Stan’s Obligatory Blog

We took Lucinda to Alethia’s birthday party today. It was held at the pool at an apartment complex in Marina Del Rey. She had some fun playing with the other kids, even though she didn’t go in the pool. Overall, she thought it was a fun time.

Afterward, we took her to Aunt Maggi’s house so she could spend the night there.

We took Lucinda to Disneyland today. This was her first time there, and she had a lot of fun.

We started off in Fantasyland. She saw the castle, and she insisted on going in. She rode the Carousel first. While riding that, she saw the Dumbo ride, so we did that next. During that ride, she saw the Matterhorn and she insisted that she wanted to ride that. She rode the Matterhorn with Daddy, but when it was over, she said that she didn’t like it. The ride was too rough, and she thought the parts in the dark were scary.

Next, we went to the new Pooh ride. The line was kind of long, so we picked up passes to come back later. While we were waiting, we took the raft over to Tom Sawyer Island. Lucinda climbed in the treehouse and ran across the bridges. After this, we had lunch while we were waiting for our appointment with Pooh. After lunch, we came back and did the Pooh ride. Lucinda liked the ride, but it broke down just before the end, so we ended up having to walk out.

Next, we went to Toontown. On the way there, Lucinda met Aladdin, Jasmine, and the Genie. Then, when we got there, she met Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and Donald. Great excitement for a four-year-old. She also did the bouncer in Goofy’s house. We were going to do the Roger Rabbit Car Toon ride, but she decided that she didn’t want to do any more rides in the dark.

Finally, we rode the Monorail. After this, we headed for the exit. The devastation was great, but Lucinda had had a good time.

Pictures are in the photo album at http://1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?string=&ayear=2003&amonth=5&aday=7&byear=2003&bmonth=5&bday=7&submit=Search

Today Daddy took Lucinda to the “Making” exhibit at the LACMA [http://www.lacma.org] Children’s Gallery. We took along her friend Alethia and her mom. The girls decorated some flower pots, climbed on the clay hill, made some pictures, and generally had fun.

Pictures are in her photo album http://1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?string=&ayear=2003&amonth=5&aday=3&byear=2003&bmonth=5&bday=3&submit=Search

Also, we tried out yet another brownie recipe. This time it was the Ultimate Brownie from the Hershey’s cookbook. We made them without the chocolate chips and frosting, but they are still very good. The recipie is available at http://www.recipesource.com/desserts/brownies/05/rec0545.html

Mommy took Lucinda to Farrell’s Ice Cream today. They had a ‘Volcano’, which they made a valiant attempt to finish. Afterward, Lucinda played some games, and they watched the roller skaters at the rink there.

Here’s a recent sample of Lucinda’s artwork. She brought this to the breakfast table and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”

We went to see “Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election” today. This was part of Laemmle’s Documentary Days film series. It showed the breathtaking and utterly shameless methods that the Republican Party used to get their way in Florida. For more information, see the film’s web site at http://www.unprecedented.org

We went to Burbank Airport today to see the two restored World War II bombers again. These are the same ones we saw back in 1998. We took Lucinda along, and she had fun climbing back and forth through the airplanes.

We also got to meet some more veterans of the war. One man had been the radio operator on a B-17 in Europe. The second had been the flight engineer on a B-24 in Italy near the end of the war. He said that his job involved mostly taking care of the fuel tanks to keep the airplane balanced. He also told us about building a little ‘igloo’ out of flak jackets to hide in when the plane was under fire. They both said that flying in combat was a horrendously frightening thing. But at the same time, they felt like they were fortunate in a way. When they weren’t flying, they were safe back at the base, eating good food and sleeping in real beds. They felt that this was better than being in the Infantry and being shot at all the time.

For more on this, see the page about the other time we saw these planes: http://cosmo.pasadena.ca.us/adventures/airshow

Also, for B-17 history, see http://www.softwhale.com/history/b-17/b-17-home.html

To get a little idea what it was like flying in these planes, see “Exerpts from the diary of a B-17 ball turret gunner” at http://www.cloudnet.com/~jfb

Finally, just to add a special non-sequiter to the day, we heard a roaring jet engine just outside of the plane. Being at the airport, we weren’t too surprised by this until we got out and saw that it was actually a motorcycle. It was Jay Leno, stopping by for a visit. So very L.A.

Finally, we stopped off for a nice dinner out at Cafe Bizou.

Upgraded MRTG today in an attempt to get ‘bbmrtg.pl’ to work. The problem turned out to be a typo in bbmrtg.pl. Sent a patch in to the Big Brother mailing list.

Upgraded PHP to 4.3.1 today. Had to add ‘–enable-calendar’ to the main port makefile so that the calendar routines would compile in. This was to enable the ‘easter_date’ function so as to allow for automatic holiday decor on the front page. The upgrade broke the ‘file_get_contents’ function in funcs.php. The new version has this function built-in, so it complained until I commented out the hacked simulation in funcs.php.

We went to the Los Angeles County Arboretum today. They had an insect fair. Then we walked around the grounds, chasing the peacocks and ducks at the lake. Pictures at http://1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?string=&ayear=2003&amonth=4&aday=12&byear=2003&bmonth=4&bday=12&submit=Search

This evening, we tried yet another brownie recipe. “Chocoholic Brownies” can be found at http://www.recipesource.com/baked-goods/desserts/brownies/00/rec0094.html