Game night!

With school back in session for over a week now, Christmas and New Year's seem like a long time ago.  (In fact, last week I saw EASTER candy on an end-cap at a big box store.)  While the junior nerds were glad to see their friends and teachers again, our family is back to having to work hard to make sure we get enough time together.  One of of our favorite family activities is game night, and over the past year, our favorite game has been Luck of the Draw.

See?  "Artistically Challenged" - that means anyone can play!

Since our art skills range from poor (the Nerd in Chief) to very good (the Littlest Nerd), we were pleased to discover that points are awarded in a wide range of categories, such as "Used Most Graphite," "Art Teacher's Pet," and "Don't Quit Your Day Job." Each card has three possible subjects and a player rolls a die that determines which one everyone must draw.  When one of the subject choices is especially cool, we have been known to try mind control to influence the outcome, with limited success.  The 45-second time limit helps keep things interesting.

A typical round may look like this:

The subject was Walrus, not  Rock and Roll.  Claire and I are the biggest Beatles fans in the family, so I found it ironic that she was the only one who drew an actual walrus.  Then again, she may be the only family member who can draw an actual walrus.

The chips are used to assign each drawing a color so that voting can be done without knowing whose drawing is whose, although the concept of anonymity works best when players are unfamiliar with each other's drawing styles.  Still, even the four of us can occasionally surprise each other, as in this example, when the word was "turkey."

Claire is the only meat-eater in the family, so her association of "turkey" with "E-coli" (close-up below) was unexpected.  Meanwhile, Hannah's reaction (upper right) was no surprise at all.

The Nerd in Chief doesn't always win categories like "Most Unsettling" - just usually.  Most of the time it's intentional on his part, but sometimes it's just the result of his lack of drawing skills:

"Harry Potter"

I was embarrassed  by my pitchfork broom until I saw that Dwayne had given poor Harry  Voldemort's eyes and nostrils.  He hadn't meant to - that's just how he draws.

You can see Dwayne's watermelon allergy reflected in this one:

I'm the one who drew the skull.  I was thinking about my husband's safety, not my indifference towards melon - really!  Sadly, Dwayne (with the Epi-Pen sticking out of his neck) loves watermelon, as do the girls.

Predictably, nerdy pop culture references sneak into many of our drawings.  I was surprised when the word "dragon" didn't elicit the same response from each of us.  I suppose I should have expected a Dungeons & Dragons reference from Dwayne and the adorable little dragon is typical of Claire's doodling.  We're all such fans of Strong Bad on homestar runner, though, that I assumed we'd all draw Trodgor.

Hannah's Trogdor is much better than mine.  Not only is the arm beefier, the wings don't look like they belong to a butterfly that just crawled out of its chrysalis.

Speaking of nerd culture, this one is my favorite.  We're all fans of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (especially the BBC miniseries), but it was still eerie when each person's "whale" drawing revealed that we were all thinking the same thing:

We celebrated with high-fives and Nerd Salutes all around.  A great moment of family unity!

What I Don't Love About Computers

As promised, I've been working on a post about my forays into Spencerian Business Script, a simplified version of the gorgeous, ornate Spencerian penmanship of the second half of the 19th century.  After several false starts, I was satisfied late last night that I finally had my post the way I wanted it but decided to save it for one final read-through when I'd be more awake.

When I got home from a Girl Scout cookie booth this afternoon with my 14-year-old (still in GS at 14 - so cool!), I found that my laptop had frozen up.  One re-start later I discovered that none of the revisions to had saved, despite my having  hit "save" each time I walked away from my draft.  So, instead of trying to reconstruct my would-have-been post, I bring you the following version...

Early last month, for probably the last time, I managed to coerce my daughters into taking a photo with Santa.  This happened at a 19th century historic site where they volunteer during the summer and fall and was accomplished partly by my insisting it would be a good surprise for their dad.  Towards the end of our visit, we stopped in the gift shop, where the girls spotted a bottle of sepia ink and I got the idea of learning enough 19th century penmanship to write a message on the picture frame with a dip pen.  I figured this would make a nice gift for Dwayne, as it combines two of his great loves:  family and vintage technology.

Since I reverted from cursive to printing in seventh grade, I knew this would take some effort on my part, and that was part of the gift as well. My cursive is okay as long as I'm writing slowly and concentrating on forming letters instead of ideas - not really a practical means of note-taking or journal-writing for me.  An online search for "19 century handwriting" led me to www.iampeth.com, where I found an extremely helpful instructional manual for Spencerian Business Script.  I skipped the information about how to sit, hold a pen, and move my arm and dove straight into copying upper-case Ms and Cs.

This was my first experience with a dip pen, and I can't say I enjoyed it.  It seemed I'd either run out of ink in the middle of a stroke or overload the nib, with an unsightly result!

After my first practice session, my wrist and forearm were burning and I was sure I'd aggravated my carpal tunnel beyond repair.  After a couple of days' rest, I was back at it, this time giving a little more thought to how I was sitting and moving my arm, if not holding the pen - I tend to use a "death grip," which unfortunately wasn't discovered until I was in sixth grade and pretty set in my ways.  A few days later, I had some results I thought were suitable for gluing onto the frame:

I tried writing a longer note to Dwayne but my patience with the dip pen had reached its limit.  I was thrilled when, two days after Christmas, he surprised me with a Parker Urban fountain pen (on sale at Office Max - that's how we roll!).  This is my first fountain pen, and I have to say it's much easier trying to write in Spencerian Business Script when I'm not having to worry about overloading the nib or having it run dry mid-stroke.

Transcription:
"This is my attempt at Spencerian [Business] script, which was used in the second half of the 19th century and the very beginning of the 20th, until the advent of the Palmer method.  As you can see, the capital letters, while still quite recognizable, are different from those of the dreaded Zaner-Bloser method, under which I toiled as a child.  There are minor differences in the lower-case letters (Spencerian vs. Z-B) but they are generally so minor that I have ignored them so as to concentrate on the sweeping capitals.  Were I truly committed to the cause of great penmanship, I would practice each day, but how can I with all these Girl Scout cookies yet to sell?  It is one thing to attempt to copy the letters; quite another to practice the principals behind each letter.  Dec. 27, 2011"

It's too early to tell whether I'll do much pencasting in the future, but I've had fun playing around with 19th century handwriting and will probably continue to experiment, especially now that I have a pen I really enjoy.  Besides flowing nicely and being easy to grasp correctly (instead of in the dreaded "death grip"), my Parker includes a nice bonus feature:  unlike my computer, it "saves" automatically.

Happy 2012!

Although penmanship has never been a strength of mine, I'm having fun playing around with handwriting styles and my new Parker Urban fountain pen, a post-Christmas gift from my husband.  The calendar page is from a desk calendar he found at an antique mall.  Since 1960 was a leap year, too, it seems appropriate. 

I've been working on a post about my efforts with Spencerian Business Script, shown above, and what led me to this uncharacteristic new interest.  However, I've been thoroughly enjoying time with family, friends, and books these past two weeks, so it's not quite ready.  I very much doubt that pencasting is anywhere in my near future, but I'm finding that as I get older, I'm more open to trying things that don't come easily to me.

I hope 2012 finds you and your loved ones well and happy.  I've enjoyed dipping my toe into the blogosphere (Thanks, Dwayne, for encouraging me!) and am looking forward to reading your posts in the year ahead!

Have yourself a nerdy little Christmas!

This year, at House Full of Nerds, we don't have our usual Christmas tree.  It's a long story involving a load of bamboo flooring and several robots.  We've had to get a bit creative with our decorations, so the Nerd in Chief has strung an X of fishing line high in our dining room and hung ornaments on it, so they appear to be floating in space, "like at Hogwarts!" as my younger daughter says.

Hanging the ornaments this high was also our solution when we had a cat who loved to climb the Christmas tree.

Even with the cool dining room decorations, my girls and I were bummed out about having to forgo the ritual of setting up and decorating our tree, an artificial one we've had for more than 20 years.  Over that time, we've accumulated an eclectic assortment of ornaments, many purchased at bargain prices the week after Christmas.  Our favorites include poor Captain Pike from Star Trek TOS, and a clear plastic ball trimmed with gold-tinted cardboard, reflecting the rationing during World War II, when my mom acquired it.

Claire solved the "no tree" problem when she dug out a table-top Christmas tree.  Her older sister got it at a white elephant gift exchange last year and promptly passed along to her.  "I decorated it with Mardi Gras beads!" she said triumphantly.  I added a couple of bells I'd found in a drawer, having forgotten to put them away the previous year, and we put the tree in the living room with some of our many robots.  It's festive, the perfect focal point for gifts, and small enough to be whisked away easily when it's time to install the flooring.

Godzilla and the robots are making sure no one peeks too closely at the presents.

With the tree situation resolved, I was pleased to discover that the remaining essential elements of my family's Christmas celebration were in a single box in the garage:  Our stockings, the Nativity set that goes on our mantle, the Advent wreath, and the Christmas Squirrel. 

The Christmas Squirrel is a relatively recent tradition, introduced to us by my best friend, Adela:  "Remember when you were a kid, and you would get stuff like underwear and tube socks in your stocking?"

"Yeah..."

"Well, Santa wouldn't do that to you.  That was the Christmas Squirrel."

Yes, those are tube socks in his little paws!

 Why a squirrel?  Since my kids read my blog sometimes, I won't go into the creature's unsettling origins.  Anyway, the adorable stuffed animal Adela fitted with a hand-made Santa hat and coat is so disarmingly cheery that it's been easy for our family to accept it as a well-intentioned provider of necessary if boring footwear.  Its exact origins don't really matter.  Hmm... I don't think that's the first time I've made that argument at this time of year.  I'd better quit before I get too metaphysical.  I hope this finds you and your loved ones happy and healthy, and if you celebrate Christmas, I hope it's a good one!

Please note that all photos are by Dwayne, aka the Nerd in Chief. He can be found at vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com.

Nerd Roots

Argh, an extended absence and now a blank slate.  It's like writing my first post all over again.  I'm still trying to catch up after spending ten days around Thanksgiving at my parents' house in Arizona.  I went because my mom had knee replacement surgery (actually a "revision," I learned, since the surgeon was replacing an old artificial knee).  Mom needed a couple of extra days in the hospital, so I got to spend a lot of time with my dad, which got me thinking about my nerdy origins.
My dad never watched "Star Trek" or read Arthur C. Clark novels, but I trace my nerd-dom directly to him.  He had a cool Lego gear set that I envied (this was back when Legos were just colorful bricks).  It was his toy, not mine - he'd owned it before I was born and I'm his first child. We moved several times when I was growing up and each place we lived, we were the only family in our neighborhood with a compost pile.  Even at the retirement home where he and my mom live now, my dad saves banana peels and coffee grounds for the petunias.  I'm not sure whether the nerdiest thing my dad has done was teaching himself to knit so he wouldn't get bored on business trips (this was way pre-9/11) or spending a week studying soybeans at the University of Illinois (my mom will point out that this was when they were serving on our church's Hunger Action Committee, but he's been both an unapologetic meat-eater and a soybean enthusiast for as long as I've known him).  It is from him that I get my tendency to pick objects up with my toes, my preference for solitude over socializing, and my suspicion towards whatever the latest craze happens to be.

One of the things I admire most about my dad is his blatant disregard for what everyone else will think. Even as a teenager, I got a kick out of telling people that my dad had knit the sweater I was wearing, although I did slink down in the passenger seat of our Travel-All so I'd be out of sight when he stopped on a particularly tree-lined street to steal bags of leaves for his compost pile.  For the most part, though, it's hard to think of a time when I haven't appreciated his uniqueness and resourcefulness:  We had the coolest swing set in the neighborhood, made from an I-beam supported by 12-foot steel legs, because a store-bought piece of junk wasn't safe enough (or good enough) for his kids.  He made sourdough pancakes and bread from starter he'd had since 1964.  And when the antenna snapped off of my first radio because I threw it down in a fit of anger, he skipped the lecture and fixed it with a thick piece of copper he just happened to have lying around.


Either my appreciation of parental eccentricities is a family trait or my children aren't yet old enough to have outgrown it.  My fourteen-year-old recently told me she doesn't miss watching TV, and neither she nor my eleven-year-old have any qualms about taking weird leftovers to school for lunch; in fact my older daughter enjoys grossing out her friends.  When my parents visit, my eleven-year-old enjoys the four mile round-trip walk to the grocery store with my dad, and fondly remembers the time they walked home in the rain.  She maintains that they would have been just fine if I hadn't shown up with the car to rescue them.  My fourteen-year-old looks forward to the violin-viola duets she and my dad play because "it's nice to play with someone else who really cares about how they sound."  While they only barely tolerate my dad's puns, they both appreciate his kindness and positive outlook on life, which although not exclusively nerdy traits, may partly explain why my mom has put up with my dad's quirks so willingly for the past 48 years.

The Thing Under the Bed

Saturday night, I was reading in bed, something I increasingly find I have to do in order to fall asleep.  I had re-read the same paragraph for the third time and considering calling it a night when the mattress beneath my feet moved.  The movement was accompanied by a thumping sound, as if something were under the bed.  I froze, as I often do in nightmares when I'm unable even to speak, let alone jerk away and escape.  What was it?  I tried to rationalize myself out of my panic.  Even if ghosts were real, which they're not, I told myself, no ghost in its right mind would wait over 13 years to make its presence known.  

The movement and thumping continued as I worked my way down my mental checklist of what couldn't be causing it:  An animal?  It sure sounded like one, but how big would an animal have to be to be felt through the box springs and mattress, and how could one have gotten into the house?  Even though I knew it wasn't an animal, I reacted as if it were - by kicking the mattress where it was moving.  I was rewarded when the motion and noise stopped, about half a minute or so after it had begun.

I lay there, my heart pounding.  I didn't dare get out of bed - not because I thought there was anything more nefarious than boxes of too-small sweaters underneath, because that would be crazy, but I couldn't make myself dangle a foot over the edge, let alone get up.  I wanted to call out for my husband but didn't for fear of waking my daughters and - more importantly - looking like a fool.  It was all too easy to picture his patient, indulgent smile as he reassured me that I couldn't possibly have felt anything and that he'd take a look at the flap over the drier vent sometime soon.  Instead, I turned my cell phone back on, in case whatever it was returned and I needed to summon him immediately.  I moved to the center of the bed, away from the spot where the Thing had attacked, opened my book, and tried to concentrate.  It was a long time before I turned off the light.

The following morning, when I read about the late-night earthquake near Oklahoma City, I felt relieved ("Oh, not an animal, just an earthquake!") and vindicated ("I'm not crazy!").  My husband, who'd been in the basement at the time, had felt a vibration and heard a noise like our front-loading washing machine on spin cycle but hadn't let it trouble him beyond a fleeting "that's odd."  Both my daughters had slept through it, much to my fourteen-year-old's disappointment.  In our sun-lit dining room, around our cluttered table, it was easy to make light of the fear I'd felt the night before and my illogical solution to the bed's shaking.

It was even easier to joke about it the following day when a coworker and I regaled our fellows with tales of the big quake - none of them had noticed it.  "It was like someone was under my bed, banging on it," my coworker said.  

"Yeah, exactly," I agreed.  

"When it stopped, I ran into Carter's room to make sure he was okay."

Oops.  Does this mean I'm a bad mom?  I'm no Sarah Conner, but I like to think I'd fight to the death to keep my children from harm.  Then a little bump under the bed unnerves me so much I can barely move.  Having spent most of my life in Kansas, the thought that I was experiencing an earthquake never crossed my mind, but neither did the thought that I should check on my kids - do I get bonus points for not wanting to wake them, at least?  I reassured myself with the thought that I wasn't a bad mom, we're just raising our children to be self-sufficient. 

My eleven-year-old, for the past two evenings, has taken great pleasure in saying things like, "Watch out for 'animals'" or "Don't let the thing under the bed bite" when I'm tucking her in.  Worse, she says this with a completely earnest face and just a hint of snark.  I love being the butt of an eleven-year-old's jokes.  Maybe we've raised them to be too self-sufficient... I'll see if I can go convince my husband to help me give her bed a few quick shakes.

Ribbons and Saints

Warning:  This is not a particularly nerdy post.

Several weeks ago, I received three dusty boxes of ribbon and bows from my father-in-law, who was widowed for a second time last February.  Unlike my late mother-in-law, I am merely adequate when it comes to wrapping gifts - when I can't find an appropriate gift bag to re-use, I'll drag out our one roll of birthday paper (currently a unisex blue striped pattern) or choose from one of several jumbo rolls of Christmas paper we've had since our children were in preschool.  I don't mind the wrapping process and can usually get the corners nice and square, but rarely embellish beyond a hastily scrawled: "To _, From Mama and Daddy" or a bow recycled from a more conscientious wrapper - until recently, usually my mother-in-law, Vernilea.  

I tell myself I'm being "green" by not bothering with ribbon, but my laziness may also have something to do with it.  So when my father-in-law offered me three boxes of ribbon and bows, I wasn't about to refuse - how much greener can you get than rescuing stuff from a landfill, or at least using it once before sending it there?  And even someone as lazy as I am can retrieve a roll of ribbon and a matching bow from the basement.

Admittedly, when Don handed over the boxes, I felt disappointed and a bit overwhelmed.  There were several little plastic spools of ribbon like you buy at Target, but mostly there were cardboard reels 8 1/2 " in diameter, each originally holding 250 yards' worth - probably enough for me to host a neighborhood Maypole dance every year until my 11-year-old graduates from high school!  

All photos courtesy of the Nerd in Chief.  He can make anything look good!

Adding to my ribbon angst was the uncharacteristic dustiness of the boxes and their contents.  Vernilea and I weren't quite polar opposites when it comes to housekeeping, but she was at the far right end of the tidiness Bell curve, while I am at least one standard deviation (maybe two) left of center.  Receiving something dusty from my mother-in-law just felt wrong, so I did what I always do with items I can't immediately face - I piled two of the boxes at the far end of our dining table, set the third one under the kitchen table, and refused to make eye contact with them.

On Thursday I finally forced myself to sort through the ribbon - maybe because it seemed preferable to cleaning out the freezer.  I found a box of glittery pine cones and ornaments that cheered me right away, reminding me of Vernilea's elaborate bow arrangements on Christmas gifts.  I dusted the spools and reluctantly threw out stuff that was too faded or that I knew I'd never use, including gummed gift tags so forlorn they could only have come from a solicitation for a charitable organization.  At the bottom of one box, I found four gold gift tags that were heavy when I picked them up.  I realized they were thin metal Christmas tree ornaments like the ones my husband's parents had given him as a child - how cool that Vernilea's family had gotten the same kind!  Then I examined the first one and found my brother-in-law's name, Michael, and the date1978.  The next two were dated 1979, one for my husband and one for his brother.  The last one bore the name of my first mother-in-law, Margaret, mother to my husband and his brother Michael. 

We're lucky to live in a community where both All Saints Day and Dia de los Muerto are celebrated.  Tomorrow, when we go to a Dia de los Muertos celebration at our local art museum, we'll take this photo to put on the altar in honor of both my mothers-in-law, Vernilea and Margaret.  The two of them couldn't have been more different from each other, but a love of Christmas and gift-giving was one thing they shared.