Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Lucinda’s preschool had a field trip to the Aqarium of the Pacific today. At first Lucinda was excited to be going to the aquarium, but in the end she was disappointed that it was the same aquarium she’d been to before. She thought they were going to a different one. And the field trip meant that she didn’t get to have her regular Share Day.

We did a big garden project today. We moved the front of the planter in the front yard back about a foot. This makes the planter somewhat smaller, so Cathy doesn’t have to work so hard to keep it up. We had to transplant all of the plants in the front foot of the planter, which turned out to be a lot of work. Then we had to reinstall the border and put down some pieces of new grass to fill in the new bare strip.

Implemented a home-made CAPTCHA on our web pages to stand guard on the ‘mailto’ links. This will prevent robots from scooping up our addresses to spam. The CAPTCHA itself is written in PHP, and it uses a MySQL database to store the 700-some challenge words and also a list of email addresses or URLs it is guarding. An example of it in action can be seen here: cosmo.pasadena.ca.us/tt.php?id=sms

Several weeks ago, Lucinda found a small green caterpillar in the back yard. She brought it inside and we put it in a jar along with a leaf from the avocado tree for it to eat. It ate some of the leaf, and then it pupated. This morning, Lucinda woke up and saw a little white moth fluttering around inside the jar.

We went to see “Bend it Like Beckham” today. This was a very entertaining story of Indian immigrants in England and football. Highly recommended.

After the movie, we went to Aunt Maggi’s house to pick up Lucinda after her sleep-over.

We took Lucinda to Alethia’s birthday party today. It was held at the pool at an apartment complex in Marina Del Rey. She had some fun playing with the other kids, even though she didn’t go in the pool. Overall, she thought it was a fun time.

Afterward, we took her to Aunt Maggi’s house so she could spend the night there.

We took Lucinda to Disneyland today. This was her first time there, and she had a lot of fun.

We started off in Fantasyland. She saw the castle, and she insisted on going in. She rode the Carousel first. While riding that, she saw the Dumbo ride, so we did that next. During that ride, she saw the Matterhorn and she insisted that she wanted to ride that. She rode the Matterhorn with Daddy, but when it was over, she said that she didn’t like it. The ride was too rough, and she thought the parts in the dark were scary.

Next, we went to the new Pooh ride. The line was kind of long, so we picked up passes to come back later. While we were waiting, we took the raft over to Tom Sawyer Island. Lucinda climbed in the treehouse and ran across the bridges. After this, we had lunch while we were waiting for our appointment with Pooh. After lunch, we came back and did the Pooh ride. Lucinda liked the ride, but it broke down just before the end, so we ended up having to walk out.

Next, we went to Toontown. On the way there, Lucinda met Aladdin, Jasmine, and the Genie. Then, when we got there, she met Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Pluto, and Donald. Great excitement for a four-year-old. She also did the bouncer in Goofy’s house. We were going to do the Roger Rabbit Car Toon ride, but she decided that she didn’t want to do any more rides in the dark.

Finally, we rode the Monorail. After this, we headed for the exit. The devastation was great, but Lucinda had had a good time.

Pictures are in the photo album at 1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?string=&ayear=2003&amonth=5&aday=7&byear=2003&bmonth=5&bday=7&submit=Search

Today Daddy took Lucinda to the “Making” exhibit at the LACMA [www.lacma.org] Children’s Gallery. We took along her friend Alethia and her mom. The girls decorated some flower pots, climbed on the clay hill, made some pictures, and generally had fun.

Pictures are in her photo album 1134.org/lucinda/photos/index.php?string=&ayear=2003&amonth=5&aday=3&byear=2003&bmonth=5&bday=3&submit=Search

Also, we tried out yet another brownie recipe. This time it was the Ultimate Brownie from the Hershey’s cookbook. We made them without the chocolate chips and frosting, but they are still very good. The recipie is available at www.recipesource.com/desserts/brownies/05/rec0545.html

Mommy took Lucinda to Farrell’s Ice Cream today. They had a ‘Volcano’, which they made a valiant attempt to finish. Afterward, Lucinda played some games, and they watched the roller skaters at the rink there.

Here’s a recent sample of Lucinda’s artwork. She brought this to the breakfast table and said, “This is for you, Daddy.”