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As we were walking home from school: Evangeline: Billy in my class thought I was going to be picked up by my dad, and I said no, I know you're not my dad because my dad... it's a boy, not a girl! Me: HE's a boy, honey. Evangeline: Who's a boy? Me: Your fa- I mean, you should say he's a boy, not it's a boy, we don't usually say "it" when talking about people. Evangeline: No, if I said he's a boy they'd know he's a he. So I have to say it's a boy. Can't argue with that logic, I suppose! Tags: 'cdotes, child development, daily stuff, language
I'm feeling:  cheerful
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Monday: Pasta
I left the actual pasta in 'dul's seemingly capable hands and he only cooked half the box. Dude! I cook for the proverbial army. We're feeding seven-ish people, and I want lunch tomorrow. Just make the whole box already!
Tuesday: Steak and mashed potatoes with gravy I made.
Too much cornstarch in the gravy, and I forgot a green vegetable. Whoops. (I was going to add spinach to the potatoes, but I forgot.)
Wednesday: Fish cakes with mango dipping sauce, broccoli and carrots on the side. And rice.
The mango sauce was meh (it's supposed to be apricots, but I didn't have that), I saved it over (with the leftover rice) to use in:
Thursday (my big blowout cooking day) Mango chicken (if you use enough spices, you don't taste the mango, did you know that? This, too, was supposed to be apricots) with fried potatoes, with a side of beets and carrots in orange juice (I used bought garam masala and they put cayenne in it, so that didn't work, but the girls were very polite) and a side of green beans. Also, two different types of raita, one with onions and one with banana.
Whew!
Good chicken, though. I should make it more often, it's not *that* hard. (And maybe next time I'll actually use apricots! But you know, I manage to like those even less than I like mangoes. Mangoes, you can hide the taste with sufficient quantities of coriander. Apricots? Not so much. Maybe I'll try it with peaches. I like peaches.)
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It wasn't really a nightmare - I mean, it should have been, but it didn't scare me - but I've been feeling vaguely uneasy all day and now I just don't want to go to bed. Sometimes I dream lucidly, and then I usually dream through my own eyes. Other times I dream semi-lucidly or not lucidly at all, and mostly when I do that I'm dreaming as though reading a book or watching a movie. If I'm even in the scene, I'm seeing me from a different angle. This one was the second type, and I had very little control over it. There was some sort of soul-sucking witchy vampire, and he was sucking the souls of sixth graders in a very bad gym class. Also, the floor was caved in. And I think he had to be stopped with the power of love. And angst. Love and angst. This, clearly, is why I am so uneasy - my sleeping brain is a terrible scriptwriter. I wouldn't watch this movie in a theater if THEY paid ME to go! I'm still not sure I want to go to bed, though. Tags: thoughts
I'm feeling:  sleepy
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"Please make sure that your child wears their school clothing on this day. We encourage all of our "little dolphins" to dress in school clothing every day If you need to reach out to us concerning this policy, please feel free to contact us. On the reverse side of this letter is a list of wonderful WEBSITES your child may use at home to help them become better at Reading, Math and science. Please have your child go onto these sites. This will significantly increase their achievement in school." (This whole letter is in italics, btw. The bold is theirs.) Now, first of all, I don't think I need hype telling me that MORE SCREEN TIME is the answer to all that ails kids' grades. Nor do I really need people giving the easy solution to school achievement instead of one that might work just as well if, say, I were poor and didn't have easy access to a computer. But besides that, wtf is with "If you need to reach out to us, please contact us"? Why not just say "Please contact us if this is a problem" so you don't sound jargony and redundant? Sheesh. Tags: school
I'm feeling:  aggravated
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Now, Ana has been reading for a while. I don't want to brag, but she routinely reads picture books harder than her officially-tested-at "J" level (which is apparently a second grade reading level... although this week I think they retested them because now she's bringing home "L" books) at home. And when we went to The Big Library (the one with the lions) two weeks ago (our own local library, the St. George Library* has been undergoing a lot of renovations and their children's room has been relocated to the basement with a corresponding reduction in the available books) she spent an hour just picking out books and reading them while I browsed. Silently, no less! (Usually, when I see her take out a book to read I tell her to read it to her sister so as to kill two birds with one stone there... and then I can read to ME! So I had no idea she could read to herself.) Well, since Ana reads picture books, I often read chapter books with her. Of course, one thing most of my old chapter books have in common is the race of their protagonists. They were older books even when I was a child (Half Magic), predating the Civil Rights movement, or they're not yet THAT old (Ramona, mostly, though that's an odd case) but still people weren't thinking as inclusively as I'd like. (And you know, I noticed this even as a kid, to an extent.) Or they do feature non-white protagonists, but they're really YA or older kidlit, or they're "issues" books, or they're historical or they're both historical AND issues. So I saw this book, it's about a 3rd grader (so, close to her reading level), and it has a black girl as the protagonist. And it's a series, so probably fluff instead of serious? Okay, let's see.... I barely had brought it in the house when Ana snatched it from my hand. She loves reading, likes books, but she didn't get that excited when I found Howliday Inn just in time for her mom to finish Bunnicula with them! So I gave it to her, thinking that since she's never read her own chapter book before and it is probably about a grade level above her reading level (given that it says RL 3 at the back) that it'd be too hard for her and we'd read it together. (I wasn't looking forward to it, since it's every bit as scintillating as Baby-sitter's Little Sister, but I enjoyed those books when I was 6.) No, instead she's spent the past day patiently struggling up to page 42 in this book. By herself. I *know* it's too hard for her, but I can't stop her, can I? No, no, I can't. Reading a book a little too hard for her is good, anyway. But I can't believe this is the same girl who normally would give up and sulk when told that "Booker boys" is not said "Booger boys". (She's a great kid, but I don't think she likes being wrong much. I say "if you don't like being wrong you should strive to be right", but she sometimes thinks that it's "if you don't try, you can't fail" instead.) *Okay, so that's not really our localest library, but our localest library is tiny and has no public bathroom. The St. George one is bigger, has bathrooms and water fountains (and the bathrooms don't stink of pee like the library we went to when I was Ana's age), and has these pretty stained glass windows and exposed beams in the main room. Tags: 'cdotes, books, daily stuff, early education
I'm feeling:  amazed
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Useless question. I try to explain this every year, and every year not enough people hear me, clearly. The Groundhog Day tradition runs like this: IF he sees his shadow, it's six more weeks of winter. IF he does NOT see his shadow, it's six more weeks until spring. The first is supposed to mean "long winter" and the second "long spring", but anybody with any sort of mathematical ability whatsoever should be able to tell you that the two statements - six weeks until spring, six weeks of winter - add up to the same thing. This is what I like to call a joke, except that some people don't understand that and take it all too seriously. And even when they don't (because really, that's absurd) they still do in that they think that the holiday theoretically means something when really it doesn't. Now, as it happens, we celebrate today because it's halfway between the winter solstice (Midwinter) and the spring equinox. We have six weeks on either side. This is something no groundhog can change - in six weeks, we'll all be talking about how we can balance eggs on their ends but only on the equinox, an equally silly statement. So go! Tell your friends! Tags: holidays, writer's block
I'm feeling:  still coughing up phlegm
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When all were asleep, my home was mysteriously moved from its nice, temperate slot in NYC to a very cold part of the Yukon. Brr! And so, as the subway doesn't run all the way up to the Yukon, and it's positively frigid outside, we're not going to the library after all. We can do that next week. Instead, I'll stay home. And bake. Warm me up a little. We'll also write a return note to one of Ana's penpals. We sent out three (form) letters (she dictated, I typed), and we've gotten two in return... from the same person, who is very enthused. Aww :) But I'm realizing that what Ana really needs to make penpals even more fun is some pretty stationery. We used to have a lot of it, and now I can't find any, even our ubiquitous pansies. I don't know. So if anybody has a link to some awesome stationery (that's paper, not notecards, if possible) at a good price, or has a half-used box that they don't like the design of, or thinks they can get some off of their local freecycle, poke me, I'll pass you my address and pay shipping so long as it isn't too exorbitant. (Shipping to the Yukon probably is, but maybe by next week we'll be in sunny Florida or something. Hard to tell in New York!) Also, if anybody reading this is going "Wow, what my kiddo really needs is an Ana penpal!", you can always poke me for that. Which reminds me, Ana was waiting with bated breath, ![[personal profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) sayga, for another video of Kira, so now she has to see it and type something up. Your kid is a very local star around here, LOL! Tags: begs, thoughts
I'm feeling:  cold
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They hide under beds. They hide in closets. They hide in cupboards, and in laundry bags, and under blankets in the middle of the floor. They hide behind trees and bushes and houses. They hide and sneak up behind you.
Hiding is a way of life for them.
Ana can hide very well where we have no idea where she is, but she mostly doesn't bother. The point isn't to be hidden, after all, the point is to be found! Evangeline... not so much. She's only four, after all, so she's bound to talk or fidget sooner or later.
My sister and I have independently had the same thought: Fun as it is for them, how hard must it have been to hide small children during the Holocaust? Not just hiding and being quiet for a short time, and then yelling "COME FIND ME", but being hidden for days and days (and years and years, but children think in days, don't they usually?) all the time?
Or hiding on the Underground Railroad with children, or hiding in any of the other situations in history where you needed to smuggle your children to safety as quickly as possible.
I have no idea how these people managed. Even cadging one day out of the hiding abilities of a preschooler, no matter how much self-control they had back then? That's an enormous undertaking. It's a depressing thing to think of as you watch the laundry bag inch its way across the floor, but I think of it every time - how on Earth were those people lucky enough to manage this?
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Good book, really. Can't believe I never read it sooner, but you know, it never came out in paperback that I saw.
One thing, though. Is there an outside world?
I see this in a lot of books. Somebody lives in a non-worldwide dystopia, or they live in a fantasy world where they're in some degree of trouble... and, I don't know, if people thought I killed a man here I'd run for the border right away!
These people don't. Oh, they might talk about the border, but that's the border into wilderness, there's no chance of people being out there.
But I'm reading this book going "Well, okay, SOMEthing happened, and now the country stretches out as far as the Appalachians. Okay. Well, there's a few more thousand miles of land between there and the next coast. Nobody has settled in any of that land? Nobody whispers, however quietly, about running so far you can't be tracked and caught? Nobody even mentions how their government trades with other governments to the north or across the sea? Seriously? Even the least politically minded person in the real world can name at least *one* other existing country or trade partner in the world!
I mean, I suppose it's possible, but then I'd expect a comment about how "Yup, as far as we know, nobody's left". And these people have technology, too, so if they don't know at all what's out there it's only because the Evil Government doesn't want them to. But even in their cynical little thoughts, nobody seems to think "Gee, maybe it's not so bad if we get just a littttle further out and we've been lied to".
And it's not restricted to this book, either. Fantasy books where your pal is a wanted criminal - well, they don't have high tech, and you're out beyond guards, so why are you rambling around the countryside instead of LEAVING the countryside and going to where nobody knows your name? Countless books where you have a closet rebellion that doesn't think, first things first, to see if they can get some aid from their country's enemies... and they certainly don't offer or come up at all. Endless stories where the prince marries any random peasant because, you know, it's not like he has to make alliances with other countries, not like they'll be upset he snubbed THEIR royalty for this little nobody.
It gets on my nerves sometimes, but then, maybe I just want to travel a bit too much.
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If I'm down there, I watch with them. Now, unlike NY1, the GSN is not predominately sponsored by the Humane Society with their awful ads that made Ana cry hours later. (I told her flat-out that they WANT you to cry so you send them money without checking first to see where the money goes. I think it's an incredibly tacky move and will support just about any animal organization *first*, no matter what the percentage of tortured rescues is.) No, they seem to be largely sponsored by Lysol. Ah, Lysol - the people who give me terrifying ads about how bleach "doesn't really clean" toilet bowls. My grandmother's reaction to this is "But why don't they ever clean the outside of the toilet?" Mine is "WTF? Who CARES if the inside of your toilet bowl is 100% sterile? You're just gonna poo in it again, and it's not like you drink from it! (And if you do, it's a toss-up as to whether dirty is really worse than sterile-but-full-of-toxic-chemicals. Don't drink out of your toilet, guys.) HONestly. Yesterday they had a new one talking about how the pump of a soap dispenser can (logically) get covered in germs, and that's why they're selling new pump-free dispensers for home use. Aside from the fact that it's highly unlikely that your family members are carrying plague, here's an interesting question: Once again, who the fuck CARES? It's the pump of your soap dispenser! You pump. You soap up, you rinse. At this point, any germs you picked up from the dispenser are now safely in the u-bend of your sink. End of problem. I mean, unless their argument is that their soap is so sucky it barely kills pre-existing germs, much less the ones you pick up in the bathroom, I think I'll pass. Real soap is better for your skin than detergents anyway, isn't it? (Yes, yes it is.) Tags: advertising, rantlings, wtf?
I'm feeling: aggravated
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of ethical and professional guidelines.To those of us who already know all this, this is old news. To those of us in deep denial... nothing's gonna convince those folks. As in... I feel very sorry for this doctor. We are still at stage 1, of 3, of the truth. They are still ridiculing the idea. I have a 16 year old son, he was normal befoe his vaccinations, with in a few months of his injections he changed. He has been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.
I believe he his an mmr casualty.
In America, one family has been paid out for mmr damage.Asperger's syndrome. Huh. 25 years ago, that kid would never have been diagnosed. Asperger's wasn't even in the DSM at that time. It's better this way, I do believe that, but when the next comment by this person runs "And you know, the rate of autism is increasing!!!" remember that it's increasing because kids like his weren't getting diagnosed back in the 80s.Tags: articles, autism, links
I'm feeling: coughing
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Well, I have to go to bed, so no time for that, I'll just have to be angry in the morning. But while I'm up, a quick comment on The Hunger Games which I just now read for the first time. First - it's written by the same person who wrote The Overlander Chronicles, which were my guilty pleasure when they came out. It's much better written, but the Gregor books were her first, weren't they? I'd expect some improvement! (And the Gregor books weren't bad, they just had some awkward writing in parts.) Second, it's interesting, reading this book I kept flashing back to another book I have at home - The Hermit Thrush Sings. The two books don't have much in common - just numbered districts after a vague "fall" that are forbidden contact with each other, mutations in the "dangerous" woods, and singing birds as a theme - but the one reminded me of the other. So if you've read a bit about The Hunger Games but think you'll like a book with less violence and more mysticism, pick up the other one instead. (I just now bothered to look up hermit thrushes and was pleased to find that they're real birds with a really pretty song. When I finally looked up nightingales a while back to hear a recording of their song, I was gravely disappointed.) I'm adding this to my personal list of dystopic books I've read and enjoyed. Cut my teeth on dystopias, you know. One of the first chapter books I ever read was Outside, by Andre Norton. Printed in large "early-readers" print, no less! Much of the book seems cliched and old to me now, but I read it to bits then, and that's what counts, isn't it? (Childhood's End, now, is depressing as FUCK and I won't read it. And you can't tell me that's not dystopic fiction. All the aliens have is their FAITH that their actions are on the side of good, and that's not good enough for me.) Tags: books
I'm feeling: sick
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Let me just say, first, that the movie is probably part of why I'm not at the moment angry about being overlooked. Because I could tell by one or two of the other questions to Mr. "He's On First" and how they were worded, and by the movie itself, that I would have had to deal with a lot of the "Well, let me just spend five minutes telling you - politely! - why everything you just said was wrong" sort of questions. And those just aren't any fun. I'm gonna cut this for spoilers. ( Read more... )So, you know, I kinda dreaded having to answer things like "If it's really as hard as it is for Max, why don't you want a cure?" where I'd have to first reiterate that some autistics do want a cure, and even if I don't agree with them in principle I can't argue with their desires. In my quest to be honest, I'd eat up a lot of time.
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So, Reelabilities is holding their second annual film festival. Now, they asked Ari Ne'eman to to answer questions as an aspie, but you know he got picked to be on the National Council on Disability, so he suggested me (!!!) and I said yes and I went there tonight to see the movie Max and Mary. I got there a respectable 15 minutes early, but it turns out my schedule was wrong and I was actually AN HOUR and 15 minutes early, but that was fine, it gave me some time to read my book. At the end first they had questions from... one of the filmmakers? I'm not sure, I had a coughing fit around when we were told the history of the filming, so I left to get some water. And I listened, and I was sitting at the front (a place I would *never* choose for myself because there's no safe barrier of chairs between you and, you know, the front) mentally preparing myself to deal with a barrage of questions and to answer any stupid ones by NOT saying "Wow, that's an incredibly stupid question, you know"... although, you never know, if people expect that they may be gratified to think I have no social skills whatsoever, get to feel a little superior, I don't know. And the previous speaker finished up and... I don't know what happened, if he was misinformed or what, but he basically finished by saying that "Well, I'll meet you right now in the lobby for snacks" and... I didn't end up answering questions at all. And as people were clearing out and I was sitting there going "Wait... what?" I realized I had two choices. Well, two good choices. I could try to stop this by yelling "WAIT! There's ME!!!" at the crowd, and look like a fool. Or, I could try to identify one of the coordinators (if I could recognize them in the crowded lobby) and ask them wtf just happened. I'd still feel awkward and out-of-place, but at least I'd feel that way more privately. (Or I could just leave, but it seemed to me that if I left without at least a good faith effort to remedy the situation that when everybody-but-me compared notes later it'd look like I flaked out on them.) So I did that, and we concurred it was too late to get everybody's attention now, and anyway I had just recently recovered from laryngitis, so I decided that rather than hang around in a crowded noisy lobby full of people eating and the smell of wine (something that always makes me feel a bit nauseous) and perfume (a gratifying sign that I'm less congested, I suppose) I'd just go home and finish my book (The Hunger Games, I can't believe I never read it yet!) on the way. Which I did. But I'm still not sure exactly what happened there. Sheesh. I'm not actually *upset*, per se (not actually having to deal with people is a bit of a relief, I suppose...) but I'm really annoyed at the whole thing, and I can't shake the feeling that somehow it's a ME thing... or something. (Deep down, I'm still in elementary school at times, and scared both to be picked and NOT to be picked at seven-up during a class birthday party. I always thought that either way it was probably because they were mocking me, and I may have been right.) When I've thought on it a bit, I'll post about the movie. Tags: wtf?
I'm feeling:  annoyed
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See, I couldn't talk AT ALL yesterday until 4 or 4:30 or so. (And then I tried not to too-too much, because it's not good for my poor overworked vocal cords.)
So I went to pick up Evangeline, made the universal sign for "Help, I need a pencil and paper because I can't talk!!!" to the person at the desk, and wrote a note for her: Please tell Eva I can't talk because I'm sick.
And she did, and Evangeline and I went around to pick up Ana, and we snuggled. And when Ana came out I just pointed at my throat and shook my head.
Ana: I don't believe you, I think you're just pretending you lost your throat.
Me: ??? *shakes head, points at throat*
Ana: Yeah, whatever.
Me: *points at shoes*
Ana: What? Oh, I'll tie my shoes, but you should just tell me instead of faking.
Me: *frantically trying to find a way to say "miserable brat" without words*
Ana: So, you said we could have that bag of chips today.
Me: *nodnodnod*
Ana: We can have the chips, right?
Me: *nodnodnod*
Ana: Where are they?
Me: ??? *shaking head*
Ana: *whining*
Me: *vague gesturing culminating with a point homewards*
Ana: *being annoying*
Me: *sighs*
Ana: Oh, I know, you were saying "The chips are at home", and I tricked you!
At this point I was very annoyed, but I couldn't yell at her so I tried not to think about it.
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This is in honor of the fact that I am unable to speak and am thinking fuzzily. So, you know, I had the nieces make dinner tonight. Today Ana and Evangeline cooked dinner. (I supervised, and did most of the chopping.) Ana read the recipe, doubled it, and made pancakes with bananas. Evangeline and I made potato hash with red, yellow, and green peppers and also spinach. And we had sausages to go with. Evangeline is so funny. I gave her a nice sharp knife to cut with, on the entirely reasonable grounds that a sharp knife is less likely to slip and cut you, and if it DOES cut you it will do much less damage because you'll be using less pressure and because, duh, it's sharper. The first time we let Ana use a knife unaided (but not unsupervised!) she panicked going "I'll cut myself!" and I went "Yeah, probably - that's the secret ingredient after all! - but that's why I'm here" and so she chopped for a few minutes until she got bored or too worried and left. Evangeline actually did cut herself. In retrospect, I should never have given her a half a potato but should have restricted her to onions and peppers. She gave herself a teeny tiny little nick on the corner of her thumb. And she said "OW!" as she did it, but she didn't cry, she went back to chopping. But I glanced at her (I mean, she only said ow, so I thought it couldn't be very serious), and it was really bleeding a lot for such a small cut, so I told her she should wait for the bleeding to stop until she helped again. And THEN the tears came down! No, no, no, she wanted to HELP! Don't make her stop CUTTING! Blood might be our "secret ingredient", but that doesn't mean I really *want* it in my brinner. So I sent her down to my grandmother to see if there was a band-aid there. And then I forgot I'd sent her down, so when she came back up (hilariously, right when her dad walked in!) I was so shocked I actually said something - "Evangeline! When did YOU go downstairs??" *headdesk* I swear, I'm a good aunt, most of the time. I know what I'm doing. One can only hope that nobody under stood me, congested and phlegmy as I am. (Incidentally, my grandmother watched Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader on TV tonight. Now, aside from the fact that the folks on that show are dumber than the proverbial sack of bricks (they might not have used the terminology when you were a kid, but how hard is it to think that a "doubles fact" in math includes, I don't know, doubling something?), I have to ask what sort of crack the producers are smoking when they think that "phlegm" is a second grade spelling word. In the second grade, they're still learning words that are, you know, topical. When the heck is "phlegm" even gonna come up? Actually, that's a good question - is this phlegm EVER gonna come up? I can't talk! I can't breathe! I can't think! I can't even really cough! Gah!) Tags: 'cdotes, daily stuff, food
I'm feeling: cheerful
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/nyregion/25namechange.htmlQuote 1: In the other decision, a Westchester judge made an exception to a general requirement that name changes and home addresses be advertised in newspapers, saying the safety issues for people in gender transition were obvious in a world that can be hostile.
The publication requirement insisted upon by some of the Manhattan judges has fed an eerie subculture of readers, many of them prisoners, who follow the newspaper notices. One man forced to advertise that he was becoming a woman received several seductive letters with prison return addresses. “Hello Angel!” said one of the letters. “I am not afraid to take new roads,” said another. What gets me about this quote (aside from the odd "help, we don't know whether to say man or woman!" issue) is that Angel is also a man's name. Admittedly, it's a man's name that's pretty much limited to Hispanics (and pronounced differently), but in any part of the country with any sort of Hispanic population it shouldn't be that marked, gender-wise. Quote 2: Still, routine changing of gender identification can be startling to some. The Rev. Jason J. McGuire, executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which helped defeat the gay-marriage proposal in Albany, said the courts might be ahead of the public on gender issues.
“Oftentimes, the courts are used to advance an agenda,” he said, adding that the name changes created loopholes people could use to hide for any number of reasons. A. Fuck you. You might technically have a constitutional right to be homophobic (in the broad sense of the word, let's not let the poor dear get bogged down in technicalities he's not likely to grasp) but the whole point of a separate judiciary and "balance of powers" is so that the majority (or a small, vocal, and relatively powerful minority of haters) can't keep civil rights from others. B. Also, everybody is allowed to change their name for any reason unless it is an intent to defraud, and EVERYBODY is entitled to have their name change kept private if the judge rules it is a valid safety concern. So, again - fuck you and your "special" rights.
( Read more... )Tags: articles
I'm feeling: cheerful
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(I am so there. That series is surprisingly not-terrible.) The guy I was with scoffed at " you were underwater for 7 minutes!!" with "That's not possible", but clearly he doesn't understand the secret filmmaking that indicates "this isn't actually possible, but suspend your disbelief a little". (One wonders how he reacted when he saw trailers for the first ever HP movie, years ago. Broomsticks? Flying? That's not possible!) As it happens, Greek/Roman mythology is a bigger topic in kidlit than you'd imagine. Aside from the aforementioned Percy Jackson series there's one about Pandora and various deadly sins (or something...), and now there's... this series. It's on Goodreads as a giveaway. Authors Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams put a modern spin on classic myths with the Goddess Girls series. Follow the ins and outs of divine social life at Mount Olympus Academy, where the most privileged godboys and goddessgirls in the Greek pantheon hone their mythical skills.Yes, it appears to be a High School AU for Mount Olympus. ... This is either going to be super sucky or it's going to be SO AWESOME. All it needs is for the "students" to sparkle, right? There's another one as well. They're both in the First Reads program so I entered. Persephone often "goes along to get along" instead of doing what she really wants. But when she meets Mount Olympus Academy bad-boy Hades, she finally feels she has found someone with whom she can be herself. He's the first person who actually listens to her, and she finds herself liking him, despite the fact that the other goddessgirls think he's bad news. But if he makes her feel so special -- and so comfortable -- can he really be all that bad? My goodness. I've never felt so much LOL-ing anticipation towards a book before in my life. If you can snag me a copy when I don't win, I'd very much appreciate it. (I think this is even better than cannibalistic time-traveling mermaids!) Edit: It turns out - thank you, rho! - that it is definitely possible to hold your breath underwater for well more than seven minutes. I had no idea! Tags: books, lol, thoughts
I'm feeling: cheerful
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(Because I've been bored.) The bots are incredibly stupid. They never steal. They never, of course, prepare for the possibility of having their field or road or city stolen. They deliberately build cities and roads to get immediate points NOW... even if what they're doing means they can't close that city or road (or even keep building on it, particularly if there's a builder). They never close a city just to get the tokens or to force somebody to have to re-place their builder. But, you know, they're bots. They don't think. As I play, I'm starting to wonder something. A few somethings, actually. 1. Using the tiles from the standard Carcassonne, could you connect all the road pieces to each other? Or all the city pieces to each other? 2. Could you do this in such a way that you have no open ends left? 3. If so, could you repeat the feat with various of the expansions? Obviously that would never happen in a real game, but could you do it for fun? Tags: games, thoughts
I'm feeling:  bored
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So, this person doesn't like the Everyday Math curriculum, nor... some other math series.And she might have a very good point about that - the nieces' school went off Everyday Math because the teachers said they jumped around too much and it was confusing the kids. This is an opinion I can trust - it makes sense to me, and the people saying it presumably know what they're talking about. Unfortunately, I can't trust this presenter's opinion. Her argument against these two curricula aren't "Kids find them confusing" or "I don't think they're teaching math" but "They aren't teaching math the way I learned it, and I don't understand how they're teaching it, so it's wrong wrong wrong!" So, of course, she demonstrates these methods... and it's obvious to me that she's clearly taking the slowest, most round-about method of doing this in order to prove her point. But she *doesn't* prove it. The lattice method? That one that everybody derides as "who invented this"? I'd guess that if you know what you're doing and aren't unfamiliar with it (and no, "parents aren't familiar with other methods" is not a good reason to only do what you've always done) it's just about as fast as the more common method. (And it's not exactly new. A method that's been around since the 13th century CE and that appears in the very first printed arithmetic book? I'd say it has some staying power.) She says that her preferred method of division is "the most efficient" method, but it's only, in my view, more efficient when writing with pencil on paper. If you have to work something out in your head? Reasoning - which she thinks is just wrong wrong wrong - is the way to go, and, indeed, is how I do most of my math... and which is why, unlike most people I know, I never *do* reach for a calculator or a pad of paper if I come across a necessary math problem in the course of my day. (And nobody ever yet has explained to me how you can use long division to divide, say, 31 into 2000. Not without memorizing the 31 times table, that is....) It may be that these two programs aren't teaching kids well. In fact, I've heard a lot of bad stuff about Everyday Math specifically, so I'm inclined to believe that. But unfortunately, she let the facts lie to the side while she spoke about her opinion that one form of problem solving is superior - so much that the others shouldn't be taught. I was so annoyed by that detail that when she said what really should have been her shocker - a quote from the Everyday Math teacher's guide stating that of course, calculators are readily accessible (and so not all algorithms for basic arithmetic need to be mastered) - I started wondering why she didn't answer that important question - why IS it necessary to know how to do basic calculation? (Judging from the comments, most people don't know. I read a lot of "People who do this method would fail all their tests!!!" or "How can you show math on a test using that method? You wouldn't get any credit!!!!" or "If you don't learn the right method, how can you compete in college?" or "This is why students in other countries do better than our students" but not once did I see a comment explaining when math comes up in day to day life and it's better to use THIS method over THAT method. I find this much more disturbing than the original comment about calculators!) And, really, thinking it through, I can think of a few ways to justify the calculator comment anyway. One person in the comments went "Well, math is easy when you strip it of the clutter, all those word problems". But who is better at math? The child who can tell you that 12 x 12 is 144 and that 6 x 12 is 72, but has no idea why he's memorized that or that the numbers exist outside of the book? Or the one who needs to use a calculator but who can work out all the right steps to find out how much paint you need to paint the walls (but not the doors or windows) of a given room? (All while the first child absentmindedly fills the room up with paint!) Actually, what's even worse than the fact that the commenters didn't seem to know what we use math for is the fact that few of them realized she was selling something. They took her deliberately confused approach to these "alternative techniques" and assumed that meant that nobody can do any form of calculation using them. (I'm doubtful many of them understand why the standard algorithms work, to be honest, but I suspect none of them understands why it matters if they understand or not.) Here's somebody's reply to it.And here's part two!Apparently he's since found a copy of (some of) the books to review, so I'm going to look that up to see what he says. It really irked me watching the first video (the firstest one, the one at the top) she talks about how at the end of the 4th grade curriculum there's a "world tour" project and "Where's the math?" Well, I don't know where the math is, honey, you're the one holding the book, you tell us! Off the top of my head I can think of any number of ways applied mathematics could go into planning a world tour, but without a copy of the book I can't tell you if they did that well or flopped miserably. Her implication, of course, was that connecting math to any other subject (such as geography or social studies) was wrong wrong wrong! because, after all, it's not how SHE was taught. (And maybe there IS no math there, I wouldn't know, but I'm interested in seeing another opinion because that first video was so obnoxious.) Tags: education, rantlngs, videos
I'm feeling: aggravated
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1. The kids keep coming home from school cranky and yawning. They get to bed too late. 2. When Jenn and/or 'dul gets home, it's already pretty late, and that's when they start cooking dinner. 3. Bonne-maman eats too late. 4. I'm home all day. These added up to... 5. I should just make dinner every night instead of twice a week. Which is what I'm endeavoring to do - prep dinner during the day, heat it at dinnertime. Anybody have any simple meal ideas? They should NOT rely on dairy (some substitution is okay, but it adds up fast), and they SHOULD have a good amount of vegetables or fruit in them. Today I made: Black beans with corn, red pepper, garlic, and culantro (that's not a typo) Kale with tomatoes and sweet chorizo (bonus, the sale gave me three ounces of the spicy type free, so I'll use it elsewhere) Sweet plantains with lime juice Rice So you can see that I have a green veggie (the kale), a yellow/orange veggie (the corn, and the mangoes for dessert), a red veggie (the tomato and red pepper), some starch (brown rice and plantains) and, of course, some protein (black beans and the chorizo). So that's a pretty complete meal, and other than the fact that mangoes cost a dollar apiece right now and I don't like them it was all pretty inexpensive, though it'll be cheaper still if I plan my menu in advance for next week. That's why I'm asking for ideas! Ideas for sides or for main dishes (which do NOT need to be meat-based) are appreciated. No crock-pot, so nothing like that. Tags: food, questions, thoughts
I'm feeling:  full
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Oh, don't give me "earth's rotation" and "angle of the sun", I know that! But... Look, I googled to find what time sunset was in NYC, found out that today it's 4:55. Sunrise was at 7:17 Okay, fine. But in Anchorage it's sunrise at 9:52, but sunset only at 4:27. The sun rises two hours later there, but it only sets about thirty minutes earlier? I'd always assumed it was constant - if it rises an hour later, it sets an hour earlier, that sort of thing. And over in Honalulu the sun rose at 7:12 (barely earlier than here in NYC) but it doesn't set until 6:12. Maybe my problem is in viewing my own city as the default, and if I viewed these times as varying from the equator (or the North Pole) they'd make sense? I understand that summer and winter are more dramatic closer to the poles, and less dramatic close to the equator, but... like I said, I thought you took from both sides of noon more or less evenly wherever you were. Tags: questions, science, thoughts
I'm feeling:  confused
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retreat.... 
tired
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bouncy