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Thursday, August 31, 2006

The Federalist Papers -- paper 46

Federalist 46

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

a few things

I need a favor. I'm doing a little poll. Those of you who know French in any way -- by which I mean, you took French in high school, you taught French in a high school, you have a friend who lives in Montréal, you once watched a movie where someone said 'bonjour', you can read the word 'French' and know what it means: If you were going to pronounce, say, the name of the Charlotte Brontë book "Villette", say like if you were going to, I dunno, read the book aloud (I am totally not obsessed and you need to just shut up, I heard you), would you say it:

a) Vill-ette?
b) Vee-lette?
c) Vee-yette?
d) Some other way?

Tomorrow I might call my high-school French teacher and ask her (there are advantages to living in the same small town your whole life -- see?). But I may not, if someone can answer with authority here. Or else take a stab in the dark and inadvertently confirm that my super-secret suspicion is correct.

And also I have a meme. Thank you, Michael, for always being willing to supply me with blog content on those dry days.

What do you do with a drunken sailor?
Put him in a long-boat till he's sober, of course! Earleye in the mornin! Sheesh. Don't you people know anything?

Would you rather fall and skin your knee on carpet, pavement, or a clay tennis court?
You know... who comes UP with these things? (no offense, Michael, I know you feel the same way). Really there's no point in answering this because all of these will happen to me sooner or later anyway. But come on, what's next? "Death by drowning, electrocution, or rabies?" Oh, wait, I think I saw that in a survey not too long ago.

Who let the dogs out? Who? Who?
You know, I actually have serious negative associations for this song thanks to a bunch of drunk people on a train on a day about six years ago when I did not look my best after a long day of traveling. Shuddery horrific schoolbus flashbacks start... now.

What's the strangest thing that has happened to you lately?
I posted to my blog three days in a row. I think.

If you could, would you be a taxi driver for a day? In what city?
Ah, no. City driving is enough of a struggle without paying passengers.

In high school, the kids voted you "Most Likely" to do what?
Most Likely to Trip Over a Crack in the Sidewalk, Tossing Her Books and Papers Hither and Yon Whilst Causing Serious Bodily Injury to Herself and at Least One Passerby. Or they would have, if they'd had space in the yearbook. I was a shoo-in. Instead I only got Most Likely to Forgetfully Leave a Trail of Her Belongings from Classroom to Classroom Throughout the Day. Or something along those lines.

What is your favorite color of a rose?
Pink for small ones, cream-colored with pink edges for big ones.

Why does Mickey Mouse wear gloves all the time?
Because he's such a dapper young mouse. He is totally puttin' on the Ritz.

Where would you hide a safe in your house to assure that it couldn't be easily found?
We have our secrets.

What's bedtime like for you? Do you still sleep with a teddy bear from childhood? Do you mind that little crack of light through the curtains or do you need to have total darkness?
Oh gosh, no teddy bear. Books, and a really handsome good-sized husband who's asleep loooong before I am, would be more accurate. We leave the hall light on and the bedroom door open so we can see to get to the bathroom. And now that you know this, your life will never be the same, right? Yeah, I know. You can thank me later.

Silas Marner, chapter 6

Chapter 6

(what on earth is going on here?)

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, chapters 5 and 6

I had to replace my microphone (because I leapt up to stop a catfight outdoors with my headset on... because I am who I am) and I'm still not totally happy with the new one.

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

(what on earth is going on here?)

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Barb made me do it.

Well, actually, Lauren had a hand in it too. And honestly it just sounded like a fun idea, so here I am, doing it.

Barb wants to know why I named my blog what I did. And since there actually is a little bit of a story that goes along with that, I thought perhaps I'd tell it.

When I first started blogging (I will NEVER like that word. It's like that whole www thing. If they'd known how many times people would be saying that they would never have used w's and so made the entirety of Western civilization look like idiots going around saying doubleyou-doubleyou-doubleyou-dot before everything. Don't you think? I know, I know, World Wide Web and all -- which is actually shorter to say than www, but you look like even more of an idiot saying that instead. I think they could have come up with something that flowed better instead of 'www', and that sounded less like a bodily function in the case of 'blogging'. Is all I'm saying. In a really, really long parenthesis.), I was at diaryland. I started at Diaryland because there were a few people on an e-mail list I was on who used it, and I liked the idea of keeping a diary, and I'm an exhibitionist nerd-type and I got the idea that it would be fun to do it online.

I digress. A lot.

Anyway. That first diary was called 'blissful contentment', kind of as a rebuttal to all the angsty teenagers who seemed to make up the majority of the population at diaryland who liked to write bleak things about how much life sucks. I still like the title 'blissful contentment'. But then there came a time when I wrote this post about homeschooling, and Thicket Dweller linked to it, I think, and people came to see it, and left comments, and I went to their blogs. And I felt really convicted, because here were all these bright, intelligent, witty women with blogs where they would exegete Scripture and where their relationships with Jesus were the primary focus of what they wrote. I had been going through a bit of a spiritual re-awakening, not to sound too granola and new-agey, but it was slow, and seeing all those blogs (Kristen, I am looking at you) gave the re-awakening a bit of a kick in the pants, and like the follower I am :), I decided that I wanted my blog to focus on my spiritual life too. Initially I started it as a separate thing, and I was going to maintain the diaryland diary for the daily-life kind of posts and keep surrounded-by-treasures for the whiz-bang convicting intelligent brilliant Scriptural exegesis. (You're allowed to snort; I'm being facetious). So I titled it in accordance with the spiritual re-awakening kind of idea -- I was going to be having New Life Part II or some such thing. Except sometime not much later I merged the daily-life stuff with the not-so-frequent heavy-duty posts. In fact I haven't done a heavy duty post in a long time. Great, now I have guilt.

But now you know. If you didn't already.

Monday, August 28, 2006

Silas Marner, chapter 5

Finished this a couple of nights ago.

Silas Marner by George Eliot -- chapter 5

(what on earth is going on here?)

101 things update

Five hundred and ninety-five days ago, when I was still using Diaryland and when my husband was doing a very dangerous job and risking getting himself killed because his boss said to and I needed to distract myself, I came up with this list of 101 things to do in 1001 days. It has been well over a year since I've even looked at it, but Kiwiria posted about her list today and that got me thinking about mine. It's not a project that I'm really into at this point, but I thought it would be interesting to go through and see how many things I'd done and how many I'd completely dropped the ball on. Yes, I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition. So shoot me.

Warning: Dude, this is LONG.

For my spirit:

1. Read through the Bible.
2. Attend a Christian ladies' retreat. -- and will again in less than a month. Six meals, no cooking! woo hoo!
3. Read the Bible every day. -- have completely fallen off the wagon on this. This will change. Now. Today.
4. Have private devotions every day. ditto as above

For my body:

5. Achieve and maintain a weight between 140 and 150. -- Ack! All the guilt right at first! Honestly, though, I am working on this again and have been since last Thursday, because see, I had a teeny weeny little heart thing on Wednesday. It wasn't even a full-blown attack but it was the second almost-attack in three days after a series of weeks of noticing more thuddy extra heartbeats. Up until recently I'd been fine since the hysterectomy magically corrected my iron levels. I think the increase in VERY SLIGHT problems is because I'm eating very stupidly and gaining weight. So I made a deal with T: I don't have to go back to the brusque, unkind doctor who wants to put me on medicine with side effects I don't like if I a) lose weight and get in better shape and b) don't have any attacks between now and Thanksgiving. So. I think 150-160 is a better idea, though, for my frame, height, and mentality. A perpetually hungry Mommy is a grumpy Mommy.
6. Spend half an hour at least five times a week in some kind of exercise. -- does typing count? Or reading for Librivox? Seriously, since T's back problems I haven't even been able to go for many walks, and with his later workdays it's still difficult. Will start taking kids on walks in mornings.
7. Eat enough fiber. -- am doing, I think.
8. Eat enough fresh vegetables. -- yes! thanks to Costco's cheap ready-to-eat broccoli and spring mix.
9. Drink half a gallon of water every day. -- not unless I can count diet Coke. I really should get on this, though.
10. See a doctor about the tachycardia thing.
11. See my GYN about my weird periods.
12. Make junk food an occasional treat instead of a regular dietary occurrence. -- I had done this for a long time. I'm still not as bad as I used to be (a candy bar a day doesn't keep anything away but wolf whistles).


For my mind:

13. Begin taking academic college classes. -- I am so frustrated that I cannot mark this off. However, since I can't do this yet -- NEXT SEMESTER I SWEAR. Or maybe I'm pushing this too hard and it's Just Not What God Has For Me Right Now.
14. Read chronologically through the works of Dickens. -- you know, I am not so crazy about this one anymore. Who cares if I do that. Maybe next year.
15. Practice the piano at least four days a week. -- HA HA! oh, hee hee.
16. Practice the flute at least four days a week. -- ditto.
17. Read one book every two weeks which I'd never read before.
18. Empty my never-been-read shelf. -- and again
19. Read through this list of books. -- I remember that list although I'm not looking at it right now and I know that I did read a lot of them. Some of them I lost interest in. Some of them I may go ahead and get.
20. Beat my husband at chess. -- Nope.


For my family (and friends):

21. Teach my children to read music and to play the piano. -- I backed off on this because they weren't interested.
22. Learn to use the chainsaw so it's not all up to T and my dad every time we cut wood. -- Decided against this one because I like to have all my limbs.
23. Stop yelling. Ever.* -- This one goes up and down.
24. Establish a cupboard of rain toys while my kids are small enough to enjoy it. -- Not a bad idea. I don't have an empty cupboard, though.
25. On days divisible by 3, don't watch videos; instead, do things from our copy of 501 TV-Free Activities for Kids.* -- Did I write that? How hokey. Not that eliminating excess video watching is a bad idea, don't get me wrong. We don't watch a lot these days as it is -- both kids are crazy about reading and spend a lot of time doing that. So if I die never having stopped yelling, I will at least have not bungled THAT up, eh?
26. Visit T's mother and half-siblings in Washington. -- This is one of those things that we keep saying "maybe next fall. Maybe next spring." It's mostly the expense and partly the time involved that keeps us from doing it. SOMEday.
27. Read a biography onto tapes for my dad. -- I don't remember if I'd done Mover of Men and Mountains for him before I made this list or not. At any rate, I've done one for him, and a couple of other fiction books.
28. Read a series of books onto tapes for my dad. -- No new series since I did Narnia for him years ago. (and I've moved up to CDs now, by the way.)
29. Read out loud to the kids most nights.* -- when they're not reading to themselves.
30. Send at least an e-card, preferably a paper card, to the people whose birthdays are in our family calendar. -- I usually hit most of these.
31. Establish a cozy reading corner in the school room. -- This is now a non-issue since we no longer have a school room.




For others:



32. Get my iron levels up so that I can again give blood. -- did it, and will give platelets next time I'm going to Fresno.
    
33. Give platelets. -- see above
    
34. Register as a bone-marrow donor.
    
35. Write regular letters, with the kids, to our three sponsored Compassion children. -- actually, we just started doing this this year. It's been nice.
    


For myself:


36. Own a dress in which I look stunning, and wear it. -- This is dependent on the weight-loss bit.
    
37. Get a haircut that flatters me. -- not yet, but I'm gearing up my nerve.
    
38. Get contact lenses. -- tried them. They didn't work right. I give up.
    
39. Give myself a makeover day.
    
40. Watch a movie in the theater by myself.
    




For fun:



41. Have a bonfire, complete with hot dogs and marshmallows.
    
42. Take a trip where at least half the time I am looking at scenery I have never seen before.
    
43. Travel to a foreign country. -- Ha ha. Hee hee hee.
    
44. Get a bigger Christmas tree. -- when we gave up the school room we lost living room space so this idea got shelved.
    
45. Have another family (aside from extended family) over for a meal every two months. -- gave up on this. I am too antisocial. And too embarrassed about my house.
    
46. See the Nutcracker in San Francisco. -- I still want to do this. I don't think it's a trip we'll be able to afford this winter, but maybe next year.
    
47. Buy a good digital camera and learn to take good pictures with it. -- I think they're good anyway. :)
    
48. Transfer the last two years' camcorder cassettes of family movies to VHS. Watch them while we're doing it. -- Did this one!
    
49. Look at the lights of our town from the mountain that overlooks it.
    
50. Climb the "mountain" near my parents' with T and the kids. -- It'll be a while before T is up to a project of this nature. I did climb it with my mom and LT but I think that was before I made this list.
    
51. See my friend Susan and her family in person. -- I wish. :(
    
52. Stomp in rain puddles with the kids. Don't just let them do it.
    
53. Get a tan on my legs. (one year out of my life won't kill me.)
    
54. Take the same trip we did on our honeymoon, except stay to the coast rather than driving through LA on I-5. -- We've done bits and pieces of this but not the whole thing and certainly not all in one trip.
    
55. Do an overnight hike/campout. -- ah, no. Maybe when C is a wee bit older and past the my FEET hurt. When will we be DONE? stage.
    
56. Visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium. -- Twice in the past six months.
    
57. Renew our zoo membership. -- And let it expire again.
    
58. Go to Storyland -- with T this time, who's never been there. -- Did this one this year.
    
59. Take the kids on BART (LT's wanted to do this for years). -- Well, T took LT yesterday, to go to the Oakland Colosseum for some Raiders Day thing that T's dad had given them tickets for.
    
60. Find a hedge maze and go through it. -- It was rather cheezy but it WAS a hedge maze (at the Dennis the Menace park in Monterey
    
61. Have a spring picnic in Yosemite Valley. -- The kids and I have done this several times now.
    
62. Do family portraits ourselves, outdoors in a place that we love. -- never all of us at once. Yet.
    
63. Go camping in a place we've never been. -- we are sticks in the mud. I am finding this out.
    



For my home:


64. Rid my house of things we don't use and figure out storage for the things we keep. -- This is done. The problem is that we use a dismaying number of things.
    
65. Frame the prints we've had sitting around rolled up for six years. -- kind of gave up on this one. However, I've framed a few of my pictures and put them up.
    
66. Get some kind of enclosed storage (even if it means enclosing the built-in shelves they're already on) for our videos and DVDs.
    
67. Decorate the walls in this house, or in whatever house in which we're living. -- Still this house, and still quite bleak overall
    
68. Get decent living-room furniture.
    
69. Burn the atrocious couch to cinders, and dance ceremoniously around the ashes.
    
70. Get decent dining-room furniture. -- Our chairs are in SUCH bad condition. They're soft upholstered things on wheels and the upholstery is in shreds, literally. It's so trashy. Chairs cost too dang much.
    
71. Make shelves in our bedroom, to hold books. -- Did that one a year or so ago.
    
72. Replace our low dresser with two upright ones.
    
73. Make a door for the cupboard over the fridge.
    
74. Paint our bedroom.
    
75. Perform my chore list every day. -- HA HA.
    
76. Establish a chore chart for my children and use it. -- We did this last spring and we'll start it up again when school starts next week.
    
77. Raise vegetables in the summer. -- Next summer, I swear.
    
78. Fix up our backyard so that it's a pleasant area for playing, relaxing, or entertaining. -- HA HA. Hee hee hee. It has a really... um, creative... kids' fort in it, made by kids...
    
79. Grow my own cooking herbs. -- am doing this. I've been using them, too. Yum.
    
80. Build the kids' play fort. -- They built their own.
    
81. Renovate LT's room.
    
82. Realize that the landlord is never going to finish painting our house, and get him to let us do it ourselves.
    


Crafty things:

(darn, there goes the "For" theme)


83. Transform my box of unused yarn into completed crochet projects. -- I got a really good start on this but I haven't been crocheting much lately.
    
84. Crochet a doily every month. -- or not.
    
85. Make a lace tablecloth. -- This is still something I'd like to do, but it's definitely not high on my priority list. The first time someone spilled Diet Coke on it I'd probably need to be institutionalized. Maybe for a wedding present for C, or something. :)
    
86. Make a tablecloth for family gatherings where each person signs his/her name on the cloth at the end of the meal, and I embroider the signatures for each gathering in a given color. -- I still think this is a good idea, and every time a gathering goes by and I haven't done it I wish I had. I'm hosting Christmas this year... maybe I'll make one then.
    
87. Have a booth at the Christmas craft fair in our town. -- Not something that's high on my priority list at this point.
    
88. Make the sandbag gun rests T has been wanting me to make for months. -- Did those over a year ago, when I still had my sewing room.
    
89. Make a double-bed-sized double Irish chain quilt out of my scrap fabric (yes, I have enough to do this). -- I cut out the pieces and there they all sit in Ziploc bags.
    
90. Make pajamas for the kids every fall. -- So far, so good.
    
91. Make T, LT, my nephews, and my dad matching Western shirts for the fair. -- methinks this is too big a project to undertake with no sewing room, and also with a son who does not care about dressing like Grandpa anymore. :(
    
92. Make C and myself matching Christmas dresses.-- Not yet. Not this year, either.
    
93. Make matching springtime dresses for my best friend's three daughters. -- I still really want to do this. Her girls are growing so fast! Perhaps next spring.
    
94. Finish the 1 Corinthians 13 cross-stitch I started, um, six years ago. -- Nope.
    



Together with DH:


95. Make our wills.-- nope.
    
96. Restore our biweekly home date nights.
    
97. Declutter the outside of our house. -- We made such vast improvements in this arena that I'm going to go ahead and cross it off even though there are still a VERY few things that need to be done.
    
98. Establish a savings account to cover medical copayments. -- We did. It's empty right now, though.
    
99. Establish a savings account for normal use.
    
100. Plan menus and shop from those, rather than running to the store at 2 every afternoon to figure out what to make for dinner. -- This is one of my minor household triumphs. Things go SO much more smoothly on a daily basis because of this.
     

So if I've counted right, I'm now down to about sixty things, give or take, to do in 406 days. If I cared.

Sunday, August 27, 2006

quiz lifted from Kristen

Since I actually spend quite a bit of time contemplating college, I jumped on this quiz a few days ago but decided not to post it because I was in the middle of a flurry of posts. Better to save it for a time when I needed to fill a gap to keep the blank page at bay. ;)

You scored as Linguistics. You should be a Linguistics major! Linguistics 100% English 92% Journalism 83% Engineering 75% Chemistry 75% Philosophy 67% Theater 67% Biology 67% Psychology 50% Anthropology 50% Mathematics 50% Dance 33% Art 33% Sociology 25% What is your Perfect Major? (PLEASE RATE ME!!<3) created with QuizFarm.com

Interesting. I do like the idea of studying linguistics, being a nerd-girl type who likes to dissect words and see where they came from and who still sometimes thinks in French even though I haven't sat in a French class for over thirteen years. I don't suppose it's a highly marketable field of study, though, outside the world of academia (and I am SO not a professional academic. SO SO not), not that the sole purpose of study is to prepare for a career, but still, four years and however much money is a bit of a big investment, probably too big to toss away on something that's for personal enrichment alone. I guess a translator is a linguist, and that would be fun work. Still, though, I feel a real pull toward nursing. Not that all this matters at this point, when I'm who knows how long from actually doing anything about it (T's work schedule changed this summer, making it pretty much impossible for me to take any night classes without enlisting a babysitter). What I should be thinking about is this upcoming school year for the kids, which starts in eight days and for which I have only the barest outline done up. I do have a good stock of crayons and glue laid in, though.**

** What a bittersweet day it will be when we no longer need crayons for school. *snif*. (I hear Marilla's voice in my ear: "For pity's sake, if you must borrow trouble, borrow it handier home.")

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Poems

I've recorded one poem for Librivox and C has recorded two. (see the previous post if you've no idea what's going on here.)

Sonnet 2 ("Time does not bring relief; you all have lied") by Edna St. Vincent Millay -- recorded by me

"Windy Nights" by Robert Louis Stevenson -- recorded by C

"Bed in Summer" by Robert Louis Stevenson -- recorded by C

The Federalist Papers -- papers 41-45

To repeat salient points about what's going on here:

• I'm serializing some of my Librivox recordings here in my blog.
• I generally record two or three chapters from each book in a week.
• I won't be hurt if you never download these but I thought I'd put them here in case anyone felt like following along.
• For bandwidth reasons, please only download each file once (right-click and save, or whatever it is that you superior Mac people do to download a file from a link). And if I do end up running out of available bandwidth I'll simply stop posting these.
• Also please tell me if you hear mistakes/repeats as you go. If you know the minutes/seconds at which the mistake occurs, so much the better.

The Federalist Papers started out not as a book but as a series of editorials, if you will, aimed at convincing the people of the newborn United States to ratify the Constitution. They were written by John Jay, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, and were compiled into a book almost as soon as the series ended. They're an important piece of U.S. History and constitutional law. I volunteered to read papers 41 through 46, which were written by Madison and which mostly deal with the quantity of powers granted to the federal government by the new Constitution. I think when I've finished these (I only have 46 left to do, and if my mild sore throat clears up I'd like to record it tonight) I will volunteer for another section.

Paper 41

Paper 42

Paper 43

Paper 44

Paper 45

Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, chapters 1-4

To repeat salient points about what's going on here:

• I'm serializing some of my Librivox recordings here in my blog.
• I generally record two or three chapters from each book in a week.
• I won't be hurt if you never download these but I thought I'd put them here in case anyone felt like following along.
• For bandwidth reasons, please only download each file once (right-click and save, or whatever it is that you superior Mac people do to download a file from a link). And if I do end up running out of available bandwidth I'll simply stop posting these.
• Also please tell me if you hear mistakes/repeats as you go. If you know the minutes/seconds at which the mistake occurs, so much the better.

OK, on to the story. Five Little Peppers and How They Grew is a slightly treacly but overall nice children's story about a widowed mother and her five children, cheerfully and optimistically getting by on a shoestring in spite of sundry obstacles in the vicinity of the 1870's. It was published in 1881 by Margaret Sidney.

Chapter 1: A Home View

Chapter 2: Making Happiness for Mamsie

Chapter 3: Mamsie's Birthday

Chapter 4: Trouble for the Little Brown House

Silas Marner, chapters 1-4

For lack of anything else to do (ha HA ha ha, hee hee, oh, I kill me) I've decided to start serializing some of my Librivox recordings here in my blog. You all can completely ignore these posts and that would be fine. Or you can download them and listen on your computer or your iPod (not that I know how to do that, since I don't have an iPod. yet), that'd be fine too. I generally record two or three chapters of each book per week. All I ask is that if you are going to listen to these, for bandwidth's sake, just download each chapter once. I think I have enough bandwidth to spare to do this; if I start to run out each month I'll just stop. Actually, I lied. I also ask that if you hear errors in these files, please let me know. When I goof up while reading, I click my tongue three times and then re-read the phrase I messed up; if you hear any of these as you listen please let me know in the comments or in an email. (If you know the point in the recording at which it happens that's extra nice.) However, DON'T tell me if you think my voice is too nasaly. I'm always telling people it is and they've almost convinced me that it's not; wouldn't want to undo all their hard work.

So. Silas Marner is the story of a broken middle-aged miser who loses his gold and then ends up adopting a child and bringing her up. 19th-century English countryside, love, redemption, fulfillment, yada yada. (It's actually one of my favorite books). It was written by Mary Ann Evans (aka George Eliot) in 1861.

Without further ado:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

(right-click to save the files to your hard drive.)

is this the real life?

(bonus points if you're humming a Queen song now.)

Yesterday my husband emailed me this story (go ahead and at least skim it and come back or this will make no sense a-tall to you), and asked if I thought it was an accurate snapshot of the way women think. I told him, as I am telling you now, that I wouldn't know about the women-in-the-bar scene, or what it's really like "out there" for single women my age, because I and all my (staggering array of) women friends are married and have been that way for a while. This is what it's like in women's BOOKS, I'll say that.

What really made my stomach clench up was this bit in the men's equivalent article (linked at the bottom of the women's one):

Q: How far will you guys go that first time you’re together?

Joe: All the way.

Brendan: How far would I go, or how far would I go and have a relationship afterwards? Because if I get everything the first time we’re together, I probably won’t be calling her back.

Beecher: That’s horrible. But I will say that if she’s willing to hook up on the first date, it says something about her attitude.

Joe: For me, it wouldn’t matter. I’m not going to judge her based on whether she goes all the way, because, to tell the truth, I will if she will.

Beecher: It’s not a deal-breaker. If she makes me wait, so long as it’s not too long, that’s fine.

Q: How long is too long to wait to do the deed?
Beecher: Three dates.

Brendan: For someone I really liked, I’d wait months.

Joe: To tell you the truth, I haven’t had to wait any longer than three or four dates, so I don’t really know. But I’d have a very hard time waiting as long as Brendan.

These men are in their twenties. That means that, considering the way social mores trend downward, twenty years from now, when my daughter is in their age, it's going to be like that to the twentieth power, I would think. Or at least times twenty (observe my staggering mathematical acumen as I completely pull this theory out of the air). Or whatever. But it's going to be worse than this, I think we can all agree on that, yes? And those are going to be the men in the world who will be looking at my daughter as she walks down the street and goes about her business. Frankly it makes me want to pick out a few prospects who might be OK and then take out every other male who looks at her. Really, though, I'm going to try to save this article until she's old enough to discuss this topic, say eight or ten years, and point out to her that this is what average men of the world will think of her. They will think of her as someone who isn't worth waiting three dates to have sex with. Please God I hope there are some parents out there bringing up their sons to be different, and please God I hope that He will help us to bring up our children (both of them) to see the harm in this kind of lifestyle and avoid it like the plague.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

yesterday

Yesterday was, as C announced at the end of it, QUITE a day of "adventures". We went to Yosemite, just because we could (we haven't been able to since April, what with the landslide and all). We took T a nice lunch and then proceeded to the valley to take pictures and generally torture LT who swears he hates going to Yosemite and yet oddly enough has a great time while he's there. Especially yesterday, since, let's face it, yesterday was not just an ordinary day.

First thing I did was get pulled over. By a park ranger. For, uh, going the wrong way on a one-way road (hey, at least it was exciting this time. No measly speeding ticket for me). In my defense, the last time I was up there they'd converted that one-way road to a two-way because of road construction elsewhere. Still. Ahem. Big signs saying WRONG WAY DO NOT ENTER are generally there for a reason. I did not get ticketed but I did get a lot of ribbing from T (including a voice mail message with references to 'trying to raise the bail' and my 'one phone call'. Hardy har har) who of course knew about it as soon as the ranger ran my plates because it came over the Park radio system, and if they hadn't heard it on the radio he'd have known when the guys in Dispatch instant-messaged him about it.

Things were uneventful until we had parked in the day-use parking and ridden the shuttle bus to the Mirror Lake trailhead. We were hiking merrily along the trail, and I'm afraid I was not looking very carefully ahead of me when LT gave a little shriek when he saw this guy in our path:

(not the best photo. By the time I felt safe taking my eyes off him and got my lens changed he was pretty far away).

Just a bit of country-girl trivia: That is the first rattlesnake I've been near to in person, other than at the zoo, that survived the encounter. I may not be able to jump a car battery without reading the instructions over three or four times first by by golly I'm pretty good at dispatching venomous snakes. In a national park, however, that is Just Not Done. It was an interesting feeling to just let it slither away.

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Another snake we saw just tooling around in the water as we crossed Mirror Lake (except it's more like Mirror Stream at this time of year) at the dam:

(poor photograph because it's not so easy to focus when you're straddling a running stream on two boulders and your subject keeps moving)

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THEN we were quick-stepping back to the bus stop in order to be able to pick up T on time, and the trees parted to show us this:

Aah, summertime. Freedom and long evenings and of course forest fires. See the faint white line going down the rocks on the right-hand side of the picture? That is the August remnant of Yosemite Falls. It boggles my mind that people will scrimp and save and plan to come across the country or around the world toYosemite... in August. Or September. Dude, people, COME IN APRIL.

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And THEN... well, here:

Open Letter

To the man who shoved in front of me in line in order to take the last possible available place on the shuttle bus, avoiding eye contact and dragging along your twentyish son by the backpack strap over his fair and somewhat gallant insistences that we should be allowed to go first:

The fact that the next bus came in two minutes and was nearly empty, allowing us to sit and relax in comfort with our personal space intact, in no way exonerates you for your boorish behavior, since you couldn't have known. Jerk.

Cordially,
The harried-looking woman with the two dehydrated kids

So there was that.

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Then, thanks to the fire, T couldn't come home with us anyway, and narrowly escaped having to stay completely overnight thanks to his boss and his boss's hero complex.

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THEN I stayed up until 2 AM reading the new Marian Keyes book. Not that that's so much of an adventure, since I've been staying up till that hour doing Librivox stuff these days anyway. It's the only time the house is guaranteed to be quiet for any extended period of time.

Today's rather ordinary, so far. But I'm going out on the back porch to clean up eight months' or so worth of mess back there, so stay tuned.

Sunday, August 20, 2006

pardon me while I roll my eyes

It has always been a pet peeve of mine that high-school sports (well, all sports, honestly) are put on such a pedestal and seen as so utterly important. (This has nothing to do with the fact that I was a nerd who would not have been allowed to sit with the cheerleaders and jocks at lunch even if I'd wanted to. I swear.). But you know that jock worship is out of hand when kids who pull a prank that just about gets a couple of their classmates killed get their sentences suspended until the end of football season. Funny, I don't think the judge would have been so accommodating if the kids were just in drama. Or the band. Or, heck, academic competition. Nope, they're just really good at knocking down other people and getting the ball where they want it to go, so what does it matter if their thoughtlessness breaks a kid's neck and gives another person brain damage? The answer is clear: obviously it doesn't matter; those kids weren't on the football team.

Monday, August 14, 2006

stuff

As kind of a last-hurrah kind of thing before T goes back to work tomorrow (or actually, as I look at my computer clock, that would be... today. In about five hours, as a matter of fact), we drove to Monterey yesterday for a car show and a visit to the aquarium and also a reminder of why we don't live in the city. Various things we encountered included (ooh, a list!):

• The kind of traffic where you can't move even when your light turns green because the cars are backed up from the next traffic light.
• A parking garage. I hate parking garages, and I didn't know it until yesterday. I don't know why but I couldn't help thinking of all the weight above me and how terrible it would be if an earthquake happened. I've no idea why this doesn't bother me in, say, a really tall building (not that I've been in many of these, although T's orthopedic surgeon is on -- gasp -- THE THIRD FLOOR of a three-story building), when it made my palms sweat in an above-ground parking garage. Maybe it's the low ceilings, or the dim maze-ish kind of creepiness, or maybe it's just that I'm a nut. I don't know.
• So darn many people at the aquarium that we vowed never to go on a summer weekend again. At least we could go in through the members' entrance and didn't have to wait in the line that snaked way up the block and then around and around in one of those maze-things they have at Disneyland for everything from the Haunted Mansion to the pretzel carts. If there ARE pretzel carts in Disneyland... I haven't been there since 1993, back when it only cost $40 for an adult to get in. My beloved jellyfish room was a mob scene, and I got so annoyed at all the people taking flash pictures because how can you sit and be soothed by floating jellyfish when you're blinded every two seconds by another point-and-shoot taking a picture of flash reflected off glass?
• A Denny's where I finally learned why Jennifer hates Denny's. I hereby apologize for ever doubting you, Jenn.
• The tail end of a wine celebration fiesta thing, which meant that as we were walking toward the Custom House to see the organ grinder, there were scores of people walking away from it wearing little lanyards attached to wine glasses, the vast majority of whom were rather humorously impaired. Not so much that they staggered -- it was a wine festival, after all, and not a frat party -- but just enough that they thought they were fine when really they weren't. I hope none of them were going to drive. One woman, who I'm sure thought she was being really quiet and subtle, said in a voice that carried across the courtyard to her companion as she passed me: "Look how burned she ish. Look at that. I don't burn like that, I just tan and tan. She'sh sho red." Which I was, and I'm not offended; I'm grateful, in fact, that she gave me something to laugh at since this was not long before I would have to brave the parking garage again and I needed something to lighten my mood.

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T is doing way, way better. Not sure if he's better than he was before the surgery yet -- I tend to think so; he's been much more active in the past four or five days than he had been for quite some time. Thank you all for your thoughts and prayers. I'm sincerely hoping that this surgery fixes things, not only for the sake of his comfort which goes without saying, but because if it doesn't it will mean a lot of very big lifestyle changes for us, starting with the loss of his job and some serious financial struggling, and probably ending with me being a nurse in four years instead of ten or twelve and him being the one to homeschool our kids. And while I love rearranging furniture and daydream about moving out of state, Real Change on that kind of scale kind of scares the bejeebers out of me. So. While you're praying... :)

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I've been planning for school, which we will start after Labor Day. I actually found myself in the position of having to buy two math textbooks this year from eBay. This means that thus far, including some glue and pencils at Wal-Mart's back-to-school sale and a cursive workbook bought at the school supply store, we will have spent almost five eighths of a percent of the average California per-child taxpayer cost of a public-school education.

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Lastly (for tonight; I'm starting to nod off), the Librivox obsession continues. Just tonight I started recording my first solo project, Silas Marner. I also volunteered to do Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, which I've actually never read but have always wanted to. Also I'm recording some of the Federalist Papers, which is I think my favorite project so far because it makes me feel all smart to say the words "requisite" and "effectual" and "enumerate". Also, any time I'm in the car alone, I'm listening to A Little Princess, which was recorded for Librivox by a woman who should record audiobooks for a living, she's so awesome at it. Thank you again to my enabler of a brother for telling me about that site. I certainly didn't have enough stuff to do before, right? Yeah.

Thursday, August 10, 2006

I never once said I wasn't a sheep. baa.

This is something that people who have Myspace pages do. I do not have a Myspace page, so I am inflicting it on all of you here since I don't know what else to do with it and I just used an hour of my life making it.

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

You're welcome.

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(see, this way you don't have two of them on the screen at once, and you can't sue me -- as if you'd be able to wring any blood from this very stony stone -- for the crippling migraine that would ensue otherwise)


Also, here's one made up of the pictures I'm entering in the fair, with a few of the runners-up thrown in to fill up space.

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* Aaaand here's the one I made with the results of the 30-day self-portrait challenge. In looking at all three of these I notice that they compress the living daylights out of some of the pictures. Yikes.

Whew. I've got that out of my system now.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

I feel all validated and happy inside now

I always knew it. Punctuation does matter. See, people, THIS is why you need nerd-girls like me to proofread your stuff. It'll cost you way less than $2.13 million.

(Many thanks to Kat for MAKING MY DAY with that link.)

Sunday, August 06, 2006

The parable of the lost... filters?

Which of you, if she have a thousand-dollar camera and a very nice flash and spare batteries and also four lenses, and who have photographic filters in three different sizes, and compact flash cards and a cleaning kit and a spare camera and a large camera bag, and if she lose three of the filters which hath a cash value of approximately $120 and which fit thy precious wide-angle Tokina lens and also thy spare camera, will not wail and bemoan thy wretched stupid carelessness for many weeks, and who will not mourn at thy inability to take proper pictures of clouds or darken a scene, and will not look in every nook and cranny and also check several lost-and-found boxes for the filters which have gone astray?

And which of you, if after many days of mourning thou shouldst find the filters tucked away safely in thy spare small camera bag, will not leap gleefully in the air and shout, "YES!", touching thy head against the ceiling fan (which, thanks be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, was not turned 'on') in thy joy?

Verily I say to you, likewise shall be the joy in heaven over a sinner who repents, even more than the camera bag full of sinners who were not lost.

Friday, August 04, 2006

books for July

Whoops, REALLY late with these. I kept completely forgetting except when I was away from the computer.

There were only three this month. Bold indicates first-time read, ratings out of five, yada yada.

1. Vanity Fair -- William Makepeace Thackeray -- 4.5
   • This is the reason there were only three books this month, by the way. This thing is HUGE. It's also very, very good, kind of like if Dickens and Austen had a child who grew up to write 900-page novels like his father, which I know was impossible because Jane Austen died (unmarried and hence childless) when Charles Dickens was only five, but whatever. Anyway. Picture Austen-style barbed social commentary and Dickensian characters and wordiness and there you have Thackeray. You also have Becky Sharp, a character who is supposedly One Of Literature's Best-Loved Heroines but who I found, quite frankly, like the similarly-lauded Scarlett O'Hara, to just be a conniving bitch. A really well-written one, but there it is, and I just can't admire her, no matter how tenacious and clever and whatever she was. And now I want to watch the movie with Reese Witherspoon even though I know for a fact I'll be yelling at the TV the whole time because that's just how I roll with movie adaptations.

     By the way, this is subtitled by Thackeray "A Novel Without A Hero" and I almost agree. Becky's what I said she is and Amelia's a simpering, gutless little airhead, bless her heart, (*cough* Dora Spenlow *cough*), and most of the men are jerks, because hey, this is Vanity Fair here; we're supposed to be clucking our tongues over the emptiness and tragic waste and, well, vanity, in an Ecclesiastes sense, that is (was) 19th-century British high society. But Dobbin -- I could love Dobbin if I were a single young woman still prone to literary crushes -- lisp, gangly limbs, awkwardness, and all. Too bad he wasted his life pining over Amelia who would never in a billion years appreciate him properly and who only ended up with him at the end (oops, spoiler) because Becky, wanting to get rid of her and Dobbin so she could continue with her own devious schemes, told Amelia what a faithless loser Amelia's first husband had been.

     Um, yeah. So. Good book. Coming soon at Librivox, too, and since I was reading it anyway I contributed a couple of chapters.
     

2. Second Nature -- Alice Hoffman -- 3.5
   
   • Good, but weird. Quirky, well-written, definitely not just your average chick book. I whizzed through this quickly because a friend lent it to me and said it was good. It honest-to-goodness is about a woman who falls in love with a man who was raised by wolves. Sersly.
     

3. The Bad Beginning (I think this is the title -- first of those Series of Unfortunate Events books) -- Lemony Snicket, which is a pseudonym that bothers me with its obviousness -- 3.5
   
   • At first I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around this book. Dark humor for children? I actually read this because the neighbor kids are always recommending this series to my kids, and since said neighbor children also luuurve Captain Underpants, I wanted to make sure that this was not something revoltingly objectionable. And it wasn't. Pretty well-done, actually, and tasteful, just... dark. And for kids. At the same time. The whole idea just struck me as kind of creepy. Who would do that? Then I went, oh, duh, Roald Dahl. Whom I love(d). OK.