One of the 13693 Best Days of My Life

6:30 AM On the road to Santa Cruz to pick up and her husband.

8:00 AM Cheered Peaches to the finish line in the kids' race.

8:20 AM Started race. Paced Stephanie for awhile, then went on ahead. Felt the pain, paced myself better, walked/ran to the finish line.

12:50 PM Watched Runaway Jury. Liked it enormously.

5:00 PM Validated my novel. I'm finally officially a winner.

That's today. How great is tomorrow gonna be?

It Has Arrived!

The new iPod arrived last night, and was immediately christened "Cthulhu Prosthesis." Only because every time I think of the word "iPod," that's what comes to mind. Plastic tentacles.

So, just having Cthulhu Prosthesis isn't enough. It needed a little squishy plastic condom, a USB-to-Firewire adaptor, a car kit, and a set of Creature speakers.

The first day with a new toy is both the most fun and the hardest. The four hours waiting for the damn thing to charge were endless. Figuring out how to get my Audible stuff onto it was tricky. Goofing with the car kit was an adventure.

But here I am at my desk, having listened to the first hour of "The DaVinci Code." The full book will take something like 16 hours to hear. And with one hand, I can switch from my book to the kids' music without having to juggle CDs or switch players. And the little baby loves playing with the iPod.

Now I'm just looking for fun decorations for it. Stickers. Googly eyes. More tentacles. Perhaps I'll knit it a little cozy...

Bad Crap

You know, the Buddha says that just because you have gained enlightenment does not mean that you stop suffering. The same is true no matter what good thing happens in your life. I finished my novel. My sister came to visit. These are good things.

And then, this morning at work, the drive that holds 10 Gb worth of the files I've been working on for the better part of a year failed. Click. Click. Click. Like it had its little turn signal on. My hope is that I can recover that data quickly. If not, things get ugly, complicated and expensive.

This is not the end of the world. I told my boss and he neither yelled nor threw things. He didn't even stop smiling. It's just so frustrating. The real irony is that YESTERDAY, I asked our IT dept. if there was somewhere on the network I could back these files up because my computer was due to be migrated to XP. If they had just gotten back to me yesterday, this would have been a nonissue. Grrrrrr.

Feliz Dia de Muertos!

And a big shout-out to:
Grampa (Frederick McKay)
Tata (Zenaido Quintana)
Gramma Peg (Margaret McKay)
Nana (Lilia Quintana)
Cousin Bobby (Roberto Felix, Jr.)

Van y vienen
Y las ves pasar.
Bailan por ahi,
Platican por alla,
Hoy es su dia,
Y van a festejar!