Well, here I sit on the side porch at 243. I’m stuck down here until tomorrow afternoon; the Beetle’s getting a new timing belt (as always, your generous donation to the Benjamin Westafer Benevolent Society is greatly appreciated). Meanwhile I’ve been trying to solve the Mystery of the Missing Marley. I have a feeling that I’ve found the answer. It’s taken all day, but apparently it’s been living in the wharehouse of the Golden Harvest Food Bank. I need to get my hands on it pronto for Heather.
   I’ve got the baby with me. Actually, Tam’s folks have her right now. They’ve just returned from Vegas. It’s a big night for Tam. The Board of the Gainesville Ballet is meeting in special session to discuss? Who knows?
   I’m getting ready to head down to GHP. I’ll be sending out letters to my students soon. It looks like I’ll actually have some guys this summer! I’m not going to hold my breath. Hopefully, I’ll have a better idea soon.
   What else? I’m fighting ActionScript 2.0. I want to do something that I think should be terribly easy, and yet I can’t make it work. If I can’t solve the problem soon, I’m going to have to do it the old, inefficient way. Susan’s going to kill me if I don’t. One interesting thing I have learned in connection with Susan’s site is a little more VBScript. I used php before, but since the site is hosted on IIS, I’ve converted everything to .asp. I should mention that I recieved lots of help from Will and Tony. On the php front. I’m battling the upgrade to the latest phpBB. I’ve lost the ability to access my admin control panel. I’m not the only one, but none of the solutions listed in the forum seem to be of any help. At some point I’ll have to fix that as I want to have the GHP ’05 forum up before I send out letters to the kids.
I have fingers crossed, wood knocked, and prayers said for an exciting and most challenging potential job. I won’t know anything for another week, so I’ll have to keep everyone in suspense. You’ll hear it here first.
Stay tuned…
P.S. Here’s a picture of me and Tess at the piano. Do I always look stoned?!

Ok, one more:

As promised, here’s Tess with a very famous ballet person:

Tam and I stopped by Dance Theatre to have lunch with Nate and see everybody. It just so happens that Alonzo King was there working on his new piece, “Salt.” So, of course, I had to get the photo-op. 🙂 Tam and I are hoping to get back up next week to see the show. It will be interesting seeing a different group up there doing Alonzo’s work. From what I saw, it will rock. BTW, you can buy tickets here, the name of the show is World Beat.
We’re in our room in Durham now. Tess is finally starting to slow down. Her teeth are really hurting her. We’re trying all types of things to help her; but, until there’s baby morphine, all we can do is mitigate her suffering. – I’ll have to take a picture of what I call, “the terrible face”. It’s heartbreaking! – Tam’s putting the finishing touches on the final meal of the day for Tess now. Looks like Tess is about to pass out. That’s my cue to get my schoolwork done.
B.

We’re leaving early tomorrow for SERBA. This will be (hopefully) one of my last perforances as a ballet dancer. I have been attempting to quit for about three years now.
“Every time I try to get out; they keep pulling me back in.”
I’m looking forward to seeing some familiar faces at festival and cribbing some moves from the teachers there. Tess will be accompanying us, so expect more pictures of her with famous ballet folk. 😉
B.

Tess and I were in the Apple Store at Lenox Mall yesterday. Wouldn’t you know that the annoucement came this morning. Also, it looks like my Lombard is finally out of spec. Guess I’ll have to get a new laptop. ;-). Just kidding, Tammy.
Tam and I went to the doc today to get Tam’s staples removed. Her doctor, one Pierpot “Pepper” Brown. He’s quite a character. He answered many questions including the method he used to reattach Tam’s colon; stainless steel staples! No more MRI for her (good point, Tony). Dr. Brown asked Tam if she was an athelete as she had, “twice the rectus abdominus muscle of the average male.” Impressive. She’s not to overexert herself for the next four weeks (unlikely), but has been cleared to drive.
Tess is doing well. She’s had her first small spoonfuls of rice cereal. She did eat some, but mainly made a mess. It was most amusing. She’s sleeping a lot lately. I suspect another growth spurt. She’s grabbing onto her stuffed animals and is vocalizing with more variety. I still can’t get her to repeat exact sounds to me, but she will follow my cadence; so we can have little ‘conversations’. I’m still giving her port de bras lessons every day, so look out! Tam and I are hoping to put together some video.
Meanwhile, I’m still in classes with the University of Phoenix Online and working through an ActionScript book; which is fun, if frustrating. I hope to have something to show for it in the near future; though I’m only on Chapter 3.
More to follow…

Tammy came home yesterday in the early AM. She’s doing well, but as stubborn as ever. Today I drove her to the office (she’s not allowed to drive for at least a week) she only wanted to do a ‘little work’. She stayed for about two and half hours…
Tam and I are watching “Eyes”. It’s not terrible. The characters are a little too flippant. Speaking of litotes, here’s a shout out to my Dad’s and his students that was on the NPR show Day to Day.
Tam’s going to bed. Looks like the Vicodin is working…
Tam says “to everyone who called and sent flowers to me I appreciate it very much. Your thoughts and prayers meant a lot to me.”
Back to the show for me and then I have to write a thousand words for my Philosophy class. I only looked at the assignment this morning. Hopefully, next week will be a less eventful.

Last night around 9:30PM Tam complained of generalized, severe, achy abdominal pain after taking Tess to the Gymboree, rehearsing the kids at Riverside, teaching and rehearsing at the Ballet, and finally holding Tess long enough for me to add tea to the Coffee Shop’s site. She went to the ER and I went home with the baby.
After an upper GI sometime in the wee hours and a sleepless night I got a call at 7:00AM telling me Tam was about to wheeled off to surgery. No one really told us what if she had an appendicitis, or what. I didn’t even have time to collect the baby and get over there to see her off. It really sucked. I called everybody and Tam’s folks rushed up here to help out. My Mom and Dad are on the way and should be here any minute.
I guess the thing that was most disturbing was the lack of information from the folks at the hospital. My patience was definitely being tested. I even called my Uncle Johnny (head of emergency services at a major hosipital in Gulf Breeze). He offered the nuclear option of giving the good folks at Northeast Georgia Regional Medical Center his phone number. Finally, it was around 2:00 or 3:00PM that we were finally visited by the Physician’s Assistant. Here’s the latest:
Tam had a ruptered diverticulum. They removed the offending area and have sent the specimen to pathology. The results should be back in about three days, but the Docs are convinced it was simply a ruptured diverticulum. Tam will be in the hospital for at least four days, long enough for her ‘bowels to wake up’. How pleasant. BTW, she doesn’t have a ‘bag’ and is only catheterized (only). She’s on enough morphine and Phenergan to get a spot on Wild Kingdom. In other words, she’s pretty miserable.
Miss Kim and Vincas were very sweet during their quick visit, but I think we might want to give her at least another day to recuperate. There’s plenty of activity in the room with the baby and family. I will keep everyone posted here and try to return calls as soon as I can. For now, let me tell you that Tammy appreciates your kinds thoughts and prayers. It looks like she’s going to be A-OK and we’ll just have to keep a close eye on her diet and try not to stress her out. (The stress part applies especially to me)!

I just read this on druge. I wonder how long it will take for Fox or any other right leaning outlet to start attacking this report? An hour? Two? Or maybe they’ll just ignore it. On the other hand, how long will it take for left leaning folks to capatalize on the findings? Hmmm, took me about 5 minutes.
Interestingly, I was just visited by a nice lady distributing the “Watch”. Coincidence?
Who knows. Here’s another pretty picture of Tess:

The Atlanta Ballet hosted a public preview of Swan Lake last night. It was basically a dress rehearsal. The best part was watching Tess. She really seemed to pay attention, even though we were pretty far away.
OMG, I guess I AM going to be a ballet Dad. Oh crap. 😉

 

Dear Sir,
   With the announcement of IE7 and the promise of new security updates I am most curious to know if this new version will include full support of CSS and the .png format and if not, why not?
Sincerely,
Benjamin Westafer

Just a quick note… Things are crazed here. I’m busy working on two Flash projects. I haven’t fooled with Flash in a while and am trying to take a more thoughtful approach than I have in the past. I will be happy to share the results of my labor as soon as I actually get something done.
Other plates I’ve got spinning: I’m ‘choreographing’ Damn Yankees for Riverside Military Academy, Diane’s been sick this week, so I’ve been large and in charge getting the company ready for SERBA adjudications coming up in a week. I’m dancing for GBC in a Jaime ballet by Tam. I’m dancing for Lisa Toup’s, and I’m still waiting to hear about some top secret stuff as well as working my tail off on some other top secret stuff.
Right now, I’m about to head off to a movie. Yes! You heard right! Mom’s up here looking after Tess and so Tam and I are off to see the debut of Constantine. I wonder if I can write it off because of the coffee shop? I’d better get moving. Let me just add that I’m following the progress of my friend Paul York’s step sister Katie. Your thoughts and prayers are appreciated for her full and speedy recovery. More to follow…