Construction Zombies

Drill, Baby, drill!!

ROUGH ONE: Last night was one of those nights that really never ended. I went to bed and before I even feel asleep, at about 11 p.m., Annabelle came upstairs to report that she was feeling craptacular. I was feeling cruddy myself, and figured the bed wasn't big enough for the both of us, so I left her in my spot and went downstairs to bunk with CJ and Kirby. (And let me tell you, Kirby was THRILLED by this development and had a puppy party for the next hour or so, mostly on my chest.)

At about 3:30 I hear noise from upstairs and then in the blink of an eye Christian appears with Annabelle to report she's Super Duper sick and that she wanted so sleep with me. So then it's sick me, sick Annabelle and party rockin' Kirby all in one twin bed. That obviously spells "SLEEP," right? Yeah, notsomuch. ...

Annabelle's breathing was so labored, I listened to her every breath for a 'good' hour before I decided that we didn't need to go to the hospital, that we'd probably make it until morning (just a couple hours away at this point).

And then, at 6:30 a.m., me having been asleep for a whopping 90 minutes, what's the first thing I hear? Why, it's this ...

"Mom. Are you EVER going to get up?" chastized Annabelle (apparently breathing just fine now, thankyouverymuch). "I haven't even had my yogurt yet!" she pointed out, well, pointedly.

Glad to hear she was feeling a bit better. ...

And so, I dragged my tired, sick a$$ out of bed and got her computer fired up, cartoons on, and yogurt in hand. And so began my day.

So what does a sick family do to recover? Well, CONSTRUCTION of course!!! Cause that's how we roll here at MPA. Today, we got THREE, count 'em, THREE sill plates installed. That must be some sort of record for a framing crew of four sick, underslept workers, two of whom are under the age of 10.

In the interest of education, CJ and Annabelle learned what a sill plate is, where it goes, and about the bolts, washers and nuts used to affix them. They each got to do some drilling.

Annabelle took a keen interest in installing the washers and bolts.

She said it's because someday she wants to be able to say she helped build her own bedroom. :)

TANKED: With warmer weather upon us, CJ (a/k/a Mr. Timeline) has asked multiple times in the past couple of days about the genesis of the words "tank top." I told him that my guess was that it related to the olden times tank suits that both men and women wore. Of course my "mom guesses" weren't enough for his inquiring mind, so today we had to do some research.

Per Wikipedia, I was kinda right. It says that "tank top" is "derived from its resemblance to a tank suit, a style of one-piece women's swimsuit with shoulder straps," and that the name "derives from the 1920s term swimming tank, which is an obsolete term for what is now called a swimming pool."

Interesting! Before today, I'd never heard the term "swimming tank."

REWIND THE MOVIE: This morning CJ was asking about the history of motion pictures. Christian and I started uttering things about Edison, but we couldn't give Mr. Timeline enough specific dates and details, so we had to do some research. We wound up on a Web site called "Have Fun with History" and its "movies" section. There, we found info and a video about a  film was a test for Thomas Edison's "Kinetophone" project. It was reportedly the first attempt in history to record sound and moving image in synchronization.

The site said the video we were going to watch was an experiment by William Dickson to put sound and film together in either 1894 or 1895. As it turned out, Edison and Dickson didn't succeed in the attempt. However, the film was preserved and catalogued, and in 1964, a broken wax cylinder labeled "Violin by WKL Dickson with Kineto" was noted in the inventory at the Edison National Historic Site. But it wasn't until 1998 when  Patrick Loughney, curator of Film and Television at the Library of Congress, retrieved the cylinder and had it repaired and re-recorded. Meanwhile, the 17 seconds of corresponding file mere sent to an Oscar winning editor. Working together, expers were able to syncrohize the audio and video - more than 105 years after it was recorded.

You can see and hear the result here: http://havefunwithhistory.com/movies/dickson.html . The kids requested we watch it at least six times over.

MAGICALLY MAGNETIC: This morning, the kids re-discovered a vintage board game I keep on a shelf in my bedroom, just cause I like the looks of it.

I liked it for its retro-robot styling. I can honestly say that before today I never played with it. Turns out the darn thing is pretty cool and works like a charm. On one half of the board you put the robot in and have it point to a question.

Then you pick it up, move it to the other side and he spins around a bit and eventually settles down and winds up pointing at the correct answer to the question.

Pretty progressive for 1953, when the game was made!