Good Reads

DH picked up this book for me. It sounds good. I have a whole list of people back east who would I'm sure enjoy reading it when I'm done. I'll let y'all know if it's worth the shipping cost.

Remembering the woman who got me into blogging

Every year, on the anniversary of her death, I'm compelled to go back to her site and remember her writing. Maybe in hopes that she's really not gone and she will have posted a new update. But this year, I stumbled across this entry that I had never seen before.

http://graybar.blogspot.com/2004/11/people.html

It sucks to lose friends and family,

Decorating Easter Eggs

Firstborn decorated the eggs this year. He always enjoys this. I asked DH to pick up another dozen white eggs (we only had 8 left), but when I opened the carton, they were brown. So we have some decorated brown eggs mixed in with the white. Firstborn did a good job with them though. You really can't tell they are brown without looking very closely.

Pizza Gana

It's DHs favorite food. When his mother came to visit in November, he asked her to make one for Thanksgiving dinner. It's really an Easter dish, but DH loves it all year. She left her recipe and I have spent the past 4 months trying to dissuade him from making it again. It's basically a slab of very delicious cholesterol, containing eggs, whole milk ricotta cheese, cold cuts and provolone cheese, all wrapped into a flaky crust made with shortening and eggs.

After a long lean winter, this is probably just the food a struggling Italian farmer would need to revive his half-starved bones, say 500 years ago. But now, we must be careful not to overdo.

Because this is a traditional Easter dish, I relented and let DH make it. The picture above is of his rendition. He's quite proud. He's already talking about how he will make the next one.

We purchased a new sofa and love seat last month. Now we finally have adult furniture in our family room. There's room for a game table as well. We're working on that.

The day the furniture arrived, I was luckily able to lock the cats into rooms so that there was no danger of them running out the opened front door while the furniture was being carried in. But as soon as the guys left, I heard Nadia open the dining room door. The problem was that I locked them into separate rooms. They were not happy cats. how she pulled open that door is beyond me, but I'm a little scared. Pushing a door is one thing. Pulling it is a completely different thing.

As soon as the cats were loose though, they felt the need to check things out. They crawled all over the new furniture and the old couch, which I had moved along a different wall to make room. They were fascinated. The old couch is rather light weight and the floors between the family room and the library are hard surface. So, I was able to slide the old couch into the library where it plans to live the rest of its life.

However, every time I stopped moving the old couch to change my grip, the cats would jump onto it and sniff around. Then I would move it a little more and they would jump off. I'd stop and they would jump on. Like every time the couch stopped moving, it was a totally new and exciting couch.

In the end, they far prefer the new sofa and love seat. Georgia likes sleeping on top of the upper cushions. She jumps up there and starts needing the cushions to plump them up in just the right manner and then she sleeps. And sleeps. . .

Nadia prefers the lower cushions. The two of them sleep on this couch all day. I miss having them in the office with me.

Georgia on her perch.

letterboxing

Finally got a chance to take pics of my signature stamps for letterboxing. The first is my personal signature stamp: Barefootcelt.

The second is our team stamp. When we go out as a family, we stamp in with this stamp and list the family members' trailnames in the logbook.

Upcoming schedule

Looking through my Yahoo!Calendar for this weekend:

No events scheduled.

Now that is a rare sight. Very welcome, but rare.

Remedial Midwest

For those of us who are slow catching on, they have a magazine.

Last month's actually had some great soups. Yes, I did feel pressure to buy this. Like there was something I don't know about being "midwest" that I had better learn before I get in trouble somehow. Given my predilection for faux pas, I need all the help I can get.

Living Midwest

Everyone has their preconceived notions of what another part of the world is like. For DH this meant that living mid-west meant eating more naturally. To that end, we purchased half a cow. It helped that one of his co-workers has a small farm and raises cows. DH worked a deal with him to get a half a cow. That meant we had to go out and buy a freezer. So this year, it will not be economically advantageous, but in a couple of years, it will start to pay for itself.

This does mean that I have had to move us from extremely lean ground beef to a somewhat more fatty version. I'm learning tricks to get the fat out and learning how to cook many kinds of steak.

We have very little sunny space in our yard. And frankly, I'm too old to build a new veggie garden. So, we have purchased a share in a CSA. We will be getting weekly organic veggie deliveries starting in June. So, as the freezer empties of beef, we will probably be filling it with frozen veg that we can't eat fast enough.

All those Saturday mornings freezing beans from Rudy the farmer are going to pay off. But if someone delivers a giant zucchini, I will probably throw it at the delivery truck. I need to make a sign showing a giant zucchini with a red circle and slash. Where's that zucchini bread recipe again?

The interesting thing I have found here is that grocery prices overall are much higher than back in MA, but the organic prices are lower. So, while this CSA will reduce our overall veg costs, it will not reduce them by as much as it would have been had we been eating organic in MA. We simply couldn't afford most organic in MA. Here, we do eat more organic veg.

While we will have to pass on to the neighbors much of the corn we get, that's not my biggest worry. I'm worried about the beets. Maybe I'll do fine, but I just don't relish the idea of eating lots of beets. They are a once a year kind of thing to me. Anyone have any good beet recipes?

DI continued

While Firstborn tends to concentrate more on the technical end of his challenges, Lastborn is definitely the drama type. This year, their challenge was Twisted History. They were supposed to create a performance where they took an event in history and changed a fact or changed the whole thing around. Within they presentation, they had to create a magical object that included shapes as part of it's design.

They chose to tell the story of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon, but change it to aliens landing on earth and meeting Neil Armstrong. But because Neil was played by a girl, the name was changed to Neila.

Lastborn of course was an alien. But not just any alien. A 6-armed alien, with blue hair. We had fun adding sleeves to a shirt, stuffing them with stuffing and adding stuffed rubber gloves to the ends for hand.

The team waits with their props in the hallway. Neila Armstrong was a farmer, you know.
The three aliens argue over who will drive the space ship.

The girl-alien, Dudette, talks to Neila Armstrong. The girl in black is the narrator. Lastborn and the other alien are fixing the spaceship that they crashed to earth because they decided to all drive it together.
the whole cast assembles for to get their medals at the end of the performance. The adults in red are the appraisers.

This team did much better at their instant challenge. They worked as a team, but of course Lastborn stuck a couple of potty mouth words into the presentation. Sigh.

Overall the day was interesting. The level of competition in this region was much higher than at the region in MA that we competed in. These kids work all year on their props, and their acting so that they can give really professional presentations.

Firstborn and I watched the High School kids perform in the Obstacles challenge and in the structure challenge (that's the one he did last year). We were very proud of the fact that the HS team in Obstacles no only used the same type of car as Firstborn did (wired remote control), but were unable to overcome their obstacles in part because they had no steering. Their solution to getting through a tunnel when on a wired remote was also the same solution that Firstborn had come up with (cut a channel in the roof of the tunnel). Firstborn decided not to use that solution because we feared it would no longer be considered a tunnel.

Watching the structure performance was amazing though. This team built a structure that maxed out the test weights. They had to test it by putting weights on it while it was oriented in one direction and then again after orienting it in a different direction. (That seemed too hard to me which is why we didn't do that challenge this year). Not only that, but their skit was very creative and tied into the testing of the structure perfectly. They did things like using paper bags as masks. The first masked character was a robot; a bag painted with silver spray paint and then decorated as a robot face. Then next interesting mask was a pirate. A bag with a skull and cross bones, but stapled to the side of the bag was a second smaller bag decorated with a parrot. The second bag was positioned to look like it was sitting on the wearer's shoulders.

All of their props were well constructed and simple. Very low-budget but professional looking.

We then watched one of the top rated middle school teams in the area. They routinely go on to the Global Finals tournaments. They spend hours a week for months before each competition. The kids know how to sew their own costumes, build really intricate sets and write awesome scripts. They are very serious. And it showed. It was so amazing.

In some ways, it was disappointing though. The focus here is on winning. It is very serious competition. You can tell the teams who are fairly new to this. They look like they are in the wrong place. Like us, they tend to let the kids showcase what they already know instead of spending the year teaching them lots of new skills and letting them showcase those new skills. Some of us feel that this is a competition but also an after school activity, not a career training in itself.

The other sign of the seriousness of the competition was that few of the judges wore funny hats. It's a hallmark of DI for the judges to wear funny hats. For one it is in respect to the kids who work so hard to solve these problems and be creative. For another reason, it helps to calm the kids when they are being judged by someone who wears a funny hat. Without the hats, the feeling was less festive. There was a huge feeling of "I can't wait until this is over" instead of celebration. I will be making noise in our region about this omission.

At the end of the day, our building did surprisingly well. While we all started in mid to late November while the rest of the region started in September, we still had three teams place. One third, one second and one first place. The first place team will be going on to the state tournament next month and I think Firstborn and I will join them. I'm interested in seeing if State is as competitive as our region and if the rubricks for interferance are at about the same level. I think it will be excellent for Firstborn to see how the best of the best of Ohio solve these problems.

DI Tournament Results

This weekend was our region's DI tournament for 2008. It was a very eye-opening experience for me. Both boys participated in the tournament, but only Firstborn was actually competing. Lastborn performed at the Rising Stars level (grades PreK through 2). His team was all 2nd graders since the school they attend starts at 2nd grade.

First I'll go over Firstborn's challenge. His team manager chose the technical challenge for them. They were required to create a vehicle that could take them through a number of obstacles. They were provided with a list of about 20 obstacle descriptions and specifications. They had to choose at least three of these obstacles and create them to the specifications. For example, they could create a tunnel that was at least 24 inches long, a bridge, pylons, a gap or fulcrum. Firstborn and the neighbor across the street concentrated on creating the vehicle and they really took a great approach to it. Their first idea was to make some sort of wheeled vehicle with a "sail" that they could blow around the track. However, they had a problem finding axles that allowed them to turn the vehicle. They could have used a stick to change the direction of the car, but they would possibly loose control of the car in the 24 inch-long tunnel.

They next tried a remote-control, wireless car. We found kits for the remote control, the dual motor (to allow for steering), a tank chassis (climbs hills and maybe even walls), and a base plate to mount everything on. Now, what they don't tell you is that these directions are primarily in Japanese. They are cryptically translated to English. You have to spend time in the store figuring out which kits you need and then hours figuring out how to build the thing.

Firstborn took days to build it. He never noticed (or knew anything about) the possible gear ratios and ended up building it with the lowest gear ratio. At the time, I figured that was fine and really couldn't tell him to do it higher if I wanted to (that would be interference. He's supposed to do this all himself.)

Then one of the team managers started to hyperventilate because she worried that the car was not creative enough. So we bought one of those helium tanks with Mylar balloons and the boys tried to build a helium balloon that could fit into a 5X8X12 inch form factor. Then we remembered that the power source also has to fit into that form factor along with the vehicle. So much for blowing the car/balloon around the course. Not only would they hyperventilate but they wouldn't fit into a 5X8X12 box along with the balloon. Maybe we could find a small fan. So that means the balloon would have to be even smaller How do you create a smaller balloon? The boys decided to tape the balloon with duct tape to restrict how much it would inflate. They had a problem with the balloons leaking (poor quality) and with getting a small enough amount of duct tape that the amount of helium in the balloon would actually lift the balloon.

In looking over the rules again, I realized that the vehicle creativity was only worth 25 points and getting through the obstacle course was worth up to 120. Well, that's easy. Just reading that to Firstborn helped him decide that the vehicle didn't really need to be creative. So he continued with the remote control car.

This was a really good decision. All of the competitors had remote control cars this weekend. No one got more creative than that. However, of the 14 competitors, only 3 made their cars. The rest went out and bought wireless remote control cars.

Unfortunately, we misread the rules enough to not know that we needed to go through the obstacle course a few times to get as many points as possible. This was a big mistake.

On top of that, the team did not do very well on their instant challenge. The instant challenge is a quick challenge that the kids don't get to see until they walk into the room. Then they have 8 minutes to solve the problem. Usually it includes building a structure or object using paper cups, straws and stickers. Then they have to put on a presentation using the object. This requires really good teamwork and Firstborn's team really didn't gel as a team this year.

Here are the pictures from his central challenge presentation:
Talking to the Judges before they go on. They are with their props getting things measured and talking about how they created them. The adults in red are the appriasers (judges).

Here the kids are doing their performance. One child is driving the car over and around the obstacles. They chose to present an American Idol competition. Two girls are singing for their try-outs. First born, boy across the street and the small blond girl are acting as Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul and Randal ? I'm not a big Idol fan. The entire presentation was supposed to be without words.
Simon, Paula and Randy give their feedback to the two singers.

A closeup of Firstborn's car going over a fulcrum style obstacle. As the car reached the top of the ramp, the ramp would lower, allowing the car to drive off. It was hard for the kids to figure out how to build one, but they finally figured out that cardboard over an oatmeal can would work fine. It turned out to be one of the easiest obstacles to overcome.

Unfortunately, they found out that speaking as the three judges would lose points as well even though they tried to be creative and use the speaking parts as a special part of the presentation. Who thought a bunch of kids could be quiet for 8 minutes!

Then it was time for Lastborn's presentation. I'll continue that in the next post, complete with pictures.

Sledding, Ohio Style

South of Dayton is somewhat hilly. In fact, they refer to our neck of the woods as Far Hills. I can imagine that with the flatness of the overall landscape, that these hills (short as they might be) could have been seen from miles around before buildings were erected to block the view and before the factories came in and fogged up the air. Other than the far hills though, it's pretty flat; except for the occasional Indian mound.

Ancient native peoples that we have very little information about built these mounds all over the midwest. For years, we thought they were all burial mounds. Some were, but excavation has proven that others were not used for burials at all. Some were built to look like animals, like the Serpent Mound and the Eagle Mound. Some were ploughed over by farmers, ignorant of their significance. The ones that are not burials, are considered by the experts to be of some religious significance. Serpent mound for example orients towards significant astrological and solar locations.

Just a few blocks from our house, we have one such mound. It's not much. DH often refers to it as the pile of dirt. I can't get over the age of this pile of dirt though. To me, it is pretty impressive that a people who had to struggle through most of the year just to stay alive hunting and gathering and maybe farming in the good months, would have the ability to plan and build such a structure as even a pile of dirt. What we see of it now is probably lower than the original. The base would have been covered over the years with inches of organic matter, collected in the crevasse formed by it's base. The top, maybe worn a bit by the winds over the flat lands. The top may have been less rounded originally. We'll never know.

but now, it stands as the neighborhood sledding sight. Any kids who walks to this park has to climb the mound and look out from it, summer or winter. Heck, even we adults will often climb up there just for the experience. Somehow, coming back down always seems a bit scarier.

But just to give you easterners an experience of the mound, I thought I would share some pictures from our mid-February snow storm where my friend Sandra and her daughter F came to visit. F got to sled on the mound, but I didn't have my camera then. Later, I brought the littler boys from the neighborhood with Lastborn to have their own turn. We generally don't let them walk to the mound alone. I snapped the pictures to let everyone see the mound.

This one gives you an idea of how flat the neighborhood is.

And here are the kids climbing up to the top. Then, finally, they made it!

Being an avid reader of beancounters, I ended up being tagged for the 1-2-3 meme today. Yes, I take things way toooo literally. Maybe some anonymous reader of my blog will continue the meme.

Here are the meme rules:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people & post a comment here once you post it to your blog, so I can come see.

"Observe the pattern--the lines of type, the margins, and most particularly the blocks of white space where paragraphs begin or leave off.

You can tell without even reading if the book you've chosen is apt to be easy or hard, right? Easy books contains lots of short paragraphs--including dialogue and lots of white space. "

This was from Stephen King's On Writing. Interesting enough, the passage was about opening up any book on your bookshelf to any page. :-) Ironic.

Your turn, Remcat, Pristol (gotta write something on that blog of yours), Ben (you too!), Charmaine, JJones. Not sure how regularly anyone reads my blog. So I wonder how many of these people will actually continue the meme. So any anonymous readers that I don't know about, feel free to continue the meme and leave a comment to let me know.

Noreaster

Firstborn finally saw the snowfalls he had been waiting all winter for. We've listened all winter to him whining about how he wishes he lived in New England still where they get enough snow.


Don't know quite what he is whining about since he has used up all 5 of the allotted snow days and he has gotten to go sledding more here than we ever went back home. Being in a nice development means that I don't mind a whole gaggle of kids walking 3 blocks to the neighborhood lump-in-the-dirt to go sledding. So as soon as we get the slightest amount of snow, he is over at the mound for a sledding adventure. I never had the opportunity to let him walk on his own to a park for sledding in the northeast.


This weekend's storm was every sledder's dream come true though. It started Friday morning with fairly heavy, wet snow and continued through all day Saturday. Our Destination Imagination dress rehearsal was cancelled on Sunday, our CCD was cancelled on Sunday and pretty much everything was put on hold. The funny part was that the storm was over by Sunday morning and there was no reason to cancel anything.



On top of the lack of responsibility, was the wonderful temperature in the high 30s and the bright twinkling sun.

So I decided that we needed to try out a new sledding location. Something about sledding down (and consequently tearing apart) and ancient sacred site just puts me off a bit and, while I tell the kids that if they are going to desecrate an ancient religious spot, they should at least stop and take a moment to pray before they hurl their bodies down the side of the ancient mound, I still don't feel good about it.

So off to a park further north we went.

We almost missed it. Up the road a bit, there are some signs on the side of the road marking the entrance to a woodsy park with lots of trails and a meandering brook. The sledding hill, to the best of my knowledge is the area from the road, leading down to the brook at the bottom of the hill.

It is a nice steep hill, but it is surrounded on both sides by short, scruffy, put-your-eye-out trees and it ends in a 6-inch deep brook. If this were a fast snow, I would never have let the kids sled here. Not like they would drown in that brook, but they could get very wet and cold.

On the other side of the road, there is another entrance to the park. Again, it is a steep hill leading down to a longer flat distance before running into the brook. But on this side, there are park signs and trail signs right in the middle of the sledding area. Who thought of that one.

Of course, Firstborn decided that whichever side I picked was going to be the more boring. And Lastborn was too busy eating the snow. Luckily, the third sledder, a neighbor boy, was enjoying the actual sledding.

The snow was very slow at first. Great packing snow, it was great for snowballs, forts and snowmen, but not great for sledding unless you can start a path. Once smoothed, it could be fast if you know how to ride it. We only have saucers this year, so I did a trial run to try to teach the kids that if you keep your weight back on the saucer, it really goes well because the edges don't get stuck in the snow. They didn't listen, but I did have a good run and I packed down a starter path for the others to use.

15 inches of snow makes for nice sledding on just about any hill. And the fact that it was good-packing snow mean that there would be a base all day.

That will probably be our last sledding snow of the season. With Easter next weekend, I hope it's our last snow altogether, but I know better. We had such warm weather last week before the big storm came in that it was somewhat shocking to see so much snow. Even the kids were a bit impatient with it and they did not take nearly as much advantage of it as I had hoped they would. Firstborn is hankering to get back out to the woods to see how his forts are doing. Lastborn just wants to play his DS.

When the guy from the local tree service...

Knocks on your door and tells you it looks like your oak tree sustained some winter weather damage and he would be happy to help you out with that...

But you know that said "oak tree" is really a black walnut...

How do you kindly ask him to please get the heck off your porch?

Give him a phone and...

Yesterday, Firstborn asked to go to the park with a friend, but it was fairly close to dinner. Knowing how long these kids go to the park and not wanting to have to walk the 1 block to go get them, I had one of those moments of genius and remembered the walkie talkies that DH had purchased for just such an event.

First there were the comical few minutes while Firstborn and I figured out how to get them to work, set the volume and tested the devices. The whole time, neighbor Tommy was trying to tell us how to work them. He's seen walkie talkies you know. :-)

So off Firstborn went to the park and DH and I sat down for a moment to watch the upcoming storm coverage on the TV while dinner cooked away in the kitchen.

The walkie talkie rang (they do that now. They all sound like a nextel phone).
We picked it up and listened. Nothing.
It rang again.
Nothing.
It rang again and finally we knew what was happening. He was pressing the call button to talk. So we pressed the talk button and told him to "press the other button!" After about 3 tries telling him to press the other button, he finally got through.

Ken: You dogs!
Mom: Yes?
Ken: Why don't you have dinner ready for me when I get home so that I can go back out to play after?
Dad grabs the walkie talkie out of my hand and says: You'll get dinner when it is ready!
Silence.

Have dinner ready...
What was he thinking?