EMP in the US

Today I dropped both boys off at childcare, and David off to work. Then first things first, I met with my friends for coffee and cakes!

Then I got straight down to multi-tasking. I couldn’t wait to get music-making, but there was washing-up to be done. SO, I put the music I wanted to be inspired by on Pandora for the iphone and used David’s Christmas present in the kitchen to pump out the music while I washed up. (by-the-way, if you say you were “washing-up” in the states, it means you were washing yourself. “Washing-up liquid” is called “dish-washing liquid” here, so I should really get used to saying “washing” instead of “washing-up”!). I bought him this, which was actually pretty cheap, but it’s not a bad output, and it has a normal radio built in too:

And actually, before I move on, something I found interesting in slightly geeky sort of a way. I had actually put last.fm on our main stereo before it occurred to me to use the kitchen one, and I entered the same artist into both (Cobblestone Jazz). The music Last.fm came up with was much better than Pandora-for-iphone. (but that could have been just on this occasion – I might have to investigate further!).

Anyway, having managed most of the washing (-up) I settled myself into our spare room where I have set up a sort of space for myself.

Unusually for this sort of equipment, the midi interface worked first time with the Korg and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have a bit of catching up to do, but I have some tutorials to work through to get a bit faster with Logic. I’ll be sure to let you know if anything decent happens…

Ollie enjoyed almost a full day at childcare today, and by all accounts he loved it. We got an email from his teacher saying: “hi! i wanted to let you know that Ollie is having a great day. he literally ran to his nap mat and climbed right under his blanket! he is one happy boy!”.

Yesterday, Ollie went to childcare for a settling session so Thomas and I had an extremely rare time with just each others’ company. We fixed his remote-controlled car (which I hadn’t intended to do, as it’s noisy and destructive!) This was his main Christmas present, as he’d asked for a remote-controlled car. Happily for me, we found one for $5 at “Family Dollar” which is like “Poundstretcher” in the U.K, which meant we could return the $20 one we had originally bought from K-Mart, and was actually inferior. It was, however very badly made, and broke almost immediately (Boxing Day I think). Thomas was very excited to take it apart and have a look inside. We found that all the usual suspects like a disconnected power cable, were all solid, so when a different wire fell out, I thought that it needed to be re-soldered. However there was no solder on the end, and tracing it back to the circuit-board I found that it was the antenna. It had been placed where it was (I think) shorting out against an LED. I tucked it out of the way, so that it now sticks out the top of the car, and it now works again. Thankfully one of its wheels is irreparably broken, so it only has 3 wheels to damaged the skirting boards with!

Later on we went ice-skating, as if you go after 1.30 you can rent skates at a “half-day” rate. Thomas’ were $4 and mine were $9. I was quite out of practice so we struggled a bit initially. However, I think we did OK for his first attempt. He learned to balance so that he could stand without falling over, and I also made him learn how to get back onto his feet after he had fallen over. He fell a lot, but laughed every time. Towards the end he fell and hurt his wrist, so there were a few tears, but I made him get back up to finish on a positive note.