So much for daily blogging!
Friday was a busy but great day with a robotics team meeting, listening to The Iliad in the car and spending 2 hours exploring the non-public, science areas of our Natural History Museum during their annual open house.
Saturday was a rare treat -- a day at home doing nothing more taxing than vacuuming, laundry and watching a movie.
Today I am dealing with a deep sense of foreboding. I normally try to fight my inclination to be a pessimist, but I sense doom. My husband has a violent stomach flu and knowing how virulent those flu bugs are, I'm thinking there is no way to duck this one. I've got to prepare the house, kitchen and the homeschool to do list so the menfolk can function without me! And on top of that is just the simple horror and uber ick factor of the stomach flu.
**sigh**
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Crepuscular
My ds and I had some time to kill in between an afternoon class and an evening meeting so we headed to the zoo just before closing. It was the perfect time to go as there were very few people and many of our favorite animals were up and about. And best of all I got to use the word "crepuscular" in its correct context. Crepuscular was a favorite adjective to use in Mad Libs, for some odd reason, I guess because it is simply fun to say. But rarely do we get to use it in everyday speech!
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
NaBloPoMo
I'm not sure why I decided to join this daily blog posting group. I mean, my life isn't all that interesting to have something profound and worthwhile to write about on a daily basis! But, perhaps the pressure of needing to write something, or post a picture of something each day will give me an incentive to do something useful each day this month.
My useful task for the day was spending an hour doing music homework. In this instance it was listening with headphones (earbuds) to a recording of John Rutter's Magnificat which our church choir and orchestra is performing in early December. I'm concert mistress of the orchestra, aka 1st chair 1st violin, and I figure I need to know the work really well before we head to dress rehearsals with the hired guest musicians. So I listened tonight, tried to figure out all the changing time signatures and made notes about things to ask the conductor. I pencilled in bowings, marked some cues in and made sure rests are marked at page turns.
I had never heard of John Rutter until I started playing church music, and he is now one of my favorite composers. He is a modern, living composer whose music has the dissonance and changing meters of modern music yet is very melodic and deeply moving. And it is fun to play! Not quite the marathon of notes that is the Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria, but with all the changes of time signatures it keeps us musicians busy and focused!
My useful task for the day was spending an hour doing music homework. In this instance it was listening with headphones (earbuds) to a recording of John Rutter's Magnificat which our church choir and orchestra is performing in early December. I'm concert mistress of the orchestra, aka 1st chair 1st violin, and I figure I need to know the work really well before we head to dress rehearsals with the hired guest musicians. So I listened tonight, tried to figure out all the changing time signatures and made notes about things to ask the conductor. I pencilled in bowings, marked some cues in and made sure rests are marked at page turns.
I had never heard of John Rutter until I started playing church music, and he is now one of my favorite composers. He is a modern, living composer whose music has the dissonance and changing meters of modern music yet is very melodic and deeply moving. And it is fun to play! Not quite the marathon of notes that is the Messiah and Vivaldi's Gloria, but with all the changes of time signatures it keeps us musicians busy and focused!
Monday, November 2, 2009
52 Books in 52 Weeks update
I haven't written about books since school started back up, but I'm still plugging away at the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge, and am currently on book #49. woohoo!!
When I look at my list I want to categorize the titles into tidy groups by genre, because I'm somewhat smugly satisfied by all the different kinds of books I've read. Then I see the 10 or more Janet Evanovich books and think that I cheated in this challenge by devouring those books like a guilty pleasure snack. But balance is the key, and I definitely have balanced the fluff with some good stuff.
These aren't exactly formal genres, but the categories I see in glancing through the list.
Fluff
Janet Evanovich's books, all except #s 2 and 3 and the newest title.
Timeline by Crichton (my 14yo son and I both heartily disliked it)
State of the Union by Brad Thor (fluff for men that I started reading when bored at the beach)
Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. (never finished it after the bad guy died -- noetics, schmoetics)
Leopard Unleashed (a pure, guilty pleasure read which leads to the next category....)
Historical fiction -- some of which are also very fluffy
Vivaldi's Virgins (about the girl's orphanage where Vivaldi taught)
Jane and the Genius of the Place (a mystery with Jane Austen as the sleuth!)
Dreamers of the Day (Paris Peace accord after WWI)
Gurnsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society (kind of, sort of historical fiction)
Physik Book of Deliverance Dane (also kind of, sort of...)
The Reader (read the book instead of seeing the movie -- seemed appropriate)
Science most of which I wouldn't have read except my 14yo son urged me to read them
The Pluto Files by Neil De Grasse Tyson
Death by Black Hole (same author as above)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Classics
Northanger Abbey
Persuassion
Emma
Candide
The Iliad
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Good Earth
Once and Future King (is that a classic?)
Memoirs/autobiographies
All My Edens by Pat Welch (a local gardening guru)
Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina
Home by Julie Andrews
The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
History
The Man Who Loved China (about Joseph Needham)
In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan
Gengis Khan - a biography
The Lost City of Z (I liked it so much I'm assigning it to my son next spring)
The Right Stuff
Other good books, including some sci fi:
Dune (I had never read it!)
Dune Messiah (gave up on the Dune series after this one)
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (had to re-read it before the movie came out)
Life of Pi (one of my favorite books of the year)
Garden Spells (maybe this is fluff)
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein
And finally
Non fiction
The Big Year (about fanatic birders)
To See Every Bird (part memoir, part biography of the author's dad, also about obsessed birders)
Catapult: Harry and I Build a Seige Weapon.
I'm surprised not to find a long list of mysteries as that is what I've mostly read in recent years, but they just didn't appeal to me for some reason.
When I look at my list I want to categorize the titles into tidy groups by genre, because I'm somewhat smugly satisfied by all the different kinds of books I've read. Then I see the 10 or more Janet Evanovich books and think that I cheated in this challenge by devouring those books like a guilty pleasure snack. But balance is the key, and I definitely have balanced the fluff with some good stuff.
These aren't exactly formal genres, but the categories I see in glancing through the list.
Fluff
Janet Evanovich's books, all except #s 2 and 3 and the newest title.
Timeline by Crichton (my 14yo son and I both heartily disliked it)
State of the Union by Brad Thor (fluff for men that I started reading when bored at the beach)
Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. (never finished it after the bad guy died -- noetics, schmoetics)
Leopard Unleashed (a pure, guilty pleasure read which leads to the next category....)
Historical fiction -- some of which are also very fluffy
Vivaldi's Virgins (about the girl's orphanage where Vivaldi taught)
Jane and the Genius of the Place (a mystery with Jane Austen as the sleuth!)
Dreamers of the Day (Paris Peace accord after WWI)
Gurnsey Literary and Potatoe Peel Society (kind of, sort of historical fiction)
Physik Book of Deliverance Dane (also kind of, sort of...)
The Reader (read the book instead of seeing the movie -- seemed appropriate)
Science most of which I wouldn't have read except my 14yo son urged me to read them
The Pluto Files by Neil De Grasse Tyson
Death by Black Hole (same author as above)
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Classics
Northanger Abbey
Persuassion
Emma
Candide
The Iliad
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The Good Earth
Once and Future King (is that a classic?)
Memoirs/autobiographies
All My Edens by Pat Welch (a local gardening guru)
Maria Tallchief: America's Prima Ballerina
Home by Julie Andrews
The Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson
History
The Man Who Loved China (about Joseph Needham)
In the Footsteps of Genghis Khan
Gengis Khan - a biography
The Lost City of Z (I liked it so much I'm assigning it to my son next spring)
The Right Stuff
Other good books, including some sci fi:
Dune (I had never read it!)
Dune Messiah (gave up on the Dune series after this one)
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (had to re-read it before the movie came out)
Life of Pi (one of my favorite books of the year)
Garden Spells (maybe this is fluff)
Citizen of the Galaxy by Robert Heinlein
And finally
Non fiction
The Big Year (about fanatic birders)
To See Every Bird (part memoir, part biography of the author's dad, also about obsessed birders)
Catapult: Harry and I Build a Seige Weapon.
I'm surprised not to find a long list of mysteries as that is what I've mostly read in recent years, but they just didn't appeal to me for some reason.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Day in the Life
Monday.
7:00-10:30 Quiet time for me. Coffee, breakfast, reading the papers. Shower, tidying up, filling the bird bath and one of the feeders. Decided to make muffins and almost burned them because of the spectacle outside the kitchen window -- 5 mourning doves on the fence all watching the finches zooming around the feeder. I had to grab the camera and try to capture it.
I couldn't get all the birds in focus fast enough -- still learning the digital SLR.
10:30 Kids up, thrilled to have muffins for breakfast.
11:00 The teacher from the charter school arrives with boxes of biology lab equipment for us!! Microscope, blank slides and 3 different single-station AP labs. Feels like Christmas in a geeky sort of way.
Brought the teacher up to date on everything and he reads over my son’s work. He sees this son weekly in the Mock Trial class, so it isn’t as if he has no clue what is going on in our lives, but it is his job to review work and assign grades.
12:00 Dad and college son out the door as is the teacher.
12:30 Head to the library to get books, and to stop by the pond next door. My son has made a collection net out of a plastic cup and a section of old hose. After getting a cup-full of pond water, we admire the ducks but as we didn’t bring binoculars and it is hot, decide it isn’t a great day for water-fowl watching and head home.
1:30 Decide it is going to be a lazy homeschool day. While the pond water critters settle to the bottom of the cup, we listen to and read books 10 and 11 of The Iliad. The audio recording skims over the gory battle scenes, actually it pretty much skips book 10, so I read aloud the highlights.
2:30-4:30 Indulge in a lazy afternoon. My violin student has cancelled, college student is out for the remainder of the day, so I don’t have to drive anywhere. Hallelujah!!
4:30 - 6:30 Play with microscope, slides and pond water. Try to identify critters through internet through sites like “Micropolitan Museum”. Dad comes home and has a turn with the microscope.
Decide not to cook. While the menfolk head out to rustle up some fast food grub, I fill in the lesson plans for the remainder of the week. We’ll have to be good about doing real school the rest of the week but really enjoyed our lazy day. Watched a recorded episode of Flash Forward while eating burgers from Chili’s, then will finish laundry and settle down with library book.
7:00-10:30 Quiet time for me. Coffee, breakfast, reading the papers. Shower, tidying up, filling the bird bath and one of the feeders. Decided to make muffins and almost burned them because of the spectacle outside the kitchen window -- 5 mourning doves on the fence all watching the finches zooming around the feeder. I had to grab the camera and try to capture it.
I couldn't get all the birds in focus fast enough -- still learning the digital SLR.10:30 Kids up, thrilled to have muffins for breakfast.
11:00 The teacher from the charter school arrives with boxes of biology lab equipment for us!! Microscope, blank slides and 3 different single-station AP labs. Feels like Christmas in a geeky sort of way.
Brought the teacher up to date on everything and he reads over my son’s work. He sees this son weekly in the Mock Trial class, so it isn’t as if he has no clue what is going on in our lives, but it is his job to review work and assign grades.
12:00 Dad and college son out the door as is the teacher.
12:30 Head to the library to get books, and to stop by the pond next door. My son has made a collection net out of a plastic cup and a section of old hose. After getting a cup-full of pond water, we admire the ducks but as we didn’t bring binoculars and it is hot, decide it isn’t a great day for water-fowl watching and head home.
1:30 Decide it is going to be a lazy homeschool day. While the pond water critters settle to the bottom of the cup, we listen to and read books 10 and 11 of The Iliad. The audio recording skims over the gory battle scenes, actually it pretty much skips book 10, so I read aloud the highlights.
2:30-4:30 Indulge in a lazy afternoon. My violin student has cancelled, college student is out for the remainder of the day, so I don’t have to drive anywhere. Hallelujah!!
4:30 - 6:30 Play with microscope, slides and pond water. Try to identify critters through internet through sites like “Micropolitan Museum”. Dad comes home and has a turn with the microscope.
Decide not to cook. While the menfolk head out to rustle up some fast food grub, I fill in the lesson plans for the remainder of the week. We’ll have to be good about doing real school the rest of the week but really enjoyed our lazy day. Watched a recorded episode of Flash Forward while eating burgers from Chili’s, then will finish laundry and settle down with library book.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
