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maura @ 10:11 pm

So I’m tired + have a ton to do tonight, as usual, and I wasn’t planning to blag because I’m saving it all up for NaBloPoMo. BUT, Gus went on a field trip at school today and lately the homework on field trip days is to tell a grown up what you saw and did and have the grown up write it in your writing notebook. Except that Gus forgot his writing notebook so he convinced me to type it up and print it out for him. And this is what he said:

“Castle Clinton was surrounded by water, except for the wooden planks that let it go to New York City. It was used for 4 different things. First it was used for war (there were 28 artillery cannons that aimed out of the windows).* Then it was used for an immigration center. Then it was used for an opera house. And then it was an aquarium. It still is all 4 of those things but it doesn’t look exactly like what it should look like. It had a little chunk of everything that was in it before it was changed to how it is nowadays. Now there is one cannon, one tank of fish, one book to sign your name in.”**

* I should note that here he paused and said, “Mommy, what are those curved lines that go around words?” to request parentheses.

** He’s talking about the register that immigrants had to sign, I think.

“It was built in 18-something. I don’t exactly remember when it was built. But it was built in 1820-something. It also has thick walls. When it was first built it had walls that were 8 feet thick. They were that thick to protect itself from enemies. They were having it for the battle of 1820.*** It’s hard to believe this part but the water that used to be surrounding it is now land that has benches, trees, and other things that you should normally see around your neighborhood.”

*** = War of 1812. But he was close!

“To get there was a long trip. We took the F train to the R train to the island it’s on, and then after we were done going to the island we took the Staten Island ferry back and forth, but when we were in the terminal waiting for the ferry to get back we found a woman who was playing music on a violin and we sat there for I don’t remember how long but it seemed like a half an hour. We kept on asking her to do more songs until M [his teacher] said that the boat was here. We could see our school from the Staten Island ferry ride.**** It was pretty cold so I spent most of the time sitting down on the outside or sitting down on the inside. The ride was pretty fun and I saw lots of different boats. It was a whole day trip, if you can imagine how long it would take.”

**** I’m not sure that this is true. But they could probably see close to their school, at least.

“On the outside of Castle Clinton it looked like a semi-circle. The view that we had of it looked like it was a whole circle but it actually was a semi-circle. I had a good time.”

sometimes you’re so heavy, sometimes i don’t feel you at all

maura @ 9:03 pm

Some Things I Learned Today, in Roughly the Order In Which I Learned Them:

1. Walking to work is much more conducive to thinking than scooting. I guess my brain is too busy planning my scoot path to really think of anything. It takes longer to walk, but I think I will segue back to it as the seasons change, because the scooter is cold + windy.

2. When you have a good class in the morning it can energize you for the whole day.

3. Some things are more trouble than they’re worth.

4. Cheese ravioli, turkey sausage and garlicky broccoli rabe taste just as good the next day.

5. When your office is near the office of a colleague who works with the hospitality management department, you will occasionally be offered cookies. And they will be good!

6. My plate is full.

7. I need to refill my metrocard soon.

8. Avocados are awesome. Why has it taken me ’til age mumble-mumph to realize that?

9. The inside of The Little Red Lighthouse is dark and boring, but at the top the view is awesome. (Gus had a field trip today).

10. I can do all the dishes and make tomorrow’s lunches in exactly the amount of time it takes to listen to the entire Throwing Muses record “Limbo.”

11. If you accidentally + spazzily hit “Publish” rather than “Save” in wordpress, go back into the post and hit “Unpublish” to finish your blag. Then you can publish it!

ETA: Bonus! 12. My World Wildlife Fund calendar tells me that a newborn panda is about the size of a stick of butter. So now you know!

in this town we call home, everyone hail to the pumpkin throne

maura @ 9:14 pm

I might be slightly insane (and I barely even had any wine with dinner tonight so I’m definitely not drunk), but I just up + signed up for NaBloPoMo again. “But, but, but,” you splutter, “you haven’t managed to blag more than 3 times this month, and next month you think you’ll have time for 30 blags?” To which I reply: yep, and yep. Clearly I need the push right now. I mean, it’s not that I’m not busy (I am), but I’m sure there’s some space for blagging if I squint and look at my days sideways. Or upside down.

The holidays are coming, so we’re breaking out all of our favorite holiday videos. We’ve watched the Charlie Brown trilogy and The Nightmare Before Christmas a few times in the past week, and now all of the music from all of them is running on an endless loop through my head. Which is not so bad, really.

Somebody had a birthday today, and got lots of new electronic things with which to play. Including a 200x microscope that plugs into a computer. Said person is now roaming around the house looking for blood (literally). One cool thing is that you can take a motion capture video from the microscope. I’ll let you know when our friends the sea monkeys become You Tube stars.

you make your little way

maura @ 9:50 pm

So I read a book on my phone this week.

Just typing it makes it seem like the future, doesn’t it? I mean, seriously, I read a BOOK on my PHONE. The flying cars must be next!

The book was Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow of bing bong fame. It’s a YA terrorismtechnotyranny kind of thing, an enjoyable and compelling read. Because he’s all open source in the hizzouse, you can download it and read it for free. Also because he’s a widely published writer who already has a roomful of money. JOKING! Sort of.

But see, here’s the thing. There’s a lot from the internets that I could be downloading and reading. I mean, practically every journal article I read these days is a PDF. And there’s tons of fiction that’s out of copyright out there, too.

But I don’t. Why? Well, for work/research stuff, it’s because I need to be able to jot down marginal notes (though, to be honest, they are often along the lines of “right on!” or “that’s stupid!”). But the real reason is that it’s just not that fun to read big fat chunks of text on a computer. Esp. when you sit in front of a computer for much of the day.

Enter the phone! I can take it anywhere, and that’s what I did. It’s much more fun to read a novel while propped up by 3 pillows in bed than while sitting in my hard desk chair. My only complaint is that Stanza, this cool iphone ebook reader, is a huge battery suck, so it’s not like you can read for 12 hrs straight or anything. (Not that I have time to do that these days, anyway.)

blug, blig, blag

maura @ 9:29 pm

So I was going to post tonight about how I’ve had some hardcore bloggers block lately. And I was going to title it: “bleck, blick, block.” But then I sucked one of Gus’s soccer socks into the vacuum cleaner as I was vacuuming it, and suddenly I had something to write about!

I know you’re wondering why I was vacuuming Gus’s soccer socks. See, this season Gus’s team is playing on astroturf. Last spring they played on real grass, and got muddy or dusty or whatever during each game. And I often thought, “man, what a pain, he’d be much less dirty* if they played on one of the astroturf fields.”

* And can someone please explain to me why the 100% planet-killing polyester jerseys don’t ever seem to come clean? He had a white shirt last time and it’s pale yellow this time and it is just ridiculous how easily those things stain.

But now I rue my hasty thoughts, because astroturf was clearly invented by Satan. Last weekend it rained, and green, straw-like bits of astrograss and black specs of astrodirt stuck to everything: cleats, the ball, his water bottle, everything. Today it was dry as a bone, and the static electricity also** made the aforementioned astroturf byproducts stick to everything! Evil, evil, evil.

** Can I mention, in a total tangent, that Gus has lately started to actually emphasize italicized words when he reads to us? So cool!

Those 10 ft long soccer socks are like velcro with the astrograss, and since Gus wasn’t in during the first quarter today he instead spent it rolling around on the ground. Those socks looked like a shag carpet. Of course he has a game tomorrow, but I didn’t want to contaminate the laundry with all of that gross plastic. Hence the vacuuming.

Our vacuum has a mighty suck! But luckily it’s bagless, so the sock just went through and into the canister, where I plucked it, dusty but unharmed. And finished vacuuming it, of course.