Whoosh - into a New Year

Sledding at a snowy Capital Hills Golf Course was the highlight of the day.  Terrifying!  Followed by a "snack" in the restaurant there - an almost equally terrifying portion of chicken wings for the Girl (and she ate it all up, too).

Last minute cancellation of the party we planned on going to tonight means we'll be ringing in the New Year by ourselves this year.  Ah well, all the quicker to get to bed once we've dutifully (yawn) watched the Times Square Ball drop.

Happy New Year to all who are already in it - not long now for us, too.  Best wishes, everyone!

Now, who wants to be first over the fiscal cliff...? 

Skating in a winter wonderland

The Girl skated in another show today, at the imposing Albany Academies.  Blimey, the hours it involves, for a mere blink-and-you've-missed-it ninety second performance.  Though in fact she got to stand on the ice quite a bit longer as they struggled to get her music to play...  She stood firm in her place, like a true professional.

She did very well, especially taking into account that she'd had next to no sleep the night before (friend's birthday party) and no breakfast or lunch to speak of.  She spent the rest of the day recovering, floppily.

Meanwhile, the Boy was off with his buddy, sledding.  The Man and I also looked for some snow action and took ourselves up to Thacher Park, where it was perishing cold, with a stiff wind whipping snow crystals in our faces.  We stayed up there longer than a one-minute skating programme, but not much.

There's a chance of more snow tomorrow.  Maybe we're going to have that doozy of a winter after all?

Addressing the web

So, that experiment yesterday...

Strangely enough, not everyone in the family greeted the opportunity to stage a historical recreation of the 1980s with cries of enthusiasm.  Sounded more like cries of agony and rage, to be honest.  One of our number spent a good portion of the day sequestered in a closet with a puzzle book, in protest.

On the other hand:

• In the morning, while the Man and Girl were at the ice-rink, I had the chance to play several rounds of Monopoly Millionaire Deal with my son - quite an entertaining card game, especially if (like him) you are an aspiring member of the 1%.
• The Man and kids did some more work together on the snow fort.
• When our friends the Exiles came round in the afternoon no-one drifted off and played on the computer.  There was a lot more fort-building instead.

However, good company, fun and fresh air notwithstanding, by dinnertime the internet-free naysayers were...still naysaying.  We discussed how the day had gone and at least half the family were not entirely, or even at all, positive about the experience.  Interestingly, the kids could imagine going away and staying somewhere without internet, but found it too frustrating to spend a whole day without it at home.

Generally speaking, everyone in our house spends too much time on screens - me included.  I don't know if the children believe me when I tell them they won't look back on their childhoods and wish they had spent more time watching YouTube or playing Minecraft, but I'm pretty sure I'm right.  No, we're not going to give up on the internet altogether (the '80s wasn't such an exciting era, let's face it), but we've all agreed to reduce our hours a bit.  We'll see how that goes.

More snow today:

Escaping the web

We attempted a radical experiment at home today, a step back in time to a world without the internet! 

No video games, no just-checking-my-email, no looking-it-up-on-wikipedia... 

Yikes!  How did that go down?

I shall tell you all about it, tomorrow.  But for now, I shall get back to reading a book.

Snow day!

Once the Boy had got over the uselessness of having a snow day during the holidays ("Because what's the point if you don't get to miss any school?") he decided he was willing to embrace the 8 inch blanket of whiteness that fell overnight and through the day.

He and others of us joined the kids from next door on our-neighbour-opposite's excellent sledding slope.  Woo-hoo!

Later there was snow fort-building in the backyard - a project of ambitious scale, which may take a few days to complete. 

It looks like it's going to stay cold, so we should be able to enjoy the winter wonderland for a while now.

Sushi X-ing Day

The Girl's present to her Dad this Christmas was a set of six nicely illustrated vouchers inviting him to have lunch out with her - at his own expense, of course. 

Though he may have momentarily put his head on one side and thought "hang on a minute...", really the Man is always glad of any reason to spend enjoyable time with his daughter, so he was very pleased with his gift.

He redeemed one of the vouchers today, and the pair of them went back to Sushi X in Latham. Meanwhile, not wanting to miss out entirely, the Boy and I hitched a ride with them and went to the patriotically themed 76 Diner right next door for our own exclusive lunch out.

Tonight:  our first real snow storm for this winter (and really since the winter before last).  Wa-hey! The storm warning runs through until 7pm tomorrow and includes some heavy snowfall, so chances are there will be something deep and crisp and even to show for it all. 

White-ish Christmas

White enough, anyway - about half an inch of snow fell overnight, so we had a white dusting at least, which the Man and I made the most of on a short hike at Five Rivers.

Christmas was fun. The tree, the gifts, the games. Skyping with family. A stonking dinner (including home made nut roast and cranberry sauce, roasted brussels and sweet potatoes). Home-made crackers (we had to supply our own "bangs"). A family movie (Hugo) to round off the night.

We started early and now it's (yawn) very late.

We hope everyone had a lovely Christmas - thanks to all who added to the enjoyment of ours.

Nearly there...

Christmas Eve. We maintained our modern-day traditions for this day, by which I mean watching NORAD tracking Santa...

And I attempted to bake biscuits [cookies] with the kids (a limited success - we made at least one headless pig - but a good time was had etc, which is mostly what it was about).  We vacuumed under the tree (the droppingest ever) to make room for presents.  The Man and I took a chilly (pre-snow??) walk at Five Rivers.  The Monopoly board came out. We lit red candles at dinnertime.

We are ready, just about, for Christmas.  If you are reading this on Christmas Day, we wish you a merry one!

Christmas crackers

At the eleventh hour, the Man has started hankering after Christmas pudding.  We went looking for one today, but it turned out to be a fruitless (ha ha) search.  (This is just a photo I've borrowed from the internet.)

We had a similar lack of luck looking for Christmas crackers - another rarity here, I gather.  The Girl's Social Studies teacher recently asked her why people in British Christmas TV shows and movies always end up sitting around with strange paper hats on. The Girl explained that they are crowns and they come out of crackers.  "What, cheese crackers?" he asked, bewildered.

It's now too late of course, but out of interest we took a look on Amazon this evening.  The only available Xmas pud was a teeny 3.5oz number.   Apparently if we want it quickly we should eGift it to ourselves - which means Amazon will send us a nice email in time for Christmas to tell us we've paid for it and can have it later if we like.  Not such a bad idea for Christmas dinner - I'm sure virtual puddings are less fattening. 

We found a range of crackers.  Under "Reviews" for the cheapest ($14.95) box someone had awarded three stars and offered the following thoughts:

Not sure if it will be good I hope I won't be disappointed since these are quite expensive see what happens
 

To date, zero out of 66 people find this review helpful.

It's a wonderful show

We've all just come back from Capital Rep, where we saw the final night of This Wonderful Life.  It's an adaptation of the classic Christmas tale It's a Wonderful Life, the twist being that in this play all the thirty-or-so parts from the Frank Capra movie are performed by a single actor.

Larry Daggett gave an outstanding performance, portraying a range of characters so well differentiated that there was never any doubt who was who.  I know the movie quite well, so maybe that helped me follow the story, but the kids (who've never seen it) seemed just fine with it, too.

It's a Wonderful Life is unashamedly sentimental, and the play didn't really try to get away from that (though a few humorous observations on some of the more hackneyed aspects of the film were thrown in here and there).  But mainly it was an affectionate homage to a seasonal feel-good favourite - and at this time of year, what's not wonderful about that?

Apocalypse...not

Happy winter solstice!  School has ended today (though only until January), even if the world hasn't.

Puffamints

The Man writes...a box of "nostalgic favourites" candy turned up in the break room at work today. This included candy cigarettes:

I certainly remember these from the 70s, without any particularly warm feelings, but had vaguely thought that they were not made any more. It turns out, according to Wikipedia, that they are only actually banned in Finland, Norway, Ireland, Turkey, Saudi Arabia - and Nunavut territory.

Gotta roll with it

Around this time a couple of years ago I went to see the Girl perform a Kidnastics routine.

Well, today it was the Boy's turn.  The Man came to watch, too.  Our son had been practising hard and was very excited about the whole event.  He and three of his classmates were dressed in matching shirts and looked like a proper team.  They did a good job - jumping, cartwheeling etc and a nice bit of balancing for their "ta-daa" ending.

The Boy admitted to me afterwards that he had been very nervous.  He certainly looked like he was taking the performance seriously - but he gave his trademark grin and two-fingered peace signs when it was all over. 

Another 5th Grade rite of passage marked, and another achievement under his belt - yay.

Plushie

The Boy very rarely announces that he'd like to make something.  He just gets on and makes it - be it a cardboard boat or a paper bi-plane or a fiendish board game or whatever else.

The Girl is like that with drawings, but with anything three-dimensional she's more likely to say "I'm going to make X, can you help?" and after we've managed to put off actually doing anything for a couple of days, we'll eventually sit down together and get started, and...hm.  Somewhere along the line it turns out that I'm making X.

Now I'll admit, this is largely my fault.  I am, after all, a control freak.  I try to let go but...especially if it's a sewing project, and bit fiddly at that, I can't resist taking over.  Not the best way of passing on life skills, I know.

Anyway.  Here's the Girl's latest project, a "plushie" (anime-inspired doll), a gift for her friend.  She made the body, I made the clothes (He's Korean, and yes his sleeves are meant to be that long) and hair, and she drew on the face. 

We did a good job, don't you think?

Fir enough

We have a lovely Christmas tree already, as you've seen.  But today I felt inspired to get hold of the remains of nearly half another tree, to make a wreath for the door and decorate around the house with piney branches.  It all looks and smells quite nice, though the cleaner won't thank me come January (oh hang on, that'd be me).

Our next door neighbour, who has a landscape gardening business and is an all round enterprising sort of person (see photo of his handiwork here; he also floods his backyard every winter and turns it into an ice-rink), amused us the other day as we were returning from a walk around the block.  He was hauling an enormous "tree" off his truck to present to his mother as the family Christmas tree.  It was actually the top twelve feet of a 60' pine that he'd felled.  It looked fine, except for the side that had stood high against the wind and been flattened.  We left them debating how they were going to fit it in the house...

Mass birthday

Today my Karen friends celebrated the joint birthdays of their four children (the kids' actual birthdays are spread around the year, but the parents find it more convenient to do just a single all-in-one celebration). 

I took my own kids to this event last year, when we were all surprised to find that it was not so much a party as a church service with cake.  I really didn't reckon on my two coming again willingly, and yet they both did, without a murmur.

As before, there were hymns, prayers and a sermon - none of which we could understand, but this time it's what we were expecting.  At least one child in the room fell asleep, but it wasn't either of mine.

Then there was a three-verse version of Happy Birthday, candles were blown out and cake distributed, followed by Chinese takeaway.  No gifts, games or party bags...but as far as I could see, a good time was had by all.

Market morning

Friends of Five Rivers once again took a table at the farmers' market.  The Man and I were down there early to set up, and stuck around all morning.  A colleague from the Friends' board took over manning the stall halfway through, so much of our time was spent browsing the wares of the other vendors and chatting with friends.  We stocked up on fresh veggies and some of our favourite goodies, like hummus and granola and a huge slab of foccacia bread.

Inevitably, after yesterday's events, there were some sombre conversations.  I didn't speak to one person who isn't desperate for the US government to introduce stricter gun controls - and not just because of the latest horror.  Readers in the UK, please don't believe that all Americans have a love affair with guns.  None of my friends here supports the existing gun laws.  I don't think a single one of them owns a gun.

The rest of the day filled up, with a lot of skating for the Girl, and a friend round to visit the Boy.  The Man went for a personal-record-breaking run.  And I cooked up a storm with fresh, local veg.  Simple ways to spend a chilly December afternoon.

Newtown tragedy

In the morning my kids went to school, they had an ordinary day and they came home in the afternoon.

On this day in America, that is enough to make me thankful.

Bottles, camera, action!

Bernoulli in action - last night's bottle experiment in full:



 

 

Permission to park

According to an announcement I heard yesterday on the radio, the city of Albany is about to introduce a Residential Parking Permit scheme in the districts closest to the Capitol.  Starting mid-January, residents of those areas will be required to show a permit decal in their car window; and parking visitors will need to borrow a temporary permit from a resident friend, or face hefty fines for parking longer than two hours between 8am-6pm.

It happens that my refugee friends live in one of the districts in question.  The dad has a car.  Today was his day off, so I was able to go along with him to City Hall with the correct paperwork and the $25 fee and we got him all set up - well ahead of the game.

It may not sound like much, but it was rather satisfying to get this done - another indication that after a difficult year, one way and another, my friends are starting to keep on top of things. It's been quite a learning curve for me, too, but lately we've been managing to get necessary applications etc submitted in a timely fashion and I'm really happy to see them less worried and more in control of their lives here.

Ah, but if only I could apply the same level of efficiency to my Christmas card list...

The Man adds...this evening I accompanied the Boy to his Fifth Grade Science Night. We both had fun. I had of course done all the same experiments with the Girl two years ago. And despite the doubts I expressed in this blog back then, students are still being taught that aeroplanes fly because of the Bernoulli Principle. 

 

Irish eyes were smiling...

...and Irish (or at least American, and one set of English) feet were high-stepping tonight at the church hall where the Girl was performing in her first Irish dance recital.

It was very jolly, and very well done.  We had a special interest in our own dancer, of course, but all the kids did a nice job.  They have a lovely teacher, who deliberately emphasizes fun, excercise and community performance (some dance schools I've looked into in the past are highly competitive - quite strict and scary sounding). 

The majority of the ten or so kids in the class have some sort Irish ancestory, at least if the audience made up of their relatives was anything to go by - every other person was called Eamon or Maeve.  Mind you, if you know my real-world surname you might say that in that respect I could pass for Oirish meself.

No more dance lessons until the New Year - but (yikes) that's not far off now.  The Girl is keen to continue with a pursuit that seems to come rather naturally to her.  She may only have been learnng it formally for a year, but she's been merrily step-dancing on her own account since she was about seven, before she even knew what it was called.

Silverware patrol!

You know that urge you get right after dinner, when you just have to do fifty cartwheels on the living room rug...? 

Nope, me neither.  The Boy had it badly tonight, though - I felt quite queasy watching him.

Today's big event at his school was the introduction of "silverware" in the cafeteria.  Not wares made out of actual silver, of course, but (almost as much of a novelty in a modern American school) cutlery made out of metal, not disposable plastic.

As a member of the school's "Green Team" I had volunteered to do a stint as "Silverware Patrol".  I got to wear a special apron and stand by the pig-bins to make sure no-one threw their forks and spoons away by mistake.  I watched over Kindergartners and Fifth Graders - all equally capable, it turned out, of chucking their cutlery into the correct buckets (one labelled "FORKS" and one "SPOONS").  Good for them.  They are bright kids.

Mind you, were the Fifth Graders as good when it came to clearing up a half-peeled satsuma someone had dropped on the floor without stepping in it first?  Neayahhh, not so much.  Bright, but not abnormally so.

History lesson

I went to a talk at the library about the history of Five Rivers - a slide presentation to compliment the newly published Five Rivers: the History of a Special Place.  We were taken right back to prehistoric times and the geological formation of the area.  Native Americans farmed and hunted there, before having to give way to settlers from Europe who cleared the land for more extensive farms.

The Civilian Conservation Corps developed a portion of what is now Five Rivers into an experimental game farm in the 1930s, diverting the Vlomankill to create the now much-loved Beaver Pond.  The game farm later developed into the Delmar Zoo, featuring various native animals - it was a popular attraction for local families.  Then in the early 1970s the local Audubon Society encouraged the Department of Environmental Conservation to create an environmental education centre - and Five Rivers came to be.  It has extended over the years, acquiring portions of land as they became available, but now - hemmed in by roads and railways and housing developments - it has grown about as big as it can: 445 acres, 10 miles of trails.

For my few local readers who may be interested, the book about all this is available at the Five Rivers Visitor Center and would, as they say, make an excellent holiday gift!

Candy/corn

So, it sounds like Britain is getting snow, and we're having (at least for now) the sort of winter weather I used to associate with Britain - damp, chill and drear.  I've heard a few people suggest that after last year's decidedly not-white winter we'll be in for "a doozy" this year - but no signs of it yet.

We've had a regular sort of Saturday - Farmers' Market in the morning, skating for the Girl in the afternoon, while the Boy hung out with his buddy.  We returned the otter costume to its home at Five Rivers - rather sad to see it go. 

This evening the Girl attended a friend's surprise birthday party (they're starting to turn thirteen. I ask you...) where there was a competition to load gingerbread houses with as many edible decorations as possible, and my daughter chose to add corn chips to her house, to everyone else's consternation. 

Remarkably, no rain on our parade

The day of the annual Holiday Parade came round again - and the weather was not promising.  It was very cold.  Late morning it started raining and it continued, dully and relentlessly, all day.

So I set off to the Town Hall in low spirits...yet somehow, by luck (or Santa magic?), the rain eased up, and it stayed dry for the duration of the parade.

I was coordinating not just Fair Trade marchers this year, but also (for the first time) a contingent representing Friends of Five Rivers and featuring (but of course) an owl and an otter.  We had willing volunteers for the costumes, the same guys that dressed up for the Memorial Day Parade a few months ago.  They did a great job - they are surely destined to have stellar careers as sports mascots.

More than a dozen Middle Schoolers turned out to hold Fair Trade posters and hand out FT chocolates, so big thanks to them.  The Boy and a friend also actively participated, holding our banner and shouting "Fair Trade!  Support your local campaign!" into an echo-effect plastic microphone (unfortunately rather drowned out by the fife and drum band playing Hark the Herald behind us, and the tractor trailer ahead belting out Jingle Bell Rock). 

Some of us then repaired to the church hall, where a good time and plenty of popcorn/cookies/hot chocolate was had by all...while outside the rain came down once more.

My owl-costume days are so over

Dressing as an owl was a hoot...

 ...but I reckon I look hotter as an otter.

Whittle while you work

When I was in the library today I came across a new book - and how could I resist this title: Tiny Whittling?

Steve Tomashek, the author, has a serious-but-with-a-twinkle-in-the-eye style of explaining his art, as really you would expect from a professional whittler of tiny things.  He advises that would-be whittlers hone their skills on soap, but I only had the liquid kind.  So I leapt ahead a few pages and got straight down to whittling...

...this!

A carrot bunny!  Perhaps not the greatest in the history of whittled carrot bunnies, but not bad for a first attempt.  Yay!

Eat up

Too much time on the computer today - working on a Power Point, working on a flyer - all for some worthy cause, yeah yeah, but now my eyes are sore.

Though maybe that's from sizzling so much chili and spice in my latest Indian cooking concoction?  Spicy chickpeas tonight, and a warm potato and bell pepper salad. 

I used to find cooking, versus sewing or craftiness, rather frustrating because you do all that work and then it gets eaten and you've nothing to show for it.  But recently I've decided that's actually one of the satisfactions.  You can have all the fun of chopping and marinading and mixing and stirring stuff, and then (munch munch) there's nothing left for you to wonder what to do with once you're done.

Tree trimmed

Tree Lions

Even after yesterday's snow (all gone by this morning) it still feels on the early side for getting a Christmas tree.  However, many of neighbours already have their outdoor lights and other Christmassy stuff on display, and the Boy was insistent that we should get our tree today.

Should we drive into the countryside and cut our own again, like last year?  Or go to the nearby garden store, as in years before that?  In the end we decided to head out on Route 9W in Glenmont to buy a tree from the Bethlehem Lions Club.  Every year on the weekends before Christmas they sell trees as a fundraiser for various good causes, such as providing disability aids for people in need.  This year they've just had 34 of their trees stolen - here's the news story.  I ask you, who steals Christmas trees from a charity?

Well, we decided we should support the Lions Club by buying from their remaining stock (now guarded by a newly-installed surveillance system that someone has donated). Very nice trees they are, too.  We have chosen a pretty one which we will put up when we've rearranged the room for it. 

On the Slide in the Park

The first day of December - we woke to snow on the ground.  Not much, but enough to look like winter.

The Man went on a 5k run (a bit of a slippery slide in fact) at The Crossings, Colonie.  He did quite respectably in the circumstances.

Meanwhile I was at our Farmers' Market with a friend, selling Friends of Five Rivers t-shirts and copies of a new book, Five Rivers: the History of a Special Place.  The Market was rather quiet, but we still had a good time and made some sales.

This evening we had a lot of fun at a friend's house - dinner, plus board/card games.  We'd never played Super Circles or Scrabble Slam before, but now recommend both if you're into that kind of thing.