Mojo grew overnight! I mean, yeah, they do that, but this was a lot!
6:13 AM Jul 1st
Great swim this morning; makes up for missing some of last week due to sick kid and for some of the short swims in the week before.
12:24 PM Jul 1st
Podcast from On Point on Memorial Day, asking (among other things) what is our American freedom FOR? http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/05/mem
2:49 PM Jul 1st
KKS & Mo: cookies & spinach; R: steak & potato salad; me: dishes. Perfect balance!
7:20 PM Jul 1st
Mojo gets to go to his bud Preston's house today after pre-school! They are both totally psyched! Yay! Thanks, MamaJen!
7:03 AM Jul 2nd
Advertising/Social Justice responding to viewer: http://copyranter.blogspot.com/2009/0
This was a link recommended by MG on FaceBook. It raises a lot of questions and ideas for me, but mostly reminds me in a way of a scene in a movie--was it Gattica?
Messing around with print layouts: balancing readability, whimsy, pictures, relatively efficient inkjet printing (ink use, page counts). Hm.
That would be me experimenting with my SWAPA and other newsletters. I want more clue!
Sunday, July 5: Bug Walk at the Birds of Vermont Museum, Huntington, 10:30 – 12. Free admission to the Museum that day for BugWalkers!
Just a ping to suggest folks come. More details on the Birds' events calendar: http://www.birdsofvermont.org/events.ph
Updating Birds of Vermont Museum site. They have an Art Contest for kids! http://www.birdsofvermont.org/art_conte
Ditto; part of what I was working on at E's while she and her stepdaughterM played with Mojo.
- 11:46 Had great, full day on Sunday. How did it all fit so easily? Gardening, reading, bathing, napping!
- 12:23 Fascinating interview: http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/05/asse
ssing-the-american-future
- 09:20 PossibleSunflowers are definitely not beans OR squash so they're out of the garden now (into a pot, just in case they ARE sunflowers).
- 11:51 Raining again. Thinking it's not the day for M's first camping overnight. Hope KKS gets our msg to this effect!
- 09:43 Wood arrived! • M's fever is back, lower than yesterday, so again with no pre-school, little work. • Filtering old files I can do, though.
- 11:22 Sometimes, despite ...interesting... sounds from upstairs, you just don't want to find out what the 4-year-old is up to. Clank! Bang? Shake!
- 16:57 Mowed lawn, mailed letters, had spicy noodles at co-op, made half a bank deposit, and delivered old bricks. We are awesome! I need a nap...
This year, R took care of ordering wood and arranging for delivery. It all happened faster than in previous years, and more cheaply (although it will be more work on our end). Yay. R ordered logs, which turned out to be seasoned ones (a good thing), so we'll have to buck them up to stove length, and rent a splitter to make them small enough to stack.
M was thrilled to watch the Murray, the wood tech, use the grabbing claw on the end of the boom to lift the wood off the truck and lay it in the cleared space near our shed. One at a time, carefully!
When you go by logs, it's a lot harder to estimate cordage. This is somewhere between 5 and 7 cord of wood (we stack pretty snugly, and a cord is a volume measurement, so I'm guessing not quite 6 cord.) Our woodshed holds just over 5 easily. We'll have to rent or borrow a longer chain saw (some of those logs are about 20"-24" in diameter!) maybe, as well as the splitter.
The photo suggests the wood is leaning on the apple tree; it's not, but it's close. Aside: that poor apple had its top lopped off by the power company, clearing branches off the lines. This was a good precaution against the storms&emdash;we've had fewer power outages since they really started keeping up with that&emdash;but I wish they'd told me they were going to this poor tree!
And our winter's heat is mostly here!
Cross-posted from my Small Measures blog
- 07:35 Juggling today: sick kid, less-sick me, a site that got hacked, plus the usual stuff.
- 13:06 Pretty much just holding the sick kid today: cold cloths, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, popsicles and naps... Poor little guy.
- 16:07 M's fever is gone for now; he wants to mow the lawn. Ummm... I'm not convinced this is the right choice yet....
- 20:21 My cool husband ordered the firewood. Now it's coming tomorrow, not Monday! Quick, clear space for it! Move the rhododendron! ... Phew. Bath!
- 11:02 Still tired from a cold, but at least my throat is rough feeling, instead of that awful too-sharp-to-swallow. Trying to work; want nap....
- 13:01 My littlest sister is writing cover letters to Beethoven's 9th; I'm doing summary data to On Point. She's still cooler than me! :)
- 07:41 Sore throat, slightly achy sort of tired, stuffy feeling in the back of my neck. Bah!
- 10:19 Mo does calm stuff: build with Lincoln logs, look at squid pics on WWW, listen to music, play violin. I drink tea & more tea. Thanks, kid!
- 13:53 It's somewhat surreal to look out the window and see an excavator digging out the foundation of the house you're standing in...
When this is done, they'll pour and insulate a concrete wall, tying that into the concrete walls that are now under the front porch (which replaced boulder-footers in about 1990 I think) and into the back wall, which is still boulders, but tied to the concrete slabs & footers of the back hall extension and the greenhouse floor, c 1985ish)
Cool stuff, but the excavator out the window was still surprising to see, even though I knew it was onsite.
- 09:32 Today: cookies, shelves, groceries, laundry, garden, balloons? Maybe pestering the family across the valley? (Still vaguely rainy, feh!)
- 12:02 I am winning at data entry and laundry while Mojo plays at the Sid the Science Kid website. Street Fair later? Or baking cookies? Decisions!
- 18:40 Street fair was awesome! Pocock Rocks! We had a had blast with M's preschool friends, dancing, creemees, face painting.
A short essay on memorization (specifically of poetry), and why this isn't the "spitback" we (we?) hated in High School: A Word on Rote Memorization by Mark Bauerlein. Wish I'd had this handed to me in high school chemistry. Thanks maybe to
On retouching photos, in which a 46-year old woman is edited. Was this successful? Why did they do it? Impossibly Beautiful from Shakesville, via supergee.
Something that made me think about where I've been slacking in my own family responsibilities (this is a good thing, here, as I have been doing just that in certain ways): Dude, man up and start acting like a mom: How I learned to stop sulking and embrace my life as a stay-at-home father by Aaron Traister on Salon. Can't remember who posted this first, but thank you.
China Miéville has some reasons I hadn't heard of to appreciate J.R.R. Tolkein. This is via Supergee too, but seems right up Jed's alley also. And Chris Cobb's?
Continuing in the literary vein, an essay by Terri Windling on Beauty, Beast, and Marriage. Again with probably from Jed or Supergee.
The Achipelago of Weird, a metaphoric approach to coping with people who think you are just out there, and vice versa. Great phrasing; the comments fill out this idea a little, and add what I would've added had I been there for the discussion.
Three Swarthmore Reunion pics that make me happy: Folk Dancers, musicians and physics teachers (yes, Jim).
- 19:16 Mojo is singing "Yellow Submarine" while having his bath. **delighted/amused**
- 19:40 There's an Art to knowing one's real limits against finding excuses to be lazy. I do not have this Art.... (I'm tired *and* lazy...)
- 10:57 Thanks, T-shirt-buyer J!
- 11:54 Fascinating discussion of electric vehicle infrastructure/implementation: http://www.onpointradio.org/2009/04/shai-a
gassi-clean-car-pioneer
- 05:56 Must get M to preschool 2 hr earlier than usual in order to make an appt 1 hr away in opposite direction... Therefore, must have coffee.
- 15:11 I think I need to work this evening for a couple hours to make up for my lovely and needed nap. My sleep schedule is truly messed.
- 21:11 I am printing a SWAPA. See what reunions do to me? I don't have time for this! Clearly, I failed my willpower roll (again)...
- 23:29 Much about downloads today: vermontyarnco.com with downloadable patterns and vtherpatlas.org with revised observation forms.
- 22:55 Recommended (food for thought at minimum): http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publicatio
ns/shop-class-as-soulcraft
Back from vacation (we went to Philadelphia). It was good to be gone; it will be good to get back into the stride of things, but won't happen fully this week as I'm off again Thursday (back to Philly, more or less -- how the hell do TWENTY years pass so ... so ... fast and interestingly? ).
Trying to not take on anything new until I've FINISHED some stuff, and trying to figure out what work to bring (I'll take train for part of it after all) since Thurs & Fri are my usual work days and I can't do no work for 2 weeks in a row. (Also, if I wait on trying to get new stuff, someone else will do it/be hired and I won't screw it up and I won't screw up what is in my hands. This sounds weird, and is phrased negatively, but I think is good planning for me now and I'm just now to sleepy to phrase it better.) Wishing as always for my time to set up and do some of my own projects and sites, but must do the agreed-to/paid-to-do stuff first still.
On the other hand, although no work was done today (true about 2/3 of Tuesdays at present), I was the kind of Mom I want to be (basically cheerful, moderately organized, sharing attention, with my kid, instead of being too wrapped up in my own head/projects/chores). We mowed, tidied, planted marigolds, lettuce & spinach seeds, played with AuntieE, got haircuts, had ice cream with
'Nuff tags, Kir? Sheesh.



