Sarah's newest book

Along with Sarah's isolated Young Rembrandt artwork, she also recently built, wrote, and illustrated her own book. I think you will recognize the story she has reproduced here, but I think she did a great job.

Lynda helped put the booklet of blank pages together (it's folded and gathered just like a real book) but Sarah wrote all the words and drew all of the pictures. While there are some mis-spelling of words here and there, Sarah did an admirable job. She sounded out everything phonetically (as kindergarten kids learning to read sometimes do). While I think you could figure out the story without it, I translate the story text at the bottom of each page.

Here is the title page, which needs no further explanation. But I want to point out to anyone who is familiar with the Disney version of the story (upon which Sarah based her story) that she has faithfully captured the picture of a scullery maid scrubbing the floors while soap bubbles float around her.

Here's the first two pages of the story. Once upon a time there was a Cinderella that was an old maid. (I think she is giving a incorrect impression that Cinderella was a spinster here, but you can see how she made the mistake, right?)

While it took two pages to get it right, the story continues: But she did not do all these by herself.(You can see that Cinderella has animal friends that helped her get the large amounts of work done.)

But that is not all; oh, and my fairy godmother too. (The animals made her a dress along with helping her do all the chores. And her fairy godmother helped out as well.)

My step-sisters. They tore my dress up! But my fairy godmother is here to the rescue. (You can see the pumpkin coach in the background and three mice trying to escape the fairy godmother as she is about to turn them into horses.)

And they went to the castle. When she got into the kingdom, she got to dance to the prince.

And it was the strike (?) of twelve. She ran as fast as she could. And she left her slipper behind her.

When she got back, she went to bed. The prince was looking for the girl that would fit the slipper.

But her stepmother had locked her in her room. Then her mouse friends got her out.

And she got down in no time at all. And she got married and they lived happily ever after. The end.

Art!

Sarah completed her final Young Rembrandt art class this past Thursday. I think it was a successful endeavor because it gave her a structured method in which to explore some of her art skills and it gave me a great resource of blog ideas.

I hope she'll be willing and interested in enrolling in the later classes as she gets older. I think she will get better as time goes on.

But, in celebration of her hard work, here are her final art pieces. As usual, she never completely finishes coloring them, but I think you can see what is what.

Here is a nice, dynamic picture of a soccer player dribbling the ball down the field.

This, naturally, is a picture of a safe cracker breaking into a bank vault. No, not really. It's a chameleon sitting on a branch.

This is a set of billiard balls, all racked and ready. The cue stick is laying across the corner of the table.

I dearly wish Sarah had been able to finish this one and color it. It is actually based on an actual French painter whose name I don't remember. But I think you can see the basic structure of the image. A man and woman walk on a sidewalk alongside a cobbled street. In the background is a suspension bridge.
What I like as much as anything about this image is the shape of the woman's body-the silhouette of the dress and the style of the dress really evoke the era of the original painting.

Thanks Young Rembrandt! I think you really helped Sarah improve her style. Now I just have to get her to see that art doesn't have to be confined to a classroom and anything is suitable for reproduction at any time.

All it takes is inspiration.

Rotten Apple

I spent about two-and-a-half hours on the phone today with the semi-good people at Apple Computers, Inc. tonight trying to fix my sick iPod that has been under the weather since Tuesday morning.

In reality, I sort of blame the Flaming Lips. You see, Tuesday morning was when their newest album "At War with the Mystics" became available on iTunes. Since I really liked the previous album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" (thanks for initially turning me onto it, Flipper!) I thought I would buy this one as well. In fact, I pre-ordered it more than a week ago; it just wasn't available for download until Tuesday.

So, that morning, I checked my iTunes account while getting my breakfast cereal. Sure enough, it was ready and I downloaded it. Anticipating the pleasures of listening to a new album at work that day, I hooked up my iPod (named PRPL 33, by the way) up to synch the iTunes Library to ole' PRPL. But . . . something went wrong. It started synching fine, but then somewhere halfway through, it stopped and gave me an error message, indicating something about not recognizing the disk.

I ejected the iPod and tried again. This time, it got worse . . . not even realizing that the iPod was attached and bringing up all new strange error messages about unrecognized disk drives, asking me to initialize the disk or eject, who know what manner of problems.

So, I slunk off to work hoping that maybe the computer was temporarily freaked out and would be better by the afternoon. It didn't turn out to be any better that afternoon, nor this morning.

In fact, I thought that I had wiped the memory this morning, since PRPL wasn't showing any songs. So, while at work I reset the iPod and let it charge for several hours. When I checked on it after lunch, everything seemed back to normal--at least my library (minus the new Flaming Lips--which was still residing on the computer at home). But . . . I remained hopeful.

When I got home, I plugged PRPL back in and crossed my fingers. Sure enough, things looked okay. The new albums started synching . . . aaaaand then, it stopped. The error messages were back.

I called customer support and after swallowing the fact that since I hadn't purchased an Apple Care protection plan, I was going to have to either purchase a plan for the remainder of my first year's purchase (till June) or pay a fee for this call . . . I chose the single call price. It was cheaper.

I got underway explaining my dilemma to CSR #1 (note the presence of a numeral here; I believe that is called FORESHADOWING) and he got me started in an attempt to synch the iPod again, eventually resulting in the computer telling me that the disk wasn't recognized and asking if I wanted to initialize the disk. We were underway with that procedure when he put me on hold (to go to the bathroom? to consult an arcane manual? to get coffee?). {PLEASE NOTE HERE THAT THIS GUY HAD BEEN FAIRLY HELPFUL, IF NOT COMING OFF AS COMPLETELY KNOWLEDGEABLE AND ON TOP OF THE PROBLEM.} But I was confident . . . mostly and this call had only taken up maybe twenty minutes of my evening to this point (FORESHADOWING!!). Lynda was busy getting the kid's supper underway and was generally being a real mensch about me being trapped like this. But ANYWAY . . . on hold.

Then, disconnected!

I was forced to call back, navigate back into the phone tree and hope to hell that I could somehow get to the same CSR again. We all now know enough about job outsourcing and tech support help based on the Indian subcontinent to know that was a faint hope. So, I had to re-explain my problem to CSR #2 (MORE FORESHADOWING? You be the judge!) and explain that I had been preparing to initialize my iPod disk (I think) when I was put on hold and then lost the call.

Well, #2 wasn't interested in doing this procedure, even though the windows to do it were still awaiting instruction and input on my screen. She wanted to delete iTunes and reinstall the whole program. {NOTE, THIS GIRL SEEMED A BIT LESS ON THE BALL THAN #1, COMPOUNDED BY THE FACT THAT SHE WAS SUFFERING FROM LARYNGYTIS. SHE WAS HARD TO HEAR ABOVE THE NOISE OF DINNER-MAKING OVER RIGHT SHOULDER AND INCREASINGLY HUNGRY/RESTLESS KIDS OVER LEFT SHOULDER.} But, I trusted her and dutifully Trashed my existing iTunes program and set about downloading a new program from the Apple website.

After a few minutes of download time I tried to launch the installer, finally got it going and found that the installer wouldn't/couldn't install anything! So, I tried again (#2 told me to try again, I should say). The downloading went slower and the SAME problem occurred. #2 then told me to find my original iTunes program disk that came with the computer and reinstall from that. After about three minutes of frustrated digging around my office desk, I found the correct disk and got THAT installation underway. And . . . it didn't work either.

By now I am really frustrated. Call #2 has gone to just about the 50 minute mark, following the aborted 30 minutes of call #1. And keep in mind that when call #2 began, I explained that I had only purchased the "rights" to call #1. I couldn't let this emergency/disconnected re-call end without resolution, since I didn't want to purchase another tech call. Even further, I could tell that CSR #2 was growing a bit flustered and wasn't really sure why the installation wasn't working. She probably thought I was incompetent and doing something wrong. My temper was rising (as was my voice). Lynda was finishing the dinner prep and the girls were rattling around close by.

She puts me on hold . . .

. . . for . . . maybe . . . twenty? . . . no, thirty . . . minutes?

No WAY am I giving up now. I held that phone to my ear and ate my dinner. I passed the phone off to Lynda and stood up and stretched. I cleaned the dirty dishes and loaded the dishwasher. Lynda held on. The girls got dessert. We held on.

Did she intentionally ditch us? To induce the costly call back?

We didn't care, but we were clearly stalemated. So, while Lynda held on with the land line, I started the process again with the cell phone. I let Lynda handle the explanation while I distracted Grace with a movie. When I got back to the situation, Lynda was talking to CSR #3 (!!) who informed us that CSR#2 had lost the connection (but why hadn't the land line signaled a lost connection?) and then probably given up trying to call us back. CSR #3 said that they had tried (was he working in the same location as #2?).

Anyway, I relocated the laptop, the iPod and the cell phone to another room to get away from noise and focus, plugged the cell into an outlet to prevent losing battery, turned the speaker phone on and got ready.

CSR #3 was very competent, direct, clear, business-like. He led me through several things, some of which had already been tried, but some which had not.

In the end, he ran out of tricks and we all decided that the iPod needed to be shipped to someone for repair/possible replacement. #3 sent an email to get that process underway and maybe by this weekend, I mail PRPL 33 off to California (or wherever) to go under the knife.

I am hopeful that solutions can be found (and its still under warranty, thank God). But I'm gonna feel naked at work for a while.

My Old House

Here are various photos from our recent weekend of further home repair. Because Lynda can't sit still, she has decided, much to the delight of Shirtless Wonder, to tackle the guest bathroom walls next. Gone is the wide green and white striped wall paper. But what did we find underneath? Well, it was this:

In case you can't appreciate what that wall looks like, I tried to take a closeup of the wall here:








It has a dirty pink color quality to it. I don't like it.

Lynda also found a strange graphic image on the wall behind where the bath vanity light was mounted. It looks strangely like some sort of advertisement, but it looks a bit like something from another era . . . maybe that is because there is some sort of banjo image visible in the mid-center of the photo. If anyone recognizes where this is from, let me know.

You can see the words CLAM BAK & CHO SOC. I choose to believe that this is accurately translated, CLAM BAKE & CHOCOLATE SOCIAL. Why, don't know.

The image of the circular banjo resonator body can be seen to the left of the central wiring.




I am also including pictures of my inept handiwork over the past two days. The first image is of the dastardly screws that I inexpertly placed in the wall to hold up the mounting bracket for a master bath towel hook. You can't really see it here, but the screws aren't tightly flush with the wall and the bracket isn't ready to support any sort of hook.

The other photo is for the sink cabinet doors in the newly painted master bath. Lynda painted the cabinet a slate green color to coordinate with the blue color on the walls. It was my job to remount the cabinet fronts to the box and reattach the door pulls, etc. Naturally, the VERY FIRST THING that I accomplished last night was to scrape the new paint underneath the door pull and leave a mark. So, there you go everyone.
I suck.
Don't ask me to do anything handy in your house.

For more evidence of stuff I can't do very well, please visit the latest edition of my old college sports article The Authority Speaks.

I'm feeling Lowe(s)