family
Today, I took Daniel and my daughter-out-law to the Bookmill. There is asbestos abatement happening in the room adjacent to my office and noise drove me out yesterday, so I figured today was likely to be a waste if I went in.
It was a rather dreary day that started raining just as we left. We arrived and found that the tables along the windows (and power outlets) were all taken. Luckily, I had the forethought to bring an extension cord, so we took a table in the middle and, fortified by coffee, we got ourselves all set up and set to work.
We spent the day working, writing, and drawing. I worked on a few work things, but spent a fair amount of time working on a haibun I've been trying to finish for months. Daniel worked on writing a new story: I'm trying to get him to finish a story and actually submit it for publication by the end of the holidays. Emilie worked on several drawings, one of which I hope to use for our holiday cards.
We stayed for several hours and eventually packed up and headed back. We stopped briefly in a store with locally produced artwork. I particularly liked several oil paintings of local scenes, including a panorama of the pioneer valley as seen from the top of mount sugarloaf. In any case, it was a nice way to spend the solstice.
I spent an intense week, culminating last night, preparing for and then migrating the department services from an old server to a new one. It's a server we've had for about 10 years and it has everything running on it. I was primarily responsible for migrating the file and web services -- including a complex scientific web application. Last night, I was in the office until 3am trying to stitch things back together. Today, most things are sort of working, but many things aren't quite right. Still -- we did it and the world did not end. Now we can go forward and make things better.
Today, we went to see Jonathan Coulton perform with his new band. He played a mix of old and new songs. The Iron Horse was packed with his fans, who sang along with all the old favorites and listened raptly each time he performed something new. We always enjoy seeing him perform, although its quite different when he doesn't have Paul and Storm to warm up the audience. On stage, he affects having quite an edge, which works for him pretty well.
I had seen that John Hodgman was going to be there and when he saw that I was going to be there he mentioned via twitter (I guess that's called "tweeting it" to use the vernacular.) Within minutes, I had another half-dozen followers on twitter. I wonder how long before they discover that, instead of some interesting funny man, they're following some weirdo who writes Esperanto-language haiku.
Afterwards, I posted two comments, I said
limako was not just soft-rocked by @jonathancoulton & actually touched @hodgman with (his) hand / devas nun gardi la manon kontraŭ memorigaĵ-stelistoj
and
famulo staras inter la homar'... kvazaŭ mem homo / the celebrity stands among the people... as if one himself. #hajko #haiku #senrujo
It was nice to meet John Hodgman. I shook his hand and he spoke with me for a few moments. He was very genuine and thanked me effusively for the little translation I made for him several months ago. He invited me to speak with him further after the concert, but he was swarmed with people, so I just remembered myself to him in passing as I left, with his earnest thanks following me. I was pleased that Lucy got a copy of the book that had that bit for Richard for his birthday.
After we got back, we finished packing for St. Croix. Tomorrow we leave early for our next big adventure.
It's our last night in Champaign. Tomorrow, we're planning to stop at the Pine Hills Nature Preserve in Indiana, and then drive back to Massachusetts. We'll probably need to stop on the road someplace and will get home sometime on Friday.
We've had a great visit! We did a lot of fiction writing -- I wrote thousands of words. I finished one story -- at least a rough draft. It still needs a lot of work, but was satisfying to finally get it written. I have two other stories in progress. The three of us also wrote a draft of a collaborative story. We had a lot of fun.
It's all been over much too quickly, but I'm also looking forward to a quiet weekend at home before going back to work on Tuesday.
We arrived in Champaign as a heat wave swept in and gripped the city. We had planned to visit a water park for two days, but thunderstorms prevented us until Wednesday. In the morning, we worked in the library until the water park opened at 12:30. Around noon, some dark clouds swept in and we worried that we'd have to wait yet another day, but a quick check of the radar showed that they were just passing clouds, and we changed clothes, put on our swim suits, and headed for Centennial Park.
Daniel, as usual, was wearing his swim-trunks, black crocs, and an orange and silver swim shirt with his swim goggles around his neck. Philip was wearing a loose, light-blue mesh shirt over his swimsuit and had his fedora. Jackie wore a large straw hat. Lucy hadn't changed into swim wear, intending to find a quiet spot in the shade to read while we went swimming.
The Sholem Aquatic Center lies in the middle of a green park surrounded by subdivisions and adjacent to a middle school. We got the last parking place and walked along the black chain-link fence to the entrance in a low, cement building with a blue metal roof. As we approached, the woman in the ticket office slid open the window and took our money. A man sitting at the entrance marked the receipt with a blue highliter and let us pass. We walked through a dark hallway, past the changing rooms and other doors, emerging into the busy pool area with the bright sunlight reflecting off the cement deck.
The place was packed. People of all ages, sizes, shapes, and colors were running this way and that, splashing and playing and shouting. There were small children, young women wearing bikinis, skinny boys, parents, grand parents and everything else. Life guards, wearing red swimsuits, were positioned strategically around the pools and would occasionally whistle to redirect children not following the rules.
The aquatic center is divided into regions each with a catchy name: the Puddle is a small pool for toddlers, the Oasis is a large, irregularly-shaped pool with regions for all ages, and, at the other side of the center, are the Plunge, with water slides, and the Lazy River. We took Lucy to the Meadow, a grassy area near the pools, and found her a shady place to read, then slathered on a copious amounts of sun screen before setting out. Philip and Jackie headed directly to the Lazy River while Daniel and I went to the Oasis.
The Oasis has a shallow end, like a beach, with water lapping at the shore. Jets of water spray up in one area. Another place has a post with branches, like a tree, each with a bucket that periodically fills and dumps water. In another spot, a mushoom-shaped structure produces a circular sheet of water that children can duck under and splash in. Little children were running and splashing here with their parents
At the deeper end, older children would hang on the walls, climb out, and jump in, in a never ending cycle of laughter and splashing. Most of the people in the deep end were in small groups of two or three, sorted by gender. Young women, talking constantly, and young men swimming, yelling, jumping, and rough-housing. Floats sectioned off a few lanes where a handful of people, mostly grownups, were swimming laps. Daniel and I floated in the cool water for a while before going to join Phil and Jackie in the Lazy River.
The Lazy River is a water-filled channel 10 to 15 feet wide formed into a irregularly circular loop with underwater jets creating a current that carries swimmers, using inflatable rings, around and around. One of the water slides, an open slide, enters the Lazy River near the middle. Two entrances to the Lazy River open on either side of the Waterfalls -- a region where jets of water soak anyone floating through on their inflatable rings. Jackie particularly liked the waterfalls and would exit on one side and run back to the other to float through the waterfalls again and again like a little kid.
After an hour in the sun, I was ready to just sit in the shade. Little by little, everyone trickled back and joined Lucy in the Meadow, except for Daniel who is indefatiguable when it comes to aquatic sports. Finally, we dragged him out, dried him off, and headed for the car.
Daniel, Lucy and I have been enjoying our visit to Champaign. We've spent much of the days in the library using the private study rooms to write. I've started writing a new story and worked a bit on an older one. We haven't done as much Esperanto as we'd planned to, but Daniel has done the first few lessons at Lernu and Phil and I have worked on a translation.
Last night, we escaped the heat by going to a movie. We saw Toy Story 3 in 3D. It was fine, although the franchise seems a bit tired to me. It didn't really break any new ground.
This morning, we took a tree walk down a street with an interpretative booklet to identify all the trees. Some I knew, many I had once known, but had forgotten, and some were entirely new. On a hackberry, we found two cicadas emerging as adults. One was already mostly done and the other just emerging from its exoskeleton. We watched for half an hour while it drew itself out and unfurled its wings.
Later today, we plan to go to a water park (if the weather cooperates) and then we are scheduled to have dinner with Barbara. We're keeping busy while maintaining a relaxed pace.
Last night, I took two snakes to the science night at the neighborhood elementary school. One was a boa and the other a milk snake -- one of those coral snake mimics. They were a big hit with the kids. I was surrounded practically the whole evening with kids wanting to feel and hold them. Which, of course, I let them do. Charlie came after a bit and interpreted for the little snake so I could let kids hold the big snake.
It was my fascination with snakes that first got me interested in science. It's hard to explain, but there's something simple captivating about the other-ness of snakes: the unblinking stare, the sinuous motion, and the flickering tongue.
When I was a kid, girls weren't supposed to like snakes and relatively few did -- people were starting to talk about "women's lib" and there was less pressure on girls then than there probably was 20 years earlier. But last night, it was the girls who were most engaged with the snake -- I was surrounded by girls the whole night. I think one girl would have been happy to sit for the whole evening wrapped in the coils of the boa.
I've always been a morning person. Once the sun is up, I want to be up (until it's time to take a nap in the afternoon). During the fall, however, when mornings get later and later, it gets harder and harder for me to get up early until at some point when I wake up before sunrise anyway. We're close to that time, when waking up in the mornings is hard.
It used to be that our morning schedule was very simple: Dad had to go to work and the children had to go to school. Now, however, one boy has to leave to go to the middle school at 7:15 (unless it's a "late start day"), another goes at 8:15 or so, and, if its Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, Mom goes to work (unless she's rearranged her schedule). My brain hurts.
Here's a picture of Daniel wearing his new 'squirrel arm' earring. We had to just get a squirrel hand because an arm would have been too long. Daniel is very happy. We got it from Custom Creature Taxidermy Studios run by Sarina Brewer (no relation). She does great work and the service was fabulous. No squir
I've been so focused on getting ready for Brazil that I haven't been thinking much about our upcoming family vacation. I've wanted to have my presentations ready to go, so I've been completely focused on that. I'm nearly there.
I've got two presentations roughed out: one about using reasoning problems in class and another about using technology to support local group activity. I'm relatively pleased with both of them. I'm about half way done with the last one, which will be a summary about local groups in the US. I've been struggling with how to deal with the meat of it, but I think I've got it figured out.
I haven't been posting stuff here mainly because I'm posting in my blogs either at ADTC or Esperanto-USA. I'm trying to do too much stuff and it's not leaving me with enough time to maintain my usual routine. Eventually things will settle down and I'll feel like I have more time for myself again.
For the most part, I spent the long weekend quietly at home. I've felt extra busy at work this semester, so it was nice to get some extra rest and relaxation. I finally read the Patrick O'Brien book Pop had gotten me for Christmas. I played some StarCraft with Phil. I took the doggies for walks (a rather cold walk in Northampton on Saturday). On Monday, I spent a fair amount of the day cleaning house. I picked stuff up and got the floors swept at least.
On Monday evening, we had invited Tom and Kirsten for dinner. Alisa fixed Indian food: chicken tika and some kind of paneer with basmati rice, missy roti, and papadum. It was nice to catch up with Tom and Kirsten, who have moved back to the Valley after attending school in Boston for a couple of years. They've just moved into an apartment in Holyoke and are going to invite us to come see it once they have a few of the necessary amenities, like a stove and a fridge.
For the past two years, I've been mentoring a group of Charlie's friends that are interested in computer stuff. We set up Muppyville and have continued to interact about programming. A few months ago, a mother of one of them asked me if I was aware of any opportunities for learning computer programming. I had been thinking about starting a computer programming club, but hadn't quite willing to commit myself. But I decided it was time. So I checked with the department, to make sure it was OK to bring kids into the BCRC and got the parent of another child (who I was sure would be interested) to come with me (mainly so I wouldn't be alone with the whole bunch of kids). Today was our first meeting.
Yesterday I got Alisa to start blogging. She's been talking about it for more than a year and has finally taken the plunge. She's involved with so many things around town -- I'm looking forward to seeing the kinds of things she posts on. Most people blog on the stuff they find: in the media or on the web. I'm more likely to write about what I'm working on, although primarily in a self-serving way: I'm writing more for myself than for an audience. I've always thought of my writing more as a "journal" than a "blog". I'm fairly careful in terms of what I write about: I try to avoid writing things that I wouldn't want my children, students, or colleagues to read. In fact, I'd want them to be comfortable reading my blog. Well, mostly. I wrote about Randy once and, the next day another faculty member said to me, "I'm afraid to talk to you, Brewer. You might write about me on the web!" He was kidding. Mostly.
I'm enjoying my vacation. Today, for the first time, I went out and did stuff (other that walking the dogs -- I've done that most days). Lucy and I walked the dogs first thing and then went to the grocery store and laid in provisions sufficient for the rest of the week, though we may want to pick up a few more things before New Years. Upon getting home, Phil and I played a game of Starcraft. After lunch, I set up the computer in my office and started scanning the rest of Cox. I took a break to go with Lucy to the library to pick up some books and DVDs. Among other things, I picked up the Seven Samurai, which I haven't seen for 10 or 20 years.
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