Musings From a Madhouse

I’m just playing with a new system of publishing my blog using Mac software.  Try accessing my page at http://www.musingsfromamadhouse.com  and let me know what you think!

OK, not really.  But I took a look at Nina’s new kit, Celebrate, and I thought of the colors of my house growing up.  And I knew I had these shots tucked in among all the scans I’ve done over the past few years.     I count 9 candles, which must mean that this is my 8th birthday since we always added one to grow on.  Am I right Mom? Eventually I’ll work my way through all these old photos! It’s like having a treasure trove though.  I always see new things, and think of new questions to ask about the time when we were growing up. Man, I was a little geek though.. some things never change! 

… but this time, we’ve been vacationing a bit, not just lazy.  Well, ok.  Maybe we were just being lazy  Alex returned to summer camp this year, and Kyra attended for the first time.  Since I would have had to make 3 round-trips of 20+ hours, I decided to just rent a cabin and stay about 2 hours from the camp.  The first week, Nicu and I hung out, the second week, Kyra returned from camp and joined us, and then Dan arrived for his conference the last week.  Finally we picked up Alex and the 5 of us were all together.  But it got better.  Somehow, we managed to arrange a last minute meeting with some old friends from our last base, and we found a place to all stay together for that last week.  There were 5 adults and 7 children in that apartment!  Of course it was chaotic, but we had a blast reconnecting and getting to know the kids as they’ve grown. Pictures to follow, hopefully tonight after I get the kiddos tucked in. 

Here are two pages I did tonight with some photos I had of Alex when she was a baby.  It was so different back then, with a little film camera.  We just didn’t take as many photos, and I treasure what we have, even if they’re not perfect.  By the time Nicu came around, we were taking hundreds of photos! 

There’s not even an apology to be made here — I just plain couldn’t get myself back here after all the computer troubles that I had in the spring.  I will say that I was pretty darned proud of myself.  My hard drive failed in my main computer on the exact day that I had decided to change my method of backup.  To change the method, I had to clean off space on an external drive.  So, naturally, knowing that I had devoted a day or so to computer “stuff”, and I would be putting a new backup in place by day’s end, I deleted my old backup and installed my new backup software. And, of course, our power went off.    Well, the computer refused to come back on, which left me completely without a backup of anything.  No photos in the digital age.  None of my scrapbooked layouts.  None of my scrapbooking tools.  No resumes.  No contacts.  You get the idea.  So I called Dell, hoping and hoping that it was (as it was last time) something unrelated to the hard drive that was causing my problems.  No dice.  It was indeed a complete failure of something.  And the only way to recover any of my data was to send my hard drive away for a very expensive and non-guaranteed professional recovery service.  Sigh.

 At that point, I had nothing to lose, so I started poking around on the internet using my very old, very slow, very out of date computer, and found some software that would let me boot from a linux disk.  Ah, now here was an idea.  If I could boot the computer, I might just be able to save some files.  Mind you, I had NO idea what I was doing.  But I figured it was worth the try.  I went out and purchased a brand new external drive since I was afraid to overwrite the one I had deleted, just in case those files were recoverable (sense the irony here, as I had deleted the backup from that very external to avoid having to buy a new external?!).  I then popped in this new disk (which in itself was a miracle as I had one old desktop that had a broken CD drive but that miraculously worked for just the amount of time I needed to burn this CD) and … viola!  My files!!  I could see them, i could copy them, I was dancing around the room!  I then proceeded to copy them all to my brand new external drive, and then proceeded to reformat my internal drives per Dell’s instructions to see whether they could be “fixed”.  I didn’t care much though, as I knew my computer was under warranty and that Dell would send me new disk drives if not, which they did (with my mom’s expert assistance in all things related to computer shipping!).  Suspiciously, I eyed my new external though.  Should I trust that to be my *only* copy of my files? Or should I go ahead and make a copy on the other external, thus ensuring the deleted files would be unrecoverable from that drive if something was wrong with the recovered files.  Hmm…. ok, well, ahead with the copying *just in case*.  After all, that my hard drive should fail at that exact second that I had deleted my backup –after 2 1/2 years of faithfulness — was unlikely, and I wasn’t taking any chances.  And I had reformatted my internal drive, so if that one copy failed, the files were truly gone.  And .. just after the copy… it happened!  The new external FAILED!  Thank heavens I got the copy made! 

 Anyway, all this to say that I’ve been working ever since to find all the software and tools that I had on this computer, and to get everything back to working order.  In the meantime, I also purchased a macbook pro and have been working on learning the language of the mac, as well as networking all the equipment we have in the house (and anyone with any knowledge… my printer stopped printing from my pc and I’m stumped!  It printed fine one day, and the next, it stopped completely —- even reinstalling it doesn’t work… advice?!)  So all my time has been spent on computer issue after computer issue (I won’t tell you about BOTH our iPod touches needing servicing, or the Dell laptop melting, or the IMB/Lenovo laptop that decided that it just wouldn’t let us in any more … SIGH!) 

 I’ve also discovered a lot of folks on myspace and facebook, and have been spending more time over there exploring as well, so my computer time that’s not spent on issues relating to hardware/software is frittered away somehow!

I’m going to update the blog about our spring/summer bit by bit here, but will be away for a while in the meantime.  The girls are going to summer camp and I’ll be staying with Nicu nearby for the time they’re there.  Looking forward to time in the mountains, definitely!

 So I’ll leave you with a photo snapped a few years back of Nicu and Kyra.  Wow, they look TINY!  This was taken the weekend Aunt Barbara graduated from basic training in San Antonio, Texas.

Be back tomorrow I hope!

Maybe you were wondering what this photo was all about, sitting here lonely and randomly.  I just figured out how to use the technology I had in our house to convert old videotape to digital, and then capture a still from that video.  You see, this moment, the moment when Dan met Alex for the very first time ever, was only captured on video, and only for the briefest of minutes.  And being the photo-obsessed person that I am, I needed it in a still photo.  I won’t tell you how long, or how many work-arounds I had to use to get this one poor quality photo, but I will tell you how thrilled I am to have it.  I posted it here to ask some folks with more knowledge than I have how to improve on the quality.  I’ll let you know if they figure it out :-)  (the videotape has deteriorated a lot so most of the problem lies with it, not with the conversion process).  Now on to other things!!

I promised to get Nicu and Kyra each a turn on here with their own posts so here I go

 Nicu has become quite the little singer.  He sings non-stop.  He sings while he plays.  He sings while he eats.  He sings while he …. uhh… goes potty.  And his favorite singer?  Elvis of course! 

So at the recent program at his asilo (preschool), he took his role VERY seriously.  If you watched the video that I posted last week below, you’ll see that he sings loudly and with a big wide mouth, just as he was taught.  So when you see this face below, this is concentration at its finest…..

and here he is, singing his little heart out….

so you get an idea of what mass confusion there was, here’s the group  of kids.  Every one of them had one or two parents there plus grandparents galore.  We could barely see from the back of the room, so the picture we did get weren’t that great.  we could hear them though!  That big ole’ arrow points to Nicu.

Afterwards, the school did a balloon launch with messages from the kids.  I don’t think Nicu ever got an answer to his but there’s still a chance! (and, please, no one share with me anything environmental about this … I know, I know!)

Nicu was THRILLED that Grandma and Pap got to be there for his program and balloon launch (sorry, Mom, but you guys will have to make a few appearances on here!)

Up, up and AWAY!

Now off to bed with me

Quick one for me tonight.  I decided finally to get off my rear and use the gym freely available on base to us.  It’s about time.  But I’ll admit that I’m a wimp at this point, so it will take me some time to work up to being actually excited and ready to really work out.  In any case, I’m a bit tired tonight

 One of the neat things about getting ourselves involved in the community is that we’ve been discovering all these places tucked away that we might not have explored otherwise.  One of those places is Sesta al Reghena, a medieval time about an hour from here.  (by the way, if you follow that link, there is a big typo in it.  The Langobords, better known to most of us as Lombards, weren’t around anymore in the 18th century.  I’m guessing they mean the 8th century, as it was in the 700s that they established the Kingdom of Italy.  Here are some quick pics that Dan took during the choir concert there in December.

There was a Christmas market the day they were there, so you’ll see some booths set up around this picture.

And from inside the monastary, some beautiful fresco work.

On a cultural note (forgive me if I’ve written about this before!), the central decoration for Christmas (Natale) is not the tree, rather the nativity set.  This one was on display in Sesta al Reghena that day, among many others for sale.

And lastly, a picture of Alex taken that night.

Now she’s gotten all the spotlights lately so I’ll have to get some pictures of Kyra and Nicu in the next few days!

After the concert at the church, we followed everyone down this side street into a tiny little restaurant by the name of Terme di Diana.  Those are authentic gas lights, perfect for this little gem!

Since we were a group of 40+, I wondered how we’d all fit.  Til we came to this crack in the wall. 

Curiously, I climbed through to find a huge room for the group inside.  Turns out that the restaurant discovered these ancient Roman baths due to a draft that was coming in through the original walls; when they excavated, they found these rooms and incorporated them into the restaurant.  There are more rooms beyond, but those rooms are preserved by the government (nor did we get to see them).

Here’s the group enjoying their dinner in the Sala di Diana.  I’m not sure if you can see it, but they put coins on the ceiling to replicate the coins found during excavation.  I think I saw a nickel up there :-) 

And this room was just next door. 

Here’s the crowd of young’uns from the trip.  I have to tell a funny story though.  Alex speaks well Italian well enough that she’s not often immediately identified as American (though folks often think she’s from a different part of Italy).  I, on the other hand, speak a very poor Italian. I do try, but I just don’t get enough of an opportunity to speak it — I’m not kidding when I say I envy the kids for their chance to be in Italian schools!  Anyway, there was a bit of confusion about who I was and why I was accompanying Alex. Some thought I was a visiting relative.  Others thought I was her sister (mwah!  Love ya for that one!)  It took until the last day for most people to approach me to find out what our story was. 

Oh, and the food was good too

We had a few hours on Sunday, we we returned to St. Peter’s to visit the tomb of Pope John Paul.  Upon arriving, the pope was giving a speech out of his study window, WAY up at the top of this picture, where the banner is hanging out of the window.

The energy of the crowd as the Pope was speaking was incredible.  You can’t imagine it until you experience it.

Pictures weren’t allowed or appropriate in the tomb area, where all the popes are interred.  It’s a moving place to be, however.

Thereafter, we raced back to the bus, only to find that the group of young’uns (with a few chaperones) had misplaced themselves.  Now, Alex had asked to go with this group, and since she’d been translating for me all weekend, I figured she could use a break.  The group had several moms along, so I let her go.  And then the group came up missing.  You know that a Mom has to worry when things like this happen!  One of the kids who invited her to go with the group arrived a bit before the rest of them, and the poor boy was a bit intimidated by me since I made him promise not to lose her before I let her go.  Thankfully, they showed up, albeit 90 minutes late and soaking wet from the downpour.  What an adventure!

The chorus was scheduled to have another concert in a church in Tivoli in the evening, so we all rushed to the bus and made the 20 mile drive out.  Tivoli is a beautiful medieval town that contains Villa d’Este, built by a cardinal who was exiled from Rome (Ippolito d’Este).  The villa sits on the top of a hill overlooking the valley, and the views are just amazing.

The villa is well known for it’s fountains, all created in the 1550s from natural gravity (though two have the highest ones have been modernized recently). 

Watching the sunset over the gardens was one of those experiences in life that make you sigh and realize that you have been blessed.  Pictures don’t do the sunset justice, and we stood there and watched it for about 30 minutes.

Behind us was another fountain, pretty like all the rest, but not remarkable… that is, until the doors slid open and it began to play for us!  The entire fountain contained an organ powered by water power, and we just happened upon one of the times that it played.

Here’s how it looked when we approached:

And here you can see the organ revealed.

We then realized that the Villa was about to close, so we headed out to enjoy the twilight in Tivoli before the concert began. Such a beautiful, magical night.  The town was filled with Christmas decorations and shoppers, and the air was just brisk enough to make it feel like it was really the holiday season.

And then we returned to the church, which was just next door to the Villa, for the concert.  The chandeliers were amazing inside!  Of course, I wasn’t quite prepared for the mass that preceded the concert, as it included what appeared to be a youth group, singing gospel type music with guitar and kerchiefs.  I hadn’t quite seen such a contemporary mass (then again, I don’t often attend Catholic mass so what do I know?!)

And during the concert — you’ll note the harp, one of Alex’s dream instruments since forever.

Pumpkin time here.. promised myself I wouldn’t stay up late, so it’s off to bed with me with hopefully more tomorrow!