Messy Art Party!

Anna had fun at her friend Lauren's Messy Art Party! (Celebrating her five years, four months, and several days after being born.)


Jennifer had a few clothes for us to take for Sophie. (This is only up to six months — I'm assured there's more to come.)

Small Problems Overcome

Very often, it's the small problems that halt my forward momentum.

In the southeast bedroom, there's a bit of baseboard trim that was poorly spliced by the previous owner when they decided to alter the floor plan. (It's hard for me to explain without a picture. One of these days, I'll figure out how to use Google SketchUp.)

Anyway, nobody but me would ever notice — or care — that this splice isn't up to snuff. The "correct" way to fix the problem would have been to remove the trim and reinstall it. But this approach would likely have caused a cascade of other problems. The newly spliced piece would have been too short, so I would have had to replace that part of the trim. But then I would have had to match the old trim. Or, failing that, I would have had to replace all the trim.

Clearly, I was looking at an excessive amount of work to solve a very small problem. And I knew that. I made a conscious decision to ignore the poor workmanship.

The trouble is, my subconscious was saying, "I don't think so."

So, I was stuck. Enter Tina. "Can you just smooth it out somehow?"

In my defense, I had thought of that. I just didn't think it would work.

A few strokes with a plane, a bit of wood putty, and a random orbital sander were all it took to bypass that obstacle. Is it perfect? No, but it's good enough.

And, to top it all off, I got a prize: a LEGO "Imperial Dropship" with four stormtroopers. I don't remember seeing this ship in the movies, but it was fun to build.



By the way, there was a question in the comments about the LEGO AT-AP featured in an earlier post.

Is the scary robot one of the good guys or bad guys?

The AT-AP (All Terrain Attack Pod) is basically a gun platform. It was originally used near the end of the Clone Wars, by Republic forces led by the Jedi against the Separatists. So, I guess it was used by the good guys.

But then Order 66 came, and the clone troopers turned on the Jedi, and exterminated most of them. So, I guess it was used by the bad guys.

My First (Somewhat) Political Post

Man, it's hard for me to write about politics. Tina keeps asking me why I don't post any political pontificating. (I usually give her an earful over the morning paper.) The thing is, a written political argument makes my brain hurt.

I was going to write something about John McCain selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate, but I ended up with too many words and not enough time to edit them*, so I'll just note that it was a bold choice.

In other news, Anna is concerned that Halloween decorations are going up too early. "It's not even fall, yet!"

*(It would have been a really great essay. I'm not kidding.)

The Book Barn

A trip to Mountain Lakes generally includes a visit to the Book Barn in Denville. They have a great selection of popular fiction and lots of children's books. The prices are so low they're practically giving them away - $0.25 to $0.50 for most children's books, and $0.50 for mass-market paperbacks, $1.00 for trade paperbacks, and $2.00 for "nearly new" hardcovers.

But sometimes the prices are so low they're actually giving them away. Here's a list of the Michael Crichton novels I got for free on Tuesday.

• The Great Train Robbery (read Tuesday)


• Congo (already read, saw the movie)


• Sphere (already read, saw the movie)


• Jurassic Park (already read, saw the movie)


• Disclosure (saw the movie)


• The Lost World (already read, saw the movie)


• Airframe (1996)


• Timeline (1999)

I read The Great Train Robbery Tuesday night, finishing it in a few hours. I don't usually read that fast (I'm not Tina!), but I can't think of any Michael Crichton novels that I didn't finish in an evening. I suppose this is a pretty common observation, but it's hard to put those books down. That's why I picked up Congo, Sphere, Jurassic Park, and the Lost World, even though I had already read them.

Anna's Lolipop

We didn't make it to the dollar store this time, but one of Grandma's fond memories is how Anna zeroed in on this gigantic lolipop.


Anna worked on it for about an hour before giving up.

Trip to Mountain Lakes

We're back from Mountain Lakes. For reasons that I don't understand, I couldn't set up a wireless network there without slowing the internet connection to a crawl. This meant no laptop, and no access to the computer without disturbing Dad, so no blog posts.

In what is becoming a tradition, just before we left I put down a coat of polyurethane in the upstairs hallway. (If I ever have need of a method for increasing my stress level, I should remember this one: do a messy, surprisingly time-consuming job just before leaving the house for a few days. Make sure to block access to the shower.) I taped a sign to the stairs to remind Lisa not to go upstairs. Anna made a "No Kitty" sign. Too bad Kitty can't read! (Fast forward to our return: I found a trail of paw prints and cat hair embedded in the polyurethane. Oh well.)

The main topic of conversation, of course, was the news of Grandma and Grandpa's decision to buy a house in Niskayuna. There's paperwork to be filled out, signed, and faxed. The house needs to be inspected. Plans need to be made: How should the new house be set up? What improvements can be made before the move? What stuff should be left behind? (I'm voting for the sofa bed.)

Note to Self

Keep a list of things to write about. During the day I have "a bunch of random stuff" that crosses my mind, but I only write down thoughts like: buy coffee, fix wobbly dining room table leg. Then, after I get Anna to bed, my mind is pretty blank. I really just want to watch a movie, or read a book.

Anna's Room, Etc.

Anna's room is completely finished. We moved her furniture back last night. To celebrate, Tina insisted that I get a toy.


Anna helped me build it.


Oh, and Grandma and Grandpa bought a house.

My First Meme

A bunch of noteworthy things are happening today, but I'm grumpy and don't feel like writing about them (or it's not time to write about them yet). But I don't want to skip a day, so I'm resorting to an old trick. A sparsely annotated list.

Here's how this meme works. Below are the top 106 books tagged "unread" in LibraryThing (a book cataloging website that I absolutely love). The books I've read are in bold. The books I started, but couldn't finish are italicized.

I was hoping this list would demonstrate my amazing erudition, but I've never even heard of most of these books. Maybe they're unread because they're too long and boring? Anyway, here's the list.

1. The Solitudes by John Crowley


2. To Green Angel Tower, Part 1 by Tad Williams


3. The Arabian Nights by Husain Haddawy


4. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke - The cover of this book appeals to me. (I've found that, yes, you can judge a book by its cover. Whoever is in charge of designing these things does a pretty good job. I rarely find a bad book behind a cover that I like - although sometimes a good book is hidden behind a bad cover.)


5. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy


6. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes - I really wanted to like this, but the wording was just too stilted. I have the translation by Thomas Shelton, which has been accused of being too literal.


7. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez - Never read it, but it has a great opening line:
   

   Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.



8. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Not sure why I never got around to reading this one.


9. The Silmarillion by J. R. R. Tolkien - Am I a heretic for thinking this book was kind of boring? (I'm a devoted LoTR fan.)


10. Ulysses by James Joyce - I liked what I read, but just didn't have the time for it.


11. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - Same comment as for Ulysses.


12. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray


13. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller


14. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert


15. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood


16. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky - The best book ever! But it has to be the translation by David McDuff, which is available as a Penguin Classic (yes, the cheap one is the best). And the movie has Captain Kirk!


17. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco - Loved the book. And the movie was pretty good too.


18. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte


19. Middlemarch by George Eliot


20. The Satanic Verses: A Novel by Salman Rushdie - Somehow, even with all the publicity this book received (what with the fatwa and all), I managed to read every book by Salman Rushdie except this one. So when I saw it on the shelving cart at the library I had to grab it. (The librarian had the same reaction as me.) So far, so good.


21. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens


22. The Odyssey by Homer - The Robert Fagles translation is the best if you just want to enjoy the story. (Some critics think he strays too far from the the literal Greek, but how would I know anything about that?)


23. Moby Dick, or, The Whale by Herman Melville - Great book. Hated the whaling bits when I read it in high school, but loved them when I read it in grad school. The difference between reading for pleasure and reading to pass a pop quiz?


24. The Story of Saddler's Croft by E & H. Heron - What the heck is this?


25. The Story of Baelbrow by E & H. Heron - And this?


26. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
    

    Whan that April with his shoures soote
    The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
    And bathed every veyne in swich licour
    Of which vertu engendered is the flour

    
    (Yes, I googled for the spelling. But I will never forget those opening lines.)
    


27. A Victim Of Higher Space by Algernon Blackwood


28. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi


29. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson - I loved everything he wrote before the Baroque Cycle, but I just couldnt get into this one. (I saw that Jamie was reading it, so I might give it another chance.)


30. Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo - And, I saw the movie! (The Disney version.)


31. The Iliad by Homer - Again, I find the Fagles translation to be the most readable. (I suffered through the Lattimore and Fitzgerald translations in high school and college. But maybe they weren't that bad? I just wasn't ready for them?)


32. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova


33. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco - It took me a couple of tries to get through this book, but it was worth it. (The first time I tried to read it, I got bogged down trying to figure out which parts of the "history" in the book were true. If only I'd had Google back then!)


34. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo


35. Battle Royale, Book 1 by Koushun Takami - I read Casino Royale. Does that count? (And, I saw the movie! Casino Royale, not Battle Royale.)


36. Love in The Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez


37. The Once and Future King by T. H. White


38. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas


39. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner


40. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen


41. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak - Didn't see the movie either.


42. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding


43. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon


44. Emma by Jane Austen


45. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - I have this book on my bookshelf for some reason, although I've never read it. A brief perusal of its contents indicates that it might be my kind of book. Many detailed tangents totally unrelated to the plot. Check. Author is full of himself. Check. What's not to like?


46. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond - Would have made a good magazine article.


47. Life of Pi by Yann Martel


48. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas - I read an abridged children's version. Does that count?


49. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand


50. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf


51. Dracula by Bram Stoker - I saw the movie!


52. The Host by Stephenie Meyer


53. Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny


54. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams - Loved the book. Hated the movie (the one with Sam Rockwell as Zaphod Beeblebrox).


55. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse


56. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini And, I got the DVD out of the library, but I didn't watch it yet. Maybe tomorrow.


57. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf


58. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - And, I saw the movie!


59. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood


60. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne - And, I visited the house in Salem. Twice!


61. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence


62. Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift


63. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens


64. Inferno by Dante Alighieri - The Hollanders have the most readable translation. I read this to Anna when she was an infant. (I'm not kidding.)


65. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe


66. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen


67. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence


68. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy - Who knows why I even bothered to try reading this one?


69. The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake


70. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald


71. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens - And, I played string bass in the high school musical. (And I don't even play string bass!)


72. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand


73. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë


74. Underworld: A Novel by Don DeLillo


75. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen - Saw the movie!


76. Bleak House by Charles Dickens


77. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger


78. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman


79. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - Would have made a good magazine article.


80. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje - Didn't see the movie either.


81. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce


82. Dressed To Slay by Harper Allen


83. The Confusion, Part I: The Baroque Cycle #4 by Neal Stephenson


84. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott


85. A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson - I just read this yesterday!


86. Silas Marner by George Eliot


87. Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle


88. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond - Would have made a good magazine article.


89. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Cate says I should try this.


90. The Known World by Edward P. Jones


91. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner - I just can't get into Faulkner.


92. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro


93. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri - I still haven't read the Paradiso, but the Hollanders have a recent translation.


94. Joseph Andrews and Shamela by Henry Fielding


95. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe - Saw the movie! (Does that count?)


96. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy


97. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon


98. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells - And, I saw the movie!


99. American Gods by Neil Gaiman


100. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy


101. Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe - I read the Cliff Notes. Does that count?


102. Swann's Way by Marcel Proust


103. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - And, I saw the movie!


104. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess - Saw the movie!


105. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides - Also on my bookshelf.


106. The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot

That was more fun than I expected. I'll probably come back to this list as I think of more things.

Be Careful What You Promise

I've been trying to put the finishing touches on Anna's room. There's some urgency to this project because I only have until Halloween to complete all my projects. I'm reminded of Hofstadter's Law. (It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take Hofstadter's Law into account.)

Anna wants to help, and complains that we never let her do any chores. (How about cleaning up all your toys in the sun room? Oh, Daddy, that's so boring!) I usually let her do something, so it's hard for me to explain that the remaining tasks require a bit more precision than she is capable of.

As an example, I've been putting base cap molding on top of the plain baseboard. It dresses things up a bit, and it's my way of saying, "this room is finished."

She doesn't want to help cut the base cap, because the miter saw is loud and scary, and I casually mentioned that it can cut off your hand; however, installing the pieces is a different story. If I had a nail gun I might be able to scare her away. But a hammer and nails? She hit a nail once at school, so she's an expert.

The proper response would have been to let her hit a few nails. I can always repair the damage after she gets bored.

But no. I had to get creative. She's not interested in pounding nails just for the sake of pounding nails. There has to be a payoff. Maybe we can build something? How about a princess castle?

Wait, did I say that out loud?

The thing about Anna is that when she hears that we are going to do something, she thinks we are going to do it right now. (This may be true of other small children, but I have a feeling it is particularly true for Anna.) A princess castle is something that we could build - given time to consider the requirements, research construction methods, acquire the necessary materials...

"Daddy, I made a plan!"

This is a concept drawing. Apparently, the castle needs to have a drawbridge that goes up and down, a moat (with crocodiles?), and a few towers with a place for the fairy godmother to hang out. The colors are for illustrative purposes only. The castle should be pink, but she didn't want to use up the pink marker. (She's not that concerned about using up the red, orange, and green markers.)

So, now I have to add "build a castle with Anna" to my list of projects. Ironically, I let her pound a few nails into the trim, and she didn't cause any damage. She also had fun with wood putty and sandpaper.

Coffee for One

I'm not quite human until my first cup of coffee. Tina and Anna both know this, so the first order of business in the morning is to get Daddy some coffee. Tina usually makes a pot of coffee when she wakes up. However, today she had to go to work early, so no coffee.

Anna came in to let me know that she was done sleeping and "can I please go downstairs now?" I mumbled my assent and went back to sleep. The sounds of a chair dragging across the kitchen floor and cabinet doors opening and closing used to disturb me, but now I figure if she wants to get a granola bar and a glass of milk, well, she's five years old. And it gives me five extra minutes of sleep.

Anyway, five minutes later, Anna returns. "Daddy, I made you coffee!"

That's one way to make me jump out of bed. "What? What exactly did you do?"

And she proceeds to list a series of actions that sound remarkably like they could lead to the production of coffee. At least an abstract cup of coffee.

"You have to plug it in and turn it on because I can't touch electricity."

Whew. So she does listen to my lectures. I'm still a bit nervous, because there's a good chance that my day will start without coffee, but I stumble into the kitchen to survey the damage.

And I find that everything was set up just right.

Life is Full of Little Trips

I'm not much of a traveler. Our recent trip to Boston was a major excursion for me. That doesn't mean I don't like to take trips at all. Just that I prefer them to be a bit shorter. Like, two miles is good.

For today's first little trip, Anna and I met Tina at work for lunch in the cafeteria. We've been there before, of course, but always for some sort of event. This visit was apropos of nothing, so we had to stop at the visitor's center to pick up an ID. (Anna brought her own special "Anna Banana" ID. I did not bring any cameras, explosives, or other contraband.) The girls had pizza and french fries. I had a "burrito grande."

The ride in the elevator to Tina's office no longer includes Anna holding onto me for dear life; however, it still includes a walk to the water cooler. Never mind that there's water in the office. We need to zoom down to the snack area, wave our hands to magically turn on the light, get one of those tiny paper cups, and always push the blue button to get cold water. (The red button is hot water. We don't want that.)

After we left Tina's work, Anna and I made a trip to her school to pick up some more books. We're up to 800 books as of today.

When we got home we read ten books before being interrupted by some tree trimmers for National Grid. Apparently the utility pole next our garage is slated for replacement and "could we pull our truck into your driveway so we can trim the trees?" Well, since you asked so nicely, yes you may. Anna set up chairs in the backyard so we could watch them. (They were pretty good-natured about that.)

Our final trip for the day was to Target to get Anna some curtains for her almost finished extremely lilac room. We convinced her to choose lilac over pink for the walls by promising pink curtains, so now it's time to pay up. As a special treat we had more pizza and popcorn in the store. And somehow princess pajamas found their way into the cart. Maybe that's why, when it came time for the ritual browsing of the toy section, we spent most of our time in the LEGO aisle. ("Daddy, don't you just love this big, giant, scary LEGO robot?")

Little Things that Break

Very little. Like 1/16" little. That's the size of the drill bit I need to finish reinstalling the quarter round molding in Anna's room. I usually have extras, but for some reason I was down to my very last one. Just a slight deviation off axis is all that's needed to snap one of these little things. And so tomorrow I'll head back to Lowe's to buy a package of 1/16" drill bits.

The key point here - one that I am slowing learning - is that it is a false economy to say, "Well, I only need one of these inexpensive, but fragile (and/or consumable) items, so I'll just get what I need."

Now, I'm not running a hardware store, so I don't have to stock everything. But I shouldn't run out of things like cheap drill bits or drywall screws.

Harry Potter Delayed for Sophie

There's been lots of speculation about why the release of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is being changed from November 21, 2008 to July 17, 2009. (Some blame it on fallout from the writer's strike, or maybe Warner Brothers is scared of a vampire movie based on a book I've never even heard of.)

But the answer is simply that Sophie's estimated due date is November 23, and there's no way that Tina and I could be assured that we could watch the movie in the theaters.

Wow

I'm not normally much of a sports fan, and I've only watched a little bit of the Olympics, but all I can say is: Wow. That Michael Phelps is pretty good.

(Also, I googled "Michael Phelps" a few seconds after the end of the relay, and someone had already updated the Wikipedia page!)

The End of an Era

Today was Anna's last day at Our World Montessori. She has been a student there for almost four years. She said that she'll miss her friends and teachers, but she's ready for kindergarten.

First School Bus Ride

No, it's not the first day of school yet. It's the "Bus Safety Orientation" for kindergarten. Anna sat in front with the other children, while Daddy sat in back with the other adults.

School buses have seat belts now! But their use is not required? One of the concerns is that it would be very difficult for the bus driver to ensure that all the students keep their seat belts fastened properly. The bus only has manually adjustable lap belts which can cause injury in an accident.

We also heard about "compartmentalization". The claustrophobia inducing seats of a school bus are designed to provide passive restraint (i.e., without seat belts). Plus, a school bus is not a car. It's big. It has a lot of mass, so it responds much differently from a car in an accident.

Yes, I am trying to talk myself into believing that my little girl will be safe when she takes the bus to kindergarten.

Anna's Room

Anna's extremely lilac room is almost finished.


A few minor touchups here and there, and we should be ready to move her furniture back this weekend. And then onto the next thing...

When Squirrels Become Gardeners

This is why you shouldn't let the squirrels determine where to plant vegetables.


Last year, during the fall, we had a few pumpkins sitting around that baby crabapple tree (barely visible in the upper middle part of the photo). The squirrels pretty much left them alone until winter. It was very amusing to watch them slide around in the snow and nibble on the pumpkins. Eventually, the pumpkins were gone. Well, I guess they were only mostly gone, because in the spring we had a few unexpected seedlings sprout around the tree. We decided to let them grow, just to see what would happen. The result is a sprawling mess of pumpkin plants. Of course I'm not going to get rid of them.

Anna's Chair

Let's see what we can do with this old chair. First we need a base coat. ("Daddy, white is so boring!")


Much better. We need every color!


Now we just need a little bit more glitter.

Directions to 2053 Lexington Parkway

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You have lovely hands. Do you moisturize?

Oh no! Not Bernie Mac!

Ocean's Eleven is at the top of the list of movies that I shouldn't like, but do. A while back, I found this review, which neatly summarizes my feelings.

MaryAnn Johanson

Here's one measure, for me, of what makes a movie great: If I stumble across it while channel-surfing and I'm instantly suckered in -- I can't not watch it, no matter at what point in the film it's at, no matter how many times I've seen it before -- that's a great film.

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

In the morning, Tina and Anna went for a "walk and talk" to get Dunkin' Donuts and coffee. We were going to visit Luke on our way home, but Cate called to say he was sick, so we took our time getting out of the hotel. Anna enjoyed watching TV in bed.

The long boring ride home was enlivened by an F-15 landing practically on top of our car. No, really. Here is a Google Maps picture of Barnes Airport in Wesfield. That road at the bottom is the Mass Pike. Notice how close the runway is to the road?


The other fun thing was some blinding rain that (thankfully) cleared up just before we got to the Castleton-on-Hudson Bridge.

It's nice to be home. After a trip to the library and the Co-op we had a healthy dinner. Tina gave Anna a bath while I put together the new bed that was waiting for us. And now I am going to bed.

Sleeping Under the Citgo Sign

We're visiting Catherine, Jamie, and Luke.

Last night we stopped off in Arlington Center to get some Thai food from Sweet Chili (of course), and pizza from Papa Ginos. The plan was to get pizza from "Za" which turned out to be in East Arlington. A bit of confusion there.

We made it to Waltham, then spent some time oohing and ahhing at Luke.


Catherine and Jamie had a delicious cake for Tina. Um, yeah, I didn't get a picture until after we had started eating it.


Catherine made Tina a beautiful necklace. This was one that Tina had admired before.


We headed to the hotel and almost made it without any problems. We were literally across the street and just had to make a U-turn past the bus station and we would have been done. But we could not move. For what seemed like forever nothing moved. Finally, a prisoner transport vehicle to the left of us put on its lights, traffic parted a little bit, and we followed in their wake. Too bad they weren't going in our direction, but we finally managed to turn around and get back to the hotel.

Anna likes the free cookies.


Here's the view outside our window.


The next day (that would be today), after a hearty breakfast at the hotel, Tina set off to Beth Israel to do some real work, and Anna and I went to visit and "help" Catherine and Jamie. We were going to be way too early, so first we stopped off in Arlington Center for some coffee (just for me!) and a visit to Spy Pond. Anna was pretty excited to see the ducks. We came here every day when she was a baby.



We got to Waltham just in time to see Luke get a sponge bath. Jamie headed to work, and the rest of us had pizza while Luke slept peacefully in his stroller. I tried to help out a little bit, but really, Catherine had things under control. Anna and I picked up a hefty stack of pictures from Luke's first week. I helped Catherine with birth announcements while Anna drew some pictures. And then we had to head back to the hotel to meet Tina for dinner.

It took forever to get back to the hotel. Part of it was just unavoidable traffic. But a big part of it was that I was determined not to get stuck in that ridiculous traffic in Kenmore Square. I should have just headed down Comm. Ave., maybe crossing at the B.U. Bridge. What I did instead was go through the Fenway, making a big circle around the hotel. Each time I tried to avoid traffic I would get stuck in more traffic. When we finally got to the hotel, Tina was resting after a busy day at BIDMC and a conference at the Seaport Hotel. She was pretty hungry too, so it was a good thing Catherine had given us some cake to bring to Tina. Unfortunately, we didn't have utensils, but that's what fingers are for! We tracked down some more food at India Quality and 7-Eleven (for Anna), and finally went to bed.

The Upstairs Hallway

I put down the first coat of polyurethane in the upstairs hallway.


It's hard to tell from this photo, but I think it turned out pretty good, considering how bad it was when I started. (I can't believe I don't have a "before" picture.)

Oh, why is the above photo cropped so funny? Well, let's just say I wanted to draw your attention away from some of the unfinished projects in the hallway.


That's an access panel for the bathtub plumbing. It would take at most one day to make a less noticeable access panel, but after exactly four years living in this house I still haven't gotten around to it.

Yup, that's the original wallpaper that covered the upstairs hallway, stairwell, and entry.

The Evolution of a Kitchen

The original plaster ceiling was crumbling and the lath was moldy. (The kitchen is under the bathroom.)



Removing the lath revealed... almost nothing keeping the bathroom from falling into the kitchen! (If anything, the floor was probably holding up some of those joists.)



A bit of lumber, lots of bolts, and even more coffee. (Thanks Dad!)



I can finally see the light in the kitchen! And how about that ceiling? Easy access to the mess of plumbing and wiring that still needs to be sorted out, plus stylish special order tiles!



Let's just not look at the rest of the kitchen yet.

First and Last Books in the Library

For no reason at all I decided to check out the first and last books in the library (shelved according to the Dewey Decimal system)

I found the first book shelved at 002 Lan - Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of A Man Who Rescued A Million Yiddish Books by Aaron Lansky. This book seems to be a well-told tale of person who decided to save Yiddish books that were being discarded from various collections. I can almost see myself doing this. Well, maybe not rescuing Yiddish books specifically, but you get the idea.

The last book was shelved at 999 Sha - South: A Memoir of the Endurance Voyage by Ernest Shackleton. This book is on a subject that interests me, and it is written by the man himself. The text does seems to be a bit more difficult to read than modern accounts.

Unfortunately, this book seems to be improperly cataloged. 999 is the DDC number for "Extraterrestrial worlds". Most libraries choose either 998 Arctic islands & Antarctica, or 919 Geography of & travel in other areas, although SCPL is not the only library that classifies Antarctica as an extraterrestrial world.

So, does this book really qualify as the last book in the library? Does anybody care?

Random aside: Schenectady County is home to the 109th Airlift Wing of the Air National Guard. They provide airlift support for Arctic and Antarctic missions using a ski-equipped version of the C-130.

Musical Rooms

We're getting ready for the arrival of our newest family member. One thing that traditionally needs to be done is preparation of the nursery. We already have a crib (thanks Cate!) and all the furniture we need, so it should be a simple matter of putting the furniture in the room. There are, however, a few preliminaries.

With the addition of another girl we will need one bedroom for each of the two girls, plus one bedroom for me and Tina, plus an office for Tina. We have four bedrooms in the house, but we've only fixed up three of them. Well, that needs to change.

(I like to refer to the bedrooms by their geographic location. This drives Tina crazy for some reason, but it is the only way I can keep track of them.)

Here's the scenario:

• NW bedroom = office --> nursery
  
• NE bedroom = Tina and Mike --> office
• SE bedroom = unoccupied --> Tina and Mike
• SW bedroom = Anna --> Anna

So every room changes, except for Anna's room. But wait, there's more!

Anna wants her room painted lilac. (Actually, she wanted it painted pink, but we talked her into lilac.) Once we get all the other rooms set up, it will be hard to get Anna out of her room to paint it, so it has to be done now. (We could also ignore her request, but come on, it's pretty reasonable for a little princess to want her room painted some sort of pinkish, purple color.)

So we moved Anna's furniture to the NW bedroom (current office, future nursery) while I paint the SW bedroom (Anna's past and future bedroom). Of course, the NW bedroom wasn't empty, so all that stuff had to go somewhere. Thank goodness for old houses with large walk-up attics. And Dad helped me bring my oak table down to the basement. But wait, there's more!

The upstairs hallway is in terrible shape. The floor should really be replaced, but we're not going to do that, so I just have to fix it up as best as I can. The thing is, once I put down a coat of polyurethane we can't access any of the upstairs rooms at all, and with the humidity we've been having it takes 2-3 days to cure. And it really stinks too. Good thing my sister just had a baby so I have an excuse to go to Boston for a couple of days.

Hey, this post could use some pictures, huh? I'll have to see what I can do about that. Maybe tomorrow. Firefly is waiting - Bushwhacked!

One post per day

One post per day.

Made it with 2 minutes to spare.

And now off to bed.

(There's a very good chance that this post will be edited sometime in the future. I'm not one of those purist bloggers who think you can't ever change anything after posting.)

Malcolm would have been a good name

I just rewatched the intended pilot episode of Firefly. (This episode was actually broadcast last because the brilliant executives at FOX decided that the best time to show an episode introducing the characters, setting, and overall story arc would be at the end of the series. But I digress.)

Even though I should have been exactly the intended audience for this show, I didn't get to see it until Catherine and Jamie gave me a DVD of the complete series for Christmas. I mentioned that they had a baby yesterday, named Lucas Orlando Milliken.

That's a good name. A fine name. But Malcolm would have been a good name too, don't you think?