Geeky Mom

I have been slacking off this week. I had good intentions to get some things done around the house, but those never came to fruition. When it comes to my house, I am simply overwhelmed. I have tried to simplify, to get rid of things, to take things one step at a time, but it seems that my house is always one step ahead of me. There are certain things that I manage to stay on top of–the kitchen (thanks to help from Mr. Geeky and Geeky Boy), the bathrooms (thanks to our cleaning woman and the fact that we are pretty neat in the bathroom to begin with), cooking, and the laundry. The rest–paperwork, the kids’ room, general clutter, small home improvement projects–are just too overwhelming to face. Baby steps, I guess.

I also had plans to catch up on some CSS, to write more (I did not write a single thing outside of this blog), to do a few minor work things that I can never get done at work. What did I do instead? I blogged; I read a lot of blogs. I also putzed around the computer–downloading new things, dressing up the blog. I watched tv. I entertained the children, including a trip to the museum, a movie and a night of board games. I read books. All with a complete slacker attitude. You know, I could do this or not.

Thing is, I’m like this fairly regularly. I happen to believe in down time–serious down time. Sometimes my down time lasts just a day. Sometimes it will last a week–as this one has. A lot depends on how I feel, whether I’m getting enough sleep, the weather (and the weather has been rotten this week). In our work-hungry culture, the kind of down time I’ve been experiencing this week is frowned upon. I should be doing things even when I’m not on vacation. I should have the days filled with activities for the kids.

The U.S. has one of the highest average work hours/week in the world. Additionally, according to this Google answer, lots of people work through lunch and never use their vacation time. I take an hour lunch every day. I’ve started taking days here and there when I’m feeling stressed. This is my first vacation that wasn’t in the summer for an actual trip somewhere or at Christmas time. So I took advantage of it by doing nothing. I have no regrets, really. Yes, I hope to be back in a productive mode come Monday, but for now, I have 3 full days of nothing to look forward to.

Anil had a post yesterday about DVD Jon, the guy who circumvented iTunes’ DRM. DRM is something I am very frustrated by. As Anil’s post indicates, it’s really crazy to keep trying to enforce DRM. There are always going to be hackers out there who will crack the code. Meanwhile, the people who are really hurt by it are average citizens, those who don’t even know that tools exist to circumvent the problem. The people who might actually be pirating music or movies will always find a way to do it.

DRM is especially damaging to education. Yes, there’s fair use, but if a DVD is protected, try getting a 3-minute clip for your conference presentation. Soon computers themselves will be hardwired to protect content, just making it harder to use your content legally.

I love my iPod, but one of the things I find frustrating is that you can’t transfer music via your iPod from one computer to another. Granted, I circumvented this, but many people I know haven’t. It’s my music. If I want to have it on my home computer and on my office computer, I should be able to. Here’s the relevent clauses in Apple’s Terms of Service:

You shall be authorized to use the Products only for personal, noncommercial use.

You shall be authorized to use the Products on five Apple-authorized devices at any time.

You shall be entitled to export, burn or copy Products solely for personal, noncommercial use.

You shall be authorized to burn a playlist up to seven times.

You shall be able to store Products from up to five different Accounts on certain devices, such as an iPod and iPod mini, at a time.

However, they make it difficult to do what you’ve been authorized to do. I know that much of this comes from pressure from the movie and recording industry.

Some DRM-free stores are popping up–one is mp3tunes.com, which charges only 88 cents/song. Granted, you might not find exactly what you want, but at least the music is yours.

DRM is a good argument for continued P2P sharing of music, however illegal that might be.

You should also see Clancy’s post about Lessig’s talk at the 4C’s.

Link to more photos

We made our way through lots of rain to the museum. I took the long way because I’ve never taken the short cut from our house and didn’t want to risk getting lost in the rain without a good navigator.

The museum was rather crowded even at 10:00 a.m. because schools are out for spring break and there were a few not on spring break who were visiting (lots of buses). Unfortunately, the Dali exhibit was sold out. I hadn’t even thought of that. But we paid our $10 to go to all the regular exhibits. We hadn’t been in a while so it was fun.

Note to self: Medieval art is not always child appropriate. There are only so many paintings of Jesus on the cross that a 9 and 5 year old can look at before they’re grossed out and/or scarred for life. And of course, I made it so much better by explaining that entertainment for children in those days would have been live executions. And we talk about violence on tv–ha! Also, armor is out for the 5 year old. She thinks there’s people in there. I only got her to calm down by having her recall the Simpson episode where Homer jousts with King Philip. If anyone overheard us . . .

19th century European art, very good for the children, relatively tame, although every time we saw a nude, Geeky girl yelled out, “Let’s go look at the naked people!” Shew. I put Geeky Boy in charge of the camera and he was mainly taken with contemporary art. He also liked the Renoirs and the Pennsylvania furniture section, but those pictures didn’t turn out.

We covered a lot of ground. Geeky Boy wanted to do Japanese and Chinese art and I wanted to do American art, so we did both of those fairly quickly. Geeky Girl especially liked the Japanese tea house. It would be fun to go when they have a tea master. We didn’t get any pictures of that though. We went into one room of contemporary art where Geeky Boy took a picture of nearly every piece in the room. He thought it was really cool. I’m thinking a trip to the Tate Modern is in order.

Finally, we ended in Persian and Indian art, by which point, we were all exhausted. We have plans to go back in a few weeks for the Dali exhibit. We might make another trip to the science museum once Mr. Geeky returns. That would round out our cultural experiences quite nicely.

Today we go to the art museum. Which is the exact opposite of Target–maybe. We may or may not go to the Dali exhibit. It would cost us an extra $40. I’ll ask the kids. They always make pretty good decisions about what they’d like to do. I have been the the actual Dali museum in Figueres, Spain, but that was 15 years ago. I’ve heard this exhibit is really good, so I’m inclined to shell out the money and go. Besides, I think the kids will get a kick out of it.

Of course, I will blog the experience. I will also take the camera, so maybe photo blogging.

Chez Geeky Mom. Please tell me if this is too painful on the eyes. It’s easy to tone down.

A successful trip to Target, especially since I didn’t break the bank. We stuck to necessities–laundry detergent, light bulbs, shoes for the kids, etc. We did indulge ourselves by purchasing The Incredibles on DVD. Though we certainly don’t *need* it, we probably will watch it many times, starting tonight. We’re planning a big family movie night tonight featuring The Incredibles.

Whenever I go anywhere, I like to assess the kinds of people I’m surrounded by. One of the things I like about the area our Target is located is that it is fairly diverse (for the suburbs). It’s definitely middle America though. Lots of people buying stuff that looks more expensive than it really is. Probably lots of people buying stuff they can’t really afford. When I looked at how people were dressed, you can kind of see the desperation around the edges (I include myself in this picture). Their clothes don’t fit as well as they should; they’re too tight, too loose, too short. Partly, I’m sure this is the same reason my clothes don’t fit too well sometimes. It’s harder to find the right size in cheapville and cheap clothes are much more susceptible to shrinking and stretching (and fraying and ripping).

There were a few people who looked stylish and well put together and they stood out, almost as if we were being visited by a super model. Others were trying too hard; these were mostly teenagers who were trying to keep up with the latest fashions but couldn’t afford to do so. Something was off–their shoes didn’t match or underwear was showing or their pants were a little too short.

I wondered what the stories were behind these people. Who was recovering from a bitter divorce? Whose kid was on the verge of doing drugs? Who had suicidal thoughts in the middle of the night? Who had just been diagnosed with cancer? We try to leave those things behind, to cover that up with our clothes and the looks on our faces, but it doesn’t always work. It reminds of the novel, White Noise by Don Delillo where the family goes shopping to ward off their fear of death. Isn’t that why Bush encouraged us to go shopping after 9/11? To try to get our minds off of our death and deaths of thousands of others?

When I go shopping, I almost always think about this, about why we shop, why we consume. I know it is to fill some hole deep within us, but that we can’t fill with consumer goods even though Target and Wal-Mart and K-Mart and Sears and Macy’s and Bloomingdales all try to convince us otherwise. I always think before I shop. I try to only shop when I need something–food, household goods. I may not always succeed in only buying necessary items, but I try. I think.

So I finally bought some music. I actually ended up not going with any of the suggestions. Somehow, I ended up on a search by clicking through recommendations based on everyone else’s recommendations. It was quite a journey. I ended up with Rufus Wainwright’s Wait Two. I almost bought a Lucinda Williams album and a Magnetic Fields one (really liked the 69 love songs). I had a free song from a Pepsi cap, so I also downloaded Green Day’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams which I had heard on the radio (WXPN, the greatest station ever) the other day.

I have also finally managed to download the 750 songs from sxsw. It took me three days! Yousa! Either I was doing something wrong or it just takes that long to download a 2 gig file. I haven’t unzipped the files because the kids are asleep in my room–where the iMac is. In addition, I downloaded the free Wilco stuff.

More music than you can shake a stick at!

technorati tags: Music

So David tapped me for this pluse he called me cool. I’m sure I’ll never find 3 people who haven’t done it.

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I just order Fahrenheit 451, having never finished the thing eons ago. There’s a good reason.

So which book? I’m assuming I pick a book that I want to preserve. I have to pick just one? This is so unfair–oh wait (thinking out loud, ha) . . . The Riverside Shakespeare. Better get to work on that. If I have to pick a single play, it would be Twelfth Night or Cymbeline. I know I should pick Hamlet, but I want happy stuff. Hopefully, I’ll get to memorize the whole thing.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Hmmm. I’m sure that I have, but I can’t think of anyone right now. I tried to avoid books with male protagonists in the era in which I would have been susceptible to crushes, so maybe I missed out on that whole thing.

The last book you bought is:
I just bought four: Fahrenheit 451, 1984, We’ve got blog, and Little Children

The last book you read:
I just finished Amateur Marriage–really, really good.

What are you currently reading?
Cluetrain Manifesto–also good, but getting boring. I’m also always re-reading Dilbert comic books; I can’t help myself.

Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Well, I’d take the Riverside Shakespeare because I’m assuming I’d forget it before I go to the island and if I did memorize it, it might provide me with, um, necessities.
One Hundred Years of Solitude, because I haven’t read it in a while and I could probably read it more than once, maybe 3 or 4 times at least.
Ulysses. I’ve actually read this book and it made sense to me, but it might make more sense after my head has baked in the sun for a while.
Confederacy of Dunces–for some humor
Jude the Obscure–because I couldn’t think of anything else and it might actually make my own life seem wonderful by comparison

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
Bitch, Ph.D.–cause she’s cool and needs a break from all the politics stuff she’s doing right now. And I’d like to see her bookshelf
Jimbo–Maybe it will be a break from the visit by big gorilla.
New Kid–I know she’s reading something cool.

Inspired by David, who’s always doing this and which I always find fun to read, some recent search activity that landed people at my blog:

“smelling girls sneakers”
“stressed out burned out mom”
“vignette mom”
“Martha Stewart ‘miss my pet’s’ name”
“wearing jeans to work”

Always interesting, no?

I’m taking vacation this week since the kids are and Mr. Geeky is in California for a conference. I’m planning to accomplish a lot anyway. Here’s today’s plans:

-deal with finances–pay bills, take taxes to accountant (found $400 in savings and didn’t even charge me; go h&r block!), get cashier’s check for property taxes
-finish laundry–Mr. Geeky did all the laundry before he left, but it needs to be put away (making significant progress)
-work on the book
-possibly work on another blog presentation (blogging and science)–the Schiavo case should offer quite a bit of fodder for that
-e-mail some faculty about smart classroom issues–I know this is technically work, but I didn’t get it done last week and it’s something I really want to do.

Tomorrow we have plans to go to the art museum and/or the science museum. I hope my list here will keep me honest.