Yeah! What a crazy day! We had a news film crew and a rock band in our house, not to mention the excitement of our new game!
That’s Henry in the green shirt. That’s my messy but interesting house. You might spot my new inkle loom, Henry’s Kung Fu diplomas, the portrait of him that Chloe drew, and Dan’s beautiful photo prints. And my millions of books.
Beatles Rock Band is amazing, really amazing. I’m worn out — more tomorrow.
I use my beloved iPhone in the kitchen a lot. I have a power cable for it and a set of little speakers, and it sits on top of the microwave while I listen to iTunes, Pandora, Stitcher, and Public Radio. I used to lean it against my sugarbowl but then whatever app I’m using switches to landscape mode which is useless and annoying. So yesterday, after thinking about it for months, I finally asked Henry if I could borrow a few LEGOs and I made a little stand! It’s perfect:
It’s quite stable and the phone leans back at a perfect angle. Clicking the pictures will take you to my flickr, where you can see close-ups of the stand without the phone in it, in case you want to make one for yourself.
Here’s a little treat for you – Bach’s incomparably lovely Goldberg Variations played on the harpsichord by Janine Johnson and streamed courtesy of Magnatune. (Buy it there!)
Forgot to say that Dan took us to lunch at the Studio Diner yesterday! I love going there. We went around 2:00 so it was practically empty, and nice and cool, too. My BLT was excellent, made with good ripe tomatoes, curly lettuce (not iceberg), lots of bacon, and thin crisp toasted bread. Henry, the Teenage Eating Machine, who used to barely eat anything, wolfed down an entire 1/2 pound burger with everything except pickles, and a huge pile of fries. And Dan had some kind of open-faced sandwich with meat and cheese, and clam chowder which he said was really good. It was relaxing and fun, a lovely birthday treat!
On the way home we stopped at the craft store so I could get some cotton yarn to start a belt for Henry on my new inkle loom. And then we spent the rest of the day hiding in the air conditioned bedrooms again until Henry had Kung Fu from 6:30 to 9. Chloe came over in the evening and we spent a couple hours scanning more of 1961.
In January 1961, the family went to look at the aftermath of a 45-car train wreck near DeWitt:
It’s my 40th birthday. Doesn’t that sound old? But I just talked to my 88-yr-old grandmother and she says 40 is young :)
Henry gave me a Barnes and Noble gift card (knitting books here I come!) and Dan gave me a Ravelry tote bag, a wooden darning egg, a Knit Picks gift card, and a Schacht inkle loom, all things I’ve been wishing for! I can’t wait to start a weaving on my very own inkle loom. You may remember that I borrowed one for a while in Spring and really enjoyed using it. Henry requested a handmade belt for his birthday so that’s the first thing I plan to make.
It’s 100 degrees here today, good lord, so we’ve got the AC running in the back of the house (we can close off the bedrooms from the living room) and are hiding back here, all three of us.
I got hired to record an audiobook for a little publishing company, so I’m working on editing the very long Chapter 2 right now. I recorded it last night from 8 to 11 (the aircraft flies over my house less frequently at night).
I slept really well last night, hooray! And I woke up slowly, which is always best. I seem to either sleep long enough and wake up slowly, or I wake up much too early and all-at-once. Funny.
I also had a crazy dream: it was my fifteenth birthday and no one was paying any attention to me because of the nuclear war. However, the kindly gay Asian man who was living with us gave me a hug and said we could bake a cake in his convection oven. And there was a wolverine in the attic and a possum in the basement. I don’t know how the possum got into my dream (maybe he hitched a ride with the wolverine), but everything else can be traced back to something I thought about the day before, but y’know, scrambled by the egg-beater of my sleeping mind.
Chloe and I scanned 100 more slides from 1960 yesterday. Grandpa took this photo in San Francisco, October of 1960:
Dig the 20′ long station wagon!
We noticed the island in the distance and thought it might be Alcatraz. Checked google maps and a map of the cable car system, and discovered that this is the corner of Hyde and Chestnut. Here’s a screenshot from google maps:
Notice the apartment building on the left with its columns of gray stone in different shades of gray. Notice the red post-box thing on the corner, and the cable-car tracks of course. It’s the same corner!
(No spoilers here, haven’t seen the first ep of season 3 yet.)
We’ve been looking forward to season three of Mad Men for so long! It seems like a thousand years since the last new episode aired. A couple of weeks ago Dan and I decided to watch seasons one and two all over again. That was about the 5th time through season one for me, and maybe the 3rd time through season two. That show just gets better every time you watch it. So we had a lot of weekend Mad Men marathons and stayed up too late a few times, and now we’ve just got the last two episodes of season two remaining. Ooo those Jet Set people are so creepy.
So tonight when Dan gets home we’ll finish up season two and then there’s the first ep of season three waiting for us!
And, since Henry knows how excited we are about it, he wanted to watch too — so I started watching season one all over again with him a few days ago. He loves it.