Our Lady of the Keyboard

  Our Lady of the Keyboard 
  Originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

Picture for mom. I don't remember exactly where I got her...I think she was given to me by one of the Sister's at Auntie Nena's convent. Anyway, mom, if you find something like this in a material other than plastic (wood? stone? ashes of Mount Pinatubo?) I wouldn't mind something like it for a souvenir.

It be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

  It be Talk Like a Pirate Day! 
  Originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

Did you celebrate?

when I picked up Stasha at school, they were all wearing these getups, and even the principal was swashbuckling. What are our schools coming to?

Later on, I had to teach my the first yoga classes of the session, so I borrowed Stasha's eye patch and wore a red bandana. But I didn't get much farther than "Arr! This be International Talk like a Pirate Day, and this be U of L Beginners Yoga! Arrrr!" before I had a coughing fit. You probably need to drink a lot of grog to keep your throat in piratey condition.

Animal feeding time

September is a great time for observing the feeding habits of various animals as they prepare for the winter. Here, we have a lovely northern flicker searching our back yard for ants, grubs, and other goodies:

and here, we have uncivilized prairie chirpers foraging for grub to place in their lunchboxes:

The kids are doing great this fall. Theo loves his new teacher and claims that he makes learning fun. I hope it is not too fun - his new teacher is one of those fun, happy guys who thinks he lives in a sitcom. It just better be a sitcom with lots of multiplication or penmanship. Stasha is very happy to have the same teacher as last year, less happy to be surrounded by pesky grade ones who are "kind of bad and stupid" (her words, not mine). Apparantly, last years grade one kids were much better behaved and also smarter. So she says.

And to my great surprise, Theo loves his Ukrainian dance class.

We weren't worried about Stasha at all because she wanted to dance again no matter what, but Theo took some convincing to get back into it this year. However, because they changed the class configurations they moved him up a level into a large class with three other boys in it. It's two hours long, but he loved it and said it went by faster than last year's one hour classes. However, he also had his first case of really bad DOMS the next day. Definately, Ukrainian dancing seems to be harder than judo.

Both kids are in judo again of course. Cause falling down builds character.

Not to nag, but....

Recipes, people! Recipes! but....um, hold the spinach, at least for now.

then and now

  then and now 
  Originally uploaded by Sophie_vf.

Much as I (justifiably) whined about the cost of textbooks, I am geekily blown away by the fact that they now come in COLOUR. It t'weren't like that when I was young.

On the left, anatomy textbook for 2006. On the right, my cell biology text from 1981. Yup, nigh on twenty-five year ago. We were just happy they weren't on scrolls of parchment

September Sunday morning

It's tomato and crockpot season. Thus we have fried green tomatoes and baked beans for breakfast! Mmm. All we're missing is the pork chops.

We are enjoying Sunday morning a lot more than we enjoyed Tuesday morning. The view from Stasha's door at 7 am:

Labourious Days

The Labour Day weekend being the official end of summer and beginning of the school year always presents a dilemna - should you try to be as lazy-ass as humanly possible before the routine of school and activity begins, or should you go crazy trying to catch up with projects and errands before that same routine interferes?

The answer, of course, is both. Both kids tried to get as much lazing around done as possible:

while still making some sort of useful contribution to the household:

Meanwhile, Tim and I poked away at yardwork:

This horrendous crab apple tree produces the mealiest, most tasteless apples ever, in abundance. Tim was actually going to cut it down this spring to make room for the surrounding trees, but just as he approached it, a little sparrow flew out of the bird house where it was building a nest. And so the tree was saved for one more year.

We also managed to get some painting done in the kitchen, made extra fun by the 31 C temperatures. Here's the kitchen at eleven o' clock Sunday night - Tim put another coat on the next day.

There was still plenty of time to do less useful stuff, though. We seem to have the need to visit Virtual Rennes le Chateau every few years, and replay the old Sierra Game Gabriel Knight 3. Ah, the golden age of gaming, where you actually got to solve puzzles and think. (As an aside, the game touches on similar themes made obnoxiously popular by Dan Brown's Da Vinci code, and I don't even need to read that rag to know that Jane Jensen and the Sierra team tell a superiour story). (As a further aside, look at how much detail the Sierra team put into the graphics - compare the screen shots with the actual locations at Rennes le Chateau!)

Anyway, this is Theo's game face: