Journal

I picked my daughter(Beatrix, age 7) up from her school play rehearsal and took her to the grocery store with me. I had parked next to the cart return area, and Beatrix was excited to help return the cart before getting into the car. After we got into our car, but before I’d started to drive away, a store employee came to collect the carts in the return area. Beatrix watched through the car window while this young man lined the carts up and stacked them together. 🛒

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There have been tropical storms passing by Southern California, causing us to have unusual weather. It’s been humid, which almost never happens here. The temperature rose past 105℉(41℃) on Wednesday, and it did not cool down much at night. One of the great things about our region is that even when it’s hot during the day, it usually always cools down at night. 

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A tropical storm passing by has given us rain today, in Southern California in September. Rain in September is unprecedented, and we won’t leave home again until it stops. 

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Our school district started 2 weeks earlier than last year. It’s been about 99℉ / 37℃ all week. My elementary kids had to eat lunch inside, and school pickup traffic is at rainy day levels.  My fourth grader kid literally cooked s’mores outside in a solar oven that he made today, so I guess the weather was good for that.

My kids have already been in school for a week because the school board decided to start the year two weeks earlier than last year, just stealing two weeks of the summer break that we can never get back. They started school(2nd, 4th, and 9th grades) last Thursday. Yes, the first day of school was a Thursday. And then had a complete 5-day week this week. Longest week ever! I’m glad it’s Friday!

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My sister got tickets to a Death Cab for Cutie concert on August 2 at The Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, and invited me to go. The venue was an outdoor theater in Griffith Park.

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Today, while browsing through the Way Back Machine on Internet Archive, I stumbled upon an old website that I had made, RunWithTheBest.net (archive link). This was almost certainly my first “professional” website, and I believe I made it in the year 2000 when I was sixteen years old.

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We saw The Beths in concert. After seeing The Beths twice in 2023, we’ve had tickets to two other concerts that we didn’t make it to because of complications with our kids. This year, the perfect storm was created with The Beths playing on my husband, Jerrod,’s birthday right in our own county. We didn’t even have to drive to Los Angeles! For merch, we both got Straight Line Was a Lie t-shirts, and I got a tote bag and sticker!

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This year, I joined the choir at a small, local Presbyterian church. I sing Soprano 2! I grew up singing, but haven’t had a choir to sing in for years. 

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My kids are on spring break, and I’ve just finished all three novellas in the Chaotic Orbits series by Beth Revis.

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I met Louis Sachar at Barnes & Noble in Huntington Beach, at a signing for his first adult book, The Magician of Tiger Castle. Louis Sachar is also the author of Holes. It was a delight to meet him, and hear him discuss his new book.

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Make and do things for your own enjoyment. Do it for the joy it brings you.

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I got to see Sarah Beth Durst and Sangu Mandanna at The Ripped Bodice bookstore in LA. Their newest books came out on the same day! It was a delight to see them in conversation together as they talked about their books and writing process for cozy fantasy and romance. 

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After a busy last couple weeks, I’m excited that today is the first day of Summer Break for the kids. Not waking up early to get kids ready for school this morning was pleasant.

Visiting Peltzer Pines Christmas tree farm to pick out our tree for this year.

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Here’s a photo of my three kids at the Blizzard Halloween party this year in the traditional photo spot in front of the orc statue. I shot this photo at 1/15s on my Fujifilm X-T5 handheld and I’m really impressed with how it turned out. There’s some motion blur where my son is flapping his Ender Dragon “wings”, but besides that it’s quite sharp. The lens used was the Sigma 18-50mm 2.8 if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

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This weekend was the dance recital for my daughter, Guinevere. Guinevere is now thirteen and has been dancing since she was three. Guinevere has been en pointe in ballet for almost two years, and this recital was her first performance en pointe.

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This year, I went to yallwest for the first time. That’s a Young Adult book festival in Santa Monica. I went by myself and had a great time meeting people and attending panels.

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My oldest child, Guinevere, is a 12-year-old, and while there are some new challenges to tween parenting, it’s mostly pretty great. 

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We attended our second concert in as many days on Friday night. It had been a while since I attended a live performance that didn’t star one of my children.

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Last night, we left the house and saw The Beths in concert.

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I’m a seasonal planner, which means that I plan the upcoming season. This doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m planning based on the weather or the astronomical cycles. I am planning the seasons of my life and the year. This can include things like holidays, but also “back to school” and “summer vacation”.

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I saw the Barbie movie today, and it was my first time in a movie theater since 2019. I laughed. I cried. I brought my Legally Blonde 2 Barbie. It was an amazing movie, and I loved it.

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After having the carpet installed on Friday, we were just waiting for the stuff from our bedroom that they packed out to be returned. This morning they brought the pod back and moved everything back in and assembled the furniture. 

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Today is my 40th birthday. I’ve completed my thirties.

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For the last few days, I’ve been focused on choosing new paint and carpet for the bedroom. I knew that I wanted a light pink paint for the walls, so I picked a few colors that I liked and did test swatches on the walls in the room. The three colors that I sampled were Behr Pink Sea Salt, Behr Angelico, and Behr Stolen Kiss.  I painted swatches on every wall in the room to test the color. It’s amazing how the same color can look so different on walls in the same room! All three colors... [Read More]

Back in February, we discovered wet carpet in our bedroom. The water was coming from a common wall in our condo. It took days to find the leak and stop the water, mainly because the plumbers needed to enter other units. They finally tracked down the leak and shut it off, but we were left with wet carpet and walls that were wet with some holes in them.

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It felt like spring this weekend! It was a beautiful day on Easter Sunday.

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Guinevere asked to ride a horse for her 12th birthday, so I scheduled a trail ride at Irvine Regional Park. It had to be rescheduled twice because of the rain. We finally got to go on our trail ride, and it was a beautiful day! Guinevere rode a horse named Gracie, and I rode Snip.

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We went to a place called Let it Brie today, and I think it’s our favorite restaurant now. This is our cheese board. Beatrix(3) loved the baguette slices with brie and fig jam.

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Guinevere’s first pair of Pointe shoes got too small and it hurt when she tried to dance in them. It was hard to get an appointment for a fitting at The Pointe Shop, so we ended up with a fitting just a couple hours before her ballet class. 

The pointe shoe fitter could tell her old shoes were too small before she even took them all the way out. Guinevere was quickly fitted for new shoes and we drove straight to the dance studio. We got there one hour before her regular ballet class, with two hours until she was... [Read More]

The hills are green and flowering, and we took a little walk up the hill by the park.

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I went over to my parents’ house. Since we’re planning on having a tea party next weekend, my mom and I got out the china. I believe this china has been in my parents’ possession since my paternal grandmother passed away when I was 5(which was in 1988), but I think it’s been packed away for most of that time and I don’t remember having seen it at all. My mom may have used it for something when I was a child, but I don’t remember it.

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I got this new mug, and I love it so much!

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On our way to the car this morning, we saw a snail crossing the sidewalk. When I returned from school drop off, the snail was still there and had progressed a few inches.

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I received a new Fujifilm X-T5 camera for Christmas, but I haven’t gotten to play with it much because our family was sick for most of winter break. Then it was very rainy and cloudy most days. The sun is finally out again, and I took the opportunity to pull out the camera.

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My husband got us tickets to The Postal Service & Death Cab For Cutie playing Give Up & Transatlanticism at the Hollywood Bowl in October.

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In the Northern Hemisphere, today is the day with the least sunlight, it’s called the Winter Solstice, and is often considered the “first day of winter”.

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We normally go to the Christmas tree farm on opening day, but it was really windy, with a red flag warning. We visited the Christmas tree farm the next day, Sunday, instead. The old Peltzer Pines location in Brea closed after last year. We visited their farm in Silverado Canyon instead.

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I love to find a local coffee shop, especially a local roaster while traveling. We had our afternoon coffee break at Succulent Coffee Roasters. I bought some beans to take home.

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