Professor Layton encourages ‘adventures in maths’

I had the very great pleaseure of contributing to the Orkney Learning Festival that took place at Kirkwall GS in Oct 2008. This was a great occasion and it showed the excitement and passion for teaching and learning that there is in Orkneys schools. I met Joanna McLeod, a teacher from Firth PS, and she expressed an interest in getting involved in one of the projects that I was looking to start. This project involved the use of a game called Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS. I had twenty DSs and 20 copies of the game to give to a teacher to see what, if any, use and impact on learning that this game might have. I had mentioned the obvious links to problem solving that the game offers what with there being over 180 maths puzzles but I also talked about the opportunities for imaginative writing, animation, art and design and other curricular areas to be explored. If you look closely at the beautiful animations in the game then you might see a style that is redolent of Sylvain Chomets movie Belleville Rendevouz. Joanna, as it turned out, has an animation degree and trained in this area so she was very aware of his work and of the history of animation and she was keen to see what she could do in this area as a result of using Prof. Layton as the stimulus. A few months later and a return trip to Orkney was organised. Yet again I was deighted to see how a teacher had used this device to great effect and how it had been used to enthuse and excite a class full of children. The main work that had been done with the game involved the planning, storyboarding, design and sharing of animations based on the theme of Winter. The children used the Custom Animation function within Powerpoint and they used this to great effect. What was particularly pleasing to see was the zany and original ideas that the children came up with. One movie was called, The Good, The Normal and The Hairy! Where they got that name I dont know but it certainly caught my attention. Each group had a puzzlemaster and their job was to ensure that there was some maths puzzles in the game so that when others played it they were faced with a challenge as well as enjoying the narrative of the story and the aesthetic of its design. The children also talked most eloquently about the maths aspect of the project. They talked about how engaging with the puzzles in the context of the game was really motivating and how, if they couldnt solve a prob lem, they would work with their peers to see if they could solve it together. One child even said that it felt like he was having adventures in maths! Now, as we found with our Dr Kawashima work (still digesting this interesting claim from France, although there is not much available to read as yet it seems), here is yet another games based learning scenario in which schoolchildren are saying its cool do and be good at maths. Again I ask, is this not what we want? Hopefully Ill get al the video footage edited (along with everything else that I have still to finish) and get it online soon. One last thing&if you ever get the chance to go to Orkney then you must take it. I managed to visit Skara Brae, Maes Howe and the Ring of Brodgar prior to catching the flight home today. Have a look and see what you make of this beautiful and mysterious place& Thanks to all in Orkney and at Firth PS for

Living in a Tesla World

Transportation is inextricably linked with (green) buildings. And for a number of reasons -- peak oil, national security, price gouging, and concern for the environment -- the current oil-based transportation system is dying. Its death started with hybrids, and to a certain extent, continued with natural gas vehicles. With the advent of electrical vehicles, we will all witness the slow, prolonged, and painful death of oil-based transportation. Tonight Dateline NBC gave us a glimpse of the next generation of transportation in Tesla Motors. The future of electrical cars is bright, but let's be clear: it's complicated, too. If you watch the above video, you hear Jason Calacanis (owner of a Tesla Roadster) and Elon Musk (founder of Tesla Motors) talking about electrical vehicles. Calacanis, a self-proclaimed Corvette guy, says he's done with Corvettes (he has two Tesla Model S sedans on order) and hasn't been to the gas station in four months. Repeat, that's four months of no gas station. In the future, like Calacanis, most people will have no need for a gas station. A Pricey BeginningBut to be clear, in the near term, electrical vehicles won't be for the price sensitive consumer. The Tesla Roadster starts at ~$109k, and the Model S is supposed to be ~$50k. Figure in generous federal tax incentives and cheaper potential fuel prices, you still have to be able to buy the car to begin with. But a transportation world with Tesla vehicles is kind of picturesque, I'll agree. These cars are beautiful, and they perform. Although Tesla is somewhat first to market, they're not alone. A number of other electrical vehicles will hit the market in late-2010, early 2011, and sometime thereafter. Some of these include Ford Focus BEV, Nissan EV, Dodge Circuit, Smart EV, Mini E, Aptera, Mitsubishi i-MiEV, Subaru R1e, and BYD e6, etc. The list is long and will certainly get longer. What is The Source?As we move from oil to electricity, we have to ask: where's all this electricity coming from? Nationally, based on 2006 measurements, electricity mostly came from coal (49%), natural gas (20%), nuclear (19.4%), hydroelectric (7%), other renewables (2.4%), and petroleum (1.6%). Coal is not clean by any stretch of the imagine, and nuclear, let's face it, has complicated waste storage problems. Natural gas is cleaner than oil, but it's not clean. In short, we really need to tie renewable energy to the advent of electrical vehicles. Otherwise, the next generation transportation system won't be all that clean. It can be though. A Perfect WorldElectrical vehicles should be charged at home (or work) using renewable energy gathered from rooftop solar, geothermal, small wind, and/or a portion of utility-scale green power. Solar panels, green tech, an energy storage system, and everything else may be expensive in the near term, but costs will go down eventually. A short-term solution may be green power purchases through electricity companies. A better solution is to make buildings more energy-efficient, because the less energy wasted on operations, the more that can be used on vehicles. From our perspective, to prepare for a future of electrical vehicles, the first step involves making buildings more energy efficient. It'd be nice to use energy-efficiency savings to power these vehicles. Then, going forward with a partially decentralized solution, start generating green energy on these efficient buildings to make them net zero energy or resource positive. We're doing one good thing by phasing out oil, but as we phase into greater electricity use, we have to have to do it right. And clean. Photo credits: Tesla Motors.

Tuesday Morning Post: Pod Person edition

So the Holiday Rush is finally over, with both Children's Week and Noblegarden out of the way, it's a bit quieter in Azeroth. In fact, some of us are starting to think they may be a problem: It's just too damn quiet. Northrend just doesn't have that much ambiance after a while.Still, even if the landscape of Northrend is starting to look somewhat sterile, there's still buzzing going on in the background, at least. Patch 3.1.2 remains on the PTR and even has some updated notes, There's a Murloc Marine on the loose, the first round of tickets for BlizzCon will be released in scant days, and we have a plethora of interesting pets and mounts showing up in the game files. Downtime today is 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific, and some servers will be down even longer, so you'll have plenty time to read up on all this and more. Curl up in your WoW Pod and check our usual tuesday morning roundup after the break.

Jp. sx doll

April Meetup Saturday April 18

I laughed myself silly at Johnny Neihu's ripping of American Samoa's representative to Congress, Eni Faleomavaega, who has been the object of much derisive commentary in the Taipei Times recently for his unswerving support for the wrong side. Johnny points out that Eni "I don't want good American boys to die for Taiwan" Faleomavaega is from a place that sends troops to fight in Iraq in grossly disproportionate numbers, and originally supported the Iraq War. There's a good article at JapanFocus that talks about the issue of Samoans fighting in Iraq (Vltchek also talks about Fijian mercenaries in Iraq). Meanwhile, Jerome passed the news about the upcoming April meeting of the breakfast club:++++++++++++++++We missed our March meeting because two desired speakers had to unfortunately postpone to a later date. However we are back in April and have people lined up for the next couple of months.First: This Saturday, April 18th, at 10 am.we have an interesting speaker from the UK, Michael Rand Hoare Ph.D.Mike is one of those patient and persistent chaps who can root around through archives researching items political and otherwise. He is Emeritus Reader in Theoretical Physics in the University of London and Honorary Research Fellow in Royal Holloway College at the same. He may soon be an Hon Res Fellow at the SOAS in London,--that is pending. He is here having just given a presentation on Kinmen and Matsu in the 50s and 60s for Academia Sinica etc.Topic: 'The Rise and Fall of Britain's Hong Mao Cheng Consulate" It almost reads like a spy novel with intrugue and competitive powers galore. We see the Brit side of the 2-28 happengs and reports.The British Consulate in Tamshui, housed in the 'Hong Mao Cheng' buildingwas re-opened in 1946. It had functioned throughout the Japanese period until the outbreak of the Pacific WarThough very small as consulates go, it immediately came to special prominence in the '228' period, when it sent daily reports to Nanking and London on the developing situation in Taiwan. These reports, mainly sympathetic to the Taiwanese people, were played-down in London, however, where the KMT had its own friends in the Foreign Office.In 1951, when the British Government recognized Beijing and diplomatic relations with the ROC were cut, the Consulate surprisingly remained open, reporting as before while scrupulously avoiding any contact with the Taipei regime. This highly anomalous situation led to absurd, and sometimes farcical events as the pretence was kept up. Strangely the authorities in Beijing, though sometimes expressing annoyance, did not threaten any retaliation.In the late 1960s the continuation of the Consulate was threatened from another direction altogetuer--Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Authorities kept up an underhand campaign, behind the backs of Tamshui, to have the Consulate closed, for fear it jepoardized their situation. This was not successful, but the Consulate was eventually disbanded in 1972 as part of the deal whereby the UK upgraded its Beijing Consulate to Embassy status.Mike is giving us the fruits of his going through the UK Archives which are governed by their version of the Freedom of Information Act.The meeting location is the restaurant 婷婷翠玉 at 174 AnHe Road, Section Two. (rough translation of name is Tender, Pretty Green Jade.) You will be able to tell the restaurant by the lace curtains on the window--it was used in a TV commercial a while back. (We will have the downstairs room--breakfast cost will range between NT$100 and NT$200. Phone if lost 2736-8510.Restaurant is between Far Eastern Plaza Mall/Hotel and HePing East Road--about a half a block north of the corner of HePing East Road Sec. 3 and AnHe Road. or a half a block south of Far Eastern Plaza on the AnHe Road side.Take the MRT Mucha Line to the Liuchangli Station exit there, and walk west on HePing East Road 3/4 of a block till you reach where AnHe Road dead-ends into it.Then go north on AnHe Road; it is a half a block up on the west side of that street.Or take any bus down HePing East Road and get off at the first stop that is east of Tun Hua South Road. That will put you at the corner of HePing and AnHe.You can also take a bus down Tun Hua South Road to the stop right across from Far Eastern Plaza and walk over to AnHe Road.Or if you take the 235 bus east, it turns off of HePing onto AnHe Road and the first stop is right across from the restaurant.Keep me abreast of headcount if you anticipate coming. jkeating@ms67.hinet.net

Morfar’s Perspective

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Guest Blogger: MorFar When you travel with Owen and Kyle, you better be prepared to get tired (i.e. exhaustion). Kyle and Owen are two of the happiest, friendliest, curious, energetic people you will ever know. The key word here is energetic. We left our Easter Weekend rendezvous spot (Camp Bement in Charlton, MA) at about 2:30 pm on Sunday. The 3-hour trip to Freedom, NH was extended a bit by a brief stop to drop in on their great-grandmother who lives in a mansion (a retirement home in Methuen, MA). As is typical for them, especially for Owen, they wanted to see everything, touch everything, smell everything, taste everything in this big, big house. I’m not too sure what they thought about their great-Nana. But I do know that you could get exhausted just trying to keep up with both of them exercising their curiosity to know everyone and everything in that big house. Finally, the arrival at our house in Freedom, NH, provided an opportunity for two little boys to stretch their legs after watching videos on the DVD player in the car. You could also get exhausted by trying to keep up with Neptune, our 9-month old puppy who is big enough to give even Kyle and Owen a run for their money. Finding ways to give Neptune creative ways to expel his energy in ways other than jumping all over Kyle and Owen is a challenge, indeed. Owen loves to find ways for Neptune to run around, so throwing a tennis ball for fetching as we walked around the pasture worked pretty well. All the while, Kyle was helping his best buddy Mormor get organized for supper. Supper was later than Kyle and Owen are accustomed to. So was bedtime. Bedtime for Mormor and Morfar was a little earlier than usual. Monday dawned bright and beautiful. There’s nothing quite as nice as a beautiful spring day in northern New Hampshire. And nothing quite as beautiful as Kyle and Owen making the best of it. A hike up the “big mountain” of Jackman’s Ridge at Camp Calumet was followed by throwing sticks to Neptune in Lake Ossipee and that of course ended up with two boys taking off their shoes, socks and pants so they could get as submerged as possible, themselves. Ice out on Lake Ossipee had taken place just two days earlier! A quick lunch at home was followed by a not so quick baseball practice at Constitution Park on the other side of Lake Ossipee. Quality of batting goes roughly in this order – Owen, Kyle, Morfar, and then Mormor. Zestfully eating Mormor’s lamb stew for supper went roughly in this order – Kyle, Morfar, Owen, and Mormor. All of this was capped off by Kyle, Owen, and Morfar accompanying Mormor and Neptune for the weekly dog discipline class in North Conway. While Mormor and Neptune were totally immersed in discipline for an hour, Morfar tried to keep up with Kyle and Owen in and around the elementary school where the class takes place – gymnastics in and around the playground, more baseball on the beautiful baseball field, Frisbee tossing on the other field, and exploring all around the whole exterior of the school. Needless to say, by the time bedtime arrived, it was very late for Owen and Kyle. Why did they seem so unready for bed and Mormor and Morfar were ready for bed right now? Tuesday started shortly before 6 am with two boys thundering into Mormor and Morfar’s bedroom. They were ready to go. And go we did. A hike through the snow from the Kancamagus Highway brought us to the beautiful Sabaday Falls. Kyle thought they were bigger than Niagra Falls and we tried not very successfully to dispel that notion. Lunch (macaroni and cheese, what else?) at Friendly’s, and then the highlight of the whole trip – swimming most of the afternoon at the indoor pool at Purity Springs Resort. During this whole time, one of the things that Kyle and Owen, especially Kyle, were constantly reminding us of, was the upcoming flight to Philadelphia with Morfar that would take place on Wednesday. So during the latter part of Tuesday afternoon, I took some time to get myself ready for my business trip the would ensue from the flight with Kyle and Owen, while Mormor took them for a visit to our neighbors, Mary and Bob, and their son, Jonah. It’s a two hour ride to the Manchester Airport. We left shortly after 9 am for our flight scheduled to take off at 12:30 pm and arrive in Philadelphia at 2:00 pm. Everything went like clockwork until…arrival at the airport and the announcement on the terminal monitors that our flight would be delayed until 1:30 pm. Then the announcement that it would be 2:15 pm. Thankfully, Mormor was still on the scene to do heroic service of helping with lunch, bathroom visits, etc. But sooner or later the inevitable would take place: Morfar by himself with Owen and Kyle to the other side of the airort security. So here’s Morfar alone with Kyle and Owen in a very crowded gate area. But miracles do happen and Morfar learned that even little boys get exhausted. Here in the midst of total noise, crowdedness and confusion, Owen pulls lovey-lion out of his backpack and lays down on the Southwest Airlines gate area carpet and decides to get some peaceful rest. Kyle likes the looks of that and he pulls honey-bunny out of his backpack and cuddles up to Morfar soon to be joined by Owen on the other knee. And there we stayed until it was time to board the 737 (Kyle always knows exactly what kind of plane he’s dealing with). Thanks to the miracle of DVD players, all was quiet and peaceful through the whole flight – even the extra hour of the flight circling around Philadelphia while that aiport was closed because of high winds. Kyle and Owen were perfect travelers and as predicted, knew exactly what to do at all times and moved much faster than Morfar through the security zone. It was a very happy reunion that Owen and Kyle had with Mommy and Papi and Meera on the other side of the security zone at Philadelphia Airport. Morfar was pretty happy too. Morfar slept very well that night.

Long for

Earth, or "Disney's Faces of Death"

This morning, I accompanied the kindergarten and first-grade classes at my kids' school to see Earth, a Disney nature film that was released on Earth Day. The beginning of the film discusses how this film, and Oceans, to be released Earth Day 2010, are meant to recapture the wonder of Disney's True-Life Adventures series, which depicted day-to-day life of various animals ("Nature writes the screenplay.") But I remember these shows, replayed on Sunday nights during my childhood as part of The Wonderful World of Disney, as mostly funny and heartwarming: tales of otters making their way home and scenes of black bears scratching themselves against trees. Just a warning: Earth is only rarely funny or heartwarming. Although Rated G, the 1 hour, 40 minute movie depicts many animal deaths. So many that my son started counting them at the end. For the most part, these deaths are bloodless, and the camera cuts away just as teeth hit the jugular, but the music, the tension and the slow motion of animals capturing their prey is fairly graphic. And of course, most of the animals that die are "baby" animals. A baby elephant gets lost from the herd, and James Earl Jones tells us that after the dust storm, the baby elephant starts following its mother's footprints to find her. . . .only he goes in the wrong direction. (pan camera out, sad music begins.) A caribou calf is chased out of the herd by a wolf and is able to outrun him for quite a long time, then is caught (camera freezes, pans out, sad music begins.) Cheetah does same thing to gazelle, chases for a long time before gazelle trips, cheetah (in slow motion) goes for the jugular. Baby elephants stalked by lions. Baby walruses stalked by polar bear. Big elephant taken down by herd of lions. The worst was a long story line that ends with polar bear starving to death. He is too weak to attack the walruses, and slowly lays down to die right next to them. (My son asked, "So they're just all friends now?") Luke basically spent the entire movie with his eyes closed and his hands over his ears. Disney must have some clout with the MPAA. I looked at kids-in-mind.com, and Earth has a violence rating of 4 out of 10. The only other movies with just 4s for violence and no other issues (sex/profanity) are rated PG (Escape to Witch Mountain, for example). I'm not sure why other animated kids' movies are rated PG (Monsters v. Aliens, for example), but "true-life" violence between real animals is G. I would say that kids are more frightened by violence between real animals that they were just told was real than violence between animated people or animated animals (Kung Fu Panda, for example). At least I was pretty sure that half the scenes in Faces of Death were faked; here, they are not. Whatever, that's life, I guess. As James Earl Jones tells us, this is the Circle of Life (yes, there were several Disney-inside jokes in the narration). But I think that a nature movie could find a few other things to film than polar bears starving to death. The elephant in the room (ha, ha) is that the movie is supposed to make you more aware of global warming. And, I guess if you're young enough, you might make a connection between the narrator telling us over and over that because of global warming, elephants have to travel longer to watering holes (and get eaten by lions on the way) and that because of global warming, the ice floes break earlier in the Spring, preventing polar bears from having firm ground on which to hunt seals (so they starve to death). So, the movie is really more like Scared Straight: if we would stop global warming, then elephants wouldn't get separated from their moms in duststorms and get eaten by lions. If we would stop global warming, then polar bears could eat seals and not starve to death. Good news for elephants and polar bears, but maybe not for lions and seals. The movie does have stunning visuals, of course, similar to IMAX nature movies (without the stomach drop). I'm sure there are some people that love the movie, but as someone who will be up all night with a 7 year-old, I'm not one of them. Last point, and then I'll shut up. The Supreme Court has granted cert. in U.S. v. Stevens, a case in which a filmmaker was convicted under 18 U.S.C. s. 48 for creating a video in which a pitbull attacked a pig. The Third Circuit vacated the conviction. (See Eugene Volokh's posts on the case here.) I would think that if asked whether this statute is so overbroad that it would reach Disney's Earth, the prosecutors would argue that Stevens' film would be distinguishable from a nature documentary in that the animal-on-animal events in Earth are not staged. So, Stevens' film is a felony, but nature documentaries are fine. I would suppose that the federal statute must be aimed at stopping filming of humans being cruel to animals or the filming of humans inciting animals to harm each other. However, the statute (which the Third Circuit said was unconstitutional on its face) doesn't quite say that. The statute prohibits recordings of animals being intentionally maimed, killed, etc. I guess I could interpret that as meaning that a human must be involved and intentionally doing something so that the animal will be maimed, killed, etc. Also, there are exceptions for recordings of educational value and artistic value. And, the policy behind the law is not to stop the killing of animals in the ordinary course of human events, whether by the circle of life on the Serengeti or by the slaughterhouse. The policy justification is that these videos spur animal cruelty, and the circle of life is not animal cruelty. So, Disney is OK, even if Mr. Stevens is not. However, if I were Mr. Stevens, I'd make sure my attorney has seen Earth.

Little Egret fishing

K.C. Tsang was standing on the banks of the Sungei Punggol one morning in November 2006 watching all the Little Egrets (Egretta garzetta) massing along the banks very near to the water’s edge. Suddenly one of them took off, hovered over the surface of the water and within a split second plunged it long bill into the water and grabbed a fish.He noticed that the birds always had the sun shining from the front of them in the morning, when hovering and fishing. There would thus be no shadow cast to alert the fish.And K.C. added, “I though that these fellows feed mostly on insects among the grass. This has been observed most of the time. This is something new to me. Maybe a person with a video cam would be able to capture the whole episode.” Our bird specialist R. Subaraj has this to say: “Little Egrets mainly feed by walking along the water's edge or in the shallows, catching fish by stabbing at them with it's long bill. The flying over the surface technique that you describe is therefore interesting and obviously an adaptation to take advantage of a situation. “The egrets feeding on grasshoppers in the fields around Singapore are usually Cattle Egrets (Bubulcus ibis) (above). This is their natural behaviour. Intermediate (Mesophoyx intermedia) and Little will also do that from time to time... but it is not their normal way of feeding.”Input by K.C. Tsang; image of Little Egret by KC and Cattle Egret by John Lynn.

Pregnancy Brain Strikes Again!

Scroll down for the awesome diagrams.I had never heard of "pregnancy brain" before and thought it sounded kind of made-up. Like, Oh, she's just distracted, she has pregnancy brain. Like, tee hee, she can't concentrate because she's thinking about the baby. I stupidly thought that perhaps "pregnancy brain" meant instead of focusing really hard on crunching the numbers due at the end of the day, I might accidentally spend 45 minutes on babycenter.com looking up whether or not the baby has fingernails yet.(By the way? She does. Isn't that cute?)Turns out, that is not what pregnancy brain is. At all. Pregnancy brain is when your body sends all of its blood and nutrients and thinking power to the growing baby and leaves your brain to fend for itself. And apparently, left to its own devices, my brain basically functions like a dimwitted half-cousin with language issues and a drooling problem.Thus, "pregnancy brain" is when you suddenly find yourself standing in the middle of the room for some reason but you don't know what it was and Oh! Remember that time that thing happened and it was funny and you should maybe blog about it, do you have a picture to go with it? Why is your husband staring at you like that? What? Oh, right! You were in the middle of a sentence. Wait, you were? I was? About what? Hold on, I have to pee.It's happening all the time now. I put my socks on and then go to look for a pair of socks to put on. I panic because I cannot find my cell phone and ask if it's okay if I just call my sister back so I can find it. I made a nice dinner for Ish on Valentine's Day that took me twice as long as usual because I kept forgetting to do things even though the recipe was in front of me. Every morning I put my wedding band on, then my engagement ring; except the other day, I looked on my dresser and realized my engagement ring was still sitting there, even though I swore I'd already put my rings on. I looked down at my hand and realized I'd put my wedding band on, then a totally different ring on top of it.Yesterday, I went to Whole Foods. On my way home, I discovered there was a new TJ Maxx! In my neighborhood! I decided I needed to go check it out. So this afternoon, I drove over to it only to discover it was gone!But how could that be?Well, right. Pregnancy brain.But here is the story of how, in my world, a entire giant building suddenly disappeared.Now let's remember that I'm maybe somewhat directionally impaired to begin with. (I wrote this post with diagrams of how I was supposed to drive the .3 miles to get from work to the deli but instead ended up driving around a pond somehow...)In my world, yesterday I drove directly to Whole Foods and then drove directly home. And on my way directly home, I passed TJ Maxx. So today, when I was coming from a point even farther away but absolutely directly home and it wasn't there, I was baffled. Where could it have gone?Let me show you what I mean.In case you can't tell, to get to Whole Foods from where we live, you take Folsom to 4th street and turn right.Getting to Whole FoodsUm, and yes. We are talking about an approximate total of FIVE BLOCKS.How do you lose a TJ Maxx store in five blocks???In my own feeble defense, one-way streets make all of this far more difficult.But okay. So, to get home from Whole Foods, especially if you park in front of the store as I did, you simply double back.Getting Home from Whole FoodsEasy!And so yesterday, as I was traveling on Howard starting well before 3rd St., I figured I'd have to bump into TJ Maxx, since I had done so the day before. Except I didn't.Eventually I had to give in to the notion that perhaps the store hadn't disappeared but that at some point my version of directly was not, actually direct.And seeing as today I was driving on the street I ACTUALLY LIVE ON, I had to figure it was yesterday that I did something, ah, indirect.So when I reached home and had not found the TJ Maxx, I did the only smart thing I could think of to do. I decided to retrace my steps from yesterday, hoping somehow it would jog my pregnancy brain version of "memory" and give me some clue as to how I got home the day before.I turned around and headed back to Whole Foods.Getting to Whole Foods, Day TwoYes, yes. All of this seemed familiar.I even got this far......before realizing that, ah-ha!! Yesterday I'd turned left! Here!(Oops. I also accidentally made half an arrow blue and the Whole Foods pink. Sorry, Whole Foods!)On Harrison! For no! Reason! At! All!(And the only reason I remembered I'd done so was because I also remembered thinking that the guy driving the car in front of me, who was also turning left, seemed like kind of an asshole.) (Why I thought this, I have no recollection.)But yes. As you can imagine, I was quite relieved to have found TJ Maxx. I pulled my car into the parking lot and pretended like of course I knew TJ Maxx was on Harrison Street. Like, duh. Where else would it be?Then while at TJ Maxx I didn't find anything I wanted. (See previous entry.) I did manage to buy that cute folder thing, but even more traumatic than their sad little selection of clothes I might possible fit into was their "St. Patrick's Day Doll Display."I don't know about you, but I do not see these dolls and think, Gosh, they're so cute.No. I think, AGGGGHHHHH! WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS THIS ALL ABOUT???They look possessed!And...drunk.Where do you even begin with this one?This guy is squinting with his tongue out as if to try to remember what he's doing. He also looks shitfaced.What I want to know is, why does he think he can play golf with a flute? Because in case you can't tell, that's a GOLF ball by his boot, next to the frightened-looking Grandfather Leprechaun head.Hey, kids! It's Shitface The Leprechaun, and he's coming to your house to lick you! And kick golf balls the size of his head around while he plays you a little ditty on his black stick flute!My trip to TJ Maxx was not all I'd hoped it would be.Then, when I got back to my car, and managed to get out of the tiny parking lot (which was hard to do in and of itself because the directional arrows in the parking lot were very, very misleading), I realized I still had no idea how I'd gotten home the day before. As I drove, I had to search the streets for any sign of what I'd done.You can bet I hadn't gone directly.In fact, I went so indirectly I need to go download a NEW image from Google in order to make the street map big enough to show you what I did do. Hold on.Okay.How Not To Get Home From Whole FoodsSeriously. With an under 10-block GRID to travel, you would think it wouldn't be hard for me to find my way directly home. After all, I've lived in San Francisco for seven-and-a-half years, and lived in SoMa for one. And yet I still managed to take the wrong street in BOTH directions - West AND North to go about five blocks.The best scariest pregnant brainiest part of all this is that I hadn't even known I'd done it. I had to go back over my steps to figure out what in the world I did, and why it hadn't seemed like I'd done anything wrong.Turns out...This is how I always used to get home off the highway when I was commuting from work! (That X = the highway exit). MYSTERY SOLVED.Sure it makes perfect sense for me to go from Harrison, which I shouldn't have been on, to go all the way to 9th, as though getting off the highway in the opposite direction, to get back home. Of course it does.Shitface the Leprechaun totally gets me.*lick***********Comment of the Day**********Citycat said...I once got lost on my way to Costco from my old apartment. Key factors here: I was ON FOOT, because it was less than half a mile away, I had lived in that apartment for over three years, and I took a wrong turn. Funny thing? THERE ARE NO TURNS BETWEEN MY APARTMENT AND COSTCO. SO here I am, in an alley full of trashcans, entirely lost, because I turned for absolutely no reason.And I'm not pregnant. Just stupid.

News Roundup: 04/08/2009

Rapper Nas, reggae artist Damian Marely, and others will headline this summers traveling Rock the Bells festival. Beginning on June 27, the festival will hit 10 cities in North America including Toronto, Denver, Los Angeles, and more. [Billboard.com] Courtney Love has revealed that over $360 million dollars left by the late Kurt Cobain to her and her daughter, Frances Bean, has gone missing. Presumed to be stolen, the money was left to Cobains family, as well as Love and Bean, after the singers death in 1994. [NME.com] Franz Ferdinand has recorded a cover of Britney Spears Womanizer for the BBC program Live Lounge. Asked why the band chose the song, lead singer Alex Kapranos explained that Womanizer is the best song to come out in the past several months. [Stereogum.com] Amazon has lowered the price of some of its top-selling songs in an attempt to strengthen competition with its main competitor, iTunes. Over 100 songs on the Amazon site now cost $0.30 less per download than their iTunes equivalent. [PCWorld.com] Jessica Simpson was recently dropped by Sony Music Nashville, a move that may mark the end of her short-lived country career. A Simpson representative says the singer will return to pop music with her next release. [CMT.com] Conductor Sir Charles Mackerras has won two 2009 BBC Music Magazine awards for recording excellence. [Independent.co.uk.]

Something’s afoot in the City of Raleigh

I got a mysterious email invitation this afternoon from the City of Raleigh. It reads: The City of Raleigh invites you to enjoy your coffee break Tuesday, April 14, celebrating a local partnership that is producing a significant “FIRST IN THE U.S.A.” 10 A.M., Tuesday, April 14 Raleigh Convention Center Salisbury Street and Lenoir Street I understand a different invite went to the city councilors that read: The City of Raleigh and the Transit Authority invite you to enjoy your coffee break Tuesday, April 14 celebrating a local partnership that is producing a technological “FIRST IN THE USA!” Please join us at 10 a.m., Tuesday, April 14 at the Raleigh Convention Center’s Salisbury Street and Lenoir Street plaza. As you can see, the second one mentions the “Transit Authority” and “technological first.” I wonder what this means. A GPS bus locator? No, that’s old hat. Been done already. WiFi on city buses? Certainly possible, but what’s the local partnership angle?. Mobile digital TV on city buses? This one makes more sense. Capitol Broadcasting (home of WRAL) has been tinkering with mobile digital TV and has some devices built. Capitol’s new mobile technology spinoff company is called News Over Wireless and is certainly local. But would transit passengers be forced to watch all-WRAL, all the time, or would other stations also be available? On the other hand, it could have nothing to do with TV and could be some sort of other transit innovation. A Prius-branded bus? Electric vehicle recharging stations? Again, what would be the local partnership angle, and what about this would be worthy of such subterfuge? This is all speculation at this point, as I haven’t gleaned any more insights. I do hope to be around for Tuesday’s unveiling of Whatever It Is.

Way better

Than last time anyway. Only 2 and a half weeks since my last post (insert eye rolling icon here!).This past week I have been as sick as a dog - yucko - I came home from work on Wednesday morning with a stomach bug - thought it might even have been something I ate. It wasn't, must have been stomach flu or a virus or something. On Thursday I felt worse - aches and pains, stiff neck, headache, couldn't eat etc etc...general misery. I am a lot better now but still not quite back to eating normally. The upside is that I have lost over 2 kgs (yippee!) - the weird side is that I am completely off coffee - and for those of you who know me well that is definitely a sign that something is not right. Hopefully tomorrow I will be completely back to normal.I did go to a work friend's 50th Birthday party last night - I was supposed to get all glammed up in a long red dress and high heeled silver shoes all borrowed from another friend...as the theme for the party was red carpet or Hollywood. However, because I was feeling sick I piked out and went the black pants and dressy top path instead. I think to carry off the long red dress I would have had to be at the top of my game.This week at Shop and Crop we all made Christmas Cards as part of a challenge - this might seem early but it really isn't. It's only about 8 weeks or thereabouts until Christmas and if you are going to kake your cards this year now is the time to start. Here are the 2 I made using Kaisercrfat Dashaway papers.Here are some more photos I have taken over the past few weeks.

Mothers day is fast approaching

Mother's day is fast appoarching this week we begin making our plans, it's another holiday in our family and in a sense for me it's a dreaded holiday all holidays are like this for me because of my mother I know that sounds harsh but let me explain she never really has been the mother that she should have been to me, My grandparetns took care of me and then I took care of myself when I got older. She always ruins the holdiays with her little fits that she throws and her smart elleck comments that she makes about everyone in the family. I dont know why my family keeps including her and allowing her to behave this way Im not going to say anything because it's not my decision to make because it's my uncle's house that we always go to and Im not going to stay away and miss seeing the rest of my family especially my grandma I just bit my tongue and move on but I dread it everytime it seems like the holdiays can't be enjoyable. Do you have family members that are like this?

The In-Laws are Coming

My husband's immediate familyMy mother-in-law is the lady beside me and my father-in-law is hiding in the back right, looking very uncomfortable not wearing his usual electrician's uniform of faded navy blue Dickies and matching shirt. They are coming from Ohio to see the Bug and the new house on Saturday and staying into early next week. Let the mad cleaning begin! I will resurface early next week, hopefully with a lot of progress on my sweater. Wish me luck, I have to spend all day Monday alone with the in-laws as it is my DH's first day at his new job. PS: Delilah has a nasty tapeworm and some other nasty parasite called Giardia or something like that and is so sick. Poor baby. It is clearly a sickness.