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Archive for February 2011


Simple tuna casserole

February 26th, 2011 — 6:44pm

Invented a simple tuna casserole last night. Dan gave it a big YUM and had two helpings!

  1. Fix a box of Trader Joe’s mac-n-cheese, but also chop up a couple stalks of celery and drop into the boiling water after the mac has cooked a minute or two.
  2. Mix prepared mac-n-cheese-n-celery with two cans of tuna fish (drained) and a glug of cream.
  3. Stick into a buttered casserole dish and top with a sprinkle of garlic powder and some grated cheese (I used sliced colby-jack, which I chopped into ribbons).
  4. Bake 20 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or until the cheese is melted and the whole thing is nice and hot.

It would be great with a salad and buttered french bread, if you have some. I didn’t, so we just ate casserole.

2 comments » | Blog, Recipes

Composers!

February 25th, 2011 — 1:04pm

A couple of weeks ago, Elli found a cute little picture-book biography of J.S. Bach on Project Gutenberg. She showed it to me, and then we noticed that the same author, Thomas Tapper, had written a number of these little biographies, and that Gutenberg has ten of them. So I made them into a collection and recorded them all. Elli did the administrative stuff and the proof-listening. And here they are!

http://librivox.org/stories-of-great-composers-for-children-by-thomas-tapper/

There are links on that catalog page to each little book online, so you can look at the pictures while you listen :)

If you find an online source for any of the other little composer biographies, let me know. I think there around ten more that Gutenberg doesn’t have yet, and I’d be delighted to do a second volume.

Comment » | Audiobooks, Blog

Museums!

February 22nd, 2011 — 8:27pm

Henry has no school this week, so we went down to Balboa Park this afternoon for a treat. I love Balboa Park. My parents used to take us there sometimes, and we’d spend the whole day wandering around, looking at the gardens and visiting a museum or two. It’s a very happy, special place for me.

Today the Aerospace and Automotive museums were open for free! I love looking at the beautiful old cars. Here I am with an International Harvester Model A Auto-Wagon, which has bolt-in back seats so it can be used for hauling things around the farm or to take the family to church:

photo

And here’s Henry with the DeLorean:

photo

When we were finished drooling over the cars, we went through the Aerospace Museum. I like the WWI gallery best, and the spacecraft of course! Here’s Henry with the Apollo 9 Command Module:

photo

So much fun!

Comment » | Blog, Homeschooling

hipstamatic

February 14th, 2011 — 10:29pm

I’ve been having a ton of fun with Hipstamatic, an app for iPhone that “brings back the look, feel, unpredictable beauty, and fun of plastic toy cameras from the past.” http://hipstamaticapp.com/

I bought it a while back when it was on sale and had fun with it then, but a recent update has made it way more useable, since it will now allow you to take up to nine photos in quick succession and eliminate your unloved films and lenses from shuffle mode. I kinda went nuts the last couple of days.

HIP_319421761.196287

Karen

Shoes

Grapes

HIP_319421839.921324

Karen

Geraniums

When you upload photos to flickr from within the app, it tags them with the film, lens, and flash you used so you can easily recreate your favorite combinations. Handy!

2 comments » | Blog

custom iPhone alarm/ringtone

February 3rd, 2011 — 6:39pm

Every time I want to make a custom alarm for my iPhone, I need to google the process all over again. So, just thought I’d note it down here to make it easier next time. Of course, the same process makes alarms and ringtones.

Here’s the link I always use:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2160460_custom-iphone-ringtones-free.html

Here’s a quick version to remind myself:

iTunes preferences -> CD import settings -> AAC
Convert mp3 snippet to AAC
drag AAC version to desktop (or somewhere), throw away mp3 version, throw away AAC copy still in iTunes (if there is one)
rename from .m4a to .m4r
double-click

The alarm I just made is the “Somebody loves the MONARCH! Monarch speaking… WHAT?!??!” soundbite from The Venture Brothers. Cracks me up every time I hear it. Grab it if you want it. It’s only 7 seconds long. http://ge.tt/3yvpkMq

5 comments » | Blog, Tech

nice music dream

February 3rd, 2011 — 1:05pm

I had a really fun dream early this morning, just before my alarm went off. I was singing with a friend… a man with a baby daughter. I’m not sure which friend it was. Could have been Hugh, pthree, or even my cousin Jon — all three have baby girls. We were singing “I Ride an Old Paint” (I like the Almanac Singers version with Woody Guthrie on lead vocals):

The guy (whoever it was) was singing lead, and I was harmonizing. In my dream the notes were crystal-clear. The verses were easy to harmonize with, but I had a little trouble finding harmony to fit the chorus; however, by the end of the dream I found notes that fit beautifully. And although sometimes I wake up with really awful songs in my head, that’s a lovely one so it made a good start to the day.

In unrelated news, I weighed myself last night: 112.8 pounds! That’s up from my usual 109, and even if the home scale isn’t as accurate as a doctor’s office scale, I must still have gained a pound or two. Yay me!

(I’m almost 5’8″, so 109 is wayyyyyyy too thin. 112 is, too, but it’s better, anyway.)

2 comments » | Blog

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