Wife and I are here early at the 930 Club to see the John Waters X-mas Show. Our pals Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey are the opening act. My latest photo of them looks great on their promo card.

- mike lee - washington, dc

My Sidekick hasn't been syncing properly with the mail server all weekend, so hopefully this e-mail will post properly via the T-mobile web interface.

Some of the photos from the last post were of dinner at one of our favorite restaurants in NYC, Pasha at 70 W 71st St. Cuisine is Turkish.

1) The Franklin Hotel at 164 E 87th St was where we stayed. It's a well appointed little hotel with a very friendly staff, but too small for my taste. The rooms were tiny, with no fridge or ice machine out in the hall.

2-3) For breakfast, we walked to the Barking Dog luncheonette at 1678 3rd Ave @ 94th.

4) Walking down the Upper East Side after breakfast, most of the museums weren't open yet. We eventually got into the Guggenheim gift shop where we picked up a Frank Lloyd Wright candle, and optical illusion coaster.

5) Cici burned off a lot of energy at the MET's playground by Central Park. She had her first experience chasing city pidgeons and completely enjoyed it.

6-7) We arrived via taxi at the Arclight Theater, and off-broadway theater at 152 W 71st St, to catch the 1pm show of our friend Chris Major's panto-style production of Jack in the Beanstalk. We actually saw the second half of the 5pm show yesterday because we got caught in traffic and arrived late. Today, we enjoyed all 1h 45m of the light-hearted production.

8) Heading out of the city, we discovered that our transmission was having trouble in the middle gears. After a 5-hour drive, dropping Amy's sister off in Baltimore along the way, we made it home OK. But the car goes in the shop tomorrow.

I'll post some photos tomorrow on my Flickr stream.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

- mike lee - nyc

Found at the Woodrow Wilson rest stop in New Jersey just now: the new Hershey's Kissables candy coated mini kisses. These have a sweeter chocolate taste than M&Ms, which I think I still like better.

- mike lee - heading north on jersey turnpike

Before we start out a new weekend which will have me taking pictures while roaming around NYC, here are photos that have been lingering in my photo gallery from the past three weekends:

1, 2) Dinner at Cafe Hon in Baltimore; Cici pays her respects to the King again.

3) One of Cici's birthday presents: A Leapfrog LeapPad Alphabet Bus.

4-6) A satisfying taco dinner on our first visit to Samantha's Restaurant near the corner of University Blvd. and Piney Branch Road in Silver Spring, MD.

7-11) A visit to the Backyard Naturalist store to buy a couple bird feeders and supplies.

- mike lee - wheaton, md

The truth is in there.

Tod Machover, the guru of experimental music composition at the MIT Media Lab, stopped into our office this morning for a quick visit because he was in town for a client meeting already.

I'd seen his projects at sponsor events at the lab, but some of my co-workers were able to learn from him, and sample his over-the-top enthusiasm.

Hyperbow, Beatbugs, Toy Symphony, and Hyperscore, were projects he covered.

Hyperscore, his graphical music composition software for kids, has been productized as a software anyone can buy, and it was ported to the Fisher Price Pixter a couple years ago.

His latest project is a community site where Hyperscore loads in a web broswer so people can "paint" their own cell phone ringtones and then save them for downloading into a phone.

- mike lee - washington, dc

My Katamari Damacy Prince figurine arrived today!

- mike lee - wheaton, md

...Cianna watches mommy brush her teeth. Two-year-old baby doesn't get it yet and just licks the toothpaste off her little toothbrush. She also has fun chewing on the bristles.

- mike lee - wheaton, md