Mastodon 2007 January — kayray.org

Archive for January 2007


resting

January 31st, 2007 — 8:39pm

Henry and I slept late and then went to the library and jammed the backpack full of books, and ran a bunch of errands. At the library, Henry got a copy of Beowulf which he is in love with so far. I got three knitting books, but there’s nothing interesting in any of them! We both felt pretty good until the afternoon when we both all of a sudden got terribly tired and just went and lay down for the rest of the day. He’s up in his bed listening to audiobooks and watching LotR on my laptop. Dan’s sleeping (still very sick). I’m in my bed listening to audiobooks and resting. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

3 comments » | Blog

Jan 31 (Wednesday)

January 31st, 2007 — 8:15pm

Library!
Read some Beowulf
Karate
Silver on the Tree

Comment » | Homeschooling

Jan 30 (Tuesday)

January 30th, 2007 — 8:13pm

Karate (Tiny Tigers)
Grammar
Mythology
Musical Theater
The Grey King

Comment » | Homeschooling

frog

January 29th, 2007 — 9:44pm

Poor Dan is still really sick, but for some reason Henry and I haven’t caught the horrible virus yet. I felt mildly sick for a couple of days, and my chest is a little tight and I cough now and then and am tired, but other than that I feel fine, better than yesterday. Good thing I felt ok today ’cause I had to do million things. Got the mail, FedEx’d something to somebody, bought a few groceries (smoothie ingredients, Vitamin Water, and grapes especially for Dan to munch on, nice and soft for his sore throat), bought 29 gallons of water, took Henry to his Science workshop. I sat in the car and knitted and listened to Loveline, and Henry dissected a frog. Eww! But he had a great time as usual (Lyndy is amazing, amazing!!) and brought home a spare frog and his dissecting tools.

Came home, got a quick shower, punched a hole in the top of a Vitamin Water bottle cap so Dan could sip through a straw, taught two piano students, took Henry to karate (knitted!), bought more cold medicine for Dan, also hand sanitizer (Henry and I are practically bathing in the stuff), came home. Henry fixed quesadillas for dinner and we had some canned pineapple with them. Did two loads of laundry. Read another chapter of The Grey King to Henry for bedtime while he played his bass.

Our LibriVox Weekly Poetry last week was Jabberwocky, in honor of Lewis Carrol’s birth month. We had 34 submissions! That’s almost an hour of Jabberwocky :) Here are all 34 versions for you to download for free:
http://librivox.org/jabberwocky-by-lewis-carroll/

Comment » | Blog

Jan 29 (Monday)

January 29th, 2007 — 8:06pm

Science Club – Dissected a frog! Eww!
Math
The Grey King
Handwriting
Karate

Comment » | Homeschooling

same as yesterday

January 28th, 2007 — 10:15pm

I’m still just a little bit sick — tight chest, slight cough, sniffly nose, tired — and Dan’s a lot sicker than I am, which is very unusual. Usually I’m the sicker one. I hope it doesn’t hit me hard in a few days or something. Lots of WoW today. My Druid hit lvl 49 and my new little Warrior hit 11. Since I’m so boring, here’s an interesting article for you to read:
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
We actually do pretty well following the guidelines at the end of the article.

4 comments » | Blog

sick

January 27th, 2007 — 3:43pm

Ugh, Dan’s rather sick and I’m a little bit sick. We just hung around all day coughing and playing WoW and watching tv and stuff. I finished my dark green socks yesterday and will take a picture soonish. Also finished the dark-green scarf. Started light green socks, but I think I need to make them smaller.

Comment » | Blog

Jan 26 (Friday)

January 26th, 2007 — 8:06pm

Reading – Hank the Cowdog

Comment » | Homeschooling

Poems, 02-05

January 26th, 2007 — 5:25pm

02 – The Arrow and the Song; The Babie; Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite; Little Drops of Water; He Prayeth Best; Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; Spring’s at the Morn; The Days of the Month

03 – True Royalty; Playing Robinson Crusoe; My Shadow; Little White Lily

04 – How the Leaves Came Down; Wee Willie Winkie; The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

05 – Wynken, Blynken, and Nod; The Duel

2 comments » | Audiobooks

Glasses; Robin Hood

January 26th, 2007 — 2:04pm

I picked up my glasses today! I love them.
Here’s a crappy Photo Booth photo:
my glasses
I’m sure I can get Dan to take a more flattering photo soon :) These are my first glasses. I’ve already noticed that my eyes feel more relaxed, if that’s the right term for it, while I’m knitting and using my computer.

In other news, our audiobook of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, by Howard Pyle, is finally finished! A volunteer named Glovis started the project on Jan 13, 2006. I signed up to be his “MC” (Meta-Coordinator, a LibriVox term for a sort of project overseer and eventual cataloger). Glovis disappeared last spring (hope you’re ok, Glovis!) and took the already-submitted recordings with him, so when I took over, the project was a real mess. Missing files, missing readers… Well, I finally tracked down a number of the already-finished recordings, found some readers who were willing to re-record their chapters, and parceled the orphans out to fresh readers. Yesterday Lucy completed our last outstanding chapter! Anna proof-listened it, and I did minor edits on some of the other files (volume boosting, adding a bit of silence to the end, fixing the sample rate, etc.), and cleaned up the ID3 tags on all the files. This morning I did the Big Upload to archive.org and created the catalog page — and LOOK! It’s finally ready to download and listen to!

http://librivox.org/the-merry-adventures-of-robin-hood-by-howard-pyle/

I am embarrassed by the relatively poor quality of my own recording (Chapter 9, I think). I recorded it back in Jan 2006, when I was still using a crummy microphone. Bah. Oh well, it’s good enough :) Hope you enjoy!

Oh, the first and last chapters are read by Alex, who actually lives near Sherwood Forest :)

9 comments » | Audiobooks, Blog

Jan 25 (Thursday)

January 25th, 2007 — 8:06pm

Bayshore Day:
Science – States of Matter
Art – Lion
Writing
Reading
Brain Food Science Podcast
Karate

Comment » | Homeschooling

Jan 24 (Wednesday)

January 24th, 2007 — 7:53pm

Handwriting
Karate
Studied Frog science book
Grocery shopping
reading
Grey King

Comment » | Homeschooling

Jan 23 (Tuesday)

January 23rd, 2007 — 7:47pm

Karate
Mythology
Theater
Created wire ring
Cooked lunch
Reading

Comment » | Homeschooling

Oh lord.

January 23rd, 2007 — 8:20am

Look what I found while googling:
Deluxe Sock Collection Kit (scroll down)
Sock Collection Book = $10
Three skeins of yarn =$52.50
total value of $62.50

Special Deluxe Kit price is
$60.00

add $5.75 shipping

six socks

Look at those socks, just look at them! Imagine the warmth and beauty of that stranded Icelandic yarn! As the Yarn Harlot says, it’s such a bargain that it would be irresponsible and foolish NOT to buy it. However, I don’t have $65.75 right now so if you feel like surprising me with a really awesome present, feel free :)

14 comments » | Blog

Movie Soundtrack Game

January 22nd, 2007 — 9:01pm

From Hugh, i got tagged. Shuffled iTunes, to see what song plays as the background to various scenes in the movie of my life:

Opening credits:
Rat Patrol – They Might Be Giants

First day of school:
The Fool on the Hill – The Beatles

Falling in love:
Schtille di Nacht (Polish folksong) – Pete Seeger

Prom/Grad:
Dona Nobis Pacem – LibriVox Christmas Carol Collection

Mental breakdown:
Sweet Lorraine – Nat King Cole Trio

Flashbacks:
Oedipus Rex – Tom Lehrer

Getting back together:
You Shook Me – Led Zeppelin

Wedding scene:
I Feel Fine – The Beatles

Final battle:
One Fine Day – The Chiffons

Death scene:
Baby it’s Cold Outside – Brian Setzer/Ann Margret

Funeral scene:
You Really Got A Hold On Me – The Beatles

End credits:
Birds Fly – They Might Be Giants

Finale:
Ain’t She Sweet – The Beatles (awww, what a nice ending to my soundtrack! :)

***********
Um, who will I tag… Who reads this? How about Kathy, Kri, and Chloe?

Oh, Henry wants to play too!

3 comments » | Blog

The Big Key

January 22nd, 2007 — 8:18pm

I’ve had headaches and mild nausea on and off since my eye exam. Strange. Yesterday the nausea was relatively unpleasant and I just lay on the couch and listened to loveline most of the day. Today it didn’t hit me till the afternoon and wasn’t very bad. Played a bit of LOZ:TP this morning after I did a bunch of housework/laundry/etc and got the Big Key in the Lakebed Temple (is that what it’s called?), but got horribly lost in an underwater maze and warped back to the entrance. Ready for the Boss tomorrow! Henry worked on his new Erector Set clock kit. He loves it so much! And the I took him to his Math Club meeting and he learned about probability while I sat in the car and knitted and listened to more loveline. Then home, more laundry, piano students, dinner prep, karate, dinner, and now I’m just lying around resting. Pretty tired, haven’t been sleeping well again, sigh.

7 comments » | Blog

Jan 22 (Monday)

January 22nd, 2007 — 7:44pm

Math (Aleks.com)
worked on Erector Set model clock
Reading
Karate

Comment » | Homeschooling

Knitting update

January 20th, 2007 — 11:34am

I’ve been borrowing Henry’s scarf all winter, but when we go to Canada I’ll need my own, so I splurged at Noble Knits on Thursday and bought two skeins of Baby Alpaca Grande. It’s the Softest Wool Ever. I started my scarf in a fancy lace-and-cable pattern, but I ripped it out and decided to go for a simple and elegant seed-stitch. The seed-stitch pattern shows off the sheen of the yarn very nicely. Here’s my progress as of yesterday:

scarf beginning

And I’m nearly done with my dark-green toe-up socks, after changing my mind and re-starting them four times! Just working up the leg of sock #2:

sock progress

No, they don’t really match perfectly but it doesn’t bother me. I promise to write down my round/stitch counts at I go next time! :)

Why yes, I am rather fond of green.

I’m seriously considering ripping my red BPT sweater out entirely, instead of just removing the hood and knitting a new neck, and making a new and completely different sweater out of the yarn. I’d like something longer and slightly looser with better neck-shaping. But first I need to make socks, mittens, and scarves for Canada!

4 comments » | Blog, Handmade

Jan 19 (Friday)

January 19th, 2007 — 7:43pm

Brain Food Podcast (Science)
Reading

Comment » | Homeschooling

Eye exam

January 19th, 2007 — 5:52pm

I’m listening to my wonderful CD “Across The Western Ocean.” I highly recommend it if you like non-slick real-sounding historical folk music.

Today I had an eye exam with Dr. Sherman, the guy who did Dan’s pre-and post-Lasik exams. Dan really likes him and recommend I get my checkup there. He’s super-nice! My vision has actually been frustrating me for several years — I could tell it was slowly degrading, things in the distance getting slightly harder and harder to see — but my last two exams turned out perfect. So I was actually happy when Dr. Sherman said I needed a slight prescription. I look forward to better vision when my frames arrive! (in 5-10 business days, sigh) I picked these in light brown.

Pretty tired today but I recorded two chapters of Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Comment » | Blog

Back to top