Saturday: Great start, miserable finish.

Feb 2: Ballard Docks

Saturday morning, I woke early and took Kouryou-chan to an early rehearsal. She seemed up for it, and as we drove to the show she said, "I know my lines all the way through scene 5. I won't need my script at all!" We were a little late, getting stopped on the Ballard Bridge, which gave me an opportunity to shoot this photograph.

After dropping her off, I found a quite cafe' with "free wifi" (which just sucked; upload rates were tragic) but it was enough to finish proofing Decadence in December and get the whole set ready for uploading. I had to wait to do the actual uploading until I got home. The coffee was okay (Tully's, rather than Starbucks) but you can really tell when you're in a dubious part of town; the coffee shop was in that transition zone between the marine industrial and the northern residential; a place that used to have lots of hookers, and the door to the bathroom at the coffee shop has a lock and a "For customers only" sign on it. The one down in Greenlake has much better seating, lighting, and no such warnings.

Burien Dad & Daughters Dance

I picked up Kouryou-chan and headed back home. I started to feel a scratch in the back of my throat, and my sinuses started to fill up. It wasn't too bad at 5:30, when I was scheduled to take the girls to the Burien Annual Valentine's Dad & Daughters Dance, which was such a silly exercise in civil community, but it was still fun. I got to meet some of the other men in my community, and the girls immediately formed their own little cliques and groups. Yamaraashi-chan's best friend showed up, and they had a good time. It was blissfully short, 90 minutes or so, and they took the lame Polaroid, and had cookies and punch, and played the Hokey-Pokey and limbo and the Macarena. I wore my kilt; the looks from others were fun, especially one little girl who engaged her father in a very serious discussion of it.

But I couldn't deny, halfway through the dance, that I was getting sick. I was coming down with Omaha's cold.

I had had a date scheduled that night. Something far more vigorous. Something that involved ropes and pullies and hoods and a beautiful young woman, who I had to call and sadly tell her that I was cancelling. I downed pseudephedrine and ibuprophen and fexofenadine, and nothing held the aches and runny nose and all that at bay. I tried flushing my sinuses, and that didn't help. I begged Omaha to take on the responsibility of watering the cat, and went to bed early.

More project365 pictures!

Jan 30: Evil Kitty

It was about 10pm on Wednesday when I realized I hadn't taken a photograph all day, so in desperation (and trying to stay with the spirit of the thing) I grabbed the camera and got this photo of Dinah. She's doing well, but I don't think she appreciated being the target of the camera and its flash.

Jan 31: Plank.

I got off the bus Thursday, and there on the ground were some steel planks covering up a hole between a city waterline and a building. Which is pretty ordinary, until I got close and saw that they were labeled "Plank." Well, duh.

Feb 1: Pedestrian Safety Tunnel

Friday night. I'd been at work late, doing utterly insane things. I registered to conduct a session at OSCON on WYSIWYM Templating for HTML, XML and JSON using Python, which is pretty insane, only later that evening finding myself doing sick, horribly things with Javascript. I wrote reentrant javascript. That's just wrong. But it was late when I left, and again I'd been bad about the camera, so I took more photos. One of a cop motorcyle parked in the middle of the street, one of a tow truck for Metro buses (I would have used it, they're huge and cool, but it didn't come out very well), and this one, which I liked best of the three.

Sunday, still diseased

Woman with portable forest

Sunday morning, I dragged. I had slept badly due to the headcold, tossing and turning to drain my sinuses now and then and generally being miserable. We had invited lisakit and her roommate to go with us to Costco for our run, but she bowed out for her own reasons.

I was mostly okay through the run. I started to feel better in the afternoon, so we got through our monthly shopping. Pseudoephedrine is a freakin' miracle, no doubt about that. While we were at Costco, a woman was wheeling around two tall bamboo plants in her basket, like she'd taken them out for a walk or something. She had her own private portable forest. The kids thought that was very silly.

When we got home, Yamaraashi-chan got an invite from her mother to go over in the afternoon and play with a close friend in town. I agreed that it would be good for her to go; she had no homework or other responsibilities unfinished, and Kouryou-chan would have her Sunday rehearsal.

I took Kouryou-chan to the theater and then found a little cafe' nearby. They claimed to have WiFi but I was never able to get on with my Linux box. Which was probably a good thing. Since my cold has me at a creative low, I took the time to try and organize my projects into something sensible. First sensible thing: "my" projects and the family's projects are two separate items. I try to accomplish my projects in the interstices of family responsibility, not despite them or because of them.

Anyway, I picked Kouryou-chan and went home. Yamaraashi-chan was home exactly on time. Omaha made a delicious warm shrimp, pasta, and tomato salad, and I had just enough energy left to water the cat, put the kids to bed, and then go to bed myself.