Twenty-Eight Meals

Starting in January I will go from 20 hrs/week to 32 hrs/week. I’ve been 20 hrs a week ever since Calvin has been born and I’m definitely ready to increase. However, the work reason I’m increasing is we’ll be doing a major migration of the integrated library system (catalog) next fall and I need to work more to get ready for it. My tentative idea is to get up around 6 each day, work until it’s time to get Calvin up. Then I’ll take a break for breakfast, drop Calvin off at school, and then work some more until it’s time to pick Calvin up. In addition, I plan to stop doing regular work on Sunday and instead switch back to a traditional Monday-Friday schedule1.

My biggest concern at the moment is where I’m going to fit household tasks in. Right now, Monday is my “day off” and I use it to pay bills, balance the checkbook, run household errands, etc. I’ll be switching that to Sunday. Right now, after I finish work on Sundays I usually sit down and prepare my menu for the week and then go grocery shopping. This takes a ridiculous amount of time. I can easily spend an hour meal planning and then a couple hours shopping. In preparation for my hours increasing, I decided I should see if I could streamline meal planning and shopping.

This weekend I came up with 28 meals that I hope can be repeated without wearing them out too fast. You can see it here. I also wrote down every single ingredient needed for the meal and then sorted the ingredients by location in the store2. This way, when I’m making my grocery list, I can see what ingredients I need to buy for the week and put them on my list in the correct order. Since I grocery shop on Sunday, I have each week go from Monday-Sunday so I always have ingredients for the current days meal on hand3.

I’m not sure if this menu plan will work out or not. Nor, am I sure what this will do to our grocery bill. However, hopefully my scheme works out well.

  1. This will actually be the first time in my professional career where I don’t work Sundays. I started working most Sundays as a reference librarian to compensate for never working Saturdays. Others viewed Sundays as less popular to work because you only work 4 hrs so you had to make up the additional 4 hrs some other way. As a result, the other librarians were very amenable to me never working Saturdays since I took the dreaded Sunday rotation off everyone else’s schedule. When I transferred to IT, I was use to working Sundays and since we’re closed Sunday mornings, it was a great time to do server maintenance ↩
  2. The Indian meals use a huge number of spices so ingredients list looks intimidating but most of them are relatively fast to put together. Since Jaeger likes Indian food so much I have a special spice carousel dedicated to Indian spices. ↩
  3. Worst case, this allows me to wait to grocery shop till Calvin is in bed. I used home delivery for a while but had trouble getting my orders in. I’m not convinced I want to go back to home delivery, sometimes I had trouble getting them to delivery exactly what I wanted, but this meal plan should make it easier either way. ↩

Afterglow

Occasionally, once every couple of years, I read a book that induces a drug-like euphoria. These aren’t necessarily fine works of fiction, in fact I don’t think fine works of fiction have ever fallen into this category. The books are almost always space opera with very strong female characters. Sometimes there’s a touch of romance but not always. I don’t know exactly what it is about these books but after I finish reading them I feel like my soul has been refreshed.

This evening I finished reading Fortune’s Pawn, by Rachel Bach. Devi Morris is a mercenary who has grown up on a feudal-based world. She’s a peasant but is a very good fighter and has advanced rapidly through the ranks. However, what she really wants is to be a Devastator, one of the king’s elite bodyguard. To achieve that goal, she’s willing to do pretty much anything including signing up for security duty on a ship that has a reputation for being cursed.

The book is written in first person, which I normally avoid like the plague. Our library subscribes to a service called Wowbrary which sends me weekly emails of new stuff our libraries order. I saw Fortune’s Pawn and decided to request it in spite of, or perhaps because of, Publisher Weekly’s lackluster review1. In addition, the author had written a fantasy series, under a different name2, that I thought was pretty good.

I’m very glad I gave the book a chance. It’s not a deep-thinking book at all. Devi isn’t overly deep and doesn’t aspire to be deep either. There’s a bit of mystery, a bit of romance, and quite a lot of blowing things up. The book ends without resolving much of the plot3 but Amazon claims the next two books will be out toward the beginning of next year so hopefully they’re already written and everything works out for Devi beautifully. Everyone views books differently so it’s hard to say for sure what type of reader would like this book. However, I think if you like David Weber’s Path of the Fury4, you’d probably like this book too.

As an aside, this book was published by Orbit and they seem to be putting out quite a bit of stuff that I like recently. Hopefully the trend continues.

  1. I’m not convinced Publisher Weekly has a SF reader writing their SF reviews as I’ve disagreed with several of the reviews I’ve seen from them recently. Of course, everyone has different opinions and this book certainly isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. However, I recall one review recently where they thought the SF book was revolutionary and it really wasn’t even close to revolutionary for a SF book. ↩
  2. The Eli Monpress series written under the name Rachel Aaron ↩
  3. Which normally I hate but while the major plot thread is hanging I think the book itself resolved ok. ↩
  4. The original Alicia Dierdre DeVries book, not the much expanded In Fury Born version ↩

An Epic iPad Saga

A little over a year ago I bought an iPad as an experiment. We were planning to fly to Hong Kong and my main purpose for buying the iPad was to see if it’d work as an entertainment device for Calvin. Beyond that, I had no thoughts of what I would use it for. Since I wasn’t sure what my use case was, I didn’t want to spend a great deal of money on it. So, I bought a 16GB, Wifi-only, refurbished iPad2. That device was the best thing ever invented for keeping a child happy on an airplane.

<digression>
Just recently I saw an article whose author seemed to think the end of western civilization was nigh and it was the fault of lazy parents who didn’t want to entertain their kids the old-fashioned way on airplanes. I read this article in stunned disbelief. I do not view myself as an overly strict parent but we do have limits on screen time, types of snacks, etc. However, the moment we get on the plane I have one goal: survive the plane ride with Calvin and me both sane and, preferably, happy. If that means letting Calvin watch 10 hrs of video and eat the occasional piece of candy, I can live with that. When traveling to Hong Kong we were traveling for 23 hrs straight. Of that time, Calvin was grumpy for about 5 minutes. That, my friend, is priceless.
</digression>

Calvin is the main user of the iPad but I do use it for a couple of things. My biggest use is trying to learn Chinese characters via the TrainChinese app. Calvin uses the iPad to watch movies, play games, and also play some educational apps. I’ve also created some “movies” of some of Calvin’s favorite books. I scanned the pictures in the book and then synced the audio book to the pictures. Calvin seems to like these quite a bit and will listen to the audio book while working with legos and occasionally glancing at the pictures.

I’m fairly happy with the iPad but I do have two complaints. First, 16 GB is no longer big enough. I’m ripping more and more of Calvin’s movies for the iPad and it’s starting to fill up. This is a fairly minor complaint and it was self-inflicted. My biggest complaint with the iPad is it doesn’t have a lot of good parental controls. I understand iOS 7 has better parental controls than the prior version but it’s still not at the level I want. I want to be able to have different profiles such as the “airplane” profile which lets him use pretty much everything installed and then a “normal day” profile which doesn’t let him watch movies and use the “game” apps without a parental override while still allowing access to the “educational” apps.

Because of the two complaints above, I started considering whether or not it made sense to get Calvin his own tablet while letting me keep the iPad (16 GB is plenty for what I use it for). I waffled for quite a bit and finally decided I couldn’t really justify the money. So, I resigned myself to the inferior parental controls and started looking for solutions to the space issue. I investigated a couple of options, including a couple variations of wifi drives. One of the biggest problems I saw with dragging a separate drive along is power. I’m not so concerned about storage space for the iPad on domestic flights. I’m worried about international flights. The iPad has a great battery life and most of the wifi drives I looked out would die significantly before the iPad. Of course, I could bring even more batteries with me to keep the hard drives charged but it seemed like it could get clunky fast.

While looking for storage options, I stumbled across several posts detailing how to use the iPad Camera Connection Kit to provide extra video storage. It sounded very kludgy but also like it’d probably do what I needed. The camera connection kit/SD card wouldn’t require any extra power and it is also pretty small. This would also allow me to swap out movies during longer vacations (my iTunes is on my non-portable kitchen computer). I ordered the kit and a 16 GB SD card and hoped for the best.

The camera connection kit was scheduled to arrive today. I prepared supper early so as soon as the package arrived I could start fiddling and wouldn’t have to be distracted by minor things like food :) The package arrived and I eagerly opened up and inserted the SD card into the camera connection kit. Then, I went to find the iPad. It was sitting, ever so innocently, on the kitchen table. Calvin had been using it earlier but was now occupied playing Legos with Jaeger. Before plugging the adapter into my iPad, I turned my iPad on. That is, I tried to turn my iPad on.

When I hit the power button on my iPad, a curtain of dark gray advanced about 1/3 of the way across the screen and then retreated. The rest of the screen stayed blank. I tried again, same thing. I though that perhaps Calvin had run down the battery so I plugged it in to my computer and saw that it still claimed to be at 50%. I asked Calvin if he had dropped the iPad recently. He looked a little sheepish and noted it had only been dropped a little bit from the couch, accidentally of course.

Now, I know for a fact that this poor iPad has been dropped a fair amount by Calvin. Often at distances higher than the couch. However, I had a bad feeling that this had been one drop too many. Just to be thorough, I tried a reset and then a restart. Other than the background briefly changing to a lighter gray, nothing happened. I was able to hook the iPad up to iTunes and it appeared to transfer data fine so it just seemed to be some sort of display issue. At this point, I was pretty convinced it was broken but decided to have iTunes attempt an update and restore just to see. No luck.

Jaeger suggested I should make an appointment with the Genius bar. I was a bit dubious because I was pretty sure they would just tell me it was broken. If I was lucky, I thought they might have a way to diagnose exactly what was wrong and then give me the option of having it shipped off to be fixed for some indeterminate amount of money. The problem with this is Calvin and I are flying out on Tuesday. Yes, I’m spoiled but I did not want to fly alone with Calvin without some sort of entertainment device for him.

I made the appointment with the Genius bar for a little after supper and then set to researching my tablet options. One of the first things I looked at was how much it’d cost to get another refurbished iPad. The cost was about what I expected. However, the major sticking point was there didn’t appear to be any way for me to get one of these iPads by Tuesday. If I was going to buy a new iPad, I want the 32 GB model. Those looked like they’d cost around $600. Given recent events I was very reluctant to hand over a $600 tablet to Calvin. I turned my attention to Kindle Fires as a possible stop gap option. Best buy had several 32 GB Kindle Fires available for under $300. From what I’ve heard, the Kindle Fire has some of the best parental controls of any of the tablets. I talked to Jaeger about it but he was worried about being locked in to yet another vendor’s proprietary weirdness. His argument had merit so I checked and Best Buy also had some 7″ Nexuses. That seemed a reasonable option to get us through the Thanksgiving trip and then I could order a 16 GB refurbished iPad for myself later.

After supper our whole family piled ourselves into Motoko to go visit the Genius bar. We got there, they checked us in, and settled in to wait our turn. They had a cute kids table with 4 tethered ipads on it loaded with kids games. I thought Calvin would be fascinated but instead he wanted to sit in my lap and listen to me read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Eventually a tech came up, took a look at my iPad and proclaimed it dead, as expected. What was completely unexpected to me was he then offered to sell me a replacement 16 GB iPad 2 for $250. That was a better price than I’d seen online so I figured it was worth it to go ahead and order my replacement iPad now, even if it wouldn’t arrive in time. To my astonishment, he told us he’d be right back with it. I hadn’t realized he’d been talking about getting me a replacement immediately. That’s probably the best customer service I’ve ever had from an electronics manufacturer. Once the tech came back with the “new” iPad he poked a couple of buttons, we handed over our credit card, and then were on our way once again with a fully-fuctional iPad.

Given we once more had a working tablet, I decided it did not make sense to follow our original plan and buy a Nexus for Calvin at Best Buy. So, we went home and I synced it and everything appeared to be back to normal.

I was delighted that the experience turned out to be so cheap. However, I still had only a 16GB tablet. So, my purchase of the camera connection kit wasn’t going to be wasted after all. Following the Lifehacker directions, I created the DCIM folder and 100DICAM subfolder. Then I moved a test video file over and renamed it DCM_0001. It was a mp4 file which I had been led to believe should work fine. I plugged it into the iPad and was happy to see the iPad recognized the file and seemed quite happy to give me the option to import it. I imported it and then clicked on the Camera app to try to find it. Based on the instructions, I was let to believe it would appear in my camera roll. I didn’t see it. I tried several other things and tried to figure out where I went wrong. I tried different file extensions and still couldn’t find the videos. The iPad definitely thought it was transferring the files, it would ask me for confirmation when I requested it import something it thought it already had, but I couldn’t find them. Finally, I figured out my mistake (which you may have already noticed). I had been looking in the Camera app, not the Photo app. On my iPad I only use 2 of the 4 statically placed apps: Safari and Mail. As a result, I apparently have developed a blind spot in actually seeing the Photos and Music Apps. Now that I’m finally looking in the right app, everything is working perfectly.

Of course, the biggest problem with this scheme is that all the videos are going to have really bizarre names: DCM_0001, DCM_0002, etc. I need to come up with some sort of index option that is relatively easy to use. That’s probably a project for tomorrow.

Recent Reads

I’ve noticed that since I’m in between books I haven’t been as good about logging what I’m reading. So, in an attempt to correct that, here’s my recent list, in reverse reading order:

  • Assassins Gambit: The Hearts and Throne Series, by Amy Raby – This is a fantasy with a strong romantic element. A women is trained as an assassin to catch the interest of the emperor and assassinate him. Except, everything turns out to be more complicated than she expects. At the moment, most Amazon reviews seem to be giving it 5 stars. In my opinion, it’s closer to a high 3 stars. However, the story was intriguing and I’ll probably read the next in the series.
  • The Bitter Kingdom, by Rae Carson – This is the third, and final, book in the Girl of Fire and Thorns series. I thought it was good but I think the first one is still my favorite.
  • Cetaganda, by Lois McMaster Bujold – I’ve been reading/listening to Bujold off and on for a decade or so. I started by listening to her Chalion series. Every so often, I’d listen to one of the Miles Vorkosigan books but it’s taken me a lot longer to get into the series. This is probably because I started out trying to listen to them but don’t have access to all the audio books (if audio books are even available for every book in the series). However, I finally got around to reading Cetaganda. It was good but I think Shards of Honor, Barrayar, and A Civil Campaign are still my favorites.
  • Crossover, by Joel Shepherd – I liked this book a lot. Originally I gave it 5 stars but on further reflection, I dropped it down to 4. The story begins as an android tries to avoid her destiny and tries to live a “normal” life. Unfortunately, she’s a very, very advanced android and multiple governments want to use her for their own purposes. I think it’d be a good book club book because there are lots of different angles to discuss including discussing some of the choices the author made.
  • Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie – This book was fascinating. Like the one above, it has an AI as the protagonist. There were a couple of unique things about this book. It’s written in first person which already is a hard perspective for me to get into. To make things a bit more complicated, the AI has multiple concurrent perspectives since she has awareness in multiple bodies. However, what made it a little harder is the narrator doesn’t think in gendered pronouns. So, the AI uses female pronouns for everyone unless she is talking directly to someone in a language that does use gendered pronouns1 . Anyway, so all of that is an interesting writing technique that distracted me for the first couple of chapters until the plot sucked me in. The plot is pretty interesting. Basically, the AI was “forced” to do something wrong and spends the entire book trying to correct that mistake. I’m definitely getting the next book in the series.
  • The Magic Faraway Tree, by Enid Blyton – This is actually a Calvin book. I was talking to someone recently who talked about how she loved some of Enid Blyton’s books 2. A particular favorite was The Magic Faraway Tree. I looked it up and Boulder Public Library actually had a copy that I was able to request. We got the book this week and I’ve been reading it aloud to Calvin who loves it. A brother, sister, and cousin have a magic tree behind their house that has access to a rotating collection of faraway lands. These lands are places such as the “do whatever you want land” and the “land of goodies”. Naturally, this is a concept that is almost guaranteed to appeal to a young child. The book has a very classic feel to it in that the morals pop out of the story to beat you over the head. The children are so good (they always help mother and father before they run off and have adventures). In addition, the “greedy” child is usually the one that gets all the others in trouble in the faraway lands. However, this is the perfect sort of chapter book for Calvin at the moment. It is reasonably long without any of the grittiness that often appears in more modern juvenile books. Grittiness can have its place. However, I’ve been finding it very tricky to find books that are a good listening level for Calvin without being too mature for him and I’m finding the classic books fill this gap fairly well.
  1. In some weird way, this seemed the reverse of reading biblical passages. In most versions, God is always referred to as He. However, I was always taught that God transcends gender and we aren’t suppose to assume God is strictly male. ↩
  2. Though, she also cautioned that, similar to many older books, that you had to watch out for racism in some of the Blyton’s books. ↩

Foothills Community Park, Boulder, CO

Tuesday we took an unplanned visit to Dakota Ridge Park because the weather was so nice it seemed wrong not to go to the park. While there, I talked to another mother who said that the Foothills Park was very nice. She inspired me to go check it out.

This is a “community park”, versus a “neighborhood park”, so it covers a fairly large area. I looked at it on Google maps and was able to guess where I thought the playground equipment would be. However, I wasn’t sure how to get to it. We entered the park but I decided to turn south which took us past a play structure by the community garden. However, it didn’t look large enough to be the playground equipment I had seen on the map. So, we retraced our steps and went to the north side of the park. Once we got there, it was obvious that the north side was suppose to be the main playground area.

CalvinFoothilsRock

The view is pretty impressive. As the name suggests, it hugs the foothills. It also looks like it has a lot of paved paths so it might a good place to take Calvin to ride his bike.

The playground area is divided into two sections. The bottom section contains fairly traditional playground equipment that contain hints of boatness.

lowerplayground

Among other things, they had a periscope.

periscope

They also had ladders which Calvin thought were like the ladders on the fireboat we saw in Hong Kong.

ladders

In addition to the periscope, they had a lot of other panels on the equipment: several different wheels, “fan” panel 1, gears, and a “spelling panel”.

steeringwheel1

steeringwheel2

fan

fan2

spelling

There were a lot of different climbing options to get into the structure including several rope ladder variations.

ladder

Calvin had fun playing on the lower structure but I think he would have had even more fun with a group of kids where they could have play-acted being on a ship. After a bit, we went around to the upper playground equipment.

upperplayground

This equipment was more contemporary, the same sort of things that the Dakota Ridge Playground has. I was initially skeptical of how non-traditional this style is. However, after watching kids play on it, it obviously offers a lot of upper body exercise. There was a little girl playing and it was amazing how, using just her arms, she was able to hoist herself all around the ropes and “hammocks.” Like the little girl, Calvin enjoyed scrambling all over the equipment.

climbingwall

hanging

climbing

hamock

While Calvin was enjoying the equipment, I wandered around to see what else was on the top level. There were a couple of swings including regular swings, bucket swings, and a molded bucket seat. Then I went over to where there appeared to be a covered slide that went from the top area down the bottom area. However, it was completely fenced in with no gate. Eventually, I realized that you were suppose to climb the rock wall to get into the enclosure and slide down. The slide was interesting in that it was a tube but had clear pieces interspersed so it wasn’t too dark inside. I called Calvin over and he got a kick out of climbing up the rock and then going down the slide. The sun was in a bad position so I was only able to get a picture of Calvin climbing up.

rockclimbing

It’s a nice playground and fairly close to Calvin’s preschool so I expect we’ll visit this one again.

Summary:

Features 5-12 year old equipment, covered slide, bridges, track ride, periscope panel, gear panel, spelling panel, chimney climber, corkscrew climber, wavy web climber, vertical climbers, sky rail climber, small climbing wall, climbing cables with orbs, “playshell” seat, “rocking tube”, twisted ladder, small rock climbing wall, swings, bucket swings, molder plastic bucket swing
Surface Material Poured Rubber
Restrooms Yes!
Water fountain Not sure
Shade There are quite a few shaded picnic shelters.
Picnic area Yes, quite a few. Some are available for renting.
Parking Good sized parking lot
Pros
  • Good variety of equipment
  • Provides both traditional and modern playground eqipment
  • Restrooms!
Cons
  • No sand but you can’t have everything.


View Random Parks and Playgrounds in a larger map

  1. After looking it up, it was apparently suppose to be an hourglass panel except there was no sand. ↩

Reading Goal: The Complete List

I finished my reading goal! It was a good experience. I feel broader now :) My goal was also handy because it was a way to justify reading time instead of doing something “useful.”

It seems like I got through a lot of goal books in the first couple of months and then slowed down drastically. I was a little surprised by the areas I had trouble with, mainly best sellers and literature. I read a lot of classics when I was young so I didn’t think literature would be a problem. However, it seems like all literature these days is depressing and I strongly prefer uplifting books. I’m not sure why I had trouble with Best Sellers. I also had a bit of trouble with historical fiction. I guess I must not like history for histories sake even though I like it as a backdrop for mysteries and romances.

I was surprised how easy the memoir and informational categories were to fill. I’m not a big non-fiction reader so I figured these would be one of the hardest categories. However, I found a lot more interesting non-fiction than I expected. Though, I didn’t finish any autobiographies/biographies, just memoirs. For the informational books, I tried to stay away from parenting books, since those are the ones I read already, and I at least partially succeeded.

I liked the structure having a book goal gave me so I think I’ll do another one. This time I’ll probably focus on children’s books more. Maybe read all the Newberys I haven’t already or possibly a “great kids books” list. However, I’m going to give myself some time to relax and read whatever strikes my fancy first.

Books I’ve Finished Recently:

  • Fiction Books Jaeger Recommends: Accelerando, by Charles Stross – This one took me a while to get into. I was having trouble caring about both Manfred and Pamela. It wasn’t until Amber came along that things seemed to get interesting.
  • Historical Fiction: Buckingham Palace Gardens: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel, by Anne Perry – This is actually a historical mystery but I’m counting it as a historical fiction novel as I feel it was historical enough it can count. I enjoyed it quite a bit and think I might add this series to the few historical mysteries I read. I started listening to it but switched toward reading at the end. I think I like the series better as a read than a listen but maybe it just depends.
  • Literature: Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog), by Jerome K. Jerome – This is probably more “classic” than “literature” but I’m going to count it toward my literature goal. I downloaded it from Project Gutenberg and read it in little bits on my phone when I was standing in line, etc. I’m not sure if this was a good way to read the book or not. It was a very random stream of consciousness-type novel. Two reasons I glad I read it: I finally understood the title choice of To Say Nothing of the Dog, by Connie Willis. I was also greatly amused by several accounts of river rage that seem remarkably similar to today’s road rage.
  • Juvenile Fiction: The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling, by Maryrose Wood – Fun book. It felt a bit like The Willoughbys. Kind of old-fashioned-like but obviously modern. The one thing that was annoying is the ending stopped at a cliffhanger.

Summary of Books Read

Best Sellers

Biography, Autobiography, Memoir

Fiction Books Jaeger Recommends

Christian Fiction

Graphic Novels

Historical Fiction

Informational

Juvenile Books

Literature

Mystery

Poetry

  • Ekaterinoslav: One Family’s Passage to America: A Memoir in Verse, by Jane Yolen
  • Love Poems, by Nikki Giovanni

Realistic/General Fiction

Short Story Anthologies

Current Goal Counts:

Category Goal Number Read
Best Sellers 2 2
Biography, Autobiography, Memoir 2 2
Fiction Books Jaeger Recommends 2 2
Christian Fiction 2 2
Graphic Novels 2 2
Historical Fiction 2 2
Informational 2 2
Juvenile Books 12 12
Literature 2 2
Mystery 2 2
Poetry Anthologies 2 2
Realistic Fiction 2 2
Short Story Anthologies 2 2
Total 36 36

Firefighter Storytime

When Jaeger’s mom came out to visit we went to the Erie library and noticed signs on the door stating there was to be a Firefighter Storytime in a couple of weeks. Oddly enough, it wasn’t during times that I normally work1. I filed it away and meant to look up more information about it later but then forgot. Monday, we went to the Erie library again. Unfortunately, in my rush to get out of the house, I had neglected to pick up the bag with our items that needed to be returned. Normally, this wouldn’t be a huge problem but I had a member video checked out that I couldn’t renew2. I glumly resigned myself to revisiting the library again that week3. However, as we entered the library, I saw the flyer again for the firefighters and realized they would be visiting Tuesday and Thursday of this week. Since I had been thinking of taking Calvin anyway, this worked out well for returning the video.

Tuesday we visited the library again for the storytime. This time I remembered the bag and successfully returned our books and videos. Calvin was very excited by the prospect of the Firefighter Storytime. We got there early to stake out our seat on the floor. To my surprise, there were hardly any kids there. However, Calvin enjoyed listening to the stories and watching the fireman put on his gear. They were hoping that the firetruck would be free but it ended up being out on a call. The children’s librarian hinted that perhaps we’d have better luck if we came back for the Thursday storytime.

I was a bit ambivalent about taking Calvin back to the library yet again. However, I eventually decided firefighter storytimes were rare enough that it’d be worth it. It was a good choice. There were different firefighters this time and probably four times the number of kids there had been on Tuesday.. They read the obligatory firefighter books4. However, in addition to the firefighter showing off his gear, they had a little “hot or not” game to indoctrinate kids of the types of things they need to be careful of. In addition, the kids all practiced dropping to the ground and crawling when the smoke detector went off. I was fascinated that in both of the storytimes once the firefighter had his gear on, he requested the kids come and give him a high-five or a hug. They were trying to show the kids that firefighters aren’t scary so the kids wouldn’t hide from the firefighters in case of a real fire (which makes me wonder how often that happens).

We were lucky and after the second story time we were able to go outside and see a fire truck. I hadn’t brought Calvin’s fleece in, because the building was warm, but it was a bit nippy outside so he wore mine. Naturally, Calvin had a blast.

Firetruck1

Firetruck2

Firetruck3

  1. Most library storytimes are not designed for working parents. I complained about this once or twice but was told that non-morning storytimes are not attended well. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see this storytime was running from 4:15-5. It still wouldn’t work for someone working full-time but was perfect for me. ↩
  2. Branch items will renew up to 15 times unless someone puts a hold on it. However, member items only renew 1-2 times, depending on the type of item. I’m employed by the district and the relationship between the district and member libraries can be heated so I try very hard to return all member items on time religiously. ↩
  3. Don’t get me wrong, I love libraries but it’s not the most convenient location for us to visit since we live in Boulder. Once a week visits fill our need for books and movies without monopolizing all of our afternoons. ↩
  4. I think it’s a requirement that every firefighter storytime include Curious George and the Firefighters. ↩

East Boulder Community Park, Boulder, CO

The weather has calmed down a bit, at least for the moment. Boulder has great parks but, sadly, they don’t have water features nor a lot of shade. Thus, most summer days I was unwilling to drag myself to the park. Then, we had a lot of lovely rain that turned into flooding. Even I must admit we got too much rain. Several days after the flood the weather was in the lower 70s and sunny, perfect park weather. Unfortunately, every park we tried was closed due to flooding or the roads to the park were closed.

Today, we tried another excursion, this time to East Boulder Community Park. I also made sure to check ahead of time that it wasn’t on the closed park list and all the roads to it were open.

playground5-12

This playground is in a large park complex that includes a rec center, lake, dog park, tennis courts, handball courts, and squash courts (we have these in the US?). The playground itself is very nicely designed. Most of it is fenced in, probably to prevent the ducks from getting in, but it also nicely corrals the children. In addition, there’s a very wide variety of playground equipment for all ages as well as shaded picnic tables.

Before we entered the playground area, Calvin got distracted by the lake and the ducks. However, Calvin lost interest fairly quickly.

communityparklake

As soon as we entered, Calvin headed straight for the prominent reptile. He was going to climb up on it but the sun had made its surface fairly hot.

alligator

After the reptile, Calvin headed straight for the play area designed for 5-12 year olds.

playground5-12

This play equipment had a couple of unique features. One of them was the rollerslide.

rollerslide

Calvin managed to do fairly well on the roller log. He keeps getting bigger . . .

logroll

The equipment also had three different types of bridges: an arch bridge, belt bridge (basically reinforced rubber), and a “clatter” bridge.

archbridge

beltbridge

clatterbridge

It also had “enrichment” options such as the maze panel, tic-tac-toe, and bubble panel.

mazepanel

tictactoe

bubblepanel

I was fascinated by the “spiral climber.” They were pretty big steps but Calvin managed.

spiralclimber

Also, Calvin is hanging on better to overhead equipment. This is the trapeze horizontal ladder. He couldn’t manage to get to the next trapeze bar but hung on this one for a fairly long time.

TrapezeHorizontalLadder

Calvin briefly went over and explored the equipment designed for 2-5 year olds but found it fairly uninteresting.

playground2-5

There is also a “club house” and a contraption that looked like it was suppose to be hooked up to water. However, it wasn’t turned on.

clubhouse

Most of the surface material was sand. However, they had an official sandbox as well as a digger.

sandbox

However, the highlight of the visit was probably the discovery of the “playworks” structure. At first it looks like just another piece of playground equipment. However, if you look closer, you can see it has various tubes running through the structure as well as tethered shovels to pour sand into the tops of the tubes.

sandplayworks0

sandplayworks1

The tethered shovels were good in that they wouldn’t walk away. However, they are a bit awkward to use. Fortunately, I had brought along Calvin’s shovel, pail, and dump truck just in case we discovered sand. This allowed Calvin to put sand in his bucket and lug it up, and then use his shovel to move the sand down to his dump truck at the bottom of the tube.

sandplayworks2

This is a very nice playground. I’ll definitely plan to visit it again in the future.

Summary:

Features 5-12 year old equipment, 2-5 year old equipment, club house, sand box, sand play works (tubes and shovels), sand digger, roller slide, covered slide, bridges, tic-tac-toe, maze panel, bubble panel, spiral steps, trapeze horizontal ladder, log roll, regular swings, bucket swings, track ride, spring riders
Surface Material Mostly sand but some poured rubber
Restrooms I assume there are restrooms in the rec center but didn’t see anything obvious near the playground
Water fountain Not sure
Shade Shaded shelter with picnic tables. The 5-12 year old play equipment does get some shade from trees but the rest is un-shaded.
Picnic area There are two small covered shelter with picnic tables.
Parking Parking lot for both the playground, community center, and everything else in the area.
Pros
  • Amazing variety of equipment for a fairly small area
  • Has a nice variety of things for children to play on regardless of age.
  • Lots of nice sand play options
Cons
  • Nothing obvious


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Reading Goal: Update 11

Well, progress on my reading goal has definitely slowed. Though, to be fair, I haven’t been reading a huge amount recently. I’ve been distracted by all sorts of things.

Books I’ve Finished Recently:

  • YA Fiction: Dodger, by Terry Pratchett – I’ve been avoiding Terry Pratchett’s YA books for some reason. This is odd because I have liked every YA Pratchett book I’ve read. In any case, I was desperate for something to listen to so tried this one. It wasn’t set in Discworld but rather in Victorian London. It was pretty good. In addition to this one, I also re-listened to Monstrous Regiment (brilliant) and Guards! Guards! (good).
  • Juvenile Fiction: Boom!, by Mark Haddon – I had a lot of time to listen to books while painting the basement and then dealing with the flood. This was another one which, happily, also counts toward one of my goal books. Mark Haddon wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time which is a book I avoided because it was one of those that everyone was reading. Boom! was a fun book and even had a male protagonist! (see how I broaden my horizons?)
  • Graphic Novel: Saga Vol. 2, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples – Graphic novels are still a struggle for me but I read the first volume in this series for my goal, enjoyed it, so got the second one when it came out. I was mildly amazed that the one graphic novel I read was nominated for the Hugos and actually won.
  • YA Fiction: Muddle and Win: the Battle for Sally Jones, by John Dickinson – I just finished this book today. I read most of it in the doctor’s office waiting for something useful to happen this morning. I saw a review of it on Robin McKinley’s website and requested the library buy it. I was a little surprised they were able to get it as it appears to be a UK book. In some ways it reminds me of a younger version of Good Omens except that the world is never in danger of ending and most of the action happens in Sally Jones’ head. It was an amusing read.
  • Historical Romance: In the Arms of the Heiress, by Maggie Robinson – I read this quite a while ago but recall that I liked it . . .
  • Fantasy: Crown of Midnight, by Sarah J. Maas – I read the first book in this series a while back. I really enjoyed the first book but found it wildly implausible. This one I also enjoyed and thought the motivations of everyone hung together better.
  • Romance: Blackmoore: a Proper Romance, by Julianne Donaldson – I liked this one. It’s a regency romance that actually has the heroine act like she lives during regency times. It had the feel of a Jane Austen book without being wildly derivative.

Currently Reading:

  • Juvenile Fiction: Nick and Tesla’s High Voltage Danger Lab, by Bob Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith – I just got this one today as part of LibraryThing’s Early Review program. I read the first chapter to Calvin tonight. He wasn’t excited but I thought it had promise.
  • Juvenile Fiction: The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: Book I: The Mysterious Howling, by Maryrose Wood – I’m currently listening to this book. So far it’s amusing. I don’t know how to describe the feel but it’s fun.
  • Fantasy: Shadows, by Robin McKinley – This is Robin McKinley’s newest book. I’m two chapters in and not quite sure what to think of it yet. The setting isn’t necessarily my favorite but it feels a bit like Sunshine which I did like a great deal. We’ll see . . .
  • Jaeger’s Recommendation: Accelerando, by Charles Stross – While painting the basement and dealing with the flooding experience I tried quite a few of Jaeger’s recommendations via audiobooks. However, none of them were quite working for me. So, I requested hard copies of all the books from the library to try browsing each one and see which one has the most potential. This one looks like I’ll probably be able to get through it. I went to the trouble of requesting it only to discover Jaeger actually already owns this one.

I keep working on my literature goal, mostly without success. I’ve picked up and discarded numerous options. I’m most of the way through Three Men in a Boat but am not at all certain that I’ll make it all the way through. I was also thinking of trying The Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison. I’m not sure I’d ever heard about it until Randolph County Board of Education created a ruckus over it. I was hoping for a “happy” literature book but this looks like it might be worth reading anyway.

Current Goal Counts:

Category Goal Number Read
Best Sellers 2 2
Biography, Autobiography, Memoir 2 2
Fiction Books Jaeger Recommends 2 1
Christian Fiction 2 2
Graphic Novels 2 2
Historical Fiction 2 1
Informational 2 2
Juvenile Books 12 11
Literature 2 1
Mystery 2 2
Poetry Anthologies 2 2
Realistic Fiction 2 2
Short Story Anthologies 2 2
Total 36 32

Monthly Update

The past month has been very busy.

Camping
In late August we went camping and setup at Difficult Campground which is close to Aspen. It had fairly small campsites, our extra large family tent was difficult to fit, but was a nice campground. There was a small stream that ran behind our site which I thought Calvin would get into but he pretty much ignored it.

Saturday, we got up, ate breakfast, and then headed out to Crater Lake in the Maroon Bells Wilderness. We made good time since Jaeger carried Calvin most of the way. Calvin spent a good amount of time complaining about how exhausting it is to be carried. Then we let Calvin walk and ambled for another mile or so before stopping for lunch. Given how long it had taken Calvin to walk a mile, we decided to carry him back. We had taken the bus up and we didn’t want to miss the last pick-up at 5pm.

The bus took us back down to Aspen where we got a snack and wandered around a bit. It turns out none of us had been to Aspen before which was weird since I thought Jaeger had been everywhere in Colorado. I decided it was basically a snootier, smokier1 version of Boulder. I also took the opportunity to stop by their county library and quiz the local staff on how they liked their ILS (catalog system).

Sunday we ate and then went and visited a ghost town. When we arrived, we were the only people there but as we were leaving a lot more people stopped by. I don’t think Calvin understood what a ghost town is. Jaeger took Calvin up the gondola while I spent a couple of minutes working and then we ate lunch and headed back home.

This was our 2nd successful camping trip of the summer. The prior year we hadn’t gone camping at all due to moving and our fear Calvin would continue his trend of waking up screaming in the middle of the night. However, this trip, and the previous one, all turned out good without any nighttime scream (by Calvin anyway).

Basement Refresh
Since I’ve started working in the basement, its problems have been bothering me more and more. We had water stains on the ceiling tile and the paint was desperately in need of being refreshed. Jaeger was pretty ambivalent given he rarely goes into the basement but I got a bee in my bonnet to fix it up better.

The ceiling tiles were a problem. They’re drop ceiling but in a style that no one seems to carry anymore. After looking at a lot of options, I decided my best plan would be to try to get matching paint and paint over the old water stains. I stopped by Kwal Paint to drop off a ceiling tile for matching and to pick up sample paint colors for the walls.

Jaeger didn’t like the existing tannish color so I picked up two blues, a light yellow, and a light green. Then I got some foam core and painted each with the proposed color and took them down to the basement to look. The light green look dreadful, I thought the yellow was ok, but Jaeger didn’t like it, and the darker blue was too dark. So, we decided on a light blue that has very slight greenish hints in it.

Over Labor Day weekend I feverishly painted everything, including redoing the trim. I discovered many crimes against drywall during that weekend. There’s so many it’s hard to start. Among other things whoever had painted the tan color had decided to save time and just paint over nails instead of pulling them out, filling in, and then painting. Also, it turns out one of the color combinations had been a nice cream colored wall with purple trim. That must have been fascinating.

Eventually I got everything repainted and then I moved the furniture around. We had a cubicle area that had been working as a storage unit but I got most everything thrown away, given away, or stored in the garage or a large white garage-style cabinet we bought. In addition, I changed the layout so my treadmill desk faced the window directly. All-in-all, I was pretty happy with how it turned out. I finished cleaning up the room scant minutes before our Megafest visitors arrived.

Megafesting
Yanthor and Anya came over to our house last week and we took time off to fest. We played a lot of games, watched one movie, and ate good food. Saturday was Jaeger’s birthday so I made two types of ice cream and German Chocolate Cupcakes 2. It was lots of fun and very relaxing.

A Night Out
Jaeger convinced me to call our babysitter for her to take care of Calvin Wednesday night while we went out to a restaurant to celebrate Jaeger’s birthday. It was sprinkling when we left and I debated whether I should take my light rain coat or the Gore-Tex. I decide on the light rain coat, a bad choice as it turns out.

We went to eat at Moongate, which is located in downtown Boulder. I had hired the babysitter till 10pm so after dinner we decided to go out and walk to the other end of the Pearl Street Mall. By that time, it was pouring. Jaeger wanted to stop by GoLite to get another shirt and by the time we got there, our clothes were dripping. Little rivers were running down Pearl Street Mall, it was amazing. Jaeger bought a shirt and we continued on to the Boulder Bookstore where we picked up several used juvenile books and Jaeger bought a tour guide to Beijing and Shanghai.

We sloshed back to our car, getting even wetter, and arrived back home a bit earlier than we planned.

Flooding
The rain continued to pour. In the middle of the night I groggily thought that maybe I should check the sump hole in the basement but couldn’t convince myself to get up. The next morning I woke up and padded downstairs to the basement to start work for the day 3. I started to walk to my desk and felt wet squishy carpet beneath my feet. I called Jaeger down and we started to assess the situation. Our sump hole does not have a pump, which I had been vaguely aware of and was on a list of things to deal with someday, and was overflowing. Jaeger bailed it out, into the nearby toilet, to a reasonable level and then we went up to have breakfast and consider the situation.

Sporadically checking the internet, I learned that we were pretty lucky with our very minor water problem. All the creeks and rivers in our area were completely out of control and real deep flooding was rampant in the rest of Boulder (Gunbarrel is slightly elevated and isn’t in the path of any major bodies of water). The sheriff requested that everyone stay home.

At first, one side of the room seemed dry so I was hoping we could just move the big stuff to that side and only dry out half of the room. However, after a deeper exploration it became obvious that everything was at least a little wet. Jaeger and I pulled everything out of the basement and piled it haphazardly in the living room, family room, and garage. I spent the rest of the day letting Calvin watch DVDs while I used our carpet cleaner to pull the water out of the carpet. Right before supper time I had gotten the carpets to where they were still damp but much dryer. Our next step was to roll the carpet up, pull out the carpet pad to discard it, and then drape the carpet to let it finish drying.

I went upstairs to make supper and just as I finished, the power went off. However, I already had supper cooked so we found our camping lanterns and had a pleasant meal. Then Jaeger went down into the basement. Our sump hole had overflowed again and all the work I had down during the day had be cancelled out. Jaeger and I spent probably a half hour bailing the sump hole till it was at what looked like a safe level. About in the middle of our bailing, the power came back on. We pulled the carpet up and draped it over random things in hopes it would start drying during the night. Jaeger and I took turns waking up every two hours to make sure the sump didn’t overflow again. Surprisingly, it started going down during the night. However, we did get woken up twice due to emergency flood warnings (that weren’t actually in our area).

Friday morning everything was complete chaos in the Boulder and large surrounding areas. Evacuations were being attempted all over the place and it was obvious that we were very, very lucky. We decided we needed a sump pump so I called a plumber and was put on a list to be called when they could start getting places. He told me I should probably get on a second list given the demand. I decided not to because at that point our sump hole looked reasonable and I decided there were probably other people that needed it more than we did.

I used the carpet cleaner to suck a good portion of the water out of the carpet pad and then ripped it out and put it by the trash to be thrown out later. During this process I had one of the basement mysteries revealed. The basement has uneven floor. However, in random spots it would have a weird bump in the carpet. Neither Jaeger nor I could figure out what the bumps were. We were half afraid they were rodents that somehow had gotten trapped under the carpet. Well, when I pulled up the carpet pad, it turned out they were loose remnants from a prior carpet pad. For some reason, when the newest carpet pad was put down, they didn’t bother to clean up the random pieces that were littering the floor. Really odd.

With the carpet pad gone and the carpet suspended and having fans blowing on it, there wasn’t much left for me to do other than occasionally make sure bad things weren’t happening with the sump hole. To my surprise, around 3pm, the plumbing company called back and told me someone would be there in 10 minutes to install a sump pump. That was way quicker than I expected. However, perhaps we were one of the few people they could actually get to.

The plumber arrived and told me a full install would take three hours, which he didn’t have. However, he could install a temporary solution and come back next week to finish up the job. The full job will cost around $1200 but we’re lucky because we already have a sump hole. The prior lady he had just visited didn’t have a sump hole so it was going to cost her $3000 to get a solution. Anyway, this type of scenario isn’t particularly common in Gunbarrel but Jaeger and I felt we should go ahead and get a pump anyway as insurance.

At this point, the carpet is mostly dry. However, I’m not sure yet whether or not it’s salvageable. I’m letting it dry today and we’ll see what the situation looks like tomorrow. I’ve been cooped up in the house since Wednesday evening and church was canceled today (the church is in a bad area) so I’m considering a visit to the library today. I haven’t heard what conditions the roads are in yet but I think a roundabout route should get me there without any problems. Worst case, if it starts raining, we head back immediately.

Anyway, it’s been very adventurous.

  1. Boulder is pretty rigid about allowing smoking in public so it was disconcerting to be sitting outside the cafes in Aspen and having to dodge the smoke. ↩
  2. We had just finished a cake I had made a month prior so Jaeger didn’t want another full cake to deal with. ↩
  3. I usually work a little bit before breakfast which allows me to get the prior day’s emails out of the way. Then I take a break to eat and take Calvin to preschool and then resume. ↩