Saturday Matinee

While Hal is out all day in the land of Ultimate Umpire Geeks, I have a quiet day at home. Thought I would peruse a movie that I put on the Netflix "Watch Instantly" queue. It was recommended to me a number of years ago, and I finally had the 2 hours and 10 minutes to watch.

Stone Reader is a movie for people who LOVE books. This documentary follows a man who searches for two years for a one-hit-wonder author, Dow Mossman, author of Stones of Summer.

On Cafeteria Trays

Yesterday on Facebook, the Carleton College page posted a video blog entry about traying- a time-honored winter tradition. Ah, yes, "borrow" a cafeteria tray and use it to slide down the big snow-covered hill. Much fun!

I commented, "I wonder if Carleton will go the way of other colleges and stop using trays in the cafeteria. They say that it reduces waste from people taking more than they can eat, plus it saves water by not having to wash the trays. If Carleton does go that way, perhaps they can assign trays to each dorm room. So, each student gets 1 bed, 1 dresser, 1 tray."

Carleton answered back that they had tried some trayless days, but it hadn't gone over very well. (I'm surprised they didn't comment on my great suggestion about standard room issue.)

So, today I went to eat lunch at the Harvey Mudd cafeteria which has already implemented traylessness. (I ran into a prof who brings his own tray - a gift from his wife with his name written on it.) I think I do actually take less food when I have to revert back to my waitressing days and carry two plates (one salad, one chicken fettuccine), one fork and a cup of water. And I don't need a tray for sledding since we have no snow, or hills, around here.

Check out the article at the NYTimes about this issue.

More Mathemagic

In December, this blog reported on seeing Art Benjamin, HMC math professor and mathemagician at Hollywood's Magic Castle. Last night, Art was the guest on The Colbert Report. For the next few weeks you can see the show on hulu. You can still see his show on Ted.com.

Sangria Ate Ham

The title of this post is an anagram for "I Hate Anagrams." Every Sunday I listen to the Puzzle Master, Will Shortz, on NPR. Some days I do pretty well playing along with the contestants, some days, not so much. The days I really do poorly are the anagram days. Hence, the title of this post.

I watched Word Wars today (streaming on Netflix), and now I know why I also don't enjoy Scrabble. It's a game of anagrams. It's also a game of knowing many, many words (without necessarily knowing their definitions). I enjoy other word games, such as Apples to Apples, Categories and Dictionary, so I've always wondered why I don't like Scrabble. Now I know.

Claremont Concert Orchestra

Tonight was the first rehearsal of the Claremont College Orchestra for spring semester. This group consists of students from Scripps, Pitzer, Harvey Mudd and CMC as well as members from the community. It's good to get back into playing mode. On the docket for our first concert - a taste of Vienna. Overture to Der Freischutz and Clarinet Concerto by Weber in addition to Beethoven's 6th Symphony (The Pastoral).

U2Charist

Last night the Claremont UCC held a U2Charist - a church service with communion set to the music of the rock band U2. The chapel was filled with people of many ages, and a group of children read portions of the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King, Jr. The offering went to the African Well Fund which builds wells in Africa so that people can have access to clean water.

This is the second U2Charist at CUCC, the first one was in September.

A Break in the Rain

Since Monday, it has been raining and raining and raining on the West Coast. This weekend we get a break from the gray and wet until next Monday night. Here are some pics of the result of the over 6" we have gotten in Claremont.

Our garden lettuce and broccoli look pretty happy.

The mushrooms grew like crazy.
So did the weeds.
Through the clouds you can glimpse the snow on Mt. Baldy (from the Costco parking lot).

On a Mission with Sushi

Our tradition, over the past 7 years, has been to take our daughters out for dinner the night before they return to college for a new semester. We started out going to China Star, but after it changed hands, the food got worse, so we went to various places.

Since Claire leaves for her final college semester this afternoon, she chose to have sushi last night. Now, I've had sushi, but probably not particularly good stuff. We tried Hayato Sushi and Grill on Foothill in the Supercuts strip mall. It was delicious. I especially enjoyed the Spider Roll (which has soft-shelled crab), but this Fire Roll (pictured) was also yummy.

Claire has given us the directive to try out a variety of sushi places and report back our findings!

West Coast Swing

Tonight we started our second semester of social dance. Last semester we learned the Cha Cha, the Blues, and Salsa. We're starting off with West Coast Swing, and tonight we learned the sugar push and the cross-body turn.

Deluge

Although we really need the rain that has been pouring down (there has been so much rain that the Claremont Library is closed due to flooding) on the West Coast this week, I wonder if I somehow caused it. Over winter break I planned a lesson centered around the familiar children's chant "Rain, rain, go away" for just this week with the first and second graders.

I pulled out every xylophone, metallophone, or barred instrument that I have in the music room so that every child could sit at one (alone or with a partner). For 20 minutes we tapped the bars with our fingers, played with mallets, and sang the song over and over.

At the end of one of the classes today, little Chloe looked at me and said, "You are the best music teacher!"

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

This morning I heard this story on NPR about a speech given by Martin Luther King, Jr. at Bethel College in North Newton, KS. Dr. King came to Bethel, where my parents were students, on January 21, 1960. At that point my parents were married and my mom was pregnant with me when they heard this speech.

Bethel recently found a tape of this speech and had the audio restored. It would be interesting to hear it. I wonder if it will be available some way to the public.

Portrait Day

We took advantage of Claire's shutter skills yesterday. She took some portraits of us at Scripps. I put seven of the very best at my picasa site.

Board Meeting

I have been attending Orff-Schulwerk workshops for over 5 years now. Sometimes I go to the Orange County Chapter, sometimes the LA Chapter, but I am closest to and a member of the Inland Counties Chapter. This fall they asked me to be a member-at-large on the board and to put out the electronic newsletter three times a year. I said yes.

Today at the board meeting, I agreed to be the VP for membership for the next two years. The requires computer skills, keeping records of members and making sign-in sheets and nametags for the four workshops each year.

Philip Roth

The first time we attended our book club, we discussed Philip Roth's The Human Stain. I was only slightly concerned that we wouldn't be warmly welcomed to the new group since I really didn't like the book. (Of course, liking the book is no prerequisite for participating!) Now, a number of years later, we are going to discuss Roth's Indignation. While it started out okay for me, about halfway through I got progressively less interested in the protagonist and the choices he made about his life.

I scanned a variety of reviews online, and many of the male readers gave positive feedback. One review, by Ruth Franklin, came closer to what I felt about the book.

Culinary Delights

We had ourselves an adventure tonight. Last week Claire had eaten at the Kogi BBQ truck in Westwood and extolled its delicious food. She bemoaned the fact that these trucks never come to the Inland Empire. While at school, she follows the Kogi tweets to see where they'll be, even when she can't go there. Yesterday the happy news - KogiBBQ was coming to Cal Poly Pomona!

The Kogi truck would be at the corner of Temple and Valley from 7-9. We arrived at the intersection about 7, but only saw a group of about 15 people at the bus stop - no truck. Parking spot found, we ventured out in the dark with great hope and hunger. A group of about 8 people Cal Poly students wandered over to an empty spot along the road, and we followed them. Claire checked Twitter and said that the truck was on its way, and, sure enough, it finally showed up. By the time we ordered there were about 100 people in line behind us. We lucked out in being near the front.

I had three tacos, Korean tofu, Short Rib and Chicken. Hal had a spicy pork burrito, and Claire had a Korean tofu burrito.

One word - delicious.

We topped off the evening with a trip to Yogurtland. A veritable progressive dinner adventure!

Shop Claremont

Since we have all been encouraged to Shop Claremont, last night we went to dinner at The Press. I had the Taco Salad a la Press which I have to say was very good. So was the Chipotle Vegetable Soup.

Pleasant Times in the Waiting Room

While Claire is home over break, she is taking care of her achilles' tendon at the physical therapists'. Having taken her to pt several years ago, I know about the wait, so I am prepared today. Here I sit with my laptop. I knew I wanted to work on iMovie, adding another group of students to my movie of what they've been doing in class. I finished what I could there and decided to see if there was wi-fi here. There is! So I've also caught up on Facebook, email, had a chat with a friend, and now blogging. An hour has already flown by!

When I'm tired of this, I can always pull out my next book.

Kingsolver

Our book club will discuss The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver next week. As big a fan as I am of her other works, this one felt like a slog to work through. The main character doesn't feel like the main character for the first half of the book, or so, I'm not sure that the theme or main idea of the book is a lacuna, and much of the beginning is not all that interesting to me.

Dropbox

Claire sent me an invitation to use Dropbox, a "cross-platform, cloud-based, storage application and service." One can have free 2 GB of storage, adding more free storage for inviting friends who open accounts. Since I use two computers (plus one at school), I thought I'd give it a try. I am putting items for teaching into the dropbox so I can have access to them wherever I have internet connection. If the site is not filtered at school, then I won't need a flash drive to have access to files I want to print. Also, when I have files that I continually update, and store them here, I won't have to continually replace them on the other computer.

I will probably also use it to share photos which you can do with people who have and don't have a dropbox account.

This could be good. If you want me to invite you, let me know!

Garden Salad

For tonight's potluck, we are taking a salad made up of mostly of items from our yard. The lettuce has been growing like crazy, as well as the spinach. The dressing has juice from our tangelos. Sweet tangerine slices come from our tree. If our walnut tree were still alive, perhaps we'd add some of those, but since it is gone, we'll add some from Trader Joe's, as well as cranberries from Sprouts. Perhaps I'll call it a Claremont Salad.

Falling Leaves

We have a large Chinese Elm (at least we've been told that's what it is - the pictures on the internet look different than what we have). A little over a year ago we had it cut back, as we do every few years. It's semi-deciduous, which I think means sometimes the leaves fall, but you're never quite sure when that will be. Well, it's been shedding its little tiny leaves like crazy for the past month or so. I have been raking them a bit at a time, but the leaves along the street have taken priority in the compost bin. Today I finally worked on the leaves in the mulch and all over the cottage yard. Two hours later, I got the vast majority of them (for now), but when the bin gets emptied next week, I'll be back finishing it up. That is, if the leaves stop falling at this crazy rate.

At least I am not shoveling snow!

Winter Harvest

Fresh lettuce and spinach from the garden for dinner tonight - it's winter in Southern California!

Turning it Around

School started again yesterday after Winter Break. As we came out of our string class at 5:00 yesterday, I noticed that it was much lighter (relatively) than it had been after our class in December. I'm always glad after the Winter Solstice to notice the lengthening days.

I took a little video in my class today which I have put on my music blog.

Claire's Photography

Claire has been developing her interest and talent in photography. Last semester she took beginning photography as well as digital imaging. Next semester she tackles intermediate photography. This photo was my Christmas present from Claire. The man is the accompanist (drummer) for the modern dance classes at Goucher.

In our basement we have had an enlarger for developing photos, given to us by Anne a number of years ago. While looking at the box with said enlarger, Claire discovered a small box with a variety of goodies, the best of which is a medium-format camera made in the 1950s. It's the same style as my very first brownie camera, though much nicer. You look down into the top of the camera to get your view. She'll have lots of fun with that.

You are invited to peruse her new flickr site here.

Avatar

I really wanted to like the movie Avatar. The buzz intrigued me, and I'm always up for a good story, especially science fiction. So, the visuals are pretty stunning with all the glowing plants, the smooth loping of the Na'vi as they maneuver through the trees and air, and how they made the Avatars really look like their human counterparts.

BUT. This 3D movie still has a 2D story. I kept thinking it was Dances with Wolves on a different planet. Good Guys vs. Bad Guys with nary a shade of gray.

This opinion is purely my own. Hal liked the movie more than I did.

Winter Garden

This is what's growing in our garden today: butter lettuce, spinach, mesclun mix (lettuce), broccoli, lemons, tangerines, tangelos. It's sunny and in the 70s today.

Happy New Year!

Old-fashioned family night tonight. Hal made popcorn the old-timey way on the stove in the dutch oven with oil. We played some games to go along with popcorn.

So far this is more successful than the Oregon Ducks were today in the Rose Bowl!