Thursday, June 16

Today was largely uneventful, filled with another attempt at jamming on some work, and ending with a little bit of an art show.

I got up with Grace at about 4AM, and after she dozed back off I checked in with the office. I chatted for a while about the current events and my state of development, providing an interim sample of my app's output. So far so good. I put in a few more hours trying to get over a hump or two that had made me restless, and turned in after the sun rose.

I ended up sleeping-in until about 10AM. I'm not sure if it's truly sleeping in if you just went to bed a few hours before, after having been up for a few hours, after having slept just a few hours before that.

We had a quick breakfast, and I wanted to get back to the keyboard. I was so close to being done with this should-be trivial task. All I was trying to do was grab a flurry of web pages from the client's own website, that should have been identically formatted, and grab some of the content of of it and parse it into a format to be re-added to the content management system. The trouble is that the HTML in the web pages is fraught with simple and dumb mistakes and bad formatting. Some of the bad formatting is just a lingering problem with HTML (it's allowable to open some tags and not close them, the close assumed when it hits a next tag of particular types, for example), but some was just plain wrong.

I spent most of my time yesterday trying to identify and clean up the bad HTML bits as I re-ran my application after correcting for whatever I'd found previously. I had thought it would be a small, constant set of errors, but it turned out to be too widely varied and on too many pages to try to one-off. I decided to break down and grab the JTidy library and add it to my project. This dropped my program source by at least half, and caught nearly all of the errors without any effort on my part. There were still some glaring, horrible errors (like an equals-slash-equals instead of an equals-quote) that I had to correct before passing them to JTidy, but that was small by comparison.

While I worked, Claire was running between the room and two of the laundry rooms in the hotel. The last time she'd done laundry she just lingered in one room (each room has a single washer and dryer) cycling through the laundry, but this time we had a little more so she was trying to shotgun and get the laundry done faster. Of course, things don't work so well here, and one of the dryers had a problem with the coin feeder, and one dried better than the other. Also, someone else took an opportunity between a wash and dry cycle to jump in and throw some of their stuff in the washer.

Also, unlike last time, Claire was spending time in the room, where it was not only much cooler, but also to help tend to Grace when she stirred. She still sleeps most of the day away, but there are spurts of time where she's awake and wants to interact a bit. This doesn't mix well with trying to focus on software development, no matter how trivial it seems, so Claire was trying to help me get the time I needed to get the task done.

After I'd had enough, and everything seemed to parse right, and the laundry was done enough, we stopped doing those things and met with the other adopting mother to try to hit the Marshallese museum near the courthouse. The gals had tried a few times before, but it's always been closed.

We cruised up the street and parked in the line of cars in front of the building with the museum inside. We strolled up the stairs, but noticed the “closed” sign, with a note to return “during operating hours.” We were there during operating hours, so we tried the door and found it to be open. The light was on, and a fella was in there sweeping and working on the floor. He didn't say anything, either to greet us or turn us away, so we helped ourselves to the sites.

The museum, such as it is, is basically a fair-sized room with a number of shelves and standing displays strewn with old black-and-white photographs. The shelves also have some artifacts, such as mats and fans and shells. There are newspaper clippings and old typed and handwritten signage describing the items nearby.

As we neared completion of the loop through the room, the fella continued his work without anything more than a “yokwe” for us. He had opened a can of what smelled like paint thinner, and it quickly became overpowering. The room had no ventilation, and he gave no warning (and wore no protective gear). I thought this was rather unsafe on many levels, so I took Grace out of the room. The other adopting mother also brought her son out, where we commented on that poor choice of timing or materials. Shortly Claire joined us, and made the same comments.

We adjourned and set out for a late lunch at Monica's, a little “fast food” place recommended by a recent contact. It's a little unassuming, but clearly marked building. Inside were four small four-top tables, and what looks like a deli counter, although nothing was in it. The proprietor greeted us and confirmed he was cooking. He turned on an air conditioner and brought menus.

The menu is pretty simple, there's rice, fried rice, or noodles, with a choice of one or two meats, and a small selection of appetizer or side dishes. The meat selections are your typical chicken, pork, beef, and seafood, with a variety of spices. I chose Kung Po chicken and rice, and had a couple Diet Cokes. After taking your order, he runs back and cooks the dishes to order and brings them out (he did bring a round of sodas before starting to cook). The food was actually very tasty, and pretty inexpensive. I wish we'd have tried it sooner, as we probably would have gone back more, but with (knock on wood) just a week to go, chances are slim.

After returning to the hotel, we decided to continue hanging out, and agreed that after a quick diaper change, we'd head to the other mother's room and watch some tube or movies or just sit and chat while the kiddos coo. It turned out to time right to meet with Lauren, a local artist, and the one who told us about Monica's. She showed up just a short time after we'd made it to the other room. Everyone bantered, and then the gals started flipping through Lauren's portfolio. She'd brought a book filled with 8x10 and 5x7 prints for sale.

As they started flipping pages, Grace hit her afternoon threshold, so I excused us and changed her and gave her a little bit of a bottle. After she'd fallen asleep I returned and we sat quietly on the sofa.

Lauren's art is quite like the style of the painting that we have in our hotel room, including the one that Grace stares at the most. The moms each picked a handful of prints. We asked if she had any kind of website where she displayed or sold her works, and she lamented that she didn't. Of course, I asked if she wanted one. She was surprised to learn that's the kind of work I do. She does the paintings from which the prints are made, but is going to Sicily, Italy, to work more on honing some graphic art skills. We exchanged e-mail, and pledged to stay in contact to see about helping her get a site where she can share and sell her work.

Claire offered to drive Lauren back to her apartment, and the other mother and I chatted a bit more while she prepared a tub for her son. Just as we were saying “see ya tomorrow,” Claire returned, gave her own salutations, and we went upstairs. Grace was already out, so we changed her again (she needs that almost as much as anything else she does), dressed her in nightclothes, and tucked her into bed. We sat down an finished the second DVD of Modern Family before turning in.