Save the Daily Breakfast!!

I was completely horrified to hear that Fr. Roderick was asked by his Vicor to stop producing his Daily Breakfast podcast. He is asking all his listeners to send in a small testimonial through email that he can print out and bring to his meeting with his Bishop on Saturday (4/1 tomorrow!!). This is by far my favorite podcast, even though I am certainly not Catholic!! I'm off to write my testimonial, and if you're a listener (or even if you are just a friend of mine) please send one off to: dailybreakfast [at] sqpn.com. Hopefully, he won't even have enough paper to print all the emails that he gets.

Compact Fluorescent light bulb craze

In an effort to save on the ever increasing electric bill, I decided to try putting a couple of these compact fluorescent bulbs in some lamps around the house. I knew that Doug really didn't like them, but I heard they had improved since they first came out and I was going to see if he could tolerate them. Without mentioning it to him, he came home and immediately said, "What's with the lights? Did you change them to those compact fluorescent bulbs?" They definitely seemed a bit greener and harsher in tint, but not that bad. I said that we should try them for a week and if it was really bad, I would take them out. A week passed and it was tolerable. They are a little slow turning on (1/2 sec as opposed to 5 sec with the old kind), and they always take a good minute before they reached their maximum brightness. I got some more bulbs and starting changing them around the house. I even got new lamps and lampshades for the kid's rooms so we could use more of these bulbs (hmm, spending money to save money, I always get stuck in that trap). I found some Sylvania bulbs at BJ's and thought, gee these are even cheaper! But when I got home and tried them, they were horrible!! Totally bright white and painful to look at. I tried relegating them to the outside garage lights but even that was unbearable. In the end, they went into the basement. So not all compact fluorescent bulbs are created equal. Only GE will do for this family. By this point, Doug had gotten on the bandwagon and was pointing out all the places where we could use these bulbs. In fact, he was almost possessed by it!! In all, we have 16 bulbs in place both inside and outside. Be warned though, on a cold night, it takes a long time for these bulbs to turn on and reach brightness outside.

Then we got a visit from a relative (who shall remain nameless) who hadn't even noticed that these bulbs were any different. But when we mentioned that we switched over to compact fluorescents, they said - oh no, fluorescent lights are bad because they cause osteoporosis. I thought - that is the craziest thing I've ever heard. But out of politeness, I kept my mouth shut and later googled for it. I found a couple sites that bad mouthed fluorescent lights in general (you can always find sites the will bad mouth any topic at all!), but the only links that I found for "osteoporosis and fluorescent lights" said that full spectrum fluorescent lights actually HELP osteoporosis because they foster Vitamin D production and therefore calcium absorption. I assume full spectrum means including UV, which these bulbs are probably not. But they certainly don't hurt!! Of course this just made me fuming mad that this person could hear something so outlandish and just believe it at face value without any scientific thinking and critical judgment applied to it (you don't have to go to MIT to have some common sense). Just because you see it in print doesn't mean it is true. As long as this doesn't interfere with our babysitting, I will just remain mum about it.

Anyway, the electric bill usage seems to be lower these days, so that is a great thing. We don't love the bulbs, but we sure love the savings!

3/31 - And what did we do with all those old light bulbs? I brought them to work and left them on the "swap table" in the cafeteria and then were all gone by lunchtime.

Doug's new glasses

Here's Doug in his nifty Silhouette rimless glasses with his nifty little girl. These glasses are cool because they are barely noticeable. But for so little glasses, you have to pay so much $$$!!!

Mail2RSS: free disposable email, read your email in your favorite RSS feedreader!

Wahoo!!! Thanks to my new buddy Quentin, I found this nifty site/service that will post my email (forwarded from gmail) to an RSS feed (readonly of course) so I can read it in Bloglines. It took a little while for the whole thing to get going, but once it started working, it was pretty much real time (some delay in the mail2rss at first and then the usual delay from bloglines). But now I can read my Gmail at work legally and not feel as though I am completely cut off from the world (and hate my company just a little bit less)!! What a fantastic idea from Zoran Juric to forward email to RSS (yes, for those of us geeky enough to know what that means). Thank you thank you thank you Quentin!!

WashDryIron machine

How cool would that be? This kid's creativity is outstanding!!

Could Bach play his stuff?

I had found the sheet music for Bach's Goldberg variations on the Internet, and was really excited to get some free music. The sudden access to all sorts of classical sheet music on this and other sites was opening up a new world of music that I normally wouldn't have gone out and purchased. I knew the Golberg Variations from the Glenn Gould recording, and from the movie 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould. I've since lost my CD (lent it and remember getting it back, but never made it back on to the shelf), but I kept hearing a few of the variations in the Baby Bach video. So as part of my teaching of classical music the kids , I took it upon myself to learn all the pieces in that and the Baby Mozart video. The Mozart sonatas were a breeze to learn, but the Bach was REALLY HARD. Bach music is more "pure" in that he created music by strictly following the rules of counterpoint. He certainly didn't consider whether your fingers would get tangled up while playing it. Mozart, on the other hand, definitely composed at the piano and his music is almost intuitive to the hands. So that begs the question, could Bach play his stuff? It takes years to master some Bach pieces, maybe he had his many children and students do all the playing. But during composition process, how did he "play" through it and hear the music? Was it all in his head? Of course, I am only looking at it from the keyboard perspective. Maybe he had 4 students sing all the parts as he composed. Regardless, he is truly a genius, one that some overlook with all the other composers, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. that followed.

So in using these newly printed out Goldberg Variations, I had to overcome some technical barriers, such as how to put the music into a "book". I put them all into plastic sheet holders so that the single printed sides could be doubled up. Then I had to figure out how to mark up fingerings and such onto the plastic. I ended up using fine point Dry Erase markers (they are erasable with some alcohol sanitizer). Now, at my new job, our printer has 2 sided printing, so anything new gets printed out in duplex mode and simply hole punched and put in the binder. Much easier!

Now as I started learning these variations, I noticed that some pieces were especially finger tangling because my hands kept running into each other. Then I noticed that these variations were marked "a 2 Clav." and it finally dawned on me that it meant 2 keyboards, like on a 2 tier harpsichord. So that begs the question, how do people perform and record these particular variations on a one keyboard piano?

Then I hopped onto the internet and started looking at harpsichords and found this fascinating site where you can build your own Hubbard Harpsichord French Double-manual. So this will be my project when I retire!! Then I can finally learn those pesky variations.

(This draft was exactly one year and one day old!! Original time 11:33pm Mar 7 2005)

New glasses for everyone

In an effort to save on insurance premiums (I am hoping to drop the vision coverage when I change over my medical, but they may not let me), I am stocking everyone in the family up with new glasses. Here is Adam in his new SpongeBob glow-in-the-dark glasses. Hopefully his sister won't get a hold of them, as she managed to break not one, but two pairs of glasses in the store. Ripped the metal hinges right off. She did it again at home to an old pair of ski sunglasses as well.

ROFL at the gym

I was at the gym when I listened to this (very short) podcast: Jerry Lewis Undergoes Emergency Gefloigel Surgery The Onion - America's Finest News Source. It somehow tickled my funny bone so much that I couldn't lift the weights anymore because I was laughing so hard. I kept listening to it over and over and still I kept laughing. No one at the gym stared at me, so at least it wasn't too embarrassing.

One day on the way home, I heard Blogging: A Blight or a Boon to Marriage? Since the topic is so near and dear to me, I was again laughing so hard that I couldn't even hear the podcast. It was very true to life and humorous.

As a side note, this story describes how IM abbreviations are entering mainstream language (as my post title will show): OMG: IM Slang Is Invading Everyday English.

Wildlife at work

Photo from Emory College

Ever since I moved to the cube next to the window, I've seen a bunch wildlife outside. Not that Hollis, NH is the boonies. It is, compared to Framingham, MA, where the most I ever saw were geese roaming the grounds. I've seen deer wandering outside here, and most recently a Pileated Woodpecker. I tried to take a picture of it with my Palm, but it was just too far away. Oh yeah, and everyone laughed at me trying. I've never seen a woodpecker in real life (I am a city girl). It's nice to have a cube with a view.