improvements needed on facebook (or whatever replaces it)

• Allow me to filter out the Virtual World games

I want to know how you are doing. I don't care about your virtual farm or mafia world.

• As soon as you add a friend, you should be prompted for the name of a group.

Everyone is not the same sort of friend. "Friends" belong to different interest and social groups. I like hearing about all my facebook friends. I don't need to remind those in California to go to our town meeting. There are friends to whom I'd like to chat about a Tim Burton-esque moment, and many facebook "friends" whom I would not want to bother with that stuff.

Thus whatever replaces facebook will be something with a natural easy interface for adding friends to appropriate groups, and easily sending messages to groups. Some "friends" would be in several groups, of course.

I should be able to sort them into privately decided on groups. I should also be able to define public names for groups into which my "friends" can sort themselves. All of this should be extremely easy to do and not require me to read directions as to how to do it. It must be intuitive.

When you "confirm" someone as a friend, you should get a popup asking what publicly-defined groups you'd like to be in. For example:

• Margie's Movie and TV Discussions
• Guinea Pig willing to read Story Drafts
• Tell me about the kids. Photos please.
• All the minutiae about your day, really.
• Issues relating to our town's public schools
• People who might buy my sculptures

Democracy makes 49% mad

All this talk of "the people are against this" and this bill is being "shoved down our throats" ignores the fact that there was an election, and a majority of the people voted for the Democrats. Health Care reform was a major platform under which the Democrats campaigned. We got what the majority voted for. That's how democracy works. When I compare expenditure on Health Care to that on a bloody unnecessary war entered into by our previous, Republican, Administration, I'd say the Democrats are wiser at spending our money, and lives.

$5 for a box of summer

California raspberries in February.

Notes on Boskone panel: The Heroine's Journey

The Hero's journey is physical with internal parallel.
Archtypical Joseph Campbell, orphaned baby, foster parents, journey to end in becoming Wise Old King.
Real people make things for work and find a partner and have kids.
Getting Back what you lost.
Isis: Putting pieces of a man together so you can have a baby.
Greer: Girls in labyrinths.  Eilonwy and her bauble.
LeGuin's Tahana irritated other writers to write better.  Wizard of Earthsea vs Tombs of Ituan.
Theme of Escaping constricting female role.
Bujold: Women inherit from mother-in-law.  Go out and stay out.
Ista was stuck back at home.  At 40 she tries again.
Bujold was given credit for writing about a middle aged woman.  Someone in the audience remembered a crack about a 50-year-old heroine entering a dragon's lair:  Is it hot in here or is that just...
Bujold:  Women attract men.  Men defeat other men and get the woman automatically.  That's why men and women are both looking at men.
Bujold:  Not just the guy's story and flip it.  What is woman's power?
Janet Kagan's Mirabile.
Goddesses Priestesses figures, mother role.
Nanny Ogg - Middle Aged.
Demeter--Balbo lifts skirts and dances to make Demeter laugh.
Writing a Woman's Life.
Christopher Broockmeyer's tale of an Action-Adventure Grandmom: All Fun and Games

the best quote I heard at Boskone 2010

was when Verner Vinge said:

That humans will be here in a million years is kind of depressing.  There should be something much better around that we made or that we became.

 It reminded me of how we tell our kids we want them to be better than us, not take after us.

Rafi on the Boskone Badge

The Artist guest of honor at Boskone was John Picacio.  They used one of his cover illustrations for the Badge.  We noticed that the child in the image looked a lot like Rafi.  I tried to snap a photo of Rafi before leaving for the con Sunday morning but ran out of time and didn't manage to get the angle just right.

Edgy Mr Ed

This morning my husband was talking about how prime time television used to have more innocent shows with fantasy elements--like I Dream of Jeanie, Bewitched, and Mr Ed.

"Mr Ed, a talking horse.  A kid's show in prime time," I said, but then amended,  "No.  It was suitable for kids, but it wasn't a kid's show.  Because Mr Ed wasn't about a talking horse.  It was about a man who was frustrated with his wife and his small town middle class life.  His wife thinks he's a dolt, but he has this talking horse like a superman secret identity superpower."

"I never thought of it that way," said my husband. "He is frustrated with his wife--he probably married her straight out of high school.  The horse is his superman alter-ego.  That would be how to remake the show.  Have Wilbur be obviously psychotic, with Mr Ed just talking in his mind."

That led to whether Slaughterhouse Five should be interpreted as literal science fiction time travel, or as the character being psychotic, or as Magical Realism.

arisia 2010: silver costume

I didn't take many photos at Arisia. Here are two of people I don't know.

Someone needs to reinvent galoshes.

They're practical.  I'm tired of having to change my shoes when I'm running in and out.  There's also the puddle-sock hazard.
The old galoshes and rubbers were difficult to remove.  And they acquired a hopelessly un-Cool reputation.  Someone is going to re-invent galoshes, make them Cool, and make lots of money.

Arisia 2010

Ro helped Rafi with her Kamikazi Kids Pink Sparkle French Princess costume.

Pie helped Zoe with her Kamikaze Kids Phoenix costume.

Unicorn-C sold at the Art Auction!

Commercials we stop channel-surfing to watch

Currently, it's the American Express commercial with the frowns and then the smiles.  If commercials are engaging, sponsors don't have to worry about Tivo.

Four strings, eight dollars.

I bought a "First Act Discovery" ukulele for Hanukah on Sunday.  We gave it to Rafi, but she agreed to share it.  Sunday night, I looked on the web for how to play it.  Found a great on-line ukulele tuner. I wish I could find a similar page for lute.  There was also http://www.theuke.com, which has learn to play in 3 minutes (1 chord) or 4 minutes (another chord), and free sheet music with tablature.  Printed out jingle bells, home on the range, and auld lang syn.  Now we're all set.  Let's see who actually ends up playing it.  If any of us.  Lots of fun, the bit I did.  It did come out of tune after one attempt at Jingle Bells.  Is that normal?

Rafi raisin dog face

What a clever little girl!

600 Credit Cards

Rafi began to memorize The Charge of the Light Brigade, but now she's changing it.

She recites the first stanza straight, and the second one up to "Theirs not to reason why". But then she recites:

Theirs but to do and buy.
Into the Shopping Mall rode the 600.

Food court to right of them
Food court to left of them
Food court in front of them
Eat! Eat! Eat! Eat!

Then she collapses in laughter.

I'm not sure if we're going to finish the poem. So far, it has been educational. She has learned the words "blunder", "dismay", and "reply". She has learned the poetic principal of having one Soldier stand for all of them. She's learning how to parody.

She turns 6 next Monday.

my email wants to be Twitter

When I log into my yahoo email, the welcome screen now says:

What are you doing right now?

It provides a line for me to type in the answer.
I'm torn between: "None of your business!" and "I'm checking my email, duhh."

Rafi's latest story

The Girl Annabelle and the Mysterious Boy Named Kevin

By Rafaela Zeballos, Age 5.

Once upon a time there was a little girl named Annabelle. And she was very nice. And one day she met a strange little boy. The boy was the same age as Annabelle was. And that day the boy and Annabelle became friends. But there was one thing about the boy that the girl didn't know about the boy. The boy's name was Kevin. But when the boy was just about to tell Annabelle his name, he thought Annabelle would think his name was lame. But he knew his parents always told him to tell people his name. So he took a deep breath and told Annabelle his name. And this is what he said: Hi. My name is Kevin. And the girl said back: Hi. My name is Annabelle. And when they were grownups, they married each other.

The End.

Ogunquit Cell Phone Photos

Along the Marginal Way

Sam and view nearby.

Surfer ready to encounter Bill.

Zoe on a tamer beach.

Questions for Dr Phil

Isn't it traumatic to have one's worst weaknesses exposed on national television? Are a lot of the guests hurt more than helped? Is there a support group for them?

Camping, Lessons Learned

• Bring more towels.
• Figure in a half day to set up and another half day to tear down. (Maybe under 3 hours, if you're good at it.)
• Ideal camping trip is three or four nights. Rodrigo says three nights.
• Have an extra sleeping bag or quilt handy in case it gets cold in the middle of the night.
• You really need to find your swiss army knife before the next time.
• Don't forget pillows.
• Rain entertainment should also be packed. (According to Zoe.)
• The more stuff, the more to sort through to find what you need, the more delay in getting anywhere.
• Having one bag for one category of stuff was useful. E.g. the "medicine cabinet" bag, the non-cooler food bag, etc. Do this with the rest of the items, so you won't lose the bottle opener again. (also see, swiss army knife.)
  

Food lessons:

• The Coleman forks that screwed together to be very long were great for hot dogs. I could cook five hot dogs at a time by holding them in the flames of a wood fire. No waiting for coals.
• Don't use the Coleman forks for marshmallows. They stick terribly. Bring disposable wooden skewers for the marshmallows.
• One packet of hot dogs was enough for one night. And next time remember lettuce.
• Bring fruit. Apples, oranges, grapes--all were good.
  
• The propane burner did come in handy. So next time bring something in which to boil water for tea, and some tea.
  
• Freeze a carton or two of lemonade and put them in the cooler to defrost and drink. That would be more useful than the blocks of melted arsenic-contaminated tap water.
• Food takes up a lot of room. Pack enough for the first night cookout and some stuff to nibble on for breakfast. After the first night, eat out. Or go grocery shopping while there.

family camping on the Cape

I needed to take a vacation before my co-worker went away for a month. I did not want to spend more than the cost of a new Energy Star refrigerator, the item that has been topmost in my future large expenditure plans.

We bought a Coleman Bayside 8 tent for about $160 from Target. It's a roomy 8-person tent that we could stand up in. The four of us could sleep in it with our luggage around us. It wasn't stuffy, like the reasonable small tents I'd slept in before. It would have been nice to have more windows one could see through with the rainfly on, other than the two through the door. With the rainfly off, it is a good screen house. I can envision using it as a refuge from bugs in the backyard. Its best feature is a swinging door, which you can secure with Velcro when you and/or your kids are going in and out frequently. When you're in or out for a while, you can zip it shut like in a normal tent.

Carver

I wanted to visit Plimoth Plantation, so the first night we stayed in Miles Standish State Forest ($14). It was decent, though more of a getaway for the metro-Boston resident or budget-alternative to a hotel than a destination worth crossing state lines for. We were disappointed by trash left around the campground and in our campsite. There was also a lot of electronic noise from fellow campers. We had to listen to baseball until after the supposed quiet time of 10pm. One nice feature was a small pond within view of our campsite, where we could wade or even swim.

Before the trip, I'd looked at websites for different campgrounds near Plymouth MA and on Cape Cod. One of them, "Paine's" in Wellfleet had seemed very snooty. They had families with children segregated into a section separate from the all-grownup parties. After our first hour in Miles Standish listening to whiny and crying children from surrounding sites, I decided they had a point. After my darling child began bawling at the top of her lungs after 10pm, I conceded that our family was no exception.

It takes a while to get used to camping. I woke up in the middle of the night because I was too cold, then was woken too early by five-year-old Rafi. I tried to amuse her with a notebook and pen I fished out of my pocketbook.

"I'll write a story," said Rafi.

"Great," I said, and closed my eyes.

"Mommy, how do you spell 'Once'?"

"O-n-c-e, but I gave you the pen and notebook so you'd let me sleep. Just make up a spelling. It doesn't matter. Please let me sleep."

I closed my eyes.

"Mommy, how do you spell 'upon'?

I was zombie mommy and not in the mood to learn anything. We tubed Plimoth plans and headed for the beach.

Just Off Cape on Dwellable

Brewster

We stayed at the Sweetwater Forest campground in Brewster MA ($32 times 3 nights). It's on a large plot of land that contains a picturesque marsh, sandpit, and pond. There were horses in a privately owned farm in the grounds, but they were not for the campers to ride. There was canoeing and fishing in the pond but not swimming. If you walked out onto the boat dock, you could see large turtles swimming in the pond. I think that's the first time I've seen large turtles in New England, outside of an aquarium.

The campground boasted a miniature golf course, but it was more of a collection of miniature putting greens. No windmill and no kitch--it wasn't proper miniature golf.

The water and electric hookup sites were somewhat close together but landscaped in a pleasant way. The tent/no-hookup sites were slightly more spaced. When we asked to stay an extra night and had to move, we got to stay in the "DLK" site, which was really beautiful--overlooking the pond in one direction and a small playground in another. It was also very secluded. I overheard someone saying "DLK" stood for "David L Klein". A websearch reveals he was a co-owner of the campground, who died in 1996.

We bought a sticker for the national seashore ($45). We went to the Marconi beach and had a great time riding waves in the seaweed. We went to the other two National Seashore beaches in the Provincetown area, but arrived late in the afternoon and found them cold. We drove through P-town with difficulty, and decided we needed to walk or bike there from somewhere else. We looked longingly at art galleries, then drove to the first pizza place on Route 6 that had parking. Very good pizza.