The times, they are a'changin'

We have several important updates for our readers:

1) Lucy is now in Second Grade! 

This is shocking.  Here's what she thinks:

2) Lucy is taking piano lessons!  

Also, we now have a piano!

Here's a visual demonstration of both of those things:

And here is Lucy's illustration of the new situation:

3) Lucy is playing soccer for the Dracut Flash!  

Here she is in her uniform:

This is our first foray into the world of competitive sports.  So far, so good.  We started this past Sunday, and it looks like we're going back for week 2.  Go Flash!

Here's Lucy's story about it from school:

She really likes it.  Even the oranges.
4) The above are all awesome things.  But we also have a Very Bad Thing we have to report.  Our very favorite Beacon Street family has moved.   To Maine.  Which is Far.  Not That Far, but still, not here.  We are very excited for Matt and Mary and Ruth and Woody to start their new adventure in Maine, but we are very sad that they are no longer our neighbors.  They will still retain honorary status as members of the Christian Hill Cocktail Society (CHCS).  We all go way back:

We raise a glass to Matt and Mary and Ruth and Woody, and we will all visit soon!!!!

No Cities to Love....

We just got home from the Sleater-Kinney show at House of Blues in Boston.  In a last-minute switcheroo, we actually took Lucy with us.  We bought the tickets back in October, before we realized what a fan Lucy was going to become.  The plan was that we were going with Elizabeth; Ian was going to hang out with Lucy for the evening.  Perfect!  But over the past few months, Lucy has been listening to the new Sleater-Kinney album, No Cities to Love, and singing along and dancing and listening with rapt attention to their interviews on the radio.  So we went into stealth mode, telling Elizabeth & Ian to NOT tell her who we were going to see.

Then Elizabeth called this afternoon and said that she was pretty sure it was an all-ages show, and that she would be glad to give up her ticket for Lucy to go.

Yikes! 

We offered it to Lucy, and her face lit up.  She *was* disappointed that she wasn't going to spent the evening hanging out with Uncle Ian, but the thought of Sleater-Kinney was super exciting to her.

Lucy has previously been to two big shows.  The first was They Might be Giants when she was four months old, as pictured here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeb/2371604259/
Understandably, she does not remember much of that show (she was asleep in the Baby Bjorn for most of it).  She saw They Might Be Giants again in 2010: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jakeb/4636697316 and tells us that she remembers the confetti canon (of course).

We were worried, as the show's opening act was scheduled to start at 8pm, which is already just about her bedtime.

But it turned out great.  She was into the opening act, and very interested in all the action on the stage.  We were *extremely* lucky, because we had standing room only tickets (we didn't realize this and thought we had seats).  But an usher came up to us when she saw Lucy and said, "would you like some folding chairs?" YES!  And then, she took the folding chairs, walked right to the edge of the balcony and set them up for us with a terrific view of the stage.  It was amazing (we thanked her profusely).  We would not have lasted long -- any of us -- if we had had to stand for the whole show.

The show was tremendous and loud and wonderful and awesome.  Lucy had a great time.  I'm pretty sure she was the youngest person there.  A guy sitting behind us was very excited to see her and said it gives him hope, because he has a couple young daughters at home.  A couple of other people smiled and one woman even said "Thank you for bringing your daughter!!!"  It was pretty great.

Lucy sang along, clapped, and was fascinated by all of it, from her ear plugs to the crazy stage lights and backdrop, to the awesome, raging performances coming from the stage.

I couldn't be happier.

Plumbing woes, weather worries, and the late hour of bedtime were quickly forgotten.

She's in bed now, and I'm heading there myself.  We have many cities we love.

Vanquished!

"I have vanquished the drain!"

This was Jake's proud announcement this afternoon.  We were having trouble with the drain in the kitchen sink, which came to our attention because my Mom noticed it.  Well, what she noticed was all the wet in the cabinet under the sink, and also that it was the fault of the sink drain (not the faucet).  FYI, my Mom will make sure that something is broken find something that is broken if she stays at your house.  Just ask my brother's garbage disposal, freezer, and washing machine.  Yikes.  She has quite a track record.

And thank goodness for this blog, for it is by the magic of searching the blog that I discovered that my Mom was suspiciously also here the previous time we had sink trouble (though that was with the faucet, in 2007).

But seriously, we are glad she noticed it.  The situation under the kitchen sink has always been a bit, well, suspicious. I really wish I had taken a picture of it before, but rest assured, there was a strange "venting" situation involving a piece of rubber tubing that was cinched off with a clamp.  Just cinch it up.

Thanks to the internets, our friends at Ace Hardware, our neighbor Lisa, and our handy friend Matt, Jake was able to get all the information he needed to take the drain out of the sink and put in a new one.  The one he was removing, however, was not really exactly like the ones that appear on the internets, which are, well, new and easy to attach and detatch.  While removing the old one, something broke into something else, and, well, there was need for a hacksaw.  I realize that a hacksaw isn't typically a tool one uses in plumbing, but in our house it is.  One of our previous (thus far undocumented) Adventures in Plumbing (TM) involved the simple removal of a shower head, which ended with the shearing off of a pipe, which required a call to an Professional Plumber to fix.  (Happened on a Friday afternoon, after business hours, of course.  We waited until Monday for non-emergency plumbing hours.)

But Jake has emerged victorious from this Plumbing Adventure, and without recourse to a Professional Plumber at all.  Three cheers for Jake.  He has vanquished the drain.

In other news of vanquishing, I have just sent off the article that I have been working on; it was my main goal of the summer to get it completed.  And it's still July!  I am very pleased.

And in other, non-vanquishing, though also awesome news, Lucy has begun ukelele lessons.  We're all very excited about this development.  More details in an upcoming post.  But for now, here is a Conversation with Lucy (TM) that Jake got to overhear at the lesson:

Lucy: My mom plays the violin.

Marieke (her ukelele instructor): That's right! She mentioned that.

Lucy: Well, she's not good at it.

Wow, kid, thanks for the vote of confidence.  I've been vanquished by my own child.

Oh, and if you'd like to read about Lucy's ukelele lesson from her teacher's point of view, you can read about it here:
https://storytosong.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/lets-play-ukulele/
(She asked for our permission to write about it, and we were delighted to see what she did!)

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!

No Peanuts (still)

Today we went to the allergist for the second time to check in on Lucy's peanut allergy. You may remember that there was an incident last year, and the allergy to peanuts and walnuts was confirmed by a skin test. We were hopeful that she might have conquered the allergy, but sadly, no. Lucy is still allergic to peanuts. She might not be allergic to walnuts (her skin didn't show a reaction) but apparently there's some cross-contamination with nuts, so we probably shouldn't try it.

No PB&Js for this one.

Epi-Pen is at the ready.

But as long as you're reading, we should share a "Conversations with Lucy" feature from today's car ride to the doctor. We were listening to some of our music, namely, They Might Be Giants' classic album, Flood. We were listening to the track "Dead," which may be familiar to readers of our generation & musical persuasion. The opening lyrics are

I returned a bag of groceries
Accidentallytaken off the shelf
Before the expiration date

So far, so good. But then, there's a line that goes

And was everybody dancing on the casket?

Then we hear a voice pipe up from the backseat:

"What's a casket?"

I asked her to repeat what she'd said just to be sure I had heard correctly, and indeed, she wanted to know what a casket was. Readers, I assume you all know that "casket" was one word I knew quite well as a kid, as my father sold caskets. I don't know how old I was when I knew what one was, but I also don't remember not knowing what one was. I will have to ask my mom if I asked or when I knew. Anyway, I did the parent cop-out and told her that a casket was a box. It's true. Or at least true-ish. Oh boy, I can't wait until Lucy is able to read this and use all of this against me.

Stove!

Here's the long-awaited post on the NEW STOVE! Hooray!

Jake did the research on getting a new stove way back before we left for vacation. We have gas (ha!) and Jake did research on Consumer Reports and whatnot to find what we wanted. He also did some sweet sweet bargaining, doing some internet sleuthing for a good deal, and finally taking that deal to Home Despot, where they gave us a price 10% cheaper than Best Buy was going to give us. Nice move! We also got a free delivery deal, and some kind of rebate thingie. All in all, good work on Jake.

Upon our return from vacation, we had the impending stove delivery to deal with, combined with the getting rid of the old stove, which is still actually functioning. Just for old time's sake, here's our old stove (with the final blueberry-peach crisp it baked for us sitting on top):


You may remember it from stories such as the time we used a bungee cord to fix it, or the time Jake fixed it with help from some random dude he found through the internets. Good times, good times.

We were very hopeful that we could find it a new home, and Craig's List didn't fail us. Magee stoves w/ built-in heaters actually are pretty popular out here for folks who want to heat small cottages or apartments. The company doesn't exist anymore, but the old stoves don't die -- they are built to last. We actually sold the thing for $150, which was a nice bonus. (Yes, we fully disclosed all info about the stove to the buyer).

The new stove and matching hood was delivered and the old one taken away; the only thing left was to hook up the new one. Should we call a professional for this job? Well, maybe. But instead, Jake took on the project, with the professional help of our good friend Matthew. Thank you Matthew, for overseeing the potentially very dangerous gas hook up!

So here's the stove, in action (cooking breakfast!):


We also have the matching hood, which we need to install. The old hood was the kind which recirculated the air right back into the kitchen. So in other words, it was pretty much useless. This means we have a bit of a project ahead of us, installing the new hood so that it actually vents outside. This will be a very big improvement on the kitchen (and hopefully enable us to start a kitchen painting project!), but will take some engineering. This will NOT be a do-it-ourselves project. We have professionals on board, and hopefully we'll be having it done in the next few weeks.

I know our loyal readers will be disappointed if we omit the gorey details and associated discoveries that the new stove hook up created. So for those of you who still care, here's what it looked like when we took the old stove out:




That black pipe on the left is the gas hook up. Jake (w/ Matt's assistance) took the top part off, and hooked up the flexible gas hook-up right above the shut-off valve.

And here's a close up of that hole:



The hole is where the heater vented outside, through the chimney. New gas stoves don't need this kind of vent, so now we just have a hole there. After we get the hood hooked up and whatnot, we'll close up this hole and tile over it. No one will ever know it was there. Unless they read this blog. We feel this is a better solution than what was done with another hole in this same chimney.

And here's a close up of the flooring underneath the stove:


Take a good, close look. Does that look like a piece of linoleum to you? Yeah, it did to us, too. We thought that was weird. But what's really weird is that that is actually a piece of plywood that has been PAINTED and made to look like linoleum. Someone apparently took quite a bit of time, using green paint as well as white and black, and various faux-finish techniques to make this look like marbled linoleum.

All that, for a piece of floor that is UNDER the oven. That seems crazy. Why do that? I am intrigued by the suggestion that Matt made that perhaps, at one point, the ENTIRE KITCHEN FLOOR was actually done in this way, and when someone came along and tiled it (which is what we see on the rest of the floor) they just cut away around the stove, leaving this piece un-tiled underneath. This actually makes a fair amount of sense, given the rough cut look of the edges. But seriously, can you imagine the entire floor being painted like this?

So far, the new stove has been awesome. It has several different-sized burners, as well as a huge center burner that can be used with a griddle (see above photo). It also has a warming drawer underneath for all those big dinner parties. Yes! The big thing is that it's BIG. Actually, the outside dimensions are smaller than the McGee, but without that heater on the side, the oven itself -- inside -- is MUCH larger. We're happy about this. We're also happy that, you know, the door closes, the light works, and we can see through the window to what's cooking inside.

I will say that one down side to the new gas stove is the fact that it relies on an electric ignition. This is probably safer, and perhaps more energy efficient than the always-on-pilot light that the McGee had, but, when the power went out, our McGee still worked. That was a nice feature. With the new stove, if we lose power, the stove won't work either. Sigh. But overall, this is a nice step up.

Welcome to 83 Durant, New Stove!

P.S. For any of our readers who knew me sometime around 1990, this post may bring to mind an appropriate sound-track for reading this post: the song "Stove" by the Lemonheads. It's a rather charming, sad song about a guy who misses his old stove. Refrain:
I miss my stove. She's all alone.
She's right out front and looks a mess.
Unwanted guest. We lied to her.
I miss my stove. Feel sad I guess.

I suspect Mr. Dando wasn't really talking about his stove. At least we know that our old stove is living a useful life for someone else's house. No hard feelings, stove.

Merry Christmas!

Lucy slept through Christmas morning, which was just fine with us.

The Sufjan Stevens Christmas album has been getting lots of play around here. I'm partial to his version of "I Saw Three Ships", but I can't find a link to that online. Here's a nifty little animation of a different track:



I can also recommend this John Fahey Christmas album. There's not much Fahey Christmas on youtube (exception: a weird instructional video involving Auld Lang Syne), but here he is in 1978. You gotta love youtube.