Standing out from the crowd

The Man and I made it down to Five Rivers this evening, and there it was, as lovely as usual. 

We chose the Vlomankill trail, and stopped to look at the stream-level measuring station at the first wooden bridge.  It's a "CrowdHydrology" initiative.  You read the measurement, then text it to a website that records the measurements over time and thus tracks the rise and fall of the stream.  We duly took today's reading (0.7 feet - pretty low, but still a nice enough flow) and the Man texted it in.

Here's a photo (from our archive) of the stream in winter at the measuring point:

When the Man visited the website he identified that at some point someone had (presumably by mistake?) recorded a measurement of 32 feet (a Noah's flood situation), which had thrown all calculations off by a crazy margin.  That is the risk with crowd-sourced science projects, I suppose.

Wednesday activities

This morning I had a long get together with a couple of fair tradey friends to discuss a few things and catch up on news.  I got home just in time to remind the Girl that she had a skating lesson, and we were soon out of the door and over to Troy for that.

It has rained on and off all day, so apart from a brief rainy swim the Boy has mostly been stuck indoors honing his Zoo Tycoon skills.

Haircut 2007

In my usual way I had left it way too long to get a haircut.  I did think about it several weeks - hm, months - ago, but then discovered that my regular hairdressers had closed down (they didn't even tell me!  And they used to send me valentines...) and that stumped me enough to give up the project.

But yesterday I was going through a pile of papers and found a photo of myself soon after a rather nice haircut in 2007. When I looked in the mirror, I knew that the time had come.  I broke out the phone directory and randomly picked another local hairdresser.

I chose well, and got a good cut - very reminiscent of that 2007 "do", since I took the photo along and said, "Like this, please!"  My hairdresser chatted about her parents (from Turkey) and her upcoming wedding and her degree in Math (her fallback if she stops enjoying cutting hair).  An hour flew by and I no longer have a wild fringe and fluffy more-bunny-than-pony tail.  Hooray.

Vintage vote winning game

This afternoon the Boy and I played a game called "Landslide".  I bought it a while back at the Salvation Army Thrift store, but this was the first time we'd given it a whirl.

Not bad!  It's a race to win the US presidential election by trading off votes.  As in the real thing, it doesn't matter how many individual votes you get, you have to win states and therefore the electoral college.  For added fun, there are "politics" cards that allow you to throw a spanner in the works every now then, by enabling you to steal a state from your opponent or force a voter bidding war.

The Boy was puzzled by the colour choices - in the game generally Republican states were blue and generally Democrat states were red, so that didn't seem right.  But the photos on the box suggest that the game is somewhat vintage, certainly pre-2000 which was apparently the year red became associated with the Rs and blue with the Ds.  Further research confirms that Landslide hit the stores in 1971.

Since it was a game of strategic trade-offs and bidding, of course the Boy won - by a landslide.

Bless this house

So, yes, an enjoyable evening with friends last night.  Today the kids each had people round, so they were happily occupied.  Meanwhile I was invited to my Karen friends' new house blessing ceremony.

Members of the extended family and other friends from their community gathered together for some prayers and hymns and sermons.  Since it was all in Karen it mostly washed over me, though I was pleased to share in such a special celebration.  And it turned out I had a walk-on - or a least a sit-down - part to play, as halfway through I was invited to sit on a chair (everyone else was on the carpet) and was presented with flowers and pompom garlands and a woven shawl.  I've been helping this family out for a couple of years now, including quite a lot lately through the house-buying process, and this was a formal thank you. 

I was very touched, but nothing meant more than seeing the kids happily running through the bright and cheerful rooms (such a contrast with the gloomy apartment they've lived in up to now), as their parents welcomed visitors to a home of their own.

Place marker

Sorry, it's another of those place marker posts tonight - we've just come back late from dinner with friends, which was lovely but now I'm too sleepy to write. See you tomorrow.

Evolving

Last day of farm camp for the Girl today.  Really she's aged out of it now, but she does love those goats and I believe she has made herself useful helping out the younger children, so she has had a good time.  This afternoon she was back at the rink after a week off - more spins and jumps and what not.

The Boy had a brief swim, but this August is turning out to be unusually cool (suits me!) and the water was chilly.  So he took to his drums instead - he's practising the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction - until his buddy came over to hang out.  They ended up playing charades, and I managed to guess the Boy's mime interpretation of the word "evolution", which suggests I may personally have evolved to be psychic.