BilikFamily.com

Laptop - On the geek website, Slashdot, there often seems to be this juvenile attempt to be the first person to comment on a freshly posted story. You'll see lame postings that say "First Post" in a sort of "I got there first" competition. Well, this is my first post from a new laptop. My last iBook is just shy of three years old, but when I woke up Friday morning, it was acting flakey in an electrical sense. We plan to send it in under warrantee if we can and later have it put on the desk so that the twins can play edutainment CDROMs at the same time — one on the iMac and the other on the iBook.

This was an unexpected expense that I had hoped to put off until early 2006. I was starting to get into situations where things I wanted to do (multimedia-wise) weren't available for my iBook because it wasn't up to the task horsepower-wise. With a DVD drive and the newer G4 processor, I can now use GarageBand for instance. Photoshop'ing five megapixel images shouldn't take as long. As a bonus the new laptop ships with iPhoto, Pages, and Keynote. I was interested in those in the past but didn't want to shell out the money.

Claire - In other news Claire had her first clarinet lesson on Wednesday. She now seems to have a handle on the special way you blow to get a note out of a clarinet since it's a reed instrument. Three of Claire's best girl friends are also in the school's 4th grade clarinet class: Brittany, Shauna, and Shannon. When I came home from work Friday, Brittany and Shauna were over practicing with Claire. I was amazed that Michelle could be in good spirits with three new players. Having played for several years herself, Michelle could give them advice, but it was hardly soothing tones coming from the study. *grin*

Autumn - I have a backlog of pictures in the camera to work on. There are pictures from the first day of school, Claire's birthday, and Michelle and Claire practicing clarinet. I also have a few new recordings of piano music to capture and mp3-ify. Unfortunately, (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) the nice weather is competing with desires to work on them. This is my absolute favorite time of year. Nights in the 40s, brisk mornings, temperate days and, bees excepted, most bugs like flies and mosquitos and gone. In one more week southern NH will be a burst of color. Sadly, it's followed by several months of Michelle's least favorite season: winter and it's accompanying cabin fever and illnesses. We lit the fireplace stove last night for the first time of the season. I think it was a psychological thing for Michelle. She didn't want to turn it on before October. Michelle was saying that the stoves are one of the few investments she really is happy with. I think the other would have to be TiVo. Both get daily usage and appreciation.