December 2007 Archives

Christmas happened, went over well, the Things are happy for another year. We are not bankrupted, and Santa didn't go crazy. Yay! We've been enjoying the long holiday break, Sysguy is pretty far along on his "I don't have to work" beardage. We enjoyed the company of several sets of good friends; Sysguy's mom, Volunteerlady, and her consort, Happyguy visited. We currently await the arrival of Superdad and Supermom, who are driving west for the winter in their snobrd. I appreciate a holiday that happens in fits and starts. Spread out the fun, I say.

Sysguy did indeed glue my bow back together, and it is even functional! You can't even see where it snapped! I'm a little worried about shearing though, so I got a back-up bow anyway. Its a not-cheap but not terribly expensive carbon-fiber job. It gets good reviews, though I'm not sure at my level of experience that really matters. I was mostly interested in something indestructible that would last pretty near forever. This one was recommended for unpredictable environments, like bars/outdoors, etc (...fencing with small boys). The fact that it came in sparkly purple is just gravy. It doesn't have nearly the camber (arched back) that the wood bow has, which is interesting. They look about the same when they're tightened though, I guess the purple one is a lot stiffer. They weigh the same. The purple one has a really pretty abalone slide and eye on the frog.

Thing 2 and I have a violin recital on Saturday. He had his group recital last week, yah yah. This one is the individual instruction recital. So I get to participate, too. Its amazing how little agony is involved in doing a public speaking/performing type thing when you're an adult. I can remember being frozen in fear at the very thought of standing in front of people doing anything at all as a kid. Now, eh. Watch if you want, I don't care.

I brought our violins to work today, because its less of a hassle to get to lessons from work if we already have them with us. During my lunch break, I took advantage of the opportunity to practice for a while in the lab, where the acoustics are fabulous for music but really appallingly bad for instruction. I sound fabulous in there, even for a super beginning player.

Before Thing 2 started violin, I did not know that fiddle bows needed to be tightened to play, and loosened when not in use. Heck, I didn't know they needed rosin, either. I have learned this. Not well though, because after my lunch time interlude, I forgot to loosen my bow. A few hours later, after school, while the Things were sitting at the spare table near my violin, innocently doing their homework, sproing! My bow just snapped.
Fortunately, it didn't take any eyes with it.

Dang. I hate when that happens. You know how much these crazy sticks are? Ugh. My instructor is bravely loaning me one of her spares for now.
She said my bow will now make an excellent tomato post. Feh.


Sigh.

For some reason, All I Want for Christmas is the holiday song sung by the kindergarten. It is much more appropriate for the first grade, however.
Thing 2 lost his first front tooth less than two weeks ago, and the second one departed abruptly today, immediately following an altercation with the monkey bars at school.

I'm not sure what is cuter: the gap, the lisp, or the fat lip. I love them all.

One of the really cool things about living in California, for me, a midwesterner, is that you can grow citrus. Right in your yard!! Outside!! Guess when its ripe? At Christmas!! Who knew?

I guess I led a pretty sheltered life, at least fruit-wise, but before I moved here I didn't realize (or much care) that citrus was ripe in the Winter. I guess that's why I didn't much care for it, I would buy it in the summer. When it was yukky. Having lived here for a while now, I am not only aware that the fruit is ripe in winter, but that there are some super fabulous varieties that are better than candy. I'm generally not a fruitarian (you people know who you are), but I do love a good clementine orange (or tangerine, whatever you want to call it). A few years ago, I calculated that what I was spending on boxes of clementines every year would handily outstrip what it cost to put in our own little tree, which I did. And they're ready! Right now!

I sent the Things out to harvest the clementines after school today, in the last two weeks they've all gone from mostly green to mostly orange (!), and we've been waiting and waiting. Its always amazing to me that they're actually good. And they came from my yard. The yard I don't actually do much of anything to any more. I really owe that clementine tree some TLC, its looking unhappy in a way I'm going to have to fix. But the clementines are fantastic. And if you are related to me, there will be clementines in your Holiday Boxes. And lemons.

I can't understand why everyone doesn't just plant their own. I've gotta get a kumquat tree.

Yum!

Monday. I used to hate Monday, for all the usual reasons, but now its growing on me. It is one of my days off, and I tend to actually get stuff done that day. Albeit, stuff I was usually supposed to be doing over the weekend, but usually don't because lounging on the couch is a much more attractive option when our darling entropy accelerators are around undoing everything all day.

We got our Christmas tree up, and put the lights on the house. I first started this sentence with "We finally...", as if December 8th is somehow getting your Christmas stuff up late. I live in a neighborhood where some people like to get a jump on things. Some of them right after Halloween. I'm not sure if they're overachievers, or being paid by my parents to drive me nuts. The result is the same. Where the hell do people store all that stuff? Do people seriously rent a storage area for that?

I like to get a small amount of new Christmas crap every year, so I can turn over the holiday objects that are falling apart. This year's new items are some plasti-garland I found online at a not unreasonable price, some LED multicolored lights I'm pretty pleased with myself about from Big Lots (They're selling the same ones for twice as much at the local All Christmas All The Time! store.) The Big Lots ones even have 40% more lights on a string. I almost never get a deal like that, because I hate to shop, anywhere, let alone Big Lots, so I'm gratified that the effort paid off for once.

After school today, I took the Things to the aforementioned Christmas store, where we wandered around looking for a single ornament each. I'm starting their collections for when they get out in the world and have their own Christmas tree—its expensive to do it all that first year, and then you end up with a bunch of junk it takes forever to get rid of (see above). After their eyes goggled practically out of their heads at the decorated decorations that had little decorations with wee tiny bits of even smaller decorations on them, they were hard pressed to decide. It was fun to watch them be overwhelmed by all the sparkly choices.

Thing 1 picked out an extremely sweet heart-shaped mercury glass ornament with sparkly poinsettias painted on it. Thing 2, normally the soft touch of the two, picked a festive-yet-scary, red, non-sparkly dragon. Interesting. Keeping up the girlie end of things, I got a pink and purple sparkly glass egg with rhinestones on it, and I found a darling mercury glass turtle for SysGuy.



In our further wandering in the caverns of the store, we came upon tiny, very reasonably priced, fiber optic Christmas trees. I plan to curl up with a bottle of wine and watch my spiffy new tree change colors indefinitely.

The thing is trippy.

Last night was Thing 2's group violin recital. Suzuki students are supposed to have a weekly individual lesson and group lesson, to get them in the groove of playing in front of other people, and to practice playing as "one" violin. Not that its terribly effective yet for Thing 2, but it is excellent practice, and he was pretty excited.

He's done other recitals with his previous instructor, but her group was smaller and more relaxed. This group required the wearing of actual concert clothes, and concert behavior. He got to dress up, and I made him a bow tie.
He was thrilled. He was such little man!



The concert was held at a church in SnobSea, near our house. Usually, when we go there for group lessons, Thing 2's group is in a large parlor off to the side of the main sanctuary. For the recital, Thing 2 and I left early, so he could get tuned and get in position. Walking in, I checked the parlor to see if he was supposed to meet in there first. The lights were on and there were people in there, so it seemed reasonable to check. A gentleman stepped out and said there was an unrelated group in there at the time. Okeydokey, moving along.

Except.

Later, Sysguy and Thing 1 arrived at the church for the recital. Thing 1, well trained by months of group lesson viewing of his brother, barged right into the parlor as usual. Apparently, without breaking stride, Thing 1 checked the group, didn't blink, and went straight for the snack table set up at the back of the room. The kid has his priorities in order.

I do so wish I had a video of Sysguy extracting Thing 1 from the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that was currently under way. The look on SysGuy's face in the doorway, when he finally made it into the sanctuary, was priceless.

I’m sure glad November is over.
We had our house tented after Thanksgiving, and the new hard drive that our domain lives on crashed. I am uniquely talented in finding the only hotel in CA that doesn't have cable. There was free wi-fi, but only if you had a pc.
Its a skill. Sigh. Well, that's over!!

Now we’re full-on into the "I want that!" period of cartoon commercial watching. Yee Ha! The Things were actually fighting over toys they only fantasize about owning at this point. The likelihood of Santa bringing us a toy that is already a bone of contention before we have it is very slim indeed.
I guess I should be grateful they don't have anything actually important to fight about. Like girls. Shudder.

Because of my total loathing for large groups of my fellow humans, our Christmas shopping has pretty much already happened. Now I'm conducting a torrid relationship with the UPS and FedEx guys. I hope they don't find out about each other. SysGuy is cool with it, as long as I don't pester him with the details. Heh.

There seems to be an inverse correlation between the Things leaving potentially laundry-destroying items in their pockets, and my remembering to go through said pockets thoroughly every damn time I wash them. Our school had too many days off last month, for various reasons, and on one of them a friend and I went to a coffee shop. The Things had to come with us (no school), and I got them some of those little marker coloring on velvet projects to keep them busy and away from me on the other side of the coffee house.
I love them most from a distance.

These projects came with 3" markers. Crappy little markers that are usually too dry to do much coloring. Until they've arrived at the nirvana that is the washing machine, via the only pockets I managed to NOT go through. Having been rejuvenated and juiced up in the washer, they promptly lost their lids and proceeded to put party sprinkles on every single pair of pants the Things own on their carnival ride in the dryer. My position in the pantheon of housekeeping prowess is secure. My children wear polka dot pants to school.

Does anyone have a problem with that?