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

54 The Holy Alliance – 21:45

Dan let me use his fancy digital SLR to take pictures of my new fruit bowl today:

I got tired of using one of my two mixing bowls to store fruit and then having to dump the fruit out when I needed to mix something, so I made a papier mache fruit bowl. I used a basic papier mache goop: 1 part flour/ 2 parts water/ a glug of white glue and a good big shake of salt. I had to buy a newspaper. It’s kind of hilarious that I only buy a newspaper when I need a lot of cheap paper for a project…

When the basic bowl was dry I gave it two coats of white acrylic paint. Next time I will be smart and use white printer paper for the last layer of papier mache. Then I used Mod Podge to apply a layer of yellow tissue paper to the outside of the bowl and then some orange and red flowers. The inside is just white with a coating of Mod Podge.

Hooray for making something very useful and decorative out of almost nothing!

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

53 Napoleon – 24:04

After thinking about it for days, I ordered a Zoom H2 Handy Recorder on the weekend. It shipped Monday and I got it yesterday and spent all day playing with it. I love it. Besides cheap-ass earbuds, assorted cables, and a little screw-on tripod-foot, it came with a 1-gig SD card, a foam windscreen that slides over the mic, and a mic-stand adapter (not shown in the pics nor mentioned in the description, so I ordered a mic stand adapter as well, oops).

After fiddling with it a lot, I figured out that the best setup for me is to have the gain on medium and set to max. I attached it to a boom mic stand behind the couch, and the boom goes over the back of the couch and across my left shoulder. I have the mic near my mouth and tipped sideways so I speak just past it.

With my old (but very nice-sounding) condenser mic, I could only record in the bedroom because the mic was so sensitive it picked up the server hum, the refrigerator hum, and every tiny noise. Also, no matter what I did, my condenser mic picked up background hum from something and I had to do rather aggressive noise-cleaning for my Ignatius recordings (Ignatius likes LOUD recordings so any background hum was amplified as well). Last night Henry and Dan were playing videogames in the room next to the bedroom for hours. Ordinarily I would not have been able to record at all, since their voices would have come through the bedroom wall and the livingroom was out of the question. But last night I was able to record the five last chapters of “This Country of Ours, Part 4” sitting in comfort on the livingroom couch! I do still run my recordings though my 10-band EQ filter to remove any low-end rumble, a gentle compression filter to even them out a bit, and a *tiny* bit of light noise-cleaning because I’m just obsessive that way.

The Zoom’s sound quality is very nice — not tinny like my cheap USB mics. Not, perhaps, *quite* as warm as my condenser mic, but nearly so, and the lack of background hum more than makes up for that.

The Zoom H2 has a great interface. Once you get used to it, it’ve very easy to navigate around to change settings, record, play or delete files, etc. The thick manual is very thorough. Transferring audio via its USB cable is slow, so for my longer recordings I pop the SD card out and use my card reader instead, but for the shorter recordings it’s handy to just use the cable.

By a pleasant coincidence, Jacek, a Polish English teacher, emailed me yesterday for help registering at librivox, and it turned out he was also looking for someone to record short humorous anecdotes in English for his students. I volunteered, of course, so those were my very first recordings on my Zoom! Here they are:

Exact Change
Fishing

Lol! And Jacek has just sent me some more, which I can do right here right now!

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

52 The French Revolution – 28:12

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

51 The American Revolution – 13:30

Dan’s coming home today!! He has has been gone for almost a week, learning sysadmin things at the LISA (Large Installation System Administration) ’09 conference. It felt like he was gone for a month and I’ll be soooo glad when he’s finally home.

Poor Henry has been very sick since Monday (some kind of flu — headache, fever, cough, general misery) so all he did all week was sleep and watch tv, and I kept him company. But I got a lot of recording done, too. I finished my recording of The Templars for Ignatius Press, and did a little picture book about the Pope for them yesterday as well. That one was very sweet, with pretty watercolors. I’ll provide links again when my audio is up for sale. I also recorded four chapters of the next part of This Country of Ours (kids’ US history) and another chapter of Alice in German.

I also ripped apart the odd collar of my Slipped Cable Vest and re-knit it to fit a lot better.

And I wove three bands on my inkle loom. I made them the maximum length my loom can handle, a bit over 8 feet. The red-and-black one has already become shoelaces for Henry (with electrical-tape aglets). If you want woven bands for anything (bodice lacing, dress trim, drawstrings, shoelaces) let me know :) I am super-proud at how much my weaving skill has improved. I wove the last one in one quick evening sitting, probably a couple hours or so. My hands have figured out the routine quite nicely.

Oh, and I’m working on a little case for Henry’s iPod Touch, which he won two weeks ago in some kind of game of chance at a bowling alley!!

I am, astonishingly, not sick yet, knock on wood. I’ve been washing my hands obsessively and staying as far away from Henry as I can, poor boy.

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

50 The Mercantile System – 7:15

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

49 The Rise of Prussia – 8:46

I finally bought several colors of mercerized crochet cotton for weaving on my inkle loom. I just finished a pair of shoelaces for Henry last night:

And then I started another pair in green and white:

Two weekends ago Henry and I went to the wonderful Tournament of the Phoenix. We had an absolutely wonderful time. Here’s Henry learning some sword techniques:

and trying on some maille:

And then just last Friday, Sally, Chloe, Henry, and I all went to the Wild Animal Park for their new Mule Ride. It was Sally’s birthday present to all three of us! We all had the best time. We rode for nearly 2 hours on 3 1/2 miles of fire-roads out in the undeveloped part of the Park. My mule was Erica, Henry’s was Doc, Sally’s was Jill, and Chloe’s was Tonto. The mules were very sweet and well trained, and our three guides were pleasant and knowledgeable.

Henry took this picture of my mule with the developed part of the park in the distance:

And here’s Henry giving Doc a pat. Doc was the largest mule, probably half Belgian, but very slow and docile.

We would all love to ride the mules again!

I haven’t told you about the joust, the mule ride, or my knitting and weaving fun. But I’m tired now so all I’ll give you tonight is this handy chart which will help you decide if you’ve got a cold, the seasonal flu, or H1N1:

Henry came home with a dry cough, a stuffy nose, and a headache, so we’ll see…

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

48 Russia vs Sweden – 7:55

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

47 The Rise of Russia – 9:15

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

46 The Balance of Power – 9:15

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

45 The English Revolution – 33:12

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

44 Religious Warfare – 28:41

Oh, how lovely.

“I find it elevating and exhilarating to discover that we live in a universe which permits the evolution of molecular machines as intricate and subtle as we.” — Carl Sagan

Lyrics and downloadable mp3s at http://www.symphonyofscience.com

(Thanks, Chris!)

Newborn Kirsten and 2 1/2 year old me, April 1972:

(More scanning with Chloe today)

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

43 The Reformation – 22:47