…well, mostly this week. This first picture is the only exception, from the last day of summer camp, which was a week and a half ago and like most of the days included face painting, which the kids never seemed to tire of. The first day of “real” elementary school starts next week, which should be exciting. It’s a great school, continuing in the Montessori system, and she’s looking forward to it both for the newness, and because some of her classmates from past years that she didn’t see last year are there. In addition to school, singing lessons and swimming lessons are planned — she swims well already, but has no technique. By the way, if anyone has any advice on singing lessons I’m listening… I’ve been asking around with only minimal success and I really know very little about the subject.
The next makeup opportunity is the Romero zombie walk in two weeks. I’m going as a zombie, and Nefarious is going to be a zombie hunter and will get to drag me around by a chain around my neck. Hopefully she does not abuse the power. If you missed them or forgot them, here are the costume pictures from last year. We’ll be at the main one as well, on October 24th, unless we’re too wiped out because we’ll have just returned from Panama and Costa Rica.
Today I was digging through my boxes of accumulated junk, looking for some effects gear that I offered to lend to my neighbor, and I found my old Frankenstein’s monster RC car. It’s got the front end of one car, and the rear end of another, and was built out of two broken cars. It looks silly, but it’s actually really fast and fun to drive and works perfectly. Not that the ones we’ve been playing with recently aren’t fun, but it’s a treat to play with a “real” RC car instead of a “toy”.
In other “toy news”, I got this cool 72 LED watch from Hong Kong for not much over $15, a cheap knockoff that would have cost me in the realm of $200 if I’d ordered it from Japan. Nonetheless, it works great and I love it. It’s simple to read — the first column is the hours, and the rest of the display is minutes (so in the picture it’s 5:40). Nefarious had a recent great deal as well, getting this miniature semi-automatic multi-band rubber band pistol from a gumball machine for twenty-five cents! It’s the best thing I’ve seen come out of one of those machines for a quarter.
Yesterday we climbed up on the roof of the studio buildings to read after we got back from the pool. I read my “Psychic Tourist” book, which I finished today, and Nefarious and Cassie read a “Snow White” graphic novel, taking turns reading pages to each other. I love having roof access, and it’s one of the many reasons I like living here — I also like that Nefarious has gotten to live in a variety of places that have given her a rich life experience. Thankfully moving doesn’t stress her out (I know it does for some kids), probably because she’s moved so many times in her life, and her sense of home is defined by the people in her life, rather than the specific building.
We went for a walk to get a slice of pizza for lunch, and they blew dandelions that they found along the way. I also took this picture of some local street art of a goose that someone had modded with a new head. It wasn’t an improvement… sort of in bad taste to vandalize street art, as ironic as that may seem…
Other than that, we went out for a nighttime park visit as we often do, and I experimented with the night time options on the camera — these are all four second exposures. A nearly full moon and virtually no clouds, and unlike most starless Toronto nights, tonight the sky was dotted with dozens of clearly visible stars, which really is an oddity and a treat.
7 Comments
Hmmm, Front end of a Losi truck and rear end of what looks like a Tamiya “Grass-hopper”?? (I think??) Pretty cool!!!!!
i took vocal lessons for 12 years. the best place to look for coaches is really local school systems. most music department heads are coaches or have one on staff, like their choir director or at the very least, they may have the name and number of one locally to put you in contact with.
I’m impressed Joe!
The place that I found and know about were the local church choir directors. They were often teachers and if not, knew someone who was that they could recommend.
I took singing lessons from the age of about 10. The singing teacher was found through my school. Singing was initially suggested when I moved schools to a Montessori school and most of the other kids could read music and played musical instruments already. Singing was something I could pick up whilst I leart to read music and, I think, it has made my grasp and understanding of music much better. In terms of what to expect, when I first started we sang a lot of songs that I already knew, Disney songs and the like, but then I started to ask my teacher to sing other things, other songs I knew, we quickly moved into Jazz, which was something I enjoyed much more than songs from the Lion King. From there more complicated songs were introduced, I joined the school choir, I was in a Baroque chamber group and by the time I was 17 I was singing in Jazz clubs to make pennies. The for some reason I lost my confidence, and stopped…but ignoring that, it was the best thing I ever did, and also because I learnt to read music and read what the notes should sound like when I make them I can play other instruments relatively easily.
Thanks for the heads up. I bought one of those watches :)
you should order this sweet watch.
https://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20267
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