Tuesday, Dec. 24, 2002
We met Sara's friends Tim and Dawn for lunch at Restaurant Mexico.
I finished Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", which is excellent.
Monday, Dec. 23, 2002
Saw lots of Sara's high school friends--Effie, Jon, Omo (again), Mike.
Sunday, Dec. 22, 2002
Hung out with Omo at night at a local "Irish pub". Afterwards I finished Ellen Raskin's "The Westing Game", which I'd read long ago as a kid but mostly forgotten. It's still pretty good.
I've come down with a cold.
Saturday, Dec. 21, 2002
Sara's dad took us to the monthly meeting of the "Pickers and Grinners", and I tried to play upright bass a little.
Friday, Dec. 20, 2002
We visited the Desert Botanical Garden.
Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2002
Sara and I flew to Tempe this morning. We got their in time for a nice late lunch, and then went out to Encanto park for an evening of music, including two bands that Bob played in.
Monday, Dec. 16, 2002
Lars, the german juggler/diabolist who was interning in town for a while last year, came back to visit for a while this week, and I got to see him tonight: Josh had organized a laser-tag game in the evening, which was fun.
Saturday, Dec. 14, 2002
I did a little christmas shopping at the Farmer's Market in the morning, then juggled (good crowd this week, including John from Detroit who was here with a friend to sell t-shirts at some anti-war demonstration). We ate at NYPD afterwards, and then I came home to nap and do some reading.
I've been re-reading some of Susan Cooper's books. They're still pretty good. There should be a name for the particular subgenre of fantasy that involves a kid saving the world while on vacation in Wales.
At night we finally finished watching the first season of Ranma 1/2, which a friend loaned us on DVD. Very funny, and highly recommended.
Friday, Dec. 13, 2002
News came out that my ISP, DirectTV DSL, is going out of business and will be shutting down service in as soon as 30 days. Great. I spent a little time looking at alternatives.
Thursday, Dec. 12, 2002
Together with Ken Clark, James Partridge, and a couple other bike people, we met with officer Brad Hill for the second time. The differences didn't seem as great as I'd expected. We agreed that we'd draft a few paragraphs to add to Cycling Street Smarts, clarifying lane positioning, "narrow" vs. "shareable" lanes, and taking care to set a tone that is cooperative. (One of Hill's concerns was with a couple paragraphs set up an unnecessarily confrontational tone, and I agree, at least up to a point.)
Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2002
I watched Truffaut's adaptation of Farenheit 451 with my book group. It was strange; I'm still not sure quite what to think of it.
We also read the book. It was still good, but not as good as I'd remembered it; I'd forgotten how flowery Bradbury is, and how long the book goes on after you've already gotten the point. It feels like it should have stayed a short story.
Wednesday, Dec. 4, 2002
Tuesday I again ended up having to walk a lot. So today instead I just left the bike at home and walked the 2.5 miles to work. In the afternoon I went to Recycle Ann Arbor's ReUse Center and bought a $15 Huffy mountain bike. Everything worked, which was more than you could say for most of the bikes there. I'm not sure whether I'll actually end up using it, but it was fun riding it back to work through the snow.
Monday, Dec. 2, 2002
I underestimated the amount of hand protection I'd need on my bike in the cold, and ended up with extremely painful fingertips on arrival at work. The same thing happenned going home. A lot of the streets were just too snowy to ride on today anyway, and I ended up walking several blocks.
We watched "Annie Hall" at night; a few good jokes, but I didn't really see why it's so popular.
Saturday, Nov. 30, 2002
I read Susan Cooper's "The Bogart", because all the copies of "The Dark is Rising" were checked out of the library. A family with two kids inherits a Scottish castle, and with it an invisible, mischevious spirit (the bogart). Very well done except for some awkward stuff about computers.
I originally intended to go out to do a little work and maybe some christmas shopping, but was lazy and stayed home. My only venture outside was to do some grocery shopping with Sara.
Later at night we watched Akira Kurasawa's "The Hidden Fortress".
Googlewhacks as of Sept. 29, 2002:
Before
Most of my interesting travel was done when I was too young to remember. From a list of birthdays my parents sent me on my 19th: