Night at the Waxworks Museum

Every year the 5th Graders at school take part in a "Waxworks Museum" event.  Each of them had chosen a famous person to research, made a poster to display their information, and tonight Matthew, they became that person.

Or at least, a waxwork of that person.  The waxwork came alive only when you dropped a nickel in their tin, then he/she looked you in the eye and gave you a little spiel about their life.

There were rows and rows of celebrities lined up in the crowded cafeteria tonight.  The Man and I were astounded by the variety of subjects the kids had chosen.  Soccer stars a-plenty, from Pele to Wayne Rooney; entertainers from Shirley Temple to Taylor Swift; Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, Henry Ford; Michele Obama (two of her, in fact) and Princess Diana; a couple of Beatles; recently appointed US Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor; naturalist James Audubon; Underground Railroad heroine Harriet Tubman; Neil Armstrong; Eva Peron...  Probably my favourite was Manzo Nagano, the first known Japanese immigrant to Canada, who tonight greeted his visitors "Konnichi wa, eh?"

I also had a sneaking regard for this well-known literary millionaire.  She looked the part in repose...

...and (as more than one person noted) she could pull off the accent pretty convincingly, too.  "It's authentic," she explained to those who asked.

Same old same old

"Oh!" cried the Man, as he looked out of the window this morning.   "Yesss!" shouted the Girl.  And "Noooooo!" wailed the Boy.

Snow.  Not very much, but definitely snow.  My son is not a fan.  But it's that time of year again.

So tell me, I asked my neighbour as we waved off her kids and my daughter on the school bus, how come winter has managed to catch us unprepared?  What, did I imagine we'd moved to Florida?  A cursory review of previous years reminds me that this is exactly when the weather usually turns here - and we even had that sneak preview a few weeks ago, nudging us to get ready.  Yet the Girl is woefully underdressed for the conditions, without an adequate coat or snowboots.  Hence she eagerly opted for the short bus-ride this morning, rather than shivering along on foot.

The Boy resisted the temptation of a warm bus and had me trudge round to school with him as usual, through the not-deep-but-slippery snow, and against an icy wind.  I met him for the even colder walk home this afternoon, when even he conceded that the bus might be the way to go from now on.

The temperature has dropped below freezing, and I imagine that's where it's set to stay for a while...

Though why UK readers would care about any of this I don't know - haven't some of you been snowed in for a week already?

Bringing home the bacon

Unbelievably we've already reached the end of the second session of skating lessons this season (and only two more to go).  The Girl and I both received "certificates of completion" and I am very chuffed because apparently I've now graduated from alpha level to beta.  Of course the Girl is already on gamma, but hey, it's not a competition.

This afternoon Man and Boy had their annual appointment with the train show under the Empire State Plaza in Albany.  They came home with a bag of goodies, including a couple of miniature buildings and some tiny lighting equipment which they'd managed to snap up for just a few bucks.  Excellent, as the Boy has to put together an electrical project for school and this will be just the job.  Luckily the seller they chose was minded that this stuff was a load of old junk, rather than "collectable" and worth hundreds of dollars.

The Girl would like it to be known that we are finally on the way to "being a normal family" - I served her bacon for dinner at home tonight.  She has been petitioning for this for a long time, and I finally caved when my friend J offered me a packet of bacon which she assures me (and she cares about these things) is from happy healthy pigs (not so happy or healthy now, obviously) which weren't raised on a diet of antibiotics.  The next steps to "normalcy" naturally involve getting a TV and a second car, so for sure the kids will be upping the ante on those campaigns in the days ahead.

Eureka moments

The Man writes...as you can see, the children practise daily and rigorously for a life in front of a computer screen. Not for them a youth of "jumpers for goalposts", "bucket for stumps" and "an orange for Christmas". (Though lest you are wondering, these are not their own laptops - Albaniana.)

Further preparation for tomorrow's techno world came this week in the form of "Math and Science Family Night" at the Girl's school. This comprised various activities including tossing four coins 32 times and seeing how often heads came up, seeing how many drops of clean and soapy water can be balanced on a penny, and understanding where your centre of mass is by trying to stand up out of a chair without leaning forward. 

Both the Girl and I were coming off tiring days, and inevitably there were times when aimlessly dropping coloured beads into water was more fun than elucidating the details of Archimedes' principle.  And if I'm nitpicking I believe the statement in the Parents' Guide that "The Bernoulli Principal [sic] is the reason airplanes fly" is a common fallacy?  However, in general the evening had been put together with a geat deal of care and imagination and proved to be both diverting and thought provoking

On parade

Once again we joined in the local Holiday Parade in our town, billed as possibly the shortest parade around at just 0.35 of a mile.  It was rather cold, so we processed at a fair lick and very quickly reached the end of it.  This year the entire family joined in, plus my friend J and her daughter, so that was a respectable number of us waving our little "I [heart] Fair Trade" flags (which I'd run up on the sewing machine in the afternoon) and handing out FT chocolate samples.

All the old favourites were in the procession, including the sewer truck ("Because nothing says 'Holidays' more than sewage," murmured J), but we saved our freezing fingers and toes and didn't hang around for Santa.  Instead we followed last year's tradition and went to be entertained by jazz and Christmas music kindly laid on by a local church.  We ran into a few people we knew there, and the kids got themselves a free dinner (if all-you-can-eat popcorn and cookies count as dinner).

Hooked on crafts

For the last week the Girl has spent nearly every spare moment hunched over a project in the far corner of the sitting room.  Today she proudly finished this magnificent hand-hooked rug - just in time to enter it for the annual Albany District 4-H show, held at JoAnn's craft supply store.  It's not a judged show - everyone wins a ribbon.

The Boy is exhibiting the felt candle he made the other week. 

Since we were in JoAnn's, both kids insisted on buying new rug-hooking kits, which they've been working away on this evening.  The Girl is doing hers upstairs this time, while listening to the 17-disc Jim Dale audio version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  We might not see much of her for the next few days...

Floodwatch

The kids crashed in from school in a state of high excitement, and absolutely drenched.  "We came home through a FLOOD!" they explained.

They weren't kidding.  After getting changed out of their wet things and into more appropriate footwear than soggy sneakers, they took me out to see the newly formed local water feature.  What with the Thanksgiving holiday last week, the leaves haven't been cleared for a while and must have been blocking the storm drains.  I couldn't even see where the drains were supposed to be.

We had some fun paddling, examined some working storm drains further along the road that were Niagara-like in their wateriness, and watched while neighbours successfully cleared yet more drains, to save their front yards from being submerged.  

Then we went home, where someone who'd got water in his wellies had to get changed all over again.