My friend Jonathan has started keeping an online journal, rather remarkable in its openness and honesty.

Kathy and I went to Half-Price Books for a while last night. One of the more interesting things I stumbled across was a book on the architect, I.M. Pei. One of my favorite buildings in Dallas is a huge, shiny green glass obelisk of his design that has a beautiful water garden beneath (which we got chased out of by a security guard one weekend). I was surprised, however, to find out how much of his other work I was already familiar with, including Dallas City Hall, an example of his earlier work, and the Meyerson Symphony Center, which is a wholly remarkable piece of design. Ever wonder why the glass pyramid at the Louvre and the geometric glass juttings at the National Gallery are so similar? Same guy. Quite interesting to read about the man and see so much of his work.

Electronic Arts, my employer, today announced Ultima X: Odyssey, the next online Ultima game world. It’s using the Unreal engine, and is a dramatic departure technologically from Ultima Online. The demos I’ve seen look really sweet, and the team has some really good ideas for improving the online gaming experience over what’s out there already. Of course, I can’t say much beyond what’s in the press release (both because EA wouldn’t want me to, and because I don’t know much else), but it’s nice to be able to acknowledge the project’s existence.

Abigail is just getting over mono, which turned out to be the cause of the fever that so nearly disrupted her birthday party. (The recovery comes none to soon, as yesterday was the first day of school for her.) She’s on the upswing now, though the doctor says no contact sports for another several weeks, as mono can cause one’s spleen to swell and potentially burst if it gets a good, solid whack. Fortunately, Abby’s not too prone to contact sports, so this restriction should sit fine with her.

Margaret has a rotten case of swimmer’s ear, which has come on rather abruptly after her learning to swim. She’ll be out of the pool for a while.

Emily, who we’re home schooling this year, and Liam who isn’t yet old enough for school, are of course completely healthy.

Last week was a busy one. A few highlights:

• A Day with Liam: On Tuesday, Liam and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean, which we both quite liked, though Liam hid his eyes at a few strategic moments. We then moved on to Chuck E. Cheese’s for an overpriced but tasty lunch, followed by a trip to Mazak Music, our local musician’s emporium, and a good long swim in the river to work the pizza off. I got hit with a migraine, so wrapped things up a bit early, but we had a great time anyway.
• Blue Man Group: My friend David Barnard won a couple of tickets to see Blue Man Group on their tour for their new album, The Complex. David had never seen the Boys in Blue before, so it was lots of fun to get to introduce him to one of my favorite acts. While I enjoyed the show a great deal, I’d have to say that I actually dug their stage show in Vegas more. While I like their music, the most characteristic thing about the group is their on-stage techno-shenanigans, which the rock show format leaves less room for. That said, there were some delightful visual tricks in this show too, which made the “How did they do that?!?!” game as much fun as ever.
• Camelot: Kathy and I went down to see my cousin Tanya in a production of Camelot on Friday night. Though it’s a musical theater staple, I’d never seen it before, and was excited to get to fill that gap in my cultural education. The show launches from T.H. White’s version of the Arthurian legend, with much of the whimsy in that telling making the transition to stage intact. We quite enjoyed the show, as well as a bite afterward at the Liberty Bar (another worthwhile discovery!) with Tanya and the lawyer-by-day/thespian-by-night who played Sir Pellinore. It was a super evening out!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m moving from programming our account management system at work to programming on the game server team. As a result, I’m having to cram a lot of C++ into my brain in a short time. It’s engaging but exhausting work. I couldn’t, however, ask for a better guide than Accelerated C++, the book that was recommended me by Tim Keating, our team lead. I had expected C++ to be largely a matter of learning another syntax for object-oriented programming, but there’s quite a lot more to it than that, as it turns out. Anyway, I’m having fun fleshing out my resume and learning something new, not to mention tackling a job I would certainly have been rejected for had I applied through the usual channels!

• I took Maggie to the San Antonio Zoo, for a ride on the Brackenridge Eagle, to the office of Mom McMains, and to see Spy Kids 3D (which didn’t make a lick of sense) for her day with Daddy.
• Emily’s home from her four-week New York trip. We’re glad she’s back! It’s great to have the full family again.
• Abigail’s birthday party was yesterday. In spite of sporadic illness on her part and looming thunderstorms, all the portents cleared and we had a spectacularly good time. Thanks to all who attended and helped make it a wonderful occasion!
• As a token of thanks for helping to set up her website, Celeste gave us a beautifully done print of Vanity and another of Dragon. We’re looking forward to finding a good spot in the house for them. She and Adam are off to Arizona for Harley Davidson mechanic school in a couple of weeks.

We’re not quite sure how it happened, but Liam recently got himself into some poison ivy. He’s not as agonizingly itchy as I would have expected, but has broken into some horrid looking rashes. The doctor’s hooked him up with the good anti-itch stuff now, and we’re making sure he wears socks on his afflicted feet as much as possible so as not to share the blight with his siblings. They’ve also recommended that we soap-and-water his shoes, though I think that may have been just because they’re smelly. You never can tell with those doctors!

We’ve finally got air conditioning out in my converted garage office and the other rooms on that end of the house. After Sears damaged our living room with their initial install and then ignored our cries for help, both phoned and written, for 9 months, we told them to get lost and to take their system with them. Ironically, the company they contracted to do the removal, Austin Air Duct, turned out to be quite competent and helpful. We solicited a bid from them, along with several other local contractors, and eventually decided that we liked them best and had them do the installation.

The job ended up being a fair bit more involved than they had expected, due to the shoddy work the original Sears crew had done, but they called in the necessary extra people and got the job done finished up anyway at the originally bid price. The new installation looks much nicer, runs quieter and best of all, actually cools the place off. (The old installation always struggled a bit.) We paid a bit extra to have some extra returns put in, which means that I can seal the inside doors to my office for soundproofing and not impact the airflow.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the new system, and would heartily recommend Austin Air Duct to anyone in the area.

On Tuesday I took the day off work to spend with Abigail. We started the festivities at Natural Bridge Wildlife Ranch, a groovy drive-through zoo, where we got to feed a variety of deer, buffalo, zebras, llamas, sheep, antelope, goats, etc. from the window of our car. The highlight for Abby was when a zebra started chewing on the top of her door, leaving a great puddle of zebra slobber behind. Helpful hint: you get to spend more time with the animals if you drive a car without enough coolant, as you’ll have to pull off to the side and turn off the engine regularly to keep from overheating.

We went on from there to Chuck E. Cheese — the very one, in fact, that I used to go to as a kid, and to which we kidnapped Chris for his 17th birthday. (Aside: We handcuffed and blindfolded him and drove around in circles along the way, and yet he still guessed our destination. Obviously the brain structures which are responsible for figuring out how to get from point A to point B and which I lack were given to him instead.) I don’t remember if this is standard for pizzas there, but ours was a hyper-garlicky affair that I quite enjoyed.

After pizza, we moved on to the Riverwalk, where we took the narrated river cruise through the downtown area. Having grown up in San Antonio, the Riverwalk is one of my favorite places to go without any particular goal in mind. It’s always lovely and fun to wander around exploring. On this trip, we had the added pleasure of running into Ross’s mother at her gift shop. We stayed and visited for about an hour, having a great conversation between interruptions from people wanting to buy lottery tickets and other items. She was very kind to Abigail, and regaled her with a few nifty items from the shop to take home with her. (One of which, a small star pendent with flashing red and blue lights, quickly lost favor with me when Abigail discovered that it would give Daddy quite a start to hold it up in the rear-view mirror.)

Finally, we went over to Barry’s for Siegfried, the third opera in the ring cycle. I wasn’t sure how Abby would do with something that long, but with me whispering paraphrases of the text in her ear, she loved it, and said she wanted to come back for Götterdämmerung .