neurotwitch

Sunday, April 19, 2009

waiting for riley

Meant to post this photo a couple of weeks ago, when I got it. It was taken by Kristine’s mother-in-law, I think.

Kristine Downey awaiting the arrival of Riley Rose—this is about three weeks before her due date. Photo by Diana Downey. (click to enlarge)

Kristine was due last week. So I’ve been waiting for the phone to ring for days now, announcing the arrival of Riley Rose Downey. If she doesn’t show up in the early hours tomorrow, the docs will induce labor and she will arrive sometime on April 20.

If she can hold out just another day, she will be born on the same day as her Great-Great-Grandfather John Dunn Jr., born April 21, 1891. Riley is the first “great”—she will be my first “great niece” and Dad’s first great grandchild. Which will be cool because Kristine was the first niece/grandchild in our immediate family.

There are two more “greats” due this year—Aaron’s son David some time in May and Brian’s child some time in November. I wish my mother were still with us—she loved babies so.

posted by lee on 04/19/09 at 10:05 PM
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Saturday, April 18, 2009

diversions

On my way to changing my billing information for the New York Times (to remove my Bank of America credit card—more on that in another post ... ) I saw the link to TimesMachine. I’d received an email about this about a month ago, informing me that, as a NYT subscriber, I’m can use the TimesMachine for free ... I didn’t check it out because, at the time, I didn’t have the time.

“TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922.” Oh dang, not the dates I’d really like to look up, but quite a treasure trove anyway. You pick a date, and it displays the paper as it looked the day it was published. You select the page you want to look at and it displays it larger. “Interesting,” I thought to myself, “but I can’t read it.” But, mousing over a story pops open a little window that displays the title and first few lines in a type size I didn’t have to squint at. And at the bottom of that summary is a link to the full article, which is contained in a PDF file. Very cool. I don’t know why a subscription is needed for this—it’s not something people would likely pay for unless they were doing historical or genealogical research, I think. Maybe I’m wrong.

I initially looked up September 13, 1898, because that is my paternal grandmother’s birthday—ah, the Spanish-American War was going on at this time. Then I switched to September 14 because I realized stuff that happened on her birthday wouldn’t show up until the next day (oh I’m so spoiled by the Internet!) and read an account of a gruesome murder in Bridgeport, Connecticut where an attractive but somewhat emaciated young woman was tossed into the river under the Bridge Avenue Bridge (I think that’s what it was) after being cut up into several pieces. Very tidy cuts they were, with the Bridgeport PD deciding it was done by a surgeon. The theory was she didn’t survive an operation and was cut up and tossed away, with the implication that the operation was an abortion—why else would a botched operation need to be hidden? They had not identified the victim at that time, though they did rule out a couple of women who might have been the victim—it was all quite interesting and I would love to see if they ever did solve the mystery—but not today.

No, for today, there’s a much better time sink. And that is DeepLeap: The Fast-Paced Time-Wasting Word Game. Letter tiles drop on to a rack, 75 per game, and the object is to spell as many words as you can from the tiles before they get displaced. Kinda like Tetris, but with words, and you can’t pay attention to anything else while you’re doing it like you can with Tetris—it’s so, I don’t know, seductive? Good way to stretch the ol’ brain before beginning the day. Wish there was a way to pause the game.

Like I said: diversions.

posted by lee on 04/18/09 at 11:27 PM
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Sunday, March 29, 2009

planting peas

As I mentioned, we started working on the yard today. Stanley chipped and shredded leaves and branches and I raked and picked up trash. We’ve barely made a dent in what we have to do, but it felt so good to be working outside today.

And, finally, I planted peas, both green peas and sweet peas. Meant to do it on St. Patrick’s Day, but didn’t get to it.

This year, I bought the Burpee “Money Saving Garden”—which is a bunch of packets of vegetable seeds that, if you plant them and they grow, provides more than $600 worth of vegetables for $10 (and a lot of labor). Or so they say. So I was looking at them to see which ones needed to be started now for planting later—but Burpee neglected to provide any sowing instructions whatsoever. Not one word about when and how deep and spacing, etc. Zilch! I looked on their website to see if I could find any planting guides, especially for the tomatoes which I know need to be started early, and found nothing. Nothing in the box, nothing on the seed packets, nothing on the envelope holding the seed packets, nothing on the website ... very, very annoying. I wrote to customer service, which is not open on Saturdays or Sundays, so we’ll see if I get a response. And looked stuff up on the internets.

The crocus is really pretty this year, and the squill, which is not as prolific as it has been in the past (click to enlarge).

There are lots of wood hyacinths sprouting, and tulips coming up and even daffodils, which I thought had all died out since there were hardly any of them last year. The tiny lilac we planted last year looks very healthy, good sturdy-looking buds.

The puppies got a lot of yard time, which we hoped would tire them out a lot but, of course, it didn’t. Ruby managed to get a stick in her eye last week, which caused her eye to turn all pink and nasty and required a trip to the vet. It was an ulcerated tear of the cornea and required applications of goo several times a day. It’s looking a lot better—she goes back to the vet for a check on Monday so I hope everything is okay.

Bingo gets impatient—she is an amazing jumper, especially in the house when she’s trying to eat grain moths. (click to enlarge)

Here are the sweeties again. Ruby is 10.5 months old and weighs 50 pounds and Bingo is 8.5 months old and weighs about 55 pounds. (click to enlarge)

More "planting peas"

posted by lee on 03/29/09 at 03:59 AM
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the nathan hale middle school piggies

We started working on the yard today—raking and cleaning up the branches. And cleaning up the litter.

While school is in session, we get an unbelievable amount of trash tossed and blown into our yard. We’re next door to Nathan Hale Middle School, and the kiddies are piglets. They toss candy bar wrappers and plastic bottles and school papers and, on the last day of school, entire text books and binders full of paper and crap from their lockers.

Often, their mommies add to the garbage by cleaning out their vehicles when they line up along Strawberry Hill Avenue waiting for their fat little piglets to get out of school and get their rides so they don’t have to walk one step more than necessary—they toss bottles and cigarette wrappers and the contents of their ashtrays. I wish I had the time to gather up their garbage and follow the big pigs home and dump it in the middle of their lawns.

It’s all very depressing and takes quite a while to clean up.

What would help a great deal is a 10-cent deposit on all bottles, including water and Gatorade and any other beverage the piggies consume. A nickel doesn’t mean anything to anyone except the folks who harvest the recycle bins every Thursday. Maybe a dime deposit on water sold in bottles would clean up some of the mess people leave behind—I still don’t get why there is a deposit on soda bottles but not water or Gatorade bottles—it’s ludicrous.

posted by lee on 03/29/09 at 12:13 AM
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Saturday, March 28, 2009

march movie

This year, March began with a snow storm, the Megastorm! I used my Flip and shot the puppies and Stanley and cars speeding down an icy street (which is supposed to be 25mph—which not even the Norwalk cops obey despite there being three schools in a very short stretch). Stanley did most of the digging out—I helped some using the Fox electric snow shovel. A lot of work. We said last year we’d get a “real” snow blower, but never got around to it. We decided after this shovel job to for real look for one this summer. The Fox comes in handy, but it’s still a lot of work to use it and it really isn’t designed to handle more than five inches or so at a time.

Today, it was nearly 60 degrees and mostly sunny, and we worked in the yard this afternoon. And I made another little movie of the puppies. Used the Flip software to put them together and then Moyea Flash Video MX Pro to make a Flash movie out of it. It lasts about seven minutes or so and not very interesting to anyone but us. But here it is, anyway:

I’m glad we’re not getting the weather they’re getting in Kansas today—two feet of snow! Tornadoes and flooding down South, flooding in North Dakota ... ah spring!

posted by lee on 03/28/09 at 11:40 PM
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Monday, March 02, 2009

snow and silly teevee shows

We’re in the midst of the MEGASTORM. Yep, that’s what the Weather Channel is calling it. I wonder what it’s real name will turn out to be—probably something like Frank or Harriet.

The storm started here in Norwalk about 9ish, I think. It was starting to get heavy outside while we were watching the latest Jesse Stone movie. Now, several hours later, I think we have six or seven inches on the ground. Or more—I’m not inclined to go outside and look more carefully. I will in a bit, when I head upstairs to bed.

The Jesse Stone movie. I really like this series, but this latest one, Thin Ice or something like that, was really disappointing. It was depressing and left the story hanging—nothing good happened. They’re filming the next one, or just filmed it, and it’s due out this year some time, but it’s a long time to wait for some resolution. This one wasn’t a Robert Parker version, but based on his characters. Maybe that’s why it wasn’t as satisfying as the last four were. But maybe it was a good ending, because it left me wondering and caring about what happens next. And it makes me want to visit Nova Scotia—it’s so pretty there (that’s where it was filmed—what is supposed to be Boston looks an awful lot like Halifax ... )

More "snow and silly teevee shows"

posted by lee on 03/02/09 at 07:43 AM
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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Joan Gulyas, 1940 - 2009

It’s taken me two weeks to be able to write about my Aunt Joan’s death. She died on February 4, in a hospice, surrounded by her family. She died of lung cancer, which had metastasized to her brain.

Dad and Stanley and I went to visit her in the hospital in December, just after Mom’s funeral. I was shocked when I saw her—I knew she had cancer and I knew she’d been undergoing treatment for it, but I didn’t expect she’d be so thin. But she was awake and aware and totally pissed off because she wanted to go home—she was bored with being in the hospital. And she wasn’t ready to leave this mortal coil yet—she said she had things to do still.

Joan Gulyas and her daughter Wendy, November 6, 2004 at Mom and Dad’s Golden Anniversary gala, photo by Leo Robertson. (click to enlarge a little)

When Dad called me to tell me she’d died—something I knew would happen too soon—it felt like a searing pain in the middle of my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Another person so important in my life gone. My mother’s sister, another of the Wyandotte Dunn Girls, gone. She was just 68. I tried to write several times, but I couldn’t—my heart is still raw from losing Mom and thinking about Aunt Joan just let loose all these memories and loss and I’m just now starting to get a grip on it all. I have a card to send to Uncle Ron, Wendy, and Michael—I haven’t been able to think about what to write in it so I can send it. Maybe I’ll be able now that I can finally write about it.

She was smart and funny and fun and, I think, courageous—she could have given up her battle with cancer when her son, Keith, died on May 26, 2007—but she didn’t. It’s way too soon to have lost her—I had some questions about our family tree that I was going to ask her about last spring when we started talking via email, but she went out of remission and I started dealing with the reality of Mom’s FTD and we never did continue past a few messages back and forth. I’m sorry I didn’t make a chance to ask her more. I did find her messages in the ancestry.com forums though—it’s kind of eerie, reading them.

It’s funny—when I think about Aunt Joan, I think about her when she was married, with kids, when I’d go babysit for her, or we’d just go over to her house with Mom to just hang out and I’d listen to Mom and Joan talk, their humor, their “sister” language that I mostly understood but not all of it, their intelligence. But when I dream about Aunt Joan, I dream about her as a teenager, in high school and just afterward until she married Ron, and I remember Ron riding on his bike to see her and wearing a babushka to keep his ears warm and how she laughed, and playing the “stone game” on the steps of the front porch of the house she and Mom grew up in, and how pretty she and my Mom and aunts all were ... all from before I was six or seven years old.

Next week we will make a donation in her name to the Wyandotte Public Schools Scholarship Foundation, which was listed in her obituary in the Detroit Free Press. And I’ll send that card.

posted by lee on 02/21/09 at 04:59 AM
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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

catching up, with teeth

So much for my pledge (to myself) to post at least a couple of times per week. Lots of stuff going on, several projects keeping us busy. There are two that I can make public.

The first is a new ecommerce website, the first of several, Gear for the Poles. The idea is to offer travel gear and apparel targeted to specific destinations. We will soon put up Gear for Africa and Gear for the Galapagos, maybe more (maybe by activity, we’ll see), all under the necessaryGear logo.

The other project was setting up a blog for Westport Benefits Group. We just finished it last night and Steve Parmelee, the site owner, has written his first post.

We also have several other stores in the works, a new site we’ve just started working on, a database we’re building, a redesign for two other sites, and Google ad campaign support ... I think that with this economy, people are planning on using their web assets and polishing them to get the biggest bang for their business marketing and collateral bucks, which is where we can help.

OH MY - and a review of THE CHART HOUSE
Last Friday, I really wanted to get to Natick to see my Dad—we planned on going to bingo with him, just hanging out over the weekend and then heading back to Connecticut while the Superbowl was on (we don’t do football—and we didn’t want to drive with the post-game drunks).

More "catching up, with teeth"

posted by lee on 02/04/09 at 03:23 AM
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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

when we were tested we refused to let this journey end

Finally.

My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and co-operation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms.

At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because we, the people, have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbears, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

More "when we were tested we refused to let this journey end"

posted by lee on 01/21/09 at 04:36 AM
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Monday, January 12, 2009

not too bad, but not as good as i thought i was

Always thought I have a pretty good eye for whether things are balanced or not, a picture hanging a little bit askew, deciding on the fairest way to divide something six ways (five siblings, you see ... ) I know I DON’T have an eye for wrapping paper around boxes, but otherwise, pretty okay.

Then I took this test: The Eyeballing Game, found on Matthias Wandel’s woodworking website via xBlog: the visual thinking weblog, and scored an average error of 7.63.

Hmm. I think I’d better rely on measuring with rulers and protractors and levels for the stuff that really counts.

posted by lee on 01/12/09 at 08:11 AM
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