The picture was taken with the DigiMicro USB digital microscope Karen gave me as part of my Christmas present. Now I can include the tiny turtles! What other tiny things do I need to show?
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday
A tiny jade (I think) turtle that Poss gave to me. It's almost 3/8th inch long.
The picture was taken with the DigiMicro USB digital microscope Karen gave me as part of my Christmas present. Now I can include the tiny turtles! What other tiny things do I need to show?
The picture was taken with the DigiMicro USB digital microscope Karen gave me as part of my Christmas present. Now I can include the tiny turtles! What other tiny things do I need to show?
Labels:
art,
turtle tchotchke tuesday
Monday, December 29, 2008
New Multifunction Printer
The very old HP inkjet printer we had for our color printing was not playing well with all of our new computers. Windows Vista doesn't play well with much of anything older than it is and our MacBook Air computers seemed to get stymied by the little print server doo-dad that put the printer on the network. The little Dell Mini running Linux was completely flummoxed by the print server doo-dad. That left a couple of notebook computers running Windows XP that could use the printer and we don't use those computers any longer!
We needed to get a modern color printer. Off to Costco we went.
We came home with a Canon PIXMA MP980. This is a nifty printer. It connects to our wireless network and all of our computers can use it. (Well, I haven't tried the Linux system yet and, since I now have a Mac, I don't use it much.) It has six ink cartridges (including gray) for our photo-printing pleasure. It copies. It scans. It scans slides! So I got to free up some real estate by replacing the old printer and scanner with one, smaller device. Ain't technology grand?!
Did I say it scans slides? I had to try that feature out. You might have heard that I have thousands of family slides that need scanning. Here are the next 100!
As we saw last time, Jack has gotten shutter happy. We're now getting a lot of pictures of the same event with little or no change in the cast of characters from slide to slide. Mom suggested that I could scan only a small portion of the slides. Up to now there weren't many duplicates. But the problem with deciding which to scan pretty much requires scanning them to see which to scan. So they're still all getting scanned. I suppose I could get a little previewer to weed out the pictures that are blurry or badly composed versions of more successful pictures.
In the middle of these pictures is the first (and only, so far) picture with all five kids.
Jack still hasn't made an appearance with Karen.
Here's Karen!
We needed to get a modern color printer. Off to Costco we went.
We came home with a Canon PIXMA MP980. This is a nifty printer. It connects to our wireless network and all of our computers can use it. (Well, I haven't tried the Linux system yet and, since I now have a Mac, I don't use it much.) It has six ink cartridges (including gray) for our photo-printing pleasure. It copies. It scans. It scans slides! So I got to free up some real estate by replacing the old printer and scanner with one, smaller device. Ain't technology grand?!
Did I say it scans slides? I had to try that feature out. You might have heard that I have thousands of family slides that need scanning. Here are the next 100!
As we saw last time, Jack has gotten shutter happy. We're now getting a lot of pictures of the same event with little or no change in the cast of characters from slide to slide. Mom suggested that I could scan only a small portion of the slides. Up to now there weren't many duplicates. But the problem with deciding which to scan pretty much requires scanning them to see which to scan. So they're still all getting scanned. I suppose I could get a little previewer to weed out the pictures that are blurry or badly composed versions of more successful pictures.
In the middle of these pictures is the first (and only, so far) picture with all five kids.
Jack still hasn't made an appearance with Karen.
Here's Karen!
Carousel-08 |
Labels:
family,
gadgets,
memories,
slide project
Thursday, December 25, 2008
First Christmas with all five kids
Merry Christmas (plus 45)!
We're up to the seventh carousel of slides. This has a few pictures of Christmas, 1963. All five of us are here (but never all together at the same time in any picture).
Carousels 1 through 6 go from August, 1949, to December, 1963. That averages two years and four months per carousel of 100 slides. With this volume Jack has become a picture-taking maniac. We have only two months of our lives here.
Carousel-07 |
That was some fur coat our grandmother had. The last picture in the group has her smiling with teeth showing. She always seems to have a rather grim expression so that one is a nice surprise.
What happened to cousin Danny's eye?
Here is an article from The New Mexican that tells about the plane ride we took. The caption for the picture was for another family that also took the ride. I guess they decided after they laid out the page that ours was a more attactive family so they used our picture. They just didn't get around to rewriting the caption.
We were the first family to fly and there was some difficulty getting things going. So they gave us a longer ride than the 20 minutes we were supposed to get to make up for our long wait.
We were the first family to fly and there was some difficulty getting things going. So they gave us a longer ride than the 20 minutes we were supposed to get to make up for our long wait.
Labels:
christmas,
memories,
slide project
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday, Special Christmas Edition
Here are the turtles on our tree! Some have already been featured in this space.
A Jay Strongwater ornament.
A Christopher Radko ornament.
A metal and enamel ornament.
An unsigned gourd. (A gift from Peggy and Michele)
A gourd signed something like "D Meyer 1999" (It's probably Denise Meyers but her web site is broken when I wrote this. The site shows up (without pictures) in Google's cache.)
A gourd by Robert Rivera.
No tree is complete without a herd of turtles!
A Jay Strongwater ornament.
A Christopher Radko ornament.
A metal and enamel ornament.
An unsigned gourd. (A gift from Peggy and Michele)
A gourd signed something like "D Meyer 1999" (It's probably Denise Meyers but her web site is broken when I wrote this. The site shows up (without pictures) in Google's cache.)
A gourd by Robert Rivera.
No tree is complete without a herd of turtles!
Labels:
art,
ornaments,
tchotchkes,
turtle tchotchke tuesday
Monday, December 22, 2008
MLM: All I want for Christmas
Showing old letters to Santa seems to be a common thing to do this time of the year. I hope seeing a few more doesn't cause too much anguish.
When I was planning this post I was thinking that I would be griping about the process of having to write these letters to Santa that never produced the desired results. I thought that it had been a futile effort but it turns out that I actually did get some of the things I asked for. How about that?
Here is my letter from 1958 that I dictated to Mom.
A look back at the pictures of Christmas, 1958, shows that I did get a train! YAY, SANTA! I don't know if I got the stylish brown jeans.
I had to print my letter for 1960 myself.
I got a Dennis the Menace doll sometime but I don't see him in the 1960 pictures. Let's assume that Santa came through for me that year (and years later for Izzy when she sold the box it came in for a tidy sum on eBay).
But I did have a major disappointment that year. I really wanted the Mr. Machine (you'll notice it's first on my list). It was introduced that year so maybe it was the must-have toy of the year and Mom and Dad just couldn't wrest one from another shopper at the local TG&Y. Or maybe they realized that it had an annoying bell that rang constantly. I saw one a few years ago at a local antique store but it was just too late. Watch this commercial for Mr. Machine on YouTube and you'll understand my disappointment.
In 1965 I got more helpful in my letter. I gave Santa the prices (from the Sears catalog) of all the things I wanted. (Why would Santa need to have prices? He has elves making these things!) I checked off the items I got. I scored three times!
I don't remember the Jr. Chef Mixer (for the fantastic price of $6.66!) but it's got a check mark. I was a junior chef! And I got the Mouse Trap game. Did that finally leave the building in the Crapture after only 42 years? I couldn't remember what the Crazy Clock Game was but thank goodness again for YouTube (and TimeWarp Vintage Toys)! That was a silly toy.
Years later I got some toy slot machines from Edmund Scientifics when I could appreciate them more. They were a good introduction to probability.
I hope Santa brings you much of what you want for Christmas this year. Especially world peace.
When I was planning this post I was thinking that I would be griping about the process of having to write these letters to Santa that never produced the desired results. I thought that it had been a futile effort but it turns out that I actually did get some of the things I asked for. How about that?
Here is my letter from 1958 that I dictated to Mom.
A look back at the pictures of Christmas, 1958, shows that I did get a train! YAY, SANTA! I don't know if I got the stylish brown jeans.
I had to print my letter for 1960 myself.
I got a Dennis the Menace doll sometime but I don't see him in the 1960 pictures. Let's assume that Santa came through for me that year (and years later for Izzy when she sold the box it came in for a tidy sum on eBay).
But I did have a major disappointment that year. I really wanted the Mr. Machine (you'll notice it's first on my list). It was introduced that year so maybe it was the must-have toy of the year and Mom and Dad just couldn't wrest one from another shopper at the local TG&Y. Or maybe they realized that it had an annoying bell that rang constantly. I saw one a few years ago at a local antique store but it was just too late. Watch this commercial for Mr. Machine on YouTube and you'll understand my disappointment.
In 1965 I got more helpful in my letter. I gave Santa the prices (from the Sears catalog) of all the things I wanted. (Why would Santa need to have prices? He has elves making these things!) I checked off the items I got. I scored three times!
I don't remember the Jr. Chef Mixer (for the fantastic price of $6.66!) but it's got a check mark. I was a junior chef! And I got the Mouse Trap game. Did that finally leave the building in the Crapture after only 42 years? I couldn't remember what the Crazy Clock Game was but thank goodness again for YouTube (and TimeWarp Vintage Toys)! That was a silly toy.
Years later I got some toy slot machines from Edmund Scientifics when I could appreciate them more. They were a good introduction to probability.
I hope Santa brings you much of what you want for Christmas this year. Especially world peace.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
More Christmas pictures from childhood
Here is the sixth of the carousels of slides.
We have the rest of the pictures of us being photographed actually having fun. I still find that very odd but it's nice to see that we were allowed to be kids once in a while.
Then we have two Christmases with the Ramirezes, 1961 in Los Alamos then 1962 in California. In 1961 the blocks that the fortresses are still being made from arrive. I thought that the ones from 1955 looked chunkier than the ones that survive (but everybody else seemed to be sure that they were the ones so I kept my mouth shut). But 47 years (and counting) is an impressive lifetime for cardboard blocks.
Then the family is complete! Karen makes her appearance!
We even get a few pictures of Dad in this set. Blurry sometimes, but he's there.
We have the rest of the pictures of us being photographed actually having fun. I still find that very odd but it's nice to see that we were allowed to be kids once in a while.
Then we have two Christmases with the Ramirezes, 1961 in Los Alamos then 1962 in California. In 1961 the blocks that the fortresses are still being made from arrive. I thought that the ones from 1955 looked chunkier than the ones that survive (but everybody else seemed to be sure that they were the ones so I kept my mouth shut). But 47 years (and counting) is an impressive lifetime for cardboard blocks.
Then the family is complete! Karen makes her appearance!
We even get a few pictures of Dad in this set. Blurry sometimes, but he's there.
Carousel-06 |
Labels:
memories,
slide project
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Thaï-ï-ï-ï-ï...
Today we went down to Mira Mesa to see the Metropolitan Opera's broadcast of "Thaïs" in High Definition. Things were going well. Athanaël had gotten spiffed up and was ready to try to convert Thaïs. Just as Thaïs (sung by the latest Lacroix supermodel, Renée Fleming) was about to make her appearance things changed to very low definition. No sound, very few pixels, no picture, snippets of sound, a few pixels.
Someone came in and hollered that they were going to let it continue like this till the intermission when they'd reestablish their connection with the satellite. When the intermission was about to end he came back and said that things were hopeless. We could stay and enjoy the big pixels and no sound or we could get a refund or exchange for the replay on January 7.
We're going to try again on the 7th . Wish us luck.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
MLM: Miss Ketola and other terrors in the library
Librarians always seemed to be terrorizing me. Was it just me or did they have issues with all children, those little defilers of their sacred temples? Or did they have special, unwritten rules for the little boys?
At Pueblo Junior High School the librarian was Miss Helen Ketola. She was the epitome of scary librarians. Here is her picture from my 8th grade yearbook (that I had modified slightly):
At Los Alamos High School we didn't have a library. We had an "Instructional Materials Center" (what we called "the IMC").
The head of thelibrary's IMC's Code Enforcement Department was Mrs. Arntzen.
I really don't remember much about Mrs. Arntzen. The reason I remember anything about her was because an English class assignment. I don't know what we were studying. It could have been English poetry. For the assignment I wrote a parody of "The Constant Lover" by Sir John Suckling. I called it "The Constant Shover/Ode to Miss Arntzen" (I thought all librarians were unmarried). The premise was that if you broke any IMC rule, you were summarily shoved out of the building by Ms. Arntzen. Who amongst us hasn't broken a library rule? She was a busy woman.
Lucky for you I didn't keep a copy of my poem. It wasn't very good but it was well received by the class. Apparently they had similar feelings about Ms. Arntzen. All I remember about the poem was the title and that it ended with her shoving "A dozen dozen from their place."
I'm outta here!
There are a couple of incidents with Miss Ketola that haunt me.
One day I was reading in the library and had my feet on the chair on the other side of the table. Miss Ketola came up to me and flung a rag on the table in front of me, told me that chairs were not for feet and demanded that I dust it off. I dusted it and NEVER put my feet on a chair in her library ever again. The lesson was a good one but I think that the method was a bit extreme.
Then one day I was looking for something like "The World Almanac and Book of Facts." I wanted to know when something like an eclipse or meteor shower was going to happen. I asked Miss Ketola something like "Where are the almanacs that tell me what's going to happen?" Her answer was "You stupid child, almanacs can't tell you what will happen! They tell what happened in the previous year!" (She didn't say quite those words but that was the tone of her answer.) I was so stunned that I couldn't explain that I knew the almanac would have the information I was looking for and still wanted to look something up. I left with my tail between my legs.
I must have made peace with Miss Ketola. At some point of my stay at Pueblo I worked behind the desk at the library. I don't know how I got that job. Was it an honor or penance?
I must have made peace with Miss Ketola. At some point of my stay at Pueblo I worked behind the desk at the library. I don't know how I got that job. Was it an honor or penance?
There was a bit of terror in the junior high library that I brought on myself. There was a book on taxidermy that I checked out. I thought it might be kind of neat to stuff my own small mammals and frogs. It got scarier and scarier as I read through it. You have to kill the animals! They suggested several ways. There was putting them in a jar with ether. That put them to sleep then suffocated them. That was a peaceful way for them to go. A quicker way was to poison them with cyanide. "Just run down to your local drugstore and ask the pharmacist for a bottle. Be very careful with it. Just a tiny bit on your tongue will kill you almost instantly." I didn't want to kill little animals it turned out and I didn't want to kill myself. That was the end of my taxidermy career.
Back then could you really get cyanide at your local drugstore? Or even ether?
Back then could you really get cyanide at your local drugstore? Or even ether?
At Los Alamos High School we didn't have a library. We had an "Instructional Materials Center" (what we called "the IMC").
The head of the
I really don't remember much about Mrs. Arntzen. The reason I remember anything about her was because an English class assignment. I don't know what we were studying. It could have been English poetry. For the assignment I wrote a parody of "The Constant Lover" by Sir John Suckling. I called it "The Constant Shover/Ode to Miss Arntzen" (I thought all librarians were unmarried). The premise was that if you broke any IMC rule, you were summarily shoved out of the building by Ms. Arntzen. Who amongst us hasn't broken a library rule? She was a busy woman.
Lucky for you I didn't keep a copy of my poem. It wasn't very good but it was well received by the class. Apparently they had similar feelings about Ms. Arntzen. All I remember about the poem was the title and that it ended with her shoving "A dozen dozen from their place."
I'm outta here!
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Someone to mooch from?
Google sends me messages telling me when keywords show up in news articles. Yesterday I got a link to this article. Is he related? If he makes it to the big times do you suppose we can get good seats at his concerts?
Labels:
family
Friday, December 5, 2008
Time Flies
I've got to get a life. Here, already, are the next 100 glimpses of our lives.
We have Christmas, 1959, followed by a single slide of Jack in his skivvies on a hunting trip, followed by Christmas, 1960.
I love the matching jammies my sisters got to wear (but I don't see how they could have slept with all that glare). The Christmas 1959 pictures were overexposed. I tried to fix them up but you can do only so much tweaking before the dust on the slides becomes the main feature.
The next Christmas we all have matching jammy bottoms.
Then we're off to Dayton, Ohio. Was that trip the only time I've ever seen fireflies? Or was that some other time?
The last series of pictures in this batch has us clowning around. That seems strange. What happened that made that kind of behavior unacceptable? The pink isn't my fault...I guess Jack got some bargain film. Maybe I should have turned them into black and white.
We have Christmas, 1959, followed by a single slide of Jack in his skivvies on a hunting trip, followed by Christmas, 1960.
I love the matching jammies my sisters got to wear (but I don't see how they could have slept with all that glare). The Christmas 1959 pictures were overexposed. I tried to fix them up but you can do only so much tweaking before the dust on the slides becomes the main feature.
The next Christmas we all have matching jammy bottoms.
Then we're off to Dayton, Ohio. Was that trip the only time I've ever seen fireflies? Or was that some other time?
The last series of pictures in this batch has us clowning around. That seems strange. What happened that made that kind of behavior unacceptable? The pink isn't my fault...I guess Jack got some bargain film. Maybe I should have turned them into black and white.
Update: I decided to change the pink pictures to black and white. I'm thinking that the film was monochrome but somehow the processor made them pink. The final pictures don't look like they came from faded color originals.
Carousel-05 |
Labels:
memories,
slide project
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Yet more adorable children
Here is the next carousel of slides. We go from Christmas, 1957, to August, 1959. We look like we enjoyed each other. I wish that Dad would have let someone else take an occasional picture with him in it. I wonder what he looked like through these years.
Carousel-04 |
Labels:
memories,
slide project
Monday, December 1, 2008
MLM: Who?
One day at college I got the following certificate in my mailbox.
I don't know who nominated me, what meritorious accomplishments I achieved, nor who voted to include me. But, gosh, I was elected to Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges! Once again my name was misspelled so I'm not sure that it really counts.
I passed up the opportunity to buy a copy of the book that included my (misspelled) name. I haven't regretted that decision for a moment. I could have submitted a biography (for a fee) but I passed on that opportunity, too. I could have included this honor on my resume but I forgot to.
I wonder who does the fact checking on the biographies the honorees submit for themselves.
I don't know who nominated me, what meritorious accomplishments I achieved, nor who voted to include me. But, gosh, I was elected to Who's Who Among Students in American Universities & Colleges! Once again my name was misspelled so I'm not sure that it really counts.
I passed up the opportunity to buy a copy of the book that included my (misspelled) name. I haven't regretted that decision for a moment. I could have submitted a biography (for a fee) but I passed on that opportunity, too. I could have included this honor on my resume but I forgot to.
I wonder who does the fact checking on the biographies the honorees submit for themselves.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Fa-la-la-la-la la-la la la!
It's Thanksgiving weekend and that can mean only one thing: overeating and decorating a tree. Two things! Overeating, decorating a tree, and shopping. Three things!
Yesterday, Thanksgiving, we set up the tree. We have an artificial tree that is strung with lights. We just have to take it out of the box, put the sections on the stand and plug each section's lights into the lower lower section's line.
Jerry rearranged the family room a bit. The chaise longue portion of the sofa got moved into the bedroom and the recliners shifted into the space that that made.
Here's the newly emptied space:
Here's the first section of the tree:
And the second:
And the last section with the lights burning:
We then paused to give thanks. Jerry's cousin moved to Las Vegas so we had to start a new Thanksgiving tradition. We fixed the whole spread for just the two of us. Jerry got us a Tofurky roast (Oh, look, it's made by Turtle Island Foods! Is that cool, or what?) that was roasted with carrots from our garden. We made dressing (from cornbread made from corn we ground ourselves), mashed potatoes (well, butter with some potatoes to keep it from being too runny), green bean casserole (what Thanksgiving dinner is complete without green bean casserole?), cranberries and French Silk pie (we haven't come down with salmonella poisoning yet).
Today we stimulated the economy at the Arts 'n Crafts fair at Bates Nut Farm. Our usual post-Thanksgiving Arts Festival wasn't done this year. Shoot!
We came home and napped. Then we decorated the tree. Here's the finished tree.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
Yesterday, Thanksgiving, we set up the tree. We have an artificial tree that is strung with lights. We just have to take it out of the box, put the sections on the stand and plug each section's lights into the lower lower section's line.
Jerry rearranged the family room a bit. The chaise longue portion of the sofa got moved into the bedroom and the recliners shifted into the space that that made.
Here's the newly emptied space:
Here's the first section of the tree:
And the second:
And the last section with the lights burning:
We then paused to give thanks. Jerry's cousin moved to Las Vegas so we had to start a new Thanksgiving tradition. We fixed the whole spread for just the two of us. Jerry got us a Tofurky roast (Oh, look, it's made by Turtle Island Foods! Is that cool, or what?) that was roasted with carrots from our garden. We made dressing (from cornbread made from corn we ground ourselves), mashed potatoes (well, butter with some potatoes to keep it from being too runny), green bean casserole (what Thanksgiving dinner is complete without green bean casserole?), cranberries and French Silk pie (we haven't come down with salmonella poisoning yet).
Today we stimulated the economy at the Arts 'n Crafts fair at Bates Nut Farm. Our usual post-Thanksgiving Arts Festival wasn't done this year. Shoot!
We came home and napped. Then we decorated the tree. Here's the finished tree.
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!
Labels:
home improvement
A little autumn color
My Haemanthus albiflos is blooming. It is a confused plant. It doesn't really know when to bloom. I remember that it was blooming around my birthday one year. It blooms when it wants to. It knows best.
It's got white petals (or are they bracts?) with a bunch of bright yellow stamens poking out. I gave it a bigger pot this year and I think it appreciated that. It's putting on its best show ever.
It's got white petals (or are they bracts?) with a bunch of bright yellow stamens poking out. I gave it a bigger pot this year and I think it appreciated that. It's putting on its best show ever.
Labels:
gardening
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
MLM: NOT (thank God!) Another Priest in the Family!
Peggy tells me when I was very young that I was introduced to one of our relatives on the religious side of the family. She exclaimed "Another priest in the family!" I have no idea who that was but she must have been disappointed. Religion and I never got together.
I went through the motions for a while because I didn't have much of a choice. When you are born to a Catholic parent you are raised a Catholic.
The best thing about growing up Catholic (until Vatican II changed the rules) was that I couldn't eat meat on Fridays. I got to eat more peanut butter! Yay, Friday! (Oh, my! I just checked and apparently it's a myth that Vatican II let us eat meat on Friday! Oh, well.) I went to Neil Gardner's birthday party one year that happened to be on a Friday. Mrs. Gardner served hot dogs. Later that day I realized that I had committed a mortal sin. I was terrified. I wonder if I confessed that. Was Mrs. Gardner trying to send this Catholic to hell?
One of the worst things about growing up Catholic was having to go to catechism class every week after school. Didn't they know that kids would rather play after school?
In our early years we got to memorize the answers to many questions so that we could prove to the priest that we deserved to take our First Communion. Later, we got to memorize answers to many questions to prove that we deserved to get our Confirmation. One of the things that we do when we get confirmed is take the name of a saint who is special to us. I didn't know one saint from another. (Did they teach us about saints? Did I miss that lesson?) Beth had been appalled that none of the boys in her group had taken the Archbishop's name so I took the Archbishop's name. What was the Archbishop's name?
I think that this is one of the tests I took that prepared me for confirmation. I aced it!
The catechism teacher gave me a good assessment (but she couldn't spell my name).
When she sent us off to summer vacation, she gave us a little card with reminders of what to do after we were released from her care.
There is no record of my going to mass on First Fridays or any other times. And my parent or guardian didn't attest to my fulfilling these duties. I'm off to hell.
Sometime during my catechism career, I was taken from class to be a model in a photo shoot. I have no idea what the pictures were going to be used for but I got a copy of one of them! I'm fiddling with a little model of an altar or something. How inspiring!
I'm the one on the left. I don't know who the others are. I don't know what I did to deserve this honor.
Another honor I had was to have my birthday fall on the Feast of the Ascension, a Holy Day of Obligation, a couple of times. Geez! I had to go to church on my birthday and it wasn't even a Sunday! NOT FAIR!
Around the seventh or eighth grade I somehow got to make the decision that I wasn't going to go to church anymore. How did I get to decide that? Children can't decide things like that for themselves.
Except for weddings and funerals, the last time I can remember going to church was when we visited Tucumcari and I went along to let our grandmother see that she had good grandkids following the right path.
I went through the motions for a while because I didn't have much of a choice. When you are born to a Catholic parent you are raised a Catholic.
The best thing about growing up Catholic (until Vatican II changed the rules) was that I couldn't eat meat on Fridays. I got to eat more peanut butter! Yay, Friday! (Oh, my! I just checked and apparently it's a myth that Vatican II let us eat meat on Friday! Oh, well.) I went to Neil Gardner's birthday party one year that happened to be on a Friday. Mrs. Gardner served hot dogs. Later that day I realized that I had committed a mortal sin. I was terrified. I wonder if I confessed that. Was Mrs. Gardner trying to send this Catholic to hell?
One of the worst things about growing up Catholic was having to go to catechism class every week after school. Didn't they know that kids would rather play after school?
In our early years we got to memorize the answers to many questions so that we could prove to the priest that we deserved to take our First Communion. Later, we got to memorize answers to many questions to prove that we deserved to get our Confirmation. One of the things that we do when we get confirmed is take the name of a saint who is special to us. I didn't know one saint from another. (Did they teach us about saints? Did I miss that lesson?) Beth had been appalled that none of the boys in her group had taken the Archbishop's name so I took the Archbishop's name. What was the Archbishop's name?
I think that this is one of the tests I took that prepared me for confirmation. I aced it!
The catechism teacher gave me a good assessment (but she couldn't spell my name).
When she sent us off to summer vacation, she gave us a little card with reminders of what to do after we were released from her care.
There is no record of my going to mass on First Fridays or any other times. And my parent or guardian didn't attest to my fulfilling these duties. I'm off to hell.
Sometime during my catechism career, I was taken from class to be a model in a photo shoot. I have no idea what the pictures were going to be used for but I got a copy of one of them! I'm fiddling with a little model of an altar or something. How inspiring!
I'm the one on the left. I don't know who the others are. I don't know what I did to deserve this honor.
Another honor I had was to have my birthday fall on the Feast of the Ascension, a Holy Day of Obligation, a couple of times. Geez! I had to go to church on my birthday and it wasn't even a Sunday! NOT FAIR!
Around the seventh or eighth grade I somehow got to make the decision that I wasn't going to go to church anymore. How did I get to decide that? Children can't decide things like that for themselves.
Except for weddings and funerals, the last time I can remember going to church was when we visited Tucumcari and I went along to let our grandmother see that she had good grandkids following the right path.
Labels:
confessions,
mlm
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Halloween, Christmas, Birthdays, Christmas, Christmas
Here's the third carousel of family slides. Halloween, 1955, from the second set continues. Then we see Christmas and a couple of birthdays.
Then we run into a little trouble...mostly naked little girls. They make me nervous so I blacked out a lot of them. I don't want to contribute to sick people's fantasies.
We're seeing some of the line-up-an-smile! style of picture taking. And there are some pictures of kids not having a good time at Christmas.
Ah, such memories! (Well, not yet for me. I was only two and a half at the end of this set.)
I want to know more about that nifty washing machine in the living room.
Then we run into a little trouble...mostly naked little girls. They make me nervous so I blacked out a lot of them. I don't want to contribute to sick people's fantasies.
Quick update already: The naked girls make me really nervous so they're gone. If any of you grown up girls want to see yourselves in just your panties, let me know.Then more Christmases.
We're seeing some of the line-up-an-smile! style of picture taking. And there are some pictures of kids not having a good time at Christmas.
Ah, such memories! (Well, not yet for me. I was only two and a half at the end of this set.)
Carousel-03 |
I want to know more about that nifty washing machine in the living room.
Labels:
memories,
slide project
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Monday, November 17, 2008
MLM: Taking a bye
I'm tired and won't dredge up a reminiscence this week. (Please see my three previous posts to see why I'm tuckered out.)
Labels:
mlm
Sunday, November 16, 2008
I've been macerating all day and, boy, are my arms tired!
It's that time of the year again...time for The Dreaded Fruitcake.
For several years I've been making fruitcakes using Alton Brown's Free Range Fruitcake recipe. He's tweaked the recipe for his book "I'm Just Here For More Food" (I'm sure you can get it at Otowi Station) and I've followed those tweaks again this year.
Last year I made three fruitcakes. One for Jerry and Me and two for my New Mexican family members to divide four ways. This year I decided to be more ambitious.
Today I made six fruitcakes. One for each of my sisters and my mother. And one for Jerry and me.
The day started with macerating the dried fruit in rum.
After the fruit has plumped up it is cooked in apple juice, apple cider (hard), sugar, and butter.
After it cools for half an hour, eggs are mixed in and the wet ingredients are added to the flours, leavenings, and cinnamon (using the Muffin Method (see AB's book)). The cakes are baked for an hour. After they come out of the oven they are doused with brandy.
Here are the first two fruitcakes.
It was another hot day (it got up to 91°F) so they got baked in the convection oven out in the garden room. I have three big loaf pans so I baked a third cake after the first two came out of the oven.
They have to cool completely before taking them out of the pans so I couldn't bake the other three right away. And big fruitcakes take a long time to cool. But they finally cooled and I got to do it all over again.
This time I baked in the kitchen. It cooled off by evening time so I didn't mind heating up the house. I baked them in two shifts again since I didn't want to crowd the oven.
It's been a long day and I'm beat. The sixth fruitcake is about to come out of the oven and I'll be able to finally take a nap!
So, unless I hear pleas from any of you sisters or mother demanding otherwise, you should be getting a fruitcake in about a month. That's how long it takes for me to finish the process. Brandy spritzes, you know.
For several years I've been making fruitcakes using Alton Brown's Free Range Fruitcake recipe. He's tweaked the recipe for his book "I'm Just Here For More Food" (I'm sure you can get it at Otowi Station) and I've followed those tweaks again this year.
Last year I made three fruitcakes. One for Jerry and Me and two for my New Mexican family members to divide four ways. This year I decided to be more ambitious.
Today I made six fruitcakes. One for each of my sisters and my mother. And one for Jerry and me.
The day started with macerating the dried fruit in rum.
After the fruit has plumped up it is cooked in apple juice, apple cider (hard), sugar, and butter.
After it cools for half an hour, eggs are mixed in and the wet ingredients are added to the flours, leavenings, and cinnamon (using the Muffin Method (see AB's book)). The cakes are baked for an hour. After they come out of the oven they are doused with brandy.
Here are the first two fruitcakes.
It was another hot day (it got up to 91°F) so they got baked in the convection oven out in the garden room. I have three big loaf pans so I baked a third cake after the first two came out of the oven.
They have to cool completely before taking them out of the pans so I couldn't bake the other three right away. And big fruitcakes take a long time to cool. But they finally cooled and I got to do it all over again.
This time I baked in the kitchen. It cooled off by evening time so I didn't mind heating up the house. I baked them in two shifts again since I didn't want to crowd the oven.
It's been a long day and I'm beat. The sixth fruitcake is about to come out of the oven and I'll be able to finally take a nap!
So, unless I hear pleas from any of you sisters or mother demanding otherwise, you should be getting a fruitcake in about a month. That's how long it takes for me to finish the process. Brandy spritzes, you know.
Labels:
kitchen
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Harvest Time
It is autumn and that means pomegranates are getting ripe. Today was pomegranate harvest and canning. Here's the bush before the harvest.
Too bad it didn't perform as well as it did last year. This is the entire harvest.
And here is what was inside the fruits.
The pomegranate is a "Utah Sweet." This type has very sweet, light pinkish pulp and nonstaining pink juice.
I made pomegranate jelly. First I had to get the juice out of the seeds. I fed them through the food strainer attachment of the KitchenAid mixer. I made a little video of the process and shortened it so show only the start and the finish. Blogger's video processor thought it was still too long and sped it up a lot. That's OK, you get the gist of the process. They didn't speed up the audio part. So, if you have 47 seconds to spare, you can watch my latest little movie.
I ended up with 3¼ cups of juice.
The recipe for a batch of jelly calls for 4 cups of juice. Since I knew the harvest was not great, I had a contingency plan. I bought a bottle of Trader Joe's pure pomegranate juice from concentrate. I added some of that to bring the juice up to 4 cups.
I then stood over the hot stove on this hot day (it got up to 88.4 today) stirring the juice, pectin, and sugar and ended up with six half-pint jars of jelly.
Yum!
Too bad it didn't perform as well as it did last year. This is the entire harvest.
And here is what was inside the fruits.
The pomegranate is a "Utah Sweet." This type has very sweet, light pinkish pulp and nonstaining pink juice.
I made pomegranate jelly. First I had to get the juice out of the seeds. I fed them through the food strainer attachment of the KitchenAid mixer. I made a little video of the process and shortened it so show only the start and the finish. Blogger's video processor thought it was still too long and sped it up a lot. That's OK, you get the gist of the process. They didn't speed up the audio part. So, if you have 47 seconds to spare, you can watch my latest little movie.
I ended up with 3¼ cups of juice.
The recipe for a batch of jelly calls for 4 cups of juice. Since I knew the harvest was not great, I had a contingency plan. I bought a bottle of Trader Joe's pure pomegranate juice from concentrate. I added some of that to bring the juice up to 4 cups.
I then stood over the hot stove on this hot day (it got up to 88.4 today) stirring the juice, pectin, and sugar and ended up with six half-pint jars of jelly.
Yum!
Friday, November 14, 2008
Been there, done that
Well, I seem to have had some free time tonight. While doing puzzles and browsing through some New Yorker magazines, I scanned another carousel of slides. The scanner does four slides at a time so there was some time between loads of slides to do something else.
This time we go from Easter, 1952, to Halloween, 1955. As more and more kids arrived, fewer and fewer pictures of the newborns were taken. And, strangely, Bobbie's first Christmas was not photographed (at least not with slides that made it to this carousel).
I hope you have your insulin ready...here comes some major sweetness!
I have this notion that I will catalog all these pictures and put the details in a database that will be used to let people use their favorite browsers to search for pictures containing selected people in special occasions and the likes. So, if anybody can identify the guests at Peggy's birthday party, could you let me know? Email would be fine if we don't want to identify them publicly.
This time we go from Easter, 1952, to Halloween, 1955. As more and more kids arrived, fewer and fewer pictures of the newborns were taken. And, strangely, Bobbie's first Christmas was not photographed (at least not with slides that made it to this carousel).
I hope you have your insulin ready...here comes some major sweetness!
Carousel-02 |
I have this notion that I will catalog all these pictures and put the details in a database that will be used to let people use their favorite browsers to search for pictures containing selected people in special occasions and the likes. So, if anybody can identify the guests at Peggy's birthday party, could you let me know? Email would be fine if we don't want to identify them publicly.
Labels:
memories,
slide project
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
More Picture Torture
Here's another installment of family photo fun. This is the carousel number 1 of the slides. We go from Mom and Dad's wedding day to Peggy's second Christmas. (There are no pictures of her first Christmas here. What's up with that?)
Carousel-01 |
(Somehow I don't think I'll get a whole carousel of 100 slides scanned every two days. I need to take a nap.)
Labels:
memories,
slide project
Sirius XM
The Sirius and XM channels with similar programming were consolidated today. Sirius didn't have a channel devoted to music of the '40s so that is a nice thing to get from XM. Other than that there wasn't much coming from XM that I noticed that I'm excited about.
But you with XM receivers are now getting Met Opera Radio. I am so happy for you! From September to May you'll be hooked to your radio four times a week. Tonight they're broadcasting "La traviata" for the umteenth time this season but I listen again and again. The intermission interviews are always interesting (except when Will Berger gets involved).
Tomorrow you have your last chance to hear Doctor Atomic. Don't miss it. I'll probably listen again but I haven't been thrilled with it. Even seeing it at the broadcast to the movie theaters last weekend didn't help much. The music was interesting but the vocal parts never interested me. Except the Act I finale, "Batter my Heart," was almost interesting. But you Los Alamosers should listen just because it happened there.
Welcome to Met Opera Radio!
But you with XM receivers are now getting Met Opera Radio. I am so happy for you! From September to May you'll be hooked to your radio four times a week. Tonight they're broadcasting "La traviata" for the umteenth time this season but I listen again and again. The intermission interviews are always interesting (except when Will Berger gets involved).
Tomorrow you have your last chance to hear Doctor Atomic. Don't miss it. I'll probably listen again but I haven't been thrilled with it. Even seeing it at the broadcast to the movie theaters last weekend didn't help much. The music was interesting but the vocal parts never interested me. Except the Act I finale, "Batter my Heart," was almost interesting. But you Los Alamosers should listen just because it happened there.
Welcome to Met Opera Radio!
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
A missed opportunity
Today was the 20th Anniversary of Jerry and my becoming the owners of our house. I forgot about that until this afternoon when I was discussing septic systems with Francine at work. How that triggered my memory of the events of 20 years ago I don't know.
I dug through our box of haphazardly (dis)organized pictures with the hopes of finding some pictures of the changes to the house over the years. I found some of the remodeling projects but couldn't find any that showed the house as it was when we moved in. There must be some of those somewhere.
You'll just have to be picturelessly impressed that we've been here 20 whole years. And there's no way we're moving now. There's just too much stuff to pack (see here for a very small sample of what would have to be packed).
Maybe before the next 20 years pass we'll get hooked up to a sewer.
I dug through our box of haphazardly (dis)organized pictures with the hopes of finding some pictures of the changes to the house over the years. I found some of the remodeling projects but couldn't find any that showed the house as it was when we moved in. There must be some of those somewhere.
You'll just have to be picturelessly impressed that we've been here 20 whole years. And there's no way we're moving now. There's just too much stuff to pack (see here for a very small sample of what would have to be packed).
Maybe before the next 20 years pass we'll get hooked up to a sewer.
Labels:
home improvement,
memories
MLM: Edmund Scientific
I loved the Edmund Scientific's catalog when I was a kid. It was filled with all sorts of fascinating stuff. They had scientific toys and fun pseudoscientific stuff (I got my Pyrex crystal ball from them). They had magnets and iron filings that let you see magnetic lines of force.
They had stuff that was way out of my reach that I could only dream about. There were the motor-driven Celestron telescopes with equatorial mounts! There were the oil immersion microscopes.
How I wished we were rich so I could have all of neat things in the catalog.
But it was a thrill getting less expensive things. It started with filling out the order form. You'd enter the quantity, the item's descripton, the catalog number, the unit price, and the total amount for the quantity ordered (usually just the unit price, darn it!). You'd add up all the lines and Mom or Dad would write a check (thanks Mom and Dad!) and send it off.
Then you'd wait.
Some time later the mailman would deliver a package and you'd get to live your dreams!
One of those packages had a set of fluorescent crayons.
I had a black light. This was back in the age of DayGlo posters that lit up spectacularly under black light. But those were for Hippies. I had better use for my black light. I had rocks and minerals that fluoresced (after all, the word comes from fluorite!). But while I was at it, do-it-yourself black light posters were a fun thing to make. Thus the crayons. Cool, huh?
You'll notice that three of the crayons are missing. Well, either Pough or Dough got into my box of fluorescent crayons and ate some of them. This made for an exciting tour of poop patrol duty. Crayons, you know, don't digest. They come out pretty much the way they go in. With a long extension cord and my black light, the bits of crayons in the Pough poo-poo (or the Dough doo-doo) made for easy pickins.
(By the way, I convinced Mom to throw that black light away instead of giving it to Casa Mesita. It had only a little cardboard taped to its back to keep little kids from being electrocuted.)
They had stuff that was way out of my reach that I could only dream about. There were the motor-driven Celestron telescopes with equatorial mounts! There were the oil immersion microscopes.
How I wished we were rich so I could have all of neat things in the catalog.
But it was a thrill getting less expensive things. It started with filling out the order form. You'd enter the quantity, the item's descripton, the catalog number, the unit price, and the total amount for the quantity ordered (usually just the unit price, darn it!). You'd add up all the lines and Mom or Dad would write a check (thanks Mom and Dad!) and send it off.
Then you'd wait.
Some time later the mailman would deliver a package and you'd get to live your dreams!
One of those packages had a set of fluorescent crayons.
I had a black light. This was back in the age of DayGlo posters that lit up spectacularly under black light. But those were for Hippies. I had better use for my black light. I had rocks and minerals that fluoresced (after all, the word comes from fluorite!). But while I was at it, do-it-yourself black light posters were a fun thing to make. Thus the crayons. Cool, huh?
You'll notice that three of the crayons are missing. Well, either Pough or Dough got into my box of fluorescent crayons and ate some of them. This made for an exciting tour of poop patrol duty. Crayons, you know, don't digest. They come out pretty much the way they go in. With a long extension cord and my black light, the bits of crayons in the Pough poo-poo (or the Dough doo-doo) made for easy pickins.
(By the way, I convinced Mom to throw that black light away instead of giving it to Casa Mesita. It had only a little cardboard taped to its back to keep little kids from being electrocuted.)
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Slide Show!
It's finally time to begin the dreaded slide show of our family pictures.
When I helped Mom move stuff from her old house to her new condo, we boxed up all the carousels and trays of the bazillion slides that have been living in the cold room for all these years. I brought them home with me. Well, I missed a box that got lost in the commingled pile of stuff Mom was taking out and the stuff Poss was bringing in.
I spent a couple of hours scanning two trays of slides from the 1940s and put them in my Picasa Web Album. So far there aren't a lot of pictures really worth looking at. The first tray has some wartime pictures that are worthwhile but the second is probably interesting only to those who were there at the time (and since there are few people in the pictures I have no idea who those might be).
These albums probably won't be permanent. I'll replace them with new pictures as I scan them. I'll keep all the pictures and send out DVDs with them to interested people when I get enough to make that worth the trouble.
The names, places, and dates that were written on the slides are the pictures' captions. You can add comments to the pictures where you can correct or enhance the descriptions. I'll try to save the corrections for the final collection of the pictures.
Click on these pictures to be taken to the albums:
When I helped Mom move stuff from her old house to her new condo, we boxed up all the carousels and trays of the bazillion slides that have been living in the cold room for all these years. I brought them home with me. Well, I missed a box that got lost in the commingled pile of stuff Mom was taking out and the stuff Poss was bringing in.
I spent a couple of hours scanning two trays of slides from the 1940s and put them in my Picasa Web Album. So far there aren't a lot of pictures really worth looking at. The first tray has some wartime pictures that are worthwhile but the second is probably interesting only to those who were there at the time (and since there are few people in the pictures I have no idea who those might be).
These albums probably won't be permanent. I'll replace them with new pictures as I scan them. I'll keep all the pictures and send out DVDs with them to interested people when I get enough to make that worth the trouble.
The names, places, and dates that were written on the slides are the pictures' captions. You can add comments to the pictures where you can correct or enhance the descriptions. I'll try to save the corrections for the final collection of the pictures.
Click on these pictures to be taken to the albums:
1940s Tray 1 Wartime pictures and White Sands |
1940s Tray 2 More outings and Highlands Homecoming |
Labels:
family,
memories,
slide project
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