be added but the debris generated by painting and the dust that continuously fell and which, as he was coming to realize, he loved more than anything else in the world. He felt closer to dust, he said, than to light, air or water. There was nothing he found so unbearable as a well-dusted house, and he never felt more at home than in places where things remained undisturbed, muted under the grey, velvety sinter left when matter dissolved, little by little, into nothingness. And indeed, when I watched Ferber working on one of his portrait studies over a number of weeks, I often thought that his prime concern was to increase the dust. He drew with vigorous abandon, frequently going through half a dozen of his willow-wood charcoal sticks in the shortest of time; and that process of drawing and shading on the thick, leathery paper, as well as the concomitant business of constantly erasing what he had drawn with a woolen rag already heavy with charcoal, really amounted to nothing but a steady production of dust, which never ceased except at night. Time and again, at the end of a working day, I marvelled to see that Ferber, with the few lines and shadows that had escaped annihilation, had created a portrait of great vividness. And all the more did I marvel when, the following morning, the moment the model had sat down and he had taken a look at him or her, he would erase the portrait yet again, and once more set about excavating the features of his model, who by now was distinctly wearied by this manner of working, from a surface already badly damaged by the continual destruction. The facial features and eyes, said Ferber, remained ultimately unknowable for him. He might reject as many as forty variants, or smudge them back into the paper and overdraw new attempts upon them; and if he then decided that the portrait was done, not so much because he was convinced that it was finished as through sheer exhaustion, an onlooker might well feel that it had evolved from a long lineage of grey, ancestral faces, rendered unto ash but still there, as ghostly presences, on the harried paper."

Active

2007-01-08T13:45:00.000-08:00

It was quite the busy active weekend. A. did not work all weekend, Saturday after the girls finished their Polish school we drove downtown and went to the Field Museum, where we checked out Tibet, New Guinea, and Egyptian exhibits and artifacts, then we made a beeline to the Shedd Aquarium and checked out the sharks, the reef exhibit, and of course the dolphin show. Interestingly, J. prefers the Field Museum, she especially lvoed a dimaond and gemstone exhibit of course since she loves collecting stones, and N. loved the aquarium, she saw her favorite unicron fish and also the turles and the dolphins. The dolphins ended up being a big hit with all three girls this time around.

I ended up travelling to the local park three times with N&J, twice we played "freeze tag"- once at the park and once in the front yard. I jogged most of the time since they were riding their bicycles so fast. Oh and Friday night we took a nice long 2 1/2 mile walk to make sure we saw all of the remaining Christmas decorations in our neighborhood.
And I did get to watch most of the Pats playoff game since A. was home, and she bought me some new sneakers, casual ones, not running ones, they are black with red, they are way cool.

I am almost done re-reading all of Raymond Carver's short stories, and I also rewatched Genesis of the Daleks late at night Friday, and Sat night A. and I watched Eddie Murphy in Boomerang, it was actually decent, we had never seen it before.

The girls were in excellent spirits since we kept them so busy all the time, they did of course do some more drawings, and read more books, they are huge fans of Curious George lately and so we have been rading a lot of those stories and alos we read "Make Way for Ducklings!" last night which N. has decided is one of her most favorite stories!!! And they remembered checking out the duckling statues in Boston Common a few weeks ago, and A. and I spoke about J. and how much we miss her! And it is hilarious how much both N&J now love dragons because of J's husband A.!!! :)

And I heard from an old friend who will come visit next Sunday to watch football playoffs so that is good. Also good is I heard back from the Doctor Who audio company in England, Big Finish, and my cds for Xmas will be arriving soon, they were supposedly shipped Friday!

All for now.

Late night movie fun

2007-01-04T08:09:00.000-08:00

Watched most of Superman Returns dvd last night, I liked it a lot, I think the actor playing Superman is doing a fine job at portraying the Christopher Reeve Superman.

I took a nice 2 and a half mile walk after dinner with N&J and we walked all around our neighbor checking out as many of the remaining Christmas decorations as possible.

A. is still tired from the trip to Boston, hopefully she gets back to her old self soon.

More on home

2007-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

It really is relaxing to be home, house and laundry ahve been thoroughly cleaned, N&J keep wanting toi play the game Monopoloy lately and read their books, then after they go to sleep A. and I head to the basement and watch movies, soon we will start to watch all of the Desperate Housewives season two dvds.

The weather has gotten a little chillier but not much. In the back of mind I keep thinking of taking a run at night but so far have not.

The cat's new spot for napping seems to be under the chair near the porch door, for a while it had been under the Christmas tree, though now that all decorations and tree have been stored away, he needed to find a new spot.

I read a news article today that a 112 year old woman just passed away she was a lifelong Red Sox fan and the team brought the chmapionship trophy to hear when they won a few seasons ago, and she calimed it was one of the best days of her life! Interesting.

All for now.

New years Eve

2006-12-31T18:50:00.000-08:00

We are staying in.

A. just returned from work- we are listening to the Cure remastered Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me, dancing around, playing air guitar, and N&J are sipping sparkling grape juice out of gigantic goblets. We are all happy, it's way cool to be with my three girls!

:)

Home

2006-12-30T15:32:00.000-08:00

We are all back home after spending 8 days in Boston.

Christmas and my birthday are over. Enough said.

Happy New Year to all.

I am off to buy some pink champagne shortly.

A. was cancelled from work today and so we visited friends who just bought a new house and I finally met their baby, Nadia, she was adorable and the house has a massive basement that we loved.

Mary Faherty

2006-12-15T18:13:00.000-08:00

My maternal Grandmother died about two hours ago. And I can't stop thinking about my times with her, as a small boy she always talked about the Boston sports teams with me, whether it was the hockey team, Bruins when I was really young because I loved skating and played hockey for a few years, or the Celtics in the early eighties when they won many championships, or the Red Sox and all their dramatic failures until their timely championship recently. Grandma in my memory was always so very kind and gracious. Whenever I visited her with my Mother she always offered me cookies and a drink, I can close my eyes and picture her at her apartment surrounded with all of her things.

The last few weeks have been hard, as it is is hard to hear the pain family is in when losing someone.

My Grandma was so proud of her Irish heritage, and so pleased the Red Sox were world champions. And her cookies were great.

These are the things along with her goodness that I am choosing to keep within me, memories to bring a smile when needed.

BC

2006-12-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

BC has returned to San Diego! It was a short but sweet visit.

As soon as we drove away from the airport, Nicki said: "I all ready miss Bill".

Matsuzaka!

2006-12-13T12:34:00.000-08:00

Supposedly the Red Sox are very close to signing Matsuzaka, the Japanese pitching phenom!

So looks like next season's starting rotation would be:

Schilling
Beckett
Matsuzaka
Wakefield
Papelbon

Looks good on paper, though I am concerned that the Sox still have no closer!

Maybe they can sign Clemens, stick him in the rotation and move Wakefield to the pen?

Also, Since Lester is now cancer-free, where does he end up? He is a starter too!

Good dilemma to have though. :)

Holidays

2006-12-13T08:24:00.000-08:00

We are finishing up our holiday shopping, and getting ready to visit Boston next Wednesday. Our good friend BC has been visiting this week and staying with us. Monday we all went to a Christmas recital for the twins, they sand a few carols and a good time was had by all. Haven't done much reading lately aside from some Raymond Carver short stories. Work and school have been keeping me busy.

Am looking forward to seeing all of my family at home next week!

Lynch in Boston

2006-12-05T13:52:00.000-08:00

from the Globe:

David Lynch was his charming, inscrutable self at the Brattle Theatre Sunday. In town for a screening of his new movie, "Inland Empire," the director took a few questions, but answered obliquely. Asked, for example, about the bunnies in his new film, the "Blue Velvet" director said, " They're not bunnies, they're rabbits." Lynch did manage to make a little news, announcing that the second season of his long-ago TV series "Twin Peaks" is coming out on DVD next spring. At that, the crowd erupted in applause. Before the screening, Lynch attended a reception at OM in Harvard Square, where he chatted with Haden Guest, new director of the Harvard Film Archive, and to Cambridge City Councilor Brian Murphy. (The council declared Sunday "David Lynch Day.") The director later dined at Casablanca with Brattle Film Foundation founders Ned Hinkle and Ivy Moylan, and Brattle board prez Mike Bowes.

Hazardous Driving

2006-12-01T06:55:00.000-08:00

Reminded today of how awful it is to drive in a snowstorm! Ended up going an average of 20 m.p.h. all the way to work, and went arriving at work, discovered that the parking lot was not plowed! I parked but am worried about getting out later today, hopefully it will be plowed and all will work out.

I was actually relieved/happy to get to work today safely, I was not sure I would make it.

Last night was fun, me and the girls played monopoly and they drew me cool pictures. And A. did grocery shopping and got lots of grat stuff.

new lyrics

2006-11-29T16:30:00.001-08:00

Now my body is sad
And the wind blows through me
Like the soil on your head
I am compost and leaves
And my life was gone, darling
And now I am free
And my life is gone darling like words made of sand
Like the shivering tree
And my life was a flower
And love was the leaves
But nobody saw
Any beauty in me
And my life is gone darling
And now I am free
And my life was gone darling like words made of sand
Like a shivering tree
When your life was gone darling
And when you were free
When your life was gone darling your words made of sand
So be nothing with me
Words made of sand
Just words made of sand

-Brett Anderson

new lyrics

2006-11-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

Now my body is sad
And the wind blows through me
Like the soil on your head
I am compost and leaves
And my life has gone, darling
And now i am free
And my life is gone darling like words made of sand
Like the shivering tree
And my life was a flower
And love was the leaves
But nobody's young
And if you see in me
And my life is gone darling
And now i am free
And my life was gone darling like words made of sand
Like a shivering tree
When your life was gone darling
And when you were free
When your life was gone darling your words made of sand
So be nothing with me
Words made of sand
Just words made of sand

-Brett Anderson

Flu shots

2006-11-28T13:15:00.000-08:00

We all had our flu shots- Aga had hers at the hospital, she brought me one home and administered it to me, and N&J had theirs last night. I took them- they were ok, N. was kinda scared and cried, but she brightened up as soon as we were walking back to the car!

We all have been playing lots of "go fish" cards game and a fishing game with mini fish and magnets lately. The girls beat us usually. Also, I started teaching them how to play monopoly, the board game, which they seem to like.

Aga is interested in learning how to play backgammon so I might need to get that game too.

We prefer playing games to watching too much television.

Oh, and I have been reading a collection of science fiction stories by Philip K. Dick(blade runner, minority report, etc.), they are interesting though quite bleak!

Thankful

2006-11-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

I realize it is a no-brainer but I am most thankful for my family. Especially the blessing of having two sweet beautiful kind loving daughters.

Side note- I also am thankful that God let me finish the Chicago Marathon for a second time, only I wish it did not have to hurt so much for a full week afterwards. I thought my right knee was never going to be the same again!

Holiday Plans

2006-11-22T08:36:00.000-08:00

My Dad arrives in about an hour for Thanksgiving, we have turkey, corn, potatoes, apple pie, stuffing, cranberry, green beans, gravy, ice cream, cool whip, it should be good.

Hopefully I will be able to sit with Dad and show him "Father's Day', a Who episode I think he will get a kick out of, and also take a nice long walk as well.

The Doctor Who convention begins tomorrow night at a local hotel, I may pop in Friday but not sure because Dad leaves then. Saturday with N&J is definitely happening and Sunday is a possibility. Mainly it depends on money, as per usual, because I KNOW that N&J and of course me really want to spend as much time a the convenion as possible.

Nicki is really so cute, in the morning I was geting ready to leave for work and I asked her if she was excited that her Grandpa was visiting today she said yes then paused then she looked at me and asked, "Dad, are you excited too?" SO cute, but sadly she is sick! So the current Ward family medical report is that me and Julia are ok and Aga and Nicki are sick! Nicki basicallyhas a high fever, a cough, and feels very very weak, so she stayed home from school today.

I started Xmas shopping this week, got Aga a few things.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

On the Mend

2006-11-16T06:18:00.000-08:00

Nicki came home from school because she got sick on the bus, I got sick at night so did not go to work, then proceeded to sleep from about 1130 am until 330pm. It is funny because last week the main family member who was so sick was Julia and now she is fine, but the rest of us all felt so sick yesterday. Aga called the girls doctor and was told there is a bug going around right now, hopefully it is gone, I do feel better today but still have not eaten so we will see.

In the evening I had to take N&J to their school for "family reading night", I read to them, they bought books, they won books in a contest, and we all made bookmarks, it was fun.

I have been reading Philip K Dick's "Minority Report and other short stories" lately during my lunch breaks, it is odd but good.

The Red Sox won the rights to bid for Matsuzaka, the Japanese pitcher phenom, hopefully they can sign him.

Irony

2006-11-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was filled with irony. Aga had an argument with a friend of hers who is a Christian and it might be a while before they speak to one another again, and then in the afternoon, we got in the mail a thank you card from her and her son for the presents for his birthday a few weeks ago.

There was another irony but it is personal so I decided not to share it here.

Happy Birthday to my little sister Liz.

All for now.

Anne Frank's Tree

2006-11-14T08:31:00.000-08:00

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - The ancient chestnut tree that comforted Anne Frank while she was in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Holland must be cut down, the Amsterdam city council said Tuesday.

The diseased tree in the courtyard behind the canal-side warehouse where the Frank family took refuge for more than two years has been attacked by an aggressive fungus and a moth, called the horse chestnut leaf miner. Experts estimate the tree's age at 150-170 years.

The chestnut is familiar to some 25 million readers of "The Diary of Anne Frank." Anne often looked at it longingly from the attic, the only window that was not blacked out to prevent anyone seeing movement inside the apartment in the rear of the warehouse on Prinsengracht street where the Frank family hid.

The Jewish teenager made several references to it in the diary that she kept during the 25 months she remained indoors until the family was arrested in August 1944.

The tree's condition has rapidly deteriorated in recent years, the city said. The inner wood is rotten and the dying roots and bark are not regenerating.

"It's very sad, but the decision has been taken," said Patricia Bosboom, spokeswoman of the Anne Frank House museum. "It's one of the oldest chestnut trees in Amsterdam."

It will take several weeks before the city issues the required license to fell the tree.

The museum, where the tiny apartment has been preserved, said grafts already have been taken and a sapling from the original chestnut will replace the once-towering tree.

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs," Anne wrote on Feb. 23, 1944. "From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. ...

"As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy."

Anne Frank died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in March 1945.

Daisy Scouts

2006-11-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

N&J are Daisy scouts officially and they have their first troop meeting this afternoon. Nicki is feeling a lot better now too, so it looks like the whole family is voer the flu finally.

I am planning on doing a nice run today after work since all of the girls will be at the meeting, Aga is one of the troop leaders, and evidently they meet once a month.

Resignation

2006-11-08T10:46:00.000-08:00

Rumsfeld just resigned, hooray!

Asics

2006-11-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

I had the rare chance to do an afternoon run because Aga took the girls to school for a party/reward for their selling stuff for fundraising for the school. I wore the new white asics for the second time and so far they are just perfect, I really like them. The cold weather really limits the running, I had planned to do a bit more but ended up running for about half an hour, then went back home. The knee hurt a bit and so I used the heating pad and today so far it feels great, perhaps I am ok now, time will tell.

Nicki still has a bad cough but it looks like Julia and me are finally "flu free".

Halloween

2006-10-30T10:32:00.000-08:00

Nicki's costume is a witch and Julia's is a cat for Halloween.

They have been making lots of decorations at school and decorating their doors at home, Nicki likes to draw witches on brroms and write "BOOOOOOOOOOO!", Julia likes to draw ghosts and pumpkins.

Yesterday afternoon was fun, we all went to a birthday party for their friend michael, who turned 6. Played hockey with Nicki, basketball with Julia, and pushed Nicki on a skateboard(Julia was off on her own skateboard).

I finally ran again since the Mararathon- just two miles on the treadmill Sunday morning because my right knee hurts. I checked on ask.com and looks like I have something called, now do not laugh- it is called "runner's knee"! So I have been using a heat pad at night, drinking lots of vitamin water, and taking it easy, as much as possible with two 5 year olds at home.

My flu and Julia's is about completely gone, now the one who is pretty sick at our house is Nicki, she has a really bad cough. Hopefully she be well enough to trick or treat tomorrow! They really love holidays, they are such good girls.

Ok more family and running updates later, take care all.