whiplash weather

maura @ 6:37 pm

I’m always surprised at how fast things can change with early Spring weather. This time last weekend we were drinking hot chocolate after Jonathan took Gus and a pal to the park to get in some sledding and build a snow fort (after the 2 feet of snow we’d gotten the day before). Today it was 53 degrees and sunny, though there are still a few dirty piles of snow yet to melt. I took Gus to karate this morning, but we’ve spent the afternoon inside.

What is is about the internets that makes us want to own up to stuff that we’re maybe a bit ashamed about? I always feel guilty when we don’t take advantage of the nice weather and do something outside. The botanic gardens, the High Line, riding bikes in the park, getting back on our scooters: we could have done any of those things today. But I’m tired and Jonathan’s tired–indeed, we both napped, which is a rare luxury. Gus was perfectly happy to spend the day playing video games and watching Japanese Kirby videos (subtitled in English) on YouTube. And we’re planning to head to the zoo tomorrow so we’ll have plenty of opportunity for vitamin D and running around then.

You all know how I feel about video games, both for Gus and for myself. Recently we have put some limits on weekend gametime; the weekdays tend to police themselves, what with school and homework. But many weekends we’re doing stuff, too, in which case it’s not really an issue. We didn’t impose any limits today because Monday starts a 10 day electronic fast in our house. In Gus’s school the highest grades go on a camping trip each year, and to raise money for the trip they do a read-a-thon in which sponsors pledge a few cents a page. The teachers have decided that in the midst of the read-a-thon will be a 10 day period with no TV or other electronic devices. For everyone in the family, I might add.

I always feel a bit torn about these digital fasts. On the one hand, I do see some value in taking a break from electronics–they use electricity, and you don’t tend to move much while using them. They can also be kind of antisocial, though I hesitate to even bring that up because they can also be *more* social. When I’m talking to an old college pal on facebook aren’t I being more social than if I’m sitting on my sofa reading? And Gus already reads a ton–one day last month he read 219 pages of Harry Potter #2!–so it’s not like I’m worried that he’s not spending enough time hitting the books.

What I expect the 10 days will do (beyond raising money for the trip) is highlight my own various uses of electronics. Between my phone and laptop at home there’s work work (mostly but not solely email), research work, work-related reading, twitter (which is half work half not), personal email, news reading, facebook (actually not so much these days, maybe 2-3x/week), and TV/movie watching (I’ve been busy enough recently that there hasn’t been much gaming for me). Some of those can happen while Gus is asleep, so I don’t need to worry about them. But I do tend to use the phone, especially, to fill in at certain times. In the morning at the breakfast table I usually check weather, email, the NY Times, and twitter. In the evening while supervising Gus getting ready for bed I’m often catching up on personal email, twitter, facebook, or RSS feeds (overwhelmingly library- or higher ed-related).

Technically I won’t be able to use the phone or computer in that kind of filling in the cracks way during the electronics fast. Luckily I’m also about 2 months behind on New Yorkers, so maybe I can get through those, finally. But I predict that it’ll be hard to remember to check the weather at nights while Gus is asleep.

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bon appetit!

maura @ 9:52 pm

We are finally getting around to watching Julie & Julia. With the debt that we owe the late Mrs. Child (for me it’s mostly a caloric debt, but still), what the heck took us so long? Well, we tend not to squander sitter time on movies since it is possible to watch movies at home, and prefer to save it up for museums or dinners that don’t involve chicken nuggets or pizza. Of course, now that we’re watching it we see that we totally could have dragged Gus to see it,* though he probably would have been bored.

* We don’t tend to take him to any even remotely scandalous movies, though that streak may change tomorrow when we all go to see Avatar. But friends of his have seen it, prompting this hilarious summary: “There were these blue guys. They were the avatars. And they had a tree. And they really loved their tree. Then there was a fight.” So we feel like it’s probably going to be okay.

So far I totally agree with what everyone said: the Julia parts are wonderful, and the Julie bits fall flat. I kind of feel bad for Amy Adams: she’s a good actress, but who could compete with Meryl Streep in that towering role? It’s such a sweet movie, too, and Stanley Tucci is fantastic. I think I’ll have to read the book now (which, of course, we already own).

We didn’t get to finish it last night because Gus woke up twice and then it was suddenly after midnight and I have just been too tired lately to be staying up like a teenager. We paused shortly after Julia and Paul were packing up their Paris kitchen and I thought: “Hey, Jonathan has an orange Le Creuset pot just like that! Except his is oval and hers was circular.” I’m sure there are actual chef-y names for them like “stockpot” and “casserole” but I’ll never find out unless we finish that dang movie so bye!

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insistent and furry

maura @ 11:03 pm

The cats seem to have missed us while we were away. Dreadfully, achingly, pathetically missed us, if their behavior the past few days is any indication. The needy one can’t go an hour without sitting next to one of our chairs and mewing pitifully to be picked up, or flinging himself down on the floor in front of us as we try and walk through the apartment, to lure us into petting his soft underbelly. Even the stoic one is following us around and Will Not Stand for closed doors. And they’ve woken us up before dawn the past 2 days with meowing and sitting on us + purring (needy) and jumping onto the bedside table to sniff my head (stoic).

Gus, too, has not been a great sleeper since we returned. Sometimes he suddenly decides that something he used to find hilarious is actually quite scary, which seems to have happened on Sunday night with the awesome (and very cute, really!) game Plants vs Zombies, which Jonathan just got for the iphone. Honestly it’s not creepy at all, but for some reason it struck a nerve with the kid. He was up at every miniscule creaking floorboard and clanging radiator pipe on Sunday night, and we were up, too.

I’m tired. I think I need a sleep vacation.

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natural consequences

maura @ 9:30 pm

Today we got up, got ready, and got in the car to drive back from my sister’s place in Delaware. My sister, brother in law and 2 nieces followed in their car. Along the way Gus slept for 2 hrs.

When we got back to Brooklyn we said hi to the cats, changed into fancy clothes, and hopped on the subway into the city to go see The Nutcracker. It was a great time, though Gus’s attention did fade in parts. But everyone loves champagne and gummy bears at intermission, and Lincoln Center is so fabulously retro.

After the show we headed to a fancyish restaurant in a nearby fancyish mall. Just inside there’s a big (like 10 feet tall) metal statue of a naked man, and of course the kids ran right over so they could get all Finding Nemo: “he touched the butt.”

The restaurant was lovely. We had a great seat by the window and the kids watched the city go by. All of the kids got complementary cotton candy for dessert, and Gus had ice cream too. Probably not the best idea.

We went to some sort of weird electronics showroom in the mall afterwards where nothing was for sale. When we were looking at the netbooks Gus accidentally on purpose pried up the security tag, which immediately started beeping. We hustled him out of there quick.

Once we got home the kids played Super Smash Bros Brawl for ages. Feels like we’ve only just now gotten them to bed, and I’m pooped.

Moral of the story: extra sleep + no physical activity + loads of refined sugar = crazy kid. Hope he sleeps it off.

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i got nothing (well, okay, very little)

maura @ 10:10 pm

Observations About Some Things:

- I was on the reference desk for 2 hrs today which was really fun. Desk hrs are one thing I never feel like I have enough of — it’s such an immediate, tangible way to help the students. Today’s random highlight was a student in line behind the student I was helping find articles in scholarly journals who insistently suggested that student #1 use the internet because the library resources are too complicated. I tried to explain that you can’t usually find scholarly articles for free online, but she wasn’t having it. Luckily what she really wanted to know is where to find the books in the BF call number range, so she headed upstairs and student #1 and I found a few articles together.

- I’ve had terrible bloggers block for the past week for the academic library blog that I write for, but then I picked up a great article yesterday and now I think the block is gone, yay!

- Gus is No Longer Sick, and in fact is so well that he didn’t even complain about homework tonight, even the extra stuff he’d missed yesterday and Monday! At bedtime he asked me if I loved him “more than life itself,” not sure where that came from.

- I felt all better and stuff today so after work I came home and cleaned the house and did the laundry and did the dishes (Jonathan cooked all day for tomorrow) and took out the trash. Now I am tired, and it’s time to catch up on TV.

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i am tired

maura @ 9:13 pm

Short entry tonight because it was a long week. Lots of teaching and the faculty poster session and hanging up posters all over the place for our new course (which has two [2!] people registered for it already, hooray!). And then helping to run a bake sale at the talent show at Gus’s school tonight. And also I’m still sick. Because it’s good to have a sick person selling baked goods to children at dinnertime. Achoo! Have some brownies.

Now Gus is sick too, which kind of scuttles our plans to get him a flu shot this weekend. But it does support the new plan of me lying on the sofa all weekend getting better. So it’s a draw.

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into a parallel world somewhere

maura @ 9:52 pm

The other night Gus had a nightmare that woke him up. He usually goes back to sleep pretty easily after nightmares, and (thankfully) he did that night. The next morning at breakfast we asked him whether he remembered the nightmare. He rarely does, but this time he spun this crazy yarn about a video game in which you’re on a boat being chased by zombies riding bicycles, and to try and escape you have to climb the mast of the boat but pigeons keep flying into you trying to knock you off. One of those things that sounds pretty silly in the light of day, though I could see that it might be scary in the middle of the night.

Anyway, I suggested to him that he write that video game. And then when he makes his millions and all the cool game bloggers want to interview him and ask him where he got the inspiration, he can say to them: “it came to me in a dream.”

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i don’t need the daytime

maura @ 10:11 pm

So I thought I’d write about TV, how disappointing it’s been recently which is making me grumpy. But then I realized that the end result of disappointing TV these days is that I’ve been reading more, so I thought I’d do a (some of) what we’re reading post.

Me:

The Cloud Atlas, by Liam Callanan
Someone recommended this to me ages ago, then I forgot about it. Recently I saw it mentioned again, just in time for a wave of intense fiction longing. So far (I’m about 1/3 of the way through) it’s a great story about WWII set in Alaska, with rice-paper bombs and personal intrigue and religious mystery. Ever since Smilla I’m a sucker for fantastical mysteries set in snowy locales. I’ve had it for a while but haven’t finished it yet because I had to pause when a new book I’d requested came into the library (which I assume I won’t be able to renew, unlike this book, which is older and thus less in demand).

Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger
This is the new book. I seem to be reading it fast (150 pages yesterday, I think), because I don’t expect that I’ll be able to renew it. Also I keep reading bad reviews of it and I guess I’m eager to get to the bad part. I’m about halfway and it’s decent so far. Not as good as Time Traveler’s Wife, but I think that some people only get to write one great book. TTW is definitely nothing to sneeze at — if I were Niffenegger, I’d be happy to sit on my vast piles of cash and paint (apparently she is an artist as well). Anyway, this one’s about identical twin sisters who are the daughters of an identical twin who was estranged from her identical twin who dies and leaves the daughters her flat in London. It’s also a mystery. She does write some nice, dreamy, descriptive prose, which I like.

Jonathan:

Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely
This book has a fetching blue and orange cover, and is an exploration of the variety of reasons that people don’t always behave rationally. Sometimes Jonathan will recount bits of it to me, like the part about the experiments in which people were given money and no money to perform tasks and they more willingly helped people out when no money was involved. Which, to me, proves that money is evil.

The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia, by Laura Miller
I remember reading about this when it came out but then it dropped off my radar. I don’t think that Jonathan’s started it yet; we will probably need to renew it if we’re both going to read it. I read the Narnia books multiple times both as a kid and a (now, agnostic) adult, and lately I’ve been thinking about when Gus will read them, so this book should be interesting.

Gus:

Dragon Slayers’ Academy, by Kate McMullan
Gus LOVES this book series, which is sort of a Harry Potter for the younger set with dragons instead of wizards. They’re pretty good, too, funny plots and reasonably complex language with a fair number of pictures interspersed throughout. Plus, they’ve taught him Pig Latin. He’s on book 14 (of 19) which for some reason the library only has ONE copy of, so we bought it and plan to donate it to the library when he’s finished.

Calvin & Hobbes (various), by Bill Watterson
Jonathan gave Gus his old C&H about a year ago, but now that Gus is older he’s really smack in the middle of the C&H demographic. So we got another 3 books from the most recent Scholastic flyer to come home from school. We did have a little bit of a splashing problem in the bath tonight when Godzilla destroyed Tokyo, but otherwise it’s been fun to watch Gus devour these, laughing all the way.

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i stole your time, made it mine

maura @ 5:33 pm

Last weekend Gus couldn’t stop talking about My Sims, which he’d watched his friend play on the schoolbus. So Jonathan broke out our 9-yr-old copy of The Sims and installed it on his computer. Gus was extremely obsessed for about 72 hours, though it’s since faded. The interface is actually kind of difficult to manipulate, and I’d forgotten how clunky it is to move furniture around, build new rooms, etc. Ultimately I think the intensive mousing required got Gus down.

Short as it was, the obsession was intense, and brought me right back to my own obsession when we first got the game years ago. It’s true that Gus was much more amused by certain aspects of the Sims than I; of course it cracks him up that the sims forget to relieve themselves and have accidents. And he didn’t care as much about decorating as I did. He was always annoyed when his prissy sims complained about the blue formica table that Gus bought for them. (The simplistic consumerism of the game is kind of hilarious — they are happy when you buy them nice stuff! How realistic!)

But I was surprised by some of his inventive strategies. He bought his sims a computer before getting a TV, explaining: “they can use the computer to play games and look for jobs.” Ultimately, he had to buy them a TV because his woman sim didn’t want to play video games and needed something fun to do (blurgh, Will Wright, I lost a little respect for you on that one).

Somewhat alarming was the realization that in many ways Gus and I played the game very much the same. Just like in real life, Gus hoarded his money and bought his sims something expensive only when it really seemed necessary (e.g., when he realized that the fancy computer breaks less often than the basic model). And he spent lots of time really scripting every move for his sims. The sims will take care of some, but not all, of their “needs” automatically, and if you really want to do well in the game you need to control most of their actions. Gus realized this pretty quickly, as did I, and we both got kind of obsessive in trying to make them do the “right” things. So it was kind of weird watching him play.

This week we were both back to our regularly scheduled games: Gus and friends can’t get enough of Super Smash Bros Brawl on the Wii, and I’m still rocking Harbor Master on the iPhone.

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moving, watching, working, sleeping

maura @ 11:10 pm

So, I bought a bike. It’s funny, I’ve wanted a bike for ages, pining after the ones I walk by on the street, and then I finally get one and I don’t even mention it. Partly that’s because I haven’t ridden it as much as I’d like. We got them (one for Gus too, a used one for $40!) in late July but have been so busy that we’ve only really ridden them a couple of times. Gus essentially taught himself how to ride his. It came without training wheels: he just jumped on and pedaled away like he was born cycling. This past Sunday he and I rode the entire loop in the park, 3.35 miles!

Even though we haven’t ridden much I love my bike. Love love love it. It’s an older, used girl’s bike in pretty good condition, with 3 speeds and both coaster and hand brakes. It’s sort of a cloudy gray color, nothing fancy, but very dependable. Solid, you might say. I have yet to ensticker it but rest assured that’s coming soon.

I am still a little nervous about riding it on the street, but it’s getting better. Today was a work-from-home day and I decided to take my lunchtime to do a trial ride to work and back, about 20 minutes each way (so fast!). There’s a good route from here to there with bike lanes on most of the streets, and other than the occasional pesky van or delivery truck parked in the bike lane it was pretty easy. I even stopped to practice locking the bike up. I do admit to a tinge of nerves, still, when I think of leaving the bike locked up all day while I’m at work. I hope that it’s too old + boring to steal, but what if not?

On the bright side, I am already making a list of the bike accessories I will need to get. The bike has fenders (a plus), but I could use a rack over the rear wheel with those awesome folding side baskets to hold my bag + stuff. And a bell, of course. And maybe one of those gel seat covers, oooh, squishy.

“But,” you may ask, “whatever will you do with your scooter?” Never fear, there’s still a place for the scooter in my transportation stable. I’m not really prepared to ride the bike into Manhattan, so when I have meetings I will bring the scooter instead. And one good thing about the scooter is that I can fold it up and bring it to my office, so I don’t have to worry that it will get stolen. On the other hand, since the wheels are plastic it can be nearly unusable in even a light drizzle.

Maybe changing it up a bit is the best way to go: a couple of scooter days and a couple of bike days each week. Sounds like a planonus.

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