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Archive for August 2009


The Story of Mankind, Ch. 21

August 31st, 2009 — 7:44am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

21 A Summary – 5:28

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

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More about yesterday

August 28th, 2009 — 9:35am

Forgot to say that Dan took us to lunch at the Studio Diner yesterday! I love going there. We went around 2:00 so it was practically empty, and nice and cool, too. My BLT was excellent, made with good ripe tomatoes, curly lettuce (not iceberg), lots of bacon, and thin crisp toasted bread. Henry, the Teenage Eating Machine, who used to barely eat anything, wolfed down an entire 1/2 pound burger with everything except pickles, and a huge pile of fries. And Dan had some kind of open-faced sandwich with meat and cheese, and clam chowder which he said was really good. It was relaxing and fun, a lovely birthday treat!

On the way home we stopped at the craft store so I could get some cotton yarn to start a belt for Henry on my new inkle loom. And then we spent the rest of the day hiding in the air conditioned bedrooms again until Henry had Kung Fu from 6:30 to 9. Chloe came over in the evening and we spent a couple hours scanning more of 1961.

In January 1961, the family went to look at the aftermath of a 45-car train wreck near DeWitt:

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The Story of Mankind, Ch. 20

August 28th, 2009 — 7:43am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

20 Alexander the Great – 4:07

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

I’m 40!

August 27th, 2009 — 12:17pm

It’s my 40th birthday. Doesn’t that sound old? But I just talked to my 88-yr-old grandmother and she says 40 is young :)

Henry gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card (knitting books here I come!) and Dan gave me a Ravelry tote bag, a wooden darning egg, a Knit Picks gift card, and a Schacht inkle loom, all things I’ve been wishing for! I can’t wait to start a weaving on my very own inkle loom. You may remember that I borrowed one for a while in Spring and really enjoyed using it. Henry requested a handmade belt for his birthday so that’s the first thing I plan to make.

It’s 100 degrees here today, good lord, so we’ve got the AC running in the back of the house (we can close off the bedrooms from the living room) and are hiding back here, all three of us.

I got hired to record an audiobook for a little publishing company, so I’m working on editing the very long Chapter 2 right now. I recorded it last night from 8 to 11 (the aircraft flies over my house less frequently at night).

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The Story of Mankind, Ch. 19

August 26th, 2009 — 7:42am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

19 Athens vs. Sparta – 4:40

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

3 comments » | Audiobooks, Blog

The Story of Mankind, Ch. 18

August 24th, 2009 — 7:41am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

18 The Persian Wars – 8:51

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

3 comments » | Audiobooks, Blog

Hyde and Chestnut

August 21st, 2009 — 11:26am

I slept really well last night, hooray! And I woke up slowly, which is always best. I seem to either sleep long enough and wake up slowly, or I wake up much too early and all-at-once. Funny.

I also had a crazy dream: it was my fifteenth birthday and no one was paying any attention to me because of the nuclear war. However, the kindly gay Asian man who was living with us gave me a hug and said we could bake a cake in his convection oven. And there was a wolverine in the attic and a possum in the basement. I don’t know how the possum got into my dream (maybe he hitched a ride with the wolverine), but everything else can be traced back to something I thought about the day before, but y’know, scrambled by the egg-beater of my sleeping mind.

Chloe and I scanned 100 more slides from 1960 yesterday. Grandpa took this photo in San Francisco, October of 1960:

San Francisco, Oct 1960

Dig the 20′ long station wagon!

We noticed the island in the distance and thought it might be Alcatraz. Checked google maps and a map of the cable car system, and discovered that this is the corner of Hyde and Chestnut. Here’s a screenshot from google maps:

San Francisco, 2009?

Notice the apartment building on the left with its columns of gray stone in different shades of gray. Notice the red post-box thing on the corner, and the cable-car tracks of course. It’s the same corner!

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The Story of Mankind, Ch. 17

August 21st, 2009 — 7:40am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

17 The Greek Theatre – 6:15

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

The Story of Mankind, Ch. 16

August 19th, 2009 — 7:37am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

16 Greek Life – 7:41

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

Mad Men!!!

August 17th, 2009 — 12:01pm

(No spoilers here, haven’t seen the first ep of season 3 yet.)

We’ve been looking forward to season three of Mad Men for so long! It seems like a thousand years since the last new episode aired. A couple of weeks ago Dan and I decided to watch seasons one and two all over again. That was about the 5th time through season one for me, and maybe the 3rd time through season two. That show just gets better every time you watch it. So we had a lot of weekend Mad Men marathons and stayed up too late a few times, and now we’ve just got the last two episodes of season two remaining. Ooo those Jet Set people are so creepy.

So tonight when Dan gets home we’ll finish up season two and then there’s the first ep of season three waiting for us!

And, since Henry knows how excited we are about it, he wanted to watch too — so I started watching season one all over again with him a few days ago. He loves it.

Have you been to http://madmenyourself.com/?

Here’s me:

madmen_icon

and here’s Henry:

madmen_icon_henry

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The Story of Mankind, Ch. 15

August 17th, 2009 — 7:36am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

15 Greek Self-Government – 5:51

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

The Story of Mankind, Ch. 14

August 14th, 2009 — 7:35am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

14 The Greek Cities – 6:07

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

The Story of Mankind, Ch. 13

August 12th, 2009 — 7:34am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

13 The Greeks – 3:50

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

Happy 4th anniversary, LibriVox!

August 10th, 2009 — 1:01pm

On August 10th, 2005, our Hugh McGuire had his brilliant idea, and thus LibriVox was formed. Esther (a.k.a Starlite) put together a wonderful 4th anniversary podcast with contributions from many of our volunteers:

LibriVox Community Podcast #106 (49:40 minutes long.)

Bits of it made me come over all weepy with sentiment and gratitude to our lovely volunteers, and bits of it made me laugh out loud! (I’m talking to you, Ryan and Ruthie!) Elli and Neeru did a “ten things we all love about LibriVox” countdown that’s full of fun and contains selections from a certain story read in many different languages. (I was pleased to discover that I could understand a little bit of the Dutch reading! Dutch is a very close relative of English, closer even than German, but I guess I never really listened to any Dutch before. Well, LibriVox can fix that ;-)

And that reminds me — on the weekend I finished and cataloged my recording of Dad’s ancient copy of The Swiss Family Robinson: http://librivox.org/the-swiss-family-robinson-by-johann-r-wyss/ I love this book! Hope you like it too. I’ll add it to my podcast feed when the history book is finished.

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The Story of Mankind, Ch. 12

August 10th, 2009 — 7:33am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

12 The Aegean Sea – 6:35

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

The Story of Mankind, Ch. 11

August 7th, 2009 — 7:32am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

11 The Indo-Europeans – 4:07

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

The Story of Mankind, Ch. 10

August 5th, 2009 — 7:30am

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

10 The Phoenicians – 3:13

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

Fargo is moving :(

August 3rd, 2009 — 10:05pm

Henry’s very best friend in the whole world, Fargo, is moving to Arizona. He’s here with us for one last visit. On Friday they went with Henry’s dad to Cirque du Soleil (he had comps!), on Saturday we took them to the Wild Animal Park in the evening, which was lovely, and yesterday I took them to the science museum and the zoo! (At the zoo we saw a woman fall into the pond at the bird show, but that’s a story for another time.) Today I was pretty tired so I let them laze about with me and watch fun things. We showed Fargo the first six episodes of Firefly, and a great many episodes of Arrested Development, so now he’s a fan of both shows! We plan to squeeze in a bit more Firefly before he has to go home tomorrow. Got to get up to “Out of Gas” anyway.

They got a bit of exercise playing swordfight in the yard and walking to Henry’s Kung Fu school for his evening class. Oh, and Henry baked a cheesecake while Fargo helped. And I filled four mp3 cds full of LibriVox audiobooks for Fargo to listen to on his drive to AZ.

We hope we will still get to see Fargo sometimes even after he moves, because his dad still lives up in Orange County so Fargo will come out for visits and we’ll steal him away. He’s a wonderful boy, smart and funny and a great reader. I lent him my huge volume of American and British poetry to read while he’s here and he had his nose buried in it practically the whole time.

Fargo is grating lemon rinds while reading poetry:

DSC05826

Washing up after baking:

DSC05838

At the Animal Park (Henry is finishing up the Alex Rider series and had to bring his book with him):

DSC05811

Come visit us again soon, Fargo! We’ll miss you so much!

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The Story of Mankind, Ch. 9

August 3rd, 2009 — 9:30pm

The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, read by Kara and Michelle.

vanloon_mankind

09 Moses – 5:10

You can buy a lovely thick reprint of the original book, with dozens of lively illustrations, from http://mainlesson.com.

Impatient? Get the entire free audio book here: http://librivox.org/the-story-of-mankind-by-hendrik-van-loon/

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

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