Lydia Archives - Page 27 of 50 - Ramblin' with Roger

The Lydster, Part 142: First in Math

At Thanksgiving, when we were at my in-laws, the Daughter became obsessed with being on the computer. But it wasn’t to be playing with the latest mind-numbing video trash. It was to play First in Math.

The variety of games include Measurement World, where one picks out the comparable length or weight in either metric, US customary, or mixed; Know and Show word problems; and Skill Sets. The latter uses the 24® Game, which, briefly, is getting four numbers and using the math functions, trying to get to 24.

For instance, if the numbers were 5, 6, 7, and 8, you could do: 5+7=12, 8-6=2, 12X2=24. But the actual timed play gets increasingly difficult, as the numbers include negative integers, fractions, and decimals. It gets even trickier when one has two sets of numbers, one number is unknown in each set and needs to be solved using the same missing variable.

FIM was designed to “Harness the power of digital gaming to build math skills.” Schools all over the country participated, but, as of the end of December, there wasn’t a New York State school in the top 100 of the country, less a matter of skill than a function of different emphasis.

Within the school district, the Daughter’s class was the last in her school, and her school among the last in the city to join First in Math, beginning in mid-October. At the end of the third week in November, she had about 4500 points, but by the time the turkey had digested in our stomachs, she’d reached 7500 points. And in mid-December, she obtained the coveted 10,000 points and got to first place in the city, overtaking some child two grades behind her at a different school.

Her class went from barely in the Top 50 in the state to the mid-teens. In the city, they are a solid #2, though it would be difficult – “Don’t say impossible!”, she implores – to catch them. A lot of that, though by no means, all of that rise came from her efforts.

I’d like to say that I have no idea where she gets this competitive streak. I’d like to say that, but it would be wrong.

The Lydster, Part 141: the Presbyterian

The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA explained the denomination to the Donald.

Both the Wife and I grew up in the Methodist tradition. We didn’t become Presbyterians until the 21st century. Theologically, there’s not that much of a difference between the two Christian denominations, IMO, but some of the rituals are a bit different.

The Daughter has grown up in the Presbyterian church, so it’s more difficult for her when we go to other houses of worship, such as my parents-in-law’s Methodist service. For my spouse and myself, it doesn’t much matter, when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, if we say “sins” or “debts” (our usual form) or “trespasses” (the Methodist form). I WILL admit that growing up, all that sibilant “trespasses… trespass against us” ironically sounded a bit serpentine.

When Donald Trump was campaigning, he made some comments about Ben Carson’s Seventh Day Adventist faith. Then he noted, “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness.” The Daughter saw this on TV and grimaced. “He can’t be a Presbyterian, can he?” (The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA explained the denomination to the Donald.)

I wish The Daughter was more familiar with the late Fred Rogers, who was a counterculture Christian icon, not just a wholesome American TV star. Here’s a lovely story about the ordained Presbyterian minister.

The Lydster, Part 140: PTX

The Daughter uses The Wife’s iPad more than The Wife does. Among other things, she watches music videos. Sometimes, while riding the stationary bike, she listens to her second favorite group (after the Beatles, of course.)

That would be Pentatonix, an a cappella quintet: Scott Hoying, Mitch Grassi, Kirstie Maldonado, Kevin Olusola, and Avi Kaplan. From the website:

Since bursting onto the scene in 2011, Grammy Award-winners and platinum selling recording artists, Pentatonix, has sold more than 2 million albums in the U.S. alone and amassed over 905 million views on their YouTube channel with more than 7.8 million subscribers. Their latest holiday album – That’s Christmas To Me – sold more than 1.1 million copies in the U. S., becoming one of only four acts to release a platinum album in 2014.

The Daughter came up with her Top 10 favorite songs.

10. White Winter Hymnal. OK, I don’t “get” the song from their 2014 Christmas album, originally recorded by Fleet Foxes on their 2008 debut album.

9. I Need Your Love. I like this more than the Calvin Harris feat. Ellie Goulding original.

8. Daft Punk. I find the blue eyes…distracting, and not in a good way. This is a medley of Daft Punk songs, including Get Lucky. In February 2015, the group received their first GRAMMY® Award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental and A Cappella for the medley.

7. Radioactive, featuring Lindsey Stirling. A cover of a 2012 Imagine Dragons song.

6. Rather Be. Originally done by Clean Bandit, featuring Jess Glynne. I’ll admit that I had never heard either version before.

5. Can’t Hold Us. I wonder if the Daughter’s seen the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis video featuring Ray Dalton from 2013.

4. Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. Now we’re into very familiar source material: Tchaikovsky. Let’s watch Nina Kaptsova dance to it.

3. Love Again. Is this an original? If not, I have no idea of the source material.

2. The Evolution Of Music. This is the first recording of theirs I heard, a medley of songs MOSTLY from the 20th and 21st century. I like how it changes from black & white to color in the 1960s. Here it is again, with the “thank you” tag. Here’s the list of songs covered.

My twin nieces and The Daughter performed this at the Olin family reunion in July. Let’s watch Minnie the Moocher by Cab Calloway.

1. Wizard Of Ahhhs, starring Todrick Hall. A Wizard of OZ motif, featuring a medley of these songs. I had no idea who Hall was – here’s his Evolution of Disney.

I need to listen to Somewhere Over The Rainbow, by Judy Garland and by Israel “IZ” Kamakawiwoʻole, plus the IZ medley of Rainbow and What a Wonderful World.

Bathroom archeology

If that design were in the whole room, it would have been like showering in an aquarium.

When we first bought into our house in 2000, one of the things The Wife and I knew we needed to get fixed, sooner rather than later was the bathroom. It was so bad, I actually entered some contest called “America’s ugliest bathroom.” Alas, we did not win. But it was UGLY, SO ugly… I must have those pictures somewhere.

Unfortunately, other home improvements, including, but not limited to, a new kitchen floor, a new roof built by a Trusted and Recommended Roofing Repair Company near me, and having someone dig a big hole in our front lawn to stop sewage from coming to our basement, and replacing our deteriorating above ground pool patio with grass all took precedence. In the summer of 2014, we contracted work to begin on our bathroom starting with a glass shower enclosure.

These pictures do not do their ugliness justice. The pink toilet, pink sink, terrible wallpaper. Worse, a shower where the tile was falling down. Well, the shower was replaced, and the bathroom expanded. The new vanity was purchased in August 2014. But then, for reasons I cannot explain, the work stopped. The vanity was moved from the living room to the room adjacent to the bathroom just before Thanksgiving. In July 2015, after looking at the panel above for nearly 11 months, work commenced again.

The white, pink and light blue wallpaper was taken off, and somewhere below was this:

If that design were in the whole room, it would have been like showering in an aquarium. Then, the very next level down, we discovered this:

It made us laugh heartily.

The house is around 100 years old, so it’s quite believable that someone would have used this design.

Sorry that the pics are so dark. they were taken on the Wife’s iPad, before the dim lighting of the bathroom was enhanced.

EDIT: My friend Arthur lightened the top pic and especially the lower three. GRACIAS!

The Lydster, Part 139: Random music

She sees a title she recognizes, because Pentatonix had subsequently performed it.

The Daughter likes to perform, on her own terms.

Over the summer, she arranged an impromptu dance performance, which is not all that unusual, having taken ballet in the past. What was noteworthy was that she danced to Sail On by the Commodores [LISTEN]. She just took a random compact disc from my CD holder, a greatest hits album, and decided on that. She was unfamiliar with the song, and the group. Yet it was a nice routine.

A couple of weeks later, she decided that she and her mother ought to do a fashion show of some of the clothes they bought over a weekend in anticipation of going back to school. Again, she picks a random CD, Hand on the Torch by US3, also a group unknown to her. She sees a title she recognizes, because Pentatonix had subsequently performed it, and she uses that for the show. The song was I Got It Goin’ On [LISTEN]. It fit with the fashion model motif, and at a little more than five minutes, it was just the right length.

It’d be one thing if she’d perused a list of MP3 tracks and glommed onto these titles, but this was some sort of inspired musical alchemy where she takes a random disc, from over a thousand of them, and makes something of it.

(Image from here.)