So I went down to the basement to try to transfer some old DAT tapes to the computer. Neither one of the DAT decks appears to be working correctly. *sigh*

I've found a part number for one of them, at least.

I went through a bunch of old credit card statements today, because ISFiC wanted to know how much they owed me for the storage locker that has been being billed to my card. Suffice it to say that I can now pay my property taxes.

And my next installment of property taxes. The good news about having money sitting out there like this is that you're not tempted to spend it. I think of it as a payroll savings plan. And if I'd had the money invested over that period, it would be worth a lot less. :)

The hole that it leaves in ISFiC's books when it comes out, however, will be a sight to behold. Apparently, we managed to avoid paying me back for three years.

Tonight's Reason #385 For Why Katie Cannot Go To Bed Now:

"My feet are too big."

I pointed out that Daddy's feet are even bigger and he was planning to go to bed shortly.

Interestingly, it seems to be quiet now. Maybe too quiet...

I wandered over to the studio computer while doing laundry to send kriel an MP3 that he'd asked for. Naturally, the computer refused to boot up.

I eventually reset it to boot to the last known good configuration and managed to get it up and running. And the MP3 is in the mail. :)

Rassen frassen hardware...

Katie turned three years old today. Because I had to go to a Capricon meeting tonight -- which meant missing dinner with daisy_knotwise, Katie, and Julie -- we went out to Red Robin for lunch. There, they brought Katie a little chocolate sundae and sang their happy birthday song for her. Katie was delighted.

On the way home, we stopped at the bakery and picked up a small cake, because there had to be candles some time. Katie insisted. :)

And Katie had a decent haul of presents. Julie gave her the "Melody Time" DVD that Daddy had picked out, while Mommy and Daddy gave her several Dr. Seuss books and a box set of Curious George books. And there was much reading as a result.

But not when the cake was present, as you'll see.
( Photos and cake inside... )

Today is Katie's birthday, about which more later. But before I get around to that, I owe pictures dating back to the pre-WindyCon 36 era. Like, for instance, November 1st, the day when Julie turned 18 months old.
( Photos inside... )

The Five Guys at Randhurst showed up as "now open" when I checked their website this morning. I took advantage of this by heading up there for lunch.

It's more expensive and more food than I should have on most days, so I probably won't go there that often. But it certainly tasted good! :)

WindyCon is done for the year. I think things generally went well, but am a bit too tired to say anything else coherent at this point.

Maybe tomorrow. (But since I still haven't posted about Saturday and Sunday at OVFF... :) )

daisy_knotwise has decided that it is time for Katie to have a haircut. Given that she'll be three years old next week and hasn't yet had one, I suppose she's correct. I especially suppose she's correct given how little Katie likes to have her hair washed and brushed.

But I recall how my father used to cut our hair. One false move and it was time for a crew cut.

I'm hoping Katie didn't squirm too much.

Because it is two days until WindyCon, I should have expected that the hard drive in my main home machine -- the one with all the interesting data on it, including the Girl Genius presentation that I spent two hours working on last night -- would pick this moment to fail. *sigh*

Fortunately, that hard drive is part of a mirrored pair, so I've recovered the presentation from the working drive and will shut this down in just a minute. Then it's off to Fry's to buy another drive to replace the dead one.

I didn't have the hour to spare, but I surely don't have the data to spare.

I went to Sam's Club and the Jewel to pick up supplies for dinner, as I'd requested Superburger as being really, really easy to chew. And fried potatoes. Also really, really easy to chew. But we were out of onions and low on potatoes, so first to Sam's for those. I would have picked up more ground beef there too, but they were out, so I'll grab some tomorrow so we can make meatloaf. (Chorus: Really, really easy to chew!)

I also picked up several birthday presents for Katie -- a selection of Curious George stories, three Dr. Seuss books in a bundle, and the classic Disney music DVD -- as we're at T-minus seven for her third birthday. Those all remain safely hidden in my trunk for the moment.

When I called daisy_knotwise to let her know that she'd need to thaw the remaining ground beef in the freezer as I'd struck out on fresh, I asked her if there was anything else she wanted from the Jewel other than buns and Julie formula.

"Yes," she replied. "I want something wonderful, but I don't know what."

So I promised I'd look. And on the way there, I realized what the correct wonderful thing would be. So when I walked into the Jewel, I started to head toward the bakery section, except the wonderful thing was sitting on the display right as I walked in.

Pumpkin pie. I picked it up and dropped it in the cart. I made sure to pick up more pressurized whipped cream, because I didn't want to run out in mid-pie, along with the other Superburger ingredients to replenish what we were about to use up, and the Julie formula.

When I got home, I announced to Gretchen that I had found the wonderful thing and produced the pumpkin pie. Not at all to my surprise, she concurred.

So later in the evening, we cut up the pie, giving a small piece to Katie, a fair sized piece to me, and a big piece to Gretchen, as I warned her that Julie would mug her for part of her pie.

Boy, did she! Eventually, she was grabbing the remains of the pie out of Gretchen's dish and chowing down on it. And Katie also requested more pie. So Gretchen got more pie and got Katie another small piece.

And there was much pie. And it was good.

And there is still one large piece left. :)

The root canal (phase one) is complete. I'll still need a temporary filling and, later, a crown.

Apparently, the morphology of my tooth is unusual. Oh, look. There are five canals, not four. Although two of them did meet up further down. I'm told I got my money's worth on this one. :)

*sigh* So I saw my dentist today and now have a referral for a $1000+ root canal tomorrow. Ouch!

On the other hand, we're in the open enrollment period for my company benefits, so I think I will now probably buy the family dental insurance that I had been planning to pick up next year anyway. This won't help with the root canal, of course.

The sad thing is that there are moments when I think that the root canal might be the most pleasant thing that happens all week. :)

The bad tooth has gone from intermittent to fairly constant pain. Last night, I was able to control it with ibuprofen. Today, much less so. My dentist isn't picking up messages on his answering machine over the weekend, which is not a surprise.

Now, the last time this happened was New Year's Day 2000. I eventually found an emergency dentist and negotiated with him: I wouldn't make him come into the office and he would call in a prescription for antibiotics for me. And antibiotics were seeming like a better and better idea.

Rather than call an emergency dentist, I called Dr. Bob. And he has called my local pharmacy and ordered a course of amoxycillin.

Thank you, Dr. Bob!

Nobody here is desperately ill, but no one is exactly well either. Katie has a loose cough, Julie has some serious nasal congestion, daisy_knotwise has been under the weather for a bit and hit the wall this evening, and I've been fighting off a cold all week.

I think I'm also about to lose a tooth.

I still owe pictures of the girls and an OVFF report. However, daisy_knotwise was out tonight visiting a friend who is recuperating from surgery, so those will be a bit more delayed.

On the other hand, I got a good bit of actual work done today. :)

When it gets to be November 1st (and Daylight Savings Time ends), it's hard to continue the delusion that it's still really summer. Accordingly, I have removed the cushions from the new patio furniture and stored them on a shelf in the garage until next spring. daisy_knotwise and I have to figure out where to put the items that the cushions displaced, but they're less bulky than the cushions. :)

I picked up a three-pack of licenses for Windows 7 Home Premium today and am installing it on one of the laptops. Having tired of staring at counters slowly incrementing on a screen, I grabbed the second laptop to get online with. And thus I'm here.

And Julie is eighteen months old today. After her bath -- which should remove the fine layer of chocolate that she's coated with following Halloween! -- there will be pictures. :)

We've had two groups of trick or treaters come by so far, but it's still early. According to the Des Plaines website, trick or treating is recommended to stop at dusk. I suspect that won't be the case.

I'll be going out with Katie and Julie around 5 PM. daisy_knotwise will be staying here to man the candy bowl.

In the meantime, the treat on our end is that I have taken advantage of this opportunity to rearrange the furniture in the dining room to make more space around the table, mostly according to Gretchen's specifications. This looks like a substantial improvement so far. :)

And the third group of trick or treaters has just arrived. Katie is demanding "More kids!" Mind you, she's also giving candy out by the handful. Obviously, she hasn't internalized that she's getting the leftovers. :)

After the last few nights when Katie fell asleep like a log, tonight's bedtime was more adventuresome. On the fifth or so intervention, I went into her room to find out what was wrong and was told quite earnestly that "Jet take rocket soup." Now, daisy_knotwise had been explaining to Katie that she was hearing jets from O'Hare. But what this had to do with rocket soup (jet fuel maybe?) was a mystery to me.

Until Gretchen explained that there's a character named Rocket in Little Einstein's and that they'd brought him soup on a jet.

Right. "Jet take Rocket soup."

Well, that makes more sense.

We're home again after OVFF, finally having found the cold front just south of Merrillville. I suspect there will be a con report at some point, but right now, there's going to be pizza for dinner and a lot of sitting around being tired.

Of course, this plan has to accommodate the visit by the cleaning lady tomorrow morning...

Well, I had to hand merge four files, but I am now VPNed into my machine at home and busily checking in 1117 files. I figure this should finish sometime after noon tomorrow.

In the meantime, I can go to bed, get some sleep, and enjoy OVFF.

Happy birthday, daisy_knotwise!

Let's go to OVFF!

I was up until 3:30 AM last night working on the project for work. Unfortunately, I'm still chunking through files that need one line changes due to my having moved header files between projects.

On the other hand, the fact that I was willing to be up until 3:30 AM working on the project has won me forgiveness for the fact that it's going to be late getting done.

And now daisy_knotwise and I have a few things to do before OVFF. :)

Ok, we'd planned to invite samwinolj and Carol (who is in town helping her mom) over for dinner tonight. Sam and I would watch the animated Green Lantern DVD that I'd picked up (and which Katie eventually joined us for, although she was a bit disconcerted by the larger number of explosions than usually occur in the Hundred Acre Wood), then we'd make cookies, and grill some burgers for dinner.

But when daisy_knotwise went to the grocery store with Katie, she came out with marshmallows. So Katie and Julie were already well sugared up before the cookies came out of the oven.

It was an interesting evening.

But the conversation was excellent!

After having looked at kevinnickerson talking about buying one, I wandered down to Fry's today and found the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ with two 500 GB drives on sale with a $100 rebate. And I bought it.

Now, I'm backing up my office computer's data to it. We'll see how that goes. :)