Moments that parents cherish

Dova absolutely adores Adam and he loves her and watches out for her. Adam is sporting his new buzz cut to keep cool for the summer. Both kids are total sweatheads (taking after Mom and Grandma). He also has his Corvette page which he faithfully updates from Dad's Page-A-Day calendar. For some reason, guys are not genetically able to tie up girl's hair, so Mom put these cute pigtails on Dova.

InfoWorld Tech Watch | Google Labs goes Big Brother

Since I'm suffering from insomnia right this moment, I thought I'd post this article link before it gets too out of date. Whew, good thing I put my mic on mute after reading this article, although I'll be darned if I will remember to enable it for (yes, I'm too shy to publish my name here, although I was close!).

Doug's new car

Here it is with 4 miles on the odometer reading. Makes my car next to it look downright boring!!

OK, for those not in the know, it is a 2006 Corvette C6 coupe with red leather interior and Z51 suspension, made to order. We picked it up 2 days ago, and I have yet to drive it or get a ride in it. Since it is a two seater, we would have to get a baby sitter to be able to take a ride together!! Luckily for Adam, he did get a ride in it the first night (booster seat over a heavily protected passenger seat of course) .

More pictures to come on Flickr when it stops raining, even "ahtistic" shots for George.

Carl Paul 1943-2005

The year 2005 was a year full of tragedy for so many people around me, including myself. It started at the end of 2004, where a dear friend sustained a severe brain injury which she is still recovering from. Then another friend lost her mother and her brother within a few months of each other. The husband of the brain injured friend lost his sister in a freak accident. Carl Paul here passed in October, and then my father in November. 2006 has not seemed to fare much better as my boss lost his brother-in-law and father-in-law within weeks of each other. Another ex-coworker Richard Hamilton passed. And finally, my ex-boss lost his wife after a long struggle with cancer. I wonder if it is because I am simply getting older and more and more people will pass away around me. It seems a bit more than it should be.

I single out Carl here, because his death somewhat prepared me for my father's death. Carl was only sick for a few months before he rapidly declined. His service was one of the most touching events that I have ever been to. There were many posters of pictures, and quotes from people that knew him. I knew him as many did, through talking to him at the cafeteria at work. My personal conversations with him spanned physics as he discussed with many people, but also music. I remember telling him about this set of recordings that I had of Glenn Gould playing the complete Mozart sonatas. I absolutely hated these recordings, and felt that Glenn Gould completely banished the soul from the music. He played them like a typewriter, mechanically and perfect to the point of disgust. Some of the tempos were way off, from beyond humanly fast to excrutiatingly slow. These recordings made me physically ill!! I tried to find something redeeming about them, but they are completely perverse in my mind. I completely agree with all the negative reviews found on Amazon:

It is, simply, because I eternally love Mozart, and this ridiculous playing really harms me. ...his knowing of style is undeniable which makes impression that his neglect playing is deeply purposeful.

I love Glenn Gould -- when he's playing Bach, that is. But Gould hated Mozart, and while some of his early Mozart recordings are quite nice, the Mozart recordings he did in the 60's and 70's (i.e., on these discs) were simply bizarre. And not in a good way. They are exhibitions in spite, and spite is not fun to listen to. Granted, some of the slow movements are played beautifully -- but there's more to Mozart than slow movements. The fast movements (i.e., two thirds of the music in the average sonata) are a horror.

Gould's generally snotty, holier-than-thou attitude to Mozart is clearly reflected in this butchery of what is, generally speaking, very solid piano music. Gould's condescending views to Mozart are, presumptively, based on the power of his (Gould's) own fine body of compositional work and the sheer weight of Gould's own prodigious ego.

OK, I digress, need to stay the course here. Carl absolutely loved Glenn Gould and his performances of Bach and Beethoven. I agreed that no one comes close when it comes to Bach, but I could not convince him that Gould completely butchered Mozart. So I ended up giving him my entire CD set and thanked him for taking them off my hands. A few days later, he came back to me and told me that he and his wife, a concert pianist, agreed that the performances were terrible. She said that her students could to a better job than Gould did. He offered to give them back and I told him he would have to find someone else to pawn them off to!

Carl had also given me the book Piano Notes : The World of the Pianist. It was a really nice gesture and a great book to read. I'm not sure why he did so, as we were not really close friends, but I will always remember that the book was a gift from him. I have since bought it for another pianist friend.

Carl's service was the first open casket service that I had ever attended. Seeing his body was quite a shock to me, as it was so real, so obvious, so final. Perhaps having this type of service gives a sense of closure to the people close to him, but it is clear that I am not that kind of person. The service itself was beautiful. The speakers often moved everyone to tears, especially his nephew. The music was Mozart's Requiem. I asked Doug later if that was the type of service that he would want and he said yes. I don't know whether I could handle an open casket, but that would be his wish. My father's memorial was simply the inurnment of his ashes, with no viewing, and much more to my taste. Friend number two above helped me tremendously in those preparations.

Rest in peace, Carl.

How the kids sleep

Parents are forever obsessed with how kids eat, sleep and poop. Here is the sleeping part to bore, I mean excite you with. I took these pictures when I arrived home late from Seattle and had go to see them sleeping. It is the best part of being a parent, to see your children sleeping, where they are perfect angels and cannot get into any trouble. Actually, it was extremely risky to enter Dova's room because she is a light sleeper and once she realizes that you've snuck out of her room, she insists that you lay down and sleep with her. Adam is completely different. You can go into his room after he is asleep, give him great big hugs, move him around in his bed, fix his covers and he sleeps right through it. Sometimes he will even wake up slightly and say a few words to you, but have no recollection of it in the morning. Actually, he sleeps much like his mom, a known "sleep talker". 

Dova, on the other hand, sleeps like her dad. Very lightly and if you wake her, extremely grumpy. When Adam was little, we insisted that he go to sleep by himself every night and had to deal with him coming out of his room every 10 minutes for hours until he was exhausted and finally fell asleep on the floor. With Dova, we simply gave up and didn't even try. I lie down with her in her bed every night until she falls asleep. At least I am still productive knitting her sweater when she isn't stealing the needles and the row counter. After she is asleep, I have to quietly sneak out of her room. Sometimes the sound of the bed creaking or the doorknob turning is enough to wake her up and she will insist that I stay with her. In that case, I have to bring her downstairs, take out my contacts and brush my teeth while she watches, bring her back to her room and sleep with her for the night. All night, she will press her feet against me, swing her arm in my face, lie on top of me and push all the covers off. Not very good sleep for the mom. And only mom will do, no substitutions. Someday I will have to get her to sleep by herself, but even though it can be quite a hassle, I love every minute of it. These days won't last forever.

Naxos Classical Music Spotlight

I happened upon this podcast from the iTunes directory, and at first it was pretty low on the list to listen to. Now I like it more and more, perhaps the announcer Raymond Bisha is loosening up for the summertime, or the choices for CDs are getting more interesting. Here is the description of the podcast. The spoken part of podcast is like a good classical radio broadcast, similar to the ones you hear on WGBH, where the DJ is extremely knowledgeable about the composer, the music and often the particular performance. It is one of the things that I miss about not listening to the radio anymore. Don't get me started on bad classical radio (I won't name any names, but a certain commercial station in Boston comes to mind, ahem "Classical Radio Boston"), where they only play "Top 40" classical music and DJs are dumb as doorknobs, or simply not allowed to speak intelligently. But this Naxos podcast takes it one step further in terms of expounding upon nuances and emotions. Since it is a promotional podcast, you don't get to hear the whole piece, but it has certainly left me wanting to hear more. It is almost better this way, where you can hear a particular passage and its meaning, almost like a music lesson.

The latest podcast about John Cage sent me reminiscing about my time at Tanglewood in the summer of 1981. In our master class, we were each asked to choose a piece to learn and perform from The Waltz Project. Each student chose a piece that represented their tastes and personalities. I, along with one other student, was immediately drawn to the John Cage piece, 49 Waltzes for the Five Boroughs. The rest of the students simply scratched their heads over the piece, not knowing what to make of it. The "score" of the piece simply consisted of 49 street addresses in New York City, where the performer had to extrapolate the "music" from. We made an adaptation for all the addresses of the students. There were 4 performers, one that "played" the addresses transcribed to chords on the piano (Yvar Mikhashoff, our master, and one of the original performers of the Cage piece), one that played the melody line of the addresses on another piano (me), one that "announced" the location as we traversed the country (the assistant teacher) and one that ran the model train setup inside of the piano (the other student). When I first started listening to this podcast of John Cage Piano Music, I thought that perhaps I had outgrown my childhood fascination of this often bizarre composer, but I found myself still loving the music. It was extremely beautiful at times, and breathtaking in its expanded view of what music is. I was glad to be reacquainted through Raymond Bisha's eloquent narrative.


An earlier podcast on Mahler Symphony No. 8, also known as Symphony of a Thousand, was also quite enlightening. The funniest part was at the end, where Raymond Bisha left off with this remark, "To go out, here are the final bars of the symphony. Play this at full volume and you might just blow the roof off your house. Go ahead, try it, just see what happens." Just not what you expect to hear from a classical music host.

My first letter of complaint

I'm not the type of person to officially complain about things, although most of my friends know that I will usually go around and tell the story to each person until I get it out of my system. Here is a letter that I actually mailed to the local Radio Shack in Nashua, NH. Maybe I'm getting older and not so shy, or maybe I'm more intolerant of rude behavior being a mom now. Here it is:

Manager
Radio Shack
42 Gusabel Ave # 42
Nashua, NH 03063

Dear Sir or Madam:

Unfortunately, I have to report an incident that occurred with a sales representative at your store. I had purchased a battery and was paying for the item. Since I knew I had exact change, I started to search through my change purse to extract the change. After a few seconds, the sales representative said, “Could you hurry it up, I have someone waiting.” I looked around and didn’t see anyone else in the store that required help. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I assumed that perhaps he had someone on hold on the phone. After rushing and paying, I noticed that he simply walked away from the cash register, with no one to attend to in person or on the phone. I am very disappointed with the amount of disrespect I received for taking a few extra seconds to pay. I have not returned this Radio Shack as a result of this experience. The sales representative was an older gentleman. I have enclosed the receipt for the purchase as well if that will help you to identify this individual.

Sincerely,
Angela (last name here, I'm sure everyone reading this knows it!)

Soccer mom anonymous

For some reason, Adam ended up with three sports this spring, which is not just hard on the soccer mom chaffeur, but hard on the pocket because you have to buy all those portraits that go along with it! OK, you don't HAVE to buy the pictures, but I just couldn't resist. Even though I sprung for all the pictures, I managed to save on frames by recycling some old ones instead of buying new ones. Here they are:

I love the Little League picture the most and I may just spring for the magazine cover as well, and oh yes, another frame (thoughts?) . His soccer picture is just plain goofy with his crazy hair, but at least he has his favorite glow-in-the-dark soccer ball that he received from his cousin Michael. Last soccer season's picture came out much better. Same photographer, but better weather, better background, better angle, better hair, better everything! OK, here is the picture for direct comparison:

Luckily Adam likes the sports in order of least expense: soccer, t-ball and gymnastics. Gymnastics will be dropped for sure (that is, until Dova is old enough because she seems to take a liking to it). The spring season is winding up in the next couple of weeks and then on to swimming and ice skating lessons. Let's hope he doesn't like skating because hockey would simply be unaffordable for this soccer mom!

Here is Adam scoring an awesome goal

Now I've gone video crazy, but this one is short and sweet. The person yelling "Nice job, Adam" is not me, but the Team Parent, Ginny. I was too busy trying to track him with my camera.

6/14 - I forgot to mention that my favorite part of course is his dancing for joy afterwards. This little clip was unedited and he managed to score a goal within 11 seconds of my filming. Pretty talented indeed!

Comparing pig shots

From the Seattle Fish Market. I was more rushed for the daytime shot, being more self-conscious with people around me. But I did manage to get pretty much got down to the same angle for them. I'm still not sure what my whole fascination with this pig is!!

My Memorial Day weekend away from home

I went to Seattle to attend the ASMS conference for work. Click on the picture to see the whole set in Flickr. The most ironic thing about this trip was that I had worked for a major mass spectrometry company for 12 years but never attended to this conference. We actually demoed our new instrument in their hospitality suite, amoungst 200 ex-coworkers. So I had to leave the company to go to this conference, only to be back in their suite, wearing the same color shirt as the rest of them. It is a strange world indeed.

In the mean time, I missed Adam's first Memorial Day parade. Here he is marching with his T-Ball team, the Ogden Raptors.