Grandma’s still trying to get cute photos, and still can’t figure out this video mode:
Ahh, that’s better!
And by midnight the last stragglers had left, the third dishwasher load was running (though you couldn’t tell by the piles of dirty dishes still on the counter), and it’s time for us to drop into bed too.
Phew! The overseer is out of sight momentarily whipping the other slaves, so I’m taking a quick blog break behind this palm tree.
I’ve never heard anyone else refer to the week before Passover in this way, but I think the Passover preparations are intended to make us feel that we really are slaves in Egypt! Cooking and cleaning and moving furniture and building pyramids tables from sunup to sundown…
At least Moses gets a break now and then to check if Pharaoh has changed his mind: “Let my people go put their feet up for a minute!”
[This is not for my usual family audience! It’s for other cyclists who’ve had the same problem I have, so they can find this solution through a Google search and save themselves some of the money and frustration this has cost me in the past.]
I’ve been using a Cateye Strada cyclocomputer for about three years for my 30km daily year-round commute and love it. I love the buttonless experience (just press the face itself to switch modes) and the toolless installation. I bought an extra harness kit and switch the computer back and forth between my summer and winter bikes.
But the winters in Calgary are harsh, and every winter I’ve had the same problem. A little plastic clip in the harness that snaps the computer into place breaks off from the cold, and without it the computer won’t stay put.
The last two year I’ve forked over the money to buy a new harness kit, but those things cost nearly as much as a whole new computer.
This year I came up with a simple solution right in line with the toolless philosophy: an o-ring.
I realized on closer inspection that the back of the Strada has a hump that slides into the harness. An o-ring (or rubber band) can fit over that protrusion and keep it in its base.
The other end of the o-ring hooks around the headset on my road bike. If I were to do this on my mountain bike I could wrap the o-ring around the handlebar and attach it right back up to the Strada.
I think the end product looks just as good as the original, and it’s sturdier to boot.
We’re expecting a large crowd for Passover this year (not that anyone’s surprised). Somewhere between 14 and 20 guests all told, about half of them children. But where to seat them?!
We have an assortment of tables but they’re rather hard to work with, most of them round so they can’t fit next to each other, all of them different heights. So yesterday (thanks Sharon for the idea!) I cut up some nice birch plywood and made us a 4’x9′ table that fits neatly into our regular dining room table for a combined length of over 14′. That’s enough for 16 people. If we get 20 we’re going to have to be even more creative.
That was the second-best part, that we now have a nice long table. The best part was that of course I had to buy some new tools.
It’s the first day of spring, and time for spring passover cleaning!
We bribed encouraged the kids to be involved by letting them pick their own jobs (from a looooong list) and taping them onto a job board when they were done.
After supper we had sundaes, and the kids got to pick one topping (from another looooong list) for every two jobs on their job board!
The pathways are clear of ice, and we had a high of 16 today (19 tomorrow!), so I took my road bike out of hibernation. Wow, what a difference! Compared to my trusty old mountain bike (which I bought as my sole mode of transport when I first moved to Calgary 15 years ago), I felt like I was flying. It’s quieter, smoother, and faster.
Helen is going out this morning to do some shopping that can’t be put off any more. She may invite Kenan to go along to his favourite, Scholar’s Choice, even though he already spent all his savings on a new watch.
Kenan's new watch
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Yesterday we had a student-led parent-teacher conference. That means Shana’s teacher was hanging around if we needed her, but it was Shana’s job to be the teacher for 20 minutes and teach us what she’s been learning this term. We got to see her art, hear music and rhythm, learn cursive (modern cursive is different from how we learned it!), explore a giant ear, and more. Shana started out kind of shy but warmed up to the role and thoroughly enjoyed showing off her knowledge to us.
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While Shana was teaching us, Sharon showed Kenan how to play Battleship, so today we’re making paper boards and playing at home.
Kenan playing Battleship
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I’m looking forward to watching Avatar (in 3D) this afternoon! I’ve been wanting to for weeks and there’s never been a good time. There still isn’t, but today that’s not stopping me.
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We’re hopefully settling (or making progress?) on what colours to paint Shana’s room.
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Tomorrow Sharon is coming over to help us plan for Passover. We’re going to have a big crowd this year! Besides Sharon and my parents we’ve invited a family with three young girls and another family with five children from Shana’s age up to 18 or so.
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Kenan loves his Calgary Flames jersey he got for Christmas, if you haven’t already noticed.
1. We recently switched to Shaw’s cable telephone but they installed a big ugly box right in the guest room, flashing lights and all! This morning the kids & I put on our electricians’ hats and moved it to our “server room”. As they say, “you don’t own it until you void the warranty!”
2. My computer has been broken for the last week or two, but it came back from the shop this week, so I have some catching up to do with my work on Americas-Mailbox.
3. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really worthwhile running side businesses–especially ones with U.S. income. It just makes tax season that much more complicated! For the second year I’ve hired a tax accountant to do the hard word, but I still have some bits of papers to get together for him today. (It *is* worthwhile though–last year he got me $1800 USD that I could have been receiving every year if only I’d known what to do.)
4. This weekend we’re looking at paint colours and maybe a chair rail in our slow re-design of Shana’s room. New bedding has already been ordered and we want the room to be ready(ier) when it arrives in a few weeks.
5. Helen and Shana are gardening today. Yes, it feels like spring! Shana thinks she can wear capris but I suspect she’ll be back in for a change of clothes soon. We’re not planting anything yet, just spreading compost and cleaning things up a bit.
6. Last week I graduated from Balloon Twisting 101. Our floor is littered with my (and the kids’) creations. Maybe I’ll find time today to practice a few more twisted techniques. How about balloon polyhedra?
An attempt at Olympic rings
7. Mom and Dad arrive in just a couple of days, and we’ve kind of messed up their suite. We’ve got some cleaning to do!
The Twizzler 