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Henry and I drove down to San Diego to pick up a bookcase that a homeschooling family was selling for cheap. On the way he worked in his grammar book and we listened to a They Might Be Giants album called “They Got Lost” which I’d never heard before, though I know some of the songs from other albums. “Words Are Like” is lovely. We were admiring the solo in Rat Patrol, and I asked Henry if he knew how to make a guitar sound like that. He said, “It’s probably a vibrato bar, some distortion, very strong fingers, and maybe a little reverb.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it doesn’t matter — he knows the terminology and how to get started if he wants to replicate that sound. Neat.

In other rodent-based news, we were both sitting in the upstairs room that is known as The Sitting Room but is really more of a Project Room, when Karen the Cat started jumping around and acting all crazy. We watched her for a while, and pretty soon we noticed that she had caught a MOUSE and was batting it around, teasing it the way cats do. I let her keep it because I want to encourage her to rid our house of vermin. She played with it for an awful long time. I hope she finally ate it and didn’t leave it, or parts of it, under someone’s bed…

Here are the lyrics to “Words Are Like”:

Words are like
The middle class
A drinking glass
A mask

Words are like
A Spanish town
A wedding gown
A crown

Words are like
A happy dream
A racing team
A wooden beam
A seam

Words are like
A rusty nail
A minor scale
A snail

Words are like
A postcard stamp
A highway ramp
A cramp

Words are like
Kaleidoscopes
The taste of soap
A billy goat
A coat

Words are like
A teenage star
A prison guard
A faded scar
A car

It’s a demo with just acoustic guitar, a bit of simple percussion, and two voices in lovely harmony — Flansburgh and a woman, maybe the woman who sang “don’t cross the street in the middle…” I wonder if I can find tab for it. Henry and I could easily sing the harmony together.

Last week it got suddenly hot, summertime hot. I’d been wearing my heavy green Doc Martin boots all winter but yearning for something new, so one day I went to Sports Authority and bought a pair of green Crocs. Yeah, those uncomfortable-looking shoes that all the kids are wearing. I bought some for Henry a couple of months ago, on the recommendation of a karate mom whose kid has hot feet, like Henry. Henry loves his Crocs and actually WEARS them without resistance, which pleases me very much. I’m sick and tired of battling with him to keep his shoes on. (Plus, Henry’s shoes always become horribly smelly because he refuses to wear socks unless it’s really cold out, but his Crocs haven’t picked up any foot-stench at all. Which is a miracle.) Henry says that after a break-in period, his Crocs are super-comfy. And I thought they’d be cute with my handmade socks peeking through the holes on those not-so-warm days.

I adore my Crocs. Far from being uncomfortable and plasticy-feeling, they’re softish without being super-squishy, and they’re very nice on the feet. My arch supports fit in them perfectly. They weigh so little that I barely even notice them, and that’s good ’cause I need all the help I can get not to get tired out. Plus, they’re cute :) Also, cheap at about $21.

Now, of course, it’s cold again, but my Crocs work well with all but my thickest wool socks and my feet are warm and comfy.

Today was Karate and then Bayshore. I watched the musical theater rehearsal (they’re doing a highly-abridged version of The Sound of Music, minus the Nazis and romance but with about 8 extra von Trapp children added — Henry plays “Franz von Trapp”, which is great ’cause he’ll get to sing most of the songs. :) Then I ran over to Yarning For You and browsed through the yarn, looking for nice sock yarn. I was perplexed to find that EVERYTHING they carry is self-striping. Bleah. I will stripe my own socks if I want stripes, thank you very much, and I rarely WANT stripes. I prefer cables and other textural interest, or stranding with two SOLID colors. There was some just luscious merino sock yarn, springy and soft, but all self-striping and in unattractive colors to boot. The lady understood my pain and dug around in the back of the store, and found me a couple of balls of plain red Jawoll sock yarn, the kind I like, with the extra nylon for toes and heels. But I decided I should maybe finish up Tubey and Dan’s 2112 hat and Henry’s second pair of 2-day socks before I start something else, so I asked her to try not to sell the red sock yarn until I come back for it :) While I was there I bought 3 sets of my adored Brittany Birch DPs, sizes 0, 1, and 2. I got the little short 5″ ones, as I’ve heard they are wonderful for socks. I’ll start another pair of 2-day socks for Henry tonight on them :) :) :)

After Bayshore, we brought Henry’s friends Adam and Brooke home with us, and they played happily all the rest of the day till I took them home at 6:30. Great kids, plus they live very very close! We plan to get together again soon. Adam just turned 12, and Brooke is 10-going-on-11, so Henry, at 11 1/2, is right in the middle.

I just have to give another plug for one of my favorite utilities for OS X: GrandPerspective

I Just noticed that I had one gig of hard drive space left on my laptop. ONE! So I ran GrandPerspective. It gives you a graphical representation of all the files on your drive so you can spot the huge ones, mouse over them to see what and where they are, and delete the useless ones. And now I have 32 gigs free :) (I tend to forget to delete uncompressed audio and downloads that have been moved to another machine.)

A brand-new LibriVox volunteer, Kate, posted a link to her beautiful essay:
On Reading Aloud
Her words ring so true.

Some people think that when children are doing other things while they are being read to, it means they are not listening. That is false. What they hear is made complete by what they do with their bodies while they listen. The problem with making children read to themselves and silently is that it requires them to sit still, which is not natural to them. They might choose not do it at all as the stillness of it is too hard for many of them to bear.

Yes! Yes! When he was small, Henry would literally orbit the room while I read to him. Now that he’s eleven, he’ll usually sit still to listen but likes to have a “fiddly toy” in his hands. I was the same — when Dad read to us every night, I’d work on an embroidery project or a latch-hook kit, or just smush a wad of silly-putty. Even now I prefer to knit while listening to audiobooks. Somehow I can concentrate on the story better if my fingers are moving and part of my mind is lightly occupied (knit 3, purl 1…)

Even to ourselves, as adults, we ought to read aloud. We make our tongues conform to another’s pattern of language, and that frees us from our own, and improves our own language. We have this gift of the English language and what is written in it. To apprehend it best, we ought use all the senses we have available, as more than sight can be involved.

Yes! As a volunteer for LibriVox, I’ve dipped into some wonderful literature, previously unknown to me, reading a chapter of this, a chapter of that, always aloud. I think it would be more difficult to enjoy such random samples if I were reading silently. Reading aloud throws me right into the thick of things. And when I re-read an old favorite aloud, I discover beautiful bits that I never noticed before because I am, I admit, a fast reader who glides through a book without noticing every nuance.

Thanks, Kate, for sharing your thoughts on this subject :)

I went to the library yesterday and found a new-to-me P.D. James book, Innocent Blood. I can’t put it down. Just finished chapter 14 while filling the sink with dishwater, and I suppose it’s not going to be possible to wash the dishes while reading, so I’ll have to stop for a bit. P.D. James is a master. Highly recommended if you enjoy the British crime/mystery/suspense genre.

Edit: finished it :)

Ok, so here’s the beginning of my “Tubey” sweater!

It took a long time to get the top shrug part right. My arms are so skinny that making the shrug the width of my upper arm measurement didn’t work, and I had to rip the whole thing out and add a lot more width, but I think it’s finally fitting ok. I knitted a couple of inches of each sleeve and wore it around for a while, and it’s not too tight under the arms anymore. So I picked up stitches all around and have started knitting the body tube, as you can see in the pictures.

The yarn is Debbie Bliss Cashmerino, in a rusty-orangey-reddish-brown color.

Also these photos show my cute hair!

Henry and I got too worn-out yesterday at the civil war, I guess, ’cause we both felt a little bit worse again today. But it was a nice day, warm and sunny, so we opened up all the doors and windows and the house filled up with fresh air. I played Zelda for a while, and then Henry played for the rest of the day, and got all the bomb bag upgrades and quiver upgrades and bottles and things. Henry also worked on learning Flash, a bit, and I upgraded my wordpress installation (finally) and added another year and a half of old blog pages to the new archive. Click the archive link on the right and you can see for yourself! I’m all the way up through 2002. I discovered that Smultron will strip out tabs and line endings, which made the whole process of pasting old entries into new posts much much easier.

Dan found a great and highly addictive game: http://www.rfshq.com/forum/games/virus2.swf which I played for a long time today, and I’ve also been playing a lot at http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/. My current favorite is Counterfeit. Great site!

Oh, I forgot to mention — last night we watched last Tuesday’s episode of House, and it was a good one, the one where everyone thinks House has brain cancer.

Henry and I went to a Civil War reenactment today! It was really great. We watched two battles and looked at all kinds of things. Here’s a website: http://www.goldcoastfestivals.com/civilwar/civilwarpg.htm

I took a million pictures but I’m too tired to dump them out of my camera.

I had another sort of bad night last night, but woke up feeling more like myself. Went to my hair appointment at 11, and my wonderful stylist, Esmerelda, gave me the BEST HAIRCUT EVER!!! Then came home and rested, then drove to SD to get Henry, then came home and rested some more.

Cough. Sniffle. Sneeze.

I’ve just discovered a very handy little utility for OS X: Paparazzi. It takes screenshots of entire webpages. I found it because one of our LibriVox admins was having trouble accessing a very lengthy password-protected page of cataloging instructions. She double-checked the password, rebooted, cleared the cache and cookies, etc. but the darn thing just wouldn’t let her in. So I googled “full page screenshot OS X” and the very first result led me to Paparazzi. Downloaded, installed, ran, took the screenshot, emailed it to the LibriVoxer. The entire process, from from deciding to try to find a webpage screenshot utility to making a post telling her to check her email, took four minutes. FOUR MINUTES! I love the interweb.

Still under the weather: runny nose, cough, etc. But it’s not too bad. The little girl next door is slightly sick, too, and stayed home from school today. She and Henry played together for HOURS while I did LibriVox work. We had a new collaborative recording of The Autobiography of Mother Jones recorded, proofed, and edited, ready to catalog. The ID3 tags were a disaster, so I downloaded all 27 files to my macbook and fixed the tags in iTunes while spot checking sound quality and making sure all files had a proper beginning and ending. I knew nothing about the book but listening to bits and pieces here and there got me interested, and I’ll probably listen to the whole thing soon. That makes four books I’ve cataloged in three days! Our March Madness Jamboree, an attempt to get some older projects finished up to make room for new ones, is a roaring success — we’ve cataloged about ten new books in the last week. You can subscribe to our New Releases feed and enjoy the madness!

I saw this mentioned on boingboing today:

C-SPAN is introducing a liberalized copyright policy for current, future, and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency– about half of all programming offered on the C-SPAN television networks–which will allow non-commercial copying, sharing, and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution.

“Giving voice to the average citizen has been a centerpiece of C-SPAN’s journalism since our network’s founding in 1979,” said, Rob Kennedy, C-SPAN president and co-COO. “As technology advances, we want to continue to be a leader in providing citizens with the tools to be active participants in the democratic process.”

Link to the full press release here:
http://www.c-span.org/about/press/release.asp?code=video

Hooray! Hooray for C-SPAN and their intelligent decision to treat us like citizens, not criminals!

Henry and I are both still sick. His throat hurt all day. My throat is still tender and my head is stuffy and my nose is runny. Well, that’s more than you wanted to know! I went to Trader Joe’s in the morning and got lots of soup and lemon sorbet and smoothie ingredients and other smooth and soothing things. The rest of the day, I sat on the couch with my laptop and did librivox work, literally all day. Henry played Linerider and watched cartoons and played outdoors a bit with his (fake) shuriken and kunai daggers. A peaceful day.

We planned to join our Math and Science club on a field trip to see The Da Vinci Experience at the air museum in Palm Springs (about two hours away) but I’m still feeling sick and absolutely not up to four hours of driving, so we stayed home. Very VERY disappointing. *sniff*

sore throat :(

Woke up feeling slightly sick today, and spent the day on the couch. I sorta thought I was getting a sore throat but it’s still not actually sore, which is good. My head is stuffy and achey and my eyes feel sticky and I just feel kind of all-over lousy. Anyway it was a good day to not feel well, since Dan’s here to look after me and I didn’t have to go anywhere. I did librivox work all day — got two projects almost cataloged. Waiting on two more files for one, and the other got stuck in the derivation process so I guess I’ll have to start that over tomorrow. The only sad thing is that I was hoping to go hear Rockola tonight :(

Now I’ll have some broth with rice.

If you go to http://boingboing.net right now (March 3 2007 10:00 PST) you’ll see a post about our newly-completed, free, public domain, audio book version of Darwin’s Origin of Species, right at the top of the page!

If you missed it on the main page, here’s a permalink: http://www.boingboing.net/2007/03/03/darwins_origin_of_sp.html

It took an incredible amount of work and over a year to produce this audio book. Many readers contributed, of course, but we also had proof-listeners, editors, and organizers donating their time and energy. And the amazing Gesine pulled it all together at the end and got it cataloged and ready for you to download: http://librivox.org/the-origin-of-species-by-charles-darwin/

Thanks, LibriVoxers!

I’ve always had trouble sleeping. When I was younger, I’d have trouble falling asleep and would just lie there for hours, waiting. When I got older, I could fall asleep pretty well but couldn’t stay asleep, or get back to sleep if something woke me in the night. A night of good solid sleep is a rare and wonderful thing for me. Last summer, on Dan’s recommendation, I asked my doctor if I could try lunesta. It works well for Dan, and doesn’t make him goofy or groggy. It worked well for me for a long time, but then seemed to lose effectiveness. I switched from 1mg to 2mg, but that didn’t really help a whole lot. Finally, last week, I realized that I was actually sleeping WORSE than before I started taking lunesta — waking up anxious in the middle of almost every night and being unable to fall back asleep, waking very early, waking up with headaches, never feeling rested, etc. So I thought, heck, enough of this, let’s try skipping the lunesta for a few nights and see what happens. And, presto, that first night (a week ago yesterday) I slept well for the first time in I don’t know how long. One night of good sleep could be a coincidence, but I’ve not taken lunesta for over a week now and my sleep is still relatively good. Oddly enough, it seems better than before I started taking lunesta, and better than while I was ON lunesta. Did the lunesta somehow train me to sleep better? I wake up a few times in the middle of every night but am able to fall right back asleep, which is a miracle. Very strange. I hope I haven’t jinxed anything by blogging about it.

Finally I have a minute to sit down and write something because my 4pm piano student canceled. It’s been a busy week so far. Yesterday morning I vacuumed and mopped in the morning, and then it was time for Henry’s Science club, then piano students, then karate, then Henry wanted help with his essay. He’s writing his very first essay, about dragons.

Today was karate, then many errands (library, music store, mail, pharmacy, bagels), then home for a shower, then off to Bayshore for Mythology and Musical Theater. (Auditions for Sound of Music!) It rained all morning, so nice. And now it’s nearly four and I’m resting for a bit, and then I guess I’d better go catch up on the housework and plan dinner. Oh, I finished Henry’s first blue sock today. Had to rip it out and start over yesterday as it was to small.