in like a lamb...

... out like a lamb.

weather forecasting by adage gets trumped by banal reality this year.

ahli penterjemah

i agree to be the malay-english interpreter for an upcoming event. 

this means i am currently rabidly polishing up my erstwhile native tongue. i consume online news women's magazines classified advertisements and a political blog. i am now able to say government, opposition, contends, police state in malay very passionately and authentically.

i hope i progress convincingly beyond selamat datang tomorrow. perhaps we can discuss politics.

repose

well, what do you know?

Dog snuggles up into his own bed with nary a glance at our bedroom. HOM says he is tired out from his nocturnal shenanigans. i say this dog is smarter than we give him credit for. he could be playing a sly psychological game. he could pop up again tonight.

repose, lack of

Dog has lately been abandoning his own bed and taken to standing miserably at the bedroom door until we allow him into the room. he puts himself to bed on the rug, rouses half hourly to find himself a new spot, and has dreams that are punctuated by little yelps in the night. it gets the humans very tired by morning. 

tonight, if he stands there again, we will harden our hearts.

the little cake that was

raisin butter cake with cream cheese frosting, on account of HOM forgetting to include the carrot and the walnuts. you could call this the carrot-cake-that-almost-was.

error!

it's snowing! in spring!

pretty genteel flakes with no hope of sticking. as HOM says, this is the best way to have snow; you actually feel a lift looking at it. i do hope this is the absolute end of winter for now.

letris® 2

little thrills.

fullness of provision

not quite a lenten meditation perhaps, but some thoughts strike me, namely 

2 tim 3:16, and 

2 tim 2:15.

in lay terms, 

k.i.s.s., and 

it takes a lifetime's study to keep it so.

letris®

my best score so far.

too big to fail - sorkin (2009)

i'll say this for the book: it's epic. it's fascinating because it played out in my backyard and i didn't know. it's also confusing. dating the events more clearly would really have helped. 

i'll say this for the bankers: they're unimaginably wealthy. their speech is liberally and aggressively fricative. they are more human than 2008/2009 media suggests. and they exchange blood and soul for their paychecks.  

and i'll say this for myself: i still don't understand what a cdo is, although i now know you have investment commercial and retail banks. this really annoys me.

pity the prosperity of this world... for it corrupts joy and brings the fear of adversity. pity the adversity of this world... for it fills men with a longing for prosperity, and... is hard for them to bear...

- augustine of hippo

business plan

J2 and her friend C want to make money selling cupcakes. i foresee that we shall have to eat lots of cupcake soon.

anachronism

our entire stock of winter outerwear is at the cleaners' in honor of the new season. rather belatedly today i look at the forecast for the next few days. all i want to say is, i hope those weather guys get it wrong.

biblical/medical ethics - payne (1985)

payne makes you swim in a peasoup of words with not a single friendly bullet point in sight. in return he is logical coherent and wide-ranging in what he covers. he has things to say to the last chapter. and he threatens to change your point of view, not because he writes compellingly but because he makes a compelling case.

after a professional lifetime of kantian ethics it is a shock to my soul to be confronted with a biblical basis for what i should do. after the shock passes what remains can no longer be kant.

spring

finally!

the children i meet look happy and unsticky. the check-out lady is brisk and beaming. the lights turn green on me. J1 calls from the army barracks. HOM calls from work. the birds won't stop singing. there is magic in the air.

march madness

i say that today's sudden thunderstorm in the heart of the school morning commute is payback for the all the snow we haven't had to shovel in this month.

chinese fellowship

what i say is, if you probe the collective chinese unconscious you will find jiaozi making programmed right next to filial piety and communal support.

submission

read this, especially what the widow says. in this most final loss in the most blameworthy circumstance, she remembers that God numbers our days, not us or our precautions or someone's malicious negligence.

psalm 139:16b

prov 16:4

for HOM and J1

here's a song of love between a father and his son, of growing up and bidding farewell, of bitter sorrow and fragile hope. it's a song to have a drink over, and to weep with. it's a good song for our times, and for this time. slàinte.

current affairs

word of the week: 

sievert (Sv)

pressing on

another bag today.

it's a long road to freedom.

name your day

pi day

ides of march 

jn 3:16 

st patrick's day
all lined up

what festive times we live in!

war on clutter

my newfound much belated new year resolution is this: one bag a day. of clutter, that is. to get rid of. 

you would think a family that moved every two years would not accumulate too much extraneous substance. i'm pretty surprised myself.

dignity

for quiet grace in the face of impotence:

1. tohoku earthquake 2011

2. london bombing 2005

3. 9/11/2001

parkinson's law, var.

clutter expands so as to fill the space available.

this is especially true of a teenager's clutter and naturally is not limited to the teenager's space.

discernment

i cull a 13 gallon-sized thrash bag worth of memories and an additional box of binders from the basement, after which the basement looks just like it did before. it occurs to me that if i simply leave everything neatly arranged on shelves i can fit a magnificent amount of clutter in. this may be a metaphor. well-groomed people can sprout drivel, and mostly we wouldn't suspect it.

urgency

HOM likes to rumble on, in a low-grade endemic way, about de-cluttering. today i oblige him and offer to clear out half the kitchen shelves. the teacups can all go. we only use the four mugs. the good dinner set can go too. we only use the daily set. there is a short silence, and now HOM is mumbling on about not being in a great hurry.

daylight savings

the end, as it were, of the beginning.

info overload

here is a statement from bloomberg in the wake of the japanese earthquake:

analysts surveyed by bloomberg news were split over the direction of crude oil prices next week amid spreading unrest in the middle east and signals the global economic rebound is slowing. fifteen of 36 analysts, or 42 percent, forecast crude will advance through march 18. fifteen predicted futures will decline. six said there will be little change.

as surveys go, this statement gives us statistical proof that your guess is as good as mine.

culinary strategy

J1 finds the military barracks not entirely unpleasant. his mates are great his bunk is comfortable enough and the food's actually enjoyable. if you discount the regimentation the dirt the petty details and the field discomfort it aint too bad a deal. this, i tell HOM, is where i have done something right. when your life-long fare is middling at best you can bet anything else will be a welcome improvement. it's those poor kids with gourmet cooks for mothers who suffer the most on army rations.

bananagrams®

on a short break from that other addictive distraction, letris®.

seasonal affective disorder

the thing about the cold months is that you go around all wrapped up warm and toasty and then one day you happen to glance at yourself in the buff and get a fright. if any other body looked so pasty they would have to be ill.

new hobby

i pick up a paint brush today after three decades. it's an exotic terrain to navigate anew. how do i begin? what shall i paint? what if it looks awful? how do i even mix colors? should i get a rag? the brush feels less unfamiliar than i expect. some things, apparently, are remembered. now that presbyopia has put paid to my embroidery days, perhaps i can try this again.

how music works 2

the thing about knowing what those mode names refer to means i finally have a tag for stuff. in summary, i like my music to be in major or minor keys, preferably 3 or 4 beats to a measure, ideally from the european eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. stuff i heartily dislike, like scarborough fair, is likely to be in some medieval mode like dorian. as is greensleeves, and various other english and irish folk songs, which i now realize are served up in the mode most calculated to curdle my body fluids. i'm thinking these are the western equivalent of chinese opera, which is solidly built upon the upper screeches of the pentatonic scales. 

call a mode a mode, i say, because i now know it is a mode.

my list

here's a list of hymns that have stood the test of american time over the past 250 years. it gets me thinking. for the record, here are the top ten in my hymnody:

• amazing grace
• how great thou art
• great is thy faithfulness
• when i survey the wondrous cross
• precious lord, hold my hand
• jesus, keep me near the cross
• he looked beyond my fault
• thanks to God!
• calvary's love
• my tribute

supper

orange marmalade swiss roll.

useful things to have, daughters.

how music works - j powell (2010)

this cheerful little book clears up the mysterious pentatonic aeolian lydian myxolydian nomenclature for me and demystifies the different minor scales which years of abrsm training never did do. it also explains why ten violinists sound only as loud as two.

powell says he is explaining the science of music production but in fact gives me a delightful recap of music theory.

ewww

observed at the store:

a mother picks up a tart and shows it to her young son. the chappie dips his index finger into the filling and licks it. would you like me to buy it? extremely fortunately for the rest of us, he would.

non-literal meaning

i listen to a sermon in chinese which is also translated into english. it is surreal. the preacher appears to be talking about floods swiftly sweeping away our lives. the translator waxes on about watches in the night. you might say it's two for the price of one.

nocturnal rant

i get a trans-atlantic call at midnight. someone very cheerful needs to know some information. the information is in the email. also the website. i'm diurnal, and you're calling at the wrong urn.

mr robin

my first real bird picture this year. yesss.

to be honest

i deposit our house guest at the airport. people like to ask me, what do you do with your days? are you, like, bored when you don't have guests/ a job/ a social function to attend? it's kinda hard to explain, i sometimes want to say, but i rather like solitude.

parking

the pay n go machine at the airport is alarmingly efficient. it swiftly sucks in my ticket and card does an about turn and smartly spits them out again sans payment. it leaves you breathlessly impressed and almost grateful to have been fleeced.

its cousin the pay n park machine on the streets of d.c. is another animal altogether. it is elusive full of mysterious buttons and slots and demands payment in ten minute increments. and you are never sure the car will be there when you return.

spring cleaning

the couch in the family room gets an unexpected laundering. i find myself vacuuming up crumbs dog hairs and unrecognizable particles. we have a long standing no-food-no-pet-on-couch policy. perhaps it is time to revise this. we could have a stay-out-of-this-room policy. 

haha!

i come across a craigslist advertisement for a used piano. it is vintage upright painted red and the owner wants a hundred bucks for it. the blurb says, motivated seller! desperate guy, more like.

two men

i must say that for irreverently sly brit humor the imported version agrees better with me. both men are merciless and sharp but clarkson is given to unkind profanity ellipses and standalone sentences that get a little tired. 

like this...

and he keeps saying, i'm sorry, but. after the first time i'm sorry, too.

bryson, conversely, apart from his american verbosity, is quite capable of trussing the reader up in a wickedly deadpan sentence and leaving him gasping with laughter, but he does it without making anyone look small, except for some government departments.

passage

i rummage through old photographs. odd that i do not remember the children changing in any way and yet their childhood images are completely discongruous with their present. do other parents feel this way, i wonder? there is this strangely unreal sensation looking at now unfamiliar likenesses and this sneaky gasp of relief that we are quite done with deciduous dentition. 

we have enough years of memories to tell stories from now. we can say, years ago, when the children were little, like something back in the mists of time, and it would scarcely be exaggeration. that's a nice feeling, like we have arrived at some family milestone.