EMP in the US

So, I’ve been trying hard for nearly a week to get this right, (well, in the snippets of time I get to myself during the week!). I’ve finally uploaded it, though only the mp3 version until I’m completely satisfied and have digested some feedback. I’ve been struggling to make the bass heard on my laptop speakers, so I either have to resign myself to the fact that, if people are listening to it on their laptop, they will be missing half the track, or just hope that my little MacBook speakers are worse than most! David suggested I add some bass partials, which did help a bit (I just doubled the bass octave!) so that’s the version submitted for now.

Phew, thankfully this seemed to update ok, and I think everything is working. Let’s hope it keeps the hackers at bay for a while.

Went out to get the post this morning:

After I spent some time clearing the driveway, the snow plough came back…

…and blocked the driveway again!

At this point, I gave up and went in to have lunch. Our very kind neighbours had brought us a fish back from their weekend trip to civillisation (they visited friends in New York) which the boys and I greedily tucked into.

Also this morning, before snow play, we got round to fixing the boys’ stereo. The wretched thing had been playing to around track 4 or 5, then getting stuck and finally stopping and displaying “Er” on the display. Er…? is about right.

Needless to say, I took it apart:

If I’m honest, I probably didn’t really need to do that, but it gave me access to the laser which I cleaned with a bit of alcohol, and removed a very fine hair from the lens unit. It was the sort of hair you would get off a cotton bud, so it could be that I put it there when I cleaned the lens. Either way, taking it apart and putting it back together again made it work. However, instead of the usual extra screw leftover, I actually had one missing. Maybe somewhere in the universe all these extra and missing screws balance out in perfect equilibrium.

Ollie is much better today, in that he’s not burning up, but he’s now a green snot monster, which isn’t better for me. However, at least he’s crying a bit less and laughing a bit more.

Poor old Ollie is suffering this week. What started as a cold has developed into raging fevers. I’ve not had much sleep so forgive me if the post is a bit scattered! Ollie has spent the last two days on the sofa, demanding that I too remain there. We watched Disney’s “Cars” at 3am this morning, in order to distract him from his discomfort. Thankfully my godsend neighbour took Thomas for the entire afternoon, where he got to play and take part in stimulating activities, rather than also stay on the sofa and explode all over the house with unspent energy.

Yesterday I actually made an effort to arrange stimulating activites in the home, like a good mum. We got paints out and learned about primary and secondary colours, and then we made a fun snack, courtesy of Thomas’ Leapster game. (Win a code, go to the website, print). It was called Ants on a Log:

Basically, celery stick spread with peanut butter covered in raisins. Thomas liked it. Ollie wasn’t fooled. “Don’t like celery” he frowned as he picked it out of his teeth. Me neither mate.

The last couple of days, I’ve not been able to post because, we think, someone hacked into my site. Luckily I googled the error and the forums enabled me to fix it, but it is scary. I need to update the version of Wordpress I’m using asap, and maybe even change the theme, as it was one of the theme files that was hacked. Updating can be tricky, so I may be offline, and come back with a much more geeky, sensible-shoes look. I am not doing it right now, as I will need a clearer head. Ollie permitting – maybe tomorrow.

I managed to capture, though very roughly, through a very dirty window, a picture of a bright red bird we get around here. I’m not too interested in birds, unless they have a cool sound, so I didn’t try to find out what it was.

Lastly, I’ve been snatching time over the weekend and the last couple of days to do another remix. I quite like the first 30 seconds, but it all goes downhill from there. I’m now pretty fed up with it, and I can’t wait to get it finished and uploaded so I don’t have to think about it any more. I have arranged with David to be able to work in the evenings sometimes, as waiting 5 days in between sessions isn’t practical – I forget everything I learned in the last sitting for starters!

Anyway, the increased level of activity has led me to resent domestic chores even more as they infringe on my time. I am particularly unimpressed with washing-up at the moment, as I cut my finger quite badly (and stupidly) on the weekend, which meant I had to wear a rubber glove on the subsequent days. When the cut had healed sufficiently that I didn’t need it any more, I hung it up and it just happened to fall into a pose which reflected my feelings towards washing-up in general.

Finally, Thomas and I were walking along hand-in-hand the other day, and I said to him, “I like walking along like this with you, holding hands in the sunshine. It makes me feel happy inside.” He replied, “Yes! Especially when you have lots of pretend friends with you, and especially when some of those pretend friends are superheroes!” Hmph.

Just a quick post, as I haven’t posted for a while.

The reason I haven’t posted is that I made the best of my 2 days of childcare the last two days. I finally made some music. It’s small steps, and I needed some sort of tangible goal. There is a great website called Indaba.com which often holds remix competitions, which allows you to download the stems of a song and then make your own. Then you can upload it and see if anyone else likes it!

I had initially wanted to get it finished in one day, but it took two, along with Thomas coming home early on Friday. He had a bad cold, and was feeling a bit sorry for himself. (He’s fine now!). It was good to go through the various stages of creativity, including the one where you decide it’s a pile of rubbish and you are not going to bother with it any more. Luckily, I was able to pull it back and after the kids were in bed, I spent 3 hours finalizing it and got it uploaded. It is important to get used to being able to make something in a short time. This will hopefully become more efficient as I get better with the software. I’m mostly using Logic Pro 8, and occasionally Ableton Live (which is a total enigma to me still).

I could go on and on about the actual work, and the bits of it that make me cringe, but actually, there’s a Harry Potter on the tele, which I’d like to get back to!

Here it is:

I will post it on Facebook once the voting starts, so it’s fresh in everyone’s mind. I think voting starts on March 9th, but I will be sure to remind you! Hopefully this is the first of many – they make for good exercises.

Something priceless happened today, and I’d have loved some of the people how point out how clever Thomas is to have seen it.

We were playing in the boys room, when Ollie, throwing himself around as usual sprang headfirst into the bed and banged his head. A quick kiss and cuddle later he was mollified. Thomas, always quick to point out corrections said, “Ollie, you should’ve banged your head on the soft bit like this!” and headbutted the bed in an exact repetition of Ollie, but slightly further down his face (I think he was aiming for the mattress). It looked like quite a horrific injury, but when the tears cleared, it turned out ok. I heard myself saying “From now on no-one is allowed to head-butt anything!”

This weekend we went to the Occom Pond Party. The weather was great. There were ice sculptures that the kids could slide down:

Thomas got a turn at ice-fishing:

There was a marching band:

Both boys got to try out the double-blade skates. Ollie was actually rather good at it! He also likes to pull the sled around on the ice.

It was a good crowd.

Also, I mentioned ice-fishing, well last weekend we went for a drive to check out Enfield, which is about 20 minutes away from Hanover. On the way, we saw real ice-fishing. This is Lake Mascoma (I think!) and basically, people drive their trucks out to the middle of the lake, towing a sort of shed with them. Then they drill holes in the ice with big, very sharp drills, then sit and fish. It just goes to show how much fun you can have in the countryside:

Also, I thought I’d just mention what the weather is doing, for the curious. It has been very sunny and cold, and very very dry. We are talking static electric shocks everywhere, and dry skin patches. Our neighbour has lent us a humidifier, which we run in the boys room at night. David and I wake up with sore and scratchy throats, even with a damp cloth on the radiator overnight. The humidity indoors sits at 30% or less.

Ollie and I went for a walk this morning, and I thought I’d take a picture of the roadside so you can see where the snow-plough snow is still piled albeit turned to ice and black with dirt, but where snow covering has melted, the grass is all dead. The lack of snow is irritating, as it has scuppered our sledding and skiing plans. We do have some more forecast for next week, so hopefully we will get a few more weeks of snow fun. At least we can be thankful that the temperatures are so low, there is no slush or mud.

A huge weight was lifted off my shoulders today when we finally made it down to Claremont to take our road tests for our driving licenses. Theoretically, you are supposed to obtain a New Hampshire driving license within 2 months of moving to the state. We managed to take the written test within that time, but they didn’t have any road tests available that day. Then our car stopped working properly, specifically the horn, which is one of the rules of taking the test (your car must be in good working order, with a working horn). Then we ran out of money, so we couldn’t get it fixed, then our mechanic broke his foot, so couldn’t fix the car. Then I got several colds and strep throat which put me out of action, then I went to the UK for 3 weeks, then it was Christmas, and now we are finally here we are in February. I was stressing that we weren’t really supposed to be driving, as the UK license is only valid here if you are not a resident. I am here on my American passport, so I can’t really play that card.

Anyway, all that is finally behind us. The road test was great! The policewoman who took me round was very nice, and all I had to do was drive around the town for 10 minutes. No manoeuvers, no parking, no emergency stop. Now we have temporary licenses, and the real ones will arrive in the post:

Sorry I haven’t blogged for a while, I have been spending my evenings absorbed in Assassin’s Creed on the xbox 360, which I have to say, is more engaging than blogging.

I have also had to find time to make 30 Valentine’s day cards. It’s a big thing here, and kids give everyone in their class a card. (you don’t have to, but you’re not allowed to just bring them in for your friends, which is sort of nice – I think it’s tough to learn about heartbreak when you’re 4). You don’t have to make them, but I didn’t really want to spend money on them. The boys put the stickers on!

The boys are continuing to grow and develop. Ollie is saying lots of intelligent things now, but not always intelligible things. I worry a little when he says “look mum, that river is frozen!” as we drive over the Conneticut river, because he says it in such a baby voice. Thomas always talked like an 80-year-old man from the minute he started. Ollie will be 3 in a couple of months, and he sounds so babyish to me! He is also still in diapers/nappies, which the paediatrician assured me was normal for here, but it is niggling at me. It’s not that he can’t use the potty – he has on several occasions, but he mostly refuses to. I am contemplating the stay-at-home week intensive training, to get him started in earnest. *sigh* (and yuk!).

I also wanted to re-tell a little story I heard from the book sessions I went to with my friend Karoline. The story-teller told us that a big study was carried out to find out what was the common factor was for all the “Merit Scholars” that made them all so brilliant, so that they could tell everyone to do it, and make all the kids brilliant! Reasonable logic. (By-the-way, a “merit scholar” are pupils who come top in science and math at high school). So, they interviewed thousands of students, and found that they came from different backgrounds, some from single-parent families, some from multi-generational families, some had english as a second language, some didn’t, some were good at music, some were good at sports, and so on. In fact they couldn’t find a common factor. In the end a researcher who asked the children what their day was like heard a child say “…and then we sat down to dinner”. She realised that she had been hearing this a thousand times over, and they discovered that all these merit scholars all sat around the table with the family to eat dinner together. This point has been made several times, but the speculation was that it was the one time in the day when the kids can experience “non-contextual” conversation, and that something about the neural pathways that are formed and used for non-contextual conversation is important to making brainy kids!

There was I letting the kids trash the house to encourage their imagination, and it turns out that I just have to feed them dinner. Doh! I’ll just rebuild my sofa…

Also, I’m not sure I want brainy kids anyway. Thomas has developed that irritating reading-over-your-shoulder thing. “What’s robandrosie?” he asked me, when I was busy reading my friend’s blog.

Ollie made me laugh yesterday, when he asked to see my willy. I explained that mummys and girls don’t have them, but boys do. Then he asked “do you have a bottom?” to which I replied that I did, and he said with relief “I have a bottom too!”.

FInally I have put up the boys height chart. There is only about 10cm between them now.

This morning we were up-and-atom pretty early, so I had time to get a bit organized. The boys are sometimes reluctant to go outside, especially Thomas, so I dragged them out to catch a (free) bus into town. We got off just opposite the College Park, which we came across the other day. We had a great time exploring, and found some interesting things in it:

Could you spot the tower hiding in the trees?

This is what’s left of the “Dartmouth Pine”:

This is an observatory that they invite the public to use occasionally.

Then on the way home, the new bus-driver dropped us a little further along the road than normal, and as payday had just happened, I decided to treat the children (and me!) to some lunch in the cafe right near our house, that we have never tried.

It’s a very friendly place, and the food was actually delicious. Ironically, I had my first ever Ruben sandwich in Islington, London, just before we moved to the States, and now we are here, I have it almost every time we eat out for lunch. YUMYUM!

When we got home, there was just time to peel off the boys’ snow suits before we had to jump in the car to get to the Childcare Centre, where there was a Woodwind presentation. It was really great, as the kids were introduced to a flute, a clarinet, a saxophone, and a recorder. These presentations are good, as they are short, and finish just about when the little ones get fed up with sitting still! (or in my case, the boys can’t restrain themselves from fighting any more!)

Then I speedily put Ollie to sleep for his nap by lying with him, so that he would wake up in plenty of time to go to the Montshire Museum with our friends. We had a great time there, it’s more fun with friends.

Then it was home for a bath, ready for day care tomorrow. Phew. I’m exhausted! It made up for our non-day yesterday, where we didn’t do anything!