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Sunday, February 6th, 2005
Sylvia has recently gotten interested in the idea of reading chapter books. This is good news for me because I am interested in reading chapter books with her. The first one we read, last week, was a not very well-written or thought-out book about two children who discover a magical tree-house that enables them to travel back in time, apparently part of a series, this one has them go back to prehistory and interact with dinosaurs. On Friday I bought Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollboth, which is one of my favorite books from my own childhood. I was not sure whether Sylvia was quite ready for it but figured it was worth a try. And it seems to have been a good choice -- we have read 2 chapters so far and she is paying very close attention. Paying attention is a major topic of the book and I am having the feeling while reading it, that I should have taken it more to heart when I read it as a boy; or that I should have reread it around the time I started to forget it, in my early twenties. Not paying sufficient attention is a big part of what I have been doing wrong in the past ten or so years. Seems like it should be easy enough to change back... Hoping my facility to pay attention has not atrophied from neglect.
posted evening of February 6th, 2005: Respond
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Saturday, February 5th, 2005
A month ago I posted the story of a glue-up gone wrong. Today I glued up a second similar cabinet and thanks to input from the gang at WoodCentral, it went much better. The key difference: as advised by William Duffield, I did not put the backer boards in slots, but instead cut a rabbett and will nail them in place after the frame is dry. This means in the glue-up, I only have to worry about four boards instead of ten, much more reasonable. Also I thought through my clamping beforehand, so it was easy to get everything put together once the glue was on; and I made pinch sticks to measure the diagonals of the cabinet. I think these will be my most successful dovetails to date, which is not saying too much but is a good feeling anyways.
posted evening of February 5th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Sylvia's room
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We watched the second half of Fantasia tonight, except for A Night on Bald Mountain which Sylvia found too scary. (And she was pretty tired anyway by that point.) Weird -- I was totally sure that Peter and the Wolf was one of the songs in Fantasia, but apparently not.
posted evening of February 5th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Family Movie Night
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Friday, February 4th, 2005
Been a while since I posted about a family movie night and we have had a few more in the mean time. Tonight we watched the first half of Fantasia and that was a lot of fun. Sylvia was quite chatty throughout -- the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor played against a background of Sylvia talking about how she had watched part of this movie in school after lunch and calling various images "funny", "good" or "sad"; The Nutcracker was accompanied by her memories of seeing it performed at NJPAC; The Rite of Spring had a lot of dinosaur-related commentary and (my personal favorite) during the first 30 seconds or so, when the screen is dark and there is no sound: "'s it over?..." "What's happening?..." "Maybe it's loading." The commentary did not stem from being bored with the movie but from being engaged. She was particularly keyed-up about The Rite of Spring and busy naming all the dinosaurs that appeared on screen. She got that the large meat-eating dinosaur had to be an Allosaurus because it had three fingers and was attacking a Stegosaurus. (I think maybe there was some confusion at the studio though, and they intended Tyrannosaurus -- there were definitely some Cretaceous creatures in the crowd that looked up in alarm at the predator.)
posted evening of February 4th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, January 30th, 2005
The wall unit for Sylvia's room is coming along nicely (though I expect to be done in March now, not February) -- tonight while I was cutting dovetails for the remaining section of it, Ellen and Sylvia were painting one of the completed sections. Sylvia and I went over to Mark's house today, where Christine and Bill also came to visit. We had a great time, including watching Harold Lloyd movies and learning from Bill how to play "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues".
posted evening of January 30th, 2005: Respond
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Thursday, January 27th, 2005
Hey, anyone want to talk about Roth? I'm reading American Pastoral right now and really enjoying it.
posted afternoon of January 27th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about American Pastoral
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Wednesday, January 26th, 2005
Woo-hoo! Today I finished and sent in my application to the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University. If I measure up to their standards, I will start work on my Master's degree in Computer Science this fall.
posted evening of January 26th, 2005: Respond
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Friday, January 14th, 2005
I sent the following note to my senator today; I'd encourage you to do likewise: Dear Senator Corzine:Republicans have started to indicate the possibility of defaulting on the debt owed to Social Security -- we must nip this in the bud! The most recent indication was in Senator Wayne Allen's (R-CO) comment that he does not believe the money will ever be repaid to the fund. The time is here for a resolution reaffirming the government's intention to repay fully all outstanding Treasury bills. Note that section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states, "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."
Republican lawmakers who call into question the debt owed to Social Security, are violating their oath of office and should be repudiated. Regards,
Jeremy Osner
South Orange
posted morning of January 14th, 2005: Respond
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Wednesday, January 12th, 2005
My last two posts don't really make sense together, I just realized, without a key bit of information which I omitted -- on Saturday I took the cracked violin to Millburn Music Center, where the repairman quoted me a considerably lower price, $75, for a simple glue-up -- Gagliardi's estimate was for a full repair which would involve taking the violin apart and putting a patch on the inside. So that is what I meant by "my fiddle is still in the shop"; I did not go crazy and send it out for the full repair.
posted morning of January 12th, 2005: Respond
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Sunday, January 9th, 2005
Jammed with Bob today while a sick Janis moaned in the next room. My fiddle is still in the shop but I was playing Bob's violin on a lot of songs, and switching off with him between violin and guitar, a lot of fun -- I'm definitely picking it back up very quickly, I was getting how to do double-stops and open string drones, even very haltingly up in second position on the E string. This is going to be a great thing. I ordered Alan Kaufman's Beginning Old-Time Fiddle from ALibris for book-learning, and John Salyers' "Home Recordings 1941-42" from The Appalachian Center, for ear training.
posted evening of January 9th, 2005: Respond
➳ More posts about Music
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