Sewing, Chamber Music, and Rock and Roll!

Well, I have not been super great about documenting all of the goals I have been doing, BUT! I have done a few more that I can share.  Today, I wanted to hem some shorts of Jack's, but I couldn't remember how to thread the sewing machine, which my mom gave me a few years ago but which I have only used once.  So I actually threw the sewing machine into the car and took it to Joanne's fabrics, and when I got there I admitted to them that I did not know how to thread it an could they please teach me.  They were very patient, and helped me figure it out, which worked out for them because then I bought a "jelly roll" which is a little collection of coordinating fabrics.  When I got home, I practiced sewing by sewing all the different strips together into a stripy pattern:

Then to finish off the project I sewed the stripy thing I made into a small pillowcase for one of Jack's micro-pillows.

 After that I looked at a few you-tube videos about how to hem pants, and after that I finally hemmed Jack's shorts.  Not professional by any means, but it'll totally work.  So I think I get to cross off "do a project with the sewing machine." 

A few other accomplishments:  I organized a chamber group over the summer with Christina, Amy Jo, and Edie from Orchestra.  We are all violinists, so we are playing quartets for 4 violins, which is pretty fun: some Telemann and Vivaldi, predictably, but also this awesome piece by Grazyna Baciewicz written in the 1940s.  You can listen to it here:

Awesome Baciewicz Quartet

Also, I went to see a rock concert with Almut, Mark, and David.  We saw teh Barenaked Ladies.  It was very entertaining, here is a photo of David and I, and a little clip I took:

Painting Plates or, an exercise in combating perfectionism

Guess what?  Last weekend I took Jack to paint some pottery.  We went to a place that actually glazes and fires the pottery so you can eat off it, it can even go into the microwave.  Jack was in the most horrendous mood ever, I'd let him have screen time half the morning and he was pissed that I was dragging him out of the house and into the world.  When we got there, he picked a plate and started drawing on it with a pencil, and was uber-frustrated when he learned he could not erase anything.  I forced him to carry on amid wails and lamenting (much to the chagrin of the lady working there, and the other customers).  He did comply however, painting in all the shapes he'd planned out, and I helped a bit with the black outlining (just tracing his original graphite, which burns off in the kiln).  In the end, we had a pretty fun time, depsite having to help him calm down repeatedly about mistakes he perceived in his work.  The plates turned out pretty well I think, here is a photo:

I'm not sure he learned his lesson in the end, these came out way more perfect than I anticipated!

New Year's day

For the remainder of 2015 I continued making progress on the 101 goals, to some extent, but I did not keep up with the blog.  Big surprise there.  I thought I would just post a few photos to document the ones I have finished up.   I am optimistic about 2016, even though Danae will be moving to California again.  Sigh.  I guess I always knew we'd end up on opposite coasts.  Nobody's fault really, just life.  It has made me realize though that my resolution to keep investing heavily in my friends here is important, they are awesome and they are the ones that will keep me from being too lonely with entire family on the opposite coast (except Jack of course.  My luck, he'll probably go to college in CA too!!).  Sometimes I am complacent: just sit back and wait for my friends to come to me, but I resolve this year to keep up my end of the bargain.  :-)  But anyhow here goes, in list format (only the photographable goals), and not in chronological order in the least bit:

*  I enrolled Jack in soccer this fall, he loved it

*  We gardened all summer in the community garden, here are a couple photos of the spoils

 

 *  We went camping with Almut and Mark, and David Morin.  The photos were lost though, on my old phone which I left in an airport bathroom.  TSA would not let me backtrack to retrieve it and I lost it.  But I digress... We did also go canoeing on Walden Pond later in the summer, so I am including that photo as a place holder!

*  We made cookies for our next door neighbors

*  I did a watercolor painting with Jack... I should probably take a watercolor class or something, this is downright terrible.  Jack's was pretty good though!

*   I bought some carpets for my house!

*  I took Jack Kayaking.  He even paddled his own boat!

*  I went to a couple of jazz concerts, one with Jack and Pierre and Louise at Ryles, and the other at the reggata bar with David.

*  I visited Flagstaff for Christmas, and took Jack on the Polar Express, it was cool!

*   I went with Almut, Mark, and David to the paint bar

*   I took Mom and Jack and Jack's friend Dylan to a Red Sox Game

There were other goals I finished up, too, but these were the highlights for now.  Cheerio.  My new year's resolution is to continue working on my 101 goals.  Heh, that was easy!  You all should try this 101 project, I really did do some things that I otherwise would not have gotten around to yet!

A couple of fails

I've had a few setbacks in my project.  Setback one:  The goal was to wear my fitbit and log calories every day for 60 consecutive days.  I started on Dec 25th, and made it to Feb 10th.  So close!  I think the flu, and the endless hammering of snowstorms derailed me.  But logging calories wasn't really helping much.  I'd like to lose about 15 lbs, but instead I lost and regained 2 lbs, repeatedly.  It might possibly add up to 15 if you count all the separate times I lost two lbs...  And logging food is not so much fun.  But I guess I'll start again.  Today, maybe.  Maybe I can combine it with some of my other fitness oriented goals.

Regarding food, I wanted to try and improve our diet, inspired by Sharon and David and other friends who eat huge quantities of fruit and vegetables and zero processed foods.   So two weeks ago I bit the bullet and shopped at Whole Foods for the week.  Wow, they have nice food there, and it is a lot easier to buy healthy food and not get so tempted to buy the junk foods.  But, my grocery bill doubled.  Factor of two, no exaggeration.  But, I enjoyed our dinners a lot that week.  So this week I thought, maybe I go to two stores and buy the meats and olive bar items at whole foods, and the butter/milk/eggs/bread etc at the regular store.  Sadly, this reduced the total by about $5 or so.  I think I have to give up on the Whole Foods idea, I just need to buy the whole foods at the regular grocery store.  It's not that you can't get them there, it's that it's harder to get inspired.  I suppose that is Whole Foods' entire business model.  But I digress.

Regarding failures:  Another goal was to practice every week for one orchestra cycle.  I got off to a great start, and I have to say, my orchestra experience has been much improved as a result, so this goal has improved my life but it has also been derailed.  I skipped the week I had the flu (forgivable), and then I skipped the following week (less forgivable).  So I guess I'll have to try again next cycle.  Which is the pops concert, never my favorite.  Argh.  There is that one week where there are two dress rehearsals and three concerts and you know, that adds up to about $450 in babysitting, if you think about it. 

And while we are on the topic of failures, there is work I am supposed to be getting done this weekend.  This is a side project with no funding behind it, so it needs to get squeezed into the cracks, but deadlines for it and also for my real projects are all fast approaching and I am starting to feel overwhelmed.  And I am grumpy about this because this was supposed to be one of the perks of leaving academia, not having to do very much work on evenings and weekends.  But I am having trouble keeping up, and I work on evenings and weekends rather a lot.  I really ought to write this thing, it would probably even be fun, but I don't want to start.  So I am instead suffering the failure-to-achieve guilt.  I've spent hours shopping and cleaning and laundering and tending to playdates for my kid, and still need to clean the fishtanks and fold the laundry, and I just want a break.  So I guess I am venting in this blog, instead of writing the thing I am meant to be writing. 

And I am looking at these 101 things, and they all suddenly look so hard.  I am tired and these things take time, and money, and energy, and time.  Maybe it'll look better tomorrow... I have made a little progress on "Try 10 new restaurants," here are the results:

1. Lemon Tree Thai - Awesome, loved the fried tofu in the pad thai, and really enjoyed the thai basil and rice as well. Want to go back and try more adventurous dishes.
2. Asiana Take Out - Super yummy, but really expensive, I think it was $38 for Jack and I.  Although we did eat the leftovers for three more meals, so I could just order less food.  
3. Kens NY Deli and Brick Oven Pizzeria - This is an amazing find. Terrific Pizza and they serve beer, and it's in between the daycare and my house. 
4. Sparta Restaurant - Doesn't really have Greek food like we'd hoped, but the steak tips were yummy, and Jack gobbled down his chicken fingers, so I'd say it's solid. 
5. Savvor - Southern food near Chinatown in Boston.  Small plates, great food, also on the pricy side.  The music was too loud, but the lady that did a cover of "all about the bass"was awesome.  

...Night passes...

I've also invented two recipes involving fish.  The first is a miso-honey glaze for salmon, from the Nordstrom cookbook, but I substituted onion soup for miso because I didn't have Miso.  Yum!  The second experiment was born of necessity - I had tomatoes that were starting to get wrinkley, so I chopped them up, added three strips of crumbled bacon and some Mediterranean Olive Tappenade, and threw that over some baked salmon, double yum!  That one is a keeper for sure. 

And now it is time to face my Monday morning, which is more difficult because I did not in fact do my work yesterday.  Sigh. 

Jack Vance Vol. III coming soon!

Sick.  Very sick.  This is almost surely a direct consequence of wearing much too much clothing and climbing ON TOP OF MY ROOF (where it is difficult to remove clothing) and shoveling it off while sweating profusely and then getting chilled.  Oh and germs, as my son is quick to point out, germs are bad too.  This roof shoveling escapade followed last week's ice dam adventures, which caused some large volume of water to pour into the front living room window.  This was me attempting to mitigate that issue, an effort also involving too much outerwear and lots of sweat:

Not the world's most attractive photo, but that's what I look like, and it appropriately captures my mood at the time.  It was highly gratifying when one of my facebook friends declared this to be badass.

What does this have to do with 101 goals?  Was "clear ice dams off the roof" on the list?  No it was not (though it could have been had I known such a thing existed).  But it contributed to more goal doing because as I mentioned, I got SICK, and thus, spent the day sipping tea, catching up on the 52 weeks project and producing and ordering Volume III of the "Jack Grows Up" project.  Here is a teaser of the front cover:

I'm sure those of you who follow these volumes will be very excited to learn of this newest issue.

In other news, Sharon visited again, and finished painting in the bedroom and two bathrooms, so that goal is also officially closed out.  Yes!!  The newest paint is pink, which complements the brown tiles in the bathroom rather nicely I think, and manages to also not clash with the tan tiles.  Here's a photo:

Which doesn't really do it justice at all, but you get the idea.  That concludes this installment of goal doing.

Five Done!

Progress: I hired a roof dude, my second Angie's List adventure.  The first was the plumber, to fix a leak under the sink, but that did not go well.  He says "Go buy a new faucet, then we'll talk ($68 please)."   But the roof guy was better.  No holes in the roof causing wall mold, that he can see.  He patched a couple broken tiles and fixed a bit of flashing.  I'm officially taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the mold.

I also did take another bath, with more tealights, and took a photo.

The new paint is yellow, which contrasts with the purple/taupe fixtures rather more starkly than I'd planned, but I do like the color, and it's becoming less jarring as I get used to it.  All funky purple southwestern wallpaper is now gone.  My friend Sharon will come up again next week to finish up the painting.  I'll post pictures when she's done.  I've been about as useful as an crustacean, though I've offered to assist.  I did make this helpful contribution for her however:

I consider it a study for a painting I am planning.  Jack was in LOVE with a carpet that had two gigantic red lobsters on a blue background, and I told him I would not get that for his room (because I really prefered the carpet he selected before he learned of the lobster carpet's existence).  But I promised to make him a lobster painting, in its stead.  Here was the carpet in question:

You can see that it would be hard for me to let him have this, not the least reason being that I am pretty sure lobsters have ten legs, not eight.

Aside from that, I also obtained a fire extinguisher for the kitchen, thanks to an unexpected trip to Costco with friends Gigi, James and Jonathan.  But being red, with lots of fine print, I'll need to work out a way to take an appealing photo of it...

A few first goals

It is difficult to think of 101 things to do, frankly.  The first 30 were easy, and the next 20 were sensible, and then it started to require significantly broader thinking.  Having always been a fan of things that refer to themselves, an easy goal to add was "finish the list."  Fittingly then, that is the first goal I crossed off.  It was an alarming 21 days after I started the list.  I had better pick up the pace if I am to finish these up!

I also lit a bunch of tealights and took a bath.  It was too tempting to try out the tub in my new house to wait until the list was finished.  However, I don't mind doing it again before crossing it off, so I can take a photo.  My bathroom has cool new paint, so the photo will look neat.  Which brings me to my "Strip wallpaper and paint walls" goal.  That one is well underway (thanks to my childhood friend, Sharon Gunderson).  Unfortunately, in between "strip wallpaper" and "paint walls" there emerged a previously unforseen step "scrub mold off walls." 

For now I am delaying formal mold remediation, after having read some gripping materials on dual-moisture barriers, and concluding that the possibility of condensation beneath the wallpaper was not negligible.  I have, however, also contacted a roof maintenance person.  Ahh, home ownership.  This is only the beginning I am quite sure.