Tag Archives: Clementine

The candy fortress

By Mark | August 9, 2010

We got a call from Clementine’s school not too long ago — something about her collecting money from the other kids in kindergarten. We asked her about it, and all that she’d tell us was that it was a secret. She said that she’d stop, but assured that they had been pooling their money for [...]

Posted in Food, Mark's Life, entrepreneurism | Also tagged , , , , | 19 Comments

Fortune telling machine

By Mark | July 15, 2010

I don’t think I included this video, showing the operation of my friend Amelia’s fortune telling machine, in my Shadow Art Fair live blog. It was one of my favorite things at this summer’s SAF.

Posted in Shadow Art Fair | Also tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

OK, so I guess it’s called yarn bombing

By Mark | July 6, 2010

In the past three days, I’ve seen two local examples of what I think are knitted graffiti, or, to use the terminology of the vandals, “yarn bombing.” One was on the back deck of Ypsi’s Cafe Luwak. The other, featured in the following video clip, was on a fence along the Ypsi/Arbor corridor of Washtenaw [...]

Posted in Ann Arbor, Art and Culture, Ypsilanti | Also tagged , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

In the tornado bunker of sadness

By Mark | June 6, 2010

Linette was gone last night, at a fundraiser for Clementine’s school. I was here at home with Clementine. She’d finally gone to sleep, and I was starting to get some work done, when the tornado sirens started blaring.
This is how Linette found us an hour or so later, when she got home.

With the tornado [...]

Posted in Mark's Life, Other, Ypsilanti | Also tagged , , , , , | 26 Comments

Nothing left to learn

By Mark | March 24, 2010

Linette and I went in and met with Clementine’s kindergardten teacher a few days ago. At the end of the meeting, which had gone very well, her teacher opened a blue notebook and read to us a few of the things that Clementine had said to her earlier in the school year. Linette and I [...]

Posted in Mark's Life | Also tagged , , , | 16 Comments

I’ve finally earned a place in the Hitler Downfall meme

By Mark | February 16, 2010

I was alerted to the existence of this footage earlier tonight, upon arriving home from work. Linette took me into her office and showed it to me, but was reluctant to tell me who the responsible party was. She eventually gave up our mutual friend Eric Lagergren, though…
Thank you, Eric, for making history come alive [...]

Posted in Art and Culture, Mark's Life, Pop Culture, Ypsilanti | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day

By Mark | February 14, 2010

I had what I thought was a pretty brilliant idea this morning, after it dawned on me that I didn’t have gifts for either Linette or Clementine. It occurred to me that if I shaved my beard, I could kill two birds with one stone. Linette would get the gift of my being beardless. And [...]

Posted in Mark's Life | Also tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

A parenting tip

By Mark | February 9, 2010
Posted in Mark's Life | Also tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Hopefully the handwriting is all that she inherited from me

By Mark | December 27, 2009

On Christmas day, this was the note, written by Clementine, that all of my relatives saw as they approached our front door. Clementine, wearing her sparkling purple cape, felt that everyone should be officially greeted. While it somewhat concerns me that her handwriting is almost identical to my own, at least she doesn’t seem to [...]

Posted in Mark's Life | Also tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

On allowances and charitable giving

By Mark | November 12, 2009

I don’t pass parenting tips along all that often. It’s rare that I come across an idea that’s so unambiguously phenomenal that I want to share it. I picked something up from some friends recently, however, that I feel compelled to mention… They give their daughter an allowance, with the understanding that some percentage of [...]

Posted in Mark's Life, Other, Special Projects | Also tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments