Pictures of some toys
Posted by admin on January 31st, 2010 filed in General, Neat things, What?!Comment now »
Happy belated birthday to my husband! Here is my treasured Bert doll, which Jill road tripped to McDonald’s to buy with me eight hours after Ron pointed out its existence nearly four years ago.
Bert has one month of beard growth, so he looks like his plush friend again.
The faucet in the bathtub has sharp corners, so I got this duck attachment to make it safe for the kids. The duck is a fireman, and I just watched Miss March, so I know at least some people find firemen funny. Especially firemen with axes. As you can see, this duck has an ax. Instead of holding it with his finger (feather?) tips, it is just growing out of his joint. It’s kind of like if Wolverine was a duck and could extend an ax out of his arm instead of claws. Yeah.
Here is Maggie’s favorite doll:
I recently discovered this under her clothes:
I realize that is an appendectomy scar, but at first glance it looks like maybe she mouthed off to one of the ax-wielding toys in the house…
We recently got this neat projector for the kids’ room. You aim it at the ceiling and they watch it and fall asleep (that’s the idea anyway…). It takes up like half the ceiling. I might like it more than they do, since I can do things with my shadow…
Here I am holding hands with the octopus!
Look! I caught a whale!
Oh no! Oh no! That starfish ate my finger!
Answer these questions for me!
Posted by admin on January 29th, 2010 filed in Books, General12 Comments »
Hello! Um, hello? Helloooooo? Anyone out there?
I haven’t been a very good blogger lately, have I? I’m still here. I took a trip up to PA and then Bert did some maintenance on my computer. My poor, frazzled husband reminded me that these things are supposed to be done every month, not once every 2 years and 3 months. I am hoping he’ll just do it for me. The big thing taking up my time is that pesky job I got. It has me exhausted, since I go to bed around 10:30, wake up several times with the kids, and then get up for work between 4:45 and 5:00am. When I’m not at work, I still seem to devote all my mental power to thinking about the job. I’d love to tell you about it, but I signed a thing about non-disclosure and privacy, and I don’t want to get dooced. Progress on the book has ground to a halt since I started working. I am assuming the kids are still getting meals as normal while I am not here, since they aren’t starving or complaining too much. I stay in touch with my house husband with text messaging.
It has come to my attention that not everyone reads the same way I do. For me, analyzing how a book as written is half the point, with the other half being the story. After talking to people about books we have both read, I am usually surprised at what a different experience we had of a book. Did you know that not everyone can tell you if a book was written in first or third person after they have read it? I always notice things like foreshadowing, themes, and other structural points. Repetition bothers me. Descriptions must be done masterfully. I pay attention to all this stuff and can often remember where to find the quotes in literature as if I needed to write a paper on the books.
So tell me about how you read. Are you aware of any critical thinking you are doing about the book as you are reading it? I mean, for you, is part of reading a book sitting there and actively thinking about how the book was written? Or do you just read it to get the story (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I am just curious.)? Do you remember which books were first person and which were third? Do you remember the style of the book (like lots of lengthy description, or was it short action sentences? Did most of the book deal with characters and emotions, or was it all events and reactions?)? How do you pick which books you read?
In which we meet my new friends, Splash and Max Disappointment
Posted by admin on January 17th, 2010 filed in General, Life List, Neat things, Photography, Projects3 Comments »
As you may have noticed on my life list, I would like to try out some lomography. The pictures from this style of photography are so surreal and dreamy, I just love them. To take these pictures, you get this stuff at the store and put it in your camera. What was it called? Hmmm… film? Yeah, I think that was it. Film. Part of the fun of lomography is that you never know what’s going to come out of your roll of film until you get it developed. I’m getting ahead of myself though.
The lomo camera that I really want is expensive, so I decided to build my own pinhole camera. You can make this out of any sort of box, even an empty juice box. Although I feel a little lame for doing so, I ordered a cardboard kit to make the box for my camera instead of making my own from scratch (Thanks, Lunar Groupe!). So meet my camera, Splash, who is made from cardboard, glue, double sided tape, a shiny piece of metal, and stickers. See the fish stickers?
Splash is a pinhole camera, which means there is no flash and all the light for the image is collected through a tiny hole. I can expose each shot for as long or as little as I like. One of the things that I really liked in college was when I did a semester in the observatory (back when I was sure astrophotography would be my life) and learned how telescopes and digital cameras work Well, this project taught me how cameras with film work (although it’s pretty much what I expected). So I finished the camera, loaded it up with film, and took a bunch of pictures. At the end, I had no way to rewind the film without taking the back off the camera. At night, I turned off all the hall lights, shut myself in the bathroom, turned the lights off in there, and took the film out in what I thought was complete darkness. The film was left with Walmart for development.
Yesterday we went to pick up the film and met with Max Disappointment, who is kind of in-your-face mean. See?
He put a smiley after the note explaining that none of my pictures came out because the film had been exposed to light! Do you think Walmart will give me free stuff if I complain that a smiley is not a considerate emoticon for someone who just lost all her pictures? Wouldn’t a sad face, with a little tear, and maybe a liquor bottle in which sorrows could be drowned, be more appropriate? At least he didn’t charge me.
The light exposure means one of three things.
1.) My dark bathroom extracting method is flawed and light got in while I was taking the film out.
2.) The employee developing the film decided that since the pictures looked different (lomo pics aren’t like what you would hope for if you were trying for realism), they were obviously a mistake and he would not develop them.
3.) Light is leaking into Splash somewhere and the film was exposed while it was still in the camera.
Numbers one and three are the easiest for me to try to fix. I think Splash has a date with a roll of black duct tape. That should help keep the light out.
Maybe next time I’ll get under a blanket in a dark closet to roll the film.
I bought a four pack of film and I have used one roll. If I don’t get this figured out by the end of three more rolls, I might have to call Splash a failed project and just wait until I can buy a camera. This stuff is expensive!
Sky!
Posted by admin on January 15th, 2010 filed in General, OutdoorsComment now »
The first roll of lomo pics will be ready tomorrow! Until then, look at the sky from last night:
Burning the oranges
Posted by admin on January 14th, 2010 filed in General, Neat things1 Comment »
We’ve been eating oranges, AKA anti-scurvy balls. Did you know the mist that comes out of the orange peel is flamable? We did! Look how my new digital camera caught the action:
Get ready to make fire.
Add orange peel.
Squeeze peel at fire and watch the burst!
VernQuarBoWriMo v. 3.0 25%
Posted by admin on January 11th, 2010 filed in General, VernQuarBoWriMo, Writing1 Comment »
25%! 25%! 25%! I wrote a quarter of a book! It’s all down hill from here!
22535 / 90000 words. 25% done!
VernQuarBoWriMo v. 3.0 24%
Posted by admin on January 10th, 2010 filed in General, VernQuarBoWriMo, WritingComment now »
Had a few nice days off… Doing some editing on the first part instead of tackling new material… ready for beta readers soon… going to bed now.
21552 / 90000 words. 24% done!
VernQuarBoWriMo v. 3.0 23%
Posted by admin on January 7th, 2010 filed in General, VernQuarBoWriMo, Writing1 Comment »
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
MORE THAN 20K WORDS, BABY!!!
I’m taking a day or two off from writing the book, starting tomorrow. Gonna get some other things done, I hope.
I am now done with the first section, which came out to about 70 pages. I am going to devote some energy to editing that and making sure everything is there. Is anyone interested in beta reading for me? I promised Bert he could read what I have done before anyone else, but it would be helpful to have some more input after that. Let me know. It could still be a while before I’m ready.
20817 / 90000 words. 23% done!
VernQuarBoWriMo v. 3.0 21%
Posted by admin on January 5th, 2010 filed in General, VernQuarBoWriMo, Writing1 Comment »
18932 / 90000 words. 21% done!
Song lyrics about today
Posted by admin on January 5th, 2010 filed in General6 Comments »
It finally happened. Beren has become a Dora the Explorer fan. Parents of young kids know that Dora sings about everything, every time they do something. They are pretty much the same songs. These songs get in your head, even though you don’t realize that you know the tune or the words. Here’s my song about today, just like Dora would sing it. Picture me swinging my arms back and forth like Dora and Boots do in their dance.
We did it! We did it!
Got a job at Target and pissed in a cup!
A drug test! We did it! We did it!
Braved snowy roads and didn’t get hit by a truck!
We did it! We did it! Hooray!
Beren got germs at Chik-Fil-A!
A fever! We did it! We did it!
Endured disappointment at Borders!
We did it! We did it! We did it! Hooray!
Something about a backpack and map!
WE DID IT! YAY!