Trying to lead the good life

On Sunday Daniel and I were having one of our leisurely weekend chats and I mentioned that we had bought a new lawnmower and how great it was to be able to start the mower myself. His response, "I have one word for you, Jane, 'gardener'" So, in addition to the fact that we only recently moved to a modest flat screen tv, the whole grass issue highlights that I am still woefully behind my little brother in leading the good life. To rectify this, I thought today I would finally use the coupon I bought weeks back for 5 super duper car washes. Again, while I am sure that Daniel and Michelle regularly have this cushy experience, it was a first for me. I am not quite a wash it in the driveway with a bucket person, but have only graduated to the self serve car wash where you do it all on your own, or splurge to go through a really lame automatic wash, but still get out and do your own vacuuming. So, today was a huge step up. It was one of those places where you exit your car so that a swarm of guys can clean its interior within an inch of its life. I was loving life, being the sort of person about to drive off in my 'looks almost brand new' car. Mild panic when I realized I should tip but had no idea how much. I was about to pull out of the lot when I realized that the little compartment for sunglasses next to the gear shift was open. And guess why. Because they managed to break a tiny piece of plastic essential to the close function. I did not just drive away and put up with it but backed up and had a chat with the manager. Of course, they will pay to have it fixed, but I have to bring them three bids. So, cushy car wash now turns in to schlep around town to insult mechanics by asking them to bid a tiny plastic doohickey.

Back to research

In between the arrival of summer holidays and playing out my fantasies of being a prosecutor, things are also moving forward on the electropalatography research project. We finally got IRB approval and last week had a team meeting with the guy from Completespeech which makes the palate devices we are using. I now really understand collaborative research. It was so much fun to listen to the incredibly smart (I think 'smart' because I had trouble following) questions from my colleagues. Things about frequency and how various electrodes map to the excel data sheet...

We are in the process of getting our first two Russian speakers fitted and will be able to start collecting their data soon.

Boot camp

This is what I couldn't face getting up for this morning. Picture from last week. I am second back doing an excellent side plank with arm raised!

This is the view if you look east as we work out.

School's out for summer - almost

This is the last week of school for the children although why anyone bothers I am not sure. There was a four day weekend so no school last Friday or this Monday. They had already handed in all of their textbooks and cleared out their lockers. By yesterday evening it was 9th grade promotion party for Sam and 'yearbook stomp' for Catherine. I drove Sam and three of his friends over - had to roll down all the windows because of the asphyxiating amount of cologne they were all sporting. Here is a picture:

Today they are all at our local amusement park, Lagoon, for the day. Catherine and her friends went up to the university to watch the senior class graduation.

Craig and I had a quiet evening in last night watching an episode of Damages on Netflix. Our peace punctuated by phone call from Sam "How late can I stay out?" Followed by text "Spending the night at Quinn's." Catherine appeared briefly to collect stuff for an overnight at her friend Karli's - "Hi mom, just getting some stuff. Do you want to see Karli's belly button piercing." How could I resist. Not sure if Catherine was there while she got it - it was all of 20 minutes old.

Could not make myself get up for bootcamp this morning.

The birthday evening

Last night was supposed to be the Adele concert - tickets to which at vast expense were my birthday present from Craig. Got there only to discover it was cancelled due to illness. Now comes the long wait where you hang on to the tickets and hope she reschedules at a time that actually suits. So there we were all dressed up and no place to go. Decided to catch a movie and ended up at Hangover Part II which was hilarious but verging on too raunchy even for me. There were two tween age kids sitting in front of us with what I thought was their mom, until head turned and I saw full beard. Seemed like way inappropriate movie for them, to which Craig said "visitation." Midway through the movie a woman squeezed past us and plopped down in one of the two vacant seats next to me. She had an enormous bucket of popcorn and within about 30 seconds began agitatedly looking for her "bag". Very distracting. Then she began to talk to herself. Even more distracting. Craig and I got the giggles, speculating that perhaps she had gone out for a popcorn refill and had ended up in the wrong movie. She stayed to the end though, muttering a lot and then when house lights came up, crawling around on the floor looking for the bag which once found looked alarmingly like one of those tied closed bags of dog poo you see people with when out walking the pooch. Woke up to snow.

????

This has gotten ridiculous. This is what was on the grass this morning. SNOW! It is May 30th. We are still running the furnace.

Guess the native language

This could be a fun game for linguists. You get something like this in an email and you have to figure out what the writer's first language is.

"I do not think I can make any difference if I try to talk to him because
I already did and he is just like someone carrying two big melons and has
lost balance."

PS- It is Arabic