Ooooh! Shiny!

I have a shiny new laptop!  I am in the process of catching up on blog worthy events here and reading the blogs I've missed while I was without a laptop.

I've been adjusting to the new touch screen, and that's been kind of fun, but far and away the most fun has been the discovery that the new laptop can do this:

That's actually Choclo, if you were wondering... I have no idea if he actually smells much better than you.

Do we detect a theme?

In other news of the new and shiny, we got the new new freezer (the old new freezer came in with it's frame crushed).  Here we are removing the old one.

And we got the cars repaired. And the mixer fixed.  And the dryer.

And now: Nothing else is allowed to break until after Christmas!

Did I mention we have mice? We've never had mice before in the 13 years we've lived here!  Fortunately it seems to be a litter of fairly young mice, so they have been easy to catch (the Zoomlians have caught and released 4 so far).

I harbor dark suspicions that it is all part of the perennial campaign to get a cat (I love cats, but we have allergies). At any rate, the mice have until Friday to vacate the premises (or be caught by Zoomlians) before we put in the traps.

Maybe we need a cat avatar instead of a dog...

Other Stuff, Like English

 So, with all the Halloween stuff, actual educational stuff was also happening.

For one thing, Klenda made her English teacher Dad's year when she asked the Emperor if she could read The Scarlet Letter.

I hadn't read it in a while, either, so we are reading it together- so fun!

If you haven't read it since high school (and then under duress), the key to the book is this: Pearl is expressing everything that Hester is repressing.

Once you know that, it's a fascinating (and somewhat creepy) read.

And, speaking of creepy, we just finished Sophocles's "Oedipus Rex." 

We love Greek plays!  The picture is terrible, but that's Zorg (the shepherd) giving Klenda (Jocasta) the bad news about Mxyl (Oedipus) - she's closer to her husband than she thought. 

It's so fun to do these great classic plays with people who don't know how they will turn out!  It really is a shocking twist!  As it turns out, the original audience knew exactly how it would turn out, so they (like me) go through a play dripping with dramatic irony.

Also, Sophocles mentions that Jocasta has a magic necklace which keeps her from aging, which makes the whole situation make more sense.

We can't wait to start "Antigone!"

Poem of the Week

All Souls' Day

Let's go our old way
by the stream, and kick the leaves
as we always did, to make
the rhythm of breaking waves.

This day draws no breath –
shows no colour anywhere
except for the leaves - in their death
brilliant as never before.

Yellow of Brimstone Butterfly,
brown of Oak Eggar Moth –
you'd say. And I'd be wondering why
a summer never seems lost

if two have been together
witnessing the variousness of light,
and the same two in lustreless November
enter the year's night…

The slow-worm stream - how still!
Above that spider's unguarded door,
look – dull pearls…Time's full,
brimming, can hold no more.

Next moment (we well know,
my darling, you and I)
what the small day cannot hold
must spill into eternity.

So perhaps we should move cat-soft
meanwhile, and leave everything unsaid,
until no shadow of risk can be left
of disturbing the scatheless dead.

Ah, but you were always leaf-light.

And you so seldom talk
as we go. But there at my side
through the bright leaves you walk.

And yet – touch my hand
that I may be quite without fear,
for it seems as if a mist descends,
and the leaves where you walk do not stir.

By Frances Bellerby
HT: The Guardian

Costumes!

 Leena was St. Elizabeth Ann Seton!

 Oob was St. Michael!

Yes, we have had a few St. Michaels over the years.

 Choclo wanted to be Ezekiel. 

Ezekiel?  Like the Old Testament prophet?

Yes, like the dry bones!

If you've ever taken the tour of the Franciscan Monastery, they have a "purgatory chapel" which has a wall sized mosaic of Ezekial and the plain of dried bones coming to life.

Evidently, it made a big impression!

Those were the kids old enough to go trick or treating. 

In other news, the older Zoomlians dressed like an adorable older couple and went reverse trick or treating!

 It was great!!!  They gave out a ton of candy and had a wonderful time!

Hope you had a happy Halloween!

Pumpkins: Round 3, Happy Halloween!

 Choclo did General Grievous (with, ahem, a certain amount of help from a very talented friend). 

Klenda did an eye. Sauron?  Creepy when lit, at any rate!

Oob did a ghost pumpkin: white with eyes.

Leena did an actual jack o lantern!

Mxyl and Zorg did Gamera and Godzilla, respectively. 

They both did drawn characters (or shallowly carved) so that the only visible openings were the Kaiju's mouths.



This was because we were using fog machine "smoke" in the pumpkins. 

When it worked, the smoke poured out of the creature's mouths, or shot out like a death ray!

That's the good news.  The bad news was that we found it very difficult to get to work properly!

The really great news, was that we got it to work eventually, and it really was amazing!

                                          In other news, we have cute warty gourds.

Also, a lot of pumpkin seeds.

Also,  brain cupcakes. 

Weird, cute, or weirdly cute?

Happy Halloween!

Tomorrow: costumes!

Pumpkins: Round 2

Get the camera, it's Gamera!

Wordless Wednesday: Fall Beauty

An Object Lesson

It's been a crazy week!

 The brand new dryer stopped working.  Someone forgot to put the lint trap  in when they started the dryer.

They realized it quickly, but not before an errant sock had gotten sucked down the trap and into the inner workings... So the moral of that story is: Always use the lint trap!


The great news is that the Emperor and I (with a little help from the internet) were able to take the entire dryer apart and get the sock out of the blower wheel!

Hooray, us!  We used to be very handy - rehabbing an old Victorian and roughing in our own plumbing and electric lines.   As we got more and more little ones, our handy hands were full, and we had to hire out lots of jobs we would have done ourselves.

It's pretty exciting to realize we can do a lot of our own stuff again!

In other news, the new freezer arrived, but with the door crunched badly, so it had to go back.  Also we have a car in the shop and a kid with a fever for several days.

The kid is on the mend, the car should be fixed today, and eventually a new freezer will show up.

And our dryer works!

I Shall Return

Really soon now!  I have a shiny new laptop which I bought before I realized that my freezer was in the process of dying.  It is new (well, refurbished and about half the price of new), and it turned out to be much shinier than we had expected: it has a touch screen!

No, I did not realize that when I bought it.

Hey, maybe the new freezer will turn out to have a touch screen, too!

Unfortunately, that brings up the image of me accidentally swiping the freezer and deleting all the ice cream...

At any rate, Bill has the laptop, and he is transferring files, setting up a firewall, making sure it has a word processing program, and otherwise idiot proofing it.

Actually, Bill also has most of the contents of my freezer in his freezer.  Hey, look, he's literally saving my bacon!  Thanks Bill!

Speaking of Pumpkins

 We painted our pumpkins!

Leena made twin pumpkins, one to put on, and one to put out!

 Zorg did a "Starry Night" face on his pumpkin.

 Mxyl did a Centauri (we recently finished watching Babylon 5).

Oob did a treasure chest on his (white) pumpkin.  He also put a little key to the chest on another part of the pumpkin!

Klenda did these beautiful  purple flowers.


And here are Choclo and Leena's sitting together on the front porch.

Much thanks to a dear friend who helped out on some of the more complex painting!