Still Not My Usual Bed Time!

Well, it seems that vacation bedtime can be pushed a little later than normal.

Today was packed! We drove out to Bloomingdale's to try to finish up our registry. There was an unhelpful staff in the kitchen wares, but that was made up for by the great help we got in bedding. A few more things to pin down, and the registry goes live! Yay.

On the way to school, I stopped to get gas. Thank you attendant for noticing my sticker was due at the end of this month (i.e. tomorrow). He informed me that points on the license and a $50 fine would be the penalty for not renewing, so my day's plans were rearranged. Points in Massachusetts lead directly to quite the increase in insurance.

I then went to school to water the landfills. The students will have one opportunity to make a final observation of these science experiments before they and their associated new life forms are carried out and pitched unceremoniously in the dumpster.

Next, I waited for some time in a line at an auto inspection site. Seems like others either forgot and were reminded or were just waiting for the last moment. Luckily, the whole thing only took about 1.5 hours of waiting and then inspection. I only had to have the safety inspection. My car emissions were checked last year.

That done, I headed over to Harvard Square to do errands. I stopped by an art store to pick up a matte board to frame my cave map that Bob Osburn gave me last time I visited him. I stopped by the Museum of Useful Things(site has issues) to pick up some First Night buttons. I then went to a camera store to check out if my lenses would fit on the new digital Canons. They do! I am getting closer to breaking down and getting one. I also plan on getting a small camera to carry around with me to take pictures of daily life and patterns. Last I got this week's comics at Million Year Picnic. (I still can't find their website!)

Home again, home again, jiggity jig. I came home and after a brief repast of mac and cheese, I started my work. It is truly recommendation time, and I again was frustrated by filling out the same form many times. I decided to learn Word forms and devoted many hours to creating an as exact replica of the Association of Independent Schools in New England (AISNE) form that I fill out for math and English for my students. It will simplify my job and shorten my work in the long run, but it was a huge endeavor to do tonight. I am glad it is finished. Tomorrow, I will reap the benefits of my work.

11:42 Not My Usual Bed Time

This schedule will not last past break. I am up at 11:42. When school starts up again, that will be rare and have very negative impact on my teaching the next day.

I finished the registry section of our wedding website. It will go live when we finish the actual registry. That took most of the morning.

Actually, the morning started at 5:00. I gave Will a ride to the airport and promptly took the wrong exit out. I ended up learning more about Boston geography (see my earlier post about that), but I did not really want a new learning experience in the pre-dawn gloom and mist of December Boston.

We were then awakened at 7:00, only minutes after my head hit the pillow after finally getting back from the airport. Our defective bed was being replaced, a good thing, but the delivery was the first on the list, a bad thing.

The morning then officially started around 10:30 when I climbed out of bed to start my day for the third time. I worked on the website, carried stuff down to the basement for storage, and carried the last of my boxes upstairs to put the contained books, games, and magazines on the shelves recently assembled for that purpose. I then got one of my recommendations written! Tomorrow I will do the rest.

We just got back from a scrumptious dinner at Jonathan's. He fed us many things including kale. Just because I want to include a picture, here is one of kale.

Noticing New Shoes

Reena and I bought new shoes while at the mall for our registry the day after Christmas. There were few shoppers in the Walking Company, and we got really good service. I have been wearing one of my pairs quite a bit recently, and they feel great. I also got a pair to wear at work-something different. I got some Dansko clogs. Perhaps they will be great, perhaps I will hate them. I will have to report back when I know better.

Today, much more work on the wedding web site. It should be updated in a few days. We also went to a camera store, but they were a repair shop. Reena was told to come back tomorrow to get the screws she is missing for her camera, and I will look elsewhere for my needs. I would like to get one of the new digital Canon SLRs as well as a good point and shoot for informal picts and walking around looking for patterns.

Got to get up at 5:00 tomorrow to take Will to the airport, so off to bed. Sorry, no pictures today.

Will is Here

Will, the guy with a link on the left, is visiting. We took the Serenity Character quiz which I took previously, and I scored differently than last time. See the results below. Much better than being Wash as I was before. The quiz has changed.

You scored as The Operative. You are dedicated to your job and very good at what you do. You've done some very bad things, but they had to be done. You don't expect to go to heaven, but that is a sacrifice you've made for a better future for all. The Operative 88% Kaylee (Kaywinnet Lee) Frye 75% Zoe Alleyne Washburne 69% River Tam 63% Inara Serra 63% Simon Tam 56% Capt. Mal Reynolds 56% Shepherd Derrial Book 38% Hoban 'Wash' Washburne 38% Jayne Cobb 25% Which Serenity character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

Today, I finished editing report cards and sent them out. Unfortunately, a rough draft was already sent out, so there were calls to make and notes to write. No really bad edits were in the drafts that went out, but it still started the day on a funny foot. I then ran many errands including picking up my car from the shop. Now I have two working headlights, a new battery, and an air blower that doesn't make a high pitched noise all the time.

I then went dress shopping with Reena, and the woman selling was a little surprised to see me there. Tradition runs deep.

I still did not get those recommendations written. Tomorrow or Thursday will have to do it along with the curriculum that is waiting in bags around my office.

IMPORTANT NEWS FLASH!!!!!!!
I made my first Cafe Press sale, but it was then cancelled. At least someone found it.

Monday Shopping Madness

You would think that Reena and I would stay away from malls and stores on this busy Boxing Day shopping frenzy. Well, we didn't. Instead, we went to a wedding dress store which turned out to be not as pushy as others in Reena's experience. We then went to a mall to work on our registry while we have time off. Soon, I will post a link to our wedding site if you don't already have it. With a full day at the stores, we were not the only ones there, we came back to pizza and Stargate SG1.

I got Reena hooked on Stargate a while back, and now we have quite a few seasons sitting on our shelf. We take time to chill by watching this show together. It is a comfortable intersection of our interests. Who knew MacGyver could be so cynical and tough? One of our favorite characters is Teal'c who is kind of the Spock of the show. Captain Carter is not just the pretty woman; she is powerful, smart, and a character in her own right. As for Daniel, well he is interested in ancient cultures and is mostly a pacifist. Sound familiar?

I created two new sections in my Cafe Press store. They use photos I took during my last trip to England. Follow this link to see them (for some reason the picts would not upload.

Christmas, Car, Cafe, Comfort

This is a sample of Midnight Flares from my Cafe Press store. I also created many spirograph tote bags to show the different designs. If you want to see one of those designs on another piece of merchandise, just email me.

This Christmas we took a walk, vacuumed our cars (thanks JD), and just took it easy. I worked on my store a little, and we are off to a party soon. A good day.

Perhaps we have come to the end of the pervasive and incessant Christmas music everywhere.

Birthday

On my 21st birthday, two friends attempted to take me out for a beer. In 1991 in St. Louis on Christmas Eve, not a single beer serving establishment was open. We finally went to the Limit Grocer, an establishment swept aside by the gentrification of the Loop. I dutifully got a six-pack from the case and bought it from the cashier. He did not card me, so my friends carried me back into the store and demanded that I be carded as the 21st birthday ritual required.

Today saw another Chinese dinner (you can always find a Chinese restaurant open on Christmas Eve) and a movie. Thanks Avi, Gail, and Reena for the evening. Thanks for all the phone calls.

On the way back from seeing The Family Stone, we stopped at a local White Hen food store where I discovered injera. What a lucky find. I was introduced to it by a friend in the Masters of Ed program at Webster University. She was from Eretria and invited me to her family meals a few times. I love that spongy sour-dough bread, and I love eating with my fingers.

Other than that, I worked more today on my Cafe Press store. I mostly focused on learning the templates for the different merchandise and using them to create my Midnight Flares Fractal pieces. More to come. My next project will be to make a Spirograph calendar (along with a million other things.) All in all, it was a good birthday.

Spin the dreidel, and if you don't have one, here you go. Just click on the image for a larger pattern. It was taken from www.holidays.net/chanukah/pattern.html

A Walking & Computer Day

O.K. I broke down and created a fancy storefront on Cafe Press. It is called Patterns: Recursion and Repetition. I have started adding some spirographs to the store. Unfortunately, I have to rescan the one I really liked at a higher resolution. Creating this new website took up much of my day. This is the header for my page.
Reena and I went for a walk to Harvard Square. I visited my favorite comic store, Million Year Picnic. I can't find their website right now; they don't show quickly on google, so I'll give you the website for the best comic store in Saint Louis. I miss Starclipper! We then went to Newbury Comics because one of my students gave me a gift card for that store. While the names sound the same, Newbury does not really sell comics. It is more of a music and video store. I got the first season of Dark Angel and Finding Nemo. After a few more errands, we came back home.

Now off to cook dinner and watch a movie.

Less and More

Today was a day of less and more. It started out by my going to the new building site without checking my work email. Yep, the meeting had been moved to Winchester (I did not know there was a town named that around here till today). I went to Atrium, interrupted a meeting, and found out the new location. An hour late, I showed up as the new building plan unfolded. With budget cuts, we are trying to be creative on how to make a unique space with very little modification. I think in the end, we arrived at a neat solution that several people had evidently suggested at an earlier meeting and made do with the less that we were handed as a budget.

I then returned to school, did some maintenance on student science projects, fed the fish, and picked up some materials. A shopping trip to Target to pick up more cereal containers, and then home again. Today I cleaned my car!!! I only cleaned the surfaces and glass. The exterior will get so much grime that it is not worth cleaning now, and I borrowed JD's shop vac to do the carpeting.

And that brings me to the very good (and more part) and productive part of the day (beside actually cleaning my car). I went to JD's and we made two items I have been needing. One is a riser for a bookshelf so it can sit over some pipes that emerge from the floor near the wall. It all went well, and when I arrived home, I realized that we had not counted the thickness of one of the boards and the holes cut for the pipes were 3/4 of an inch off. Out comes the saw tomorrow, and that will be taken care of. The other item was a TV shelf to fit a dvd player underneath.

All in all, a productive day with things on the to-do list getting done. Here is Reena's favorite spirograph from yesterday.

To-do List? What to-do list?

Here is the first fractal that I created and liked. I call it Midnight Flares.


Well, I never seem to stick to the list that I make. There are so many items on the list, and others take priority. Let me see: clean the car-nope, call artisan-yep, straighten office-pretty much (there were so many piles!), secondary school recs-nope. "What did I do?" you ask. Well, I went on a walk to Porter Square to do some shopping for odds and ends. I came away with the odds. Several things on the shopping list were not available. The frame store did not sell matte board. I got the frame but will have to go somewhere else tomorrow to get a matte. I also did odds and ends around the house. Tonight, I made an inventory of the Atrium School for our building planning for next year in a new building. I created a basic website that I can use in the meeting tomorrow with the building committee.

"What else?" You ask. Spirograph, of course. I am really enjoying this simple use of plastic wheels and cogs. Next year when I teach least common multiple and greatest common divisor, out comes the set. The number of points on each pattern is the number when multiplied by the wheel's teeth yields the LCM of the wheel's teeth and the cog's teeth. "Bleargh," you say in disgust. Well, ok. Here is another one.

Today's List

-Clean the Car. It must happen today. Also, install wiper blades in hopes of not just smearing rain and winter muck around on my windshield.
-More research on exercise bikes.
-Call the last artisan on the list. Robinson Studios. Lovely pottery that Reena has been buying for several years. This is one of their plates. Why two different potters? Well, we are getting one set of meat and one set of dairy plates.
-Straighten my office. There are piles everywhere!
-Start writing secondary school recommendations for 6th graders. I really want to get this one off my plate for the rest of vacation.

If I get all that done, I can refer back to my massive to-do list for other things to keep me happy. Here's another spirograph to keep you happy. If you see an image that I have made and want a higher res copy, please email me for it. (Fractals, Spirographs, etc.)

Of Bikes and Driving in Boston

The day is drawing to a close, and I have begun to knock off some of the things on my list. Calling artisans has happened, straightening the house, and the beginnings of looking for an exercise bike. I went to two exercise equipment stores, and their entry level bikes were around $800. Online, reviews seem to suggest that a reasonable exercise bike can be had for $300-$600. More research is needed. The stores were across Boston from Cambridge where I live. I am relatively new to this area, and after driving through rush hour traffic to get to the stores, I then detoured to go to the excellent Cambridge recycling center and promptly got lost. I made it before the 7:30 closing time, barely. Learning a new area is a process of getting progressively less lost more often. Boston, however, is a little more demanding of the driver, and I have take quite a while to get the minimal mental map of the region that is currently in my head. Plunk me down anywhere in the greater Boston area, and I probably would not even know I was in Boston unless I could see downtown.

On the art front, here is a spirograph that I created last night. There are several that I have scanned, but this is the only one that I have made the background white and cleaned up the pin holes. I think there is a different quality to the art created by hand than computer. I love both, but the variation in pen movement and pressure and the texture of the paper create variences that I can not reproduce with a computer. I hope to soon create a Cafe Press store with various fractals and spirographs as well as some nature shots of repetitive and recursive objects such as ferns.

The Frenzy of Vacation

It seems that this blog will be somewhat diary form for now:

Here it is, Tuesday of vacation, and the to-do list fills an 8.5" x 11" piece of paper. I am sure I will add to it as I go; why do something if I can't cross it off?

Done so far-straighten house, wash sheets
Done soon-various calls for wedding preparation. Yep, the wedding is about 6 months away, but it seems all too soon. We are going to make our own invitations, and thus I am registering for a class at the local Paper Source. After that, many calls to local artisans whose work we love and have seen at the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen's Fair. Some of these are Kaleidoscope Pottery and Penelope Wurr Glass.

Soon, someone is also coming to look at our new bed. It began to be very soft on the side where I slept. We rotated the bed, and the new side where I slept did not become soft the same way. The Jordan's people decided to send out a rep from the manufacturer to check it out. This is an all latex bed and not cheap. I hope it is the bed structure and that it is replaced. If not, we have to use the store exchange policy to get another bed. It felt so good in the store.

Last night I created some new Spirograph designs. I will add them in here when I have a chance to scan them later today.

Getting Started

I chose clippings because I see this space as a place where I accumulate a variety of ideas and notes. A refrigerator with unlimited space.

I was drawn to do this by several comments in another endeavor I am attempting. As an elementary school teacher, I do not have that much time to play around on the net, but now that break is here, I am taking some time between getting house chores accomplished and working on school projects. I have always wanted to explore fractals and other types of recursive and repetitive art, so I have made a few with Ultra Fractal. Had lots of fun.

This is one of my recent attempts. I have always been drawn to this type of fiddlehead spiral. Ferns have intrigued me from an early age. With a few beginning attempts at making fractals, I have now opened up a Cafe Press store. Only one item of each kind is allowed in the free ones, so it is only this image. I will hopefully add more fractals and other types of recursive and repetitive art that I am playing with and will make a store that combines all of them. I have to pay for that store, so it may not come out very soon.

This, my first tentative step into blogging, is probably too restricted in regards to comments. I will look at more and read more.

Cheers to anyone who takes a look.