Caturday antidote

How come dogs don't get their own day of the week?

Back to the real world

Vacation is over but I am in no way ready to return to the "real" world. I had a good time but I needed to relax more than anything else and that's not exactly possible when flying coast to coast with small children. Last summer I took a short 3-day vacation by myself, maybe it's time to do that again. I am feeling very, very burnt out.

Purple crocuses

From my front garden. This is slowly but surely becoming a botanical blog.

It's spring!

First crocus of the spring

Something got into me last fall and I bought around 200 spring bulbs. This was unusual for me because I have a love/hate relationship with landscaping. I want things to look nice but I dislike the entire concept of a lawn. I see a flat, perfectly cut grassy monoculture to be gigantic waste of time, money and energy and my lawn shows it. It's patchy, generally scruffy looking, and full of weeds and moss but it's also full of life. Insects and spiders of all sorts and a large number of monarch butterflies, since I mow around all the milkweed that pops up.

But back to 200 bulbs. Historically, I have not been a very outdoorsy person, especially not the dirt-under-fingernails variety. For most of my life, "outside" was the giant room with the bright light and the blue ceiling. It started looking more and more like a bad decision with all the work required to dig out sections of lawn or restoring neglected flower beds. It was certainly more work than repotting some plants and remembering to water them. It look a few weekends and some more weeknights, but I did it. I got them all in the ground before the first frost and some areas even look halfway decent. Now everything is coming up - crocuses, tulips, daffodils, giant alliums, leucojums, and hyacinths. I'm practically giddy checking what's popped up overnight or during the day. I have spring fever!


A good book on the history and ridiculousness of the lawn is The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession. It influenced my attitude towards the lawn and got me a bunch of dirty looks from certain suburban types on the commuter rail.

Aloe fhtagn

The aloe plant that I rescued from death by neglect in my son's room has taken a turn towards the Cthulhu.

I swear I just repotted it and watered it regularly, and didn't invoke an Elder God.

Netflix to the rescue!

My household is probably a bit atypical in that we have only one television set connected to a cable or satellite source. At least, atypical compared to how I grew up and compared to other households were there's TVs in living room, family room, kitchen, garage, each bedroom, etc. We also are living like primitives without a DVR because we've never upgraded our satellite system (Directv) in the 11 years since we got it. Why would we? We've had the same TV the entire time. Yes, yes, primitive, I know, but it works.

Directv also works well for us because we have a very clear view of the southern sky (usually getting a 98 or higher on the signal meter), except on snow days like today. My kids spent the morning outside in the snow as kids should on a snow day and came in to warm up at lunch. Disaster! Half the channels they like to watch were out. Then I had a brilliant idea - Netflix on the Wii. Quick download and setup and bam, they are watching How It's Made from the Science Channel without all the skeevy commercials for Oddities that freak my kids out. And I look like some big damn hero.

Why isn't this how we watch everything, on every channel? It's 2012 for crying out loud, why is there still a notion of a broadcast schedule? Like I said, we don't have a DVR so I don't know how it is for people who have them, but I would gladly pay the same amount I'm paying for satellite & Netflix to be able to watch whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and not get gouged in the process or be limited to only older seasons, the latest 3 episodes or whatever "windowing" nonsense the media companies design to maximize shareholder value. It's sad how much we are letting ourselves be held back by the old cultural gatekeepers so they can continue to keep their heads buried in the sand and refuse to adapt their business models to new realities.

"Where did you get that beagle?"

While I was out walking our dog yesterday afternoon, I was stopped by a passing driver who wanted to know where we had gotten our beagle. This has happened four or five times now, including at the vet's office. Each time the questioner is surprised and somewhat disappointed to find out that she's a rescue dog from Puerto Rico. Most times they are looking for someone in the area selling or breeding beagles, and once we were asked rather directly if we were breeding our dog. Maybe I'm a prude, but is that really a question for polite society?

Deep in contemplation about how best to
steal something off the kitchen table.

Pure bred? No idea. Former street dog? Quite possibly. Eats cat poop? Constantly. More photos below.

I wonder if the NYT will claim fair use or innocent infringement

From the Boston Phoenix Phlog: Hi Bill Keller. The New York Times just stole our column. Should we sue?

If SOPA & PIPA had passed and been signed into law, the Boston Phoenix could have demanded that all ad networks cease operations with the NY Times, all credit card companies stop processing their payments, and then have the entire domain name blacklisted in the US. All for linking to a PDF. Our copyright system is completely screwed up as it is, and things like SOPA, PIPA and ACTA will make it a nightmare.

Report cards for science standards

Your state's science report card

My state, New Hampshire, got a D. Right across the fence (literally, if I look out my home office window) Massachusetts gets an A-. I guess it could be worse... like the F my home state of Oregon received.

This is why I spend a lot of time talking about science with my kids, watching quality educational programs, etc. They are also getting old enough for me to break out some textbooks to supplement whatever they get in school. Interestingly enough, New Hampshire has a new state law that throws educational standards to the four winds. Any parent can object to any content in any classroom and demand accommodation. Neat how that's written to be non-specific enough to not trigger any Constitutional challenges like Edwards v. Aguillard, huh? The only hitch is that replacement materials have to be paid for by the parents, but hey, I'll gladly pay for a textbook if that means evolution is taught in my sons' school!

Of course, this isn't enough for some parents here in NH. They want a bill that would allow parents to pull their kids from school districts that adopt the International Baccalaureate program because that's one step away from one world government or something.

It could be worse, though. In Indiana, a senator wants to include religion in the science curriculum and is trying to get around constitutional grounds by including more than just the creation science view. The bill now reads, "The curriculum for the course must include theories from multiple religions, which may include, but is not limited to, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Scientology." Somehow, I don't think the parents who would support this bill will support anything but Judeo-Christian teachings in their classroom. What about my belief system, that world was created from the dead body of Ymir the giant? Will that be on the test?

Lunch!

Loco moco, a Hawaiian favorite. I am neither Hawaiian nor have I ever been to Hawaii, I just read about it and then found a recipe online.

"Fun" at lunch

This was how I spent my lunch "hour" yesterday. I'm fine and so is the car, but it was still not exactly a fun experience.

Never leggo my LEGO

An acquaintance on Facebook posted a link to BrickLink in a comment to one of my many status updates. I say "acquaintance" because no friend would post such a thing, not in a reply to someone like me. An enemy sure would - maybe I have my very first frenemy. I love LEGO, I have always loved LEGO, and my kids have inherited my love of LEGO, so that site is potential Kryptonite to my household budget. Take a gander at the vintage space sets, for instance. Looking back at the sets from 1979, either I was very good that year or the Sears catalog had one heck of a sale on the entire collection, because I remember building and playing with most of them. In fact, a whole lot of the space sets from 1979-1982 are pretty familiar. I distinctly remember that my very first "grown up kid" LEGO set was the space shuttle, and I built and rebuilt the Alpha-1 Rocket Base many times. But I had forgotten about many of the others, the mobile tracking station and mobile rocket launcher, the X1 patrol craft, space cruiser, cosmic cruiser and several others. I suddenly remembered them all and resisted the immediate urge to purchase them to reconnect with my childhood.

Which is in itself odd, because I still have them. I just don't know where they are exactly. I have somewhere between 80-90% of my childhood toys packed away in storage. LEGO, Star Wars, Transformers, GI Joe, Hotwheels, who knows what else. A big emphasis on "who knows." I was a very careful and conscientious child, careful not to lose a single piece or gun or whatever if I could help it. No, not obsessive compulsive... well, maybe a smidge OCD. When I moved out after college, I took it all with me. Unlike a lot of young adults, I didn't come home to find my things had been brought down to the dump 5 minutes the day after I moved into a dorm. Most likely because everyone knew that I'd leave and never return if that happened (I left and never returned anyways, so whatever). So I have a good portion of those LEGO sets still... somewhere. I am not one of those extreme hoarders you see on TV, I swear! Well, maybe a smidge of that, too.