Parentheticals

This last week would be hard to describe in one sentence (or with one adjective). Monday was a holiday. We mostly stayed home and did family things as I recall. Tuesday nothing of real import happened. Wednesday I was informed that I was going to be laid off from my job on Friday. I drove home early and told Alison and then started the job hunt. As of yet I have not lined up a new job, but I have had a reasonable amount of interviews and quite a few people emailing me for information. Hopefully I am able to locate a good job at a good company before too long. The severance package that I was offered was quite adequate that I am sure that I can find a job before we run out of money - I just don't like being without work. In losing my job I also lost my computer and my access to the internet. I am borrowing my wife's netbook until I can get a new computer shipped to me and hanging around at various places (families houses and library for the most part) to get internet acc

it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness... Sara has mastered three statements and two noises: 'All done!' which she tells us every time that we start to change her diaper or anything that she doesn't want us to do. 'I love you' which she tells to anything that she is paying attention to. I think that perhaps it is a greeting in her mind. 'Egg', which she said once when we were talking about eggs, and she now will randomly exclaim for no apparent reason. We reacted in a really excited manner when she first said it, so that is perhaps why she says it still. 'Ba Ba Ba'  she says whenever she wants food (that originated from the word bland, but it has grown to include all foods now.) Finally, she ceaselessly blows raspberries, but we can't figure what (if anything) is meant by that. The girls have been sick again, and so this last week was a bit rough. We did, however, open our first long term goat cheese, and it i

One day I told Andrea a story about Brave Lala which went something like this: Once there was a brave goat named Lala who had a goat friend named Clarabel and three chicken friends named Dot and Dot and Dot. Clarabel and Dot and Dot and Dot were scaredy animals but Lala was brave. One day Lala and Clarabel were eating grass outside, and Dot and Dot and Dot were pecking for bugs when Lala heard a sound: 'Howl' Clarabel and Dot and Dot and Dot all got scared and hid inside of the goat shed while Lala was brave, and moved toward the door of the goat shed to protect them. A wolf came into the back yard and tried to eat Clarabel and the chickens, but Lala said: 'Maaa!' And charged at the wolf. She hit it with her head and it fell over. Then she said 'Maaa!' again and hit it again. The wolf died, and rusty ate it. Everyone was happy. The end. Apparently this is the best story ever, and Andrea asks us to tell Brave Lala stories *all the time*. Seriously it is about

It has been an interesting last few days. Alison, Andrea, and apparently a lot of other people in the Brown side of the family got sick on Tuesday. They were all throwing up repeatedly. Apparently Sal (a guy from college who played games with me (Mike Hendrick's room mate) who also happened to marry my cousin) got it from his work and didn't come down with symptoms until after the dinner. On Thursday night I even fell ill, and felt awful for most of the weekend (though I didn't throw up). I had been eating home made goat yogurt daily, so perhaps the bacteria in the yogurt gave me my super power which protected my stomach from the invaders for as long as it did, and made me not throw up. I noticed a spot of mold on a derby that we are about to open up. I cut it off and since I _accidentally_ cut too much I sampled the excess. I am really looking forward to the 22nd when we open this cheese for real. :) I have been working on the symbology and balance of dancing robo

Recently I have been writing a program to allow one player to play Polynesia against an AI opponent. I have not yet gotten very far, but I am making headway. Perhaps I will be able to report amazing success and publish a released version of it some time soon :).  More likely I will report progress updates for a while, and then finally report something that is playable. Alison periodically tells me that we are going to make more mozzarella (this is supposed to be one of the easiest cheese, but I have only been able to make it successfully one time.) This time we finally realized what we had been doing wrong and made a wonderful mozzarella. We had been using dry milk for all of our cheese making (which is great because it takes less time to get up to heat, it has no bacteria in it, and it is cheap (which is sad, really, since it takes much more processing)), but this time we used our raw goat milk. By the time that we were done, it had taken only 40 minutes (from starting with a

I thought that some people might want an update about the final fate of Rincewind, the human wizzard (spelling intentional). He continued to run away from the lich for a while until he was forced to go back up to get to his stash. When he arrived at the lich level he feverishly wrote Elbereth on the stair case with magicbane - to ward off evil - and slowly crawled around the level enscribing protective runes all over the floor. He made it back to the place where the arch lich was, but the lich was no more. Weird. Perhaps there was a chameleon on the level that was just mimicking an arch lich, but it seems that it had teleported to him. Anyway, emboldened by his lack of a fight he went on to clear out the castle, defeat the dark one with a horde of charmed dragons, wander around in the black market, clear out ludios for more money, gang beat Vlad the Impaler and the Wizard of Yendor (vorpal jabberwocks, chromatic dragons, and purple worms were his pets by that time). He then buste