| Borrowed from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jan_can_too.
It's disconcerting when I carefully answer a long test and get an analysis that doesn't seem to fit at all. However, the conclusion--He would get angry when you did not, be calm and poised when you felt ruffled and anxious, and always be the voice of emotion and reason in your ear--does describe the sort of daemon I think would be right for me. I think I'd prefer the wolf to the swan, though (and an elephant sure wouldn't be practical!).
Your result for The Golden Compass Daemon Test...
Multi-Faceted Soul
In a way, you are a truly balanced person. You have a good sense of self, but you have periods of worry and self doubt. You don't like to be alone a lot, but you don't like being constantly surrounded, either. You can be shy in some situations and bold in others. You can tell people how you feel, but you don't wear your heart on your sleeve. You aren't "TOO" anything: You aren't too shy, you aren't too aggressive, you aren't too extroverted, you aren't too introverted. However at any one time you can be any combination of these things.
You tend to adapt yourself to match the situations in which you find yourself. You may be quiet and sensitive with some people, or joking and loud with others. These are all facets of your personality. People tend to perceive you as they want to perceive you. They may even tend to idealize you a bit. Then, when you do something that doesn't fit their concept of who you are (like have an outburst of anger, or a fit of shyness, or make an insensitive joke)they can be shocked and surprised. Does anyone know the real you?
Your daemon would represent your multi-faceted and ever-changing personality, as well as people's tendency to idealize you. He or she would get angry when you did not, be calm and poised when you felt ruffled and anxious, and always be the voice of emotion and reason in your ear.
Suggested forms:
Swan, Elephant, Koala, Panda, Chameleon, Wolf.
Take The Golden Compass Daemon Test at HelloQuizzy
| comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment   |
| I guess if I'm ever going to start posting again, I'll have to do it the easy way. Silly quiz borrowed from figmo.
Have you ever.....
1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked
23. Taken a sick day when you're not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo's David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone's life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swum in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I haven't started the daily vacation posts--something about actually having vacation and not even being online for three and a half days.
Today, the kid was being exasperating, and was told, "Think of other people." And she said, "Why? It's not Christmas!"
Tomorrow, we're back in the Bay Area. And at night, the raccoons come. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Some things don't seem to change much [a cupcake has lost part of its topping in an unfortunate tumble on the floor]: "Mommy! If you'll just give me more frosting--then I'll be happy!!" | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Sunday morning, in a somewhat ironic turn of events, our hosts left for the Bay Area in their nice red Prius. We packed up, and headed out to visit a Titan missile (sans its warhead). I was rather dubious about it, but in fact found it fascinating. When all the Titan missiles were decommissioned in 1982, this one was saved as a museum. Since everything was so well-built to begin with and has been meticulously maintained since, it is quite impressive as a Cold-War-era-technology time capsule. Donning helmets if we were 5'10" or taller, we were given a well-orchestrated tour of the facilities both aboveground and below.
Four-person teams, often headed by a female lieutenant, served 24-hour shifts, with their fingers literally hovering over the trigger. (I wanted to ask what happened if either of the two officers was unable to unlock their lock on the lockbox which contained the launch code.)
I’m not sure what this solution was for, or if its chemical structure has changed in the last 24 years.
Overall, the exhibit left me more impressed than I had expected by the technology and the seriousness with which it was deployed, which was surely the intent.
We wanted a nice meal before heading to the airport, and I wanted to get the kid a decent (non-shlocky) souvenir, so we set off for Tohono Chul Park, a botanical garden that I remember from my very first Tucson visit in 2000. As usual, we reached our destination more or less by dead reckoning; our attempt to get some sort of map from Google was foiled when it turned out that the crucial page had failed to print.
We ate outside in the tea garden, at tea time, no less. The food was good and the place deserted, though there must have been a brisk business earlier--a dove was quite uninterested in the scone crumb I tossed it. Afterwards, I got a cactus book and cactus bookmark for the kid (finding gift-shop books for kids who can read is actually quite difficult). We didn’t want to pay admission to the gardens when there was only a few minutes left, so we walked around the parking lot as a thunderstorm came up, taking pictures of cactuses
and clouds. And then we found a mailbox for our postcards deep in a huge mall, drove to Phoenix, got on the plane, and got safely back to the Bay Area.
 | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| We met our hosts for breakfast at a truck stop in Wilcox, before they headed back to Tucson. Our plan was to go to Katchner Caverns. However, we missed the tiny sign when we got off the highway by about 30 miles, and wound up in the little, unremarkable town of Sierra Vista, where we found tourist literature that alerted us to our mistake. By the time we found the Caverns, there were no more tours available. But there were gathering thunderstorms, so we drove back east to the rest stop in Texas Canyon, and sat in the car chatting through several torrential downpours.
Rain in Arizona is so interesting: washes fill up with speeding water almost instantaneously, yet within a few minutes of the end of a shower the ground is almost completely dry.
We returned to Tucson, and drove through the hills for a while, navigating, so we hoped, ever closer to our hosts’ house. (Tucson vegetation is so much prettier than the Bay Area’s. I wonder if it’s because live oaks are just a not-very-nice shade of green, or if it’s because the rainless grubbiness obscures what green there is in the Bay Area.) When we got back, we were offered the chance to play with the Wii--gomijacogeo gave it a bit of a try, but we wound up spending most of our time making Mii characters (I found the controls annoyingly fiddly). jikme dined with us at Lovin’ Spoonfuls, which was enjoyed by vegetarian and meat-eaters alike. As we left, we got caught in a lovely warm downpour--it’s been a long time since I’ve taken off my shoes to run to a car in the rain!
And then, we cuddled down for the night.
 | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| On the Fourth of July, we got out of town and went to jikme and tsennyipa’s retreat center in Bowie. It of course was just as brutally hot, but we enjoyed being outside and took lots of pictures of the beautiful scenery.
 
Our hosts have a very nice trailer, with both functional wireless and functional plumbing. And, as it turns out, great phone reception: as soon as we got there, I got a call from the kid on her new (hand-me-down) cell phone. We took a bit of a hike to fetch some tools from a campsite and toured the retreat center, admiring the amenities and the large tarantula that had been captured in a jar in the kitchen.
Our hosts are in the process of building a rammed-earth house. Now that the aforementioned utilities have been connected to, it’s time to start laying out the foundation.
After we ate pizza and salad, we drove to a motel in Wilcox in the gathering dark. As we drove west, we had the sky spread before us with a crescent moon, a lightning storm, and fireworks in little San Simon. gomijacogeo drove very carefully on the dirt road to avoid endangering bunnies befuddled in the gloaming. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| This year’s vacation with gomijacogeo was to visit jikme and tsennyipa in Tucson, where I had been in '05 and '06. We flew Southwest into Phoenix (paying extra for Group A seats is a good deal; we were nearly the first on the plane in both directions). Everything went extremely smoothly upon landing, and we were quickly on our way to Tucson. The evening sun was bright and the 100F+ heat oppressive, but the scenery was lovely as usual. The Border Patrol were out in full force--flashing lights by a pulled-over van with its row of handcuffed, dark-skinned people sitting on the ground.
We reached our hosts’ house in time to get to The B Line for dinner, which included an exceptional gazpacho and yummy desserts all round.
The next morning we got up to a breakfast of jikme’s scones, and I learned from her tsennyipa’s method of making French-press coffee palatable--replace the press step with filtering. jikme made her morning shake of ice, banana, spinach (except this morning it was chard), rice protein, and vanilla. gomijacogeo took a liking to them; I prefered the chard version of the shake because even though it was an unfortunate color, the chard was better than the spinach at masking the banana.
gomijacogeo’s first-choice Tucson destination was the Pima Air and Space Museum, which has many many planes, both inside and out in the hot sun. I learned a lot more from his explanations of how different planes worked than I would have had I read through the signage.
In theory, the outside planes are still usable, at least for parts, but nature is already inexorably reclaiming them.
On the way back, we drove through the hilly (more expensive) part of town. (Our hosts have a clever name for this area that I’ve quite forgotten.) We had dinner at Blue Willow, which I’ve enjoyed a couple of times in previous years; we were seated in the courtyard just as a thunderstorm hit. Water quickly collected in the canopy and dumped down the sides of the courtyard, but we were safely ensconced in the middle. I was the only one who had a dessert, which turned out to be truly wonderful chocolate crepes.
We rounded out the evening’s entertainment by going to a brand-new theatre complex to see “Wall-E.” We all had our issues with the lame science (plants surviving the vacuum of space??), but mostly found it a cute movie. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| The kid, gomijacogeo, and I were driving home from dinner last night.
Kid: Look, that's hung in the tree--from school!
Mommy: What's hung in the tree from school?
Kid: From Nina's class.
Mommy: What's hung in the tree from Nina's class?
Kid: A little boy.
Mommy: A little boy is hung in the tree?
Kid: Hung is the little boy's name.
I laughed so hard I cried, and when we got home we watched Abbott and Costello on YouTube. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | kid | | Current Music: | space heater | | Subject: | Convo with kid | | Time: | 10:01 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sad.gif) achy |
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| “Reading is my favorite thing in the world.”
“I understand; I wish I could read as much as you do.”
“You like to read? Why don’t you?”
“Well, when you’re around, you keep me pretty busy.”
“You should read! On the weekend! You should read at least 10 minutes a day!” | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Three years ago, it took three geeks to help me with a computer problem. But times change, life gets more complicated, and now it takes five.
More than a decade ago, I became a customer of a local boutique ISP, first for a dial-up shell account and later adding DSL. A few months ago, the owner sold the company to an outfit that specializes in DSL for highrise apartment buildings in LA.
Needless to say, the ISP has gone to hell in a handbasket. I had held on, hoping for the best, but these people can't keep the server up for more than a day or two at a time, and it frequently crashes in the middle of the day and is down for hours. Even worse, about a month ago, they started silently spam-filtering my email (vigorously denying it all the while), so I wasn't even getting all my mail when I could log in.
Just a few minutes ago, I got an email from their tech support finally admitting the spam-filtering--they "didn't realize" that Postini would apply spam filters for email recipients who didn't have a Postini mailbox. Naturally, I got this admission only in response to my notification that I was cancelling their service.
So I've switched over to another provider that has DSL and shell accounts, and charges half the price to boot! You might think the story ends there, but only if you don't know me very well.
Because of my special relationship with computers, all sorts of stumbling blocks immediately appeared before me, to be patiently cleared away by friends who kindly put up with me (and don't really understand how computers and I could get along so badly): generalist, gomijacogeo, sfo2lhr, andybeals, and jymdyer. jymdyer gets special kudos for actually causing Rmail to read IMAP files.
Yes, the Eighties really were the best decade, why do you ask? | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | kid, life | | Current Music: | annoying buzz from vcr | | Subject: | And another one | | Time: | 09:34 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sick.gif) still sick |
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| That was a very small increment! The kid's second top center incisor (the left one) came out just after lunch--to much general surprise--while she was jumping up and down in the kitchen (as she is wont to do).
I've had to get used to a second new smile in 24 hours! She looks so much older..... | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | kid, life | | Current Music: | space heater | | Subject: | Increments | | Time: | 08:31 pm | | Current Mood: | sick |
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| The kid just lost her first top tooth. The change to her appearance is quite startling--possibly even more than when she lost her first tooth, just about a year ago.
For an excellent documentary about gap-toothed seven-year-old smiles, I could not more highly recommend the Up Series. I saw what must have been "28 Up" with frabbish years ago. I remember none of the content, but that the concept was cool. Now those seven-year-olds have gotten all the way up to 49, and it's completely fascinating to see that the seven-year-old is still plainly there each seven-year increment later. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | kid | | Current Music: | space heater | | Subject: | Smart kid | | Time: | 10:24 pm | | Current Mood: | headachy |
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| Tonight the kid articulated an intuitive grasp of human sleep cycles:
“When I [first] go to sleep, I get little dream previews. Then at 5 [in the morning] I start crazy dreaming, and when the alarm goes off [at 6:45am] I don’t want to get up--five more minutes!” | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | life | | Current Music: | rain pouring off roof into puddle | | Subject: | VCR update | | Time: | 09:53 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/tired.gif) tired |
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| Thanks to everyone for your kind offers! I had also posted on the local Mothers Club list, offering to buy a used one for a modest fee, and immediately got three offers of free ones. Conveniently, the kid invited the daughter of one of those mothers to her birthday party tomorrow, so I should be good, especially if one of the other party guests helps set it up! :)
It'll be interesting to see if in another couple years old VCRs become collector's items. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Why is it that I can buy a clock radio--the electronic device owned by every teenager in America in the 1970s--for $4.99, yet I cannot buy that 1980s must-have device--the VCR--for less than $150??
Yes, yes, I know about the supposed economic forces (everything's now on DVD, new TV signals coming), but I also know that there are millions of households in this country that have hundreds of precious videotapes and will be very sad when their VCR breaks and they can't afford to replace it.
And by the way, if you have a nice little old VCR you've been thinking of getting rid of, do let me know. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| This is cute:
86% Mike Gravel
83% Dennis Kucinich
82% Barack Obama
80% John Edwards
79% Chris Dodd
78% Joe Biden
76% Hillary Clinton
74% Bill Richardson
41% Rudy Giuliani
31% John McCain
29% Ron Paul
27% Mitt Romney
25% Mike Huckabee
19% Tom Tancredo
15% Fred Thompson
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz | | comments: Leave a comment |
| [When I started this: We’re currently sitting on the runway at Logan, all neatly packed into the plane for an indefinite period before take-off.
We got to SFO only about an hour late, but then the bags took forever. The lovely Y rescued us, this time accompanied by her pleasant boyfriend. The kid slept some on the plane, but neither of us got to bed till way after midnight, Pacific Time. And we had to get up early this morning so I could take her to her father’s. Sigh.]
The day after Christmas, we didn’t have to get up to early in order to get to the Boxing Day lunch put on by relatives on the other side of Connecticut. It was a pretty drive, and we arrived at the same time as all the relatives we had seen the night before. The kid latched onto Cousin C, the hostess, and somewhat officiously helped serve oerdoevres and the meal. This family has a tradition of handing around a basket of little handmade boxes (because it’s Boxing Day)--one of them has a yellow rather than white bottom and wins that year’s present. I got the yellow bottom this year. The present was a candle that will be passed on to someone next year, and a soft teddy bear that we have named Freddie.
On the way back to H&H’s, we stopped at the West Hartford Cow Parade. We wandered around the self-consciously quaint (and wealthy) downtown in the gathering dusk looking for gaudily-painted bovine statues.
That night we had yummy homemade pizzas and celebrated my sister’s birthday (she was born on December 29).
The 27th was a rather frustrating day. We had to leave the house earlyish to meet my father’s best friend for breakfast. He didn’t show; it turned out that he had to take his elderly mother to the doctor that morning. We then went to our 10-year-old storage unit to try (having failed last year) to get some of my childhood books, particularly the Little House series. The storage unit has two doors and is full of stuff, and for some reason we thought we needed to get in the side whose lock had rusted shut years ago. I had called ahead, and the attendant had slathered it with WD-40, to no avail. So he spent an hour sawing it off with a dulled titanium blade (a run the the hardware store not turning up a new one). When we got in we discovered that we could have come in by the other door to get what I wanted. At least, next time we’ll be able to get in either side we please.
We then set off in the rain to Plymouth, Mass, my sister’s idea for an interesting midway point toward our next stop. We stayed in a very nice hotel, with a chilly pool and a hottub that didn’t allow children. The kid insisted that she could not swim without her goggles, but she eventually forget about that. The kid still wasn’t getting to sleep on time, so my sister and I had to hang out very quietly in our shared hotel room.
The next day was lovely--40s and sunny--and we did some touristing. Unfortunately, not only is Plimouth Plantation closed in winter, but the Mayflower II is spirited away, presumably to a dry dock. We looked at the silly Rock (which we'd done once before, deep in our childhood) and the closed shops, one of which was named after Pocahontas, of all things. We wound up having a more enjoyable time taking a walk on a bit of beach, where the kid insisted on collecting only shells (of which there were few).
We then drove to dann_lj's house, the kid reading in the back seat as has become her wont. We got pointlessly delayed driving through Boston, but that gave dann_lj more time to finish cleaning for us. We had dinner at at nice Italian cafe and then my sister drove home to New Hampshire.
The kid adores dann_lj and our annual visit to his house. This year, they played store (selling sea shells), played checkers, worked on a wind-chimes kit he had given her, and square-danced. The three of us also spent some time "skating" in our boots on the bumpy ice in dann_lj's driveway. dann_lj was nonplused that the kid waited patiently on the stairs ("on the middle step!") for him to emerge from the shower in the morning.
I had laboriously repacked some of the boxes we'd removed from storage, and we took those to the post office, and I spent most of the rest of our last day leisurely packing while the other two played. We we thwarted in our attempt to make the usual Bickford's stop on the way to Logan by the disappearance of the one on Route 1--apparently no one wants to eat pancakes anymore. So one more meal at Friendly's, and one more chance to enjoy the lovely Boston accent.
Now I'm "home", and it's no more or less dreadful than I could have expected. In a spot of undreadfulness, I'm about to go eat a home-cooked dinner! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| So, it's "Christingle", not "Christicle". This has a pretty accurate picture. You can see why I called it a satellite.....
We had a nice Christmas morning with stockings and presents (with stale donuts in between). Then we had to start the marathon portion of the trip. We filled up the SUV and drove three hours to Connecticut. The kid read three of her Christmas presents, which made for a quiet trip. The kid had really wanted to see the ancestral home, which my sister and i have avoided for 10 years, so we drove by. The kid wasn't in the mood to look out the window at that point, which was annoying. My camera had also chosen that moment to (apparently) croak. Again annoying.
We had Christmas dinner at Mrs. T's as always--old house chock full of wonderful stuff, table laden with wonderful food, and tedious other guests. Mrs. T gave the kids some dreidels, and even played them with her.
Then we had to rush into the car to rush to see relatives nearly an hour away and have dessert with them, except they'd put all the food away early. The weren't tedious, though, and Cousin D played the traditional game of doctor's office with the kid.
Then another drive, to spend the night with good friends H&H: I'm now in a house with four adults and four kids. And excellent wireless! And though my kid finally crashed only about 15 minutes ago, I'm ready for some more lovely sleep! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| After another good night's sleep (for me, anyway), we had a leisurely morning of playing checkers and other idle pursuits, before going outside. The rain had washed all the icicles away, but new little ones were forming along the roofs. It was again about freezing, and the soggy snow was solid. The sledding run was in good shape, and the sledding quite fast and fun for all. We told the kid that the snow was too jagged for a snowball fight, so I made her a stockpile of balls to throw at a tree.
We went into town for lunch at a little bakery and then went to Ben&Jerry's--I had some new banana and mocha flavors--yum. Soft, beautiful snowflakes were falling from the sky, and the kid raced around joyfully trying to catch them on her tongue. I saw her succeed at least once.
We went to the children's Christmas Eve service at the local church. This one was a bit different from the California and Connecticut ones we've been to in recent years (which were remarkably similar). The congregation seemed a bit stuffier, and the rector had an accent from somewhere in the depths of the British Isles. The main attraction was Christicles (which I must be spelling wrong), which I had never heard of before, and really just look like small edible satellites. When it came time for Communion, the minister gravely urged everyone to partake, noting that "not only are we an Episcopal church, but as part of the Diocese of New Hampshire, we take radical hospitality seriously." I continue to be proud that my great-great-grandfather was the first Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire.
The kid lost her third tooth last night, making this the second night in a row for a magical visit. Which is made difficult by her persistent jetlag.....
Happy Xmas to all! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Despite some initial worries, an extremely generous co-worker got us to SFO for our flight to Logan (to Mommy's consternation, her generosity extended to giving the kid a Disney princess doll complete with wand that makes a sound every time it moves). It was nice not to be on the crack-of-dawn flight, though the midnight drive to New Hampshire was a bit gruelling. It was also nice not to have any lost luggage this time.
The kid seems to get severe jetlag. She's getting only 8-9 hours of sleep a night (which mean 2-3 less than she should). The good news is that I'm getting 8-9 hours too--2-3 more than i'm used to! It's been downright luxurious. I realize that part of it is sleeping in a warm room for the first time in weeks. I have nothing but contempt for people who built houses eschewing insulation, central heating, storm windows, and double-glazing, all technologies that were available long before most housing in the Bay Area was built.
After waking up late yesterday, we did some errands and shopping--first stop Dunkin Donuts--and came back to play in the snow as the afternoon was getting dark. Snow--up to 18" in some places, and still decoratively clinging to branch and leaf. Enough melting had happened to add some icicles to the picture. The snow was still fairly dry though, and the temperature hovered around freezing--perfect.
We did some sledding down the hill, and the kid made snow angels. We tried our hand at some snowballs, and the three of us managed to make them stick together enough for the short-range fight required by our youngest player. Every few minutes, the kid wanted to stop to "touch the snow."
This morning was warmer, and the snow wetter. We knocked some icicles off things (despite some protestation, somewhat mollified by having some to brandish and suck on), sledded some more (but snow too sticky), made a snow family, and got wet and tired before essaying another snowball fight. The family was a fun joint project: my sister did most of the snow-rolling while I collected decorations--with some help picking withered apples and cherries, and we all worked on making the faces.
In the afternoon it started to rain, and has been pouring since. The snow family's heads have all fallen onto the ground. | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | kid | | Current Music: | ineffectual wall-heater | | Subject: | Truer words | | Time: | 08:31 pm | | Current Mood: | tired |
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| | The kid: "I am not remotely like an adult. What does 'not remotely' mean?" | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | life | | Current Music: | sirens | | Subject: | Xmas letter | | Time: | 11:57 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/shock.gif) frazzed |
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| My Xmas letter got way too whiny, so it had to become an LJ post. I won't include the expurgated one in the cards of anyone who can read the real one here :).
This December seems much less like Christmas than usual, though we got our decorations up right after Thanksgiving and are expecting my sister in a few days while planning to join her in New England for Christmas week. But most of my energies have been going into having adequate water and electricity in my dwelling--neither problem has, at this writing, been solved.
The kid finished kindergarten with a flourish and now is complaining of boredom in first grade (though I think her teacher is working very hard to address that). The kid has finally turned into a true relative of mine and wants to always be reading, doing so to an extent I’m quite envious of! Now that she’s almost 7, she’s become quite a helpful partner (at least at times!) in many endeavors; of all the moving tasks, she particularly liked the schlepping of boxes and the painting of cupboards.
Which brings us back to the moving, which seems to taken over my life. I have continued to be satisfied with my job, and it seems to continue to be satisfied with me. For the most fun of the year, I was able to take advantage of a chance for a one-week trip to Munich in August--my first time off this continent in a decade!
Shortly after the trip, I had an opportunity to rent a three-bedroom house in this town I'm stuck in, thus allowing the kid and me to move on from the one-bedroom apartment we’ve been in for three years. It’s nice having space, and the kid is thrilled with her own room with a bunkbed (even though I insist she stay on the bottom bunk for now). But the lack of reliable water and power is a bit of a drawback. Since a $5000-a-month mortgage is still impossibly out of reach, I am focused on divesting myself of stuff in hopes of someday snagging a place to rent that is, as gomijacogeo put it for all hapless Bay Area renters, “smaller and nicer” (and less than $3000 a month).
My mother used to say, “This too shall pass,” and I expect she’s right. While it’s dreadful not to have a place that is “home” now, I expect that eventually the kid and I will manage to make a home again, and at least we will have Christmas to enjoy together.
I wish all of you a warm and wonderful home for the holidays. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| This picture shows that I'm "probably" neurotypical. (Naturally, the code to copy dropped my actual scores--I think it was 91/200 aspie and 129/100 neurotypical.) EDIT: that should be 129/200, as an aspie friend of mine kindly pointed out.
And here's the link to the test:
http://www.rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php
And what about you? | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | street noise | | Subject: | Shelves | | Time: | 10:01 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/smile.gif) pleased |
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| The kid is amazing. She helped me do something hard and unpleasant today, and we had quite a good time at it.
I haven't been coping with the kitchen in this house because of the cupboards. Some of them haven't been painted in their 70 years. Some of them have 30-year-old contact paper (and >30yo paint) and various gross protuberances. The cupboard under the sink is all right (and of course not held to the same standards as someplace one would put dishes or food). But I had determined that the rest needed to be painted before they could be used. The kid wanted to help.
So we suited up in old clothes, put on disposable gloves (elastic bands kept hers from falling off), and put a disposable shower cap on her head (clever thinking, Mommy). I essayed making one of the lower cupboards ready for painting, but all I accomplished was getting disgusting bits of 70yo wood, 30yo contact paper, and God-knows-what all over the kitchen floor. I would have wanted to throw in the towel right there, but the kid kept me going. We just closed that cupboard up again, and tried the other lower one, which wasn't quite so nasty. The kid started painting with gusto, and doing a pretty good job, better than one might have expected from a not-quite-seven-year-old. We had to avoid some gross parts and I'm still not sure I'm going to put anything in it.
So we moved on to the cupboards above the counter. These might actually have been painted this millenium, except for the surfaces of the shelves, which had some rather pretty 60yo contact paper. And since this was actually paper, it was 1) not too nasty and 2) easy to paint over. We spread paint over everthing that did not have that painted-this-millenium look, and now we have a set of cupboards to use (when the paint dries).
We then painted some bits in the kitchen that for some reason had dirty-mustard-yellow paint on them, which was a great improvement. And we took a tour through the house with our wet paint brushes touching up some spots that needed it.
Throughout, the kid was cheerful and willing and competent, and only disappointed that there wasn't more to do--"You said it would take all day!" When we were done, we tossed most of what we'd been using, including the cheap brushes.
We stripped and got in the shower, where we removed paint, shampooed, and discussed the possible utility of pubic hair. ("If it's for protection, then kids should have it cause they fall down more.") After we got out and dried off, we massaged lotion into each other's backs before I combed her hair. What could be better than that? | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Current Music: | machine hums | | Subject: | OBTW | | Time: | 08:34 am | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/blah.gif) okay |
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| | Yes, I have moved--to a rental house about 1.5 miles south of where I was. Some of my gentle readers have partied and/or lived there. If you don't have my address and would like it, let me know (phone numbers are still the same). Or, you can just wait for the Xmess card. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | life | | Current Music: | wall heater | | Subject: | Normal | | Time: | 09:29 pm | | Current Mood: | too tired to think |
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| Here in the future, it takes only 12 days to transfer one's DSL to a new address down the road.
And, for the first time in rather longer than that, I'm not spending my evening on packing, unpacking, cleaning, installing towel racks, etc.....
Time enough for that tomorrow! | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | friends, life | | Current Music: | This American Life | | Subject: | Emo | | Time: | 10:03 pm | | Current Mood: | melty |
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| Okay, it's official: everyone I know is melting down around me. I just want to turn into a puddle, but whom do I get to melt down around, hm?
And no, this is so not just about you, whoever you are! | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | kid | | Current Music: | fridge hum | | Subject: | Kisses | | Time: | 10:48 pm | | Current Mood: | exhausted |
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| | “Mommy, I have a story to tell you about school, and it’s embarrassing. M and I are spending a lot of time together at school. Today we were sitting on the carpet and he leaned over and kissed my knee. That’s embarrassing! Some kids kiss on the lips at school. That’s gross! They should only do that when they have a playdate!” “Hm. Do you like spending time with M?” “Yes.” "What will you do when he kisses your other knee?" | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | philosophy | | Current Music: | machine hums | | Subject: | Whining | | Time: | 08:59 am | | Current Mood: | whiny |
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| I was contemplating my dreary life, and wondering what everyone else I know has to complain about. I know that a lot of people, possibly the vast majority of the living human population would envy my life without question. But I don't compare myself to them. I look at my friends and acquaintances, nearly all of whom have one or both of the things I sorely lack: freedom of movement and the comfort-companionship-continuity of when someone else's life overlaps with yours.
Surely no one envies me--no one would want any part of my life. But, astonishingly, they do! I have one friend who quite regularly expresses his envy of my daughter. I have a daughter--constrained and undermined though my relationship with her is.
And a fine daughter she is being these days. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| This day was one of my favorites. J had wanted to go to the Deutsches Museum, but since it was the first really rainy day, all of München had the same idea. After inspecting the line, J said, "Let’s go to the zoo." So we went to Münchner Tierpark Hellabrunn, and had a wonderful time.
The first section was of European animals (including a red squirrel who was apparently just a visitor). Since I love it when things are in their proper place, I delighted in the European bison, the European wolves, and the aurochs. The last were a bit confusing: the aurochs is supposed to be extinct, and I’m not sure whether there was simply a translation issue or there had been an attempt at back-breeding or what. In any event, the aurochs in the zoo sure looked as though they came from the Ice Age.
Like everywhere else we’ve been, the zoo was peaceful and green, with many trees and streams. We wandered about, observing the fauna, until hunger and a downpour drove us to a café where we could eat and watch the baboons. The afternoon brought us opportunities to watch some interesting behaviors--particularly by Homo sapiens.
A lion feeding was scheduled, so we located the enclosure that contained a boy and a girl that seemed to be paired up, and another female. At the appointed time, they were each given a large hunk of some large animal. It was interesting to watch them patiently gnaw and tear the flesh off the bones--so different from the way a cat can just chew through a mouse a bite at a time. One man was apparently so fascinated by the process that he wanted to take a picture that suggested it was his daughter being gnawed.
We made our way to the higher primates, and watched a juvenile orangutan playfully harrass its mother, who really just wanted to chill out. Then we moved on to the chimpanzees. There were several adult females and young of various sizes. Just as we were about to move on, we saw the silverbacked male (who I believe is named Franzl). And we saw him playing with a friend. He had engaged a visitor in an extraordinary game of mirroring the positions of their fingers, hands, arms, and heads against the glass between them. He mostly wanted to take the lead, holding up his hand in a particular configuration, then moving his fingers and expecting the woman to imitate him. Sometimes she was able to get him to imitate her. When her attention flagged and she started to try to leave, he would rap on the glass with the back of his wrist and demand that she continue to engage. We must have watched this for the better part of half an hour.
The zoo was going to close soon, so we quickly walked to the gate through a section we had not yet visited, going over a cool bridge and pausing briefly for J to commune with a bull.
In the evening, we tried Café Ignaz, a vegetarian restaurant we found in Let’s Go (I still can’t travel anywhere without Let’s Go). I had a noodle dish with lots of veggies and some excellent smoked tofu. And then another good night’s sleep. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| This day started out sunny, then got rainy for the rest of the week. We began our day at Schloss Nymphenburg, a Baroque palace with a huge backyard. We didn’t go inside, but headed out back, enjoying another quiet urban park with temperate-zone foliage and many waterfowl. The statuary at the foot of the big pool was getting cleaned--the contrast is quite remarkable. We wandered back toward the Schloss on one of the many side paths, visiting various outbuildings (some with modern occupants) and the only water fountain--a nice Baroque one--I encountered the entire time I was in München. I spent a lot of the trip being thirsty.
We walked out of the grounds back to the modern world, and after going to a Supermarkt to get something to drink, lunched at a nice little sidewalk Café Romanplatz, as the clouds gathered and the air started to condense.
We then went next door to the Botanischer Garten. It was fabulous, and my second favorite of all the spots that we visited. We started out in the huge, multi-chambered greenhouse, which had room after room of mostly-tropical plants (and, oddly, a herd of turtles from the American midwest). Probably the best was the water-plant room:
We went outside, through some formal flower-and-zucchini gardens, and into the area of plants by climate zone. The zones weren’t well demarcated, and I was somewhat confused that the corner that looked like home back in Connecticut was apparently part of the "arctic" zone. While we were there, the heavens finally opened to deliver sweet summer rain:
We continued through other marvelous gardens, such as the one devoted to agricultural plants, where we saw these flowering artichokes. We eventually wound up in "System," which turned out to be an arrangement of hundreds of Linnaean families with representative species of each.
On the way back home, we went by the surfing part of the Englischer Garten. Here, the flow controls in a tributary of the Isar make a permanent artificial wave, which surfers take turns riding back and forth, despite ample signage observing that “Surfen streng verboten”. (Here is another picture J took later in the week.)
By the time we returned to the hotel, we were getting thunder and lightning with our rain, so we took advantage of the fact that Sarovar, a decent Indian restaurant, was located directly below us. Then upstairs again for nearly eight hours’ sleep! | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Day Five
More walking and more rain. We went to the Viktualienmarkt, where the produce was laid out in beautifully orderly arrangements.
We had lunch at Chinesichen Turm, the other Biergarten in the Englischer Garten. Because it was so wet, if not actively raining, the place was mostly empty, but there was still some good people-watching.
We dined again at Bella Italia, not having gotten our act together to do something different. One of their specials was fresh pasta with carrot sauce, which is something I’ve never seen before. Yay for old standbys!
And then another 8-9 hours of sleep.
Day Six
Today was a slow and rainy day. The rain was intermittent, but there were several distinct downpours. We tied up loose ends like buying postcard stamps, and spent much of the afternoon walking in the Englischer Garten. If only I could spend several hours of every day walking! Though the Biergarten at the Chinesichen Turm was hopefully squeegeeing its tables and chairs, most of the food had been put away. So we ate lunch at the restaurant next door, which was overpriced but which did have a menu especially for vegetable friends. We then rode a couple trams to see where they’d take us, before heading back to the Fußgängerzone, where J availed himself of the McDonald’s, as he had been promising all week. On our walk back to the hotel, I availed myself of the san francisco coffee company, as J had been urging all week. As I expected, it was essentially a Starbucks clone, with good German coffee.
Packing up didn’t take long, and we had a nice early dinner at Nam Nam, where despite the English waitress, we still got German service, which meant a long abandonment between our last food delivery and any hope of getting die Zahlen.
The hotel was only a block away, but J led me off in another direction, for one more photo I’d wanted to take--of somewhere we’d been by several times, but always without the camera out. Thus, a day which had started with a disagreement about how to get to the airport ended with me shooting at J up against the wall which, sad to say, was nothing to joke about here once.
Then early to bed so early to rise.
Coda
I’m writing up the rest of my entries on the long plane ride from Frankfurt to San Francisco. J’s snoozing next to me, with the pillow tucked under his chin. He chose to stay up all Saturday night, while I got five hours of sleep before our 0415 wakeup call. I will have stayed up at least 24 hours by the time the kid comes home tonight, so I needed to get sleep while I could. An intercontinental flight on a European airline (Lufthansa this time) is not nearly as bad as what one would extrapolate from American domestic airflight. There is food, for example. Not only hot, but decent, and including vegetarian options.
I’m so very glad to have gone away on holiday, and happy to have shared it with J. It’s been lovely to see him in a space that makes him relaxed and happy.
I’m of course not looking forward to my return. Not once in 17 years have I actively looked forward to returning to the Bay Area once I have left it. I’ve managed to not read any work email; I wonder what I’ll be getting back to there. Of course I’m looking forward to seeing the kid, though she’s been downright rude on the phone (it’s been hard because circumstances have dictated that I initiate the calls, and the other side has been bad at catching (and preparing her for) them).
I’m glad I’ve gotten my fill of rain for a while: I won’t see rain again for a few months yet.
Oh, well. | | comments: 8 comments or Leave a comment |
| [Yes, I'm posting about the days out of order.]
This day was a bit dreary--overcast and rainy, and even downright chilly by evening. We headed to the Deutcshes Museum, and though the line was shorter than yesterday, it still took us a good hour to get in the door. (No doubt relatedly, there was a long line at the Imbiss for lunch, and at the gift shop, though surprisingly no lines for the WC.) this is a museum to warm the cockles of the nerdiest technophile’s heart. The two coolest things there were a vast mining exhibit, complete with a vast network of multi-storey mining tunnels which took about 45 minutes to traverse, and a detailed replica of the paintings in the Altamira Cave.
When the museum kicked us out, we walked home, along the Isar, which was brown and turbulent from the rain. We then gathered up our laundry and hiked to the nearest laundrymat. We navigated the mysterious instructions (it wasn’t a problem of vocabulary, exactly), and I took the opportunity to go to a grocery store to buy chocolate, fluids, and those little UHT portions of cream to take home.
I managed to reach the kid by phone, then we went back to the Fußgängerzone in Marienplatz, where in the smokey Spatenhof Keller I had a nice veggie Späzlepfanne and J had Bauernschmaus--a plate of many types of meat and carbs. Then home again in the rain, and to bed for another 8-9 hours sleep. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Our hotel comes with breakfast, so in the morning I feasted on bread, cheese, red and yellow bell pepper, a butter-cheese spread, Nusspli (better than Nutella!), assorted Konfitüre, yogurt, fruit, and coffee. We then continued the tour of J’s haunts and other cool things. We started at Olympiapark, where the pool is now for public swimming. We then walked around other stadiums and grounds and then went to the top of Oympiaturm, to get views of the city.
We then walked by the apartment building where J lived for two years, and from there took the U-bahn to Englischer Garten, where we ate a (surprisingly expensive) lunch at Seehaus, a Biergarten J had frequented, seen here from across the lake.
The weather continued to be beautiful, though the humidity has been hard to get used to. The city seems busy, but not overcrowded. The part we were walking through was particularly pleasant, though overall a bit disconcertingly modern. There’s a reason for that of course; J pointed out a couple of artificial hills made from Second-World-War rubble.
After lunch, we visited J’s old office and vicinity, and took a long tram ride back to the hotel. We rested a while and went to Marienplatz, where after some dithering we settled on the Augustiner for dinner. They had a daily vegetarian special, which today was Käsespetzle. Good, but very heavy! My life has been complicated by daily and mostly unsuccessful 21h00 calls to the kid on her vacation in the Hamptons; on Monday I was able to reach her, though I had to go find a call box in the middle of dinner.
Apparently, Marienplatz is not the place for street performers it was 20 years ago, though there was one guy who played amazing accordian. We had an enjoyable walk around in the warm evening, ate gelato, and came home to a good sleep. Nine hours! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Our trip from home to the hotel in München was 20 hours, door-to-door. Things went smoothly enough, with generalist delivering us to SFO, and the sfo3lhr leg was remarkably tolerable, largely because we were able to sit together (gomijacogeo slept against the window) and I got to watch 500 channels of movies and TV (using a two-handed remote with the worst human factors I’ve ever encountered--whoever thought it was a good idea to have different hands operate the arrow keys and the select key??). Because our first leg was on Virgin Atlantic, and we had a three-hour layover in Heathrow, I started out my Germany trip strongly nostalgic for Britain. Maybe next year.
We got to München without J’s luggage, which has happened six times out of nine (or maybe eight!) for him. (It showed up at the hotel overnight.) We took the S-bahn into town in golden late-afternoon summer light, and I reveled in being in a place with temperate seasons, where early August feels ripe and warm and full. The hotel welcomed us nicely, and we soon set out for the Hauptbahnhof to buy victuals and a phone card. We walked most of the way (which of course was to be the theme of the week) and first walked by Bella Italia, our dinner destination, to be certain it was there (it was one of J's standbys 20 years ago). When we returned, we sat outside, and I learned the peculiar custom of ordering a half-liter spezi in order to get enough to drink. (All fluids in a restaurant must be paid for, and most of them are very small--two tenths of a liter.)
We walked back to the hotel, with J pointing out the sights of Marienplatz and me complaining I couldn’t stay awake. Got to bed at 2200, and mostly slept till 0600, aided by listening to German news radio--even better white noise than NPR! | | comments: Leave a comment |
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geek-y![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif){kind=small}
meditative
