Book Worm

Here is Lydia Violet with one of her favorite pass times, reading books, well kinda. She does love books, I'm guessing for now the words aren't as important as the colorful pictures and turning the pages.

Much to our chagrin, she doesn't know the difference between her books and ours. She makes a daily mess of our bookshelf in the living room. But, how can one get angry when she is so gosh darn cute.

Unofficial First Phrase

On our walk to school today Lydia was being very squirmy. At one point she threw her body weight forward, more or less stopping in a parallel position to the street with her face pointing down. At which point she uttered the "words" "uh oh!"

She has of course said this phrase many times before and at completely inappropriate times. But this time felt different, she was reaching for the ground and was trying to look around my hip to the back. On a hunch I turned around to see what had sparked her attention and there it was, about 15 feet behind us, her pearly white mitten.

Vapor

Today on our walk to school it was 40º outside. I decided to show Lydia my breath vapor. I picked a sunny spot and took a deep breath. She looked at my puffed out cheeks, I'm sure trying to figure out what Papa was doing. Then I opened my mouth and slowly let puffs of breath out. Lydia looked on in amazement.

At one point she leaned her head forward and tried to chomp on the vapor as it passed by her face. She giggled and had a puzzled look at the same time.

Getting ready for the job.

Construction Baby, sporting the latest in Long Johns, jeans and work boots.

Go Go Lydia

Here is Lydia wearing a dress she received from our friend Victoria. She looks like a blast past, from circa 1967.

I really should...

...get around to writing something. It's been too long. Yada, yada. I haven't even posted about Lydia Violet's first birthday! So, to tide you over, I've posted the obligatory, covered in icing photo. At least I got it up before she turned 13 months.

There's been too much going on around here to blog about it. When we catch our breath. I'll be back. It shouldn't be too long... but in the meantime, don't hold yours.

Magic with Virtual Pause and Record Buttons

I stumbled across this little gem today reading a new blog: Serious About Camo. (Yes, I found him on Twitter.) He recently posted about this service: Mixwit / Create and Share Mixtapes.

This is so cool! Remember the days? The magic you could create with the pause and record buttons on your little boom box? How many times did you bare your soul in a mix tape? I can't even count. And I still have them all. (I actually just found a whole box and considered transfering them to CD or playlist in iTunes... but you know it just wouldn't be the same.) Well, now you can apply modern-day technology to that old nostalgia. Reveal your deepest and most private thoughts and emotions to a friend, a lover, a crush in a mix and then share it with the world on Facebook, MySpace, Blogger, etc.

Have fun...

(Thanks to shortbeatnik, whom I borrowed the above mixtape from so I could provide you with an excellent example. )

Meme: Excerpt from a book I'm reading

I peaked in on twitter today to see a former colleague, Cara, at hack Artist, tag various blogger/twitter friends with a meme.

What you say? Twitter? Tagged? Meme? Never you mind. If you're extra curious you can check out those links but here's all you really need to know... Even though I wasn't officially invited by being tagged myself, I've decided to participate in the exercise. I'm supposed to:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Well, I just started reading C.S. Lewis' Prince Caspian for the tenthish time. (I'm a HUGE fan of The Chronicles of Narnia—the first books I read without pictures.) And, I'm reading it aloud to my 10 month old. Yes, I'm interested in slowly losing my mind. Yes, I was totally influenced by Hollywood advertising. The good in this is that said advertising prompted me to stick my nose in a book rather than buy cheap plastic toys or a kiddie meal at a fast food restaurant. Which reminds me also: Who else hates the Hollywood versions of the latest made-into-a-movie literary classic? I believe their called movie tie-ins. For me they've always smacked of: the only way you can get people to read a book is to make a movie out of it. They steal people's imaginations by providing them with "characters" to focus on. (Kudos to J.K. Rowling for never allowing them to slap Daniel Radcliffe's face on any of her books.) And they make people think that you can get the same transporting experience that reading a book provides by watching the movie. I hate, hate, hate that. I like watching movies, I just hate that. It always prompts me to go to the library or the nearest used bookstore to get a version of the book from before it was ruined by Hollywood's PR machine. Hmmmm. So, there's good in that too. Uh, maybe I've got the wrong idea about Hollywood advertising.

Anyway. Where were we? Ah, page 123, where Susan says to Lucy:

I'm dead tired. Do let's get out of this wretched wood into the open as quick as we can. And none of us except you saw anything.

Now since I just started reading this again last night, at a 10 month old's pace at that, page 123 is about 121 pages ahead of where I am right now. So, I don't have much to say about the predicament that Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy have clearly gotten themselves into, AGAIN, in the wretched wood. What I can say is that I certainly know how Susan feels. And I ask, when will the older siblings learn? If they'd just listen to Lucy the first time around, pretty much every time, they'd save themselves a heap of trouble.

Now for step #5, like my friend Cara, I'm going to tag some of the people I enjoy on Twitter AND in other realms of the Internet:

chris_bailey also of BaileyWorkPlay.com (Whom is a testament to the smallness of this here Internet.)

writer.baker.musicmaker (Who is a master at all of her chosen endeavors.)

Scott Edward Anderson also of The Green Skeptic and another former colleague (Whom Cara already tagged, but I'm tagging him again. Am I breaking the rules? This is my first time.)

Dinosaur Mom (Whom I wish was on Twitter. Hmmm. Maybe she is.)

Expat with the Elephants (Because I know she'll appreciate this type of thing and give us an excellent post to boot.)

What are YOU reading? I last devoured The Time Traveler's Wife and am now looking for something I can finish quicker than reading Prince Caspian to a 10 month old.

Stranger Than Fiction?

The strange truth of this is that this book is actually one of my favorites... WAY before Oprah promoted the crap out of it. Everyone else LOVES Love in the Time of Cholera, which is nice for all sorts of reasons. But me, I am held spellbound by the saga of the Buendías and their hometown, Macondo. Now, whether I actually am One Hundred Years of Solitude as it is described below, that is up for debate. But I love that I took a random quiz and this is what came back at me.

You're One Hundred Years of Solitude!
by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Lonely and struggling, you've been around for a very long time. Conflict has filled most of your life and torn apart nearly everyone you know. Yet there is something majestic and even epic about your presence in the world. You love life all the more for having seen its decimation. After all, it takes a village.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

frolic and play, the Eskimo way

I found a cool make your own virtual snowflake applet this morning through a string of linkbacks on one of my favorite blogs, A Little Hut. She linked to How About Orange... and after snooping around awhile I quickly added "the orange" to my del.icio.us links. Among other things, Jessica, from How About Orange... (who strangely signs the J in her name exactly like I do), had an extremely useful post about wasting time (which relates back to the snowflake. If you're interested you can find mine. It's #5836046.). As such, I did some of that here and here and here.

And last night I did some time-wastin' here, thanks to Dinosaur Mom (who is looking snappy in her dino-bikini). In honor of all of this I'm adding a new label. See below. It only seems appropriate.

For quick, transparent reference to these time-wasters see here:

Create Your Own Snowflake
Snowball Fight
Elf Yourself (Here's our little family fully-elfed.)
Yeti/Penguin Baseball/Cricket
Scrooge Yourself (Lydia Violet as Scrooge)

LoVE loves... The American Art Museum

from the Smithsonian American Art Museum Web site

It turns out that LoVE loves art. And not just her Papa's art, which I need to blog about as well, but all kinds. Portraits especially. Today we visited the newly remodeled Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery with Rosie and Audrey. I've been wanting to go for awhile now and Rosie's visit from England was the perfect excuse to find the time. A few weeks ago I found Abbot Handerson Thayer's Angel on the SAAM Web site and was absolutely enthralled. It actually stunned me with its beauty. Well, I really wanted to see what Lydia Violet would think of it and folks, even at 5 months 13 days, she was enthralled too. We strolled into the gallery where the painting is hung (it's 10x more stunning in person) and I took her out of the snap n' go and held her up to see it. She studied it intently and then focused in on the eyes, which held her gaze for a good 10 or 20 seconds. Now, that might not sound like a long time, but in baby time that's an eternity. Just count it off and imagine an infant doing any one thing for that long of a stretch. Really... the only way to describe it is awesome.

We spent the rest of the afternoon at the museum and it looks like she loves all varieties of paintings and art pieces. She liked other Thayer paintings as well. Virgin Enthroned especially. (Again with the eyes.) And a striking portrait of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan from the Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits exhibit in the National Portrait Gallery.

Her reactions to everything she saw made me want to just jump into her brain and listen to what was going on in there. Having witnessed it, and how she reacted to the art in general over the rest of the afternoon, all I could think of was how much I look forward to raising her to appreciate experiences like that. I want to take her to museums all the time. I want her to be starved to learn.

I can't wait until she starts talking. Imagine the things she will say.

blogging withdrawal

I'm feeling behind. I have so many things to blog about and so little time...

1. the garage studio project wrap-up post
2. my new glass kiln, which is technically a Christmas present, so I guess I can wait to post on that until Christmas has arrived (but it's already in the newly finished garage studio folks! V. exciting!)
   
3. wind-powered donuts (yes, wind-powered donuts AND espresso for that matter)
4. a new recurring theme post "LoVE Loves..." where I detail Lydia Violet's latest obsession. Examples of posts that are waiting to be written: LoVE Loves... Papas paintings, her newly discovered feet, Lydia the Tattooed Lady, etc.
5. Lydia Violet in general. The only regular blog time she's getting lately is over on Baby in a Carseat. I think she's actually going through withdrawal herself.
6. I've been reading a great book, Craft, Inc.: Turn Your Creative Hobby into a Business and I have no time to say all the great things about it that I want to. Sigh.

Well, that's six things (a total of eight potential posts, one of which I've already begun writing), just six, out of the dozens that are swirling around in my head. I've got a break from work coming up over the holidays. Rosie Bee will be visiting from England for TWO WEEKS!!! Maybe I can get caught up then? Though, her visit I'm sure will generate all sorts of new potential topics. Sigh. I really need to figure out a way to get paid to keep up with this blog. Then all my problems would be solved.

Click on my ads people! That'll be a start. :^)

Just in case you wanted to know,

and

I am 71% Addicted to Coffee

How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

71%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I'm big enough to admit when I've been misinformed

So I got a comment today on my recent how many grains of rice in a cup? post:

Anonymous said...

Um... 100 grains of rice = LESS than HALF a TEAspoon.

Your estimate of 1000 in a cup is completely incorrect.

My original post said that there were "approximately 1,000" grains of rice in a cup. I found this "fact" on wiki.answers.com. I'm not sure where the original editor found their info but it was clearly wrong, as my commenter pointed out. The original "answer" has since been updated (to 7,200 grains) and now includes a note about http://www.freerice.com/. But, so as not to be led down the primrose path by yet another wiki, I did some actually counting and calculating of my own before making this post.

When I got home from work today I pulled out a bag of rice (specifically Tropico Extra Super Quality Jasmine Scented Rice) and scooped 1/2 teaspoon then proceeded to count approximately 100 grains of rice. Now let's do a little math:

3 teaspoons = 1 Tablespoon therefore 1 Tablespoon of rice = 600 grains

16 Tablespoons = 1 cup therefore 1 cup = 9,600 grains.

So it seems that even the updated answer on wiki. answers.com is questionable. I guess this might also vary on the type of rice grains you're counting or weighing, as they did. Basmati rice for example has larger grains than regular white rice.

So @ my commenter: Good on ya. You were approximately right. And right to point out my mistake. But how about a little less attitude next time? I mean really. I was just doing a good Samaritan deed here. Passing on the word. Feeding hungry people.

BTW, thanks for reading my blog. :^)

Universal Translator

It's like Star Trek, but better. Now you can read Grizzarkhov in almost any language you want. Granted, not in Klingon or anything, but still. How fun is this? Dima and I got a kick out of reading some of the latest posts in Russian this evening. I read out loud and he tried to understand what the heck I was saying. It was a slow process. But fun.

If you want to try, use the dropdown menu on the Google Translate tool to the left, select your preferred language and see if I'm as amusing (or as tiresome) in Arabic, German, Russian and Spanish as I am in English.

Act your age, not your shoe size.

Well, this is embarrassing.

Is this a comment on my vocabulary or my sense of humor? I have to wonder what's bringing my score down. For the record, I actually have a masters degree. And I can usually be counted on to use commas correctly. Though I don't guarantee 100 percent accuracy. That's what I rely on Write. Baker. Music Maker. for. Hmph. Maybe I should start using more of those vocab words that I got right on the FreeRice.com Web site in my posts... Am I sounding defensive?

Whatever! I'm going to embrace this. With my rating and those of my blogging friends, we're showing a nice cross section. They shouldn't mind me putting their reading levels out there for the world to see. After all, they're kicking my butt.

• Writer. Baker. Music Maker comes in at College: Postgrad. (Please note, another unnamed Web site by the same blogger rated Elementary School level. Ha!)
• Expat with Elephants a respectable College: Undergrad.
• Popcorn and Scotch another College: Postgrad.
• Dinosaur Mom, whom I don't actually know IRL (In Real Life) stomped us all. She's writing at a Genius level. *Sigh*

Finally, in order to thoroughly confuse you, I leave you with the reading level from baby in a carseat, which consists of nothing but photos of our beautiful daughter in, yes, her carseat: Genius. Well, no wonder.

I've got a load

This is sort of a metro.texture™, which would normally be an image over on my other blog by the same name, but this a story with no image so it can't, by definition, go there. Although it relates to this image that I took on the Metro this morning. (Sardines). Anyway, I digress...

While I was in the maternity time warp I somehow forgot all about my favorite Metro train operator. Well, I had the pleasure of riding into work with her today. I have no idea what her name is but if you ride the Red Line, you know exactly who I'm talking about. If you board one of her trains in the morning you can look forward to a zany running commentary all the way into the city. You'll know you're on one of her trains when you hear a deep and soft female voice that sounds like it should be jockeying jazz on the radio say, "Please enter quickly and safely, quickly and safely, people."

Really what she's got is a special talent. A superpower if you will. With that voice and her strange storytelling ways, she can make the most hectic, crowded, backed-up of commutes (1) fly by, and (2) seem painless. On a chaotic commuting day, everyone within earshot will fall under her spell and forget how they normally conduct themselves on the Metro, which under stressful circumstances would be with hostility and attitude and might even involve pushing and shoving. Hypnotized by the lilt of this woman's voice people actually DO step away from Metro doors that are bursting at the seams when she asks them to. On any other train, with any other driver, you'd find those same people trying shove themselves into the smallest of remaining spaces. Spaces that are not meant to be occupied by human forms. At least not full-sized adult human forms. But when she asks, people listen. It's fascinating.

This morning the Red Line was especially backed up, slow and crowded. And instead of cross words and attitude the only utterances to be heard from this woman's passengers (and in some cases people on the platform AND on other trains) were giggles and chuckles at her peculiar chatter. The man sitting next to me had clearly never ridden with her, because he resisted cracking a smile until we were all the way to Metro Center. But even he could not withstand her powers. I finally saw him smile after I had laughed out loud for about the 10th time.

One quote from this morning as the full train was rolling into the already packed station: "Good morning, good morning, good morning. As you can see, I've got a load." She then proceeded to tell the people on the platform how to be courteous to the passengers that would exit and how they should "quickly and safely" enter the train. But best of all was "if you feel touching or wigglin' don't despair. We've got a load. It's tight in here." That, I think, may have been what finally broke my seatmate's composure.

I think I must tell her I missed her next time I ride with her. It's really a nice way to start your day. Laughing. It sets a standard for the rest of the day to come.

Work

It's really interfering with my bloggin'.

Well, work and all the house projects, and the fact that we were ALL sick earlier this week.

... really crampin' my bloggin' style.

*Sigh*

Too Tired to Blob

I do mean to say "I'm too tired to blog" but I feel like a blob and it seemed appropriate. I'll get caught up here soon. In the meantime, I started posting to metro.texture again if you're interested. I got some cool shots on the Metro this morning with my new camera, I mean phone. It's a AT&T Tilt and SUPER cool. Can you say 3.0 megapixels? You can see a significant difference in the quality of photo. You can actually print the pictures I'm taking as 5x7s. Crazy!

Okay, so I guess I just technically blogged. But I was still tired while I did it. More later about the phone. More later in general.