An eventful day
Today, while I was at work:
- Katy took the children to visit a friend at the other end of town and got utterly soaked on the way back. Apparently this involved hail stones and possibly thunder and lightning (according to K). They got a bit lost cutting through a housing estate but discovered a playground near our house. Katy’s plan to do a map to get to the friend’s house may be well received ready for next time.
- J and K had a how-large-can-I-write competition while doing the writing for Badgers about tarantulas and boa constrictors respectively. I learned that boa constrictors give birth to live young (unlike most snakes) and a tarantula bite is no worse than a wasp sting. There may be pictures tomorrow before I whisk them off after work.
- A child sized accordion arrived courtesy of Freecycle. I love Freecycle. This thing is missing a couple of the buttons (as opposed to piano keys) but seems able to produce a racket fairly easily even for L. I need to talk to Dave and/or Beardie about controlling the racket in a harmonious way.
- Maths and English.
I came home and Katy said that we had just got an email that the 2 goldfish on Freecycle are ours, so I’m picking them up tomorrow from work. J, K and L experimented with dangling a skipping rope down through the bannisters on the landing into the hall and then trying to pull each things / people back up. Lifting J wasn’t too successful, but a plastic bag holding books, a shoe and other essentials worked OK.
Tea was a team effort. L chopped up some (cooked) spaghetti left over from yesterday. K grated some cheese with a bit of my help, and J cracked some eggs. I turned them into a cheese and spaghetti omelette of which I managed to not make too much of a pig’s ear. Grammar pedant, moi? 
Yesterday I had a 3.5 hour phone meeting with some German customers. For much of the first hour I browsed the web as someone else was doing the talking, but it was me for the last 2.5 hours. In the browsing I discovered a couple of nice web sites: groovy web site accessories and a way of getting even more images back from a web search. Oh, and an efficient way to compute the convex hull of a set of points, which I often find myself thinking would come in handy when changing nappies or doing the washing up ;).
September 26th, 2007 at 5:56 am
ooh piccie of the accordian please! we have a child-sized one too but it is very small and limited with the chord buttons (only has C, G, F and D). My dad (and I learnt as a teen) has a huge one, comes in very handy at carol singing time of year
September 26th, 2007 at 10:06 am
I am often tempted by an accordian. I have a friend that was a world something or other at the accoridan, and she was fab, but I always felt intimidated by it. I would like one to learn carols on!!
September 26th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Surely a REAL grammar pedant would have an omelette of which one managed “not to” make too much of a pig’s ear.
Latin didn’t have split infinitives, so neither should we. As the old saying goes, it’s too much up with which to put. (Sarcasm). Lest there be any doubt (would that there were no doubt at all!) - indeed, with all doubt having been eradicated - I’m not actually a great fan of Latin dictating what we supposedly “should” do in English.
Re accordion: am completely out of touch/practice (and never was much good anyway), though I keep threatening to get it out of the cupboard for our little one to liven us up with. Oh, sorry, with which for our little one to liven us up. No, no, up with which for our little one to liven us.
See, it doesn’t work…
September 26th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Excellent quotes from the wikipedia entry on accordions:
Famous anti-accordion comments include: “A gentleman is a man who can play the piano accordion… and doesn’t”, “The best way to play the piano accordion is with a pen-knife” (attributed to Christy Moore) and “An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of the assassin” (From Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary).
September 30th, 2007 at 10:14 pm
My kids are mostly through a long phase of tying things to other things (I only recently removed a tights’ leg from the bannisters, which has been there for years), but the other day I was in the garden hanging out the clothes when down came a blackbird and pecked … no, no, start again …. hanging out *some washing* when I suddenly noticed a Barbie car being lowered out of Violet’s window. Later when I looked, the car had gone, but a Barbie doll was suspended a couple of feet from the ground.
We watched an anaconda (iirc) giving birth once (on telly) - quite amazing.