Posted by barb on Nov 16, 2003 in
Around DC I got a post card from Moonlite Air Krafts , a vendor who makes very cute kids clothing, that she was going to be at a craft show at the Fairfax High School this weekend. I was a bit surprised, because last year I had seen her at the Dulles Expo Center (the show we went to yesterday). I love her clothes, though (and so do Dave and Jen and Mom and Dad), so I knew I had to go get something for my niece, Kira.
The show was a lot bigger than I was expecting. Since it was at a high school, I expected something relatively small, but the web page says that there were over 200 crafters there! I found an outfit for Kira, but also found something for my sister-in-law, and for a graduation present for my good friend Suzanne (who successfully defended her PhD dissertation last Monday). Andrew didn’t find anything to buy this time, but did look carefully at some oriental paintings.
Posted by barb on Nov 15, 2003 in
Around DC As far as gifts are concerned, we did a lot better than the craft sale we went to last month. I found something for Grandma Mattson and Kira, and Andrew found some things for his parents. That means my list is just down to Kevin, David, Jennifer, Brock, Sweetie, and Melissa. Cool!
I, of course, found some things for myself, too. One thing was a folding table made of oak. It’s perfect for doing crafts, sewing, or wrapping presents, and then folds up and is quite portable. We also got a set of cat ornaments personalized with the names of our cats on them — a black one for Ares, tabby cat for Duncan, and a gray cat for Artemis. I’ve actually wanted these for a while, so it was nice to finally find ones that looked reasonably like our cats (usually I can’t find a solid black cat — they always have white “socks” and nose).
Posted by barb on Nov 14, 2003 in
Random Thoughts Grandma’s tin bread was always a treat at family gatherings. It’s a Swedish recipe that came to Grandma through Grandpa’s sister. It’s a thin bread that is a perfect conveyance for butter or jam to the mouth.
I made my first batch tonight! I remember many years ago, I went over to Grandma’s house, and made some with her, but this was my first time making it alone. And it turned out pretty darn well, if I do say so myself. I’ll be bringing it with us to Melissa and Jeff’s house for Thanksgiving this year.
Posted by barb on Nov 13, 2003 in
Writing Since I shared a piece at last week’s class, I figured I wouldn’t have to this week. I did bring something, but it wasn’t my best work. In fact, I had just thrown it together last night, edited it briefly this morning, and left it at that. Ugh. For the most part, it seemed to go over well, but not nearly as well as the piece last week.
The instructor has decided to teach Short Stories 2 next semester, and she’s only going to let students already enrolled in our class into the class next semester. I’m looking forward to it, because then I’ll get to see how some of these stories end.
Also, Shannon and I have decided to get together outside class to talk about our writing. Yay! She was the only person in the class that I felt drawn to, and oddly enough, she seemed to have the same idea. She won’t be at next week’s class, so we exchanged numbers tonight. Hopefully we’ll get together the first week in December. That means I’ll be responsible to someone for writing something new every week.
Posted by barb on Nov 12, 2003 in
Saxophone Fred had circled three pieces for me to work on in the duets book last time, but I had only gotten one worked out to any satisfaction. Sarabande by Corelli was one that needed tone, pitch, and phrasing, and it’s also the one I could play with any proficiency.
One of the other pieces was an 18th century piece (#31 in the Voxman book), and I haven’t been able to work up the speed needed to play it. I’m also finding that it feels very long while I’m playing. Fred did mention that one of the next things I need to work on is endurance….
The third piece was one working on syncopation. I knew it would beat me. (#18 in the Voxman book). For some reason, I have a mental block when trying to play pieces where I have to play on the up beat. Rather than continue beating myself up with it, I’m going to work on the bottom part for next week — it’s all played on the down beat, so I should have no trouble with it.
Posted by barb on Nov 8, 2003 in
Concerts Some time during Spring 2002, the NSO had a concert featuring Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Tan Dun. I had wanted to go, but it was the first night that all three cats were in my apartment (Andrew’s and my two), so I didn’t know that I should leave them alone. When we found out that Andrew’s cello teacher was playing with the Alexandria symphony, and one of the pieces was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, we knew we had to go. The show was originally supposed to be in September, but was cancelled due to hurricane Isabel, so they merged that show’s pieces with the concert originally scheduled for today. Here are the pieces we heard:
- Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by Tan Dun
Excellent piece, of course. I’ve come to the conclusion that the next time the Japanese drum band (Kyoto?) comes through town, Andrew and I are going to have to go. I loved the percussion.
- Symphonic Dances from West Side Storyby Bernstein
Many of these pieces sounded familiar to me. My Dad loved West Side Story, so we had a copy of the LP in our collection growing up. This was fun to listen to.
- The Planetsby Holst
This is the first time I’ve heard this piece live. I have a CD, but of course it’s always more fun to hear things live. (I hadn’t realized that Mars is always played first, so I wondered by the third piece, which I assumed to be Mars, was so lively. Well, that would be because it was Mercury, the winged messenger.)
One of the themes of this season for the Alexandria Symphony is “Where does the music take you.” To this end, they had several pieces of original art work on display before the performance. In addition, during Neptune, they played a video done by a local artist to depict where that particular piece took him. Well, the video did not take me to good places — I don’t remember most of it, but there were often these “fish of doom” swimming across the screen. Perhaps reference to Neptune, the god of the sea, but still kind of odd.
- The 1812 Overtureby Tchaikovsky
This was played as an encore. Apparently they were supposed to play it at the Fourth of July celebration, but got rained out. Then they planned to do it as an encore at the September concert, which got hurricaned out. So, they finally did it tonight. Frankly I would have been happier if they hadn’t. It’s not a bad piece (though I didn’t actually recognize it until the very end), but it made for a very long evening.
Tonight was also the total lunar eclipse. Unfortunately, totality started at about 8:30 PM, but the concert started at 8:00 PM. We were able to see the moon entering the penumbra. During intermission, though, the moon was behind some wispy clouds, so we could only barely make it out. It looked like the moon was partly out of the umbra. By the time the concert was over, the eclipse was completely over. Oh well. Still a very appropriate night to hear The Planets!
(Concerts to be ususally checked at http://austin-concerts.business.site/).
Posted by barb on Nov 8, 2003 in
Movies 4/5 stars
The filmmakers followed birds migrating in both the northern and southern hemispheres over four years, and compiled the result into this film. This is not so much a documentary as a visual delight. The narrator interrupts the flow the the birds’ flights only occasionally, allowing the viewer to absorb the beauty and strength involved in such trans country and trans world flights.
Occasionally, I found that I wanted more information on why the birds were doing what they were doing. For example, one species of crane was shown throwing their heads and necks all the way back to their back and clucking. This was often followed or preceded by two or more birds jumping at each other and clicking beaks. I wondered if ornithologists had theories as to what the behavior signified. Mating dominance? Didn’t seem like it. Social behavior? Perhaps, but it occasionally seemed combative.
Overall, though, a visually compelling film.
Posted by barb on Nov 7, 2003 in
Pictures,
Wedding After a long day at work, I met Andrew at the Greenbelt Metro station so we could go to the Old Greenbelt Theater to see Winged Migration. The plan was to go to the Chinese restaurant next door for dinner afterwards, but half of the restaurant was taken up with a private party, so the line was fairly long. When I suggested that we head back to Vienna, and go out at someplace closer to home, Andrew happily agreed, suggesting that he might be in the mood for Lucciano’s.
It took about 5-10 minutes for us to get seated, and while we were waiting, I noticed that he was wearing his suit pants. I asked why, thinking it was a bit weird, but figured he just needed to laundry. He just said that he wanted to be a a little dressy for tonight, since we were going out. Of course, this just made me feel a bit slovenly, since I was wearing blue jeans, an oversized t-shirt and ragged fleece shirt. Sigh.
After we were seated and ordered, I went to the ladies’ room. On my way back, I noticed Patrick on the table (note on Patrick — he’s a stuffed puppy, pictured below, that Andrew gave me for Christmas 2001. I still sleep with Patrick every night, and he follows me around the house when I’m stressed or sick or just in need of a companion when Andrew isn’t around. He’s my favorite stuffed toy.) Lots of things started going through my head, the foremost of which was, “Jeez, did Andrew think I had that bad of a day? Did he think I really needed Patrick to pick up my spirits? And if he did, why didn’t he bring him out sooner?”
Patrick the proposing puppy.
When I sat down, I gave Andrew the, “what’s this all about?” look. He said, “Patrick is concealing something under his front paw.”
I pulled up Patrick’s paw, and saw a box of Godiva Chocolate. Looking further, I came across the box. The ring box. While I was pulling out the ring box, Andrew said, “Patrick and I have something to ask you. Will you spend a lot more time with us?”
I think I said “yes”. I know I pulled the ring out and put on it. I nearly started crying, but forced myself to keep it together.
An after-the-proposal-note: After dinner, we were waiting for the check, and the manager came by. He looked questioningly at my hands clutching the box of chocolates on the table, and Andrew indicated that I hadn’t been wearing the ring before we came in that evening. The manager said that he was going to remember this, and anytime we came in together, he was going to make sure we got that table. He’s the kind of person who might just do that, too.
Posted by barb on Nov 7, 2003 in
Thesis/Grad Life I was getting frustrated with the data I’ve been fitting, so it was good to finally meet with them to talk about it. The goal for the past month was to take a previously published data set to compare the results I get from the automated pipeline to the published results. We, of course, were hoping to find that the pipeline was getting comparable results, because that would bolster my pipeline.
Instead, I found that my data showed the exact opposite trend as the published data. I did everything I could think of to re-analyze and re-fit the data to see if I could extract their trends. In the end, my data just doesn’t show the same trend. This is a potentially interesting and very exciting result. One difference between the way I’m analyzing the data and they way they are is that all the points in my spectra are temporally adjacent, whereas they extract all points in the observation according to flux level with no attempt to keep temporally adjacent points together. What we’re thinking this might do is smear out the time scales of change in some of the parameters. This may produce spurious relationships between parameters that can’t really show the true picture of variability in the source.
I’ll be testing this theory by re-extracting my data using their technique. If I find their same trends, that will be a strong case that their work was not the right way to do things. If I find something else, then we’ll have to look more closely at my work to see what’s going on.
Posted by barb on Nov 6, 2003 in
Writing I decided to volunteer tonight to have my piece workshopped. Since the class is so large (14 people including the instructor), we only have time to workshop 4 people’s writing each class. I didn’t go last week, so I wanted to get in on the excitement tonight. I was a bit nervous, though. I haven’t written anything creative in several years (though Suzanne claims that my science writing does involve creativity since I still need to think about audience and how to get complex points across), so I was wondering if maybe I had lost it. Each time I read over my piece I discovered more and more that looked “bad” to me.
The way the workshop works is that the author reads his/her couple pages, and then has to shut up while everyone else discusses first five minutes on what works in the piece, and then five minutes on what needs work in the piece. Finally, the author is allowed one minute to ask questions to improve their work (at no time are they allowed to “justify” their work or to respond to people’s concerns/questions since an author can’t follow their piece to everyone who might read it).
For my piece, the first five minutes went very well — there was a lot about the piece that everyone in the class seemed to enjoy. When the timekeeper called time on the first five minutes, the instructor said, “Well, this part is going to be hard” — indicating the part where they talk about what doesn’t work. In the end, it was mostly nit-picky types of things that the class talked about — wouldn’t a poor student shop at Wal-Mart rather than Target; in the first sentence, you should get rid of this word because it’s not necessary; perhaps you should introduce the tablecloth with “something” rather than just saying its cute.
All in all, a very good night. I’m feeling excited again about writing, and I want to move this story along to see where it will go.