In Character

One of the best things about living in a house full of nerds is continuing to be surprised by the ways my kids keep themselves amused.  When they were younger, characters or themes from favorite books would seep into their play, with Harry Potter being a perpetual favorite. It's cool when this still happens - any parent who has hoped to stave off the effects of media and middle school in the lives of their children would rejoice to hear their 14-year-old daughter willingly playing the part of Hermione with her 11-year-old sister (Ron) and sister's 10-year-old friend (Harry).  However, my favorite characters my children assume are ones they've invented.

There's the Ancient Math Teacher, aka Mr. Minus, and his two students, Bad Boy, who is not so much bad as stupid, and Good Girl, so genuinely pleasant and concerned when she reminds Mr. Minus to take his Gingko biloba that it's impossible to dismiss her as a suck-up. Good Girl arrives at her tutoring sessions with a huge stack of books, gets all the problems right, and is rewarded with candy; when Bad Boy misses questions he grabs at the candy anyway, causing Mr. Minus to wrap his shaky, elderly arms around the candy dish and pull it away, feebly crying, "No!...No!...No!"
  
Mr. Minus is such a beloved character in our house that my eleven-year-old tried to dress like him for Halloween a couple of years ago.  It might have worked better if I'd let her go to school with gray hair.  As it was, most of her friends thought, with her corduroys, vest, and boys' dress shirt decorated with equations and math symbols, she was going as "a geek."  I suppose they were technically correct, but still.

I was honored a few years ago when the girls began inventing roles for me, the least demanding being The Distracted Mother, which only requires me to keep doing what I'm already doing and murmur, "Mm-hmm," and "That's nice, dear" in response to Little Timmy's increasingly ludicrous (and dangerous) requests.  This usually ends with the arrival of the Teenaged Daughter, who jolts me back into the present: "Moth-errr!  You just let the Little Brat drive the ca-ar!"   I have to admit to occasionally being uncomfortable with how easy it is to play this role.  More challenging is the role of Little Sweetheart's mother, since Little Sweetheart is one of the most thoroughly obnoxious children in existence.  Unfortunately, it's impossible to duplicate her way of talking ("Don't mwock my aaccent, Mwommy!") but we have fun trying.

I can't pinpoint when I started seeing less of Mr. Minus and Little Sweetheart.  Possibly it had something to do with my older daughter's entering middle school, or maybe I can blame it on the Wii that arrived two Christmases ago.  It's probably more realistic to just chalk it up to normal adolescent development.  The girls' characters will still occasionally oblige me with a command performance, but I try not to ask too often and am just grateful that they enjoy being a team of two.  Recently they spent an extended weekend with my parents in Arizona and when they returned, they were addressing each other as "Darling Sister."  Not as exciting as Little Timmy playing with fire, but it's enough.

Old Ink

When the Nerd in Chief brought home these bottles of ink last fall, I thought they were beautiful and couldn't believe they'd only cost him a dollar apiece.

All photos in this post were taken by Dwayne F., of vintagetechobsessions.blogspot.com

 If I felt sorry that no one at House Full of Nerds was likely to use the contents, it was a fleeting thought.   The bottles were the subject of a Vintage Technology Obsessions post, I admired Dwayne's photos of them, and then promptly forgot about them until a week or so after Christmas, when Dwayne asked if I'd like to try writing with something other than the Higgins sepia I'd purchased for one of my Christmas presents to him.  I wrote first with the blue and then the purple; the colors are just a tad more vivid in person than in this scan:

Technically I can't call leaving the "i" out of "antique" a typo.  Was there a pre-typewriter term for "writing mistake not caused by ignorance of spelling"?  My misspelling of "embarrassing," however, is embarrassingly genuine.

The ink itself has what I would call a nice chemical smell; a little bit sweet and not at all offensive to my tastes (of course, I did spend too many hours assembling and painting model airplanes as an adolescent). As a novice dip pen-writer, I much preferred Quink over the water-based Higgins.  Even when I forgot to tap off the excess ink after reloading (seen in the transition to purple), the Quink was fairly forgiving.  I set out to write in Spencerian business script but found it hard to concentrate on letter formation, dip pen use, and ideas, so the first two Qs and the H in Higgins are the way I learned to make them in 1973.

 

When I did a Google image search for Quink bottles resembling these, the best matches were dated the 1940s or 50s.

I cleaned the nib immediately after use, but the next time I wrote with it (also with the Quink - a Spencerian sample for my daughter's Social Studies class), it seemed scratchier than usual.  I'm not sure whether this is the result of the 60- to70-year-old ink's having damaged the cheap nib or (quite possibly) my inexpertise with a dip pen.  Either way, I won't be putting it in my fountain pen! 

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.