Posted by Erin
Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:55:42 GMT
If the youngest is crying, and you give some bubbles to the big kids so they can distract him, he might stop crying, but the arguing among the elder children might be so loud and vehement that you consider taking the bubbles away, even if the little one starts crying again.
If there is a water and ice dispenser in the door of the refrigerator, there will always be at least 20 cups and glasses on the table, half-filled with water and ice. Even though there are only eleven children.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 3 comments
Posted by Erin
Sun, 24 Feb 2008 20:11:13 GMT
I'm spending this week at Ivy's house while Ivy and her husband are gallivanting around Orlando, Florida. (I totally approve of the gallivanting, by the way. They'd better be having marathon fun!) That makes me, the lone adult, with eleven children, ages 19 months to 12 years. Of course, more than half are my children, so it's not really as big of a deal as you'd think. The days start off pretty calmly, and it's only around dinner time that the noise reaches such a level that I start to feel like joining along with the screaming. And right after that, it's bed time, the best part of the day.
Ivy and I have watched each other's kids several times, and it's interesting to see how interactions between the kids change as they get older. For example, the older boys now spend a lot of their time talking about their "band." Keep in mind that none of them plays an instrument. Well, Ivy's oldest is taking guitar lessons, and my boys play the piano. Occasionally I hear a couple of bars of something familiar from the guitar, but that's about it.
Of course they've discussed band names, and isn't that the most important part of being in a band? A few of their ideas are Fried Chicken, Fudge, and The Band. (There have been a lot of ideas, but I can't remember any more than that right now.) They've had some pretty heated arguments about who's going to play which instrument. I've also heard this sentence spoken: "What if someone doesn't practice enough before the concert?" That's when I wanted to yell, "What concert?!" But I refrained. They are 12, 10, and 9 and don't appreciate their ridiculousness.
I think it would be kind of cool if they actually learned to play drums, guitar, bass, etc. and covered some Foo Fighters songs or something. But I doubt that they'll come to me for suggestions. Maybe they'll let me make anti-suggestions: please not "Ironman" and only "Sweet Child of Mine" if you're joking. I'll just be hoping they don't get anything pierced or tattooed, and trying not to stand too close to the drum set, which is really loud, did you know? Even a kid size one. Even when it's being played by a 2-year-old.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 3 comments
Posted by Jon Jensen
Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:48:06 GMT
I don't know why, but some time last year, Wheat Thins started coming with tons of extra salt on them. The first time I encountered it, I thought it was just a bad box. But it's been consistent every time since then, across various varieties (except the low-salt kind).
Nabisco, stop it! It's way too much salt! You're killing us.
You took out the trans fats a few years ago, which was fine. The crackers got harder then, but that's a minor deal.
But seriously, cut back on the salt!
Posted in Miscellaneous | 4 comments
Posted by Erin
Mon, 30 Oct 2006 02:50:00 GMT
Okay, if you've read any comments, you've already met her. Ivy is my sister (one of my six sisters, that is), and she has agreed to post occasionally on this here blog, which makes me very happy. Like me, she likes to avoid housework by reading, so why shouldn't we benefit?
I'd like to clarify, though, that while Ivy does let things get messy around the house sometimes, she's way better than I am at getting things done. She makes beautiful, pieced quilts, paints walls and furniture and stairs, re-covers furniture (two of my couches, even!), and is otherwise more industrious than I am. Recently when she visited me, she scrubbed my stove, cleaned my washer and dryer (they're like new!), helped me fold laundry, cooked, and cleaned up the house several times. I love her! I'm glad she'll be writing here sometimes.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 2 comments
Posted by Jon Jensen
Thu, 27 Jul 2006 14:51:10 GMT
Spam has gotten so obnoxious, intrusive, and time-consuming. Especially if you're the domain contact and postmaster at a large number of domains. And even with spam filtering.
But then every once in a while, the infinite number of spam monkeys strikes paydirt, and I receive a spam with a subject like "Better Life, whirligig mullet", and I don't even have to open the email because my life is better already thanks to the deep beauty of their word-art.
Ah, pink quivering meat product.
Posted in Miscellaneous | Tags spam | 3 comments
Posted by Jon Jensen
Sat, 08 Jul 2006 04:08:00 GMT
So I talked Erin into signing up for an Amazon Associates account and adding salted links to the reviews on this blog. We'll see if anyone follows the links and wittingly or unwittingly sends some Amazon credit our way. My guess is it will take a long time before it amounts to anything, if ever.
It also remains to be seen how we feel about profiteering (however meagerly) from what was never intended to be anything but personal musings. But we're giving it a try, and we'd be happy to have a little subsidy of our reading and listening purchases.
In any case, we both still highly recommend that you borrow or buy books etc. from a friend or a local bookstore where possible. Amazon has its merits, but it can't replace the knowledgeable and personable help at a bookstore or a good friend's personal library!
Posted in Miscellaneous | no comments
Posted by Erin
Thu, 06 Jul 2006 01:24:26 GMT
Thanks, Jon, for getting this up and working again. You must really love me to give me this delightful distraction from what I'm supposed to be doing.
In the next couple of days I'll try to fill in the books and movies and some music from the last few months. For now, the baby is crying and demands attention.
Posted in Miscellaneous | 3 comments
Posted by Jon Jensen
Sun, 02 Jul 2006 00:12:00 GMT
It's been almost 5 months since I killed Erin's still nascent blog while trying to upgrade the Typo blog software. She has patiently waited for me to fix it.
Now it's back, running on Ruby on Rails 1.1 with the latest Typo from the Subversion repository, backed by PostgreSQL. And finally on a publicly-accessible webserver instead of the Rails development webserver (WEBrick). Getting FastCGI to work from lighttpd was a lot easier than from Apache. Though I hear that the Rails community is leaning away from FastCGI nowadays in favor of Mongrel. Sounds like a good idea, but a change to consider some other time.
Typo's data model had changed somewhat, so I created a new blog from scratch and brought over the important data (categories and articles) manually via pg_dump and a little SQL wrangling.
Sorry for the delay and the lost momentum, Erin. And thanks to Johannes Evelein for showing me that revivified is a word that people actually use. :)
Posted in Miscellaneous | no comments
