Philip's

HS pink tea Birthday Philip Valentine librarians four Pink, pink cup cakes

Florida 2005 Tori laughing with grandma Betty Tori resting in mom's car Kim at grandpa's Dick at Dad and Jeanne's Sunset at Barb's Missy Deej and Philip at Anna Maria breakfast

Working before Christmas. I wish I didn't have to work these 4 days before Christmas eve and Christmas, when almost every one else seems to be off. Oh, well, maybe I'll catch up on some things. Had a nice pre-Christmas dinner over in the Valley - the predicted snow didn't hit our area, though the Richmond area evidently got a thunder snow shower of about an inch. I cooked the turkey breast, but as usually Sharon cooked all the many other things. Roger and daughters were finishing up putting their tree decorations. Saturday we went downtown to a busy mall with lots of mall vendors; and then over to Tims to have Deej snap their Christmas photos; which got me busy settting up a 2004 Holiday web page at http://www.people.virginia.edu/~dbc/xmas/2004/xmas2004.html which took me late into Saturday evening and very early Sunday morning. Cold this Monday morning, with the birds in the yard scrambling to get seeds from the empty bird feeder, which we filled before we left f...

New Fall 2004 Semester Ah, another new semester and another trip to the Madison South Asia conference coming up. So far I've done 4 ENWR classes/sessions, pretty interesting topics. Yesterday's was on the American Dream related to work, wages, etc. I've been enjoying reading books, ficition, for the first time in almost 30 years, since I joined or started an reading club in May 2004. Recently I sent out several posts to that egroup, all on the writings of Gita Mehta; mainly her books River Sutra and Raj. Almost a cold day today - wonder if there will still be some okra and hot peppers in our remted public gardent plot. Did we have our first frost last night?

I wonder what's going on with you, in your life recently? Seems like most of the stuff I'm doing is pretty normal, though some of it is very interesting? Also what MUSIC have you listened to in the last couple of years, that's been exiting to you, that you've gone out and bought or wished you had bought. See my last couple paragraphs below about some of the stuff I'm listening to. We are having the Virginia Festival of the BOOK this week and week-end (24-29 March 2004). I went to readings of translated works by India and Pakistan authors yesterday afternoon, while Deej was going to hear well-known book reviews (Michael Dirda of the Washington Post for one), and I will try to see and hear Ondaatje (English Patient and Anil's Ghost) and Victoria Sanford (the model for the protaganist in Anil's Ghost) this afternoon. Garrison Keillor was another headliner, among the 100 or so authors at this 10th anniversary of this festival. You can see more about it, i...

Snowed overnight, with the city plow leaving big chuncks in our parking spot, all up the street on the north side. Supposedly Matt's coming to put the kitchen cabinet back in, thus we are staying home this Friday; but he had a FedEx truck blocking his drive way. Don't know when he will come. Did some shoveling, pant, pant. Made air plane reservations to go to Florida to see dad, sisters and all, the second week of Jan 2004. 2004 is coming up soon!

Friday's here again - after a week starting out unseasonably warm followed by more than 2 days of non-stop rain; two birthdays in the week - my daughter's and my older sister's plus one of my high school friends. Normal Library work with some interesting twists: a shower for a co-worker soon to have a baby; a reference person who also had been in India - he was in Calcutta in the 1960s, and was trying to see a PDF on a bar so he could accurately include it in a novel he's writing; then someone came in with their sons wonderful collection of Central Asia maps. Seminar this afternoon as usual. When will my boss want to go over digital photo instruction and learning today? Best Buy opens in town today! I earlier looked around for a fm transmitter to use with my PC sound to my radio since my speakers' switch is broken and I can't find a long enough phillips screwdriver to try to fix it. Maybe need to buy a better FM radio to hear this stuff. House: two guys came...

Fixed time

Lazy, cloudy day Regular cereal, coffee, pills, reading papers, checking email, starting blog