83 Durant St

Winterfest-ier

2012-02-11T15:13:00.000-05:00

Today we were back at Winterfest, and boy was it terrific. We went the Museum Mitten Madness events at the Lowell High School cafeteria. It was set up with all kinds of activities for kids. Lucy got to meet The Cat in the Hat:

He was telling riddles. They were pretty bad riddles, involving food puns she didn't understand, but it was all very funny to her nonetheless.

The Cat in the Hat was at the Visiting Nurses' Association (VNA) table, where she got to make a paper chain featuring her favorite foods.

We also got to meet LuLu, the sheep mascot of the Textile History Museum.

Lucy went from station to station, making each craft, including a beaded bracelet, a decorated fleece scarf (the pink one she's wearing in the pictures), a feathered and bejeweled mask (shown here):

and a rag doll. She played bean bag tosses and a hockey game (that she played last summer at the Folk Festival):

She also got some crayons, a coloring book, a fire-fighter hat:

I didn't know they came in hot pink! She got to visit some real sled dogs:

and there were CUPCAKES (to celebrate Charles Dickens' Birthday!)

There is just SO MUCH to LOVE about LOWELL!!!!

WINTERFEST

2012-02-10T20:46:00.000-05:00

It's WINTERFEST here in Lowell! We love Winterfest. We went down to partake of the festivities tonight and it was downright balmy out there!

We watched the first round of Human Dogsled Races:

There were also fire-dancers and fire-eaters (sorry, no photos of that, but it was pretty impressive). Lucy had the best seat in the house (and a glowstick):

And then we had a special treat: the largest marshmallows we've ever seen:

They had a whole toast-your-own thing happening. Lucy opted to keep hers in their raw state, though she did taste my toasted one (hence the string o' mallow-sticky-goodness on her face there).
We're in for more fun tomorrow, with more sled races, kid-friendly fun (free cupcakes, balloon animals, a magician!), and also a visit from actual sled-dogs (Lucy is particularly excited about this part). We'll hopefully have more to post after the events.

Live-blogging the (last bit of) the Superbowl

2012-02-05T21:23:00.002-05:00

So here we are, watching the Super Bowl. Many of you will be surprised by this. But we've sort of adopted our local culture in all its sometimes alien rituals. And yelling "GO PATS!" periodically is part of that ritual. Generally, the only football we watch is the football that appears on the TV show Friday Night Lights, but we've made an exception. (By the way, even if you don't like football, Friday Night Lights is amazing and you should watch it.)

Lucy even got into watching a bit of the first quarter. She and Ruth stared at the screen for a while, not quite understanding what was going on. I had to go a dinner with a job candidate, so I missed all the first-quarter excitement. But I got home in time to see the halftime show. I was kind of excited to see the Madonna show. I can't believe she did "Vogue," which is a horrible song. While watching, though, I was hit with a high school memory I'd thought I'd forgotten, when my friends Lisa and Cara and a bunch of other girls and I did a talent show lip-sync to the song. We were not, however, carried into our performance by Roman Centurions, as Madonna was this evening. Wow, Madonna. I would have made some other musical choices, but it was a fun show nonetheless. The high point was when the two drumlines came out for "Express Yourself." I love a drumline. Seriously, there should be more marching bands for halftime shows. I guess I'm seriously channeling my high school self tonight. Oops.

So we're up 17 - 15 right now. GO PATS!

Updates as events warrant.

______

Conversations with Lucy (TM) Super Bowl Edition:

So Lucy was very excited about the Super Bowl, but we found ourselves wondering just what she knew about the game. We were surprised by her excitement, and then we realized just how little she understood "the Super Bowl" when she asked "When can I see it flying?"

Excuse me?

It turns out, Lucy believed that what the world was gearing up for was the "Super Bull," which, in her mind, was a sort of Super-Man like Bull. Of course. Completely understandable. Who WOULDN'T be excited about seeing a flying bull? With super-powers? Come to think of it, I would MUCH rather be watching the Super Bull right now. Would he wear a cape? Would he have a lasso of truth?

Once Jake cleared up that it was not, in fact, a "bull," she wanted to know why it was called a "Bowl." Anyone? Bueller? We don't know either. So she had a lot of questions, and we had very, very few good answers.

But she was down with the whole "GO PATS!" thing, so she's all set for school.

______
Bridget's Super Bowl Commercials Review:

I was appropriately charmed by the Matthew Broderick commercial, which I know was for a car, but I'm not sure which one. So, uh, I'm not sure that's actually a success for the advertiser. And let's face it, I'm pretty much smack in the middle of the demographic for that ad.

I really liked the commercial for the Samsung Galaxy Note, though it is a product I will never purchase.

The Clint Eastwood commercial was just creepy.

_______________
Crap! NY just scored. 21 - 17. Crap!
______________

Crap! We just lost. Again.
A Super Bull WOULD have been better.

Snow! (and last blast of vacation!)

2012-01-21T19:26:00.001-05:00

It has finally snowed here. It's a reasonable (and not unreasonable) snowfall. Lucy and Jake were sledding in the back yard, Carter was grudgingly trundling through it, and I was shoveling (twice). But it's light and fluffy, and things haven't been icy. And it all came on Saturday, so there was no crazy rush about everyone trying to get to work. It's been a nice day of baking gingerbread (YUM!) and drinking hot chocolate (Lucy is a HUGE fan) and hanging out about the house playing games that Lucy has been making up. Awesome.

Tomorrow, we're heading to the Museum of Science with cousins Cole and Bianca. We're very excited. Afterwards, it's dinner with Matt & Mary & Ruth & Woody. Again, totally excited. Sounds like a perfect day to me! The semester starts on Monday, but for tomorrow, it's still VACATION!

Darn you, Rick Perry!

2012-01-19T22:03:00.000-05:00

So I try to avoid both religion and politics for the most part on this blog. But today the news cycle caught up with me in a big way. Rick Perry pulled out of the race. I am neither surprised nor saddened by this, but here is a piece of what he said in his endorsement of candidate Newt Gingrich:

". . . . And Newt is not perfect, but who among us is? The fact is, there is forgiveness for those who seek God and I believe in the power of redemption. . . . " {I checked this quote transcript on a few sites and all seem to have it this way}

I was listening to this on the car radio (yes it was NPR). I did an immediate knee-jerk think in my head of "really? forgiveness only for those who seek God? Might it also be necessary to seek out, say, those you may have wronged and maybe ask their forgiveness?" I was in the middle of this thought when a voice piped up from the back seat:

"What's God?"

My thought: "Oh Crap." I haven't prepared for this one.

So Lucy and I had a little talk about God. Thanks, Rick Perry. Thanks, Newt!

I started by asking what Lucy already knew. Here's a rough transcript of the conversation:

Lucy: Sometimes we say "God" when we say grace before dinner.

Me: Yes, that's right. And what else have you heard about God?

Lucy: Beezus talks to God when she does the thing before bed.

[explanatory note: "Beezus" refers to a character in the Beverly Cleary Ramona series, which is very popular here. She pays very close attention to these stories; me, not so much. I need to pay a bit more attention, but I'm assuming she's not making this up.]

Me: Oh. I didn't know that. Beezus is praying. What else?

Lucy: God makes wishes come true.

Me: Oh, uh, well, not quite....

Lucy (interrupting): He has a magic wand! He makes dreams come true!

Me: Oh wow. I don't know about that. We should talk more about this.....

Thereafter ensued a lot of fumbling trying to sort out the notion of different people's beliefs and separating them from a sort of Disney fairy tale. It was all a bit awkward. And quite confusing, for both of us.

Later, we had this exchange:

Lucy: Mommy, what's a lawyer?

Me: What makes you ask that?

Lucy: Miss Judith [a teacher at school] always asks me if my mommy is a lawyer. And today she asked me if my daddy is a lawyer. But I told her that my mommy is a teacher and my daddy works at Seven, the bike place.

So I explained what a lawyer is. It was slightly easier than attempting to explain God.

I can't imagine why a teacher would think that she's related to lawyers.

Here's hoping no one has to be cross-examined by Lucy.

Home again, home again

2012-01-17T22:05:00.001-05:00

We're back from our western adventures. No doubt more adventures await. I know it's been a flurry of posts lately, while I had the time to sit down at the end of lovely days of visiting and being a tourist. The pace of posting will surely slow a bit, but I'll try to keep the blog-light on for you.

For now, there are syllabi to write, laundry to do, and a general settling in for 2012. Wow.

Thanks to all our hosts during our Washington trip. We had a lovely, lovely time!

Lord Love a Duck

2012-01-14T03:30:00.000-05:00

The title of this post is compliments of Donal Sullivan, Rose's dad, who used to exclaim this as a response of disbelief. "Lord Love a Duck" is really a wonderful phrase, and I try to use it whenever I can.

Today was a perfect day for it: we got to hug a duck.

We went to Sequim's Museum and Arts Center, where on Fridays, one of the docents brings her pet duck, Peeper-Squeak. Peeper-Squeak apparently enjoys hugging humans. Or at least, he has been trained to allow this to happen.

Also, notice the mastadon in the back. The mastadon is awesome. They found it here. It's actually the Manis Mastadon. It's a pretty exciting discovery of a Mastadon here North America -- most notably, they were able to determine that it was hit with a human arrowhead -- the first time they had evidence that humans and mastadons lived at the same time! Here's some more info on the Manis Mastadon.

Unfortunately, we did not have the opportunity to hug a mastadon.

But Peeper-Squeak, well, he's a bit of a local celebrity. He has a Facebook page, too. I don't even have a Facebook page (still). Clearly, the duck is part of the ongoing conspiracy to attempt to shame me into joining. If a duck can have a page, surely I should?

Nope.

Still more Washington Wonders

2012-01-13T03:30:00.000-05:00

Thursday started with a necessary task: a car wash. If you're wondering why, read the earlier post about the Olympic Game Farm and you'll understand: buffalo, elk, zebra, and llama spit, in addition to seagulls hanging out on the roof of the car make quite a mess! It was in fact Lucy's first visit to a car wash. She was delighted. It was *almost* as exciting as the trip through the game farm.

After that, we went up to Hurricane Ridge, where Lucy did some sledding. She loved it!

On the way home, we stopped at Feiro Marine Life Center in Port Angeles, where we got to watch an octopus eat a crab!

It was amazing. And we felt VERY lucky, because they don't feed the octopus every day, and we happened to be there at just the right time. Hooray! I heart octopi!

We also got to see (and touch!) cool creatures like sea stars and sea cucumbers. Totally cool!

Here we are outside:

It's been a busy day.

Lucy has been enjoying listening to Bunnicula on audiobook. It's a book I loved as a kid (I believe it was my favorite in the second grade).

She's now onto the sequel, Howliday Inn.

We're getting her trained up early on the basics of the Gothic, and literary studies in general. The other evening, when we got into the car and we realized that we didn't have an of the CDs with us, she protested until we asked her to tell us a story. She started in with her apparently epic, The Nineteen Vampires. It even has chapters.

Olympic Game Farm

2012-01-12T04:00:00.000-05:00

File this under "Wonders of Washington." Seriously.

Today we visited The Olympic Game Farm. You get to drive your car through a large animal farm. You have to sign a waiver, pay them some cash, and then, miraculously, you're off.

It starts out slow, with peacocks. They're pretty lovely. Also, there are bunnies running around everywhere (though they are not pictured here).

But pretty quickly, they start to chase the car.

And there are LOTS of them. Also, there are the seagulls, who quickly start following the car, largely because we have bread. Oh, did I forget to mention that? A key aspect of the game farm is that you buy a couple of loaves of bread at the gate, and you get to feed it to the animals.

Next, you get to the Prairie Dogs. The poor prairie dogs are tough to see because the seagulls are really pushy and excited about the potential bread.

All this is nice, but after this, things get serious. This serious:

Yes, the Zebras like to take bites out of your side mirrors. Look out.

At first, it seems like it's going to be OK. It's just a llama or two, and they seem pretty chill. They like the bread, but they're not too crazy. The smaller ones especially are sort of docile and wait for you to hand out the bread:

Then, the llamas start to circle. Lots of them.

They seemed to maybe have a plan where one would stand in front of the car while the others would all attempt to shove their heads in for bread at the same time.

Then there are the elk. They are beautiful. And HUGE.

And they WILL have your bread. Don't even think you can hide it from them.

They seriously crave carbs. Do not try to hide from the elk. They will sniff you out.

They're also surprisingly photogenic!

There's some video of me freaking out about the elk, but we can't figure out how to get it off the camera and onto the computer. Actually, there were TWO cameras filming my freak out. No one was able/willing to help me while I was wedged between a car seat and the nuzzling elk, but by golly, two people were able to film it. Thanks, John & Jake!

There's also an area with bears:

I believe the bears are actually what started this whole game farm -- the people used to train animals -- especially bears -- for Disney films back in the day.

Then there are the deer -- some young ones -- that are totally adorable. I really liked these two:

Oh, and I almost forgot the buffalo. I didn't get any good pictures, but at least in this one, you can see the tongue:

Yes, that's his tongue sticking out.

So next time you're in Sequim, Washington, you should visit the Olympic Game Farm. But if you're driving a rental car, make sure you have the wild animal insurance. We really need to hit a car wash -- buffalo slobber is really nasty!

Books

2012-01-11T02:00:00.000-05:00

So we spent a bit of time at a local thrift shop called Serenity House, where we found a few great books. The first was
Matilda, Who Told Such Dreadful Lies...

Written by Hilaire Belloc and illustrated by Posy Simmonds.

The plot of the book is a sort of "boy who cried wolf" scenario, with Matilda telling awful lies and then.....well, here's the title of the ORIGINAL version of this story:

Matilda, Who Told Lies and was Burnt to Death.

I am not kidding. Hilaire Belloc was not messing around. I have vivid memories of reading Belloc's Bad Child Book of Beasts when I was a kid. Hilaire Belloc (1870 - 1953) was a French-Anglo writer -- and he wrote a lot -- and his "Cautionary Tales" are really quite terrific -- in the sense of really terrifying!

So I was very pleased with my purchase. When we got it home, I looked at it a bit more closely and noticed an inscription on the inside of the front cover, reading "To Melissa: On Dec 2 1995 -- First Confession at Queen of Angels in Port Angeles!"

For readers unfamiliar with the specifics here, "First Confession" is a rite of the Catholic Church that comes before your First Communion -- typically when you're in about the first grade. While First Communion is often an occasion for celebration (lots of folks invite families and have a little party and the young person receives gifts such as books, a bible, a rosary, etc.), First CONFESSION, at least in my experience, is a rather somber moment, and certainly not one that involves parties or presents. In fact, in my own recollection (and that of some of my Catholic friends) First Confession was a somewhat terrifying experience, because you had to sit down and remember all the sins you had committed and then tell a priest ALL of them, and not forget about any of them, or that was another sin, and then you had to go to Confession again (or at least that's what we thought). And again, we were first graders. We didn't really HAVE much to confess. (Yes, Brendan, I know I had locked you in the closet several times by this point, but really, a sin?)

Anyway, the person who inscribed this book to poor little Melissa was commemorating what was possibly a scary thing by giving her a book in which the young, female protagonist tells a lie and then is burned up in a fire. Wow. Now that's a heck of a gift!

In slightly less terrifying book purchases, we also acquired a copy of Eric Carle's Pancakes, Pancakes!

It's one delicious read!

More Wonders from Washington

2012-01-10T10:00:00.000-05:00

Hummingbirds. Just, you know, hovering around. Several times a day.

Exploring Washington

2012-01-09T17:24:00.000-05:00

So we're on the West Coast, visiting with the Bridges and the Livingstons, and having a quite lovely time. Every time we're here, it never ceases to amaze me how different the terrain, the sky, and the vegetation are. It's like moving to another planet. It's distinctly Endor-ish here (and yes, Brendan, I know Endor (the forested one) is a moon, not a planet).

Today we hiked around at Port Williams, where Lucy collected numerous specimens to bring home.

We were able to prevail upon her to not bring this home:

Yes, I also thought it was a bloody tissue. But no, it turns out that it's a local kelp, and it's called a Turkish Towel. Yup. So those of you who have been paying big bucks for your fancy 100% cotton Turkish bath towels should be aware that you can just pick them up -- for free -- on the shores of the Olympic peninsula.

Here's another specimen that we did not bring home:

I should have something in there to give you a sense of scale, but these things are huge, and very, very long. They're called Bull Kelp, or Bullwhip Kelp. The bottom end attaches to a rock in the ocean, and the top -- the big bulbous end -- is filled with gas so that it can float. I remember seeing them the first time I was out here and they really freaked me out. They are creepy. They still creep me out. Today, which I mentioned this fact, John asked if I knew what they were filled with. I suggested that they might be filled with evil, and John said, no, they're filled with toxic carbon monoxide, so that when some little creature bites into them....well, let's just say, they don't get a second bite. So to be clear, this is a kelp that grows to over 100 feet long, has a bulbous head-like thing, and IS FILLED WITH POISON GAS. Clearly, this kelp is Evil. Also, I just read that this stuff is the fastest-growing seaweed in the world: it can grow up to 2 feet per day. Evil has enormous growth potential. Beware.

We did see lots of lovely, non-evil things. Lucy delightedly collected lots of shells, including some that once belonged to some crabs. I rather liked this one:

and I liked this uprooted tree quite a lot:

Also, the trees out here (when they're not uprooted and lying on the beach) are HUGE. Here's one on the land where Nellie has her cottage:

Trees! I tell you, they're amazing.

We hope to do some further exploring in the next few days and I'll try to post again.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T11:24:00.001-05:00

Welcome, 2012. Hope you're as excited as Lucy about heading into a happy and healthy New Year!

Lucy is working on a painting project, Jake is out for a bike ride. It's a beautiful, almost unbelievably warm day here. We've been reading Lucy Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. A nice start to the year, indeed.

For the afternoon, we had some fun taking care of our friend Sue's kitties:

And yes, there are kitties, but the picture only features one (Ickle) because Dorian is clearly terrified of Lucy. Ickle is the brave one. Lucy LOVES these cats.

After a family walk on the riverwalk (shown above), Jake made us some lovely cocktails:

Not to worry, that one is a kid-friendly cocktail.

Lucy wore her lovely party hat and hosted a fete for some of her stuffed animals.

We particularly enjoyed sipping our first fancy cocktails using our Christmas presents -- Jake got me these lovely vintage martini glasses. They're a light green color -- "Depression Glass," I think? But surely someone else out there (Sadowski?) knows better than me. Rose got me these lovely cocktail napkins, too. Delightful! I declare 2012 "Year of the Cocktail"!

AQUARIUM!

2011-12-30T23:02:00.000-05:00

We love the New England Aquarium. We had a lovely time there today with our hosts, Ian and Elizabeth, who are New England Aquarium AMBASSADORS, which means we got to cut in line. This was particularly good because the place was mobbed. Lucy loved it.

Due to an unfortunate combination of poor photography skills (mine) and low light levels in the aquarium, we don't really have any good pictures that convey her JOY at seeing all the creatures. She would have stood at each tank for hours, I think, if we'd let her.

Before going into the aquarium, we ran around by the waterfront for a while. Lucy really enjoyed this large sculpture:

And then after the Aquarium, we headed to Cambridge and enjoyed a lovely lunch at the All-Star Sandwich Bar, followed by Christina's for ICE CREAM. See evidence:

For previous views of our visits to Christina's (and the ensuing messiness) you might take a look at this. Or this. Or even this. Christina's is amazing. For specific flavor choices on this visit: Jake had Kulfi, Bridget had coconut-Butterfingers, and Lucy had (well, there's no denying it) -- CHOCOLATE.

Getting Ready for 2012

2011-12-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Lucy asked us yesterday: "Can I stay up until MIDNIGHT on New Year's Eve?"

We didn't even know she was aware of the upcoming holiday, let alone that she knew that it involved something called "midnight," another concept that she discovered without our help.

What do you think? She already made her own hat* and everything:

Should we let her stay up?
*She made the hat at school, where she apparently learned all about this midnight thing....thanks, teachers!

Book Reviews (Children's Book Edition)

2011-12-28T22:06:00.000-05:00

Lucy received some lovely books for Christmas, so I write to sing the praises of some her most recent favorites.

Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney

This is a lovely story with lovely pictures. It's the tale of an old lady who goes by the name "Miss Rumphius" or "the Lupine Lady," and tells of how she planted the lupine all over her lovely land. If you've been to Maine, you'll know what I'm talking about here -- the lupine are everywhere, and so very very lovely. Miss Rumphius's goal (which she passes on to the young girl in the book, and thus, the reader, too) is to make the world more beautiful. This seems a lovely aspiration. The book pleases me and makes me want to make the world more beautiful, too.

Children Make Terrible Pets by Peter Brown

I love the illustrations in this, which feature an adorable bear. That bear's name: Lucy. Too perfect. In this book, said bear goes out into the world and finds a child. She thinks it would be great to make that child into a pet. But, as the title explains, "Children make terrible pets." It's a keeper. We actually checked this out from the library and accumulated some overdue fines for it. We got Lucy another book by this author for Christmas: YOU WILL BE MY FRIEND!, which is also pretty great.

I think our previous review of favorite children's books neglected to mention another of our favorite authors, Mo Willems. He's responsible for the insanely popular "Pigeon" books, including such classics as Pigeon Wants a Puppy, and Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, which were in heavy rotation a couple years ago.

He is also responsible for the whole Elephant and Piggie series, which seems pretty huge. We have three or so of them; my favorite is There is a Bird on my Head:

But there are tons more. Elephant and Piggie have some great comic back-and-forth, and they discuss important questions like "Are you ready to play outside?" "Can elephants dance?" and "Should I Share My Ice Cream?" These are the tough questions kids have to face, and Elephant and Piggie help kids figure out the answers.

We're also very excited about a new development at one of our favorite publishers: McSweeney's. Warning: unless you have a lot of time on your hands, or a huge amount of self-restraint in the browsing of the internets, don't click that link. You can easily lose hours (pleasant hours!) spinning around McSweeney's Internet Tendencies. The list of grammar- and punctuation-related bar jokes is worth the price. We're also big fans of Open Letters to People or Entities Not Likely to Respond.
They now have a brand new children's imprint: McSweeney's McMullens. This link will take you to the page with links to the first four books in the series (we've already signed up for it & so far, they are amazing!).

That's all for now, but I hope to do more book-reviewing soon. There are so many wonderful children's books -- Lucy's luck....and so are we!!

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T06:00:00.000-05:00

Making Christmas

2011-12-24T11:55:00.000-05:00

Stockings hung on the stairway with care:

Check.
I made the one on the left -- it's Jake's. I'm pleased with it, and I think he is, too.

Very large Christmas Tree:

Check.
That's the smokestack Christmas Tree downtown above the mills.

Ridiculously excited child:

Check.
Those are her new "fantasy animal puppets," a present she got to open on Christmas Eve. Lucky girl. The students at a local high school bought a present for each child at Lowell Day Nursery. Wow.

Jake and Lucy have been busy making an enchanted forest:

Want a closer look?
That's meringue mushrooms and candied cranberries

Hope you're having a lovely Christmas Eve, wherever you are.

Grades done!

2011-12-21T20:26:00.002-05:00

Finally! Finished grading papers. Now all I have is all the other crap that has piled up. Ugh!

Still lots to do, but glad to have that off my plate. Onward!

Best Books of 2011*

2011-12-19T14:42:00.002-05:00

What I should be doing right now is grading. Grading the stack of 65 or so final papers that were turned in today. Grading them, so that I can finish final grades, so that I can kiss this semester goodbye. But if you've ever faced a stack of grading, I imagine you know exactly what I'm about to do: ANYTHING BUT GRADE THOSE PAPERS. It's perverse, I know. On with the procrastination then:

* Also, a disclaimer: I'm calling this "Best Books of 2011," but don't be fooled; few of these books were *published* in 2011. The year designation simply indicates that I finally got around to reading them. Also, the only reviews you're going to read are good reviews. For the most part, I don't even finish books I don't like. Let that be a warning to you.

Also, a hazard of my job is that there's not a lot of "fun reading" in my life. Almost any reading I do is from the pile of books I want and/or should read because they're related to something I teach. That said, a lot of the books I read for teaching and research really are fun. Some are not. But the thing is, even when I'm reading the fun ones, I'm thinking about work. This ends up with me doing a lot less actual fun reading, and also in me finding a lot of my "fun" reading is also work reading. Did that make any sense? I imagine you'll notice some tendencies in the texts below, given that you may know the classes I teach.

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Are you ashamed of reading Twilight? You should be. Would you like to read about vampires and feel less dirty? Then read A Discovery of Witches. It's by an actual historian and is about a historian who goes digging around in the archives and discovers a long-lost manuscript. (Yes, it has shades of Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian, but it's different, I swear. Oh, and Kostova's book is also awesome.) So, the historian is a witch. From Salem. Also, there are vampires. And demons. And the whole thing is awesome. I'm only about a third of the way through (it's LONG!) but I am singing its praises now, already. If you have any interest whatsoever in vampires and vampire lit, you will find this very pleasing.

One More Theory About Happiness by Paul Guest

Paul Guest is a poet; I teach some of his poems in my Disability in Literature course. I picked this up -- it's a memoir-- thinking that I might use it in my course, so it was in the pile of "books to read for class." One evening, I picked it up just to check it out, and I seriously could not put it down. It's really terrific. And not just for my class (though it may show up on a future syllabus). Guest had a freak accident when he was 12: he was thrown from a bike he was riding, and ended up paralyzed from the neck down. Given the number of bicycles in our basement, and the sheer number of bike miles completed by our household, this is a shiver-inducing piece of information. Guest's memoir goes back to that day that changed his life, and explores all that has happened since that day. This could be morose, it could be depressing, and it could be awful. But he writes beautifully, with great detail and clarity. I was blown away. It's a great, compelling, don't-close-it-til-you're-done read.

The Dewbreaker by Edwidge Danticat

This one is not for any of my classes. In fact, I'm not entirely sure why I picked it up. I know nothing about the subject matter or setting (Haiti in the 1960s), and I think this was actually a freebie -- a book a publisher sent me as a thank-you for doing a survey or something of that sort. I'm not sure why I picked it up, but I couldn't put it down. The story just keeps going, with different characters taking pieces of it, telling a chapter, then passing it on. It moves from Haiti to NYC, it has characters of all different sorts. I'm not going to give away the details, because I knew nothing about it before I started, and I think that's a totally fine way to go into it. But it's really great. You won't be disappointed.

That's all for now. I'm calling it a day and heading home with the stack of papers. I really must grade.

MUST GRADE.

more later, no doubt.

On Partying and Parenting

2011-12-16T09:02:00.001-05:00

It's that most wonderful time of the year when there are lots of holiday parties. These parties tend to be in the evening, and often start at Lucy's bedtime. This always leaves us with the question of whether or not we should bring her along. We have a couple of babysitter possibilities, but when we broach the subject with Lucy, it goes like this:

Bridget: Rebecca is coming over on Thursday evening.
Lucy: I DON'T WANT TO BE BABYSAT!
Bridget: But you like Rebecca. You had a great time with her last time.
Lucy: I DON'T WANT TO BE BABYSAT! Are you going to a movie? I can go to a movie now!
Bridget: We're not going to a movie. We're going to a.....thing for Daddy's work.
Lucy: Is it a party? I want to go.

So you see, it's a problem. But we got our babysitter despite Lucy's outcry. And in fact, she does have a very nice time with Rebecca, despite the protests. So last night was the party, and I began to feel that the world was conspiring against my going:

First, the babysitter didn't have a car due to some unusual circumstances. No problem: I would pick her up and drop her off.

Next: I have a cold with a nasty cough and have been feeling pretty awful. But I decided that a night out would be good.

Next: I am dressed and ready to go. The babysitter is here, getting situated. I am in the bathroom with Lucy. She throws up. Directly onto me. Wow. So I'm trying to calculate the process of getting her cleaned up, me cleaned up, getting all of us back into the car to take Rebecca home, call it a night. But Lucy is miraculously saying that she feels fine. She's fine. Can she watch Dora? With Rebecca? So after consultation with Jake (who is at work, waiting for me) and Rebecca (who very kindly tells me that her brother used to make himself throw up when he didn't want to do something), I decide to change and go. Right on. Vomiting child WILL NOT STOP ME. (Quick, call the "Best Parent in the World" prize committee!)

After a drive to pick up Jake, and then a drive to the party, we end up circling for 45 minutes -- I am not exaggerating, it was 45 minutes -- in order to find a place to park in Davis Square (this is not, I suppose, an entirely unusual thing in this neighborhood). It was nuts.

But finally, we made it: to Sacco's Bowl Haven. They have candlepin bowling. And they have pizza. And beer. And it was awesome. It was our first time doing the candlepin bowling, and we're hooked. ALL work parties should involve bowling.

And they even had a goodie bag for Lucy. All the other kids of the folks at the office were there, so we were feeling, again, like candidates for that "Best Parents Ever (NOT)" award. But she really was having a a fine time with Rebecca. And we were having a fine time without her. Hooray!

More posting should be expected tomorrow: Lucy's school's Winter Songfest is this afternoon, and there's sure to be something to say!

2011 Photo with Santa

2011-12-13T19:58:00.001-05:00

For some comparisons, for last year's picture with Santa at school, go here. For Carter & Lucy & Santa last year, go here. Or check out Santa: The Terror: here.

Firsts

2011-12-09T20:52:00.001-05:00

Some recent firsts:
Last Friday, we took Lucy (and her BFF Ruth) to see their first movie in a movie theater! We went to see the Muppets, which is so incredibly awesome, if you haven't seen it, you should stop reading right now and go see it. Seriously, it's terrific. Lucy has been singing one of the songs pretty much constantly ever since. She particularly like the character Mary, played by our household friend, Amy Adams. Nice.

Today we had two firsts:
Lucy went ICE SKATING for the first time:

She LOVED it. She used the milk crates at first, but got pretty brave and was soon out-skating us (not that that is very hard!)
Time for skate lessons!!!

After the skating, we went to see a HOCKEY GAME (also a Lucy first). We all got jerseys!! It was amazing. Lucy LOVED it!

We even got to visit with Santa. Lucy was a bit apprehensive. When Santa asked what she wanted for Christmas, she froze. He told her she could write a letter.

Here's our little hockey fan, taking in the game (BC v UML). We scored twice in the first period. We left after that, as we had a very tired family.

Go Riverhawks!!!!

Here we are in a photo taken by UML's photographer, Joanne Sherburne:

Creating Christmas

2011-12-03T18:56:00.001-05:00

Things have been busy as always 'round 83 Durant, but with a bit more of a holiday twang.

Lucy and Jake picked up a Christmas tree on Friday after (Lucy's) dance class. We decorated it today. There are wreaths on the doors, and electric candles in the windows. As I type, Pandora is playing some horrible "Christmas tunes" station, which is not yet completely unbearable.

We are still eating Turkey. Jake has made Turkey Tetrazzini, Turkey Tacos, and Turkey Gumbo. Tonight, it's still more turkey-in-gravy-over-cornbread-stuffing. I'm not complaining (really) but wow, we really cooked a bit much on Thanksgiving!

We've been doing a bit of crafting. We also went to Western Ave Studios to witness (and purchase) some crafting & arting. Then we went to Michaels' so as to stock up our own (massive) supplies of Christmas craftiness. It's exciting times 'round here.

Photos to follow...having some camera snafus at the moment, but we'll get it eventually.

Speaking of my inability to properly operate a camera, Jake has just made the most magnificent cocktails ever. Primary ingredient: home-infused local cranberry vodka. Amazing. But then he also made "not-so-simple-syrup" (simple syrup with some cinnamon) which is also featured. Really, you must have one.

Cheers!

Here's our elf.

Banking Update; History Lesson

2011-11-28T16:55:00.001-05:00

I'm delighted to report today that we are officially free of Bank of America! We walked down this afternoon and closed all of our accounts. We've completely moved everything over to Jeanne d'Arc Credit Union. Hooray.

Our brief (well, too long) visit to the local branch only served to confirm our belief that we were doing the right thing. Don't get me wrong, the tellers and everyone who work at that branch are lovely folks, and we like them. They have always tried to help us, even going against BofA's asinine rules and requirements and fees. But the branch is seriously under-served. There is ALWAYS a line, and there is not physically enough room for the number of customers they regularly have. The facility is small, cramped, overheated, and smelly. I feel bad for the folks who work there.

We're also very fed up with the way BofA treats long-time customers, particularly those with smaller accounts. We overheard an older couple who were demanding to know (in heavily accented English) why they were being charged $6 a month for their checking after all these years of it being free. As is typical, the folks who can least afford extra fees are the only ones who have to pay them. The bank employee explained that they had previously used direct deposit, but now that they didn't, there were fees. The fact that in this economic climate, tons of people are losing their jobs, and thus don't even have a paycheck to direct deposit seemed not to factor into the regulations. The bank employee could only offer that if they switched to online banking from their home computer, their fees would be less. This clearly wasn't an option for this couple.

So we're delighted to be free of that mess. Triumph!

In other news, Lucy came home this afternoon and asked to watch a movie -- one of the Peanuts specials we have. We recently acquired the whole DVD box set of Halloween/Thanksgiving/Christmas specials. Lucy specifically requested one of the lesser-known specials: The Mayflower Voyagers. I asked why she liked this one. Her response: "People die in this one."

I'll let you pause to pick up your jaw (at least I had to).

Wow. I'm not sure if I'm more taken aback by the fact that a Peanuts special features death, or that it's Lucy's favorite one because of that fact. She's our little Sarah Vowell, I suppose.

I have yet to watch the episode, although I clearly need to do so immediately.

Buy Nothing Day

2011-11-25T19:21:00.001-05:00

We celebrated Buy Nothing Day by going to our favorite zoo -- Stone Zoo. It was lovely.

The kids are having a great time playing together, and we're enjoying watching them.

We just finished Thanksgiving Dinner, Part Deux: Rise of the Leftovers. It was awesome.

Lucy went to her dance class this morning; she's loving it.

Tomorrow we do the whole downtown Lowell Holiday celebration, with parade, Art stroll, hot chocolate and the like. Delightful.

Also, tomorrow will feature Thanksgiving Dinner, Part Three: Leftovers with a Vengeance.

What's cookin'

2011-11-24T08:26:00.001-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving to all.
All day yesterday, our house was filled with the awesome smells of Jake preparing for Thanksgiving dinner! Yum!
Here's what we've (Jake, my mom, and I) made so far:

Cornbread Stuffing
"Regular" stuffing
Cranberry sauce
Cranberry vodka (may also be referred to as "Cranberry sauce")
Sweet potato cassarole
Pecan pie
Pumpkin pie
Chocolate tart
Apple pie
Cranberry-raspberry-Jello salad

Here's what's going on today:

Turkey 1 ("normal" turkey, currently cooking in our oven, from Elm Turkey Farm in Dracut)
Turkey 2 (some sort of heritage breed...currently cooking up at Matt & Mary's, from John Crow Farm)
Mashed potatoes
Green beans
Creamed onions
Brussels sprouts (with some manner of bacon/maple glaze
Roasted butternut squash
Purple cabbage

I will probably update the list later.....I'm sure there's more.

Anyway, all is well here. Jennifer, Brendan, and Luke are here; Paul and Kathy will arrive later for dinner. We're borrowing Matt & Mary's oven to keep up with the madness. Woo hoo!

Pies in action:

Hope you're eating well, wherever you are!

1pm update:
Lucy's "napping" in our room, so I am too. Don't tell her I'm typing.
We watched some of the Macy's Day parade. It's kind of a tradition here -- Brendan actually marched in the parade one year, and I went into the city to watch him. It was awesome.

We also watched some of the Dog Show, which is a more recent tradition. Carter really likes it.

Turkeys are cooking away as planned. We're excited about trying two different kinds of birds. We're not completely sure *which* heritage breed we got, but it should prove an interesting taste test.
YUM!

A little math problem

2011-11-20T16:37:00.001-05:00

Please add the following:
4 4-year old children
3 2- year old children
3 6-or-more-year old children

plus their parental units.

plus one dog (on the hunt for food & love).

Time's up!

The correct answer: TOTAL CHAOS.

And also, a Happy Four-Year Old Lucy.
She had a great time at her party, as did everyone. Hooray!

Updates from the tenure year

2011-11-17T09:18:00.001-05:00

My tenure case has now officially passed both the Department's review process and (just yesterday) the College Personnel Committee. The voting at both levels (and for all five of us) has been unanimously in favor of tenure for me/us, which is a good thing.
It's off to the Dean next week.
Then University Rank & Tenure.
Then Chancellor.
There might be a few stages in there that I'm missing, because we don't get final word until May. May 2012.
But who's counting?

In other, less anxiety-producing news, today is Lucy's Birthday! She's FOUR! We can hardly believe it. Here are some pictures of Lucy, Age 4:

(We're in the slow & frustrating process of trying to grow bangs out!!)

I have a backlog of blog posts I need to write....hope to get to those soon!

Happy November to all!

Trick or Treat!

2011-11-06T21:12:00.003-05:00

After a week's delay, we finally had Trick or Treat here in Lowell. We had a lovely time. We spent the pre-trick-or-treat prep time up at Matt & Mary's house, where all the kids -- Lucy, Ruth, Woodrow, Henry, and Audrey -- were getting dressed up and revved up for the night. By 5 pm they were asking "When can we go? When can we go?" and it was still a whole hour until the festivities were officially beginning. Yikes!

The kids had a tremendous time. I was at home to give out candy to our trick or treaters (so as to avoid having our house get egged [fingers crossed!]). Carter was all kinds of worked up about it. He got into the spirit of the season by dressing up, too:

Yup. He's a reindeer. The neighborhood kids LOVED seeing him.

Hope your trick or treat was a good one!

We hate Bank of America

2011-11-04T13:39:00.001-04:00

We bought our house using a loan from Bank of America. We have long been unhappy with this situation due to the various cruddy and unjust things that BofA has done in the mortgage market and on the customer service front. In fact, it was because of some of BofA's behaviors that we got this particular mortgage, which is a special deal (no PMI) because BofA discriminated against our particular neighborhood in the past (they were ordered under a settlement to make more mortgages in our area). Doesn't seem like they learned much of a lesson from their punishment(s).

Last fall, we attempted to refinance with another bank (our local credit union) but were unable to because we're totally underwater on the mortgage. So there was no way out of this relationship. Or so we thought.

Today a letter arrived, letting us know that we are no longer beholden to BofA. They sold our mortgage to another bank, and that's the end of that.

On the one hand, I suppose I shouldn't really be that upset that BofA has sold our loan to someone else. After all, we wanted out, and now we know that they did, too.

But they sold our loan to M&T Bank; M&T doesn't even have a branch office in the entire state of Massachusetts. You know, where we live. We had our frustrations with BofA, but there is a branch just a few blocks away, and in fact, the folks that that branch have been nothing but helpful.

Also, we have some kind of super-premium checking account with BofA, that we got as a benefit of having our mortgage there. Said account supposedly costs $25 a month or something ridiculous without the mortgage. So apparently we need to completely close out our account there to avoid such silliness. Which means we have to change all our banking crap, including direct deposit, credit card automatic payments, our Paypal accounts, our utility bills, and who knows what else. This is an enormous pain in the arse. And, admittedly, one of the other reasons we didn't try so hard to get our accounts away from BofA, given the enormous time suck. There's also the stupid time suck of dealing with the new mortgage (and its attached escrow account) and getting all of those payments set up. I'd like to bill BofA for the time I'm going to have to spend on this; shouldn't I get a cut of whatever they made by selling off my loan?

But we're done. We've had it. We're leaving. And we want to recommend that you do, too. Tomorrow -- November 5th -- is Bank Transfer Day. We're joining the cause and taking our money out of Bank of America and moving it to our local credit union (where we do already have small accounts, but we'll now make them our primary account). Here's to you, Jeanne d'Arc Credit Union. Buh-bye Bank of America.

Halloween (postponed)

2011-10-31T19:53:00.001-04:00

So it's our favorite day of the year, but things have been crazy, crazy, crazy. The storm that blew through has caused a lot of damage. We are fine, and in fact never lost power, but our friends have not fared so well. Just one block up the hill from us, all our wonderful friends have been without power since Saturday night, and may continue so til Wednesday or Thursday...we just don't know. Lowell has postponed Trick or Treat, as have most of the towns in the area. The numbers are bad (as per the Lowell Sun):

National Grid was reporting an estimated 500,000 electrical customers across the state were still without power as of noon Monday. Just in Middlesex County, more than 88,000 National Grid customers were without power.
Dunstable police report that the town is mostly in the dark and could be without power for four days.
Billerica police report that 70 percent of the town is without power and could be for another two or more days.

We're very happy to be safe and warm and fully electrified. More updates when we have them. Hope you're all safe and warm!

Another curious thing (she said)

2011-10-23T07:53:00.003-04:00

Lucy really loves listening to audiobooks. Although Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me and now, Science Friday are still big hits here, she generally prefers to listen to the stories we've checked out from the library or downloaded. The first hits were Roald Dahl's The BFG and The Witches. These, though, have the side effect of raising her anxieties about giants and witches (and clearly that's already an issue in this house without these books). So Jake picked up a Beverly Cleary audiobook -- Henry Huggins -- and our house has been nearly constantly filled with the sound of Stockard Channing's voice (she does a fabulous job with these). We've also acquired Ramona the Pest and Beezus and Ramona. They're terrific. I can't believe I didn't read these when I was a kid. But to get to my point here. Ahem.

Lately, we've noticed that when she's talking to us, or even just to herself (which she sometimes does), Lucy has been providing a narrator's voice. For instance:

Lucy: I want some more milk. she said.
Lucy: Mom, where are my stickers? she exclaimed.
Lucy: Move over, Pa! she said pushing him.

To be clear, she is speaking aloud (though in a different, slightly quieter voice) the stuff in italics. It is really, really weird. And if you ask her about it, she ignores you. So basically, she's her own narrator.

A side note more specific to the books: I just looked up Henry Huggins and discovered to my shock that it was published in 1950. Beverly Cleary is 95, and she's awesome. We've long wanted to visit Portland, Oregon, but now there's yet another reason (a Beverly Cleary pilgrimage).

Anyway, readers, given recent goth-parenting posts and the onset of this new narration situation, anyone want to suggest how much money we should be socking away for Lucy's future therapy bill?

Goth Parenting, Take 2

2011-10-22T19:04:00.005-04:00

So this afternoon we were in the car on a long drive around various farms. I had a few secrets in my purse to entertain Lucy. One of them was a blue squishy stress-ball-thingie in the shape of a brain (they gave them out at work). I gave it to Lucy and she was delighted. Until she remembered the zombies.

Lucy: It's a brain! the zombies will want to eat it!
Me: Well, when the zombies come, you can throw it, and they will go after that fake brain, and then you can escape!
Lucy: But I don't want them to have this brain! I like this brain!
Me: Oh. Sorry. Well, zombies are just pretend anyway! You don't have to worry about them.
Lucy: Mom, why do zombies eat brains?
Me: ....... uh, Jake, help me out here?
Jake:.......
Lucy: Why Do Zombies Eat Brains?
Me: Well, we don't really know, Lucy. Maybe we can ask the internet later.
Lucy: Well, if zombies eat brains, why don't they eat their own brains?
Me: How would they eat their own brains?
Lucy: [sticking out her jaw and making a motion with her hand] Like that.
Me: Oh, awesome. So when you're a zombie, you can eat your own brain.
Lucy: Yes! I'll be a friendly zombie. I won't eat other people's brains. Only my own.

We're going to make millions on this idea. There will be Zombies. Friendly Zombies. Even if they have to eat their own brains.

Also, this tidbit, heard literally moments ago at the dinner table:

Lucy: Mummies are mean, aren't they? MUMMIES -- Not MOMMIES. (she very clearly enuciated each).

Visitor

2011-10-22T18:58:00.002-04:00

Last night, I went to see David Sedaris. He was awesome. While walking home with Mary, we heard a cat crying and crying. We turned around to find it was following us. Mary went her way, and I carried on towards 83 Durant: so did the cat. She's very cute. But we're not a cat household. Little kitty was VERY eager to come inside, and Jake even went out to check on her. We shoo'ed her on her way (with a little help from Carter -- she clearly doesn't like dogs). And we thought we were done.

Oops.

This evening, we heard a plaintive meowing out back. Kitty had made her way around to our back porch (perhaps she spent the night there?) and was eager to join our family. Lucy was DELIGHTED to see her, and the two of them did seem to get on quite well. The poor cat is clearly a housecat -- very affectionate, and totally wants to jump into your arms. But she has no collar.

We fed her. I know we shouldn't have, but we did. She was clearly famished. We're planning to take her to the Lowell Humane Society on Monday if she's still around. She's very sweet, but we just aren't a cat house.
While we were downstairs entertaining this little creature, our actual pet, Carter, was upstairs. Alone. With a table of cheese. Yup. It seems he got himself a nice hunk of smoked gouda for his patience. Carter: smoked gouda; Cat: canned tuna; Humans: we are suckers.

Goth Parenting

2011-10-19T21:30:00.003-04:00

So there are all kinds of parenting guides out there for all sorts of parenting challenges. Like nice, normal, parenting challenges like potty training and temper tantrums, and all that. But there are not a lot of parenting guides that cover the kinds of issues that seem to come up around our house, particularly (though certainly not exclusively) around the Halloween-spooky-story time of year. For example, this evening, Lucy and Carter and I were having a grand time wrestling in the front room. Lucy and I were doing our usual routine of "what does the ___ say," which goes something like this:

Me: What does the vampire say?
Lucy: Muawahaha!
Me: What does the witch say?
Lucy: Heheehehehehe [also: I'll get you my pretty, but she doesn't yet have that one down]
Me: What does the zombie say?
Lucy: BRAINS!!!!!

It's perfect. This evening, she told me quite matter-of-factly, that vampires put people in jail. This came as a shock to me, and this detail does not show up in any of the known (to me) traditional vampire lores (we're strict Stoker-ists 'round here, none of your Stephanie Meyer and her glitter vamps, OK?). But she seemed pretty sure of herself. This leaves me wondering who *else* is giving her this information about vampires and the like. Or perhaps she's just generating her own back stories.

So as our conversation continued, she seemed to grow concerned, indicating that she was worried about witches because "they eat children!" She seemed to be half-serious (at least half) so I was quick to remind her that these were just imaginary creatures, and that she didn't need to be scared. She switched tacks quickly (typical) and asked, with genuine curiousity, "Why do zombies say 'BRAINS'?"

[side note -- are other parents having this conversation with their children?]

So I gave her an honest answer, as I believe all parents should when their children ask difficult questions about zombies:

Zombies say "BRAINS!" because they eat brains.

I said it. Out loud. To 3-year-old Lucy. Her face changed from open interest and curiosity to terror. She was upset. And I felt horrible.

Sigh. Is 3 too early to tell your child about zombies? I dunno.

As she was drifting off to sleep tonight, she asked me (literally while I was in the middle of her lullaby which does NOT include any mention of zombies/witches/vampires): "Mommy, can you hear when you're dead?"

I answered no. She did not have a follow-up question; in fact, she seemed satisfied with the answer.

I foresee some more interesting conversations. I'll try to post again soon.

D'oh!

2011-10-15T08:48:00.002-04:00

There's a crack in the tank of the new toilet. This is lame. It's a hairline crack that you can't see, but it's slowly accumulating droplets of water....which is not good.

Curses! Triumph cancelled. At least until we can get through to customer service and make them fix this.

Blargh!

Plumbing Triumph! New Toilet!

2011-10-14T15:12:00.006-04:00

I've just had the pleasure of using our brand-new toilet! Woo hoo! Jake installed it himself today, and it only required two trips to the hardware store. The second one wasn't even his fault (the bolts that were supposed to be in the box with the wax seal weren't there)! We're delighted, and this should soon have an impact on our water usage here.

Meanwhile down in the basement, the dryer had (we're not sure when) become separated from the vent to the outside. Blargh. Jake also re-fastened that connection. Jake is now having a duly earned beer after conquering major house fix-ups!

There's lots more to say, particularly about our trip to PA last weekend, but we're a bit crazy around here with stuff to do, so I'll try to get to it soon.

Debate De-Briefing

2011-10-04T20:49:00.004-04:00

So we usually try to steer clear of the politics here, but I just attended the Democratic Primary Debate for Massachusetts Senate (for the decision of who will go up against Scott Brown). I'm now trapped (exaggeration) in my office while I wait for the traffic to subside so I can go home, and figured there was no better time than now to put down my immediate reactions to the debate.

The debate was moderated by UML Chancellor Marty Meehan, who simply has to stop walking around all over the stage while he's listening (or more likely, not listening at all) to what the candidates are saying. Seriously. It's totally this tic that he has where he walks around the room where he's talking. I've seen it in other venues, and it's totally distracting. Maybe that's intended, but it looks ridiculous. Like maybe he has to go to the bathroom or something. I realize that typing this here may qualify as biting the hand that feeds me given my current position. But it's intended as constructive criticism. Really. You're distracting the audience from the main point of the debate: the candidates.

And while I'm making perhaps unkind comments about people I generally like, I have to pause here to say this:
Dear four students who were in the rare, pretty awesome position of getting to sit on stage and ask the candidates questions: did you really have to ask about legalizing pot? Really? Also, English major, did it have to be *you* who asked that question? Sigh. Also, the question about "which super hero would you be?" was only made even more lame when the candidates seemed to indicate no real knowledge of said superheroes. Elizabeth Warren, I'm looking at you: the most awesome thing about Wonder Woman is NOT her cool outfit. They were bad answers, but it was not a good question.

So here are my quick candidate reviews:

Marisa DeFranco: You rule. Seriously, you kicked some butt up there. I was very impressed with how she took on the questions, and was forceful and passionate in her answers. She's an immigration lawyer and she fights for foster kids. (My only concern here is that I want her to keep doing THAT job, because my god, someone has to, and please can it be her?) I had never heard of her before the debate, but she really rocked this one. She was the one who unequivocally supports the Wall Street protests, too. OK, so she reminds me *just slightly* of Amy Poehler's character on Parks & Rec, in particular in some of her enunciation and delivery of her lines. She made a great point about how we should pay those who serve in the military at the same rate we pay military contractors.

Elizabeth Warren: OK, she is the reason I went to the debate; she's the recent, high-profile addition to the race. I think she's great and has good ideas. She's wicked smart and speaks truth to power. She did well in the debate, and clearly had a lot of crowd support. She said some surprising things about changing and trimming (her word) regulation for small businesses, which I think is something people wouldn't expect from her. She also had the best line in response to the (again bad) question about "what would you do if you were caught in a mistake": she said "If I had a whole lot of microphones in my face and was being asked to explain something, I wouldn't ask anyone in my family to stand there with me." I thought this was good. But again, not a good question.

Alan Khazei: Has done a ton of great work for City Year and other public/community-service organizations. I believe his heart and head are in the right place. He had a great moment where, in response to a question (I think the one about Wall Street) he suggested that he would appoint Elizabeth Warren to a position to deal with it. Nice. He strikes me as serious and teacher-ly. Like he can explain things in a very clear and explicit way.

Bob Massie: For about the first three quarters of the debate, I had little to no impression of him. He wasn't all that exciting in his answers, until (and I'm forgetting which question he was supposed to be answering) he said "I'm going to take this in a different direction" and then busted out with "we need to reverse the Citizens United decision," then went on to challenge the other candidates (esp. Warren) to refuse PAC money. The crowd went pretty wild, and that seemed to change his tone for the rest; he was stronger in his answers. He also had an impressive answer on the question about women's health and healthcare issues (he has a long backstory of illness & recovery), which made him that much more interesting. I thought his final statement was a bit weak, though, with this kind of weird "we're America and we're great" motif that was a bit off.

Tom Conroy: This guy reminds me of a guy I went to high school with named "Chip." He looks like he could be named "Chip." I should pause here in my cattiness to say that I know I shouldn't judge him based on this, but he just looks too pretty. I would totally smack someone for saying this if he were a female candidate, but that's where it is. He's the rep for Lincoln/Sudbury/Wayland. He's done this big campaign thing he's called the "Town to Town Walk" where he went 650 miles around to talk to people all over the state. I suppose this is a good thing, but the way he markets it (or the way his campaign markets it) it seems oddly resonant of Sarah Palin driving her bus covered with the constitution and her signature all over the country. It's like this weird "of the people" move that ultimately (to me) serves to point out that someone's NOT of the people. He referred a couple times to "on my walk," and this whole manufactured narrative/photo op just doesn't quite sit right.

Herbert William Robinson: Herbert is this race's Jimmy McMillan of the "Rent is Too Damn High Party." Upon looking at the pictures in the program (before the candidates arrived on stage), my friend sitting next to me said, "wow, that guy looks like a real Maine mountain man." He was pretty right-on. Here is an excerpt from what his bio in the debate program says:
"While earning his bachelor's in electrical engineering from Cornell University, Robinson worked as a musician and belonged to Local 132 of the American Federation of Musicians. In partnership with Margo Granfors under the name Towering Pretzels, he recorded a CD."
Herbert leaned heavily on the response "I was an engineer for 30 years and..." He did have the charming habit of having the shortest answers of any of the candidates, but that was because they were often "yes, what the last candidate said, too." He seemed to get a lot of crowd support. One of the (particularly awful) questions was "Have you ever driven under the influence of alcohol?" and every candidate said "no"; Herbert said: "not according to the legal definition." Awesome.

That's all for tonight -- looks like the parking lot has cleared out. Further updates as events warrant. FYI, you can check out coverage (including a video interview w/ one of my colleagues!) at the Boston Herald.

Project Plans

2011-10-04T11:13:00.005-04:00

Check out the new delivery in our dining room:

Yup, that's a new toilet. Not, it's not going to stay in the dining room. It will replace the one in the downstairs bathroom that was damaged in our mini-tornado (also, it wasn't very water-usage-efficient, so it seems a good thing to replace in any case). Jake ordered it online, and we hope to install it soon. Or at the very least before, say, we host a large dinner party in the dining room. You may recall some of our previous plumbing adventures (just click on the "plumbing" tag for the blog and all the lovely stories will appear); we're hopeful that we can accomplish this one in-house. Perhaps with the assistance of Master Plumber John? Or Local Expert on All House Things, Matt?

Other than that, we're in the middle of the seasonal transition period. Jake has taken out the downstairs air conditioners (upstairs ones, too, soon!). The grass in the back yard has started to sprout, too!

In other news totally not related to plumbing or our house at all, tonight I'm going to my first debate! Exciting. It's the Democratic Primary debate for our U.S. Senate seat (the one currently held by Scott Brown). We're particularly excited about Elizabeth Warren. I'll try to post after the debate with some reflections.

Festival Fun

2011-10-01T17:50:00.009-04:00

We've had a wonderful day of festival-ing, despite the rainy weather. First stop this morning was UML's Family day, which was relocated to the Rec Center. All the student clubs set up booths around the "Wild West" theme. The marching band played (they were great!) and there were crafts and activities and games. Lucy's favorite type of games are the ones where she wins. Luckily, they had a lot of those. She "won" a lot of things, including silly inflatable things, some various UML-themed items, a Biology Club T-shirt featuring a platypus (awesome! Jake got one, too!), a bandana that she decorated (at the Lit Society table) and an incredible amount of candy. We knew it was going to be a crazy day when, at 10:40 am (after just a couple minutes inside) Lucy was offered "fresh" ice cream. This was created by the geniuses at the Chemistry Club table, who mixed liquid nitrogen into their sugary-creamy-awesomeness to make instant ice cream. It was AMAZING. So basically, she was walking around eating ice cream in the morning, which, as she informed us, is totally breaking the rules. She loves it when we break the rules.

Here she is with Rowdy the Riverhawk mascot:

Oh, and one of the "activities" was a decorate-a-cookie table, where she was given icing and sprinkles to put on a cookie. Wow. What's not to love? She had an amazing time.

In the afternoon, we headed over to Open Studios at Western Ave Studios, one of our favorite places. I managed to get Lucy to pose here:

For comparison, you might want to look at this older post, from the same spot back in May.

She really liked these decorated brooms and actually asked to have her picture taken with one:
(She also has a tasty treat from one of the artists in her hand here.)

We purchased a few lovely things, and Lucy ate a lot of candy and cookies. Oh, and a bit of fruit. We met a lot of dogs that we enjoyed petting, and Lucy saw at least one of her classmates from school. And we ran into tons of people we know, which is extra nice. Open Studios continues tomorrow, all over Lowell. Go! It's awesome.

All this art had Lucy wanting to do some of her own (not unusual):

Someone kindly left paper and colored pencils out a table in one of the hallways. She was delighted to show her art to the artists in their studios.

Tomorrow she and I will likely tackle some art projects. It's supposed to be rainy and cold, so thought we'd love to watch Jake race, it doesn't seem like it would be too pleasant. Sigh. So we'll hang here while Jake's off racing 'round the Grand Prix.

Weekend Events

2011-09-30T10:42:00.002-04:00

This coming weekend is jam-packed with October-y Goodness (TM). Here's where you will likely find us -- if you're in the area, please join us!:

This Saturday, October 1st:

UMass Lowell's Fall Festival Family Day 10:30 - 2 on the Tsongas Back Lawn (rain location: Rec Center). All the student clubs will be there to provide activities and food. The marching band and other music groups will perform. It's sure to be fun.
http://www.uml.edu/fallfestival/Family_Day.html

Pollard Memorial Library's Fall Festival, 10 - 2, food, an art raffle, and general bookish goodness, all in that gorgeous library. If you haven't been in already, GO! It's beautiful. More info here:
http://pollardmlibrary.blogspot.com/2011/09/2011-pml-fall-festival-save-date.html

Lowell Open Studios 11am - 5 pm. (Both Saturday AND Sunday!) Over 140 artists in various studios in downtown Lowell, including fiber artists, painters, multi-media artists, sculptors, potters, jewelers, filmmakers, photographers, and more. It's amazing. I'm particularly a fan of the Western Ave Studios; it's amazing to see so many artists in those old buildings.
http://www.lowellopenstudios.org/

Sunday October 2nd:

Lowell Humane Society's Steps For Pets Fund Raiser and Festival: Noon-3 @ the UMass Field beside the Humane Society (South Campus). Bring your dog, or just stalk other people's dogs. Various pet-related vendors and raffles will be there. Dog costume contests and that sort of thing; what's not to love?
http://www.lowellhumanesociety.org/index.php/2011/09/29/steps-for-pets-this-sunday/

Lowell Open Studios 11am - 5 pm. (Both Saturday AND Sunday!) Over 140 artists in various studios in downtown Lowell, including fiber artists, painters, multi-media artists, sculptors, potters, jewelers, filmmakers, photographers, and more. It's amazing. I'm particularly a fan of the Western Ave Studios; it's amazing to see so many artists in those old buildings.
http://www.lowellopenstudios.org/

Actually, on Sunday, we will likely be in Gloucester for the Gran Prix of Gloucester, a great big giant cyclocross event that Jake's racing in. It promises to be awesome.

Miss Malaprop

2011-09-25T20:39:00.002-04:00

Quick post for today to note some of our favorite charming malapropisms from Miss Lucy this weekend:

"Mom, can I have some more instruction paper to cut into shapes?"

translation: she means CONSTRUCTION paper

"Dad, I want some more of those mustachios."

translation: pistachios. The kid loves 'em.

Free Fun!

2011-09-24T17:16:00.008-04:00

Today we went to Lucy's dentist. Now when I was a child, I didn't think that going to the dentist was fun. In fact, if you could take a look at my dental records, you'd be pretty terrified. For instance, I had four of my permanent teeth pulled *by accident*. The dentist was supposed to be taking out four baby teeth. But took four permanent ones instead. I was completely awake and being lifted out of the chair, with this huge guy yanking on my molars. Not a good memory. Nope.

But at Lucy's dentist (Collins Dentistry for Children), they had a big kids safety festival, where they had a fire truck and a police cruiser that the kids could get into for pictures, as well as a race car and a tow truck. Here's Lucy:
Good times.

There was a funny guy doing magic tricks and making balloon animals. But they weren't just the usual balloon animals, they were pretty ornate. Lucy was first in line, and she got an Ariel:
Quite impressive!

And then, the greatest thing a kid can see: A bouncy house:
Lucy had a grand time. Thankfully, the place wasn't too busy while we were there, so she was able to hang out inside for quite a while.

Lucy had a grand time, and it was all free fun. Delightful! And guess who can't wait to go to the dentist? I'm not sure how exactly they conduct the exam or do fluoride treatments while in the bouncy house, but I guess it must work.

I'm an Expert at Learning

2011-09-18T18:27:00.010-04:00

The other day, Lucy was letting us know what letter every word started with. She was very good at it, and I stopped to ask her how she had figured out all the letters. She told me:

"I'm an expert at learning."

I like this a lot.

I write today to announce that I have physically hauled all 14 of my tenure binders, plus my evidence box, over to my office. They will officially be turned in tomorrow. I am done. Look how happy I am:

And yes, it really did require a handtruck to bring the things in. The whole family came (even Carter, though we left him in the car while we schlepped the stuff up to my office). In fact, here's Lucy, eating an apple in my office:
Yup, it's a nice office. I just have to finish unpacking.

It has been a crazy time, getting ready for this whole thing. You may remember this previous post, or even this one from a long time ago. Here's a shot from late last week, when I was in the process of assembling things:

And yes, reader, this shot, just casually shows the note that Margaret Atwood sent me about an article I published. Yup. I'm kind of a big deal. Not convinced? Here's a shot of the EVIDENCE BOX:

In theory, I should have a bit more time to post now that I'm not obsessively writing about myself and printing out e-mails. But the semester is starting to get serious, so I can't promise much in the posting arena. I do owe a post about our backyard progress (yeah!) and a few other things; I hope to have an update by next weekend.

Live-blogging the walnut challenge

2011-09-08T10:21:00.003-04:00

Lucy is at the allergist RIGHT NOW and she is doing her WALNUT CHALLENGE.

First update: 10:02 am:
From Lucy:
Mommy, everything's going fine. I just ate a walnut. Iwant more of the walnuts.

Second update: 12:05 pm:
Challenge passed!
Jake & Lucy are at Friendly's, celebrating.

More tonight, I hope. But this is good news!

Neighborhood Signs

2011-09-05T14:01:00.009-04:00

So I really need a chance right now to write about something other than myself, which is a really icky thing to be doing for too long (which is what I've been doing a lot of for my current tenure packet and a grant proposal). There's not much to write about the house at the moment, so I thought I'd finally try to sit down an write up a post I've long been mulling.

I love signs of all sorts, and I love what they tell us about our neighborhoods. Back when we lived in Northampton, there was a rice pudding shop that sold different varieties of rice pudding. [Please, someone remind me what the name of the place was.] You could track the (well-foreseen by everyone except the owners perhaps) demise of the business by the addition of more and more signs outside indicating new offerings. When they started to advertise that they were selling "all beef hot dogs" as the perfect complement to their rice pudding, the end was very near. Keep in mind that Northampton is the kind of town where you could probably open a restaurant that served 23 different kinds of kale. I'm not exaggerating. Much.

Anyway, I'm intrigued by curious signage. One that has really bothered me is this place down on Bridge Street:

Can you read it? Here's a closer view:
Total Power International? Are you serious? This is where it all comes from? Right here, mere blocks from my house? What do they do there? Should I even be writing about these people? If this blog post disappears, you'll know who's responsible.

I'm also rather fond of this sign from the liquor store in our neighborhood (also on Bridge Street):
Indeed! There are a few other nice liquor store signs in town, so I'll have to get on with taking some photos for another post.

Another local sign we love is this one:
Yup, that's Arthur's Paradise Diner, home of the Boott Mill sandwich. Note that it is "delicious," but only in quotation marks. Perhaps it's an ironic deliciousness? Or *some* people say it's delicious? Well, I can tell you that I think it's more than "delicious:" it's delicious. In case you're wondering what makes a Boott Mill sandwich, it's a bulkie roll with egg, your choice of meats and cheese, and then the genius part: the home fries are shoved right on in there. Delicious.

Actually, in the background of that photo you can also see another popular Lowell sign, up on top of the building that was formerly the home to the Lowell Sun. When the Sun moved last year, they left the sign up top --- I do wonder if they're going to take that down.

I hope to have more signs for you soon. Hope you're enjoying your Labor Day weekend.

Irene's Aftermath

2011-08-29T13:50:00.009-04:00

All is well here post-Irene. The wind was pretty scary last night, and it did down some trees. We walked the neighborhood, but didn't see too much that was terribly wrong. We actually talked to *a lot* of people. It's funny how post-storm, everyone comes out to talk and check in. It's a nice feeling. Kind of like that camaraderie after a huge snowfall. But the nice thing is, the weather here was beautiful today!

We came home and cleaned up our yard a bit. Lucy was really into it:

Our yard was littered with various tree bits, and we discovered this afternoon, after a more thorough exploration, that we lost a large part of our lilac tree in the back/side yard. This is sad.
I'm not sure if the rest of the lilac will survive. Those beaten-down branches are actually still attached at the root, so I'm not sure how best to preserve what's left. The whole thing will be very off-balance without this half. Hrm. Need to do some lilac-pruning research here. Readers? Suggestions?

But we're very lucky all things told. Some folks here in Lowell still don't have power. Some of our not-too-distant neighbors up here on the hill are (we think) still without power as of Monday afternoon, due to a big tree that fell into a power transformer. Yikes! We drove by the work crews who were dealing with it:

We're told by a neighbor that the tree actually caught fire last night. Scary! (that's what's left of the tree on the left there -- sorry for the bad photo; I took it from the car)

That's all I have from the storm. I hope all are readers are fully powered and dry.

Also, today we checked out the Billerica Farmers' Market for the first time. It was awesome. We had an all-market dinner. Yum!

Irene-watch, Day 3: mini-tornado?

2011-08-28T10:18:00.007-04:00

We're all OK here. We still have power. But we've had a spot of drama.

As it is so humid here, I put on all the downstairs A/C units, so as to get things cool and less damp inside. This means closing off the downstairs bathroom. I left the window to that room open, since it's protected by the back porch. Apparently, I created some kind of freaky vacuum-room, and when the winds picked up, they created a cyclone of sorts inside the bathroom. I heard a crash while I was in the kitchen and came running. Lucy was fine, stickering away, and seemed to have noticed nothing. So I carried on about my business. About 15 minutes later, when I went to use the bathroom, I discovered this:

That's the medicine cabinet that was formerly above the toilet, as well as all of its contents. Yikes. It appears that it was ripped off the wall.

In its downward trajectory, it crashed onto the toilet tank, shattering the top (but thankfully not the tank itself, so there's no water)

Thank goodness no one was in there. That would have been bad.

I've closed up all house windows now. It's getting ugly out there.

Stay safe, folks. Beware of medicine cabinets. (If you'd like to see the medicine cabinet in happier days, you can read this old post.)

Irene-watch, Day 2

2011-08-27T08:45:00.011-04:00

All is well here, with no sign of Irene. Lucy is still sleeping, which is a nice thing for her to do (particularly since she was up several times last night demanding water). After she went to bed, I made spinach-cheese squares (to freeze for later) and some awesome banana bread w/ coconut. Yum. Today we'll try the Carnival Cookies. Updates later. Jake seems to be fine on his ride, which is already well underway. Let's hope it doesn't end up underwater.
More later....

And we're back. It's 2:45 and Lucy is napping. She has a cold and really needs the sleep. We've been crafting up a storm today, sewing up bags and sachets from various scraps (mostly me, with design assistance/direction/demands from Lucy). Here's a tiny tote we made:

She's been stringing buttons together and stickering quite happily. When she gets up, we'll take on the long-awaited cookies.

I've checked in on Jake via my spy technology. There were no updates from about 8 am until 2, so I got a bit worried, but it looks like he's up and running (the phone/tracker/GPS failed in some way, either in battery life or in transmission from the wilds of western Mass). He's roughly around Colrain, MA, where according to weatherunderground, it is overcast but not raining. That's good.

The update from Jennifer & Brendan indicates rain and winds down in Germantown. The update from Carlisle is just hot, humid, and humid. Pretty much the same here.

We'll check in later. With cookies.

3:45: Rain has arrived. Cookies are in the oven. Very strange cookie dough. Reports forthcoming once they're cool enough to test.

4:15 update: I am feeling foolish for over-hyping the cookies. They are a fail. Fail, like Lucy won't eat them. And I think they're pretty lame. Sigh.
They might actually work as chocolate chip granola. Or as a topping for yogurt. But cookies, they ain't.

To make up for the totally disappointing cookies, Lucy got to paint. She loves to paint. She did quite a bit of work. Here she is in action:

And a few samples of her work:

So while she painted (for like a solid hour), I went through some of the various baskets of crafty stuff, which included both supplies and projects completed. I threw out a large box of paper that had accumulated. I realize that perhaps someday, some art historian will be very, very disturbed to hear this, but if keep going with the Lucy archive in its "save everything" mode, we will need a new house. Just for the art. She's a productive child.

5:45 update: Jake has successfully completed his ride, and the rain only just started. Hooray! Now he's off for beer with his fellow riders. I'm sure he'll have some details to share when he gets back tomorrow.

It's raining here. But not windy (yet).

Come on, Irene

2011-08-26T14:29:00.004-04:00

So we're getting ready for Hurricane Irene here. And by getting ready, I mean Jake's preparing to go on a 100+ mile bike excursion and Lucy and I are planning what to bake and what to sew while he's away. We're not expecting too much here in Lowell (other than a storm of baked goods!), though there will no doubt be rain and wind. And Jake will be out even farther west, so all should be fine for the ride. We have some supplies and flashlights and the like, so I think we're pretty ready.

Jake's going out to D2R2 again. I'll try to update you on his status. Lucy and I are hoping to bake some banana bread and some cookies from the Heidi Swanson Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen that we love so much.

They're called "Carnival Cookies" and they involve popcorn. Needless to say, Lucy is very excited. You can check out the recipe here or read someone else's blog about making them here.

Earthquake!

2011-08-23T15:10:00.006-04:00

Did you feel it? I was working away here at around 1:50 pm (seriously, I checked my watch) when my desk & chair started swaying a bit. I thought there was something wrong with me, so I was (sort of) relieved to see the news a while later announcing that it was indeed an earthquake. No damage here at the house (it was about 20-30 seconds of some disconcertingly unstable ground), or in our area generally, and apparently (at least from what I've read so far) no big damage elsewhere.

But yikes!

Update a few hours later. I've heard from Brendan & Jennifer in Germantown, Maryland, and both of them were sent home from work after the quake. Luke apparently slept through the whole thing while napping at daycare. Florrie and Vonnie had some scary moments (at work in a school and a hospital, respectively) but everyone is fine. Still, it's a scary thing, all this shaking.

Apparently the National Cathedral sustained some damage, and it's not clear how much other not-quite-visible but serious damage may have occurred. Need a reminder? Here's what FEMA says to do in an earthquake. Also, there's some pretty interesting info from the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) on earthquakes. No doubt our West Coast readers will laugh at our puny earthquake. I just read on the Washington Post that there were some aftershocks -- "A 2.8 magnitude aftershock was reported at 2:46 p.m., and a 2.2 aftershock at 3:20 p.m."

Stay safe out there, friends.

Workbench!

2011-08-21T16:37:00.008-04:00

Jake has been wanting to build a workbench in the basement for all those projects. I mentioned this to our friend Matt who suggested that he actually had a workbench he didn't need anymore. Check out our new basement awesomeness:

Would you like to guess what the top is made of? Take a closer look:

Give up?

It's a bowling alley! The vise on there is from my grandfather's basement workshop.

We had a nice morning hike over at the Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest.

Lucy did really well:
She also saw a snake. Here's what Lucy says:

It was crawling around. It was in the grass and it was tan. I saw it first. I called my Mom and Dad and told them there was a snake. I felt surprised. Carter didn't see it. Daddy didn't see it either. Mommy saw it {but now Mommy thinks that maybe she saw a different snake because the one she saw was black with a white stripe down its back].

Thanks to guest blogger Lucy!

We just did a check on snakes of Massachusetts and found out for sure that we saw a Common Garter Snake. We want to give a recommendation of the UMass Amherst Snakes of Massachusetts site. Awesome! There are 14 kinds of snakes native to Massachusetts.

Oh, yes, and yesterday was our visit to the Southeast Asian Water Festival. It was a VERY hot day, and we rode the tandem over, so we didn't have a lot of stamina. We ate some awesome sausage and sticky rice, and watched the boats race by. It was *very* crowded there. Lots going on. Good local Lowell fun.

Southeast Asian Water Festival

2011-08-20T08:27:00.005-04:00

Later today, we're heading to the Southeast Asian Water Festival. We went a few years ago and had a great time watching the boats and eating all kinds of awesome, delicious things. I think we're going to bike over there on the tandem, as the parking is crazy (it's a *very* popular event). I hope to post tomorrow with updates on any exciting foods, but on that note, I also saw in the local paper that local "bizarre" foods are getting some media attention. The guy who does the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods show is coming to Lowell! [Beware, the following excerpt mentions the eating of things you might not want to think about anyone eating.]:

LOWELL -- Andrew Zimmern has munched on deep-fried tarantulas, beating snake hearts and turtle meat cooked on an open fire.

The host of the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods has also devoured cow testicles and deep-fried bats while traveling all over the world tasting dishes that make some viewers squirm.

And on Wednesday, the culinary explorer will be coming to the Mill City to try a type of food not so bizarre or foreign to Lowellians: Cambodian cuisine.

The plan is for Zimmern to visit the Simply Khmer restaurant on Lincoln Street, stop by a local Cambodian family's home for more food and end the day by playing volleyball and eating meat sticks at Clemente Park, said LZ Nunn, executive director of The Cultural Organization of Lowell.

How exciting! We might just have to walk over to the volleyball courts that day. With Carter, of course.

Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_18715687#ixzz1VZUnQTov

There continues to be a lot to like about Lowell

2011-08-19T08:43:00.004-04:00

Last night we went to a free concert at the backyard of Lowell's Tsongas Arena. It was wonderful! We saw Melvern Taylor and his Fabulous Meltones. They were fabulous, as billed. Ukelele, upright bass, and songs like "Love Song for Losers" -- what's not to love?

We met up with lots of our favorite local folks and even ran into a few old friends. There were kids roaming about in herds, tearing across the lawn at frightening speeds and erratic trajectories. We spotted a little girl that Lucy had played with at an event last December, and the two were quickly re-acquainted with each other. They proceeded to rush the stage and dance up front (sorry, I didn't get pictures, but wish I had!), and they ran around like crazy people for the next hour. Lucy's still asleep. It's nearly 9 am. Now that's a good time (and a nice sleep in for us, too!).

This weekend promises more fun, with the Southeast Asian Water Festival here in Lowell. We can't wait to head over and watch the races and eat all kinds of deliciousness!

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

2011-08-17T09:34:00.008-04:00

I was reading our campus announcements board when I saw this line from a lab on campus looking for folks to participate in their research project:

We are conducting research on ways to measure a user's trust in a robot.

OMG, how could I not participate?

So as a result, I spent a few hours yesterday at UML's Robotics Lab, where they were doing experiments to discover just how willing I was to let a robot run the show.

I got to drive this robot:

His name is "Junior."

I have to say, it was totally awesome. I didn't see it til after (I was driving remotely, actually from an entirely different floor), but it was very cool. I had to drive him through a maze in the hallway of the building, navigating around boxes using the 'bot-mounted camera. There were other tasks I had to do at the same time, making it all very complicated and stressful. It was very, very fun. I don't want to ruin their experimental design, so I won't say more, but wow, fun!

It turns out, robots=not so trustworthy. But also my driving of a robot=not so trustworthy either.

I also got to see this robot, though not in action:

It's a "telepresence" robot that lets you attend meetings. Notice its nifty necktie -- no business casual for this robot, oh no!

Incidentally, if you're local and over age 18, you too can do the robot trust study! Let me know and I'll hook you up with the researcher.

Energy Efficiency Update

2011-08-16T06:40:00.004-04:00

Yesterday we had a home energy audit by Next Step Living, which provides the audits free of charge (the electric & gas companies pay for them). We found out about the opportunity at a booth at the Lowell Folk Festival back in July, which, by the way, was awesome. The food, the music, the food, the people, the activities, the food....well, you can see what we loved the most. We tried Jamaican meat pies, some kind of Burmese fish concoction, various things grilled on sticks, peirogi, Polish rosette cookies, and all of it was delicious. The Folk Fest is also very much focused on being "green," so all of their plates, cups, and silverware are compostable. At the end of the event, they sort all the trash (we saw them doing this), and start the compost pile. Each year, they give away bags of compost made from the previous year's trash! Check it out:

So that's out in our garden now! But I digress...

We had our energy audit (for free!) yesterday, and it returned mostly good news. Our heating system is about 82% efficient. This isn't awesome, but it's pretty good for the kind we have (boiler w/ steam). So there's not much to be gained from replacing it, which means we probably have another 10 years or so (barring any terrible mechanical failure, which seems somewhat unlikely) until we need to deal with that investment.

We already had mostly all of our light fixtures filled with energy efficient bulbs, but he gave us one free one. He also gave us (and installed) a new, low-flow shower head. It's actually pretty awesome, particularly given that our old shower head was kind of broken and needed to be replaced anyway.

He went up in the attic (yikes!) and checked out the insulation. It turns out there's pretty decent insulation up there, and probably not much can be done to improve it. He did recommend re-doing the attic hatch with foam insulation board (polyiso) and new weather-stripping, which we'll do soon. He also thought that the bathroom fan pipe could be insulated, but said it wasn't a big deal, since it's a short run.

He did a blower test and checked out the heating system and the oven. The oven was producing a bit more CO than he' like to see, but he said as long as we're using our hood, it should be fine.

He also looked into solar options (we'd love to get a few solar panels!) but it turns out our house isn't fit for it. The main part is slate (which doesn't work for solar panels) and the back flat roof is too obstructed to make the panels worthwhile. Sigh. So there isn't much new we can do, but it was nice to get a clean energy bill of health.

Allergy Update

2011-08-15T11:55:00.007-04:00

Lucy had her visit to the allergist today. You may remember her previous visit to the allergist, discussed here, and when her allergy first presented itself here. We learned today that she is likely no longer allergic to walnuts. This is a bit of good news. She will have a "Walnut Challenge" in a month or so. The doctor suggested that since tree nut allergies are so gnarly, we might not want to just hand her some walnuts at home, so she'll go into the office, try them, and should there be a reaction, the necessary medical assistance will be right there.

But the test also showed that she is *still* allergic to peanuts. Jake sent me this photo of her various tests:
So no Nutter-Butters for this kid, still. Sigh. We were hoping for better news. But as far as Lucy's concerned, the better news is that she's at Friendly's, eating french fries and ice cream. Not too bad.

LUCY

2011-08-14T16:18:00.007-04:00

Lucy typed her own name as the title of this blog post! She also did the lovely drawing shown above. The person on the left is me, and the person on the right is her. Note the appropriately drawn eyebrows/eyebrow. And belly buttons. The heart in between us is one that she traced from this little heart thing she found. There have been a lot of traced hearts featured in today's art.

This next one is a Tyrannosaurus Rex:
This is a cat that she drew for Elizabeth:
If you happen to be afraid of clowns please don't look at the next image:
Oops. Too late. Sorry about that.

Anyway, it's nice to see that someone in the house is having a good time with her creative outlet. Art production has been way, way up lately. We're going through paper, stickers and markers like nobody's business. Buy stock in craft supply stores.

This last one is one that she did at school. She told us that it's called "Man Doing the Robot Exercise:"
We'll start the bidding at one million dollars. (If you haven't already, watch My Kid Could Paint That.)

Snug as a Bug

2011-08-12T21:39:00.010-04:00

Today we went to Stone Zoo. Unfortunately, a lot of other people did, too. Unbeknownst to us, it was Free Day at the Zoo. Ugh! On the up side, the zoo animals must have been given a pep talk, because they were particularly out, about, and active, so we saw lots of great creature action.

In other news, we were able to pick up a new something for the front room/office; see if you can figure out what's different:

Here's the before:

Here's the after:

It passes Lucy's "roll on the rug test"

so much to blog, so little time

2011-08-11T17:37:00.005-04:00

If you're wondering why I've not been blogging lately, here's a visual for you:
Yup. Tenure binders. 14 of 'em. They are making my life miserable. But well-documented misery, that's for sure.

But there have been tons of things happening that I want to blog about -- our trip to the beach, the visit from Grandma, the progress of the garden (ooh! blueberries and tomatoes), the fun of the folk festival, Carter's haircut, our latest awesome new gadgets (I'm looking at you, carbonator!), our broken car and the mechanics of dubious honesty and/or competence....and the list goes on. I hope to come back to these sometime. I also really want to scan some of Lucy's recent drawings, which have been pretty amazing. But I just don't have the time at the moment. Blargh!

So for now, here are some teasers:
1) What's going on here:
Yup, exciting electrical work here at 83 Durant. In a forthcoming issue of "The Joys of Old House Electrical Systems."

2) Updates from Lucy's school. In Orange Family, things get more rigorous. Students have to start thinking about their future life plans. Witness the board of "When I grow up, I will be..." from Lucy's classroom:
And here is a close-up of Lucy's plan:
I think I might need to include that in my tenure binder.

3) Conversations with Lucy:
Oh, there have been so many. Here is a short, recent one:
Lucy (while sitting in stroller on the way home from school): Mom, what comes after zero?
Bridget (assuming this question is a trick): "uh, one?"
Lucy (exasperated): NO Mom, the other way.
Bridget: Uh, negative one.
Lucy (delighted!): NEGATIVE ONE!

Needless to say, Jake is delighted and preparing for further discussion of integers.

Happy 2nd of July

2011-07-03T08:59:00.009-04:00

We had a lovely second of July weekend. I know the rest of the US celebrates the 4th, but 'round here we celebrate the 2nd, as it is Jake's birthday! Hooray!

The Birthday started with a trip to Parlee Farms to pick cherries! There were also strawberry donuts, which were a big hit amongst the donut-friendly of our household. (We're very donut-friendly here.)

On Saturday, Jake made lots of food for his own party (I know, it's not fair) and we had a fine time BBQ-ing. On Sunday, we had a grand time at Kate's pool party, and on Monday we had a feast of leftovers and grill stuff with Matt & Mary. Awesomeness and Deliciousness were achieved.

Jake also made a magnificent concoction pictured below:
It involves:
1) frozen watermelon granita (which we lost in the freezer a while back and recovered just in time!). It has a slushy consistency and is very sweet.
2) strawberry vodka made using this great recipe from David Lebovitz. We had some great strawberries here, and they were perfect for this project.
3) fresh lime juice

Please note that two of the three ingredients are things Jake made. So this is like some kind of evil meta-recipe or something. Anyway, this drink was delicious. Thankfully, we didn't have too much of the granita, so we ran out before I could drink so much that this story ended badly.

We now await our next round of guests and then our trip to Rehoboth.

Return to 83 Durant

2011-06-27T11:57:00.021-04:00

We're back from our trip to Vinalhaven, Maine. We had a lovely time (see the Flickr pix for more specifics). Lucy had a grand time being the focus of lots of adult attention.

Here is the house where we stayed:
It was amazingly awesome, with lots of rooms and nooks and crannies and tons of books,

and lots of nooks where the reading of books took place:
The house was HUGE, with 9 or so bedrooms (we lost count) and a HUGE fireplace:
Here's the large kitchen:
There was a music room:
(we had to provide our own musicians, though the piano was provided).

[Edit: We only had to provide a violinist. The man on the piano is the owner of the house, Mr. Terry, whose family built the house in 1917.]

There was also a cocktail room.
This photo doesn't do it justice, but it was upstairs, with full-length windows to the outside, and these windows (in the picture) to the inside. I wish we had a better shot of it, but it was perfect. We're thinking of adding a cocktail room to our house!

On the way there, we had terrific lobster rolls at Red's in Wiscasset, Maine.
And here's the famous lobster rolls:
YUM!

We went to the beach for a bit one afternoon; it's not quite Rehoboth, Delaware (where we usually spend our beach vacation).

Despite the muddy, muddy sand, and the cold, cold water, Lucy insisting on going out into the ocean. Jake was a good sport and walked her out through the sink-into-mud-sand, and Lucy got into the water up to her neck. Seriously.

Next time, we'll bring a swimming suit. And boots.

On the way home, there was a bit of drama when the tandem bike fell off the roof of the car while we were on route 95, crossing a bridge between Maine and New Hampshire. Thankfully (and amazingly) no one was hurt. We were in the middle lane when it went over (on the passenger side) and it ended up in the right lane. Jake did some great driving and managed to get us pulled over quite quickly. It was in the middle of the lane with heavy traffic, so it wasn't safe to go grab it. He called 911, and within 10 minutes or so, a state trooper came and retrieved it safely. Meanwhile, we had pulled off the bridge to await what we thought would be 1) the drastically damaged remains of our bike 2) a lecture and ticket from a trooper or 3) both of the above. Instead, the trooper left the bike by the side of the road on the bridge, called our cell and told Jake he could go retrieve it. WOW! We were very relieved. It turns out that the frame wasn't damaged (as far as we can tell). The handlebars and one saddle sustained some damage, but really, it doesn't seem that bad. Jake will be doing a full maintenance check (we had already broken the chain while we were on a ride, so the bike was out of commission pending a mechanic anyway).

So that's the update for now. We had no internet access while we were in the house, and our cell phones didn't work either. It was nice to be (mostly) disconnected for a bit. And you should think nothing of the fact that while we were on "vacation" and you weren't able to contact us, fugitive Boston mobster Whitey Bulger was captured. Nope, nothing at all unusual there. We were on vacation.

(Cook) Book Review

2011-06-14T21:00:00.005-04:00

Today I have a quick note about our favorite cook book for the past couple months, Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen by Heidi Swanson. Jake has been cooking up a storm out of it ever since we got it.

Last night we had the quinoa patties again, though accessorized with cheddar and jalepeno (a variation on the original, which is also amazingly delicious). There is a super-yum baked oatmeal creation that we've made for ourselves and for guests to rave reviews. The green lentil soup was outstanding. None of the stuff has been too difficulty (easy for me to say, since Jake has done most of the cooking from it) and all of it is delicious. We have a lot of cookbooks, and we just keep turning to this one lately.

In other news, Lucy got a haircut today. It is basically my haircut, with bangs. It looks awesome. The lady told her "when people ask you how you got such a good haircut, you tell them 'Because I sat really still!!!!'" And she did. Even while she took quite a while to blowdry it with a round brush.

Cheers!

Book Reviews

2011-06-13T14:40:00.013-04:00

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of posts featuring book reviews. This one is going to be about our favorite books for Lucy, by which I mean, books that Lucy loves that we also love. I should stress that that particular distinction is indeed important, as there are some books that Lucy loves that we don't enjoy reading, or that we actively despise. Seriously. We hide them. And then we feel bad. But really, I just cringe every time she drags over Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day? (which she did, just a few hours ago before she went down for her nap). It's a lovely book with lovely pictures, but reading it is a trial.

[Before I go any further, in the interest of full disclosure, the book images and links below take you to Amazon, in case you would like to purchase a book. I recently signed up for the Amazon Associates program, which means we get a commission when people buy stuff after following our links. Monetizing the blog. Oh yes. We are.]

One of my own favorite stories when I was a kid was by James Marshall (no relation) and featured two hippos named George and Martha. Martha made split pea soup for George, but George hated split pea soup. But George also wanted to avoid telling Martha that he didn't like her soup, so he poured his soup into his galoshes. I loved this story. What's not to love? It had hippos, dreaded split pea soup (I hated it too!) and galoshes (which I thought were really really cool because my Dad had some that went on over his dress shoes and I really really wanted a pair).

Anyway, not too long ago, we discovered a treasury of George and Martha stories:

It is awesome. There are 35 George and Martha stories, along with some background and discussions with other children's authors. Buy it for a child you love (but not Lucy, as we already have it). Actually, just get anything by James Marshall. He has a whole series of fairy tales (Goldilocks, Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs) and we've borrowed them from the library and found them to be delightful. They're pretty straight-ahead in their rendition of the classics, but with nice illustrations, and just enough understated James-Marshall-ish gestures. You can't go wrong with his stuff.

Another related favorite is Miss Nelson Is Missing!, which is illustrated by James Marshall (still no relation) but written by Harry Allard. It features a very nasty elementary school teacher. I loved this book, and Lucy seems to enjoy it.

I see that there are now some sequels to it, but I don't know how they are. We've been burned by sequels before. For instance, I am a big big fan of the original Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, by Judi Barrett

I liked this book a lot when I was a kid, and my brother liked it even more. Apparently (I don't remember this) my brother brought this home from the library EVERY week. It drove my mother crazy. But it's a fun book. A while ago, I was at a bookstore and saw that there was a sequel called Pickles to Pittsburgh. I bought it in a very nice double-issue with both the original Meatballs and this together. I'm not even going to include an image and link here because it's just awful. We gave it away to the library book sale. It was that bad.

If you really enjoy the giant food of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, you should instead check out The Giant Jam Sandwichby John Vernon Lord. I love the illustrations in this one, and the rhyming story is very cute. It features a lovely community of Itching Down, which is plagued by wasps. They come up with an ingenious way to rid themselves of the pest (hint: the title). I love it, and so does Lucy:

This is actually one that we got as a used library book -- I think it's one that Aunt Maggie and Aunt Judy actually shipped to the beach from their library's discard sale.

If you're looking for stories that feature mice (and wow, there are SO many kids' books that do!) and bikes and cheese and France, look no further than the wonderful Anatoleby Eve Titus. We discovered this at a little bookstore in New Hampshire (I think) and as soon as we saw the mice bicycling through France, we knew we had to have it (in fact, Lucy wasn't even born yet when we bought it!).

We also have the sequel, Anatole and the Catwhich is also lovely.

Apparently, there are more in the series, though we haven't yet had a chance to check them out. But so far, the series is terrific.

Lucy also loves another book about Paris, called This is Parisby Miroslav Sasek. It was a present from Tamara (no surprise) and it's a charming portrait of the city. It was first published in 1959, so this is a re-issue, with some slightly updated bits, but mostly true to the original.

The images are amazing, and there's all kinds of amusing details. Lucy *really* wants to go to Paris!

That's all for now; Lucy is awake and it's time to go read something!

Projects, Garden Update

2011-06-10T06:51:00.008-04:00

You may recall from a previous post that we had a few bad pickets in the gate, which we've replaced with new ones finally:

The new neighbors across the street also had a bigger project done: they cut down a big tree. We're sad about this, as it was a lovely lovely lovely old tree. But apparently its roots was growing into their house and had collapsed one of their foundation walls. Yikes!
In (much) smaller projects, I did a bit of sewing this week, too. Last weekend, when we went to the artist studios, I was itching to do some crafting, so I took a bit of time to make this little bag:

The pocket there I made from a wool felt kit that Rose gave me (thanks, Rose!). The fabric is actually a (clean) canvas drop cloth (from the hardware store) that I had bought for some other long-ago and forgotten project. There's lots more of the canvas, so I might need to make some more bags.

Things in the garden get better every day. We've gone from this:

To this:
Lucy will have to go pick the ripe ones today.

The blueberries should be ready soon, too:
Last year's blueberries were a big hit with Lucy, so it's exciting to see the bountiful crop forming already. We're also hoping to get some raspberry bushes to plant in the backyard.

That's all for today. We're hoping to go to Lowell Riverfest for a bit tomorrow, if the weather holds out.

Jake has headed out for the weekend to do the Green Mountain Double Century. Here's the blurb the race organizer has put out:

205 miles, 80% dirt, 25,000 feet of climbing.

Yup. He's crazy.

Lowell Stories

2011-06-09T08:09:00.002-04:00

Hey, here's the link to our winning entry for Lowell Stories!

I think it's funny that half of the four stories involve dogs. But only one movie star dog.

On trying to write more

2011-06-05T13:29:00.005-04:00

So for the past few days, I have been using a new writing site called 750words.com, which, true to its name, tries to get you to write 750 words each day. I'm liking it so far, and have met my 750 requirement each day (which means I get a cute badge!). One of the things I like about it is that it takes what you write, puts it through some magical super-secret processes, and gives you data. Lots of data. About what you write each day (or over any period of time) and then compares it to all the other users on the site. And then it generates fun graphics like this:

YOUR OVERALL MINDSET:

THE WORLD'S MINDSET:

This is funny. Also, it gives you "badges" as incentives when you pass certain thresholds. For instance, a 3-day long streak gets you this nice-looking turkey.

Adorable. Anyway, you don't get to read what I write there, because it's a place for drafting (not for publicly sharing with the world). But I am hopeful that this will help me be more productive, and thought I'd share it with those of you out there who are also trying to make yourself write more. It's a pretty awesome interface, and I'm really enjoying it so far.

Activities!

2011-06-04T20:44:00.007-04:00

Today we had a very fun day of ACTIVITIES! We started out with a morning in Lexington, our fancy-schmancy city-next-door. We went to a very fun fair for kids at the Lexington Community Nursery School. There were games (with PRIZES -- a very exciting feature for Lucy) and a petting zoo and a bouncy house and all those sorts of things. The school is very very nice, but a bit too far away for us to really consider. But Lucy had a grand time winning at games like the bean bag toss, golf, croquet, and also the "wishing well" where kids tell the teen-kids running the wishing well which prize they want, then they get it. Nice.

After the fair (believe me, it was difficult to pull her away!), we went for lunch at Bertucci's. We tried to do a different local pizza place (Upper Crust) but sadly, they had nothing other than pizza, and we have a Very Picky Eater in the family (Lucy). Blargh. So we ended up at Bertucci's, which has pasta in butter. Also, they give the kids not just the regular set of crayons and an activity page: they gave her a piece of pizza dough! Genius! She very much enjoyed that, although not as much as the Hoodsie cup she got for dessert. In case you are not familiar with the concept of "Hoodsie cup," it is likely that you have seen such a thing in your life and called it a "Dixie cup," which is a little plastic thingie filled with ice cream -- in this case, chocolate and vanilla. They're called "hoodsie cups" around here because "Hood" is the major brand of milk, thus their ice cream cups are "hoodsie cups."

We ended up skipping the nap completely, as today was the first Saturday of the month, and as with most first Saturdays, it was Open Studios at Western Avenue Studios, and Lucy LOVES going there. So we spent the afternoon looking at art, talking to artists, meeting a bunch of lovely artist dogs (several of the artists have well-behaved, mellow dogs who hang out with them in their studios), and of course, hunting down candy. This is Lucy's favorite part of going to the studios, much to my chagrin. But we had a nice time and even found ourselves a new babysitter! Woo hoo!

In other news, we've been eating lots of delicious things. Jake picked a bunch of our rhubarb and made some up to go along with the panna cotta he made:

It was delicious! While I was off in Boston for a conference, I went out with some friends to a fabulous fancy restaurant called Menton, which was incredible. I am VERY sorry that Jake didn't join us (I owe him a visit there now!).

We've been slowly working on some small-scale home improvements, particularly in the yard. I finally got around to staining our new railing on the steps to the garden. We had had so much rain for so long that I had to wait a while for things to dry out.

I also stained a climbing ladder for the clematis,

And I painted a few replacement pickets for pieces on the fence that had fallen apart.

The gate kind of looks like it's missing some teeth:

Jake will be installing them tomorrow. Hopefully I can do an update then. I should do a garden update, too. But this is all for now.

Winners!

2011-05-23T10:45:00.003-04:00

So there was this little contest called "Lowell Stories" put on by the City of Lowell folks, so I submitted a story about our brush with fame getting Carter into the Fighter. I just found out today that we were one of three runner ups in the contest -- winning a $50 gift certificate to the Lowell restaurant of our choice! Carter's fame continues to yield dividends. He's going to be mad when he finds out it's a people restaurant, not a dog restaurant. Oops.

Anyway, our story and photo will appear sometime soon on the Lowell 175th Anniversary Celebration website. I'll post a link when the story is up!

The media empire continues to expand!

Garden Edition!

2011-05-15T17:51:00.009-04:00

We spent a bit of time this weekend on outdoor improvements. We're in the process of fixing the fence, which has a few broken pickets. We found some replacement ones, which we cut to size, and if it ever dries out, I'll be painting them this week and Jake will install them. I'll get some pictures up when I get some (it's raining right now and has been for the afternoon).

We're also waiting for things to dry out so that we can stain our new railing, which makes our steps down to the garden a bit more safe.

In garden news, the rhubarb is looking great!

Jake even made some rhubarb compote for me for Mother's Day. It's exciting to see this plant really thriving. The strawberries are flowering, which is a great sign, too. The sage plant is out of control, and some other herbs (chives, and parsley, I think) have returned again this year.

This weekend we planted some new herbs (pictures forthcoming soon), including thai basil, thyme, lemon geranium, basil, and.....shoot, I've forgotten. I'll update later. We got starts for three tomato plants, kale, and a hot pepper plant. We're going small this year, as we'll be away quite a bit this summer. Still, we do love fresh tomatoes from the garden. We also got a little lime tree.

We did our garden shopping at a great local place, Mahoney's Garden center (the Chelmsford one). We're hoping to go back in a couple weeks to get tomatillos, and perhaps some raspberry plants, too.

We spent part of our day today at the reservoir with Ruth & Woody & Matt & Mary. The photo evidence is on Flickr. The girls are hilarious together. We also spent a bit of time at Carter's old school, All Breeds, where they had a big open house festival thing. Carter got lots of loving from his old friends (and lots of treats for good behavior).

In which idle conversation turns to thoughts of mortality

2011-05-09T19:47:00.003-04:00

Today I have for you a disturbing edition of Conversations with Lucy (TM). While we were eating dinner, we had this conversation, which came out of a pretty ordinary and normal dinner-time conversation.

Lucy: Mom, you have lines on your face.
Me: Where?
Lucy: Above your eyes. When you go like that.
Me: You mean like this [making an angry face where there are deep furrows between my eyes]?
Lucy: Yes, but there are lines there. Why are there lines?
Me: Because I'm getting old.
Lucy: Are you going to die?
Me: [turning pale, fumbling] No! I mean, not for a long long time. That's not something you need to worry about.
Lucy: But if you die, we'll have to get a new Mommy.
Me: Oh, but Lucy, I'm not going to die until I'm much, much older, and when you're much, much older -- like when you're a mom of your own kids, or even a grandma. So you don't need to worry about it.
Lucy: But Mom, can we just have this conversation?
Me: [Stunned silence, in complete and utter shock that she has made this suggestion/demand.]
Lucy: If you die, we'll have to get a new Mommy.
Me: OK, but I don't think that's something you need to worry about.

From there, the conversation returned to normalcy, including discussion of what she dreamed about during nap time, whether Grandma likes mice, and whether or not her cousins like chocolate. I'm still recovering. And wondering when I can use the "can we just have this conversation?" ploy on her.

In other news, today was my last day of classes for the semester (hooray!). It was also my first day in my brand new office. Yes, the timing makes me laugh, too, since now that I don't have to meet with students for three months, I finally have a space where I can meet with students. Of course, after two entire semesters without an office, surely I have learned to live without such a luxury, and so have proven such things unnecessary. Well, maybe. But I'm happy to have a space to call my own. Now I just have to unpack all those boxes....once the bookshelves arrive.

There's a Lot to Like about Lowell

2011-05-07T17:31:00.006-04:00

Seriously, there's so much to like about Lowell! We're in the middle of a weekend full of awesome Lowell-ness.

Yesterday, we spent some time at the Pollard Library. While we were there, Jake took our knives to be sharpened at Hank & Son's Locksmiths and Knife Sharpeners, where a maybe 60-ish year old man said he'd have his Dad sharpen the knives. Awesome. Then we got Lucy a haircut at Angela Salon.

Today, we went to Open Studios at Western Ave Studios, where they were having their Spring Art Thing.

Then, we went to Larry's Comics, our local (really local) neighborhood comic store, for Free Comic Book Day! We always mean to go there more often, as they are totally awesome.

Tomorrow, we're going to Carter's old school, All Breeds, for a celebration of doggie-ness.

Another Conversation with "The Truth of Everything"

2011-04-25T20:13:00.003-04:00

Today at dinner, I was telling a story about running into a former student of mine who plays on the basketball team. I mentioned that he had torn his ACL. Lucy asked for more information, and I explained that he had hurt his knee. Here's what followed (roughly):

Lucy: He has a boo boo on his knee?
Me: yes.
Lucy: The next time you see him and I'm with you can I see the boo-boo?
Me: Well, Lucy, this is the first time I've seen him in two years, so I'm not sure I'll see him again.
Lucy: Well, if we see him, will he play basketball with me? Because I know how to play basketball. And we can play at the Red Sox.

This conversation is dedicated to Uncle Brendan, who will be horrified that already, my daughter's go-to sports reference is the Red Sox, and, moreover, she believes that they play basketball. But on the up side, she knows how to play basketball. So she's got that going for her. That, and being the Truth of Everything (see previous post).

"The Truth of Everything"

2011-04-21T17:14:00.003-04:00

The title of the post refers to Lucy's new title. She informed me, after I picked her up at school today, that she is "the Truth of Everything." I asked her what this meant, and she explained that she is good at finding things, so Simba gave her the name "The Truth of Everything." Mind you, Simba is her teddy bear. So her stuffed animal told her that she is "The Truth of Everything."

I pressed her on the whole concept while we were driving home, and she explained that she did not make it up, and that she hadn't heard anyone else use the phrase. I asked how Teddy had heard the phrase, and she told me that Teddy heard it on a song he was listening to on her purple radio. Again, the purple radio is one of the many imaginary items in Lucy's collection, which include, at last count: a pink computer, a blue computer, a green computer, several televisions, a purple radio, and a yellow suitcase. She sang a few bars of the song, which goes, roughly, "the truth of everything....the truth of everything...." and so on. I asked her who sings this new pop sensation. She informed me "the Ringos." Yup, the Ringos.

I think I might believe her. And that perhaps she is going insane. Or I am. The Truth of Everything, indeed.

School Pictures

2011-04-20T17:55:00.004-04:00

Here's Lucy's first picture from school. She's wearing a dress I once wore. I'll have to dig up my version of this one.

As long as I'm posting, I'll share a few "Questions from Lucy" (TM) a new feature we'll be having here, hopefully regularly, or at least as regularly as "Conversations with Lucy" (TM).

When you were a little kid, did you ever meet the Grand High Witch? (we've been listening to Roald Dahl's The Witches).
Do sea turtles make sea salt?
Do monkeys have noses?
Can you get the recipe for Fig Newtons?

(Some) Faith in (some) humanity restored

2011-04-18T15:20:00.005-04:00

This afternoon, the doorbell rang, and it was a woman holding my wallet. As you may recall, my wallet was stolen while I was grocery shopping at Hannaford last Thursday evening. As suspected and suggested, the thief ran off with the wallet, grabbed anything worth grabbing (cash, gift cards) and tossed the rest not far from the Hannaford. The kind stranger who showed up at my door had done her best to reassemble it and had managed to collect all the cards and such out of the dirt, and brought them back to me. She even tried to track me down at my office (I wasn't there) so she drove over to our house.

So I have all my cards back, and even my change and T-token. And obviously, the wallet itself. I've already canceled the cards and ordered a new license and University ID, but still, there were a few random things in there that I had forgotten were in there, so it's nice to have it back. It's also nice to know that no one is out there trying to steal my identity (oh, and you know my identity is so coveted!). I was also very very grateful to the woman who drove across town with a stranger's wallet. It was a great kindness. I feel foolish for never asking her name. Thank you, stranger. You have renewed my faith in human decency, at least for some portion of humanity.

Trouble brewing

2011-04-16T16:23:00.006-04:00

This afternoon we'll start growing our first crop of mushrooms with our lovely kit. Lucy is VERY excited about it, and has been glowing about how she can't wait to eat mushrooms. We found this surprising (not the excitement, which is her general state, but the claim that she will EAT them, as she doesn't eat much), but went with it. At some point yesterday, she explained that she remembered that Aunt Kathy gave her mushrooms one time and she loved them. And that's when we realized why she's so excited: the "mushrooms" that Aunt Kathy gave her were meringue mushrooms, as seen here:
They're sugar and chocolate, so OF COURSE she liked them. I'm a little nervous about what happens when she realizes what oyster mushrooms are.

The kit is cute, but we did find the product advertising a bit misleading. As you can see on the image, the box claims "Open. Mist. Harvest." Cool. Sounds super-easy. In fact, in between "open" and "mist, there is a step called "take out the package and submerge the entire thing in a bucket of cold water for 24 hours, using something heavy to make sure the thing stays submerged under water." Now, this isn't really that much work, but it does involve hunting around your house to find these things, not to mention an extra 24 hours before you really set up the growing box. Oh well. I guess they couldn't fit all that on the box.