November 2007 Archives

We did the expected bit of holiday travel yesterday, visiting some family friends we haven't seen in a while. It was delightful, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

On the hour-long drive to their house, we actually got up to highway speed on the LA freeway system, it was great! The Things were cheerfully playing "Rush Hour" in the back seat, so it was gridlock somewhere. While driving, Sysguy and I were commenting to each other how the different pavements makes various pitches of sound against our tires, a phenomenon I'm sure most people have noticed. Sysguy tells me that in his internet travels he came across an anecdote that somewhere in the world (Japan?) they were adjusting the road grooves to play music when you drove over them. I'm pretty gullible, but this seems highly unlikely, even to me. How would you agree on what music? Plus, no matter how they did it, the "music" would sound like crap, especially mixed with whatever one desperately tried to blast inside the vehicle to drown it out. I couldn't find a link to anything so ridiculous, anyway.

We decided that it would be good if someone tried it, just on general principal, but better if we didn't try it here in the good old USA. We all know what would happen then: If it says Libby's Libby's Libby's on the label label label you will like it like it like it on your table table table. Uh huh. For hours. No escape. (I'd be willing to visit a "Rites of Spring" test track, for the novelty of it, though.)

I should add that this conversation happened right after we were talking about how the billboard situation was starting to resemble the dystopian vision in the movie Brazil. Now that's a tune I'd listen to on the road.... Ba ta ta Ba ta ta ta ta, Ba ta ta Ba ta ta ta ta....

Well, I've been getting flack from the nablopomo crowd I hang out with to put a new post here. I've been very distracted by my ADD, which needs a lot of tending, and the other stuff that I'm supposed to be doing, like knitting and not actually writing about it. Seems like you can either write and maintain your own blog, or you can read other people's, but not necessarily both. I blame the measly 24 hour day. Great going with the crappy time constraints, universe.

School has started. Thing 1 and Thing 2 having dignified themselves by being A. really bright and capable, and B. using these powers for evil to get suspended (Thing 1) and to have to chat with the principal (Thing 2). Sysguy and I are high-fiving our excellent parenting skills on a daily basis. It seems both Things are having organization issues. Huh, I wonder where that came from?

I am particularly impressed by Thing 1's ability to get suspended in 3rd grade. Freaky little overachiever. And also, silly! He found a razor blade in some trash on campus (it had been in the bin less than 20 minutes, the school CSI traced the origin), and he and a cohort (also suspended) decided to use it to perform various experiments over a couple of days worth of recesses by hiding it under a rock on the playground. 30 (!) years ago when I was in grade school, this would have been a "get in trouble" issue. In this post-Columbine era, zero tolerance baby. Now its a "stay home on mommy's day off and ponder your choices" issue.

On the one hand, it was a totally stupid thing to do, and they could, and very nearly did, hurt someone (when another officious, but not entirely wrong, child tried to snatch the razor from Thing 1 to give it to a teacher—another great thinker). On the other hand, they were experimenting, being boys. There's not much open space to do that here in LA, so I can sympathize. The fellow suspendee's idea was to start a fire with the razor by striking it against rocks and asphalt. I would have paid to watch that, for the hours it would take for him to figure out it ain't happenin'. I could'a brought my knitting, a beach chair & ipod and watched that all day. In fact, I think his mom would join me with a bottle of wine. Maybe we should schedule a play date.

Anyway, Thing 1 did learn that: you can't have dangerous objects on campus; it feels really crappy to not be allowed on campus (especially on a bake sale day, the agony!!); he is capable of writing the same sentence 100 times, despite extensive whining to the contrary; lastly, a day off school when you are in trouble does not mean play time at home, it means mommy is going to make you do boring school stuff anyway, and keep you from doing anything fun at all. And then you get to listen to your brother watch Friday afternoon cartoons from your room. I gotta tell you, this parenting is exhausting.

That pretty much wraps up October. We had a bizarrely short trick-or-treat expedition this year. The Things were more interested in eating the candy they already had than scoring even more. Weird. Also, is anyone else kinda gakked by those disturbingly realistic foam "muscles" in the superhero suits? They're too creepy on little guys. Eeeeew.