Ready To Go Into Orbit

Did violin practice with Richard, a long and difficult guitar lesson with Sophie, and a frustrating reading lesson with Helen. Their mom is ahead of schedule with their classes but all the extra things I am trying to do with them in the evenings seem to be lagging and suffering from a mix of my own fatigue and just the plain old unpredictability of family life. Can't quite begin to explain the feeling when I stumbled through the living room while trying to get some cleaning done for their mom, when I saw Sophie sitting there reading a bed time story to Helen. It was like a ray of light after a long hard slog in the dark.

I told Sophie that the whole world is an open book to her now that she can read.

lunar eclipse

Darn. Solid cloud cover. I am all bundled up and keep going out to check on the moon. If we could just get a glimpse...

Lets see, we did violin with Richard again today. Every Wednesday on my lunch break I meet Becca outside Fret'nFiddle where Richard has his lessons upstairs. We get next week off because his teacher is out of town. I am looking forward to the break because we are always operating under a deadline to reach a certain goal before the next lesson.

Got home form work, did a guitar lesson withe Sophie, a reading lesson with Helen, a Greek lesson with Richard, read the Bible to everybody (Luke 2), sang hymns, read books to the girls, and worked on Richard and Sophie's pine-wood derby cars. Tired now.




Dang it. Still no sight of the moon.

Daughter # 1

0805am

Saturday mornings are usually when I get a lot of reading done while everybody else is still sleeping. But daughter number one got up early and convinced me to turn my attention away from books and to watch the sunrise with her.

As the sunrise progressed we had a chance to talk uninterrupted. She told me about her imaginary friends that she still had since she “was young”. She told me she missed being little because she would just play with her imaginary friends all day long. One of her most important companions was Indianavelle. Apparently this is a little girl dressed in buckskin with long silky black hair tied up in braids who comes over to play.

Then daughter number one told me that when she grew up she was going to explore the Coal River (that flows right by our neighborhood). I told her that she will not have to wait till she grows up to do that.

Now daughter number one and daughter number two are in the kitchen, cleaning and making sugar cookies while I work around them preparing breakfast.

germanium diode

We got it to work!

It picks up one very fine gospel rock channel and that's about it.

germanium diode

Have been struggling to get a simple crystal radio set working. I found a good site that seemed to describe it rather well (http://sci-toys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/radio.html). I ripped an ear piece out of an old phone. It seems to work when either wire is tapped on the ends of a battery. Richard and I put up a sixty foot loop of baling wire in the creaky uninsulated attic and I put the radio together closely following the directions. And of course it isn't working. I looked at the package I got the diode out of and it says "silicon" and I looked at the directions and they say "germanium". So the hunt for a germanium diode began. I called on the usual suspects first, Circuit city and Radioshack. The people I got on the line were nice but had not even heard of a germanium diode (I am not making that up). There are plenty of go-to sources on line but after order minimums and shipping, the one diode I want was going to have effectively cost me twenty bucks. I called all the electrical supply companies listed in the yellow pages and none of them carry components like that. Finally the last guy I called told me to try Sodaro's. They are not listed in the yellow pages but are in the white pages. I called and asked the fellow for what I needed. He put me the receiver down and I could hear him conversing with someone and I could tell they were figuring out how the part I requested (1N34A) translated into Zenith and other manufacturers. He picked the phone back up and told me he did not have that exact type but had a germanium diode that was close to what I wanted and he would put it up at the front counter for me. Thinking this might be the last extant germanium diode in the state I headed out there on my lunch break. The place was hard to find because of the lack of a store front. Sodaro's is just a windowless white warehouse with a door and an address number beside it. Inside there is a customer lobby the size of my cubicle. But they had the diode and were very helpful. The older gentleman who I guess owns the place went back and found a few more for me. He opened a pack of alligator clips and charged me per piece instead of making me buy a whole ten pack. The place had this groovy star-wars chop shop feel to it. One of the many items hanging in there dusty plastic bag was an Atari converter. I think maybe it has been there since I was a pup. They rang me up and all the parts cost just over five bucks (plus the gas to get over there I guess). It was a good deal and one of the diodes actually has "1N34A" printed on it so hopefully I can get this radio working.