Month: September 2007

Loan Free?

Well, now that I know what my paychecks will be (more or less) for the next couple of years, I’ve been able to do some number crunching to see if I can afford my Masters program without getting a loan or not.

I was pretty confident that I could pay the first year with what I have in savings. And now that I’ve crunched the numbers, it looks like I can pay for year two as well! Woot!

In order to do this, I need to stay in my self-imposed budget (which is very livable). And well – I’d say more, but would probably jinx myself. Let’s just say that it’s doable and leave it at that.

So, for the next two years, no more paying for City of Heroes, no more DVD impulse buying, cutting back on eating out, etc. (Now I won’t go all crazy or anything – if something Sylvish comes along, I’ll be buying it, no sweat. And I intend to budget in some upcoming DVDs like Pirates 3 and Ocean’s 13. And Saturday? Indian Fud! It’s been ages since I’ve been.)

It feels good to think I can do this without a loan!

Musical Interlude

I have had a Last.FM account since August 15, 2005. In that time, I have “scrobbled”* 9,164 songs. According to Last.FM, that’s an average of 12 tracks a day. And really, that’s not entirely honest since I don’t only use QCD to listen to music. (I have installed a plug-in with QCD which scrobbles my songs.) And I certainly don’t always listen to music on my PC. (This doesn’t record my iPods or my Roku Soundbridge players.) Also, I don’t listen to music every day. But I do listen to it in great spurts.

Now, since I’ve joined Last.FM, they’ve made several improvements, including better record keeping on albums. Plus Last.FM and I have had disagreements on titles for music groups. So when you looked at my top 5 artists overall, #2 was “Unknown.” This is mostly due to my soundtracks & musicals.

If I went to use Last.FM radio to play my favorite tunes, it would mix regular music along with Christmas music. Unlike one friend I can mention, I don’t like to mix my Christmas music listening with my regular music listening.

So today I have decided to clear out my current database from Last.FM. And when Christmas time comes around, I’ll either create a second Last.FM account (trinalinXmas or something) or just not use QCD to scrobble my music.

Before I deleted everything, I decided to save all of my current stats. (Yes, I am that sort of person.) And if you’re interested, I’ll share some of these stats with you.

Top 10 Artists (excluding “Unknown” and “Original Cast Recording.”)

  1. The Beatles

  2. The Monkees

  3. Pet Shop Boys

  4. Chumbawamba

  5. King’s College Choir

  6. Monty Python

  7. The Bonzo Dog Band

  8. George Harrison

  9. Kirsty MacColl

  10. Squirrel Nut Zippers

Top 10 Albums (which isn’t very indicative since the album feature came late.)

  1. GRIMMS – Sleepers

  2. Chumbawamba – A Singsong and a Scrap

  3. The Chieftains – The Bells of Dublin

  4. Kirsty MacColl – Galore

  5. Neil Innes – Re-cycled Vinyl Blues

  6. Kirsty MacColl – Tropical Brainstorm

  7. Mackeel – Plaid

  8. Julie Andrews – Christmas With Julie Andrews

  9. Monty Python – Monty Python Sings

  10. Julie Andrews & André Previn – A Christmas Treasure & The Rutles – The Rutles

Top 10 Tracks (I have several albums where King’s College Choir sings some of the same Christmas tunes.)

  1. King’s College Choir – O Little Town of Bethlehem

  2. King’s College Choir – O Come, All Ye Faithful

  3. The Beatles – Eleanor Rigby

  4. Chumbawamba – Just Desserts

  5. King’s College Choir – Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

  6. King’s College Choir – Away In A Manger

  7. King’s College Choir – Once in Royal David’s City

  8. Kirsty MacColl – England 2, Columbia 0

  9. Pet Shop Boys – What Keeps Mankind Alive?

  10. The Beatles – Nowhere Man

(6-10 were actually all tied for 6th place.)

*Scrobbling is what Last.FM calls “recording what music you’re playing at the time.”

And more Festivals…

Mom works this weekend, so yesterday it was just Dad and I checking out Fort Loramie’s German Heritage Festival. The festival takes place in the park in the middle of town. Which is really more of a boulevard than a park, in my opinion. So there’s not a lot of room for a big festival. No matter, this was by no means a big festival.

The festival didn’t start until noon – which was a relief to us because when we drove by at 11:30am on our way to the cottage, they really didn’t look like they were ready yet. But at noon, when we returned, we found a parking place with ease and got in the line for food. There was only one food area – indeed, there was only one giant tent housing the festival. Food at one end, stage at the other, 2 beer trucks on one side. (Miller Light and some German beer I’d never heard of before. Their motto is “Life’s too short to drink cheap beer.” Heh heh.)

Despite only being on area for food, they had quite an assortment of “traditional” German food. Dad and I got the combo plate – brat with kraut, German potato salad, cabbage roll. We also picked up an order of reuben bites – a fried cheese thing with corned beef & sauerkraut and a Thousand Island dipping sauce. And for dessert, a cream puff. (Which, alas, was filled with vanilla pudding not Bavarian cream. I like vanilla pudding & all, but I like a REAL puff with Bavarian cream.) We both had pop for beverage, not beer.

The DJ was playing polka music & the like in a rather loud volume, so dad and I didn’t chat a lot. Still, despite the bland brat and the fact that I’m not a big fan of German potato salad, I enjoyed the meal. We walked to the small second tent in the “park” which was where the local museum had a display of photos and antiques. But after that, we were pretty much done with the festival. We’re not big on the side activities, which this festival was known for. Beer tray races, barrel roll, etc.

Definitely the smallest festival I’ve ever been to. And I’m hoping that Minster’s Oktoberfest will have better brats than what this festival had. (I’ve had 2 duds in a row so far!) It usually does – I think they’ve spoiled me for good brats. 🙂

Next weekend, I don’t think there’s any festivals going, so I think I’ll head off for Indian Fud. Mmmmm, Indian Fud!

The Lake Festival

Ah, the start of the autumn season of festivals. Labor Day weekend was the Piqua Heritage Festival. This weekend was the Lake Festival at Lake Loramie. Next week, the town of Fort Loramie has a German Heritage Festival. And of course the first weekend in October will be Minster’s Oktoberfest.

The folks and I headed to the Lake Festival and Antique Power Show today. They have antique & vintage tractors and other farm implements, including a working steam-driven thresher which we saw in action. Some amazing technology, even though it’s now rather obsolete. Mom bought a couple of nice BIG pots of mums at the first vendor we stopped at. Only $5 a pot and, as I said, BIG. She got the dark red ones – I liked those best. We didn’t buy much in the little vendor booths, though I did find a neat wind ornament to replace the one I had bought years ago at the Arts & Eats festival in Plymouth, MI that I attended with elsaf and judiang. (The major difference being the ornament I bought today was $10, the one from that festival was at least $50, IIRC. Heh. Alas, it’s almost rusted away to nothing, hence the need for a replacement.)

Food was next on our agenda. No festival visit is complete without munching on the goodies. The Lake Festival doesn’t have quite as much selection as the ones in Piqua or Minster, but we all found something to eat. I had a brat (the world’s smallest one, I think – dad’s was much bigger!) with kraut, onions & mustard on it. In preparation for Oktoberfest. Mom got us all an ear of roasted corn – it was very yummy. Then I followed the meal with a funnel cake. As we were leaving the festival, I saw the Old Fashioned Ice Cream booth (powered by one of the antique power machines) and decided to get a scoop of homemade chocolate ice cream. Yummy – although the stuff I make is better. Heh heh.

After the festival, we returned to the cottage where I read some of my school work (college) and then fell asleep. Darn that Lake Effect Sleep. When I woke later, mom dragged me into a game of gin rummy. We broke for supper at a nearby Mexican restaurant we’d not tried before (dad and I agreed that it was OK, but it won’t make our top pick for Mexican joints). There’s also a new toy store near it which we checked out. It was quite a cute place – lots of neat stuff.

We finished the game when we got back (mom won) and by then it was going home time. So I packed up my college stuff and drove on home. Tomorrow, there’s a family reunion, and then I must work in earnest on my college stuff.

More on Masters

My Masters program started on August 29th, a week after school started. I have two courses this semester, Critical Thinking and Informal Science Education. Before classes began, I was looking forward to Critical Thinking more, but now that we’re underway, I think I’m going to like the Informal Science Education better.

It turns out that the Critical Thinking class is basically a Logic class for Science folk. Apart from some very simple program logic which I learned for physics instrumentation, I’ve never studied logic. So I’m reading a lot of terms that I’ve never heard of or never knew what they meant. (Enthymeme anyone? Syllogisms?) Even terms I am familiar with may have somewhat different meanings when talking about logic. So I’ve found the best way to work with that class is have a dictionary beside me while I read the presentation slides and the chapter readings. The best part of the class is the class discussion. After the first lesson made no sense to me, I read through the discussion so far and was finally able to start wrapping my brain around stuff. With the second lesson, I had my references (let’s hear it for Wikipedia!) handy and tried to do it all without help from the others. And then I read what others said and found out that I was on the right track. That sounds good to me!

The class on Informal Science Learning is about teaching & learning science in an informal setting. Like watching a science program on TV or visiting a science museum. The course is taught by a lady who works at a science museum in Buffalo, NY. Cool. And my assignments are to watch a science program or read a science blog online (anyone have any favorites?), to visit a science museum (woohoo! Boonshoft here I come!), and to read from science journals or books (something I do on a regular basis actually). And as with the other class, the course discussion board is lively and informative. I think I’m going to like this program!

As I suspected, my biggest weakness in this program is my procrastination. This week in particular I was bad. Although I read the book readings on Wednesday, I didn’t actually finish the week’s work until today. But I spent over four hours in my library with my dictionary (and sometimes Linus) by my side. And I got the week’s work done. I’m hoping to do better this coming week and work on material throughout the week.

The End of Summer

Although Summer isn’t over in the Northern Hemisphere until mid September, for all intent & purposes in the US, it ends this coming Monday, our Labor Day. For me, Summer ended two Wednesdays ago when school began. But that hasn’t stopped me from having some End of Summer Fun this weekend.

Amy (my sister) and Rachel (her partner) arrived in Ohio on Thursday morning. I didn’t get to see them until I got home from work, but when I did, I gave ’em both big hugs. I hadn’t seen ’em since January. We took a nice walk in town and just outside of town heading down to the river. And for old times’ sake, we played a game of Pooh Sticks. Amy won, or so she claims. 😉 We agreed that it’s a lot harder to play Pooh Sticks on the “new” bridge than it was on the old one. It’s so hard to see over the edge.

We popped in to Indians Pizza on the way home and Rachel decided that maybe some ice cream before pizza was in order. None of us had our money with us, so we agreed to get ice cream cones on the walk home with the pizzas when we went to pick them up. We returned home to wait for Becky & Deanna’s arrival.

The goal was to play cards & eat pizza. But after our long walk, the girls and I were hungry for pizza already. With some discussion, we came up with what to order. A large deluxe, a large sausage pizza, half with green olives, and a small BLT pizza. Yes, you read that right – Bacon Lettuce & Tomato pizza. I’d heard rave reviews from it at lunch, so I wanted to try it. Others were willing to try it as well.

When the pizzas were ready, the girls and I walked back to Indians Pizza, this time with money. Rachel also ordered a Buckeye Classic ice cream cone and I got a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. The Buckeye Classic is peanut butter ice cream with little candy buckeyes and chocolate swirls. Of course, since we had ice cream cones in hand, that left Amy to carry the pizzas…

The pizzas were a hit, even the BLT pizza, which is basically a bacon & cheese pizza that, after baking, gets some mayo squeezed onto it, then is topped with lettuce and tomato. After we had our fill, dad retired to his little nest and we ladies sat around the kitchen table for playing Shanghai Rum. Amy sat out of the playing of the game, but she kept score and stayed in the conversation. Although we ran out of time before finishing all of the rounds, we had a lovely time. Mom won with me coming second. Becky, for a change, lost.

Friday was another work day for me, but as soon as I was able to leave, I did. There was a box of food on my kitchen table and a note on my counter. I was to take the food on the table plus some bags of perishables from the fridge and head for the lake with clothes enough for 3 days. This I did and I got to the lake around 5pm.

Mom’s brother Doug and his family were supposed to be joining us for supper, and they made it eventually. Dad grilled burgers & dogs and Aunt Charlene brought “wheels” (which was one of Grandma Anderson’s big family recipes – basically wheel-shaped macaroni with a milk & butter sauce). The wheels were good, as was the rest of the food. My cousin Gregg and his wife arrived even later, but we were glad they could make it. Amy hadn’t met his wife yet and Rachel hadn’t met either.

We spent the evening chatting & laughing and eventually we all gathered around the fire for more chatting, laughing, and singing. It was a very pleasant evening.

The main reasons the girls are in the area was that their friend was getting married and having a bit reception/party for friends. So Saturday was the day Amy & Rachel headed to Cincinnati for the wedding reception. They were picked up by another pair of friends who were coming down from Toledo. (They originated, like A&R, from the Twin Cities, but also like A&R, were visiting family while in Ohio.)

Once they were on their way, the folks and I headed off to the Piqua Heritage Festival. The past few years I’ve missed out on the festival because I’ve either been up in Detroit with judiang and elsaf or hanging out with A&R at home. So it was nice to get back to the festival. Although the crafts and recreations are neat, I mostly go for the food. I had a peach smoothie, crawfish etouffe, Moose Tracks ice cream, and a lemon shake up. I also bought a loaf of sour dough bread and some kettle corn popcorn for munching on at the Lake.

After a short hop at home to pick up a few essentials, we returned to the Lake where we’ve been relaxing ever since. The girls will be returning around 3pm and we’ve agreed we’ll let them grill supper. I wonder if they’re amenable to that… 😉 Belay that – they have just arrived! Woohoot!

This has been a very pleasant End of the Summer. Let’s hope The Start of Autumn is just as pleasant!