Month: April 2005

Forging Ahead.

Ack! So final projects are coming up. I’m pretty gung ho about doing my bike frame. Of course I’ve been reading a lot of newsgroups about frame building yadda yadda. There’s one woman that’s sorta a newsgroup favorite newbie, Suzy Jackson. She made her own frame and was a beacon of shining light to all those newbies out there. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that her frame cracked. not very cool. I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just practice like mad instead?


Sorta a good fillet weld… in the middle about 1/2 an inch long. Posted by Hello

To & From DC

Yesterday afternoon, I drove to our DC home, retrieved Mom’s info, cut the grass, had a bowl of beef noodle and drove right back to Pittsburg. Left at 11:00 AM, arrived at my motel around 9:30 PM. Not bad.

My XM radio helped. I figured out how to change to unused FM frequency in big cities.

Beautiful day today!

A gorgeous day today. Hmmm, I’m finally wearing shorts. Cleaned out the front closet of gloves, mittens, -20F coats and boots and stashed them all upstairs. I’m getting my spring cleaning fever, it means, time to throw the clutter out out out! It’s hard though with Vince going through the trash and IDing each McD toy and saying, “This is not trash” in his serious, serious voice.

At lunch today, Vince managed to spill both a jar of mayo and a bottle of yogurt smoothie and I was flipping out a bit and he said, “Let me give you a hug, mom.” It was very nice.

I’m working on my piano stuff, a Kuhlau sonatina. I’m pretty sure that Donald played it before. Working on playing the right hand louder than the left hand. Who knew, I always played the melody and harmony with the same hand strength. I did start the Bartok also, it’s 6 books of progressively harder pieces. In book 2, it’s still pretty easy, 2 hands in the same position and not moving across the keyboard, but, man, there is pretty much no tune. It sounds very weird. Oh well, I’m going to have to buy a recording to know if I’m playing it right.

Laundry is still a mountain over my head.

Recovery day.

Stayed up wayyy too late last night. This morning, I had to get up and get Vince ready for school. Then, Jeremy and I met at my piano teacher’s place and I gave him Edda for an hour and I had my lesson. Then I got Edda back and drove to Vince’s daycare. Jeremy had gone grocery shopping during my lesson. I spent the afternoon doing loads and loads of laundry, unloading the groceries and trying to get the kids to nap. Sheez, all this takes a lot of time.

This evening we entertained ourselves by calling everybody in our phone book and leaving messages and singing happy birthday a bunch of people.

We are back home!

Hmmm, on Saturday, it was pouring rain in the morning, we just dashed to a local bakery to eat breakfast. Then we drove over to the Peabody Essex Museum which is about 45 minutes away from MIT. One of their exhibits is an entire house which was moved from China and rebuilt inside the museum. Katherine’s brother Andy was there and so were Katherine’s friends Mark and Andy. Jeremy spent the time trying to sell Mark our Accord. Bob spent the time trying to figure out if a chair they were selling in the gift shop would fit in his Acura TL. It did not. That afternoon, we headed back to Hotel@MIT and then didn’t venture out again, we had take out from Mary Chung’s and watched Lizzie McGuire on TV. They forcasted downpours, so we were scared to leave the hotel, but we just should have since it didn’t rain until after we went to bed. On Sunday, we met my friend Lana for breakfast in Harvard Square and I had a really nice time. Then we headed to Drumlin Farm, the place where Andy works. All the sheep, goats and pigs have just given birth, there were baby animals everywhere. Vince had a blast. Then we went back to Andy and Marguerite’s house for a light lunch. Then finally to Concord to have dinner with the Footes. They are relatives of Katherine though her mother’s mother’s side (Renouf). By this time, the kids were napless and exhausted, so we headed back home!