EMP in the US

On one of the days we took a ferry across a narrow part of the lake to New York (the state of). Oriol and David had attended a summer music camp in Meadow Mount (Oriol several years in a row) and we thought we’d take a trip to see it.

First things first, we stopped at a favourite old haunt for lunch:

Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos of the camp itself, but it was totally surreal. Little wooden huts everywhere, some for sleeping, some for eating, some teaching rooms, and practice rooms. Oriol went to look at his favourite practice er… hut, and it was open! A grand piano being played in a tiny hut in the middle of the forest! We went to look for a den he had built in the woods, and the remains of it were still there, though a large tree had fallen on top of it! He then took us to some beautiful waterfalls where the students would go swimming in the summer:

The lake on the way home:

I am so excited to have pd running again, and in Debian, again, that I just had to post about it. I still have network trouble with the old Dell. The new network card, simply will not work. I have tried Ndiswrapper, and it nearly worked. I am annoyed because I’m sure I researched it carefully before I bought it, but alas, it appears I did not buy a good one for Linux. Still, for $8, it’s not the most expensive mistake I ever made.

So, the old wireless pcmcia card still works fine, but is too old to have WPA, which would mean switching our home network back to WEP. This is now such a security risk, that I don’t want to do that. Thankfully, clever old David, not-just-a-pretty-beard suggested I daisy chain off my mac, which I have done. It was easy to set up a network to share the internet connection from the mac over the ethernet port. It’s a bit cumbersome to have to have both laptops open, especially as they both have UK plugs on the power supplies, but I guess, we’ll figure out a way around this eventually.

I apt-get installed all the pd packages I needed, turned it on and it worked. SUPER! I think I may need to fix an audio issue, but I’ll let you know… for now I’m too excited with my new (well nearly new) toy.

Sorry to have been silent for so long. I still seem to be catching-up from the holiday! Speaking of which, I will now start to document.

Thomas & Ollie’s uncle and aunt came to visit us for a week, so we planned a trip to get away from the humdrum for a few days. It was a tight budget, but David managed to find us a great house on lake Champlain, and even managed to bargain it down to our price range. It was only an hour and a half drive, but we had actually planned to visit an “iHOP” for lunch on the way. For the uninitiated, this stands for “International House of Pancakes”. David and his brother had talked about it a long time ago, and I thought it would be good nostalgia for them, and a great new experience for me!

It certainly was. Needless to say, we pigged out:

It was actually located within a shopping mall in South Colchester, VT. I took this photo as I was taken aback by just how generic malls are, I mean, yes, we all know that, but this could’ve been taken in a mall anywhere in the world!

It was a short drive to the house, which was beautiful. Much bigger than it looked in the photos, and totally luxuriously furnished, with expensive “Le Creuset” style pots (actually made in Denmark!) and an enormous television, a hot tub, a lovely room for the boys, and a great view over the frozen lake.

It even has it’s own private shale beach:

The first night, we went for a walk along a causeway, which used to be a railway.

One side of the causeway was still frozen solid, with a nice mountain in the background.

A lot of geese were flying home – well we were pretty close to Canada!

The boys got to spend some quality time with their aunt and uncle…

And we got to see a beautiful sunset.

The next day, the hot tub had warmed up and was a real treat (especially with a GnT in a dedicated cupholder).

David also got some much-deserved relaxation.

That’s all I can fit in for now. Look out for the next installment!

Sorry not to have posted for so long, normal service will resume shortly.

In the meantime, I’ve made a new tag for this sort of thing.

Thomas, while using the toilet standing up said solemnly, “Mum, my willy is like a fire hose!”

So first of all, voting has opened for the remix competition, feel free to vote for me. No, actually you MUST vote for me, just because you know me. (I am always grateful for feedback too, but it’s my first ever track, so go easy).

Ollie has suddenly overcome two hurdles at once. The same week he decided to give up his dummy, we really attacked potty-training in earnest. Thankfully, after a couple of days of simply peeing where he stood, overnight on Tuesday night, he must have had an epiphany. We had no accidents on Wednesday, and the childcare centre said there were no accidents today either. We still put a nappy on at sleeping times, but so far he’s managed dry nap times, and even a dry night. Sorry for such detail, but this is primarily my record for future reference! I’m personally relieved that we dealt with this before his 3rd birthday next month.

Also, the nice weather we’ve been having seems to be breaking today, as it was a bit cloudy. However, the boys and I made the most of it yesterday morning with a walk into town via the golf course. It took us about an hour and 15 minutes, but the boys hardly complained at all!

On our way out, I took a picture of what is left of our neighbours’ snowman. Notice how brown all the grass is. There are green shoots coming up underneath now.

The pond on the golf course is still very frozen.

We got up close to the storm damaged trees to look at the pine sap.

We found a great bridge which leads to the Occom Pond side of the golf course.

We ended up on the slopes where we had so much fun sledding.

And don’t forget to vote for the remix!

So, Ollie is going through a rapid series of changes at the moment, which is tough on him, and therefore on us!

Firstly he’s now been without his dummy (pacifier) for three nights. We have substituted a Buzz Lightyear flashlight, which he has successfully transferred his addiction to, but he’s not sleeping as long as he used to, probably because he’s unable to settle himself back to sleep in the early morning, so he’s very grumpy and whiny at the moment.

Add to this potty training, which is a great success in one area (the rear if you want to know) but a complete loss in others (the front). I think all these developments are having an affect on his brain and he’s found new things to get upset about. (trouser-legs, colour of bowls, shoes-being-difficult-to-put-on, who gets to turn on light/open the door etc etc.) He even managed to cry about the fact that he couldn’t stop crying.

Anyway, I’m using a potty chart, just to encourage him along a little, as I think he himself would be happy to remain in nappies for the whole of his life, but he is approaching 3 years old, and it’s probably all my fault he’s still so babyish anyway. What did impress me today, as he stuck another sticker on the chart, is that he counted the number of stickers accurately. I know it’s only 5, but he was unprompted, and knew when to stop counting, and didn’t count the same one 6 times, as he’s done before. He then also counted the number of spaces accurately. I’ve told him he’ll get a present when the chart is full. Thomas put the idea in his head that it will be a remote-controlled airplane (which is of course what Thomas wants) so he’s in for a hell of a disappointment when he gets a bargain-bucket Little Einsteins book!

Last week we suffered a bad storm, which actually left us without power for a few hours. Yesterday, I got a chance to go for a walk around the golf course for a bit of “disaster tourism” as we joked at the time.

The fallen trees made a great playground:

And best of all we got to hang out with friends in the sunshine.

Some better photos are here on my friends’ blog:
My friends’ blog

The weather has been totally fantastic this weekend, hard core sunshine. There are just tiny patches of snow left around the house. The Connecticut river is flowing again, but small ponds, and Mascoma lake are still solid (there was still someone ice-fishing on it!).

We decided to try out a trail quest, which is where you have to hunt for a “treasure” which is usually some sort of stamp, so you can at least prove you made it there. We have a whole book of them to work through! We chose one in Enfield, about 15 minutes drive from us. There is a Shaker village there, which I don’t know what is yet, but I’m going to research and find out.

It was a beautiful day:

We had to climb a hill to start with, which Ollie found really tiring in the snow.

But the view was spectacular halfway up:

We found some sort of memorial stone, and took a break:

There were maple sap lines in some of the trees:

David spends qualidy time:

Needless to say, we got lost in some woods, and had to abandon the treasure hunt before the kids dehydrated themselves complaining about their legs and fatigue. We were glad to be able to take a shortcut down the big hill back to the car.

We decided they deserved a chocolate chip pancake each, available at this great diner we had checked out the day before:

I include this picture of the diner, David and the roof of the car because I’ve only just realised we actually drive an SUV. I didn’t know that’s what it was. It’s a Subaru Forester all-wheel-drive. It’s quite old, but has less than 100,000 on the clock. We met someone the other day who had the same car, but it had over 300,000 miles on the clock!

The weekend just got better from there. I got to go for a walk with my friends on the golf course, which is another post, and then our next-door-neighbours had a barbeque, which was just brilliant for me, as I got to sit at their kitchen table for the evening – my favourite place

Nothing too eventful to report this week, except I had a nasty stomach bug on Thursday, which I found out I probably picked up at the childcare centre, where it’s doing the rounds. Thankfully, the boys seem to have missed this one out, unless that’s what made Thomas sick in the car last weekend.

Ollie slept his first night without a dummy last night, and now has a flashlight to hold while falling asleep as a substitute. Unfortunately his decision to accept the flashlight instead of dummy coincided with us having forgotten his puppy (stuffy/cuddly whatever they’re called these days) at the childcare centre. So this morning at 6am he was mourning his dummy AND his puppy, loudly and persistently. I finally gave him my iphone to play with, which shut him up until about 7am. Still this is a step in the right direction towards becoming a 3-year-old. I hope he can manage tonight as well, then it should get easier from then on.

Thomas is also growing-up fast, and has finally begun karate lessons, which we always wanted for him. We hope it will develop some discipline and co-ordination, and maybe even strengthen his muscles a bit. It’s a good program and he seems to enjoy it so far. He has the smallest-size uniform, which looks like it will last him until high school!

David trying to figure out the belt-tying.

Also, please notice the school patch, which I had to painstakingly sew on:

My excitement for the week came in the post when I finally ordered myself a couple of t-shirts from ThinkGeek.com. I’ve wanted one of these for ages, but finally decided I didn’t care how geeky it was:

(There are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don’t). I’ve also bought another one which I think just arrived while I’ve been typing saying “<you’re it>”, for all the *ml geeks.

Hasn’t my hair got long!? I’m thinking of getting my spiky style back when I visit the UK in July. It looks nice like this, but also a bit housewifey I think – whaddaya think?

A great thing happened today. Thomas and Ollie had the neighbours’ girls over to play, who are simply great. Thomas observed Alisa copying words from a book, and as soon as she had gone home, he tried it himself. I’d been telling him he should do this for ages, but of course what kid listens to his parents? I am indebted to Alisa for showing Thomas the way!

However, can you spot the difference…?

By the way, the book was a great Christmas gift, which I still haven’t sent a thank you for!

I must also just mention that I heard Thomas telling Ollie what a church is, having pointed one out as we drove past. “Ollie, a church is somewhere you get married and sing songs!”