Partial to the bean…

Alice and I are home together this weekend; Anth and Sammy went on a trip with some friends, which we declined to join because we are not the outdoorsy type.

I’m having such a nice time hanging out with her. On Friday night we watched Iron Man on DVD (Alice hadn’t seen it). Yesterday we had lunch out, did a little shopping, then went to see Iron Man 2 (which was a really fun action movie, plus it had Sam Rockwell in it, so, you know, I loved it). Today we’re just staying home — I went through my closet and pulled out a big pile of stuff to donate, and Alice helped me to make a nice-looking shepherd’s pie for dinner (it’s still in the oven, so I can’t vouch for the taste yet).

I’m really really grateful to have kids who enjoy some of the same things I enjoy. I love having someone to watch movies and shop and eat junk food and play video games with!

School’s out!! Yesterday was the last day. (New countdown in the sidebar — 101 more days of freedom!!!) Alice is still asleep and it’s about 2 hours past her school-year wakeup time, so she’s putting her vacation to good use.

Speaking of countdowns in the sidebar, it’s only 6 days until Sammy’s birthday, and one week until her party! Yikes! I’m just mailing out the invitations today, and nobody’s going to get them until Tuesday because Monday’s a holiday! Double yikes!! This morning I had to send out a batch of sheepish “please save the date, I was a procrastinator, your invitation’s on its way” emails to make sure that someone will be at the party.

Oh, by the way, Sammy has an Amazon wishlist. Isn’t that interesting? Just sayin’…

I was thinking that today would be the day that I painstakingly shopped store after store, trying to strategerize my wardrobe to its fullest — buying a damn top that actually goes with that freaking skirt that I never wear because I don’t own anything that goes with it, etc. But now that I have looked at the weather forecast (highs in the 90s, humidity pushing the heat index up another couple of degrees), I think that today will be the day that I cower in my air-conditioned house and wait for the thunderstorms to come through. Tomorrow can be the day for strategery.

Old news, apparently, but news to me: Teaching computers to read: Google acquires reCAPTCHA — so every time you try to post a comment on someone’s blog and it makes you type in those two random words, you may be helping Google to digitize a book!

As I’ve mentioned before, this is the last week of school for the year. I’m trying to pack as much “quiet house” and “errands alone” and “shopping for Sammy’s birthday” into the next four days as possible. (Sammy’s birthday — 11 days away! Aaaah!!)

While I’m off enjoying myself, please peruse this nice big batch of pictures, starting here. I can’t promise I’ll be interesting again any time soon.

Have you seen Google today?? Hit Insert Coin once to play, hit it twice to play two-player with the Mrs. (use ASDW keys to control her)!!

Only 8 more days of school left for my kiddoes — they only go 4 days/week, and their last day is May 28. I’m ambivalent about this; I am looking eagerly forward to a 3-month break from packing lunches and hustling people out the door at too-early-o’clock, but I will dearly miss the quiet daytime hours when nobody’s home except me.

Oh well, summer should be fun. We don’t have a whole lot of activities planned, but we have some ideas of things we want to do. I’d love to get to the Renaissance Faire this year, because it’s something I’ve been saying I want to do every year since Alice was a toddler, so maybe 2010’s the year I finally make it happen. I want to get to the beach, even if it’s just a long weekend with me and the girls, because we had zero beach last summer and that was sad. We’re in talks for another movie camp towards the end of June, and I’m hoping that that works out because it’s fun to hang with my cool homeschooling friends when we can. Assuming that the weather warms up someday soon, we’ll get pool passes. Mostly we’ll just lay around and relax. It’ll be nice.

I’m posting more pictures today, because I cannot overstate how irritating it is to me that we are 10 months behind in this. Y’all leave comments saying things like, “wow, the girls are really growing up!” and I’m all “dude, these are from LAST YEAR! Wait until you see actual RECENT pix!” So in the spirit of someday making that happen, here are the rest of the shots from our trip to Penn State. That happened in June. June of 2009. Almost a freaking year ago. *sigh*

New batch up – I am committed to catching up with the present sometime real soon! Start here.

When you’re out for a meal, and your server has clearly marked you as not worth his/her effort (i.e. lavishing attention on tables around you and ignoring you for uncomfortably long stretches of time), do you tip poorly and confirm the server’s instincts, or do you tip well in an attempt to provoke shame or a change of attitude towards future diners?

Bonus question, from a different recent experience of mine: Have you ever had a server arbitrarily refuse to take your meal order? We went out to eat after Alice’s recital on Saturday (which was lovely, thanks), and the waitress came over after we’d had a few minutes to look at the menu. She asked us for our drink orders and we said we were ready to order our food as well and she refused to take anything but our drink orders. Five minutes later she brought the drinks and asked us if we were ready to order our meals. I was not impressed.

More pictures up today, starting here.

There’s a new batch of pictures up, starting here. This finishes up Movie Camp and brings us past the halfway point for 2009. *sigh*

I have Sammy home with me today. She popped a 101°F fever yesterday afternoon, along with complaining about vague symptoms like slight dizziness and a small tummy ache. She seems to feel totally fine today, but the school’s policy is no school within 24 hours of a fever, so I’m keeping her home to rest today. Please cross your fingers that Alice doesn’t get sick — her recital’s on Saturday!!

Since I have Sammy with me, I can’t really concentrate on anything — the TV is on, and I am being interrupted every few minutes with various Sammy issues or questions. So I’m trying to sort through a huge backlog of links that I’d saved “for later” in the past 6 months or so. Bleh.

Anyway, allow me to share something to mess with your head a little, so you won’t be able to concentrate on anything either. I present to you “Prisencolinensinainciusol”. These lyrics, written entirely in gibberish, have been said to resemble what English sounds like to a non-English speaker. I experienced a pleasant sensation in my brain when listening to it; it almost made me remember what it was like to be pre-verbal. There is a version of the video linked in the YouTube sidebar called “Prisencolinensinainciusol with English subtitles”, but I don’t recommend you click it — it just puts sound-alike words to the actual lyrics, which might make it harder for you to hear the lyrics as non-words thereafter.

Thank you internet. I know I take you for granted, but I want to thank you today, for letting me obsessively watch and rewatch a brief scene from an obscure (out of print) movie that has caught my fancy. Thank you for providing a fanatically detailed Wikipedia synopsis of the book I started but don’t want to finish; now I can read what happens without having to read what happens. I’m not so grateful for all of the ways you addict and distract me, but I do appreciate your genuine usefulness.

Okay, first of all, Happy Star Wars Day!! (May the fourth, get it? May the fourth be with you? Get it?? GET IT?!?)

We are skipping a commitment this morning, because yesterday kind of sucked (3-hour meeting after school, then absolutely necessary errands that resulted in me getting the kids “home from school” at 8:55 pm) and tomorrow’s going to kind of suck (3½ hour ballet practice* for Alice which will necessitate an early school pull-out just to give me enough time to feed and prep her beforehand). Today, therefore, needs to be full of gentle, restful experiences or I’m going to go freaking loony.

(*Her recital is on Saturday, so Wednesday is the last class, and then there’s a 3-hour dress rehearsal on Friday (another early school pickup), and then after the recital we’re freeeeee until September!!)

The kids do have yearly eye exams this afternoon — we stopped by there last week for a routine session of glasses-chiropracty, and when I happened to ask when the kids were due for their checkup, hey, it turns out they were due 6 weeks ago! They’re a bit behind on sending out postcards, apparently. Heh. Anyway, Sammy definitely needs new glasses, because the frames are falling apart and the lenses are so scratched up that it’s probably affecting her vision.