When I was listening to Jumping Monkeys Podcast #3 awhile back, they discussed the use of an iHome for playing music for their children. It wasn’t that thought which caught my attention, but rather the choice of music. In this case it was a lullaby rendition of Metallica.

What a great idea! I was getting really bored with listening to the same old Pooh lullaby which emanated from Alia and Connor’s night light.

I’m not using an iHome, but rather just my iPod connected to a set of external speakers.

My current playlist includes the following (in addition to Metallica): Coldplay, Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, No Doubt, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Eagles, The Smashing Pumpkins, and U2.

When we put the kids down to sleep, we turn on the iPod’s sleep timer for 30 minutes. It’s configured to randomize the playlist, so each time it’s a different set of tunes (from the almost 150 in the playlist).

Now when we’re listening to the baby monitor downstairs, we actually don’t mind hearing it in the background. I’ve even been known to hum along to a few of the tunes. I absolutely love it – and so do the kids. How do I know? Because I ask them before they go to sleep if they want music, and they tell me yes. Granted, they might not differentiate what *kind* of music, but I’ll take it as a good sign anyway. They certainly sleep to it! We’ve been using this setup for almost a month now.

At first, I wasn’t going to get every album available, but the more I listen to the list, the more I’m also considering adding these other lullabye renditions to it: Bjork, Bob Marley, Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, The Cure, The Ramones and Tool. I’m not going to link each of those albums for simplicity sake, but if you want to hear samples, you can go here.

The current problem with this setup is that somehow the speakers we are using are getting interference from someone broadcasting very early in the morning. It’s almost as someone is broadcasting too powerfully on their CB, or we’re picking up an emergency police broadcast or something. All of a sudden we’ll be sleeping and we’ll hear these voices really loud (with some technical jargon in the discussion) and it’ll wake us up. I need to run into the nursery and quickly turn off the speakers. Some mornings I haven’t been quick enough. It’s happened about a half-dozen times now. I’ll switch speakers and hopefully get a set that is less susceptible to picking up random RF.

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It’s the Summer Solstice today.. Ok, that’s misleading.. it’s only the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere… which it’s most likely where you’re reading this from…So I guess I’d be more technically correct to wish you a happy June Solstice, or more generically a Happy Solstice!

Current Mood:  calm

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First off, my bracelet was found! The last place I was at Thursday before going home was one of our offsite properties doing some work on the server. The bracelet must have gotten caught on the chair or desk or something, because one of the employees found it late Friday… Yeah!! That started off a good weekend.

Saturday, we went to Steve’s 6 year old birthday (Katelyn). Had a good time. Spent most of the afternoon chasing our two tumblebugs around the yard and playsets, so we didn’t get that much time to socialize. It was mostly their family and Katelyn’s schoolmates families though.

They had a magic theme with a magician later in the evening. At one point, they had a pin the tail on the rabbit. Connor did really well, but Alia insisted that the tail belongs on the rabbit’s ear. Later, she collected all the tails on the two rabbits and keep redistributing them. At one point, she had them over on the slide.. because, well, you know… rabbit tails need to have fun too!

Sunday was Father’s Day. Jean made a nice french toast breakfast in prep for the day. It wasn’t going to be an easy one, because my father was coming over in the afternoon to help us setup a 16′x42″ pool for the kids. It was an early birthday gift. We wanted to do some gardening and lawn work, and I had to mow. She also bought me a book of Crytograms and made a really beautiful collage with photos of me and the twins, and Dad is #1 text and whatnot. I know she was amazed at how many pictures I’ve actually *been* in! So many in fact, that she couldn’t use them all, and actually found ones with me smiling. You should see the range of hair styles I’ve had in the last two years.

Worked all morning, got a shower.

We start setting the pool up. The ground needs to be level. It looks level. It’s not. After filling up the first 2 inches, we see that the water is all pooling to one side. So now we have to drain it to move it, and we head off to Lowe’s to buy some sand or top soil and try to stablize the ground. It was about a 2-3″ incline over the 16′, which doesn’t sound like a whole lot, but causes lots of problems with the pool.

So now 1200 pounds (30 bags) of top soil is moved into the car, out of the car, spread on the ground. Whew! Talk about back breaking work. Took a break for a wonderful turkey dinner. Went back outside and finished setting up the pool and beginning to fill it.

Once there is about 3 inches of water in it, you need to get inside and ‘smooth out’ all the wrinkles on the bottom. So I did that, and was shortly joined by my kids, who both decided that they wanted to play in the water too while Daddy worked.

The pool still wasn’t perfectly level, so we had to keep moving the dirt underneath, and I wound up bringing in another two wheelbarrows of dirt from the compost pile.

Alia had us laughing so hard at one point, as she’d grabbed the hose and was having a grand old time swinging it around and watching the water arc through the air. Then it would get slightly out of control, go directly above her, and splash down on her head. She’d startle, drop the hose, and have a shocked look on her face. This happened about 5 more times, each time, she missed the cause and effect. Eventually she got it though, because then she was hosing down Connor and me, neither of us too appreciative of the fact. Sure, the water I was sitting in I’d gotten used too, but when the cold hose water hit the top of your head and face, it really gets your attention.

We left the H20 running from about 5:30P to around 11 last night. It’s about 2/3 full. Maybe Jean and the kids will play it today. I still need to setup the ladder and the filter, and then pick up some chlorine and whatnot to treat the water. Last thing we need is to a giant algae mosquito farm in our backyard.

Anyway, it was a long post and a great weekend. Grandfather and father working hard for our kids. Sure, I could have been sitting on my ass all day with someone feeding me grapes (um, no), but this was much, MUCH better.

Current Mood:  happy

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I’m very upset right now. Last night, on my way to the Iron Bog business meeting, I realized that I was missing my bracelet. Jean gave it to me over 10 years ago on either our first/second valentines’ day. I think it was more likely the first, because she wasn’t even really aware of my metal allergy at that point, and had to return the first two she bought me because they kept turning my wrist green. Finally, she settled on a stainless steel one.

It looks very similar to a medical ID bracelet, but it has my initials on the outside and an inscription on the inside. It’s fallen off before, but I’ve always immediately known.

Last night it was gone, and I only realized when I started scratching my wrist in absentia.

Jean’s looking for it in the house, I’m looking for it in the car. It most likely got caught on the corner of my pocket when I was taking my keys/wallet/cell phone on/off.

*keeping my fingers crossed*

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We’ve been using Google Maps for years now, ever since it was first released. I find the Ajax interface to be very easy to navigate, and I’m happy with the results. One of the great things about Google is that they are always adding new features. The problem is, that sometimes these new features slip in and as a regular user you have no idea. Granted, their new Street View feature (see real images and navigate 360 view at the street level) is getting a lot of news in the past weeks because of privacy issues. However, there are plenty of other features available, and I recently discovered two I didn’t previously know about.

For example, did you know that you can look at a Google Map and see traffic flow (real time)? How’s that for last minute planning! Did you know that you can save common addresses and even make your own address a default starting location?

I highly encourage you to read the Google Maps User Guide so that you can see what you’re missing. Learning keyboard navigation and knowing simple things like your mouse scroll wheel can zoom are going to make things easier for you.

So what two things did I learn? First, that they’ve now added the ability to Add Destinations to your directions. This means you no longer have to go from Point A to B and then from point B to Point C on two different sets of driving directions. You can go from A to C via B. Real nice for multiple destination travels.

The other thing is the really awesome ability to create your own map! These can be public, such as America’s Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66, or they can be private (non searchable). Being private doesn’t mean you can’t give out the link to other people –

– such as Directions to Our House. Now, I didn’t add any nifty pictures or video, because that would just be overkill… for now at least…

Now you have a link which takes you to a fully interactive Google Map that I created. You can click on our house, and have all the regular Google Map features, such as ‘Get Directions to this Point’. Or you can simply print it out and have the information to come visit us! Wanna see something really cool? Follow the link to our directions and then switch on Satellite View. Now you can see the actual streets AND our house. If you get lost now, it’s really NOT my fault.

(Edit: 6/13/07 — I removed the link to the house directions for privacy concerns. There are other public maps available for you to get the idea, and if you are particular friend/family who could actually USE the directions to our house, I’ll be glad to forward the link along to you)

Google Map Mashups are a whole separate post, but I’d want to pointout Wayfaring.com, which is a pretty slick one that I’ve used before. It takes all the features of the My Maps functionality and extends it into the public area. This way multiple people can add points of interest and leave comments, etc. Imagine, for example, a map with all the locations of SCA groups in NJ.. or even finer, just the members of Tadcaster and their relation (distance) to each other.

Current Mood:  accomplished

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So my foray into the depths of awesome customer service continued yesterday when I went to pick up my medicine. I was prescribed what’s commonly known as a ‘Z pack’. It’s a 5 day antibiotic in a pre-measured pack with 6 (or more) tablets. If I say that it takes 1 minute to fill that kind of order, I’m overstating.

I drop it off at CVS and tell them I’m going to wait. After 20 minutes, the guy behind the counters mumbles someone’s name and I think it’s me. So I go up and give him my name and says he called someone else. I ask him to check on my order and he takes my info, pulls a few bags and says ‘They must be still working on it’.

Another 25 minutes pass. I go back up and ask again. Now I’m getting really steamed. I see him look around at the packages and then nonchalantly moves my order from a black bin to a yellow bin. He comes back to me and says ‘They’re still working on it, they have to verify the order. It’s going to be another 5 or 10 minutes’. They used that same ‘verify’ excuse to the last 4 people who asked about their orders as well. When I was sitting in the lobby hearing them say it to other people, I believed it to be true. Now, though, I had a different thought.

Me: Did I just see you move it from the black bin to the yellow bin? Does that mean it wasn’t put in as a ’customer waiting’  order

Idiot: Um (sheepishly), yeah. it was put through as a standard order.

Me: That’s ridiculous. How come you didn’t notice that 25 minutes ago the first time that I checked. It’s only a Z-pack! It doesn’t take that long to fill (notices Pharmacist looking up).

Idiot: We’ll call you when it’s ready.

They had the order filled for me in 4 minutes.

Current Mood:  aggravated

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I received an out of the blue email message the other day from my old friend Sara. Sara and I were friends back in high school. We were in drama together and hung together outside of school as well. We haven’t seen each other in over 10 years, though we did communicate via email for a bit. That’s even fallen off, and I haven’t heard from her in over two years, since she told me she was getting married and I told her we were pregnant with twins!

So imagine my surprise when she send me an email the other day. Apparently, she was going through her old email archives and realized that she never replied to me two years ago, so she finally did. Not only that, but she’s been in touch with a least one other friend, Heather, regularly. She proposed that we get together a sort of mini-reunion this summer and we’re currently working out the details.

While the ‘old gang’ didn’t all talk to each other directly, each of us, in turn, has been close with a least one other member. So it wasn’t too difficult to get everyone’s email addresses, and start a little mailing. Kinda bizzaro to suddenly be exchanging email with folks you haven’t talked to in so many years, while at the same time, it’s kinda cool to suddenly be talking with them again. So let’s see if Sara, Heather, Kevin, Ray, Jason and I can actually pull this off. Meeting husbands, wives, kids… Old friends, new families… new friends…

Current Mood:  sick

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So my friend Jason was just discussing this with me last month. He swears by it, and said how much better it made him feel. I was reluctant to belive him. Jean’s allergist recommended something similar, but it was more of a nasal spray cleaner then a true Neti Pot. Problem is, if you do it wrong, you wind up gagging on the water, or burning your nasal passages.. maybe this instruction video can be used to assist in using the spray. I can only imagine how much crap I have up my nasal passage. As long as a Muscle Man doesn’t fall out, I think I’d be willing to try it.

Current Mood:  cynical

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