Guess who's coming to breakfast

At the request of an anonymous reader, I am finally updating. ;) Actually, I just started feeling a little too lazy for even my own comfort, and decided it's time to put something here. Okay:

Lisbeth is back in town. Well, not at the moment, actually, she is in Kansas City tonight for an education conference. In fact, she's presenting on the educational use of blogs. She was on the news not too long ago being interviewed about her blogging, (the clip is available in .wmv format on her family blog,) and the footage is being used in the presentation (to her great dismay, as expressed to me yesterday, primarily because I taped, ripped, and posted the video, so it really is my fault this is happening. ;) I even put it on DVD for any members of her family who can't view the .wmv for whatever reason.)

But she's back from San Francisco, she returned to KCI a week ago last night. A week ago this morning, I went to her parents' house to meet the family and eat breakfast. To meet most of the family, anyway: the middle sister, Lindsay, couldn't be there. But I met her parents, David and Susan, her youngest sister, Annalise, and Grandpa Virgil. They were all great, very friendly people who made me feel at home with them, even during the four hours or so during which I tried to destroy their computer. David had asked about trying Linux, so I attempted to set up a dual-boot system for them. I've done this a few times before with fairly positive results. This time...dear God, this time I used...I used the HP recovery program. It's shameful to me to confess this. I've never used such a thing, and I hope never to again. It actually kicked in automatically, after I screwed a Debian install, a Fedora Core 3 install, and had just completed what appeared to be a successful RedHat 9 install. It wiped out what remained of Linux (or at least of LILO) and in the end there was once again a working XP machine, which I was starting to believe we wouldn't again see that evening. So in the end their PC was okay despite my efforts, and through it all they were very cool. It wasn't all failed attempts at computer butchery, we also had fun of the variety that didn't make me all sweaty and apologetic. We ate some great food. David makes killer biscuits, and Susan's roast beef is amazing. And the chocolate mushrooms weren't exactly hand-made, but they were very good. (Thanks, Lisbeth! [She brought them back from CA for me.])

So we came back to our respective homes and have more or less resumed our normal lives. I had a workshop yesterday in my fiction writing class. The story went over pretty well, but I was amazed to learn how much I had left out, and basically everyone noticed, because the parts I left out were pretty important to the story arc. Could have sworn I'd put most of those details in somewhere. Now I know that I should probably read my own stories before I give copies to the class. I've gone back through the story, and the missing elements truly are missing. It's no big deal, though, because I have until next week for the final draft, and I know now what is missing.

On a side note, I like tv, and I don't like having to remember to set my vcr, so I love bittorrent.

By the way, if you saw the comments on my last post, did any of you actually google Amanda Monti? I uttered a genuine gasp. I have nothing else to say on the subject.