Scrivener May 15th, 2008
That old good-for-nothing bird, runaway Mayzie, originally uploaded by Scrivenings.
Eldest is finishing up a unit on Dr. Seuss in her class, so she’s taking part in a skit for us. Here she is wearing the costume we made for her: she’s Mayzie , from Horton Hatches the Egg.
Scrivener April 16th, 2008
Conversation this afternoon while running errands:
Eldest: Why did you stop at that store?
Me: To get the new Buffy comic book.
E: Buffy? Why’d you get a Buffy comic book?
Me: Because I’ve been reading the series and I like them.
E: You like Buffy? Well, why don’t you marry her?
Me: Um … because she’s a fictional character in a comic book. Besides, I said I like the comic book not that I love Buffy.
E: You like the comic book?
Me: Yep.
E: But do you like-like the comic book or just like it?
Me: I think I pretty much just like the comic book.
E: Ooooooooo, daddy like-likes the Buffy comic boooook and he’s gonna marrrry it. [Followed by a fit of giggles.]
Scrivener April 15th, 2008
According to Wikipedia, 37 is the fifth lucky prime, the first irregular prime, the third unique prime and the third cuban prime of the form
William Shakespeare wrote 37 plays; in a “3-4-5″ right triangle, the small angle is approximately 37 degrees; there were 37 extramarital affairs on Dallas during the 1980s; a world-record meatloaf contained 37 pounds of spices; “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss was sentenced to 37 months in prison; the 37th Greek word in Strong’s dictionary is “hagiazo”, which is translated as “hallow,” “be holy,” or “sanctify”; The Hindenburg took 37 seconds to burn (in 1937); Tyrannosaurus rex had 37 vertebrae in its tail; Hannibal brought 37 elephants with him on his conquest of Rome; 37 seconds elapsed between the sighting of the iceberg and its collision with the Titanic; Dennis the peasant in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is 37, and so am I. (All of these claims, except for the last one, are taken from 37 Heaven, a web site devoted to the number 37. I won’t start harassing the administrator of 37 Heaven for not including the fact that I am 37 years old until after a full 37 hours have passed since the start of my birthday.)
Scrivener March 11th, 2008
Youngest: I’m a dolphin.
Eldest: No, I’m a dolphin.
Y: No, I’m a dolphin.
E: No, I’m a dolphin.
Y: Ok, I’m the dolphin queen.
E: No, I’m the dolphin queen and you’re the dolphin princess.
Y: Yeah, and pretend I’m about to get married. Because I met the perfect guy.
Scrivener March 10th, 2008
Scrivener February 20th, 2008
Sitting out gymnastics b/c she’s sick, originally uploaded by Scrivenings.
Can you tell? She just finished taking the antibiotics for strep throat a couple of days ago, but now she appears to be relapsing.
Scrivener December 25th, 2007
Merry Christmas to all my friends and readers who celebrate Christmas and seasons greetings to everyone!
The girls and I have just finished opening presents. I got them each their very own tool box and then a bunch of tools to go in them, since they’ve both been asking to spend time building stuff with me. Eldest has plans for building some sort of shelving unit in her room, which hopefully I can get her to articulate just a bit more clearly and then we’ll work on that soon. Youngest helped me put together the new Ikea bedside tables last month, which meant that a 30 minute job took about four hours, but it was lots of fun and quite a good educational opportunity–following step-by-step directions, fine motor skills, lots and lots of counting, matching real objects with line drawings, the physics of a drawer pull, spatial reasoning, and so on–and since then she’s been asking for more projects like that, “but bigger.” There has been talk of building a tree house/fort-thing of some sort in the backyard come spring, too, so that should be a great way for us to spend time together productively engaged and learning new skills, for all of us. So I got them tools as a way of kicking off that time together as much as anything, rather than just getting them more stuff that they won’t care about any more in three weeks.
I also got Eldest a cheap digital camera. She sees me taking so many pictures that she’s been begging for her own camera for a couple of years now and I’ve been saying for a while that when I can get a decent camera for under $100, I’d do it, so when I saw I could get her a 7.1 megapixel Nikon Coolpix for $99, I got it. I’m hoping that we can spend have some photowalk outings together and spend some time learning to be better photographers together.
And of course, I got them books and a few little toys, mostly puzzles and craft things from the dollar bins at Michaels. Other than the camera, the present they are most immediately excited about is the one DVD they got: the 20th anniversary edition of The Princess Bride. Their lists to Santa were filled with princess and Barbie items (though they did add tools to the list entirely on their own), so even though I didn’t get them any of those I can still say I got them something princess.
And now my gift to you all: I’ve put together a mix. Even though none of it is holiday music, consider it my holiday gift to y’all. Because I don’t have the software necessary to zip the files, you’ll have to download each mp3 separately.
I’m Sending Out My Mind to You and You and You Mix:
Lull, Andrew Bird - 5.2 MB
Solace for the Lonely, RobinElla - 3.4 MB
Hand On Your Heart, Jose Gonzalez - 3.6 MB
Peng!, Iron & Wine -3.4 MB
I Am What I Am, Adrian Belew - 4 MB
Nail in the Sky, Howe Gelb - 2.8 MB
Wasp Nest, The National - 3.2 MB
The Lone Wolf, Kathleen Edward - 4.7 MB
I Am A Cinematographer, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - 2.8 MB
10 Miles To Go On A 9 Mile Road, Jim White - 4.5 MB
Don’t Worry Honey, Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, Anders Parker - 4.1 MB
There Are Too Many Birds, Arthur & Yu - 5.1 MB
The Apple Tree, Peter and The Wolf - 2.1 MB
Cool Kids Keep, The American Analog Set - 3.6 MB
Radiation Vibe, Hem - 3.6 MB
Miss Sarajevo, Passengers - 5.3 MB
I’m not certain whether the cover art that I put together will automatically be encoded with the songs, but if it’s not, you can grab the jpeg here.
It’s not exactly one of Beth’s omnibus Friday mix tapes, I limited myself to only as much time as I would have if I was physically burning this onto a CD to send to each and every one of you. Hopefully some of this is new to many of you. I did not specifically choose these songs to be any sort of statement about my current state of mind or anything, so resist the urge to read this list as autobiographical, even though as I was listening to it the last time through before uploading it, I realized that the urge would probably be there for many of you. This is just a halfway mellow music mix, which I put together as much as anything because I have wanted to put “I Am What I Am” into a mix for ages and keep not quite managing to do so.
Oh, and by the way, yes, that is Luciano Pavarotti singing on the last track of the mix. With U2, who put out this album of fake soundtrack music under the name Passengers a while back. Most of the album is only alright, but I do love “Miss Sarajevo” (and “Elvis Ate America” is pretty good too).
Happy holidays!!!