Ponder Post: The Phantom Tollbooth

Yesterday I finished the book The Phantom Tollbooth, a classic for children that I somehow had never read while I was growing up. Wikipedia has a really great write-up about it. The main character Milo departs through a portal (hence the phantom tollbooth title) on an adventure to visit and unify two cities, Dictionopolis and Digitopolis, in the Kingdom of Wisdom.

Every month Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, recommends three books to read,
one of which is children's literature. Her recommendation is what prompted me to read this.

Though a children's book, as an adult you can appreciate more all the amusing puns and literal interpretations of idioms. Here is an excerpt...

"Pardon me," said Milo to the first man who happened by; "can you tell me where I am?"
"To be sure," said Canby; "you're on the Island of Conclusions. Make yourself at home. You're apt to be here for some time."
"But how did we get here?" asked Milo, who was still a bit puzzled by being there at all.
"You jumped, of course," explained Canby. "That's the way most everyone gets here. It's really quite simple: every time you decide something without having a good reason, you jump to Conclusions whether you like it or not. It's such an easy trip to make that I've been here hundreds of times."

There is cute part where Milo talks to 0.58 of a boy, the youngest member of an average family of 2.58 children. Milo also tries to have a conversation with a bird who takes everything Milo says the wrong way. That is because the bird is from a far off land call Context and that is how he behaves when he is out of it. I have not given away even a small percentage of the little nuggets of humor and cleverness in this book. It is a fun read and I raced through it quickly; but it is the kind of book I will return to later to savor the nuances I missed the first time around.

After I finished the last page, closed the book, and started this post, the adult in me kicked in and I began thinking about this book on a deeper level. It struck me that although written in 1961, the book categorizes these cities the same way our world today in general is still organized.  SATs are divided into verbal and math sections. College degrees are awarded as B.A. and B.S.  Computer applications to manage and manipulate word and numbers are Word and Excel.

So what is there beyond words and number? Colors and sounds of course! We can give them names and we can characterize them mathematically – red  has a wavelength of 620-740 nm and middle C has a frequency of 261.6 Hz – but they are their own entities and you do not need the names and values to enjoy them. Colors and sounds are not forgotten in The Phantom Tollbooth. Milo conducts a symphony to paint the colors of each day and he travels through the Valley of Sound, meeting the characters Dr. Discord and Dynne. It did not escape my notice that today's technology needed to develop image processing applications and music software to digitally capture these aspects of our world.

This is the map lining the front and back book covers of The Phantom Tollbooth.

There are a few life style philosophies in the book as well.  Here is an excerpt on cities that struck a chord with me, entering as I am into the slower paced arena of retirement. It raised for me the question of being in the moment and of travel.

"Many years ago, on this very spot, there was a beautiful city of fine houses and inviting spaces, and no one who lived here was ever in a hurry. The streets were full of wonderful things to see and the people would often stop to look at them."
"Didn't they have any place to go?" asked Milo.
"To be sure," continued Alec; "but, as you know, the most important reason for going from one place to another is to see what's in between, and they took great pleasure in doing just that. Then one day someone discovered that if you walked as fast as possible and looked at nothing but your shoes you would arrive at your destination much more quickly. Soon everyone was doing it. They all rushed down the avenues and hurried along the boulevards seeing nothing of the wonders and beauties of the city as they went."
Milo remembered the many times he'd done the very same thing; and, as hard as he tried, there were even things on his own street that he couldn't remember.

The Phantom Tollbooth portrayed a fairly complete tongue in cheek model of the aspects of our world. It contained moral values and life guidance without being preachy. This book was contracted as a child's book. It seems to have far surpassed that simplistic role and did it over half a century ago. I liked it!

Ponder Post: Marry Not an Engineer

This post is just for giggles. Frank walks one morning a week with his friend Alan. This particular day he left before I was up and so he left me a note. It was hastily written on a napkin and left on the stairs for me to see first thing. Here it is.

Communication can take many forms.

I looked at it and thought, "What the heck does he mean by iron dog?"

Well he was being clever in having the "D" do double duty, telling me that our Golden Retriever Daphne had been fed and that I did not need to do it. The engineer in me initially read "Fe" as the elemental abbreviation for "Iron". It dawned in on me soon after but not immediately. Funny. I did not interpret the Al for Alan as "Al" for "Aluminum".

For those of you who are vaguely trying to recall a poem by the post title, Marry Not an Engineer, well, here it is. It was obviously written when engineers were males only.

This poem was distributed on a little yellow card by Schweber Electronics in the 1960's.
(At least that is what my trusty Google research told me.)

Does this bring back any memories for you pre-calculator techies out there?

Danville Doggie Night

Last Thursday, Frank and I picked up Alex and drove to a town about 20 miles northwest of us, for Danville Doggie Night.

On this map A is our home in Livermore, B is Alex's home in San Ramon, and C is Molly' s Pup-purr-ee.

We thought Alex would have fun strolling down the streets among the dogs and their owners who'd come out to enjoy the beautiful evening weather. At the event, pet shop owners and dog advocacy organizations gave out dog treats, coupons, and canine related samples. Each participating vendor displayed these red and paw-printed balloons.

Remind anyone of 101 Dalmations?

The area was plentiful with pups. This particular congregation was meandering about outside Molly's Pup-purr-ee.

I counted ten dogs in this photo. Do I hear eleven?

The doggies were well behaved and there were no dog fights. Alex made friends with quite a few who were very patient and loving as Alex petted, hugged, and kissed them. Occasionally the relationship only lasted until another canine friend came along.

"Hey this guy in the green cap is OK. He can really scratch that itch behind my ears."

"That guy with the green cap was nice, but this little lady...?  Oo La La!"

But Alex could be fickle too and smooched a lot of pooches.

This little pup  gave Alex a little peck on the lips.

"How are you today, Sir?"    "Very well, I thank you."

We ate dinner at a street-side table where we could watch the dogs and their owners parade by.

Alex was quite taken with his map. We hit every hot spot on it!

Here were some typical passersby.

"Is that text message for me?"

I call this Study in Black and White.

We all had a fun-filled but low-key evening out. Lady and the Tramp would be proud of us!

Ponder Post: Money, Money, Money

When the kids were little we went to a seal and sea otter show at Sea World. An amusing part was this cute little otter who repeatedly darted across the stage on his hind legs, stealing small items with a voice over proclaiming in a wee voice Money, Money, Money – I'll be Rich, Rich, Rich! That is the way I felt tonight.

This adorable sea otter proclaims that he will be rich, rich, rich!

First let me set the stage. Frank has been working very hard stripping wallpaper in the bedroom... bit... by bit... by little bit... by itty-bitty bit.

I asked Frank to smile for the camera. I think this is as big a grin as removing wallpaper merits.

Part of the bedroom redecorating also involves, what else, clutter reduction. There has been a fish bowl on the window ledge where Frank would dump his spare change periodically.

This fish bowl, complete with cloudy lined lime deposits from its fish home days
 had been repurposed to catch Frank's pocket change.

As a break from peeling paper, Frank suggested we go off this evening on an adventure to find a location where we can cash in the coins without paying a fee of 10% or so to do it. On the drive over I asked him how much money he though was in the fish bowl. He guessed $122. I had no idea but based on Frank's guess, which I thought was high, I guessed $85.  Our local grocery store had a Coinstar machine up front beyond the cash registers. As it turns out if you are willing to accept a gift card instead of cash, there is no fee and you get 100% of the worth of your coins.

Here is typical Coinstar machine. Note tray at left to feed in coins, horseshoe shaped output at center for receipt and trough below for rejected coins and other miscellaneous stuff.

I shop online at Amazon a lot and so we opted for an Amazon gift card. We dumped the coins into a tray at the left, used its red handle to tilt the tray, and fed the coins into a slot midline on the machine. The screen gave us progress messages, saying to wait while it caught up and displaying a running count of the number of dollars, half dollars, quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. We did get a warning message that some coins had been rejected and we should check for them in the trough below. We did. We found a few coins, and fed them back through the machine again, this time successfully. There were two items we did not feed through again – a washer and a sprinkler head part.

Not legal tender.

We collected our receipt for an Amazon gift card from the central horseshoe shaped output port. Both Frank and I had guessed low. There had been $143.27 in that fishbowl!

All that metal just for this slip of paper.
Pretty pricey piece of paper.

Before we could lose this small piece of paper we went directly home. I logged into my Amazon account, entered the gift card code and voila- there was a credit for $143.27 available for use and with no expiration date.

This is my proof from Amazon that the money really did go somewhere.

Isn't modern technology wonderful? Isn't the spirit of recycling great? In less than 15 minutes we converted half a scratched-up glass fishbowl's worth of heavy, dirty, metal coins into one slip of paper and two pieces of hardware. That slip of paper, with a few keystrokes and the help of a few zippy electrons became $143.27.

I can now spend that $143.27 on Amazon to replenish the clutter we just removed! 

Visiting Vivian

Frank and I just got back earlier this week from an extended weekend, six days Thursday through Tuesday, in Southern California. We were there to meet and visit our new granddaughter and to celebrate Dan's birthday. Vivian Ruth Chambers had been born on Sunday April 6, at 10:50 pm, weighing 8 lbs 1 oz and measuring 19.5 inches long. It just warms my heart to see our son Dan and his wife Carrie doting on her and loving her to pieces.

This photo showing my son gazing at his newborn daughter instantly tugged at my heartstrings. 

Carrie had a relatively easy pregnancy except that Vivian was nine days overdue. However, giving birth was a bit more challenging. After an induced labor and hours of ineffective contractions, Vivian gave no indication of intending to leave the comfort of her mom's tummy. Vivian was brought into this world via C-section. Carrie is recovering well. It was fortunate that her mom had planned to fly out from Ohio shortly after the birth. She  stayed with them for about ten days to help out. On Easter Sunday, at two weeks old, Vivian went to church all decked out in her finery.

Dan, Carrie, and Vivian on Easter Sunday April 20, 2014.

We arrived when Vivian was only 18 days old, and we were excited and thrilled to hold and cuddle her. I had brought with me two blankets knit by my mom and Dan's christening gown sewn by his godmother. They are described in my other blog DianeLoves2Quilt in the post for April 30th, 2014. We also brought a few birthday presents for Dan.

Frank and I are the proud grandparents, each of us holding Vivian for the first time.

Dan's birthday was April 25th, the day after our arrival. We celebrated with a HUGE Costco-sized chocolate cake and a few gifts.

Those are large sheets of chocolate flakes around the side edges of Dan's three layered cake.
 The cake had to be easily over 6 inches tall.

One of his gifts from us was a custom mug sporting his favorite picture of Vivian that was taken at the hospital when she was just two days old. She is sticking out her tongue. The message on the mug states how proud she is that HER dad is Dan Chambers. Dan echoes the sentiment.

Dan liked his birthday present of the mug with Vivian's photo on it.

While Dan and Carrie were at the hospital giving birth, a water pipe had burst in their slab foundation. Yes, timing is everything. Pipes had to be stubbed off and re-routed, wallboard removed, and industrial fans employed to dry out the wet walls. Given their family situation, Dan and Carrie were placed on the top of the priority list for fixing the leak that affected eight units of their condominium complex. Dan was on the phone quite a bit with contractors since he was unable to be there. Spending his time at the hospital with Carrie and Vivian he was judiciously selective in his updates to Carrie. He told the plumbers that the key to the place was under the doormat. They should be aware that inside there was a 50 lb pit bull... but not to worry. He was friendly. All was fixed within a couple days but drying was taking longer. Vivian and Carrie's first days home were punctuated by the noise and humidity of those big blowers. Frank helped Dan with the remaining cosmetic tasks. They replaced baseboard and repainted walls in the mudroom, under the counter, and behind the refrigerator so all was restored by the time we left.

The wall under the counter is primed and ready to be painted.
The baseboards were salvageable and could be touched up and reattached.

Even though Frank and I were away at night, sleeping undisturbed at a nearby hotel, we still were able to help a fair amount with holding, feeding, burping, rocking, and walking Vivian.  Frank made the comment, "Isn't it amazing how one person can exhaust four people?" I am sure Snoopy was also happy at the presence of four more hands to pet him. Things are quite different with a baby in the house. He has accepted his role as her guardian very well. It is fortunate that the contractors were gone before Vivian arrived.

Contrast the energy level in this photo with that of our bright shiny faces on the first day of our arrival.

With a new baby and all the accompanying baby paraphernalia, Dan and Carrie have been looking to move to a larger home. We visited the models for a development they are considering. They are pre-qualified and on a wait list for new releases. If indeed they go with this builder, it will be fall at the earliest that their name comes up for consideration as buyers. It seems as if Southern California cannot produce new homes fast enough for those who want to buy them or the permitting process is interfering with supply and demand.

Dan and Frank pose in the kitchen of a model home.
Maybe within a year or so Dan and Carrie will be in a home with a roomy, bright, kitchen just like this.

Frank and I left on a Tuesday morning after hugs all around. It was great seeing Vivian and a little bit daunting to realize how much she will have changed the next time we get together. All in all it was a fantastic visit and we plan to get together again soon.

Vivian Ruth Chambers at two days old.