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sundry and various
May. 12th, 2013 06:14 pm1. Happy (U.S.) Mother's Day to all the moms out there!
2. Oldest son has gotten pretty good at sweeping the floor and cleaning up his own mess, though he still has to be prompted to do it.
3. Middle son has added Godzilla and Shaun the Sheep to his fandoms.
4. Youngest son is mouth-testing the world, and the days where we could leave him in one spot without him rolling away are over.
5. I have tried my first MOOC (massive open online course), an overview of ancient Greek history, and am in the middle of my second, an intro to programming in Python. Opinion so far: Great for continuing education and for things that can be machine-graded or that have a clear rubric for easy peer-grading. I wouldn't want to pay college tuition rates for a MOOC, though; if I'm paying college tuition, I want the chance for actual interaction with the professor (it may be hard to get in a lecture class of 150 students, but it's nearly impossible in an online class of several thousand) and to be evaluated by either the professor or by someone who's studied the subject, not by someone who doesn't know any more than I do about it.
6. I'm having fun with my spinning wheel.
7. And I'm still using my spindles.
8. I'm in the home stretch of a sweater that I've been working on for six and a half years. (And when that's done, only 25 knit and crochet works-in-progress to finish.)
9. It is unlikely that I'll finish this shawl before Hobbit Part II, given that it takes me 20-30 minutes to knit a row when I have kid-free time to work on it and I still have about 150 rows of the body to go, plus the border. But I can dream.
10. I'm not writing. I'm okay with that right now; Not Yet Dead showed me that I'm still capable of writing a novel-length work. When I'm getting more sleep and can get a dependable chunk of uninterrupted time, or possibly when I get a story idea that I want badly enough to write, I'll write again.
11. I've been rereading the entirety of Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries for the first time in several years. Amazing how she can convey so much in a short phrase.
12. Department of "I may not be reading this as the author meant it": When Sayers describes Charles Parker as evangelical, does that imply he's in a different Christian denomination than CoE, or just a more low-church branch of CoE?
13. Department of "An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered": Friday night we had a massive rainstorm (which, given that we're still in a drought, I welcomed), and while I was giving my ex a ride to the bus stop, a belt slipped, causing several functions to fail. I now have a new appreciation for power steering. Fortunately I was able to get to a side street before the car completely died, and middle son was unphased by sitting in the car in the rain for twenty minutes while we waited for Spouse to pack up the other kids and the toolbag. (He discovered how to draw in the fog on the window.) Spouse put the belt back in place and recharged the battery, and we all got home safely. I am happy to be married to someone who is capable of and willing to fix a car in a downpour.
2. Oldest son has gotten pretty good at sweeping the floor and cleaning up his own mess, though he still has to be prompted to do it.
3. Middle son has added Godzilla and Shaun the Sheep to his fandoms.
4. Youngest son is mouth-testing the world, and the days where we could leave him in one spot without him rolling away are over.
5. I have tried my first MOOC (massive open online course), an overview of ancient Greek history, and am in the middle of my second, an intro to programming in Python. Opinion so far: Great for continuing education and for things that can be machine-graded or that have a clear rubric for easy peer-grading. I wouldn't want to pay college tuition rates for a MOOC, though; if I'm paying college tuition, I want the chance for actual interaction with the professor (it may be hard to get in a lecture class of 150 students, but it's nearly impossible in an online class of several thousand) and to be evaluated by either the professor or by someone who's studied the subject, not by someone who doesn't know any more than I do about it.
6. I'm having fun with my spinning wheel.
7. And I'm still using my spindles.
8. I'm in the home stretch of a sweater that I've been working on for six and a half years. (And when that's done, only 25 knit and crochet works-in-progress to finish.)
9. It is unlikely that I'll finish this shawl before Hobbit Part II, given that it takes me 20-30 minutes to knit a row when I have kid-free time to work on it and I still have about 150 rows of the body to go, plus the border. But I can dream.
10. I'm not writing. I'm okay with that right now; Not Yet Dead showed me that I'm still capable of writing a novel-length work. When I'm getting more sleep and can get a dependable chunk of uninterrupted time, or possibly when I get a story idea that I want badly enough to write, I'll write again.
11. I've been rereading the entirety of Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries for the first time in several years. Amazing how she can convey so much in a short phrase.
12. Department of "I may not be reading this as the author meant it": When Sayers describes Charles Parker as evangelical, does that imply he's in a different Christian denomination than CoE, or just a more low-church branch of CoE?
13. Department of "An adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered": Friday night we had a massive rainstorm (which, given that we're still in a drought, I welcomed), and while I was giving my ex a ride to the bus stop, a belt slipped, causing several functions to fail. I now have a new appreciation for power steering. Fortunately I was able to get to a side street before the car completely died, and middle son was unphased by sitting in the car in the rain for twenty minutes while we waited for Spouse to pack up the other kids and the toolbag. (He discovered how to draw in the fog on the window.) Spouse put the belt back in place and recharged the battery, and we all got home safely. I am happy to be married to someone who is capable of and willing to fix a car in a downpour.