Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Double tie-dye
Monday, May 30, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
Earworms
(I'm up late again and just now almost shut down my computer before I remembered I still had to blog something.)
Earworms are songs that get stuck in your head and you find yourself singing under your breath all day. This is bad enough when it's a song you like. Unfortunately, living in the same house with children means exposing oneself to some dangerous earworm-infected songs.
A few days ago, Eric asked to watch a Christmas special. Personally, I don't like watching holiday specials out of season (it comes, I'm sure, from my pre-VCR childhood when one's only hope to watch anything was to wait for a network to choose to show it), but I don't have the Christmas DVDs hidden away somewhere so it's my own fault. He wanted the Curious George special "A Very Monkey Christmas." I wasn't even watching the thing, but I nevertheless got the chorus to one of the songs stuck in my head. To add insult to injury, the actual lyrics that kept running through my head are:
(Sample track 2, "Christmas with a Monkey. Until I looked at the album, I didn't realize the inanity extended to the title.)
Earworms are songs that get stuck in your head and you find yourself singing under your breath all day. This is bad enough when it's a song you like. Unfortunately, living in the same house with children means exposing oneself to some dangerous earworm-infected songs.
A few days ago, Eric asked to watch a Christmas special. Personally, I don't like watching holiday specials out of season (it comes, I'm sure, from my pre-VCR childhood when one's only hope to watch anything was to wait for a network to choose to show it), but I don't have the Christmas DVDs hidden away somewhere so it's my own fault. He wanted the Curious George special "A Very Monkey Christmas." I wasn't even watching the thing, but I nevertheless got the chorus to one of the songs stuck in my head. To add insult to injury, the actual lyrics that kept running through my head are:
"Are you ready for Christmas Day to come?Some of the most inane lyrics ever. Catchy tune, though.
Sing it with me, or if you're a monkey, hum."
(Sample track 2, "Christmas with a Monkey. Until I looked at the album, I didn't realize the inanity extended to the title.)
Thursday, May 26, 2011
What we're reading now
When Faith finished All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown, we had just watched the DVD of "Voyage of the Dawn Treader," and she was very excited to find out that there were Narnia books too and that we had them! So she is now 4 chapters from the end of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. (I'm a Lewis originalist: None of this rearranging the novels into chronological order under my roof!) She says she intends to read all seven of the Chronicles of Narnia in a row, but we'll see. I recall some of the flashback chapters of Prince Caspian being a little slow.
Eric has been loving the Thomas the Tank Engine-branded books in the Step Into Reading series. I like them too because they're short for me to sit through while he's reading. He reads longer books like Sam and the Firefly and The Cat in the Hat as well, and my attention definitely wanders while I'm sitting listening to him work his way through those. The good thing about The Cat in the Hat is that I'm familiar enough with the words and cadence that I can hear something wrong when he makes a mistake even when I'm not paying attention. Whenever he reads The Cat in the Hat, I can sit down next to him on the couch with a magazine to read and still correct him.
Speaking of magazines, I've finally worked my way through the bi-weeklies, the monthlies, and the bi-monthlies and gotten down to the lowest strata in my pile: the seasonals. Today I started reading a Claremont Review of Books dated Summer 2010. It's a bit interesting reading what everyone was all in an uproar about a year ago. Apparently, the war in Iraq and Obamacare were big news. Who knew?
Eric has been loving the Thomas the Tank Engine-branded books in the Step Into Reading series. I like them too because they're short for me to sit through while he's reading. He reads longer books like Sam and the Firefly and The Cat in the Hat as well, and my attention definitely wanders while I'm sitting listening to him work his way through those. The good thing about The Cat in the Hat is that I'm familiar enough with the words and cadence that I can hear something wrong when he makes a mistake even when I'm not paying attention. Whenever he reads The Cat in the Hat, I can sit down next to him on the couch with a magazine to read and still correct him.
Speaking of magazines, I've finally worked my way through the bi-weeklies, the monthlies, and the bi-monthlies and gotten down to the lowest strata in my pile: the seasonals. Today I started reading a Claremont Review of Books dated Summer 2010. It's a bit interesting reading what everyone was all in an uproar about a year ago. Apparently, the war in Iraq and Obamacare were big news. Who knew?
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
On Oprah
So today was Oprah's final show. I'm quite proud to say that I never watched an episode, save a taped copy of one that a professor showed as part of a class when I was getting my Master's. Popular culture kept me quite apprised of her as the years went by, however: her weight fluctuations, her book club, her giveaways, her magazine and TV network, and never more so than now -- her final show.
The Life section of today's paper ran a restrospect of her career today. Apparently, Oprah's first national show was titled "How to Marry the Man/Woman of Your Choice."
"O" the irony.
I will never understand why Oprah's largest fanbase, the demographic most likely eagerly to acquiesce to being influenced by her, was housewives: a group with whose life she has absolutely no personal expertise. She has had the same boyfriend for 25 years and yet has never made it down the aisle. She has never raised a child and, now in her late 50s, mostly likely never will. And yet women who have succeeded in their personal relationships where she has failed tune in to her every word of advice about how to live.
When she announced the creation of her network, I read a magazine article about it in which she basically stated that she first intended to retire when her show ended but then realized that she had a continuing obligation to "influence" even more of the world. I may be alone in my opinion, but personally I don't believe that the world would be a better place were everyone more like Oprah. Maybe a more self-obsessed place.
Buh-bye, Oprah. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
The Life section of today's paper ran a restrospect of her career today. Apparently, Oprah's first national show was titled "How to Marry the Man/Woman of Your Choice."
"O" the irony.
I will never understand why Oprah's largest fanbase, the demographic most likely eagerly to acquiesce to being influenced by her, was housewives: a group with whose life she has absolutely no personal expertise. She has had the same boyfriend for 25 years and yet has never made it down the aisle. She has never raised a child and, now in her late 50s, mostly likely never will. And yet women who have succeeded in their personal relationships where she has failed tune in to her every word of advice about how to live.
When she announced the creation of her network, I read a magazine article about it in which she basically stated that she first intended to retire when her show ended but then realized that she had a continuing obligation to "influence" even more of the world. I may be alone in my opinion, but personally I don't believe that the world would be a better place were everyone more like Oprah. Maybe a more self-obsessed place.
Buh-bye, Oprah. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
If it's emotionally scarring, it must be authentic.
So, as a follow-up to yesterday's post on emotionally-manipulative children's stories, let's move on to why people think children ought to read about dying children or spiders or burned and neglected toys. Well, to prepare them for real life, of course. They need to know about the heartlessness of people and the unfairness of the world because ... because why, exactly? On the occasion of the recent royal wedding, one blogger wrote about how she planned to use the occasion to tell her six-year-old (six!) about how difficult marriage is and how there are no happily-ever-afters in real life. Really? You want to pop her birthday balloon and drop her ice cream on the sidewalk, too? Is it so awful that children grow up believing in goodness and happiness? Do we have to impress cynicism on them at such a young age? Will they not discover for themselves as they grow that things don't always work out the way they would like, so that adults have to implant doubts and distrust so that they live their lives always waiting for the other shoe to drop?
I'm not convinced that all the tragic endings I was subjected to as I was growing up are necessarily any more "authentic" than the happy ones, anyway. There's a whole genre of kids-who-have-to-kill-their-beloved-pets literature (Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, The Yearling, etc.). How many people out there have ever actually had to shoot their own pet? Show of hands, people! C'mon, don't be shy!
I can't tell you how many disturbing scenes that I wish I could unread were imposed on me by assigned reading throughout my school years. For sheer gruesomeness, the detailed and explicitly described depiction of a woman getting a nose job in V; for sheer depravity, the kitten-hanging chapter in Black Boy. But there was one short story I had to read in middle school which has haunted me for years. I don't remember the name of the story or the author, but it was about a colt that was born with twisted legs that a child kept as a pet. The child's father (Does anyone in literature have a kind, loving father? Scout Finch, I guess.) insists that the only thing to be done with the animal is to sell it for meat and hide, but the child insists on taking care of it and buys braces to put on its legs so it can walk around. Eventually, the child comes home from school to find the horse gone, and the father says he sent it to a nice farm or pasture out in the country where it will be happy. The story ends with the family in the car driving to go get ice cream or something, and they pass the slaughterhouse. Outside by the road lies the flayed corpse of the child's horse, the braces still on its legs.
Really, school? Really? Thank you for that image which I will never escape....
I'm not convinced that all the tragic endings I was subjected to as I was growing up are necessarily any more "authentic" than the happy ones, anyway. There's a whole genre of kids-who-have-to-kill-their-beloved-pets literature (Where the Red Fern Grows, Old Yeller, The Yearling, etc.). How many people out there have ever actually had to shoot their own pet? Show of hands, people! C'mon, don't be shy!
I can't tell you how many disturbing scenes that I wish I could unread were imposed on me by assigned reading throughout my school years. For sheer gruesomeness, the detailed and explicitly described depiction of a woman getting a nose job in V; for sheer depravity, the kitten-hanging chapter in Black Boy. But there was one short story I had to read in middle school which has haunted me for years. I don't remember the name of the story or the author, but it was about a colt that was born with twisted legs that a child kept as a pet. The child's father (Does anyone in literature have a kind, loving father? Scout Finch, I guess.) insists that the only thing to be done with the animal is to sell it for meat and hide, but the child insists on taking care of it and buys braces to put on its legs so it can walk around. Eventually, the child comes home from school to find the horse gone, and the father says he sent it to a nice farm or pasture out in the country where it will be happy. The story ends with the family in the car driving to go get ice cream or something, and they pass the slaughterhouse. Outside by the road lies the flayed corpse of the child's horse, the braces still on its legs.
Really, school? Really? Thank you for that image which I will never escape....
Monday, May 23, 2011
If it's sad, it must be deep.
Faith has moved into the 3rd grade curriculum, at least for English, arts & science while she finishes up math and history in the 2nd grade book. Her story today was "The Little Match Girl." I don't know why they want me to read these things aloud. I've been through "The Velveteen Rabbit" and Charlotte's Web, and every time I have to struggle to get through without my voice breaking. "Match Girl" makes the trifecta of depressing. Why is this a children's story? Sounds more like a headline: "Abused child freezes to death; ignored by passersby."
According to Wikipedia (I know, I know...), Andersen updated a story by the Brothers Grimm in which the innocent child was rewarded with riches from heaven instead of dying in an alleyway. Grimm fairy tales may have a rep for being gruesome, but at least it's only the bad guys who die horribly, while the virtuous are rewarded. Andersen goes for cathartic emotion-porn for Victorians to sit around their parlors and weep over: the Match Girl, the non-Disneyfied Little Mermaid, the Steadfast Tin Soldier. You can draw a direct line from him to emotionally-manipulative songs like "The Christmas Shoes" and anything by Nicholas Sparks.
According to Wikipedia (I know, I know...), Andersen updated a story by the Brothers Grimm in which the innocent child was rewarded with riches from heaven instead of dying in an alleyway. Grimm fairy tales may have a rep for being gruesome, but at least it's only the bad guys who die horribly, while the virtuous are rewarded. Andersen goes for cathartic emotion-porn for Victorians to sit around their parlors and weep over: the Match Girl, the non-Disneyfied Little Mermaid, the Steadfast Tin Soldier. You can draw a direct line from him to emotionally-manipulative songs like "The Christmas Shoes" and anything by Nicholas Sparks.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Metamorphosis
On April 23rd, Eric found a woolly bear caterpillar crawling across our driveway while we were out working in the yard. You can see it in the flowerpot above.
We scooped it up, put it in a jar, and fed it leaves for a little more than a week. (The websites I found about them said they ate grass, but ours preferred yaupon holly leaves, with crabapple leaves for a change of pace.) When I checked on it one evening, instead of quickly climbing up its twig to the top of the jar like it normally did when I opened the lid, it was clinging tightly to a blade of grass at the bottom of the jar and wouldn't move.
The following morning, I couldn't find it! I had to take the jar outside and dump all of the twigs and grass out before I noticed a shiny-fuzzy sheen in a clump of dirt in the roots of some of the grass. I expected a butterfly-like chrysalis hanging from a twig; these woolly bears do a much better job of camouflaging themselves than butterflies!
I moved the jar from the kitchen to the garage, partly just to get it out of sight and out of mind in case it never came out of its chrysalis. Nothing looks deader than a woolly bear chrysalis in a clump of dry dirt after a week or two! I had just about given up on it and decided it must have died, which made me feel guilty for its demise under my care, even though I personally had chased away a mockingbird hopping after it before we jarred it as a caterpillar.
Last night, I went out in the garage to pull the trash bins down to the curb and went over the check on the jar, as I did once or twice a day. I almost dropped the jar when I noticed a beautiful white moth sitting at the mouth of the jar just under the lid! I went and got the kids out of bed, and we took the jar outside to let our moth go. Below is a picture of it under the tree in our front yard. ]
So, hey, science projects work once in a while! We had better luck with our caterpillar than we did with cress seeds.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Reduce, reuse, recycle!
I received a package this week with a glossy hardback book with cardboard inserts to protect its corners. I took them out of the box to toss in the recycle bin and discovered that the nonfunctional outsides of the corners looked like mountains about the right size to serve as landscape for the little plastic dinosaurs the kids get as prizes from the dentist. Behold, the Lost World!
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
My Eddie Haskell moment
The one irritation about Faith and Eric's pack of playmates is that the five kids from up the street will just open the door and walk into my house if I don't have it locked. They seem not to be familiar with the concept of doorbells, or knocking. The oldest girl always wants to come in the house and pet George all afternoon. I have to chase her back outside to play with the others. The next-oldest is always talking: "What's that? How much did it cost? Your house is messy. Can I have that?"
Also, they address me as "Faith's-Mom."
Also, they address me as "Faith's-Mom."
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Old-school playdating
The nice weather this spring brought out a pack of feral children to prowl our neighborhood. Actually, they're very nice children from a family up the street, but their sudden appearance took me aback. The same people have owned that house for ten years, and we never saw children there before; now there are five children under the age of ten out in the front yard every afternoon looking for someone to play with. Faith and Eric have gotten in the habit of joining them; then Olivia, a second-grader from up the other side of the street, joins them sometimes; and a little girl about Eric's age from across the street likes to come out and play when the older kids will let her keep up with them.
They sit in the yard and play, ride their bikes back and forth to the corner, and share snacks from various people's refrigerators. It's all very Leave It to Beaver. The last two evenings, Faith and Eric have gone to sit in the yard across the street and play board games with the little girl there. Once I got over my bemusement at the retro nature of it all -- isn't everything supposed to be scheduled playdates and helicopter parents these days? -- it makes for a nice break in the evenings to just let them go out in the yard and look up and down for someone to play with. Better than watching PBS all afternoon.
They sit in the yard and play, ride their bikes back and forth to the corner, and share snacks from various people's refrigerators. It's all very Leave It to Beaver. The last two evenings, Faith and Eric have gone to sit in the yard across the street and play board games with the little girl there. Once I got over my bemusement at the retro nature of it all -- isn't everything supposed to be scheduled playdates and helicopter parents these days? -- it makes for a nice break in the evenings to just let them go out in the yard and look up and down for someone to play with. Better than watching PBS all afternoon.
Monday, May 16, 2011
Summer vacation
The season finales of "Chuck" and "Castle" both aired tonight. Those are the only two shows we watch, so I'm looking forward to not having to watch any TV until the fall. For the past few months, we've been paying Netflix to not watch DVDs, as I have had neither the time nor the inclination to sit down and commit to two hours of screen time at the end of the day.
I've found I have the time to get everything done in a day that needs to get done. The problem is the backlog of things I keep meaning to get around to doing and haven't yet. I can handle, for example, Monday's to-do list, but by the time I get to the end of it, I don't have the time or energy to tackle all the things I should have taken care of at some point in the past or things I would like to do but are not immediately pressing. That explains all the people to whom I owe e-mails, thank-you notes, and/or birthday cards, as well as the reason why Faith asked me a few weeks ago why there were baby pictures of her hanging on our walls but none of Eric: I have the photos -- I even have some of them already framed -- I just haven't actually hung anything on the wall in the last four years.
I've found I have the time to get everything done in a day that needs to get done. The problem is the backlog of things I keep meaning to get around to doing and haven't yet. I can handle, for example, Monday's to-do list, but by the time I get to the end of it, I don't have the time or energy to tackle all the things I should have taken care of at some point in the past or things I would like to do but are not immediately pressing. That explains all the people to whom I owe e-mails, thank-you notes, and/or birthday cards, as well as the reason why Faith asked me a few weeks ago why there were baby pictures of her hanging on our walls but none of Eric: I have the photos -- I even have some of them already framed -- I just haven't actually hung anything on the wall in the last four years.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Lost in translation
Baby Blues is one of my favorite comic strips. These strips ran back in April but are illustrative of what goes on around our house all the time. I'm probably breaking copyright laws by reposting these here, but considering my average readership is probably lucky to reach a dozen, perhaps they won't sue me too hard.
Friday, May 13, 2011
Circumstances beyond our control
When I tried to log on to make my daily blog post yesterday evening, I got this message:
Blogger Status
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Blogger will be in read-only mode while we resolve some maintenance issues. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Posted by Eddie at 12:35 PDT
Apparently, it wasn't working all afternoon and evening, so I'll be making another Saturday make-up post.
Also, speaking of unpleasant circumstances, I have cousins whose homes are in imminent danger of flooding if they open up a spillway in Louisiana to try to avoid flooding in major cities further downriver. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to pack up your family and what you can carry and evacuate, not knowing what kind of damage you might find when you return to your house again, due not solely to an act of God but also to a deliberate decision by people in charge to put your home and property in danger to save that of others. Please keep them in your prayers.
Blogger Status
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Blogger will be in read-only mode while we resolve some maintenance issues. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Posted by Eddie at 12:35 PDT
Apparently, it wasn't working all afternoon and evening, so I'll be making another Saturday make-up post.
Also, speaking of unpleasant circumstances, I have cousins whose homes are in imminent danger of flooding if they open up a spillway in Louisiana to try to avoid flooding in major cities further downriver. I can't imagine what it must be like to have to pack up your family and what you can carry and evacuate, not knowing what kind of damage you might find when you return to your house again, due not solely to an act of God but also to a deliberate decision by people in charge to put your home and property in danger to save that of others. Please keep them in your prayers.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Dear "Chuck," please stop jerking around my 8-year-old. Thank you.
So I was online today when the news that "Chuck" has apparently been renewed for a fifth season came across the wire. Which, yay and all, but I followed the link to the "season finale intel" and read...
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
...this quote from the executive producer: "Once you see how our season finale works there should be a degree of doubt. It’s structured in such a way that we don’t know if Chuck and Sarah are going to get together in the end."
Seriously, show? After all the will-they-won't-they and all the build-up, you still don't want to let them just get married already? Faith's already been reduced to tears twice this season, once when Sarah wouldn't let Chuck propose because she was going away undercover, and again at the end of this week's episode when it looked like she was going to be killed at the rehearsal dinner.
Again, TV veteran here: As long as the show is hoping for a renewal, there's no way they're going to kill off the female lead. But, knowing that, I reassured Faith that everything would be okay next week. Now, reading Chris Fedak's comment, I'm going to have to find a way to keep her from watching the finale until I know if it's going to leave her traumatized until next September or January.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
...this quote from the executive producer: "Once you see how our season finale works there should be a degree of doubt. It’s structured in such a way that we don’t know if Chuck and Sarah are going to get together in the end."
Seriously, show? After all the will-they-won't-they and all the build-up, you still don't want to let them just get married already? Faith's already been reduced to tears twice this season, once when Sarah wouldn't let Chuck propose because she was going away undercover, and again at the end of this week's episode when it looked like she was going to be killed at the rehearsal dinner.
Again, TV veteran here: As long as the show is hoping for a renewal, there's no way they're going to kill off the female lead. But, knowing that, I reassured Faith that everything would be okay next week. Now, reading Chris Fedak's comment, I'm going to have to find a way to keep her from watching the finale until I know if it's going to leave her traumatized until next September or January.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
A picture in hand is worth two words in a bush.
Wow, am I feeling uncreative tonight. Here's a photo of the kids!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Public supermarkets
Watch out; I'm getting a little political today. You've been warned. ;)
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
If Supermarkets Were Like Public Schools
Friday, May 6, 2011
What we're reading now
When Faith finished Little House on the Prairie, she had her choice of four books to read next: The Hobbit and the next book in three series she's already been reading -- The Road to Oz, Beezus and Ramona, and All-of-a-Kind Family Downtown.
Not surprisingly, when it came right down to it, she shied away from tackling The Hobbit next: That's a lot of long chapters of small print, with no interior illustrations. Instead, she went for the second book of the All-of-a-Kind Family series. I had to buy a used copy from Half.com, as all of the books but the first and last seem to be out of print. (And how random is that?)
She likes reading about the girls and their family, and we tie in the various Jewish holidays they celebrate with the Bible stories she knows. Ella read a story to Sarah out of The Red Fairy Book, and she was very excited to discover that we have the same book; she wanted to read what the girls in the book were reading.
We've talked about how authors like Sydney Taylor, Maud Hart Lovelace, and Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote books about their own childhoods. She said she wanted to write a book about what it's like for her growing up but was worried because there's not anything interesting about her childhood. I told her that there wasn't anything very out of the ordinary about Laura's childhood, or Betsy and Tacy's, or Ella and her sisters' either, at the time; it's just that as they grew up, things changed, and by the time they were grown-ups, little girls didn't do the same things they had done anymore. By the time she's grown up, her childhood might look a lot more interesting to little girls who grow up differently.
Then again, maybe not. She is growing up in my house, after all, and I'm pretty boring. Either way, she's 2 chapters from being done with the book, so it looks like I need to go back to Half.com and look for More All-of-a-Kind Family.
Not surprisingly, when it came right down to it, she shied away from tackling The Hobbit next: That's a lot of long chapters of small print, with no interior illustrations. Instead, she went for the second book of the All-of-a-Kind Family series. I had to buy a used copy from Half.com, as all of the books but the first and last seem to be out of print. (And how random is that?)
She likes reading about the girls and their family, and we tie in the various Jewish holidays they celebrate with the Bible stories she knows. Ella read a story to Sarah out of The Red Fairy Book, and she was very excited to discover that we have the same book; she wanted to read what the girls in the book were reading.
We've talked about how authors like Sydney Taylor, Maud Hart Lovelace, and Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote books about their own childhoods. She said she wanted to write a book about what it's like for her growing up but was worried because there's not anything interesting about her childhood. I told her that there wasn't anything very out of the ordinary about Laura's childhood, or Betsy and Tacy's, or Ella and her sisters' either, at the time; it's just that as they grew up, things changed, and by the time they were grown-ups, little girls didn't do the same things they had done anymore. By the time she's grown up, her childhood might look a lot more interesting to little girls who grow up differently.
Then again, maybe not. She is growing up in my house, after all, and I'm pretty boring. Either way, she's 2 chapters from being done with the book, so it looks like I need to go back to Half.com and look for More All-of-a-Kind Family.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Another Easter photo
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Tech support failure
I stayed up until one this morning trying to fix Tommy's computer and worked on it more this evening but couldn't de-malware it. It had a corrupted rootkit, which from what I read online, is extremely difficult to be rid of, once you're infected, short of wiping the hard drive and starting from scratch.
If you know of a super-easy, guaranteed way to get rid of an infection by rootkit, please don't tell me because we decided rather than try to System Recovery his old XP desktop to go to Best Buy and get a new one. It's all very shiny and new and Windows 7, and I'm quite jealous sitting over here with my old-hat Vista machine. But it's better than trying to share when we both want to be online at once, which is what we do most evenings: he at his desktop and I at my laptop, both browsing.
(I need a new label: "where the money goes." :P )
If you know of a super-easy, guaranteed way to get rid of an infection by rootkit, please don't tell me because we decided rather than try to System Recovery his old XP desktop to go to Best Buy and get a new one. It's all very shiny and new and Windows 7, and I'm quite jealous sitting over here with my old-hat Vista machine. But it's better than trying to share when we both want to be online at once, which is what we do most evenings: he at his desktop and I at my laptop, both browsing.
(I need a new label: "where the money goes." :P )
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Tech support
Tommy's desktop is freezing up every time he logs on, so I've spent the last several hours troubleshooting. Still going, but while it's frozen up and before I go do a hard reboot, I'm posting here. Wish us luck!
Monday, May 2, 2011
Weekend update
So, two things.
We will apparently be getting a new roof, according to the insurance adjuster. We had two unusual hail storms within the last few weeks. Hail is fairly common around here, but it mostly stays marble-sized or smaller and lasts less than 5 minutes. These storms produced hail gumball-sized (the big gumballs, not the penny ones), and the hail lasted about 10 minutes each time. The first storm was especially odd, as we never got any rain -- just iceballs falling out of the sky. I love the skylight in our kitchen all the time except during hailstorms, when I live in fear of it suddenly shattering and raining/hailing into the kitchen. They're going to replace the section of fence that's falling into our yard as well, so yay!
Secondly, my little finger isn't broken; rather, I have a bone cyst at the base of it. I've Googled it, but there's very little information available about bone cysts in fingers out there. My doctor says it's benign, but if it doesn't shrink down, I think I'm going to have to have something done about it anyway. Typing is awkward ( you don't know how many times I've had to backspace and retype in this post, as I'm having to use my ring finger for all my pinkie-finger keys except the colon/semicolon), and as it's on my right hand, it interferes with writing as well.
We will apparently be getting a new roof, according to the insurance adjuster. We had two unusual hail storms within the last few weeks. Hail is fairly common around here, but it mostly stays marble-sized or smaller and lasts less than 5 minutes. These storms produced hail gumball-sized (the big gumballs, not the penny ones), and the hail lasted about 10 minutes each time. The first storm was especially odd, as we never got any rain -- just iceballs falling out of the sky. I love the skylight in our kitchen all the time except during hailstorms, when I live in fear of it suddenly shattering and raining/hailing into the kitchen. They're going to replace the section of fence that's falling into our yard as well, so yay!
Secondly, my little finger isn't broken; rather, I have a bone cyst at the base of it. I've Googled it, but there's very little information available about bone cysts in fingers out there. My doctor says it's benign, but if it doesn't shrink down, I think I'm going to have to have something done about it anyway. Typing is awkward ( you don't know how many times I've had to backspace and retype in this post, as I'm having to use my ring finger for all my pinkie-finger keys except the colon/semicolon), and as it's on my right hand, it interferes with writing as well.
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