Gwendolyn at the dance clinic

Miriam at the Garage sale

 

Miriam's School Pictures

 

It was an accidental good day

Today I was in a car accident. Not too bad really. A lady in an Expedition had a green light at an intersection and so did I. There was construction going on and she and I both think that we the lights were to blame. She lost a license plate, I had the passenger side rear smashed. Drivable but smashed.

So we waited for a while for the police to show. When they didn't we went to a sub-station and tried to file a report. They gave us each a form. Thanks, thanks a lot.

Then I sat in traffic trying to get home. And I sat. And I thought about what a crappy day it was. And I sat some more.

"What the hell could be taking so long?" I thought to myself.

Then the radio does traffic. There was a five car pile-up. A semi hit a van that hit a retaining wall that hit . . . and so it goes.

So I said a quiet prayer to the families of those people who died or were hurt and thanked God for my accident. I was grateful for having a car that worked and the ability to go home to my wife and kids.

Today was a good day.

General update on life, Kingwood and stuff

Halloween's tonight. It rained so we didn't take the kids out far. Only to two neighbors. The bright side was that we were able to trick or treat at four bedrooms inside the house. Miriam was a princess and Gwendolyn was a witch. I think they had their costumes confused. I went to her storybook parade at school this morning. She was Princess Juliana and wore a shirt that Susan made for Sarah when she was the same age.

I recorded Gwendolyn describing her art this week at her blog. We both and fun and we'll keep it up. She sounded more professional than I do when I'm audioblogging from the car.

I introduced her to Cracker Jacks this week. It was a mixed bag. Her first box had no prize. All the hype singing "Take me out to the Ball game" and me telling her about tattoos and stickers and then . . . nothing.
We had more luck with the second box. It had an illusion of a young/old man depending on how you held it. This led to a discussion about illusions and brought us to Mr. Angry / Ms. Calm. A truly wicked cool illusion.

I'm reading a few books these days. Nothing too heavy though. I just finished "Somebody Comes to Town, Sombody Leaves Town" by Cory Doctorow. I really enjoyed his last two books, "Eastern Standard Tribe", and "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" and this one was no exception. Cory mixes fantastic and future in a way that blends well. All three books are released under the Creative Commons license. I read them all on my Handspring Visor.

I also converted "Monster Island" by David Wellington from iPod notes to a Palm doc. It's entertaining but hard to suspend belief sometimes. The characters make rookie mistakes and aren't always consistent with what has happened before. I like to blame that on being confused by all the zombies. Other times it seems that the cliff -hangers are more contrived than the Flash Gordon serials I watched on AFRTS in Panama

Susan and I are reading "The Automatic Millionaire" and "Financial Peace". We need to get more control of our "this and that" spending. Gas prices are just getting too high.

Minny has a boyfriend named Patrick. He appears to be a nice guy and a good friend. I wish her the best. I haven't heard from Sarah in a few weeks. I guess that means she's doing well. At Christmas break she's going to bring home her PC and I'll be upgrading her to Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger).

Work is good, home is good. The soccer team is doing great. What more could I ask?