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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.

29 – The Tournament; The Wind and the Moon
30 – Jesus the Carpenter; Letty’s Globe; A Dream; Heaven is not Reached at a Single Bound
31 – The Battle of Blenheim
32 – Fidelity; The Chambered Nautilus

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!

25 – To a Mouse; To a Mountain Daisy
26 – Barbara Frietchie
27 – Lochinvar
28 – Lord Ullin’s Daughter; The Charge of the Light Brigade

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.

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.

12 – The Butterfly and the Bee; An Incident of the French Camp; Robert of Lincoln
13 – Old Grimes; Song of Life; Fairy Song
14 – A Boy’s Song; Buttercups and Daisies; The Rainbow; Old Ironsides
15 – Little Orphant Annie; O Captain My Captain
16 – Ingratitude; The Ivy Green; The Noble Nature; The Flying Squirrel
17 – Warren’s Address; The Song in Camp; The Bugle Song
18 – The Three Bells of Glasgow; Sheridan’s Ride
19 – The Sandpiper; Lady Clare
20 – The Lord of Burleigh
21 – Hiawatha’s Childhood
22 – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud; John Barelycorn; A Life on the Ocean Wave
23 – The Death of the Old Year; Abou Ben Adhem
24 – A Farm-Yard Song

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.)