Well, Maybe One Last Post Before Summer...

The boys sleep in bed tents. The tent of the oldest keeps popping off the bed, because he has so many stuffed toys that it's hard to keep them contained within the thin vinyl walls. I had to give him an ultimatum: put some toys into storage, or no more tent. He chose the former. Lest you think I'm exaggerating about the multitude of plushes, here is proof that it's worse than it sounds.


He's old enough not to need bed rails anymore, but we keep them there just to contain the spillage.


The youngest doesn't have a problem with his tent, but he doesn't have as many stuffed toys either.


In knitting news, the mittens are multiplying at a satisfying rate of one per day.


I weep for Southern Ontario Library Service. The Ministry's $700,000 cut to their budget makes me fearful of how this will affect my many friends there. I wonder if it's just a coincidence that SOLS got slashed the exact amount that the same Ministry granted to the Ontario Digital Library project. Ah, it's too depressing to even think about it.

Summer Hiatus

The blog will be on hiatus until the second week of August. If you miss me, you can always re-read the archives. :-)

Happy summer everyone!

Reading, Swimming, Baking, Knitting

Saturday morning we went to ye olde neighbourhood Starbucks/Chapters super box store and I picked up the new Knitters magazine. My boys are pictured in the "Letters" section, wearing the sweaters my mom made for them in January.


It's not the first time the boys have appeared in this publication. They are also in the "Letters" section of a previous issue wearing earlier iterations of the same snowman design.


The covers of the two issues are shown here.


Later we dropped the kids off at my parents' house while the spouse and I went to see a movie (Land of the Dead - it was okay). It was 34 degrees Celsius (93 Fahrenheit), and my parents still didn't have the air conditioning turned on! They did have fans going, which made the place more bearable for the boys, but I think they played mostly in the basement anyway.

We've been spending serious time in the in-laws' pool. I'm getting quite dark in the sun. The lighter area is my untanned skin.


I made some pistachio cupcakes on a whim. The recipe is from a blog I read sometimes. The finished product was less than satisfying. The recipe calls for a boxed cake mix, non-dairy dessert topping (you know the one), and Jello pudding mix. I should've known better, but I was actually surprised that the result tasted like it was from a boxed cake mix, with oil-based whipped topping. Sigh. The blog entry led me to expect so much more. Well, live 'n' learn.


I did some knitting this weekend. I made some lizard and orca mittens for the kids last winter, but the boys complained that they got soaked too easily from the snow.




These new mittens will be made from a bulky wool blend, so hopefully it will do a better job of keeping the boys' hands dry.


I have only one mitten done so far. This one is for the oldest. In order to circumvent jealousy, the way I make mittens for the boys is to knit one, which belongs to whomever it fits. Then I knit another mitten for the other boy. I go back and make the twin for the first boy, and finally, I make the twin for the other boy. By the time I'm done running through the pattern this way, I'm completely through with making mittens - unless of course, my sister requests them for her kids.

Damn Kids in Your Jello Tree Again?

The other day a coworker told us how these kids were partying loudly in the park behind her house. Another coworker said she should've opened the window and yelled, "Hey you kids! Get out of that Jello tree!"
Surprisingly (to me), I was the only one in the group who recognized the reference. It's from a Jello commerical that apparently ran only in Canada in the 70s. Bill Cosby was in it and there was a big tree hung with giant translucent Jello fruit, the kind you can make from the moulds they sold back then. Do you remember it? Even the spouse does not recall the commercial.

In other nostalgia news...


The irony is that, "back in the day", the Pop Shoppe meant inexpensive, bulk pop. Now it's more like Jones Soda - an overpriced "gourmet" hipster item. The spouse drank the pop - I just wanted the bottle - and he said it tasted better when he was a kid. Then again, as children my sisters and I used to sneak sugar cubes out of the cupboard and we thought they tasted pretty great, so it's all relative.

Yesterday was productive for knitting. Here was the cow in the morning.


And here it was in the evening.



I've since dropped it off at BF's house to bring to SW at SOLS.

I'll be seeing George A. Romero's Land of the Dead tomorrow. Sweet!

The Nephew

My sister across the pond writes:

We went on the weekend to a birthday party of one of E's friends, Luca. He's known Luca since he was 8 months old and they go to nursery together. I know they are good friends but I really didn't realise how well they got along until this party. Luca and E just hung around together and ignored the party entertainer and the other kids. Luca is three weeks older than E and is very chatty. There is a lot of "E, come", "E... stones!" and "E, let's go". They were very cute together. Here are some photos.

Late Breaking News

The Pop Shoppe is back!

Oh, and in library news, Sirsi merged with Dynix today. Ehhh, as my colleague WH once said, "It'll all be owned by Google soon."

Father's Day Weekend

It was a busy weekend, as usual.

On Friday the kids had Authors' Day at their school, where they present the books they've written and illustrated. I went over at lunch to see the boys. There was also an open house so I checked out the oldest's grade 3 bridge project. Each boy made cards and lots of presents for daddy.

That evening, my sister and I took out my parents out for dinner. On Saturday, RG hung around during the day and later we took my in-laws out for dinner. The kids stayed overnight with them, so we watched a movie. I know it sounds like we couch-potato a lot, but we don't, really. The only chance the spouse and I get to watch movies is when the kids are gone or otherwise occupied (e.g. when RG is over), which isn't that often, so I mention it whenever it happens because it is an infrequent treat for us.

On Sunday we went to aikido. I found out that I passed my 6th kyu test, and the kids attended their second Sunday childrens' class. Another former Karasawa student was there, Raymond. He also studied with Sensei Ward Jardine at Renseikan. I bought these washi brooches on my way out of the dojo.


In knitting news, I'm finally done this bloody thing, the Branching Out scarf from Knitty.com. I'm also done with lace knitting. Too much thinking required - you can't knit lace from a chart and daydream at the same time.


I have absolutely no knitting projects on the go which is unusual, but someone at the baby shower requested a cow toy, so I bought white and black yarn for that. I couldn't resist getting this novelty yarn too, because the youngest said it looked like a birthday cake. Trouble is, I don't know what to make with it. A whole garment or wrap made of this stuff would be too much, and I'm not much of a scarf-wearer. I'll let it sit and see if any ideas come to mind.


Typically I have multiple projects on the needles, and that is also how I've always read books. These are the ones I'm currently reading.


You Grow Girl by Gayla Trail is my first gardening book. It's not bad for a dummies book. I bought it for its clear instructions and DIY projects. It must've been written for twenty-somethings because it assumes that the reader is cash-strapped and lives in an urban apartment. The way it's designed and structured also points to gen-Y. The drawings are cartoon-y, alt-fashion-ad-y "hip", and each instruction or tip is a discrete unit of no more than 2 pages with not much text (big borders, lots of graphics).
Review: You'll like this book if you're a twenty-something cash-strapped urban apartment-dweller. Otherwise, read it, learn from it, then move on quickly to her web site or to other books with more advanced, detailed stuff. This is not a gardening reference book you need to keep around, except for perhaps the DIY projects.

I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe describes campus life in the early 2000s.
Review: Not as strong as his last novel, Man in Full, but a good read all the same. My favourite Wolf witticism so far: one of the characters drives a crappy, old "Bitsosushi" car.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner is an interesting, (all too) quick read. Author Levitt applies econometrics to questions which we don't think of as typical for economists, and comes up with surprising conclusions. For example, remember in the late 80s when pundits and politicians reported that crime was on the rise and would soon get out of hand? Everyone was stunned when crime actually dropped in the 90s and beyond. The media tried to find an answer to why. They cited the revival of the death penalty, a better economy, more gun control. Levitt examined the data, applied econometrics, and the numbers revealed the indisputable answer: legalized abortion. When abortion was legalized in the States in the mid-70s, the women who had them were typically young, poor, single and urban. Their children would've been at high risk of leading lives of poverty themselves, easy targets for crime, drugs, and other urban woes. The numbers showed that crime dropped because the pool of potential criminals did.
Review: A fun, fast read. The central thesis is that while morality is how we would like the world to work, economy describes how it actually works, and economy is properly the study of incentives. This thesis results in some counterintuitive answers to interesting questions, which only in retrospect seem somewhat obvious.

The Opposite of Fate by Amy Tan.
Review: Amy Tan's autobiographical essays are also an interesting read. She emphasizes throughout that her novels are fiction, while describing tantalizing pieces of her real life.

A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews is a tough slog. It was easy to read in the beginning, but as I left it aside for sexier reads (damn you, Amy Tan!) then picked it up again, I couldn't get back into it. I'll finish it though, because I think it'll get better toward the end.
Review: Many critics have compared this novel to Catcher in the Rye, and I find that comparison apt. Both books share the same spirit. They are written in the first-person, in the voice of a disaffected teen on the cusp of "phoney" adulthood and contain sly, cynical observations of their communities.

Best. Movie. Ever. (I hope)

George A. Romero's Land of the Dead is opening June 24. w00t!

I can hardly wait. I love zombie films and of course have seen the original Romero trilogy (Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead), plus all the reinterpretations (Return of the Living Dead 1, 2, and 3; Evil Dead 1, 2, and 3), remakes (Dawn of the Dead [2004]), and spoofs (Shaun of the Dead). It's hard to pick a favourite from this list, but I'm very fond of the original Dawn of the Dead, with its tongue-in-cheek take on suburban shoppers and Hare Krishnas.

Kyu Test

I had my first kyu test at my new dojo. The techniques were:

• Gyaku-hanmi Katate-tori Sumi-otoshi
  
• Ai-hanmi Katate-tori Ikkyo (Omote/ura)
  
• Ai-hanmi Katate-tori Irimi-nage
  
• Gyaku-hanmi Katate-tori Shihonage (Omote/ura)
  
• Gyaku-hanmi Katate-tori Kokyunage (uchi mawari)
  

I really dislike irimi-nage, and this dojo does a lot of it. It's Steven Seagal's signature technique (see the film here, especially the parts where he does irimi-nage after irimi-nage - it's the move where it looks like he's clothes-lining his partner), which is fine for him because he's over 6 feet tall and spent much of his time training with shorter Japanese ukes, but it's tough to do it properly on someone taller than you are.

In other news, my nephew is enamoured of speaking on the phone. Well, actually just listening on the phone and getting upset when the caller has to hang up, according to my sister. Too bad she doesn't live here, where we have Dial-A-Story.


Here is another picture of him, inserted gratuitously.


And for no reason at all, except that she sent me the picture recently, here is my pal H"W"B and family.

Crafty

Due to the positive response to the raccoon patio stone, I thought I'd photograph some more crafts around the house.

I sometimes do origami. I especially like modular origami and am getting into traditional modular origami known as kusudama.


I like making fake, hand-crafted food, like this felt sushi ornament ...


... this felt fortune cookie ...


...and these dessert beads. They've multiplied since my Friday experiment.


I also sew a bit. Here are some tote bags made from recycled Kool-Aid Jammers packs.


Finally, not craft-related, but a message to my sister. Along with the berry hats, and your odd but specific requests (cough! - breadcrumbs - cough!), here is some stuff that I'll be sending to you, for the nephew.

Baby Shower Sunday

BF hosted a baby shower for R and J. I didn’t see J, but R was there. Here is the little guest of honour on MJ's lap.


DL has been working out. I was so awed by her Janet Jackson abs that I had to take a picture!


Here’s the stuff I brought for the baby. The P.D. Eastman book is the baby version of the same title in hard back that J bought for my oldest when he was born. I knitted the bear. For the knitters out there, more pics and comments about the pattern can be found here.




This is my contribution to the snacks. The cake was made by a local Greek bakery. I was supposed to make some cheesecake-pecan pies, but it’s been too hot to bake. I was actually praying for rain so that I could bake!


The message on the cake needs explaining. When I told them that I wanted, Welcome Anna Maria written on the cake and that it was for a baby shower, they assumed that the baby was coming home from the hospital the day of the party, hence their addition of Home to the icing.

Here’s the SOLS crew. I’m in the fuschia T-shirt beside cake-cutting R. I'm not actually that short - I'm bending forward so that you can see the folks in the back. The shower and traditional passing-around of the baby was enjoyed by all. BF is such a great hostess – she puts on the nicest gatherings.

Saturday, Another Hot Day for Swimming

On Saturday, RG came over and spent the day with us swimming in the in-laws’ pool. After dinner, his girlfriend O joined us. RG entertained the kids while the spouse, myself and O watched a movie.


Earlier in the day, the spouse got me these two magazines.


In Aikido Today, there’s an interesting article about Canadian Stephen Ohlman, a yoshinkan Sensei who owns and operates the Hiryukan dojo in Barrie, Ontario. There’s lots of interesting stuff in the article, but I especially enjoyed the part where he described the 11-month Yoshinkan International Instructors Course in Japan. He recalls that, "after an hour of continuous forward rolling followed by a half hour of continuous knee walking, blood soaked his pant leg." He also remembers that in the winter, "there was no heat. Steam would rise from their bodies like fog obscuring their forms. Sometimes the tatami were like blocks of ice… Suffering from a cold or running a high fever was no excuse to avoid training." To anyone who disagrees with my opinion that yoshinkan is too macho of a style, I invite your counterargument.

Myself, I agree with Robert Kent of Aikido Kids who, in the same issue, writes, "To try to rate aikido on the scale of its effectiveness as a fighting art is to ignore O-Sensei’s crucial realization that we shouldn’t be fighting in the first place… The real purpose of aikido training is to eliminate anger, competitiveness, and egotism within ourselves… Training in his art is not training to be a person who is feared by everyone else but a person whom nobody would want to attack in the first place."

Switching topics entirely, I noticed more flowers growing in the weedy, neglected part of the back lawn. These are my new WTF flowers (as you know, the others became my WTFlox flowers). Again, the question is: to pluck, or not to pluck?

Big Mural and All-You-Can-Eat Sushi Friday

At the kids' school, they are painting a huge mural in the hallway. It's almost completed and looks neat - like a kindergarten Brueghel. Here is a small part of it with the youngest for scale.


The youngest painted the boy and the blue snowman, the scene near his ear.


The oldest painted the boy in green and the snowman. You can easily identify which figures he painted because they all have three hairs sticking up from the top of the head, just like himself (although not in this picture). You can also tell it's Friday because he's in his Star Wars costume.


Can you guess which two figures he painted here? :-)


The oldest also painted these ducks.


That evening, we met KS and NM for dinner at China Buffet King.
The kids like this restaurant because there’s lots of variety, but I’m in it for the all-you-can-scarf salmon sashimi and sushi.


Here is KS with her sushi. She's laughing because now that I've started a blog, I feel compelled to describe every minor event in my life. On the bright side, when she asked how I was doing, I was able to shrug and reply, "Read my blog."


And here is NM with his sushi.


Because I was snapping pictures, the youngest insisted on having his done.


KS recently returned from a trip to Singapore, from where she brought me this fabulous bag! It's made by local craftswomen.


Yes, those are Alien stuffed toys on the shelf.

After KS and NM’s visit, I made some beads from Sculpey clay. I'm not thrilled with them, although I guess I could make a few more and see if I like having a pie bracelet.