Irene's Aftermath

All is well here post-Irene. The wind was pretty scary last night, and it did down some trees. We walked the neighborhood, but didn't see too much that was terribly wrong. We actually talked to *a lot* of people. It's funny how post-storm, everyone comes out to talk and check in. It's a nice feeling. Kind of like that camaraderie after a huge snowfall. But the nice thing is, the weather here was beautiful today!



We came home and cleaned up our yard a bit. Lucy was really into it:





Our yard was littered with various tree bits, and we discovered this afternoon, after a more thorough exploration, that we lost a large part of our lilac tree in the back/side yard. This is sad.

I'm not sure if the rest of the lilac will survive. Those beaten-down branches are actually still attached at the root, so I'm not sure how best to preserve what's left. The whole thing will be very off-balance without this half. Hrm. Need to do some lilac-pruning research here. Readers? Suggestions?



But we're very lucky all things told. Some folks here in Lowell still don't have power. Some of our not-too-distant neighbors up here on the hill are (we think) still without power as of Monday afternoon, due to a big tree that fell into a power transformer. Yikes! We drove by the work crews who were dealing with it:



We're told by a neighbor that the tree actually caught fire last night. Scary! (that's what's left of the tree on the left there -- sorry for the bad photo; I took it from the car)



That's all I have from the storm. I hope all are readers are fully powered and dry.



Also, today we checked out the Billerica Farmers' Market for the first time. It was awesome. We had an all-market dinner. Yum!

Irene-watch, Day 3: mini-tornado?

We're all OK here. We still have power. But we've had a spot of drama.



As it is so humid here, I put on all the downstairs A/C units, so as to get things cool and less damp inside. This means closing off the downstairs bathroom. I left the window to that room open, since it's protected by the back porch. Apparently, I created some kind of freaky vacuum-room, and when the winds picked up, they created a cyclone of sorts inside the bathroom. I heard a crash while I was in the kitchen and came running. Lucy was fine, stickering away, and seemed to have noticed nothing. So I carried on about my business. About 15 minutes later, when I went to use the bathroom, I discovered this:





That's the medicine cabinet that was formerly above the toilet, as well as all of its contents. Yikes. It appears that it was ripped off the wall.



In its downward trajectory, it crashed onto the toilet tank, shattering the top (but thankfully not the tank itself, so there's no water)



Thank goodness no one was in there. That would have been bad.



I've closed up all house windows now. It's getting ugly out there.



Stay safe, folks. Beware of medicine cabinets. (If you'd like to see the medicine cabinet in happier days, you can read this old post.)

Irene-watch, Day 2

All is well here, with no sign of Irene. Lucy is still sleeping, which is a nice thing for her to do (particularly since she was up several times last night demanding water). After she went to bed, I made spinach-cheese squares (to freeze for later) and some awesome banana bread w/ coconut. Yum. Today we'll try the Carnival Cookies. Updates later. Jake seems to be fine on his ride, which is already well underway. Let's hope it doesn't end up underwater.
More later....

And we're back. It's 2:45 and Lucy is napping. She has a cold and really needs the sleep. We've been crafting up a storm today, sewing up bags and sachets from various scraps (mostly me, with design assistance/direction/demands from Lucy). Here's a tiny tote we made:

She's been stringing buttons together and stickering quite happily. When she gets up, we'll take on the long-awaited cookies.

I've checked in on Jake via my spy technology. There were no updates from about 8 am until 2, so I got a bit worried, but it looks like he's up and running (the phone/tracker/GPS failed in some way, either in battery life or in transmission from the wilds of western Mass). He's roughly around Colrain, MA, where according to weatherunderground, it is overcast but not raining. That's good.

The update from Jennifer & Brendan indicates rain and winds down in Germantown. The update from Carlisle is just hot, humid, and humid. Pretty much the same here.

We'll check in later. With cookies.

3:45: Rain has arrived. Cookies are in the oven. Very strange cookie dough. Reports forthcoming once they're cool enough to test.

4:15 update: I am feeling foolish for over-hyping the cookies. They are a fail. Fail, like Lucy won't eat them. And I think they're pretty lame. Sigh.
They might actually work as chocolate chip granola. Or as a topping for yogurt. But cookies, they ain't.

To make up for the totally disappointing cookies, Lucy got to paint. She loves to paint. She did quite a bit of work. Here she is in action:

And a few samples of her work:

So while she painted (for like a solid hour), I went through some of the various baskets of crafty stuff, which included both supplies and projects completed. I threw out a large box of paper that had accumulated. I realize that perhaps someday, some art historian will be very, very disturbed to hear this, but if keep going with the Lucy archive in its "save everything" mode, we will need a new house. Just for the art. She's a productive child.

5:45 update: Jake has successfully completed his ride, and the rain only just started. Hooray! Now he's off for beer with his fellow riders. I'm sure he'll have some details to share when he gets back tomorrow.

It's raining here. But not windy (yet).

Come on, Irene

So we're getting ready for Hurricane Irene here. And by getting ready, I mean Jake's preparing to go on a 100+ mile bike excursion and Lucy and I are planning what to bake and what to sew while he's away. We're not expecting too much here in Lowell (other than a storm of baked goods!), though there will no doubt be rain and wind. And Jake will be out even farther west, so all should be fine for the ride. We have some supplies and flashlights and the like, so I think we're pretty ready.

Jake's going out to D2R2 again. I'll try to update you on his status. Lucy and I are hoping to bake some banana bread and some cookies from the Heidi Swanson Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen that we love so much.


They're called "Carnival Cookies" and they involve popcorn. Needless to say, Lucy is very excited. You can check out the recipe here or read someone else's blog about making them here.

Earthquake!

Did you feel it? I was working away here at around 1:50 pm (seriously, I checked my watch) when my desk & chair started swaying a bit. I thought there was something wrong with me, so I was (sort of) relieved to see the news a while later announcing that it was indeed an earthquake. No damage here at the house (it was about 20-30 seconds of some disconcertingly unstable ground), or in our area generally, and apparently (at least from what I've read so far) no big damage elsewhere.

But yikes!

Update a few hours later. I've heard from Brendan & Jennifer in Germantown, Maryland, and both of them were sent home from work after the quake. Luke apparently slept through the whole thing while napping at daycare. Florrie and Vonnie had some scary moments (at work in a school and a hospital, respectively) but everyone is fine. Still, it's a scary thing, all this shaking.

Apparently the National Cathedral sustained some damage, and it's not clear how much other not-quite-visible but serious damage may have occurred. Need a reminder? Here's what FEMA says to do in an earthquake. Also, there's some pretty interesting info from the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) on earthquakes. No doubt our West Coast readers will laugh at our puny earthquake. I just read on the Washington Post that there were some aftershocks -- "A 2.8 magnitude aftershock was reported at 2:46 p.m., and a 2.2 aftershock at 3:20 p.m."

Stay safe out there, friends.

Workbench!

Jake has been wanting to build a workbench in the basement for all those projects. I mentioned this to our friend Matt who suggested that he actually had a workbench he didn't need anymore. Check out our new basement awesomeness:







Would you like to guess what the top is made of? Take a closer look:





Give up?



It's a bowling alley! The vise on there is from my grandfather's basement workshop.



We had a nice morning hike over at the Lowell-Dracut-Tyngsboro State Forest.



Lucy did really well:

She also saw a snake. Here's what Lucy says:



It was crawling around. It was in the grass and it was tan. I saw it first. I called my Mom and Dad and told them there was a snake. I felt surprised. Carter didn't see it. Daddy didn't see it either. Mommy saw it {but now Mommy thinks that maybe she saw a different snake because the one she saw was black with a white stripe down its back].



Thanks to guest blogger Lucy!



We just did a check on snakes of Massachusetts and found out for sure that we saw a Common Garter Snake. We want to give a recommendation of the UMass Amherst Snakes of Massachusetts site. Awesome! There are 14 kinds of snakes native to Massachusetts.



Oh, yes, and yesterday was our visit to the Southeast Asian Water Festival. It was a VERY hot day, and we rode the tandem over, so we didn't have a lot of stamina. We ate some awesome sausage and sticky rice, and watched the boats race by. It was *very* crowded there. Lots going on. Good local Lowell fun.

Southeast Asian Water Festival

Later today, we're heading to the Southeast Asian Water Festival. We went a few years ago and had a great time watching the boats and eating all kinds of awesome, delicious things. I think we're going to bike over there on the tandem, as the parking is crazy (it's a *very* popular event). I hope to post tomorrow with updates on any exciting foods, but on that note, I also saw in the local paper that local "bizarre" foods are getting some media attention. The guy who does the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods show is coming to Lowell! [Beware, the following excerpt mentions the eating of things you might not want to think about anyone eating.]:

LOWELL -- Andrew Zimmern has munched on deep-fried tarantulas, beating snake hearts and turtle meat cooked on an open fire.

The host of the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods has also devoured cow testicles and deep-fried bats while traveling all over the world tasting dishes that make some viewers squirm.

And on Wednesday, the culinary explorer will be coming to the Mill City to try a type of food not so bizarre or foreign to Lowellians: Cambodian cuisine.

The plan is for Zimmern to visit the Simply Khmer restaurant on Lincoln Street, stop by a local Cambodian family's home for more food and end the day by playing volleyball and eating meat sticks at Clemente Park, said LZ Nunn, executive director of The Cultural Organization of Lowell.

How exciting! We might just have to walk over to the volleyball courts that day. With Carter, of course.



Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_18715687#ixzz1VZUnQTov

There continues to be a lot to like about Lowell

Last night we went to a free concert at the backyard of Lowell's Tsongas Arena. It was wonderful! We saw Melvern Taylor and his Fabulous Meltones. They were fabulous, as billed. Ukelele, upright bass, and songs like "Love Song for Losers" -- what's not to love?



We met up with lots of our favorite local folks and even ran into a few old friends. There were kids roaming about in herds, tearing across the lawn at frightening speeds and erratic trajectories. We spotted a little girl that Lucy had played with at an event last December, and the two were quickly re-acquainted with each other. They proceeded to rush the stage and dance up front (sorry, I didn't get pictures, but wish I had!), and they ran around like crazy people for the next hour. Lucy's still asleep. It's nearly 9 am. Now that's a good time (and a nice sleep in for us, too!).



This weekend promises more fun, with the Southeast Asian Water Festival here in Lowell. We can't wait to head over and watch the races and eat all kinds of deliciousness!

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

I was reading our campus announcements board when I saw this line from a lab on campus looking for folks to participate in their research project:



We are conducting research on ways to measure a user's trust in a robot.



OMG, how could I not participate?



So as a result, I spent a few hours yesterday at UML's Robotics Lab, where they were doing experiments to discover just how willing I was to let a robot run the show.



I got to drive this robot:





His name is "Junior."



I have to say, it was totally awesome. I didn't see it til after (I was driving remotely, actually from an entirely different floor), but it was very cool. I had to drive him through a maze in the hallway of the building, navigating around boxes using the 'bot-mounted camera. There were other tasks I had to do at the same time, making it all very complicated and stressful. It was very, very fun. I don't want to ruin their experimental design, so I won't say more, but wow, fun!



It turns out, robots=not so trustworthy. But also my driving of a robot=not so trustworthy either.



I also got to see this robot, though not in action:







It's a "telepresence" robot that lets you attend meetings. Notice its nifty necktie -- no business casual for this robot, oh no!



Incidentally, if you're local and over age 18, you too can do the robot trust study! Let me know and I'll hook you up with the researcher.

Energy Efficiency Update

Yesterday we had a home energy audit by Next Step Living, which provides the audits free of charge (the electric & gas companies pay for them). We found out about the opportunity at a booth at the Lowell Folk Festival back in July, which, by the way, was awesome. The food, the music, the food, the people, the activities, the food....well, you can see what we loved the most. We tried Jamaican meat pies, some kind of Burmese fish concoction, various things grilled on sticks, peirogi, Polish rosette cookies, and all of it was delicious. The Folk Fest is also very much focused on being "green," so all of their plates, cups, and silverware are compostable. At the end of the event, they sort all the trash (we saw them doing this), and start the compost pile. Each year, they give away bags of compost made from the previous year's trash! Check it out:





So that's out in our garden now! But I digress...



We had our energy audit (for free!) yesterday, and it returned mostly good news. Our heating system is about 82% efficient. This isn't awesome, but it's pretty good for the kind we have (boiler w/ steam). So there's not much to be gained from replacing it, which means we probably have another 10 years or so (barring any terrible mechanical failure, which seems somewhat unlikely) until we need to deal with that investment.



We already had mostly all of our light fixtures filled with energy efficient bulbs, but he gave us one free one. He also gave us (and installed) a new, low-flow shower head. It's actually pretty awesome, particularly given that our old shower head was kind of broken and needed to be replaced anyway.



He went up in the attic (yikes!) and checked out the insulation. It turns out there's pretty decent insulation up there, and probably not much can be done to improve it. He did recommend re-doing the attic hatch with foam insulation board (polyiso) and new weather-stripping, which we'll do soon. He also thought that the bathroom fan pipe could be insulated, but said it wasn't a big deal, since it's a short run.



He did a blower test and checked out the heating system and the oven. The oven was producing a bit more CO than he' like to see, but he said as long as we're using our hood, it should be fine.



He also looked into solar options (we'd love to get a few solar panels!) but it turns out our house isn't fit for it. The main part is slate (which doesn't work for solar panels) and the back flat roof is too obstructed to make the panels worthwhile. Sigh. So there isn't much new we can do, but it was nice to get a clean energy bill of health.

Allergy Update

Lucy had her visit to the allergist today. You may remember her previous visit to the allergist, discussed here, and when her allergy first presented itself here. We learned today that she is likely no longer allergic to walnuts. This is a bit of good news. She will have a "Walnut Challenge" in a month or so. The doctor suggested that since tree nut allergies are so gnarly, we might not want to just hand her some walnuts at home, so she'll go into the office, try them, and should there be a reaction, the necessary medical assistance will be right there.



But the test also showed that she is *still* allergic to peanuts. Jake sent me this photo of her various tests:

So no Nutter-Butters for this kid, still. Sigh. We were hoping for better news. But as far as Lucy's concerned, the better news is that she's at Friendly's, eating french fries and ice cream. Not too bad.

LUCY

Lucy typed her own name as the title of this blog post! She also did the lovely drawing shown above. The person on the left is me, and the person on the right is her. Note the appropriately drawn eyebrows/eyebrow. And belly buttons. The heart in between us is one that she traced from this little heart thing she found. There have been a lot of traced hearts featured in today's art.



This next one is a Tyrannosaurus Rex:

This is a cat that she drew for Elizabeth:

If you happen to be afraid of clowns please don't look at the next image:

Oops. Too late. Sorry about that.



Anyway, it's nice to see that someone in the house is having a good time with her creative outlet. Art production has been way, way up lately. We're going through paper, stickers and markers like nobody's business. Buy stock in craft supply stores.



This last one is one that she did at school. She told us that it's called "Man Doing the Robot Exercise:"

We'll start the bidding at one million dollars. (If you haven't already, watch My Kid Could Paint That.)

Snug as a Bug

Today we went to Stone Zoo. Unfortunately, a lot of other people did, too. Unbeknownst to us, it was Free Day at the Zoo. Ugh! On the up side, the zoo animals must have been given a pep talk, because they were particularly out, about, and active, so we saw lots of great creature action.



In other news, we were able to pick up a new something for the front room/office; see if you can figure out what's different:



Here's the before:





Here's the after:





It passes Lucy's "roll on the rug test"

so much to blog, so little time

If you're wondering why I've not been blogging lately, here's a visual for you:
Yup. Tenure binders. 14 of 'em. They are making my life miserable. But well-documented misery, that's for sure.

But there have been tons of things happening that I want to blog about -- our trip to the beach, the visit from Grandma, the progress of the garden (ooh! blueberries and tomatoes), the fun of the folk festival, Carter's haircut, our latest awesome new gadgets (I'm looking at you, carbonator!), our broken car and the mechanics of dubious honesty and/or competence....and the list goes on. I hope to come back to these sometime. I also really want to scan some of Lucy's recent drawings, which have been pretty amazing. But I just don't have the time at the moment. Blargh!

So for now, here are some teasers:
1) What's going on here:
Yup, exciting electrical work here at 83 Durant. In a forthcoming issue of "The Joys of Old House Electrical Systems."

2) Updates from Lucy's school. In Orange Family, things get more rigorous. Students have to start thinking about their future life plans. Witness the board of "When I grow up, I will be..." from Lucy's classroom:
And here is a close-up of Lucy's plan:
I think I might need to include that in my tenure binder.

3) Conversations with Lucy:
Oh, there have been so many. Here is a short, recent one:
Lucy (while sitting in stroller on the way home from school): Mom, what comes after zero?
Bridget (assuming this question is a trick): "uh, one?"
Lucy (exasperated): NO Mom, the other way.
Bridget: Uh, negative one.
Lucy (delighted!): NEGATIVE ONE!

Needless to say, Jake is delighted and preparing for further discussion of integers.