WW - Woodpecker sighting at the zoo

We were walking outside of the bird section of the National Zoo in Washington DC and heard a rat-a-tat-tat-tat. We looked up and saw this red-bellied woodpecker.



Here's a close up:



He was definitely not on display. Perhaps he was visiting his avian brothers.

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How Do I Pay for This Test?

But first, the rant…

Earlier this month, I posted on BlogHer about paying for grades.  When I was in school, I was paid a dollar for every perfect 100 test score that I brought home.  It was my parents’ way of keeping me from slacking off at school.  In the comments, I was flamed for promoting perfectionism and undermining self-esteem.  PUH-LEEESE, you are talking to a person who went to MIT at 16 and expects her kids to go there as well (OK, I’ll allow the usual age of 18).  Do I seem completely unbalanced, unhappy and lacking self-esteem from this apparently disgusting practice?  (You tell me, there are over 5 years of blog posts to look back on.)  OK, I admit that I am a perfectionist, but nowadays, I strive for perfect balance.

Apparently, all the other posts on BlogHer about paying for grades were against it and my post offered the only counterpoint.  Hey, if you want to be all touchy-feely and find out “who you really are”, be “intrinsically motivated” and strive to be happy in mediocrity, be my guest.  I expect excellence and the desire to improve oneself.  Did I need a kick in my pants to do better in school?  You bet!  Do you think I expected in a million years that I would be going to MIT at 16?  Never!!  Only my parents believed that I could.  Truly, they knew my potential far better than I ever did.  In my deepest self, I am still a slacker, but I know how to pull up the bootstraps when I need to thanks to the extra carrot I had growing up (as well as the firehouse education that MIT was).

The only consolation is that when my twitter feed posted on facebook, a bunch of my friends came back and said that they totally paid for grades.  I am glad to have like-minded friends in real life (plus my bloggy friend Mel, but it’s like I know her IRL).

I haven’t instituted any paying for grades for Adam yet, who is now in 3rd grade.  But I chuckled when he brought this home.



This is the second spelling test in a row (of as many) that he came back with a more-than-perfect score of 105.  How am I supposed to pay for that?   Trust me, he already feels bad when he comes home with a less than perfect score, and not because we berate him (intrinsically motivated, woo hoo!).  At this rate, he won’t be needing pay for grades.  That’s my boy!  We are so proud of you!


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PSF - Off With Her Hair!

About a year ago, Mommy's Martini had a lovely post about cutting her hair and donating it to Locks of Love. I knew several other people who have done this as well, and thought, this is something that I can easily do. My hair is extremely thick, grows like crazy and I have LOTS of it.  At the time, it was just past my shoulders.  I don't really like having short-short hair, so I needed to grow it a bit to get the minimum ten inches.  Around February this year, I had a trim because it was getting a bit scraggly, but then I let it grow until now. 

In high school, I had very long hair, so long that I could sit on it.



Back then, I didn't mind having long hair, it was cool and unique. Pulling hair out of my clothes when I got dressed meant flipping it out of my bra, shirt and pants.  I could never wear a t-shirt with an image on the back because it would be completely covered.  Once I got a huge rat's nest in the back which I just brushed over so it was hidden underneath.  Before college, I cut it all off.  Went to the salon, put it in a big braid and chopped it right off.  I stored the braid in my drawer at home for a few years, not knowing what to do with it.  Finally, I tossed it because it seemed kinda creepy to keep it around.  If only Locks of Love were around back then!

This time around, growing my hair long drove me bonkers.  Over the summer, I kept feeling my hair against the back of my arms like someone was tickling me.  I would put it in a ponytail, but it was so heavy that it dropped to the base of my hairline.  It looked an old hippie ponytail and not a cute ponytail.  Plus it draped on my back or over my shoulder like a small animal and made me hot, defeating the purpose of putting it up.  When I let my hair dry naturally, it would completely soak the back and sometimes the front of my shirt.  It was time.  Here are the obligatory before and after photos:

 

 

Despite the advances in camera technology, I look completely unfabulous 26 years later!!  Here's how the process went.



My hairdresser made four ponytails so that afterward the sections would be of even length. She braided the 11" ponytails.

 

When she snapped these pictures, she said I looked like Pocahontas. Pocahontas?!? That is definitely NOT the look I'm going for.  Then snip, snip, snip, snip, they were all chopped off.



Here are the braids.  Yes, all of them from one head of hair.



My hair feels so much lighter now, I figured I lost at least a pound of hair. I weighed the braids on an analytical balance and it was only 2.5 ounces. Two and a half ounces?? It felt like two and half pounds on my head!!

I feel completely liberated in my short hair and I barely have to flip my hair out of my shirt when I get dressed. Most people noticed at work and were happy to hear that I had donated it. When I mailed off the hair, I saw on the donation form that it takes $1000 to sponsor a Locks of Love child. Since I wanted to make sure that my hair would be used, I pitched in some money as well. If you can, please donate to Locks of Love!!

And now, Dova has the longest hair in the family.



By the way, did you notice the "Coach" on my shirt? That's a whole 'nother story...


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WW - Return to the Cliff Walk at Newport, RI

Doug and I managed to get away overnight to beautiful Newport, RI to celebrate our 10th anniversary.

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Dova masters the monkey bars

Never in all my life have I been able to go across the monkey bars under my own power. I was amazed when Adam did it a few years ago and now I'm completely astounded that Dova can. They obviously get their upper body strength from Doug and not me. Here she is at age five, on her first day of Kindergarten, going completely across the monkey bars.



And for a monkey encore, she flipped over on the bar.





That's my little monkey gymnast!


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Happy 100,000 visits

I only check my referral stats occasionally, but when mommy bytes hit 100,000 visits, I did want to pause and say, "Thanks for visiting, University of Wisconsin, Madison!" (even though you stayed for 0 seconds).

Back when I started this blog in the blogging dark ages, I would watch my numbers creep up a few ticks a week.  Now with social networking, the blogging community, and all the wonderful organizations that I am affiliated with (BlogHer and kirtsy in particular), I can actually watch the live Feedjit stream and see people come onto the site in real time.   When Knitted Kitties was stumbled in February, I had nearly 2500 visits in ONE DAY and I was in complete awe of the power of the internetz.   It was really cool watching Feedjit that day, where people were coming on every second.  Of course I've said before that StumbleUpon is like a blind date, all hype and no substance.  You can see the exponential decline after the first Stumble day (over-analysis has always been my strong suit).  I took the screen shot early on Saturday so that the decline was not that dramatic. 



Here are the details on the 100,000th visit.  I find it interesting that people are still using 1024x768 resolution, so I've kept the blog template to fit in that size.  It's also a requirement that I use for my user interface programming at work.   Despite the 30" monitors that some of our customers have, there will always be someone with a low-res laptop (including my blasted Lenovo T60 at work) who will be using my software.

mommy bytes By Details > Visit Detail Visit 100,000
Domain Name		wisc.edu ? (Educational)
IP Address		72.33.63.# (University of Wisconsin Madison)
ISP		University of Wisconsin Madison
Location		Continent  : North America Country  : United States  (Facts) State  : Wisconsin City  : Madison Lat/Long  : 43.0761, -89.4104 (Map) Distance  : 901 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
Browser		Firefox Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 3P_UVRM/1.00.1 Firefox/3.5.3
Javascript		version 1.5
Monitor		Resolution  :  1024 x 768 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Sep 21 2009 2:25:50 pm
Last Page View		Sep 21 2009 2:25:50 pm
Visit Length		0 seconds
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://betwittered.c...rror_tracker.js,EWuB
Visit Entry Page		http://www.mommybyte...rograms-scratch.html
Visit Exit Page		http://www.mommybyte...rograms-scratch.html
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-6:00
Visitor's Time		Sep 21 2009 1:25:50 pm
Visit Number		100,000

Enough blabbering... Thanks for all the visits from all of you (and you and you). I really appreciate it!

Tuesday Toot - Adam Programs Scratch

Photos courtesy of Catherine Seo.

Several months ago, we attended a meeting of BostonCHI (computer human interface) where they discussed the MIT Scratch programming language and web community.  Evelyn Eastmond presented the philosophy behind the creating this programming language for young people ages 8 and up.  You can create interactive stories, animation, games music and art and share them on the web.  Since Adam is eight years old, I figured I would take my pocket nerd with me. 
There were a few kids there, but he was the youngest to attend.  Adam had no interest in the presentation so he spent his whole time programming.  I was also a bit distracted, texting with Quentin who had invited us and sat a few rows back.  Since I had already tried Scratch, I was already somewhat familiar with it.  But there were a few things that I learned during the presentation and quickly passed on to Adam.  Then the group had some hands-on time where Evelyn checked in our progress.


Evelyn Eastmond checks in on Adam's work.

Afterwards, she invited all the kids that attended to show their work.  There was an eleven and ten year old that went before us.  They had a neat animation of their name and a spiraling animated character.  Then Adam was up.  He was hardly as tall as the podium.


Please look at Adam, not his wild-haired mom.

Since he had been programming for a good 45 minutes, his project completely wowed the audience.  The toughest part was figuring out how to make the trampoline say “Ouch!” only when the car bounced on it.  It would say ouch after the first hit and then stay that way as the car bounced on the trampoline.  But we figured it out together.



He definitely had the most complicated project there, probably even for the adults.  It was awesome! You can check out his bouncing car project online at scratch.mit.edu as well.  Press the green flag and then the space bar to start the animation.  I am so glad that he got my programming gene.  I'm one step closer at getting him into MIT.


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Small Town Soccer Politics

Better late than never for Tell Me Thursday right?

I live in a town that is an hour's drive from Boston, so far that a primary source of entertainment is youth soccer.  Little league is pretty big too, with basketball and hockey trailing behind with multi-town leagues.  But our little town hosts a soccer tournament on Columbus Day weekend where teams from across the state as well as New Hampshire come to play.  Big time right? 

We have been involved in soccer for four years now in various roles as team parent and assistant coach, but not as over the top crazy volunteers. Last year, Adam was allowed to play in the boy's U10 (under 10) travel league even though he was seven, and he did quite well.  For this season, he officially tried out for the U10 league and was placed on the B team.  B team?  My soccer star?  What's going on here?  Admittedly, he was off on the call back try-outs as it was raining (can't see through his glasses).  But all the coaches and players already know and fear him.  We were not going to make a stink about it.  I started to think that maybe all the players on the A team were already nine years old and in fourth grade, but later I found one 3rd grader made the cut (admittedly he is very good, but some of the older kids are not).  Was it just town politics?

Over Labor Day weekend, there was a tournament where he played with the A team.  In one game, he scored two out of the six goals and in another he scored one of the two goals.  Obviously no slouch for a B team player and he clicked right in with the other players.  Everyone was at the right place at the right time and it was a beautiful thing to watch.  But I guess the B team can have a star player as well.  On his first regular game with the B team, it poured and he scored the team's only goal despite his spotty glasses.  The team was not cohesive and got trounced 10-1.  Hopefully they'll get it together and support their star player. No sour grapes here...  ARGHHHH!!! 



This photograph was shot during the Labor Day tournament.  His goofy left leg  just happened to be flapping sideways after landing on his right kicking leg.  I just love the position of the ball perfectly shot into the goal.


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Perfect Pitch, Dissonance and Tonality

Adam contemplates the piano. 

WNYC’s Radio Lab has made quite a few episodes about music that have really intrigued me.  As a classically trained musician, my ears always perk up when I hear stories that are intricately related to how my brain is wired.

In the episode Musical Language, they discussed both perfect pitch and dissonance.  They learned that in cultures that use intonation in their speech (tone languages), such as Chinese, the occurrence of perfect pitch in the population was much higher.  They recorded a woman saying a specific Chinese word one day and again several months later.  Both recordings of the word had exactly the same pitch.  Kids who were trained for pitch in these cultures had a perfect pitch rate of 76%!  Scientific American's 60 Second Science also reported this for the quick and dirty listen/read.  Coming from a Chinese home, I guess it wasn't too far-fetched that I would have perfect pitch, even though I rarely spoke it myself.  My kids don't have the benefit of having Chinese spoken at home, but I'm still hopeful to pass down the perfect pitch.  I've also heard stories of people "training" their children by having them play the same note every time they passed the piano starting when they are very young.  Adam certainly knows when he plays a wrong note when he's not looking, but he doesn't always realize when he accidentally starts on the wrong note.  I'm still hoping!

In this Radio Lab episode, they also discussed the riotous premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.  When it premiered in 1913, it was so foreign to the ears of the audience, that they actually started to riot in the concert hall.  The audience was so overloaded by the foreign sounds of dissonance, that their brains shifted into psychotic behavior.  With the signature Radio Lab sound effects, it sounded like you were there in the audience hearing their brains going berserk with the subsequent riotous build and uproar.  A year later, the audience's ears adjusted to the new sounds and Stravinsky was then lauded with standing ovations.  I actually got to witness this behavior first hand once.  I was taking a course in 20th Century music with my beloved John Harbison who was telling us of a similar riot that occurred with another composer, which may have been Alban Berg.  He said that the audience reacted violently and some of them even became sick.  We listened to the piece and suddenly, one of the female students in the front row started to interrupt and spout out that this music was utterly vile.  Normally, this girl was a quiet, level-headed student, but she had suddenly transformed in front of our eyes!  I looked around and shrugged my shoulders with the other students.  Sure, it sounded awful, but vile?  She was going on as if it were a scourge on humanity!  Harbison was intrigued and started to ask her why she felt this way.  She continued to be agitated and threatened to leave the classroom.  He backed down, giving the rest of us a knowing look and went on with another composer.  Dissonant psychosis in action!

Since I have never embraced atonal music myself (with the exception of John Cage, who despite the strange nature of his music, can sometimes be quite tonal), I’ll add two more cents on tonal music and pitch.  The color of a piece depends greatly on the key, regardless if you have perfect pitch to identify the key.  A piece in C# minor will have more tension than a piece in F minor.  Conversely, a piece in D♭ major will sound more soothing than a piece in G major.  Even though C# and D♭ are technically the same note (at least on the piano, but not necessarily on other instruments), pieces written in those keys can have a completely different atmosphere.  Perhaps the composer sets the tone of a piece depending on the key.  Or perhaps the key really affects the tone of a piece.  But changes in timbre are not just “felt” by musicians, they can be felt by audiences at large.  With more listening, the sense of hearing can be tuned to hear differences in pitch and timbre, much as a wine taster’s sense of taste can be enhanced to evaluate its complexity and character.  And remember, perfect pitch can be a curse too!

Bonus video (watch if you dare)…  Adam looks so serene in the photo above, but in reality, if he hears an imperfection or note of dissonance, he goes haywire.  Practicing the piano with him goes from the rush of creating beautiful music together to utter chaos in a split second.  And no, he is not “performing” for the video.  This happens on a daily basis.

WW - Soccer is Here!

Header!


Fancy footwork (chop).


Goal!

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Come back tomorrow for the story behind these photos for Tell Me Thursday.

See You Later, Mom!

Normally, I don't see the kids off to the bus in the morning. But on Tuesday after Labor Day, we had a forced plant shutdown at work. Since my company still enforces two mandatory days off each month with a 10% pay cut, they decided to save even more by forcing everyone to take the same day off. Normally, I enjoy my "UPDO's" (unpaid day off) or furlough or Mula Hula as MIT Mommy calls it. We used them to go to Water Country and Canobie Lake Park last month on slightly less crowded weekdays. It's great to use them as extra vacation days. It's not so great when you're forced to take a day when your family is not around. Almost every nearby school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire had the Friday before Labor Day off, but not the Tuesday after, so bad planning on my company's part. But I made the most of this opportunity to peek into the kids' school routines. Normally, Doug rushes around making lunches and drives them to the bus stop, but he slept in that day as I pretended to be Mrs. Dad. Since I also wanted to improve the carbon footprint for our school routine, I made them walk to the bus stop.



I did NOT coach Adam to put his arm around his sister. He just did it automatically because he is a sweet boy through and through and truly loves and wants to protect his sister.

I snapped a shot of the bus approaching as I knew the rest of the shots would be looking at the back of their heads.



I asked them to wave as they were getting on the bus. Adam waved so quickly that I completely missed the shot. But I got Dova waving.



Did you miss that? Here's a close-up of her wave:



Can you say, "See you later, Mom, I don't have time to wave and look at you!" I can't complain though. I'm happy that she is secure and doesn't have any separation anxiety about going to school. She's come a long way from the tearful break-your-heart 20 minute goodbyes for daycare.

When I got home, Doug went out for an errand, and I was suddenly in my house by myself for the first time in ages. The last time I can remember was when I was eight months pregnant with Dova and I sent Adam to preschool on the day I worked from home. Prior to that, he was always home with me on my telecommute day, always making a ruckus as I tried to work. On this Tuesday, my house was extremely peaceful without the kids, but so quiet it was spooky. I ended up making calls for kirtsy (stay tuned, to be announced soon), which quickly dispelled my peace.

Doug and I had a lunch date at our favorite Japanese restaurant and we had a wonderful day together. We had to rush back to catch the kids coming off the bus. I didn't even have time to get my camera, so I shot this video from my phone:



Dova had fallen asleep on the bus. When she is woken from a nap, watch out! We call her "grump munchkin", direct offspring of the "grump monster" (that would not be me). Adam wanted to hold her hand, but she wanted nothing to do with it. Ah well, so ends another UPDO.

Perfection sometimes requires a lot of coaching

A few months ago, I posted this photograph of Dova holding a stone with the Chinese symbol of longevity.  Many people commented that they loved this picture.  I love it as well, as she is holding it so perfectly, thoughtfully contemplating its meaning (which we didn't know at the time).

Well, perfection isn't always so natural.  When I asked her to pick up the stone and hold it in front of her, she grabbed it with her whole hands and blocked out the Chinese character with her fingers.  When I asked her to look at the symbol, she tilted the stone back so that she could see it but not me.  Then the stone blocked her face.  Then the symbol was upside down or crooked.  I tried to coach her on how to hold the stone but she just didn't get it.  Here's an outtake:



Finally, I put my camera down, and physically positioned the stone and her hands, and tilted her head over the stone.  I'm such a slave driver when it comes to photography!  She was actually looking at the top edge of the stone.  No wonder she didn't get it!

WW - Giggles

Dova with one of her many cousins she met in Washington DC. What are they giggling about? A popped balloon!

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Where Does Chocolate Come From?

 
Here's a funny one from Dova:

Dova:  Where does Chocolate Come From?

Mom:  Cacao beans.

Dova:  Cow beans??!?
Mom: 


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