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Catching up on “This Country of Ours”:

23 The Founding of Massachusetts – 00:08:25
24 The Story of Harry Vane – 00:05:41
25 The Story of Anne Hutchinson and the Founding of Rhode Island – 00:05:11
26 The Founding of Harvard – 00:04:36

Sorry, I’ve been under the weather. Here are the chapters that have posted to the podcast feed recently:

Episode 26: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 8, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 8, Part 2 (8:12)
Episode 27: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 9, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 9, Part 1 (9:36)
Episode 28: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 9, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 9, Part 2 (9:10)
Episode 29: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 10, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 10, Part 1 (9:47)
Episode 30: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 10, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 10, Part 2 (13:00)
Episode 31: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 11, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 11, Part 1 (9:27)

This makes me laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. It reminds me of listening to P.D.Q. Bach records with my parents when I was little. Thanks for the link, Chris :)

Henry and I went to the Tool concert last night! Tool is one of his favorite bands in the whole world, and it was a real dream come true to get to see them.

We had great seats, dead center and only 18 rows up from floor level. We got there nice and early. The opening band was, er, not too impressive but Tool was GREAT. Interesting music, fabulous musicianship, and no stupid “guitar god” posing like the opening band. They just played their music and rocked hard for two solid hours.

I really enjoyed most of the projections on the giant screens behind the band. Some of it was beautiful patterns and colors and shapes, really spectacular.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Tool lately in preparation for the show. Henry made me playlist of the songs that were likely to be played at the show, and there are several that I like a lot, so it was really exciting to hear them live!

Here are a couple of photos, one of the stage right when we got there (so you can see our view) and one of the band playing, which I cropped a bit.

If there’s anything better than taking your teenage son to hear a band that he loves, I don’t know what it is, and all three of Henry’s parent-type people get to take him to wonderful shows this year! His dad took him to OK Go, I took him to Tool, and Dan will take him to Rush next month :) We’re so lucky!

Episode 22: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 6, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 6, Part 2 (6:19)

Episode 23: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 7, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 7, Part 1 (9:49)

Episode 24: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 7, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 7, Part 2 (11:50)

Episode 25: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 8, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 8, Part 1 (9:59)

My sister Kathy and her husband Scott are in town! They’re staying with his relatives and have a very full schedule, but I met them at the fair on Monday (the last day of the fair). There was a one-day Favorite Apron contest that day, so I entered the apron that I just made for Chloe and took 3rd place in the “classy” division :) Kathy and Scott sat with me during the judging and we could hardly keep straight faces; it was so totally the epitome of the old-fashioned County Fair experience!

Here it is, modeled by the elegant Chloe:

And we looked at the woodworking and the Home and Hobby stuff together, and then my feet got tired so I left them at the fair and came home to grill a nice dinner. They came to our house after they were done at the fair, and Mom and Chloe and Bob and Henry and Dan were all there, too, so it was a jolly family gathering and we had a great time talking and eating for hours. After a bit, I got my camera, Dan and Mom got theirs, and Chloe and Scott whipped out their camera-phones — we were all snapping away at each other like paparazzi. It was hilarious, and we were laughing so hard it was difficult to take pictures.

Here are Chloe, Henry, me, Mom, and Kathy:

And here’s a nice candid shot of Kathy, Scott, and Chloe on the couch with Mom in the background.

I have the very best family in the world! I wish my other sister, Kirsten, and my brother, Ken, could have been here too, but oh well, maybe someday. (In case you’re wondering, Ken and Kathy are actually my half-siblings but I never think of them that way.)

Oh! I forgot to say that on Friday we saw the Sidewalk Stompers Marching Band at the fair!

I love marching bands!

Henry and I went up on the roof last night to see if any of the fireworks were visible from there. We were able to see about ten different displays going off in the distance! Lots of them were partly obscured by trees, but we had a clear view of several, way off in the distance to the south. That was fun!

On Friday Chloe went with me to the fairgrounds for the Home and Hobby awards ceremony, which was adorable. It’s held in the Turf Club up in the top of the grandstands at the fairground. They serve lemonade and cookies, and the dear sweet Home and Hobby women read off the names of the winners, who then run up to the front and get their certificates. This year they showed pictures of the winning entries on a big screen. We recognized nearly all of the items, so it was fun to know which person made them. I got three certificates — a Best of Division and two Donated Awards, all for the fingerless mittens. Here’s what the room looks like:

And then Chloe and Bob came back to our house and we all watched Toy Story 2 and WALL-E. Great movies.

Oh, yesterday I finished my recording of Through the Looking-Glass. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as Alice, but it was still fun. It felt more self-conscious than Alice, and less fresh. Still, a classic! Download it here: http://librivox.org/through-the-looking-glass-by-lewis-carroll-3/ or you can always wait till I push it through my podcast feed in a few weeks.

Episode 21: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 6, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 6, Part 1 (8:40)

Rockola did their Rubber Soul show on Saturday night! Henry played on several of the songs, so we were there early for rehearsal. We went straight from Henry’s ballroom dancing class so he was starving; I ran across the street to the Claire de Lune coffee shop and brought back lovely sandwiches and lemon cake. Here’s a quick and crappy video of Henry and Cody (Henry is on the right) playing the balalaika bits in “Girl” during rehearsal (the boys start playing about 1/3 through):

And here’s Henry playing the keyboard stuff in Here Comes the Sun during the performance! Henry is the blue blodge second from the right. He gets to fiddle with knobs to make the slidey keyboard sound. You’ll hear that right near the beginning. Oh, and that’s Chloe who scampers across the stage to do the handclaps and gets a big round of applause :)

Henry also did some percussion stuff, some vocals, more keyboards… It was such fun to watch him on perform, and the whole show was just fantastic, as usual! They played not only the whole Rubber Soul album but lots of other Beatles stuff including Hey Bulldog and Happiness is a Warm Gun (two of my all-time favorites). I sold t-shirts in the lobby during intermission.

Henry is in the purple shirt, here:

And here are a couple of him waiting around, playing games and making a fierce face:

Thanks Rockola (Bob, Mark, Doug, Bobby, Chloe, Sandy, and all!) for letting Henry participate and giving us such a musical treat!

Episode 20: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 5, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 5, Part 2 (9:15)

Starting a new audiobook for you today — the third part of This Country of Ours by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall, a book of US History stories for kids. If you want to read along and see the pictures, you can buy a lovely thick paperback reprint of this book at mainlesson.com: This Country of Ours.
22 The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers – 00:23:04

Grandma knows I love BBC costume dramas, and she recommended The Cazalets, so I got the first disk from netflix and watched last week. Really liked it! As usual, there were lots of actors whom I recognized from other BBC things :) I did a little internet searching and discovered that the BBC series was based on the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard: The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, and Casting Off. I sent for The Light Years from my library and read it in three days — could not put it down. (Because I use the lovely “Readmore” app on my iPhone, I happen to know that it took me 7.3 hours of reading in 13 sessions over 3 days, heheh.)

It was just the sort of book I love: a big complicated family, lots of aunts and uncles and cousins, their servants, all the little details of relationships and family life, etc., set against a historical background (pre-WWII England, in this case). Every character seemed real to me, but I thought the author was particularly good at writing the children and teenagers. I can’t wait to find out what happens next. I don’t know which will get here first — the next book or the next disk of the miniseries, but either one will make me drop everything else.

Episode 18 of “Kayray Reads to You”: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 4, part 2:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 4, Part 2 (9:56)

And episode 19: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 5, part 1:
Absolute Zero, Chapter 5, Part 1 (9:20)

11 Who Stole the Tarts? – 00:12:13

12 Alice’s Evidence – 00:13:21

And that’s the end! I’ll start a new book next Monday.

Just finished that pair of beautiful striped socks for Dan:

The yarn is leftover scraps of light and dark blue Knitpicks’ Risata, and a bit of Regia Bamboo. I split all three balls of yarn exactly in half (yay for Dan’s gram scale) so I could make sure the socks matched exactly. I really didn’t think I had enough yarn, and thought I’d have to finish the feet in yet another color, but I had enough and a little to spare of all three yarns.

They’re worked on 60 stitches on size 0 needles, knit firmly. They are quite snug on Dan’s feet; he says they are fine, but next time I would work them on 64 stitches for just a little more room. I worked in the tails at the color changes as I went, thanks to the Techknitter’s marvelous “overcast” method: http://techknitting.blogspot.com/2007/07/overcast-method-part-3-of-tails-and.html, so I didn’t have to do any tedious finishing. The stripes are six rows of light blue, three of dark blue, three of bamboo, three of dark blue, repeat.

I wasn’t sure they’d fit Dan, and I must confess I wouldn’t have minded taking such a lovely pair of socks for myself :) But I’m glad they fit because he really needs more thin socks for summer.

Episode 17 of “Kayray Reads to You”: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 4, part 1

Absolute Zero, Chapter 4, Part 1 (10:25)

Please note: I made these recordings around 2002, and the sound quality is not as good as my more recent recordings. But I hope you will not mind the lower quality too much. You’ll probably be too busy laughing to notice, anyway.

This book is, sadly, out of print in the US. You can find a few used copies on Amazon: Absolute Zero on Amazon. Beware. Every edition after the original 1978 printing has the wrong cover art.

The fair started yesterday! Henry and Chloe and I got there about 5pm and stayed till 9 and had a wonderful time! We ate some fair food (real food, no Deep-Fried Butter for us, though Henry did try a Deep-Fried Twinkie, gag), and of course the wonderful Squeezers fresh lemonade. We walked through a couple of the commercial buildings, saw some of the kids’ hobbies and art, and spent a long time up in the Home and Hobby exhibits. A really nice Fair lady helped us find all our entries. Chloe got a third place ribbon for her mittens, and that was her very first fair entry ever! I’m so proud of her!

After a lot of searching, we found my four entries. The quilt got a 1st, the lace nightie a 2nd, the purple cardigan a 3rd, and the mittens got a 1st and fancy “Best of Division” ribbon, which means they were judged to be the best hand-knitted item in the whole competition :) I’ll take my good camera next time and get photos of my stuff on display.

We also had fun looking at the collections, and we asked the nice Fair lady lots of questions about our idea for a display of Grandpa’s color photos of the Lustron, and she seemed to think it was a great idea, so I think next year we’ll try to work up an interesting exhibit. We were very taken with a collection of food items made entirely of LEGO. We all gave that collection our votes for “People’s Choice” or whatever it is.

I can’t wait to go back to the fair!

Oops, I forgot to post Ch 3 Pt 1, so here are two at once:

Episodes 15 and 16 of “Kayray Reads to You”: Absolute Zero, by Helen Cresswell, Chapter 3, parts 1 and 2:

Absolute Zero, Chapter 3, Part 1 (9:22)

Absolute Zero, Chapter 3, Part 2 (11:55)

Please note: I made these recordings around 2002, and the sound quality is not as good as my more recent recordings. But I hope you will not mind the lower quality too much. You’ll probably be too busy laughing to notice, anyway.

This book is, sadly, out of print in the US. You can find a few used copies on Amazon: Absolute Zero on Amazon. Beware. Every edition after the original 1978 printing has the wrong cover art.

Yesterday (Sunday) Mom and I went to the San Diego Art Museum together. We drove separately (we live on opposite sides of town and the museum is between us) and she hiked up from the parking lot while I took the tram, but we both got there at exactly the same time, which was hilarious, and then the minute we’d bought our tickets a docent was ready take us through the Greek art — mostly beautiful pots, but some marble and bronze things too. I remember learning about Black Figure and Red Figure decorations in college but I’d never seen any in real life, so that was really wonderful. And then we spent a long time in the North American paintings (mostly 18th and 19th century), and then the 20th Century gallery (spent a long time in front of the huge Matisse and Picasso paintings hanging side by side). Then we ran upstairs to spend a bit of time in the European galleries. I wanted to see Giorgione’s “Portait of a Man” again and we finally found him. And then we got freezing cold and left.

In the evening, Bob and Chloe came over and we watched last week’s Breaking Bad episode and then the current one. Oh my goodness that’s a great show. RUN.

Oh, here’s the Giorgione portrait that I love (probably painted in 1506):