The Sound of My Voice

Like most people I find the sound of my recorded voice kind of unnerving. It never sounds like I think it does.

It turns out there is a very good reason for this. When we speak we hear our own voice with our skull acting as a resonance chamber. When we hear our own recorded voice we lack that extra resonance, and our voices sound higher, tinnier.

I've experienced this when listening to my voice on voicemail, or recordings made by friends. But I've never heard my own voice on the radio.

Until now.

On Thursday of this week I called the radio program Talk of the Nation, on NPR. I'm not really much of a talk radio listener, and I've never called a radio show before. but I was fired up by the topic: Modern Girls and the Modesty Movement. I was a little nervous at first but I got more comfortable quickly and just tried not to think about the fact that I was on a national radio show.

If you would like to hear what I had to say, click here. My call to the show starts about 17' 20".

What do you think: did I state my point of view clearly and coherently, or did I make an ass of myself?

I am IMDB

I scare myself (and others) sometimes.

We were watching/fast forwarding through "Ebert & Roeper" tonight and at the end of the show Roeper presented a montage of five of this favorite teen movies. One of the movies was "My Bodyguard" and he probably showed 10 seconds total of several different shots from the movie. One background character caught my eye and when we had finished the program I went back to check. I told the Italian "that's Jane" (from Firefly).

I double checked on IMDB and sure enough, I was right.

I have a really crappy memory for lots of things (especially dates and numbers - I don't do very well in the study of history) but I have a freakishly good memory for faces.

Out and About

In a last burst of summer-time fun, today we went to the zoo.

Punkin starts school on Thursday and I don't work on Mondays, so the whole family piled into the car and we drove north to the San Francisco Zoo. I have taken the kids there before but not since last year, and the Hubby (whom I am going to refer to from now on as "the Italian" - it's much more descriptive!) had not been and it seemed like a fun thing to do. Plus lots of other places that we might have gone are closed on Mondays.

We had a great time. Buddy is difficult in these kinds of situations - he doesn't want to ride in the stroller but he also doesn't want to hold my hand. Plus he runs off. But he enjoyed the animals, and Punkin really enjoyed seeing lots of different creatures.

The San Francisco Zoo is a funny place; some of the habitats have been recently re-designed and are quite modern and much more "natural" than other sections, which are quite old and much less appealing. It was great to get to see a giraffe up close while it was eating (who knew their tongues were that long?) and the new grizzly bear exhibit was fun.

But, as always, I found the primate exhibits quite depressing. The gorillas are in one of the new parts of the zoo, with a big enclosure with lots of presumably engaging environments. But they just looked bored and miserable. The male looked at us for a while and I just found his gaze to be so sad. I think the Italian said it best, "unless the zoo is going to put a bunch of humans in a cage for everyone to look at, it isn't right to do it to the gorillas". Fortunately the chimpanzees weren't visible in their enclosure, for I find them almost as sad as the gorillas.

After the zoo we met up with some dear friends and went to the beach. Going to the beach in Northern California is not what you might think - long sleeves to ward agains the wind and brief forays into the water going only ankle deep - the water is cold! The kids had a great time, it was nice to have a brief visit with friends, and it was a fun way to cap off the day.

In knitting news, I have finished the knitting on the baby blanket for my impending neice and now just need to sew in the few ends and block it. I have started a pair of socks for the Italian, and have made no recent progress on anything else! Pics of the blanket will follow once it is done.

Socks for Me!

Look what arrived in the mail for me yesterday!


I had received a comment from my sockpal letting me know that my socks were on their way from Canada, so I wasn't worried that they had not yet arrived, but I was hoping they would arrive soon...


This definitely looks promising...

Inside were lots of goodies...


One can always use more needles (especially since I tend to break these...)


In keeping with the foot theme - I'm dying to try this out.


Mmmm, chocolate - maple flavored!


And what a great card.


And finally, my socks!

Oh wait, that shot didn't work. Can you tell that I had both kids helping me open the box and photograph the contents?

Try again

Aren't they great? I love the color, they are soft and comfy, and the fit really well! The heel is one I've never made and I'm curious to know more about them. They were made by the lovely Tammy, go say hi!

Thanks for the socks and everything else Tammy, I love it all!

She likes them!

My sockpal got her package and she loves her socks! Boy, I breathed a little sigh of relief when she said they fit well - it's not easy making something form fitting for someone who isn't available to try them on!

It was so fun to read her blog entry about getting her package. My sockpal last year didn't have a blog so this is a new experience for me. It was kind of strange to see the things that I made and packed up in someone else's house, but strange in a fun way.

Here are the completed socks on happy feet, although Judy said she had to take them off soon afterward because they were too warm.


I also got an anonymous comment the other day from my other sockpal that my socks were on their way from Canada - I'm so excited. I'm inspired by Judy's care in photographing her package - I'm going to try to remember to do the same (although I will likely have a couple of helpers with the opening, which always makes things more complicated!)

The blanket for my upcoming neice is about halfway finished, but I need to work out one small detail before I can continue. I'm almost finished with clue 1 for the Mystery Stole, and I started a new pair of socks (for the Hubby this time). No photos, since my only time to do so would be at night and flash photos generally stink (at least when I take them!)

Secrets and Socks

My father had interesting ways of encouring my brother and me to interact with the world around us. One way was the oft repeated refrain "learn something new every day". When we got older this took on a more structured setting: at dinner time we would have to list three things we had learned that day (and we couldn't get away with saying "today I learned that I don't like my math teacher". Believe me, I tried it.)

These days, I find myself saying the same thing to my kids (although hopefully not as often as my dad did!) I find that the longer I am away from school (and I finished my master's degree in December of 2002 so it hasn't been that long) the more I miss the structured opportunity to learn new things. It doesn't help that I work with teenagers who, of course, are not particularly interested in the joy of learning.

This is a long-winded way of saying that I have learned something about myself recently (nothing earth-shattering, but interesting to me nonetheless). I have discovered that I am very finicky/fickle about Knit-A-Longs. I have signed up for a few of them in the last few years and have mixed success with staying involved.

If the KAL has too many people signed up or requires too many hoops to jump through I just don't have time to wade through it all (the MS3 is a good example - way too many people posting very chatty emails, I'm over 5,000 emails behind and have no intention of catching up). But I'm still working on the project - I like the idea of the surprise.

If the KAL is too small then there's not enough there to keep me all that interested (plus I think I feel a little bit shy sometimes).

This year's Sockapalooza is a good example of too big/too many hoops. Other than making my socks and interacting a little bit with both of my sock pals I haven't paid any attention to the rest of the knitalong, and I'm discovering that's fine with me. I enjoy the 'making something for someone else' part, and I enjoy the 'getting a package from a stranger' part too.

All this leads me up to the fact that I have finished my Sockapalooza socks and have put together a modest package of the socks and a few little gifties for my sockpal. Looky-looky:


Finished Monkey socks in Cherry Tree Hill Supersock on size 1 bamboo needles.


Close up of the pattern - I love the way the colors worked out with this texture.
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Socks and goodies that went along with. (In the interest of full disclosure I have to say that only two of the Soak packets went with the package; in the process of wrapping everything I set one of the packets down in a puddle of water on the table and I didn't relish the idea of the cardboard packet of soap leaking all over everything, so I left that one out). The highlighter tape is for marking rows on a chart, and the chocolate is Scharffen-Berger which is tasty and local to the Bay Area (plus, who doesn't like chocolate?)

Like I said it's modest but hopefully my sockpal will enjoy. The Hubby is going to take it to the post office today for me and it should get to my pal early next week. And then I can start checking the mail for the socks that someone is making for me!