Here are a few books currently on my radar. I’m so excited!! (And I like the whole red and black thing going on here…)
What’s on your reading radar?
Plans for the Weekend
Finally, finally the weekend is almost here–I thought it would never come! I almost yearn for the relaxed days of summer. Almost. But I love fall; it’s my favorite season. I’ve had mellowcreme pumpkins in my candy bowl for weeks! I’m daydreaming about apple cider doughnuts and gingerbread chai tea lattes… Bike rides and crisp, clear days. Still actually dreaming–we’re still in the nineties down here in Texas.
I have no huge plans for the weekend, and that’s just fine with me. There are a couple things on my agenda though…
1. Make gluten-free apple cider doughnuts in my new mini doughnut maker. This project is fraught with potential diaster, but I’m going to give it a shot anyway.
2. Watch Bride & Prejudice, the Bollywood version of P&P. This will, by necessity, be by myself, and I’m good with that. I wish I could get my hands on Aisha (Bollywood Emma), or watch it online, but that may not happen.
3. Take a bike ride in hopefully slightly cooler temperatures.
4. Finally get around to lunching at Rudy’s Barbeque. This is a barbeque joint/gas station/”country store” that serves up barbeque on butcher paper with plastic forks and sharp knives. It was a favorite of ours when we lived in Austin, and they’ve just opened one near us in Houston.
5. This is a bit of a long-shot, but maybe, just maybe, we could get a jump on our family Christmas card photo this weekend. (This never happens–I’m not one of those people–but I would rather this than having to scramble in the second week of December.)
6. Read. I’ve rediscovered my Kindle! I’ve had it for almost a year and have only read two books on it! (I’ve read plenty of samples.) I’m re-reading Sense and Sensibility and also reading Off the Record by Dolores Gordon-Smith.
7. I’m ready to tackle my next home project…the office, but Butters isn’t quite ready yet, so that will likely have to be put off.
What are your plans?
Fairytale Funkiness
My photo accompaniment to this story isn’t great, but I captured the shot on the run, so it’s all I have. As I’m sure you are aware by now if you’ve been reading this blog, I am the PTA Literacy Chair at my younger son’s elementary school, and I set up a Reading Ninjas program to get kids excited about reading. This included a bulletin board display, with each kid’s name put up as soon as they earned five points in the program.
A helper and I made a trip to the teacher’s center to try to find some die-cuts (shapes) that went along with the Reading Ninja theme. Rather disappointingly, there were no actual ninjas, and no Chinese stars…although those might have been frowned upon anyways… So, we used dragons, both the big Chinese dragons and the little Pete’s Dragons (if any of you remember Pete’s Dragon). And then some sunbursts that I thought vaguely resembled Chinese stars. But not enough to get anyone in trouble (i.e. me).
We lined the board in black craft paper and bordered it in red and then added the letters for ‘Reading Ninjas.’ Next came the white Chinese dragons, which we used as grade markers, and finally the little dragons and sunbursts. I was rather pleased with the whole effect.
Until…I was in the library yesterday, and the librarian’s aide came up to me and said that teachers had been talking to her. Teachers plural. Teachers had been asking that I switch the orientation of the Chinese dragons, because as it was, with the starbursts (Chinese stars) behind them, it kind of looked like they were coming out of… She didn’t finish her sentence, but I turned around in shocked amusement to stare at the board. It was a bit of a stretch in my opinion, but these are elementary students, and evidently the situation in the dragon’s rear was a topic of conversation.
I switched the Chinese dragons around today, and now it looks like they’re breathing fire! I meant to take before and after photos, but I was distracted by an adult Snow White biking up to the school at the same time I was walking in. She was fully costumed, wigged, and wearing lace-up heeled boots, and she never came fully in, just waited in the school lobby. It was quite the mystery… Anyway, you’ll just have to use your imagination regarding the dragon’s gassy state.
In other news, I have to say that I am utterly wowed by the efforts taken by Blake Leyers and Bex to get my countdown widget up on their blogs. Blake worked herself into a Yosemite Sam style tizzy and then eventually just dedicated a blog post and tab to the AUSTENTATIOUS countdown, and Bex debugged and brought in outside support until she finally got it working for WordPress blogs. You ladies are rock stars! So, if you have a WordPress blog and you’d like to post the widget for a chance to win an ARC of AUSTENTATIOUS, click here for Bex’s code.
Posted in life on 09/28/2011 10:56 pm | 5 Comments