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Epsilon Exploits & Familial Foibles
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12 November 2010
| First snow! First snow! Tonight is the night of our first snow! For some historical background: |
11 November 2010
| Brevity is the soul of wit. Or so the 140 character microblogosphere would have us believe. Life is complicated these days, yet simple. I find myself at a loss for words sometimes when I exceed a short quip. And other times I go on and on and on, much to the dismay or delight of fellow conversants. Then again, I get cut off alot lately. Or I say too much and get myself in trouble. Or I censor myself. The State of Nebraska says I'm not right in the head and need Religion to be well. Money is tight, but when isn't it? It seems like the rule about work expanding to fill the time allotted applies to money as well. Well, that is, one's spending expands to fill the money allotted. It's amazing to discover all the things we don't really need. Renounce and Enjoy. Having twins is much easier than having siblings 2 years apart. Sometimes I think they bring out the worst in eachother. I'm writing up the Snorri & Rupret stories I used to tell Alora & Brittan for Maxwell to read. It's National Novel Writing Month (see the bar at the top of the page). Zara believes in god. She'll happily tell you she's the only one in her family who does. Deanna, the older girl across the street, is quite religious and Zara is her disciple. During Diwali last week I gave the kids a short lecture on the avatars of Vishnu which fascinated the twins, but confused Zara. Polytheism is quite a different beast than the monotheism she has hitherto encountered. Last night we watched the Ray Harryhausen classic, "Jason and the Argonauts". Zara was frightened of the giant bronze Talos, but listened attentively to her older sisters when they paused the movie to expound on the various deities in greater detail. Cara is applying to grad schools. All on the East Coast. I still dream of living in a mobile home. But first I need a million dollars. Or at least that was how the dream went when I was 7. Or 8. I had silkworms which I raised on mulberry leaves. Silk was valuable and I was going to sell it. Until I learned you had to kill the moths in their cocoons. Couldn't do it. I think the price had gone down from Marco Polo's days by then anyway. The mobile home dream has persisted though. My theory of next summer is a trial run. School in Nebraska ends in June. It will start somewhere else in August or September. Why pay rent for the interim? Have tent will travel. There's a farm in Idaho we've yet to see, a ranch in Montana we'd like to go back to, and we've never been to Alberta or British Columbia. There's friends in Seattle and Sunnyvale, family in Portland, Berkeley and Arizona, and thermus aquaticus for Cara to study in Yellowstone. Crazy thing, she says, to spend rent money instead on gas and campsites. Crazy thing, I say, to waste the opportunity. The moves out to Nebraska and home from California were frenetic affairs. Better to exercise a little more lethargy this go round. Canadian customs might not even feel compelled to search my car with Cara there! Last month I did some translation from Deutsch to English. This month I've been watching films en Español. Netflix is really worth the $9 a month if you're unemployed. Or funemployed as the Gen Y folk have come to call it - How's that for a positive outlook! |
7 November 2010 - Well, crap.
3 November 2010
| Last night I had a nightmare. I drempt we took the kids to Hawai'i and all they wanted to do was play on the beach. I want to show them the active volcanos on Hawai'i, the cliff face and leper colony on Moloka'i, the changing plant life up the side of and then the moonscape inside the crater of Haleakula, the wet side of Maui with its jungles, the eroded caldera of West Maui, the humpback whales breaching, different kinds of igneous rocks, the fishes in the reefs, the hulu dances, and their polynesian language with its small set of phonemes. All the kids wanted to do was lay idle on the beach. I shared my nightmare with Cara and she wished it would come true. C'est horrible! |