Christmas in Oregon was nice, very relaxing, though more stressful for H than for me since it was her family we were with and she naturally sees more of the dynamics there that I don't....

The kids had a lot of fun hanging out with their cousins. The drive back was pretty mellow though tiring. It felt good to get home.

We discovered that Sam had been bitten by one of the other cats while we were away and the wound had abscessed - so another trip to the vet! More money spent! Sam's turning into an expensive cat.

The winter break has been great - two more weeks left until my quarter starts up again and then it'll be back to the grindstone. I got great grades last quarter - my first 4.0 for a whole quarter. I think this quarter will be tougher though, what with the database design class. Will have to see.

H's rehearsals are going well though she hasn't got all her lines memorized yet. She keeps raving about her cast-mates and director. Her play opens in a couple of weeks.

More music playing this Friday night at Andrew and Debbie's New Year's party - really looking forward to that. Have to get the new guitar and mandolin strings on.

The dvd that H and I made turned out really well and everyone we've given it to has enjoyed it. I need to make a few more copies and am slowly rebuilding it after I unthinkingly deleted the whole file! Man was I pissed/depressed about that for a few days.

N, M and S are really into Pokemon right now - they all got binders with card holder thingamajobs for xmas. Today was my last day of vacation....

Oy, it's been too long since I've posted! Leaving tomorrow for H's parents place for the Christmas break. Will try to write more from down in Oregon.

Enjoying the break from school...

Thanksgiving holiday is over! We did the turkey, stuffing, gravy, cranberries, rolls, yams thing - actually, H did almost all the work, I was out sick that day - I think I slept for about 12 hours....

H used the neighbor's oven (two doors down) to get everything done! The neighbors were visiting friends for Thanksgiving, so they gave H a key to use the oven. It worked out well - I think she did the turkey over there and baked everything else here. Her mom and dad (P&G), as well as one of the kid's cousins, A, were here too. We had a full house and a nice visit.

Yesterday they all went to the wave pool in Surrey, B.C. I didn't go because there wasn't enough room in P & G's van (it seats 7) and I didn't think it was worth driving a second car just so that I could go too. And I am still recovering from this cold. Still have the annoying cough. But I wish I could have gone. S, N and M all went down the slides for the first time, and I would have liked to have seen them do that....

On Wednesday I came from work and jumped right in to helping G put up some plastic over the front of our garage. It had been pouring rain for the last three days and on Wednesday our garage flooded! H called me earlier that day while I was at work to let me know - by the time I got home there was about 2 inches of water in places on the floor. Thankfully the floor isn't completely flat and the water had pooled up in a few places. Otherwise it would have gone into the basement.

Anyway, there I was in the rain, getting drenched (not so good for my cold), nailing up plastic over the garage door and trying to figure out where the water was coming from. G pointed out that the gutter above the garage had pulled free and all the water from the roof was just pouring straight down the side of the house and then under the garage door. I'm glad he was there to help. The next day I was up on a ladder nailing the gutter back in. Hopefully it will work during the next big rain. Oh yeah, it rained so much that we even got a little flooding in the basement. The water came seeping up from under the floor in places. What fun!

Fall quarter is almost over - just a couple more weeks really. Pretty much done with all major work for 510, one more paper due next Sunday for 568 (which I should start tomorrow). I have to get this Iraq blog article I'm co-writing with Paul done by Monday too.

The kids are doing well, they've enjoyed A's visit. The grandparents and cousin go home tomorrow, then it's time to start getting ready for Christmas.....which I actually enjoy. Also time to start thinking about telemark skiing. I've got to go this year and see if my knee can take it!

Met with the principal (Jill Iwasaki) and community coordinator (April Busch) for Windward High School last night at Stuart's Coffee House to talk about volunteering to help them with their library. The meeting went very well. We are all enthusiastic about making this work. I'll be helping them organize their library (which at this point consists of donated books on shelves), using cataloging software (which I need to research and evaluate) and student help (I'll have interns working for me!)

We also discussed collection development and information literacy workshops for students and staff, as well as research workshops for the students. This will be a long-term relationship that will fit in nicely with my portfolio requirements at the iSchool. Jill said I'll be the "Librarian Mentor".

They were also excited to have someone "young and cool" and thought it would be great to have a librarian male role model.

I joked that the last time I met with a principal was when I was getting suspended from high school for a week....

I'm getting towards the end of Fall quarter. Grupo Cinco just finished our project and submitted it last night. Just a couple more papers to go in both classes and then a break!

M really liked his pottery class and made some beautiful pieces. Now he's decided to join N in his dance class, so now all three kids are dancing again.

H's kid acting classes continue to grow- two new students starting this week. The bartering seems to be working out pretty well too. She had a great experience taking improv classes in Canada, has finally dropped Sheila Goldsmith's improv class here in Bellingham (along with a lot of other students), and will be starting an informal improv get-together/learning time with them. She also just got cast in one of the leading roles for a play at the iDiOM Theater here in Bellingham, written and directed locally.

Halloween went well - the kids had a lot of fun at their party, and then got to hand out candy to trick-or-treaters at our house (a first for them - I think they may have had just as much or even more fun handing out candy then they did being at the party or trick-or-treating themselves). This was the first year that we didn't go trick or treating, mostly because we had the party to go to instead.

In the past we've bought the candy off the kids at the end of the night so that they wouldn't get sick from eating it all, and now that we are off sugar (as a family), there's really no reason to go trick-or-treating for them, except that they still may find it fun to do and probably would want the money anyway. Their aunt Jessica came up today with their cousin Caleb, aka Ace - he's walking/running a lot now (18 mo old) and is a pretty even-tempered, happy boy. Jessica gave the kids each a bag of candy, so that's what they gave out to trick-or-treaters tonight.

N was a werewolf - H made a great costume for him, with the fur coming out of rips in his clothes and the ears coming out of the top of his baseball cap. We glued fur to his face and used stage makeup and he had claws on his feet and hands.

M was going to be a cyborg, but after a trial run at a library Halloween event he discovered that all the metal was too uncomfortable, so today he changed to Aragorn - with his long hair he looked pretty sharp with a green cloak and leg and arm wrappings. I put "stubble" on his chin and cheeks with makeup - looked good.

S was vampirella, with a black and white-striped wig, red dress, and white face makeup with dark circles under her eyes and grey, hollow cheeks. She looked pretty cute.

H had her second full weekend of improv classes up in Vancouver - last weekend she had a minor fender-bender which busted one of our headlights. She said when she was exchanging insurance info the other party and witness were dumbfounded when she asked what the insurance company was. Turns out that in Canada everyone has the same vehicle insurance company! Anyway, her classes are going well and there were no accidents today.

School is keeping me really busy, I have several due dates creeping up on me and still feel like I'm treading water in very large waves.

Saw "Saw" last night - interesting movie premise-wise, but suffered from overacting by Elwis and a bad montage, too many flashbacks and boggy third act: C-

Oh the time goes by, yes it does.

Shaun of the Dead was a great movie!

Did a report back last Tuesday about my experience being in NY at the RNC and working for Radical Reference. I was pretty nervous before-hand, but it was done in a seminar style, all of us sitting around a circle, so even though the focus was on me for the 10 minutes or so that I talked, it wasn't overwhelming. I imagined I'd be standing up in front of a lectern or something. There were about 30 people in the crowd, all dressed like Evergreeners. I actually felt pretty comfortable with them. The response was terrific, people were very enthusiastic about activist librarians. I could almost see a paradigm shift occuring as people began to imagine librarians as a source for protest and social justice information and support.

M starts his pottery class tomorrow. He's pretty excited about it. N and S continue in their dance class. H is going to be gone for the next three consecutive weekends, pretty much all day, for an improv class up in Vancouver, BC. It should be a pretty intense and rewarding experience for her. The only hard part for me will be this upcoming Saturday, when we have our third annual Apple Fest happening. Hopefully I'll be able to be papa/host/participant in all the events until H gets back.

School is going OK - I feel like I'm constantly behind on my readings, just barely keeping up with them, but I'm "getting" the content pretty well. I've received high grades on all my assignments and exercises so far. Got my first 3.9 in LIS510. But the pace is fast and it would be easy to fall behind if I'm not careful.

Um, what else? I feel like I'm going through my financial aid money pretty fast, but also feel like I'm spending the money on things that are worth it (like H's improv class, fixing M's bike, buying H a watch that she needed, etc).

I've been sick the last few days, and now the rainy, windy, dark and cold rides are upon me. Time to get on the cold weather gear and suck it up.

H and the kids are down in Oregon for the weekend, at Honeyman State Park on the coast, with the big sand dunes and the yurts. This is the first year I've not gone with them, and it's because the trip was planned for later in Sept instead of earlier, and since Fall quarter has started up I couldn't take the time off from my studies.

We could have gone down for a quick two day stay but that's a lot of driving for that short of time - not worth it to me. So H and the kids went down yesterday (Thu) and are coming back Monday. But what's cool is that Heather Dillon and her daughters Erin and Brenna went down with H & co. So they got to split the driving and the kids have playmates for the drive down and they'll get to share the experience of the dunes and meet their cousins and H will have a friend with her.

Jon and Chad and I are going up to Langley, BC to the Colossus theater tomorrow. It's a huge theater with Imax screens, great sound, great seats, and it looks like a giant UFO has landed on it from the outside. Inside it has a bar upstairs.

We're going to see Shaun of the Dead, which is in Seattle, but not B'ham.

Well, classes are going well. Turned in my first exercise for 568 today. On Sunday I'll be starting the write up for my group's first assignment, worth 25% of our grade! That's for 510. Keeping up with the lectures and readings so far, and more importantly I'm understanding what we're learning.

Got to see the flyer of the RNC report back I'm going to be doing. Pretty cool. Funny that I'm listed as a librarian. I'm both nervous and looking forward to it. I just want to make sure I do a good job - I need to write up what I want to talk about, and write an article about NY and Rad Ref for the ISchool's Silverfish.

And Paul asked me to co-write an article with him about soldier's blogs and other blogs coming out of Iraq! I was excited and flattered to be asked. I think it will be fun to write with him and cool to get published.

Fall Quarter 2004 has begun! I'm in LIS510 (Information Behavior) and LIS568 (Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning). These are both fairly challenging classes with a couple group projects (in 510) and a ton of reading (in 568). Had a good residency in Seattle and had fun hanging out with Jim, drinking good Belgian beers and watching Anime.

Now I've got to get back into the school schedule - used my lunch hour to read today and should be doing more reading right now (instead of working on this blog). I also have to get cracking on the first assignment (conducting some interviews) which is due next Wednesday.

Been feeling very tired lately, hard to be "happy" with the family. Bummed about that. It'll probably pass, though.

Helped Chad, Thom and Jon put up the Dissent is Patriotic display at the library today. The background is my big 48 star US flag, upside down. A t-shirt I bought at the NY protests is in there too. They have lots of quotes and pictures from various dissent actions in US history in the display. Looks good and it's very timely.

Went to Village Books last night and listened to Krist Novoselic read from his new book Of Grunge & Government: Let's Fix this Broken Democracy! It was a SRO crowd - I've never been to a reading there that was so packed. Krist had some good things to say about democracy and the political process. It was also cool to see so many young people there, way below voting age, high school and junior high, very enthusiastic. Funny to think that Krist is still a rock n roll celebrity. Some good questions from the crowd about many different aspects of the political process: Instant Run-Off Voting, Marijuana Legalization, youth mobilization, etc.

He is really tall, was wearing a suit, and is balding on top, with just some wisps of hair covering up the bald part. I noted that the cover of his book cuts off the top of his head so that you can't see that he's balding....

I tried to talk with him a little about Radical Reference and how librarians can be part of the fix, but it was pretty loud at the signing, there were a lot of people in line behind me, and he seemed pretty distracted by it all. He also appeared sort of bemused by the young, junior high age hanger-ons. He kept glancing at them with a nervous sort of half smile, his face very pale and sweaty.

I'm hoping I can get hold of him somehow (email/phone/letter) to talk more about RadRef - it would be great to get him to promote our group and librarianship in general as a force for reform and democratization.

Got a call and email from someone named Andrew Hedden who is the coordinator of the Peace Resource Center here at WWU. Jeff Purdue gave him my name for an event the PRC is putting on that will have people talking about their experiences at the RNC protests in NY. I told him I'd be willing to do it - this will help me fulfill my goal of doing a presentation of some kind. It should be interesting to talk about the RadRef experience.

Still haven't blogged my written journal of the RNC events - got to do that soon!

Have been back from NY since Friday 9/2/04. It was great to see the family again, and weird to come back to work. Realized I had to tell a lot of people about the trip, and have to think about what kind of "presentation/talk" I want to do about it.

Wrote a lot in my journal while on the road - will try to add those to this blog in the near future.

Only two weeks till Fall quarter starts again. On that note, got in to LIS568 today after being told it was full up when I tried to register for it several weeks ago. Now I have to get my financial aid and tuition billing all adjusted....

Said goodbye to H and the kids this morning - they're heading to Oregon to stay with the grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins while I'm in NY. I'm bummed I'll miss S's birthday on Saturday, but it was fun to give her the bike yesterday. She was really excited about it and loves the basket and handlebar tassels. Can hardly believe she's turning 5!

They have some fun stuff planned - staying at the coast, going to Otter Beach (a water slide park) - and they just love going down there anyway, but we all miss each other very much when separated. I think we all said goodbye to one another about thirty times this morning....

Off to NY tomorrow - Jon is driving me down to the airport as part of his contribution - we're leaving around 3am to get down there in time for my 6:30 flight. Feeling excited and nervous and some other things I'm not quite sure of....

Hopefully I'll find time to blog while in NY doing all the other stuff I'll be doing: working with Radical Reference, volunteering at the Indymedia Center, participating in the big UFPJ march on the 29th, doing another march to represent the unemployed - a long line of marchers all waving pink slips - on 9/1, and probably lots more besides once I get there.

I'll be so busy that I'm sure the time will pass pretty quickly.

One thing that all the kids were involved in this Summer was a production of Peter Pan put on by Western Washington University - part of their Summer Stock series. M&N were originally cast to be in it (M as a lost boy, N alternating as a lost boy and as Michael), but they lost one of the lost boys and the director (Jim Lortz) happened to see S and asked if she'd be interested in being a lost boy (many of the lost boys were girls) and so all three of them were in.

The first two weeks were all rehearsals, and heavy ones, something like 5-6 hrs a day. Since the rehearsals were here on campus I was able to join them for lunch breaks, though they didn't really want to hang out with me much after the first day, when they'd had times to make new friends.

After the rehearsals they did two shows a week for about a month and a half (July 8th - Aug 18th), all outdoor shows, all over Whatcom County. They were very popular, with mainly large audiences. Except for a couple of times when S was tired before a show all three of the kids were very positive and happy - they knew their lines (for the most part) and enjoyed being on stage.

This was their summer camp this year. Jim (the director) said they'd never had crowds this large for their plays and will probably do more family shows in the future.

And tomorrow they are going to be acting in a production of their own, a play created by the kids in it and co-written by H and myself (and directed/produced by H). This is part of H's Kids At Play scheme. All the kids are really excited about it, though it has been a bit stressful for H and myself.

Three more days till I leave for NY. I just signed up to be part of a line of people who will be representing the unemployed in America. Sometimes I get a little nervous when I start thinking about this trip, but mostly I'm excited about it.

It's been too long since I've posted. A busy and stressful Spring quarter at the iSchool followed by the bliss and relaxation of summer break.

It's been weird getting back into the flow of non-school life, reconnecting with my wife and kids. I've been spending most of my free time reading comics and watching movies, as well as some camping (Baker River trail with the family - our first family walk-in, carry-it-all-on-your-back camping trip), climbing (Mt St Helens with some old friends), and guitar playing.

Still have a month and a half left!

Going to New York to be part of the protests against the Republican National Convention Aug 28-Sep 4. It's going to be an amazing experience. I've got total support from H and from my friends and colleagues. In fact, many of them are helping finance my trip with donations (which I asked for). It's been nice to get such response from them.

I'm also starting to get nervous about this trip. Took me awhile to fall asleep the other night because all I could think about was what a great terrorist target the RNC would be, and of course the worse possible incident would involve a nuclear bomb or dirty bomb of some kind.

But I can't let my fear keep me from doing this - driving to the airport will probably be the most dangerous part of the trip. I plan on keeping a journal and taking lots of pictures while I'm there.

I'll be working with a group called Radical Reference (http://www.radicalreference.info/) doing street reference for protestors. I'm also going to check out the Counter Convention (http://www.counterconvention.org/) and do some volunteer work there.

H just got back from rehearsal and is excited - interesting conversation about Southern culture.

End of the quarter is days away - one more search exercise and submission of the final paper and I'll be done for two weeks! There's some preresidency readings to do, but it'll be nice to watch some movies and go to bed earlier.

The gatos are officially inside/outside now, and so far everything's been alright. They know where home is.

H just got another role, this one a major lead, as Margaret in "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof", being put on up in Blaine. She's very excited about it. Her rehearsal schedule will be five nights a week for 3 hrs for a month and a half.

M&N start rugby tomorrow. They liked it enough last week that they want to sign up for the 8 week class. I think they'll have a lot of fun with it. S really wants to play too, but has to wait until she's 5, even though last week when we were there for the mini-jamboree she played with the under-8's and did just fine with her catching and throwing and running. I told her that I'd be her coach until she's old enough.

Met a guy at Dylan's 5yr birthday party who lives here in Bellingham and has started a currency program - an alternative cash system. I'm going to look into that more; I've been interested in the idea for awhile.

My winning streak in chess is continuing. I've had wins and draws over the last dozen or so games, with only two losses. It feels good, especially since I haven't been able to play as much during the quarter.

Winter quarter is almost over. Just a couple more final papers and I'll be done for a few weeks - and then Spring quarter starts up. I'm really looking forward to the Summer.

And the cats keep on getting out. Now that the weather is a bit warmer and drier the kids have been going in and out of the house more often, giving the cats a lot of chances to get out. We have to figure out what to do, but it looks like they're going to end up being outside/inside cats by default. It's just too hard to monitor them as the door is opened and closed a lot, and that's only going to increase as Summer approaches.

It's been a long, long time since I've posted. Winter quarter is flying by. I'm not getting enough sleep. The kids are eating too much. H is hard at work on her thesis. I miss the sun, and the cats are driving me crazy.

That pretty much sums up how I feel right now....

And so, to bed.

Back in grad school! This is the first day of residency. It will be a busy quarter, with lots of research papers to do. H and the kids drove down to Oregon to hang out with the Grandparents. H bought a iBook today and is going to the OR coast tomorrow for a solo break and to start writing her thesis (and watching a DVD or two).

Residency today and tomorrow is from 8:30-6:30. A long day, but they fed us lunch! Shared my homebrew with classmates, who all liked it. Feels good to be back in school again.