Changes

I would like to say a few words in farewell to ...

My nano. Sigh. A week or two ago, it suddenly died. I did not realize how much I used it and how much I relied upon it until it wasn't there anymore. Oh well. I have replaced it with this glamourous toy:

My new ipod touch. So far, we are still becoming acquainted. It's quite a change from the nano, and I am not sure about it yet. It is quite a piece of equipment, though.

I finished the socks I started this summer, and they look great. The pattern was driving me crazy with boredom by the leg of the second sock, but the yarn was loads of fun.

These are the Lace Rib Socks from Wendy's new book, Socks from the Toe-Up, and the yarn is K1C2's Ty-Dy Sock in Blueberry Fields. The color changes are pretty wild, but the yarn is so soft and very nice to knit. There was tons of yarn in this skein, I still have a lot left over.

I give you ... Baked Apple Muffins.

We were in a baking mood today. Yum!

No, this is not the Bayou

This is New Jersey. It's pretty much one big suburb. But in our corner of New Jersey, bordering on the Pinelands and boasting a good amount of farmland despite the encroaching McMansions, I am so happy that we still get to see so much wildlife. Well, Rudolph would probably be happier if the wild turkeys would go elsewhere. But we all love these little guys:

This dude had the misfortune to be crossing our front path as I was taking the garbage cans out the other night. I caught him rather easily, and then everybody wanted a turn holding him. After dazing himself by repeatedly leaping out of our hands and getting re-caught, he finally sat quietly on Catgirl's hand for a while, before trying to climb up her arm.

Mathboy ran to get the camera and was our Frog photographer. After snapping some pix, we deposited our buddy in the grass and watched him hop away.

First Day of School '09

And off they go. Mathboy looks little nervous, and he did still feel somewhat under the weather, so I hope all goes well!

A Magical but Exhausting Trip

The books are not kidding when they say that a trip to Disneyworld is not a relaxing vacation. We returned Sunday night from our Disney extravaganza, and today both kids are laid up with colds, trying to recover before school starts tomorrow. But it was worth it because we had a great time. We hit each of the Disney parks at lest twice--and Epcot at least 5 times, because that's where the good food is! We also spent some time at the Universal Studios parks as well.



Although it was very hot some days, it turned out to be a good time of year to go: the lines were extremely short most of the time, and the crowds weren't bad at all. Two or three times, we took a break in the middle of the day to go back to our hotel and swim, and then went to a different park for the evening (usually Epcot).

Before we left for this trip, Catgirl had repeatedly stated that she would not be riding any scary rides. It was a little frustrating for Rich and me, because we had visions of waiting in line for the teacup ride again. Oy.

On the first full day, we went to the Magic Kingdom, and Catgirl consented to ride Splash Mountain with us. This ride, in particular, was the one she had said for months that looked terrifying. She absolutely would not ride it the last time we were in Disney and she said she wouldn't ride it this time either, so we were pleasantly surprised when she changed her mind at the last minute. It's a great ride, with the whole Song of the South story and all the music, and the fall into the briar patch is awesome. We were so sure that she would enjoy it if we could just get her to try it. Well...

Splash Mountain

...she loved it. And at that moment, a crazy Disney thrill-ride-seeker was born. After that, she wanted to go on everything. The Rock N Roller Coaster. The Tower of Terror. Summit Plummit, at Blizzard Beach (a five-story water slide, which you descend at about 50 mph, no tube). Dinosaur. Mission Space. Soarin' (one of our favorites). You name it, she and Mathboy were raring to go. Catgirl even wanted to ride the Hulk in Universal, but she did change her mind at the last minute about that one, and we did not blame her. Here is The Hulk, all seven loops and corkscrews of it:

Yikes. Once was more than enough for Rich and me, although Mathboy could have done it all day.

Here are Catgirl and Mathboy in the front car of Expedition Everest:

I wish you could see them better, but trust me that they are there. The kids rode Everest six times, in the front car, the back car, the middle. Catgirl, Rich and I prefer the front, Mathboy likes the rough ride you get in the back. Man, that one is an incredibly good roller coaster. If you are in the front, or close to it, you get a tremendous view of Epcot and everything around there from the top--at the point where the Yeti has ripped up the tracks and you have to go back down through the mountain backwards, in the dark.

The Disney Imagineers should be really proud of Everest. Not only is it a great ride, the mountain they built for it is beautiful.


On the first day, as we were waiting for the Magic Kingdom to open, Rich bought Catgirl new mouse ears: Pirate Princess ears, with a pink kerchief. They were a riot, and they got her noticed by "cast members" (Disney-speak for their employees) all over. She got picked out to participate in the High School Musical street show, the Flights of Wonder bird show, the Monsters Inc comedy show, and all sorts of things. We also think her ears got us chosen to be the first family allowed into the Animal Kingdom on the day we went there. They gave us noisemakers to shake at the opening countdown and announced our names...

...and we were able to race to the Safari so we got the first ride to see all the animals of "Africa." There was a lion. :o)


Just like our last visit to Disney, we all agree that we like Animal Kingdom the best of all the Disney parks. Beyond the fact that it has Everest, the whole park is so beautifully designed. I love the Tree of Life, and the design details on the walking trails are just amazing. Here's a meerkat standing guard on the Maharajah Walking Trail:

And look at the awesome digs this tiger has:


And here is the Tree of Life:

Clearly, this is no average zoo.

Well, I have many more pictures at my Flickr page, including some great pix of Universal. For example, here is one of Catgirl in Seuss Landing, at Universal Islands of Adventure, which we all really enjoyed.

Go on over to Flickr to look at, oh, maybe another 150 pictures, if you like.

Aubergine!

Look what Mathboy made! He did this entirely by himself, except for picking up stitches to knit the purple fruit part onto the finished leaf and stem part. So he learned how to increase and decrease, he knit in the round on dpns, and he did I-cord. Great, hunh?

I made these:


(photography by Catgirl). The wool tomato looks better than the real ones unfortunately. Not the best summer for my garden.

And Catgirl and I made this apple container:


Rudolph kept us amused by climbing through our "fruit" basket:


Less than two weeks until we go to Disney! Wahoo!

Happy Bubbles

Years ago, Rich and I went through a period when we played a lot of The Sims on the PC. That is the game where you create people and basically direct their lives on the computer. Eventually we got tired of having to tell them to go to the bathroom and take showers, and we moved on to more interesting games. But one thing that was kind of funny in the game was that when you upgraded your characters' surroundings (bought nicer furniture, or got a nicer house), they would have these little smiley faces over their heads. It made them happy.

This month, we all have had little "happy bubbles" over our heads when we go into the family room. See why?


That's Mathboy on the floor with his Algebra. Because, you know, like, why use a table and chair when you can sprawl out across the floor?

Yeah, I don't get it either.

I finished my shawl, and let it lounge on the new sofa.


Rudolph likes the shawl, too.


There is not much other news to report. Catgirl had a great time at her camp. She got to play the part of Mrs. Bucket for 2 scenes in the camp production of Willy Wonka Jr., and she got to sing a solo ("Cheer Up, Charlie"). She did GREAT. Mathboy had a wonderful time doing golf camp--so good, in fact, that we are letting him do another week of golf camp in mid-August. He has really improved his play, even made a par on one hole when he and Rich played last week.

Where Croquet Mallets Go to Die

Our latest croquet set did not even get through the entire tournament at our summer party before half the mallets were broken. This year I saved the receipt and returned the set to Dick's on the Monday after the party ... which seems kind of wrong in a way I can't quite put my finger on. We bought a set, hosted a party and played with the set all day, and then returned the set. It's very weird. But still, it should not have broken, right? I mean, are these sets made to be used or what? I guess next year we really have to break down and buy the $150 professional set if we don't want it to be in pieces by the end of the party.

This year's winner was Catherine, wife to the 2007 winner, Scott. She played a great game. Attendance this year was lower than usual, for various reasons. We are going to have to shake things up next year somehow: we are conflicting with many other parties, vacations, and sleepaway camps. We'll have to think it over during the winter and will announce the New and Improved Party and MOLA tourney for 2010.

The night before the party brought a beautiful sight in the sky:

This picture does not do it justice. It was a double rainbow, that reached the ground on both sides. It was totally breathtaking, drawing people out of their houses to gawk, despite the sun-shower.

In other news, there is a new Algebra student in our house:

Seriously, why do cats have to lie on books? Anyway, the kids are delighted that he seems to enjoy lying on Mathboy's algebra. (Maybe it helps that the Algebra generally is lying on the carpet in the sun? Just a thought.)

As the summer progesses, we are finally doing some cosmetic work in the house. We've only been married for oh, say 16 years, so we thought it might be time to actually buy some furniture that was our own choice. Not that we are ungrateful for the things we have inherited from family members--it certainly has saved us money over the years, I know. But it is amazing that we have never really chosen any of our furnishings (except for a few little things here and there).

The walls in some rooms are starting to get on our nerves as well. Aside from the powder room that I painted last year, the last time anything was painted in the house was after the fire, in March 2002. Some of the rooms are looking a bit drab, or the colors are just plain getting on our nerves at this point. Catgirl's room had been painted pink after the fire, because she chose that color during the one month out of her entire life that she actually liked pink. By the time the guys were done painting her room, her pink phase was already over. She's been begging for a different color since 2003, was primised a new color in 2005. Finally, in July, 2009, she got what she asked for. PURPLE.

Unfortunately, it doesn't match her coverlet. We bought that in 2008 during a brief time in which she considered having the room painted blue. By 2009, she wanted purple. I think I kept putting off the painting in the hopes that if I waited long enough she might starts liking pink again. In the end, I had to admit that she really is not a "pink" kind of girl anyway.

The room does look so fresh and clean with the new paint. We were able to weed out a lot of the little girl clutter, and we made her a little reading nook in the corner.

After the Big Summer Party, Rich and I decided to force ourselves to Do Something about the pit that we called a family room. We were thoroughly tired of the steel blue that I actually first chose for that room in early 2001. No one liked the old leather couch (except Mathboy, but he's opposed to change in general. He wanted to keep the old minivan). Even the cat wouldn't sit on it. I had been taking refuge in the faded wing chair we kept in the corner.

In a rash move, we actually carried the much-maligned furniture from that room out to the curb. We figured that it would be easier to paint the room with it empty, and the lack of furniture would force us to finally put our money where our mouths are and buy new furniture. So. We painted.

Three coats of paint later, steel blue/gray walls have become a very pale buttery gold. Man, it is hard to paint light over dark. (As an aside: Please feel free to remind me of that the next time I want to paint a room a dark color!) Another problem: where we used paint tape to protect the ceiling, we discovered that the blue paint actually extended onto the ceiling by a smidge. So when we pulled the tape down we were left with a blue outline around the ceiling. Awesome. I dug through Catgirl's art drawer and came up with a fine point watercolor brush so I could go around the entire area painting over that outline.

Problem number 3: this is a HUGE room! In the tradition of the typical modern development house, our family room blends into the "breakfast nook, which morphs into the kitchen, all with no break in the wall where we could have a color change. So if you paint one of these "rooms," ya gotta paint 'em all. In the end, I had to go back to Home Depot for a 3rd gallon of paint. Rich made me buy a 4th, too, just in case, even though I swore we would not need it. It turned out that we did not end up even opening the 4th, but there is very little left of the 3rd, and I have not painted behind the fridge yet, so we will need it. 4 gallons! Sheesh.

When we were done, we packed everyone up and decided to stimulate the economy by going furniture shopping. We found some nice stuff at a Fourth of July sale, and are looking forward to the delivery. And this brings me to the last problem with our project: time. Not having bought furniture before, we did not even think about how long it would take to have the furniture delivered! We are looking at a good 10 days without a couch. When we went home after shopping, and saw the counch still sitting out by the curb, we actually considered hauling it back inside. But it had been out for 3 days by that time, so we were too skeeved out to actually do it. So we scrounged up some chairs from other rooms in the house, and re-hooked up the TV on its crappy old stand.

My knitting projects are coming along. I am about 190 rows into the lace shawl, and I just finished the first skein of yarn.

Actually, I had to cut off the last 10% of the skein, because it got so small that it collapsed into a tangled mess and I just could not sort it out. I wasted a precious hour of knitting time trying to detangle the mess, finally getting out the scissors and cutting my losses. I have enough of this yarn that it won't matter. I hope.

The blanket proceeds as well, but slowly. Here's a few of the squares with their borders:

I ran out of the light green yarn, but I have so much of the other colors that I have decided to plunge on anyway. For a while, the worsted weight garter stitch of this blanket was a welcome change from the tricky work required by the laceweight shawl. Now that I am used to the shawl, however, I am being more or less monogamous to it. The blanket can wait for the fall.

Well, gotta go pick the kids up from camp!

Summer Dreams

So summer is really here now, even though the weather is not really cooperating. How do I know? Both kids are off from school now, and bored already. Well, not exactly. But Catgirl needs to have someone to play with AT ALL TIMES, it seems, and when she doesn't, things can get ugly.

I have me some Grand Plans for this summer. First, the kids are going to work on a subject everyday. Mathboy made out his schedule, which has Logic, Algebra, Latin, Vocab and Grammar, one subject per day. I am requiring only about 30 minutes per day. So far, though, it's been all Algebra all the time for him, and, so far, I've been letting him go.

He'll get bored of the all-algebra diet sooner or later, right? Meanwhile, I am waiting for the math books I ordered for Catgirl to come in the mail. Catgirl ended up getting First Honors, which means she had an "A" average for the whole year. I hear that 5th Grade at Good Counsel is a lot of work, however, so next year should be tougher.

Both of them all already reading like crazy, so that's a good start to the summer vacation. We've got the "To be read" and "Finished" piles of library books going.
Both kids will be able to participate in the Battle of the Books this year--Catgirl will be eligible because she will be in 5th Grade, Mathboy will be eligible because he will be going to a school that actually participates in contests--and we have the booklists posted on the fridge door. Mathboy enjoyed the first book he read off the list, Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer, that he persuaded me to read it too. It was very good. I seem to be knee-deep in Young Adult fiction these days, as I also am halfway through The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. I have to admit that this one is rather weird but also good. We all enjoyed Nation by Terry Pratchett and The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman this spring, as well. There are some good books out there for kids and teens!

Both kids are going to start doing a regular chore schedule as well. I know we have been bad about that in the past. Mathboy is very good about doing a job when he is asked to, Catgirl...not so much. But I think we need to make them take responsibility for some things--let them be the ones checking to see if something needs doing and then just DO IT.

Second, I need to find a gainful employment, and the goal is to have that in place for the fall. Can I get a job lined up for the week after we get back from Disney? Oh, by the way, sir, I would love to work for you, but you will have to wait until after we come back from our vacation. 'Kay?

I do have some CLE courses I have to do over the summer, but if I want to move into teaching I need to make some strides to make that desire look serious. I did submit some online applications for some positions, but perhaps volunteering in some teaching positions in the meantime would be a good thing to have on my resume. I also want to write an article over the summer. I thought seriously about writing a legal-scholarly article about the Mount Laurel decisions, but they probably have already been done. Right now, I am reading a book written by some California law school folks about the decision. Although it does seem well-researched--which is surprising, since the preface implies the guys never even came to New Jersey to research the thing--it is about as biased a book as I have ever read, and the writing style is terrible. I keep thinking that I could do better, but what a job that would be. Probably more than one summer's worth of research.

So maybe I would be better off finding some timely issues and whip off a few articles for the NJ lawyer's paper. Or the Burlington County Times? Would a publisher buy a murder mystery set in the catty PTA of a catholic elementary school? So many ideas, not all of them good ones...

Meanwhile, Mom has had a great idea for a book, which she wants my help to do. More about that another time.

Third, I have serious knitting goals. Meghan, of the Stitch It! podcast, has challenged all her listeners to knit something in laceweight yarn. Coincidentally, I had just cast on the Leda's Dream shawl by Pink Lemon Twist, completely forgetting how much the Adamas Shawl of last summer had cured me of any hankering for lace. Oh well. I guess the cure was only temporary. So I am knitting my shalw along with a whole bunch of other listeners who likewise are trying out laceweight. We can commisserate on the poscast bulletin board at Ravelry.

This what I have so far. It is tough going: I can't seem to get the patterns memorized, and I have had to get used to a very different way of holding the yarn as I knit because it is so fine. It makes my hands tired.

Also, I want to finish my Great American Afghan before it gets cold. I have had a new idea about how I am going to finish it up, and hope it works.

I have 15 squares done. Although the pattern calls for 25 squares, I always knew I was not going to do all of them. There are several in the book that I just have no interest in doing (ahem, socks square, ahem). Besides, 15 squares took me over a year, and I want to have this finished This Year. 2009. Done. So I am going to do 16 squares. That means one more.


I recently laid out all my finished squares and had to face a harsh truth: they are not all the same size. Sigh.

About half of them are the requisite 12 x 12 inches. About half are 11 x 11. One square is a generous 12.5 x 12.5. It may be 13 x 13, I am not sure. I was so annoyed with myself, my measurement may not have been right. It definitely looks a lot bigger than the others. So.... what to do? I could trash the lonely biggest square, but the small ones really do seem a lot smaller than the regulation-size squares. Plus I was concerned about how the yarn I used (Swish Superwash Worsted, from Knitpicks) could stretch out a lot and distort the shape of the squares when the blanket was in use.

I thought about crocheting strips betwen the squares to add size and bolster their shape. But today I had another idea, which I like even more: Log Cabin border strips. I have five colors I am working in. Each square will have border strips of garter stitch knitted on to it in four colors, not including the color the square was knitting in. I can even up the shapes by adjusting how many rows I knit on for the strips.


I've only done this much, but I think this might be a great idea. Indeed, it may be genius. Or it could be totally crazy. Catgirl has already said she thinks it looks weird. We shall see. Whatever it is, I know it's better than crocheting strips between 16 squares, and better than stretching half of these squares to fit right with the other half. And again I say: we shall see.

Summertime!

It's officially summer! Mathboy finished school this week, both kids' teams lost in the playoffs so their sports were over, the pool is open, and it is finally getting hot outside.

It was kind of a bittersweet goodbye to Mathboy's school. We are all ready for him to move on, but he did have 3 good years there. Lots of kids are leaving, so there were several kids feeling the same as he was.

I forgot to bring a camera to any of Mathboy's games, unfortunately. He pitched a lot of innings this year, and hit great--I think with an over 500 average. He got on base in every game. His pitching was pretty good too, but inconsistent. He either struck everyone out (he throws really hard) or walked everyone.

I finally remembered to bring a camera to Catgirl's last regular season game. Here is the pitcher in action:

Catgirl was quite a slugger this season, but Mathboy did not really notice. He did find the only shade at the softball field though:


Mathboy got to do another piano recital, and Mom and Bill were able to come:



I made a couple more squares for the Great American Afghan:

That last square turned out to be very cool. It was really fiddly at the beginning, but the result is awesome.

Then I received the Stitch It! Podcast charity blanket in the mail for me to add a contribution. The folks in this group make baby blankets and lapghans, sending the blankets around for knitters to add a section. I ended up doing three sections and a crocheted border to finish off this blanket:

Here's my part:


Well, Catgirl wants to go down for breakfast and is bugging me to finish this post. We want to get to the Farmer's Market to day, and then either the pool or to the famr for some strawberry picking. Our choice depends on the heat!