The Mandelbear's Musings

The main thing was the YD signing a 3-year modeling contract. She gets a couple of months of training, which costs just south of $3k, but is one-time and includes free photo shoots. After that... it turns out there are a lot of modeling jobs in San Francisco.

I also picked up an Epson Artisan 50 printer at Fry's, and got in a half-hour walk. The Artisan 50 prints on CDs and has very fast-drying, water-resistant ink. I installed it on my work MacBook, which runs the CD-printing software. Eventually I'll find, or make, templates for the Gimp; this was quick.

In the early afternoon I went out for a drive with Colleen -- everything was clean and beautiful after the rain. In between I did a lot of puttering, mostly in the office.

I faded out rather quickly -- by 9:30 I was falling asleep in my chair. A round of dishes woke me up enough to take a bath; I went splat around 10:30.

Aside from the printer, the only link under the cut is from MoveOn.org: Top 10 Shocking Attacks from the GOP's War on Women.

So... a good day. It wasn't quite enough to lift me out of my current mild depression for more than a few hours, but I'll take what I can get.

Father's Prayer (Christmas 2009), from this post by haikujaguar.

... But I have had cause lately to see that men love their children quite as much as women, in a way mysterious to women. And so I got to thinking about Joseph, who is surely one of the most famous adoptive fathers. I'm sure he too looked up at the sky and said, "God, I hope I do this right."

To which all I can say is "amen to that".

It was a mostly happy day. Colleen's appointment at Kaiser was particularly amusing, watching the nurses scramble around after they discovered that Colleen couldn't stand up to get on the examining table. They ended up moving her to a much larger room and bringing in a Hoyer lift. They had, in fact, actually trained with the lift, but apparently don't need it very often.

The odd part came while we were waiting - I caught my reflection in a mirror and I was smiling and laughing.

It didn't hurt that the news was good: the things that we were worried about turned out not to be serious.

Said goodbye to the chaoswolf just in case she was gone before I got back home today; she's still here, but not for long. It's both sad and, at the same time, exciting and hopeful.

Now that Kat's back at home for a while, and needs to get to school for a 9:30 class, I've changed my morning routine a little (and all for the better). I leave the house with Kat at 8:30; this gets me to work around 9am. It does mean less time at home, which is regrettable but can't be helped, and much less writing time at home. On the other hand, I can now get to work in time to get quite a bit more done between email time and lunchtime. Big win there.

From Technoshaman we get a link to this post on groklaw where PJ describes her first encounter with her very own OLPC XO. It was given to her in a restaurant...

A younger guy sitting at a nearby table then piped up, "Just use Google Docs if you need Word documents." My brain about exploded. Of course! What can't you do that a businessman might typically want to do that he can't do on Google Docs? Note to countries thinking about whether or not to get the OLPC laptop and worrying about Word and Excel and all that: not only does the OLPC have equivalents, but if you want the kids to be able to function in a Microsoft environment, let them go to Google Docs and they can even share the work. An entire class and the teacher can all work on a project together. Here's how some others in the world are already using Google Docs.

"Nobody needs a hard drive any more," the young guy said. And you know what? It's true. So down topples another piece of anti-OLPC FUD.

But here's the best part. After we talked a while, I see a mom with her son, about 7 or 8 walking toward us. He's pulling on her hand, and from across the room, I can see the boy's eyes are fixed on the laptop and he is grinning from ear to ear. He looked like he'd just seen a dear friend. He walked right up to the table, and I immediately turned it his way so he could play, which he did without hesitation, without a word, still grinning.

His mother was nervous, thinking maybe he'd break it, or was being rude to butt in, but I told her I wanted him to play with it, so I could see what he did. He had absolutely NO difficulty at all, asked no one any questions, ignored us all totally, and played and played and played, grinning from ear to ear the entire time.

It's a kid magnet.

He wasn't intimidated by the laptop at all. It was like it was his, that it naturally belonged to him to play with. It was so cute. They have designed something so adorable that children, I saw, are drawn to it.

Kids just get it without a manual, but we, the adults, didn't.

I can't wait to get my hot little hands on mine... It's coming. Real Soon Now.

Maybe I should order another one?

Rather than hop in the car and drive to my usual walking trail this morning, I got my hat and water bottle out of the trunk and headed over to the Rose Garden a little before 10am.

The air was cool and a little moist -- just right for walking, unlike yesterday's heat. It was a good walk. Encountered a huge crowd of people going the other way around the garden; many were wearing T-shirts that proclaimed them members of the Rose Garden Dog Walking Club. Fun!

I took two turns around the garden (about half a mile, which brings the total up to about three for the walk), then went inside to look, as always, at the Royal Amethyst blooming a little inside the front gate. Feeling a little more nostalgic than usual, I wandered around for a while and sat for a few minutes on one of the benches, content to spend a few minutes gazing at beauty and not thinking about much of anything.

Came back to find that my kids had given me a Father's Day card, and I got a truly wonderful French press/coffee mug from the chaoswolf. Altogether a delightful Father's Day so far.

Who are you two, and what have you done with my daughters? And can you do it again? (Not likely.)

Both girls were up at 6am; the younger one made coffee while the older one took a shower, and is planning to take the bus to school. They're taking out the trash and straightening up the cookbook shelves.

We don't have pod children in the house very often, but I'm going to enjoy it while I can. The world probably comes to an end tomorrow.