kayray.org

This is pretty cool:
http://whoissick.org/sickness/
I thought Henry and I were both coming down with something last night (both felt extra-tired and droopy), but we woke up just fine. Yay!

I’m a sucker for Internet Quizzes. Thanks, Ken C.

TV or radio or… audiobooks? :)

Do you Twitter? Let me know, maybe we can be friends.

If you’re an OS X user, try Twitterrific. Very handy.

From the LA Times:

First karate, then bookstore, then home, then lunch, then out to Bayshore for Henry’s classes (theater, mythology, stagecraft). While he was in class I went home, finished his first Bamboo sock, did some proofing/editing of my Etiquette chapter, planned dinner, did housework, taught a piano student, and practiced the piano. Drove back out to get Henry. When we got home he helped me make dinner — stuffed cabbage rolls with his home-grown cabbage! A very tasty dinner.

Still working on improving the kitchen. Scrubbed the cupboard doors today, and moved the baking supplies from the high cupboard to the tall cupboard, where they’re much easier to reach.

I recorded my chapter of Emily Post’s “Etiquette” (The Country House and Its Hospitality). Now I know how we should have behaved in Canada! Heheh. Mostly, though, I learned what Christine and Hugh, as the Hostess and Host, should have done. She should have had her housemaid unpack my things (quietly providing anything I’d forgotten) and draw my bath every morning and bring me a breakfast tray (all the china MUST MATCH!) and provide me with a tin of Pyro for my curling iron. LOL. And Hugh’s valet should have unpacked Dan’s things and taken his hat and stick and drawn his bath (hot, warm, or cold — aided by a thermometer). Gentlemen, of course, rarely care to breakfast in their rooms, so Christine’s cook and waitress should have provided an ongoing breakfast downstairs, ready at whatever moment Dan chose to eat. Boy. Those were Other Times, indeed. :)

Ultra Super Movie Weekend:

Last night, after Little MIss Sunshine, we also watched Three Days of the Condor, which I’d seen many times when I was a kid (it’s one of those movies Dad would mark in the TV Guide and we’d all watch together) but Dan never had seen it. He loved it, and I really enjoyed seeing it again in COLOR and wide-screen :) Great movie, let’s give it 4 stars:
My rating: 4.0 stars

Today, Saturday, we watched Stranger Than Fiction, which was also very good — funny, tender, touching, thought-provoking — with an excellent cast including Will Farrell, Emma Thompson, and Dustin Hoffman. This one gets 4 stars as well!
My rating: 4.0 stars

How do I decide how many stars? Well… I base it on how much I enjoyed watching a movie overall, how many good things I noticed (beautiful filming, believable dialogue, good writing/directing, a non-obvious plot), how many things irritated me while watching (clunky dialogue, poor acting, implausibility, predictability, etc.) and how likely I am to want to watch it again someday.

LibriVox in a NYC art gallery:
http://cailun.info/index.php?/archives/242-Touch,-Listen-2007.html

Books are meant to be touched.

Poetry is meant to be listened to.

It’s Thursday noon and we’re home. I just want to tell the story of our return journey before I forget:

We got to the Montreal airport at 2:30pm and found out that our 4:30 flight to Chicago was canceled on account of weather. (I had checked online earlier and there was no mention of this fact, although the flight had been canceled at 9am) The very helpful American Airlines ticket agent sent us back and forth between various counters, and eventually got us booked standby on an 8pm Air Canada flight to Las Vegas, then a US Airways midnight flight from LV to San Diego. This all took about an hour and a half. So then we went through customs and security and found a nice restaurant to wait in and had some food, and then just waited and waited until they boarded our flight, and then found out that YES there was room for us on the plane! And they even managed to get two adjacent seats for me and Henry, and one nearby for Dan. It was a huge relief. (Our fall-back plan was to leave Montreal at 6am the next morning, which would mean getting to the airport at 3am… Yeah.)

The Air Canada flight was very very pleasant. They had good food for sale and complimentary water, juice, coffee, etc. The stewardesses walked up and down the aisle offering cups of water quite frequently. They played two movies — Eregon, which delighted Henry (ghastly movie, but he loves it so) and then a sweet little movie about Beatrix Potter which I enjoyed very much.

Landed in LV at 10:30, took a shuttle to the Other Terminal, and followed the signs to our flight at gate B12. When we got there I had a funny feeling about it so instead of just waiting until they called us to board, I went up to ask if we were in the right place, and we weren’t! The posted gate info for our flight was WRONG. Henry was feeling really sick and queasy so we grabbed a spare wheelchair and Dan pushed him (and carried all our stuff, as usual) all the way back to A14, the proper gate. Got on the plane about 5 minutes later. Sat on the runway for a long time, then drove back to the gate — computer problems. They fiddled with the computers and got them fixed, but by they time the were fixed it was too late for our crew to fly again, so they called out a replacement crew. It took a long long time for them to get ready to fly, but we finally took off around 2:30am (I think). Landed safely in SD around 3:30. And — miraculously — our luggage made it too!

There was one last Cloud 9 shuttle heading to North County. It was very lucky for us that we caught it. If we’d missed it, we would have had to get a taxi, which I think would have cost a fortune, or waited in the airport for several more hours. Anyway we finally got home just before 5am.

I slept until 11:30 this morning. Dan and Henry are still sleeping :) Well, I guess I’ll go unpack, tidy up, and do all the dumb things I gotta do…

Today is our last full day in Montreal :( We all wish we could stay much longer. Henry and I walked out to mail postcards and buy breakfast pastries this morning. I really wanted to go see something cultural today, so after Christine got back from an appointment, she and Henry and I hopped on the metro and went down to the Centre d’histoire de Montréal which is a lovely little museum in an old fire station, down in the Old Town. I thought the exhibits were well-planned and very interesting! I think Henry and Christine got a little bit tired of Montreal history after a while :) Next we went to a busy little cafe for a bite to eat, and then up to the Notre Dame cathedral, which was spectacular. Ornate, dramatic, luxurious. Then we came home, then Henry and Christine went to look at a toy store while Dan and I went back downtown to return his rented guitar. And now we’re home again with sore feet. And I’m sleepy. Doing a little knitting now, and then I’ll make some dinner and then pack. Sigh.

Nice lazy day. We planned to go to the science center, but then Henry banged his knee at the playground and we decided he should keep off of it for the day. We had a lovely day just doing nothing. I started a pair of socks for Henry with the wool/bamboo yarn. In the afternoon Henry’s knee felt better so we took a little walk and poked around the dollar store. We bought some postcards and a pack of cards, and then we went to the market for potatoes for dinner. Christine and Henry and Dan and I played Settlers while Hugh cooked another tasty dinner — a couple of piles of MEAT and green beans with garlic and a vat of mashed potatoes. Yum! While we were eating we started discussing games, and it turns out that Hugh is a Euchre player, so after dinner we taught Dan and Henry to play (Christine was tired and went to bed). That was a lot of fun!

Christine had to work today, but she left a bag of little chocolate eggs for me to hide for Henry :) We ate little chocolate eggs all day. We didn’t do anything much else — Henry helped me beat my current Zelda dungeon (the one with the spinner, very cool) and then he played WoW on my laptop for the rest of the day. I read and talked to Hugh, and Dan lazed around. Dan and I took a nice walk out in the evening for some dinner groceries and I made spinach fettucine with a rather tasty sauce for dinner.

Yesterday morning we went to the little chocolatier around the corner and then Christine took me to her favorite yarn store, which was tremendously fun! There was so much lovely yarn to choose from. I got some wool/bamboo/polymide Regia sock yarn for Henrysocks, and some wool/cotton/polymide and wool/polymide Regia sock yarn for me, and some Marra merino/alpaca for thicker socks, and three skeins of elegant golden-brown Noro (silk/cashmere/lambswool/nylon) that’ll work up into a lovely scarf. I’ll post a photo later. And I finished Henry’s red mittens. We took a little walk before bed so he could get some fresh air, and he wore his mittens and made up a skee-ball game using snowballs and the playground slide across the street :)

It’s Friday night, and we’re in Montreal with our dear friends Hugh and Christine (Hugh is the founder of LibriVox), having arrived here late Wednesday night for a little vacation. It started snowing a bit the night we got here, so yesterday Henry was able to bundle up and play in the snow in the front yard and in the playground across the street. A dog stole his mitten but he got it back. He made a couple of snowmen and knocked them down with karate techniques, and we took a little snowy walk around the neighborhood. I finished knitting Dan’s 2112 hat and started a pair of mittens for Henry with the leftover red yarn.

H & C are in the process of buying a house, so we took a bus over to their new neighborhood and admired their wonderful new house! Friends came over for dinner and we played the Seafarers version of Settlers of Catan.

Henry read his entire vacation book on the airplane, so today Christine and I took Henry on the Metro down to the Indigo bookstore, which was huge and wonderful. They had all four Mary Poppins books in HARDBACK! Drooool. But… I don’t need any books right now (On Tuesday I bought Elizabeth’s London to read on vacation). We found three books for Henry, a Naruto graphic novel, some dragon story, and a Viking-era adventure that looks pretty good. I’ll probably read it also. So now he’s got enough books for the rest of the week, I hope. We also took him to a game store (he asked Christine for a store that sold figurines) and he bought himself a little runic pendant. Sweet boy. It was even colder today than yesterday, but no more significant snow has fallen. On the walk home we stopped into a couple more little shops, including a chocolate shop which smelled heavenly but was too crowded. We’ll go tomorrow morning when they open, perhaps.

This afternoon Christine and I did some knitting, and Henry did a bit too and kept us company. Dan, Henry, Christine, and I played Settlers while Hugh cooked another amazing dinner, and another friend came over to eat with us. Henry’s in bed now and we’re just lazing around. It’s been a wonderful vacation so far. We love the cold! :)

I really really hate April Fool’s Day. I don’t like being tricked, I don’t like seeing other people tricked. The entire internet becomes more annoying than usual. Only one in a million April Fool hoaxes is actually amusing/entertaining. Can we please, as a society, grow up already?

Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, on to other things. It’s a beautiful day! And our LibriVox March Madness event was successful beyond our wildest dreams — we cataloged seventy new works in March. I did a post about this here. And I just bought some strawberries from the stand on the corner and will now fix them with plain yogurt and granola and it will be delicious.

This morning, while Henry was at his Bayshore classes, I recorded the last three chapters of The Story of the Middle Ages! I got them all edited and proofed, and then Anna gave them a final listen, and I got the whole thing completed and cataloged:

The Story of the Middle Ages, by Samuel B. Harding

So if you’re looking for a good free children’s history audio book, there you go :) You can read along with the text at The Baldwin Project, or purchase from them a lovely and inexpensive reprint (with the original illustrations) if you prefer real paper books. I certainly do.

Here’s a sample:
Chapter 8: Charlemagne

I really enjoyed this book. Hope you like it too!

Brooke and Adam came to play today, so I got some housework done. I’ve only got three more chapters of The Story of the Middle Ages to record, and I tried twice today to record the next chapter (after the kids went home, before karate, while Henry was sitting quietly doing some math) but the house erupted in a great noise explosion both times so I only got a few minutes recorded. I planned to finish that chapter tonight after Henry was tucked in, but there was loud piano music going on until nearly ten and now I’m far too tired. But there are still three more days of March so I might still get it done for LibriVox’s March Madness event! I will certainly try. We’ve cataloged 52 new works so far this month, beating our old record of 38. We might make it to 60!

Henry traded in two old DS games he didn’t need anymore and bought a used copy of Nintendogs. He’s really enjoying it. Looks like one I might need to try, too :)

Oh! Sound Studio tech support finally sent me a link to version 3.0.5 — the version that does everything I need it to do without crashing. So now I can record, filter, and edit without running two separate copies of the program.

Last night Rockola played their George Harrison birthday show! I went for the first show (7-9) and it was wonderful, just wonderful. Dan went too, to tech both shows, but we took separate cars so I could go home after the first show and not stay out far too late and mess up my sleep for the next two weeks. We got there nice and early, and I knitted most of Henry’s sock before the show started.

Today I recorded chapter 11 of The Story of the Middle Ages. My audio software, Sound Studio, is driving me nuts. The latest version, 3.5, has a bug which renders the 10-band EQ useless – the program crashes whenever you try to EQ a file. Awesome. I’ve been talking to Tech Support about it for a week, but so far they’re unable to fix it. I’m not the only one, either — a few other people have posted this problem on the Sound Studio forum. This drives me CRAZY. It’s not like I’m asking the program to do something esoteric and unusual — I’m simply trying to use a built-in filter. And it worked just fine in the last version of the program. *GNASHES TEETH* Luckily, I didn’t update the software on my other computer, but have a version there that’s two releases old and missing some useful recording features BUT has a working EQ filter. So I record my audio in the new version, use the old version to EQ it, then finish the editing in the new version. So efficient.

Also vacuumed and mopped the main level of the house. I forgot to mention that I replaced the World’s Most Useless Mop with a new twisty mop from Target which works beautifully. So exciting, isn’t it!

Yesterday, suddenly, a phrase popped into my head:
“You can’t leave food within her reach…”
Where it came from, I don’t know, but there it was. It seemed familiar… an old song maybe? I turned it over and around and around in my mind, and pretty soon another bit floated over and joined it:
“Nor nursemaids, nor airedales, nor chocolate ice-cream sodas.”
And then I knew what it was! A Burl Ives song about a whale named Sarah! I think it was on a record we checked out from the library when I was 7 or so (that’s 30 years ago, folks). Haven’t heard it since. I googled those bits of text and found the complete lyrics:

In San Francisco town there lived a whale.
She ate porkchops by the pail;
By the pillbox, by the suitcase, by the bathtub, by the schooner.
Her name was Sarah, and she’s a peach,
But you can’t leave food within her reach;
Nor nursemaids, nor airedales,
Nor chocolate ice cream sodas.
She eats a lot, but when she smiles
You can see her teeth for miles and miles;
And her adenoids, and her spare ribs,
And things too fierce to mention.
So, what can you do in a case like that?
What can you do but sit on your hat;
Or your toothbrush, or your grandmother,
Or anything else that’s helpless.

If you want to know the tune, I will sing it for you. But only if I get a request to do so.

edit:
Here’s Sarah the Whale, sung by me

Sally took her Vita-Mix down to her boyfriend’s house today, which gave me the golden opportunity/excuse to buy myself a new blender :) After doing a ton of research online, I decided on the Waring PBB or MBB, whichever I could find locally. (I wanted to make Dan a margarita tonight and didn’t want to wait for Amazon to ship anything). They’re in the $120 range, but get great reviews and have a lovely retro look. Plus they have two speeds – low and high. I do not want a cheap-tastic plastic blender with 45 useless buttons. I want a solid sturdy glass/metal blender that will make fruit smoothies on weekday mornings and strawberry margaritas on weekend nights, both of which drinks require the ability to handle hunks of frozen fruit.

So I checked online to see which local stores might carry such a blender. No luck. Called Waring to ask if they knew who carried their blenders — they suggested Williams-Sonoma or Macy’s. Called both stores — no luck, but it didn’t really seem as if the customer service people had any clear idea of what they actually DID carry, so I decided to drive around and try my luck in the (gasp) mall.

No store there carried any Waring blenders of any description. No store carried ANY Kara-acceptable blenders. Finally I went to Target, thinking I’d just try ONE more store. Target had a $60 Oster in the same basic form as the Waring — a 1950s stainless-steel beehive shape and a single toggle switch – off, pulse, and on. And a glass blender jar! And the box boasted sturdy metal construction, etc. So I took a chance on it.

It makes a fine margarita, handling frozen berries with ease. The design of the lid leaves a lot to be desired, though. With an accidentally firm push, you can pop the center bit right out and into the whirling contents below.

I was considering returning it after the weekend and ordering the Waring from amazon but… I’ll probably just follow the path of least resistance and keep my Oster.