Seriously Beautiful Houses + Modern Farming

Check out these amazing houses. 

Oh, and this slide show, too. 

Darn, I just noticed that the last several books I've added to my list of grown-up books aren't on there. I must be forgetting to click on "Add to List" or "Save." And now I can't remember the titles and authors!

Free to Good Home

This sweet kitty showed up at my neighbor's house crying and crying for someone to let her in. We finally let her in, and she has not so much as sniffed at the open door since we did. She has no desire to go anywhere. She is a funny kitty. We took her to the vet and found out that she is about 7 months old and in good health but with no chip and hasn't been spayed. She was the mellowest cat I have ever seen going to the vet. She walked right into the carrier and just sat and looked out the door the whole time. She fought hard when the vet gave her shots and looked in her ears and stuff, but until then she was completely unfazed by the whose experience.

Something seemed a little off about her, but we couldn't put our finger on it at first. She was healthy, yet she seemed unusually mellow for a 7-month old. Also, she would get scared and cry when there weren't any people around, but she didn't really want to be petted. She was smart enough to figure out where the food and litter box where and to catch on to the cat treat routine, but would cry and cry when she was out in the little room where we keep the cat food and couldn't seem to figure out how to get out of there. Well, if turns out that she is deaf. I clapped loudly a few feet away from her and she didn't flinch. 

I've been checking Craigslist and looking at posters on telephone poles to see if anyone is looking for her, but if no one turns up I think we're going to try to find a home for her,  since our other cat is totally freaked out about having another cat in the house. So, let me know if you're interested in taking a very sweet, deaf cat. She'll be hard to say goodbye to, though, I'm getting pretty attached...

Learning Styles

I've been working on this teaching module at work, and its got me thinking about how people learn things. A's piano teacher once said that when she is learning something new, she has to see the big picture, and how the specific piece she is working on fits in, before she can take in the information. 

I'm the opposite. I'll take some basic outline of the big picture, but I really learn by taking random pieces and working with them until I start to see how they fit together. If someone gives me the whole pictures, all neatly laid out, I can't really take it in. The process of struggling with the pieces and figuring out for myself how they fit together seems to be central to the acquisition of the information. Otherwise, it just doesn't stick. I've been wondering lately if this is because I don't have a great memory, but I have good analytic skills. I can't remember information if someone just tells it to me strait out, but if I have to spend some time trying to figure it out, then I have a much better chance of remembering the details that I pick up along the way.

I'm trying to watch my kids and see if I can figure out if that are parts-to-whole people (like me) or whole-to-parts people (like A's piano teacher). I can't really tell. At this point in their lives, it seems like they are more into basic physical skills and facts acquisition, without a lot of actively trying to figure out abstract things. They have much better memories than I do (fortunately), and I think are generally more balanced than I am in the way their brains work. I'm great at some things and really awful at some things, but they seem to be more consistent across cognitive skills. I have a very even temperament, but a rather uneven brain, now that I think about it.

I love to identify dimensions along which people differ, and I guess most people are probably somewhere in the middle on this dimension, just like others, so I shouldn't rush to try to categorize people at one end or the other. But, it is worth keeping my eyes open to how my kids learn, so we can figure out what works best for them. It is useful to have some insight into how you learn.

It's Too Darn Hot

Check it out--a bicycle made out of zome, courtesy of A:

We're playing hooky from park day today because, in the words of Ann Miller, it's too darn hot! We had to do some running around this morning and everyone was very droopy and red-faced by the time we got home. We had actually planned on skipping park day to do a drop-in back handspring clinic at our gymnastics gym, but, again, it's too darn hot for that. We were also planning on doing an all-comers track meet tonight at the park where the kids are taking swimming lessons, but our mission to find tennis shoes for the kids failed, and anyway, it's too darn hot. I'd like to try out my fancy new running shoes that I got today, but it's too darn hot. It actually isn't as hot as it could be, but spending the morning in the car with no A/C kind of did us in. And anyway, I'll take any excuse to quote Ann Miller.

The One Who Hears the Flushes

A: sthva; ;asdljv sdjerkcvpdm  cocamv'pfl (i.e., something in a made up language that I cannot reproduce)

M: I know you just peed.

A: dfjkwe cerm d;fej vfoame vcal;m  (ditto)

M: Do not lie to the one who hears the flushes!

We had a relaxed, kicking around the neighborhood kind of day today. After we went to the library we walked over to our neighborhood locally-owned barber shop to see if they could cut my and M's hair. The first spot with two simultaneous openings was in 2-1/2 hours, so we just hung around and killed time going out to lunch, going to Tuesday Morning to finally buy a table cloth so I don't have to put sheets over table-like objects when we have people over to eat anymore (yay!), etc. M got his hair cut by an older ex-military man who gave him the "Air Force officer's" cut. Looks snazzy! And it will be so much easier to side-breathe at swimming lessons.

Tomorrow A has her 5th grade testing (we only have to test for grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 here) and she is beside herself with excitement. I guess you get excited about tests like this when you don't have to take them all that often. She did really well on all of her 3rd grade test except for the mechanics of writing (i.e., spelling and grammar), and I won't be surprised if she again comes out low on the mechanics of writing. We've actually been working on grammar and spelling quite a bit, but the sad fact is that I fear she inherited my bad spelling gene. If it wasn't for spellcheck, I'd be in big trouble. In fact, half the time I don't even actually see the difference between my spelling of a word and the version spell check is suggesting, but after I click on "replace" the little dotted red line underneath the word disappears, so apparently some changed has occurred.

Work, work, work, Part II

I have indeed been working like a dog for the past month or so (hence the lack of blogging), and we've been a touch grumpy around here. But, everyone is happy at the moment and I actually managed to get caught up on all the immediate stuff at work, and in fact can't move forward on most of my projects until others do their pieces. Ah, the luxury! Even more important, today I had one of those days where it was really clear to me that I get a lot out of my job. 

I'm in the most fun part of a review, where I'm just learning about the field, figuring out the lay of the land, developing the protocol. Another woman is starting a related review at the same time so we've been working together to try to keep our methods as parallel as possible, for lot of good reasons. Our collaboration has been a great help to both of us. It has saved us both time and undoubtedly smoothed our paths for our reviews because we each brought up issues that hadn't occurred to the other, and that were good think through. This afternoon we had a 2-hour meeting with our boss and some other team members to hammer out the details of our inclusion/exclusion rules and it was fun and stimulating. It is so great to work with this group of smart, thoughtful, knowledgeable, and fun women--the debates were lively and thought-provoking and useful and good-natured. I left work full of energy and feeling productive, competent, and well-respected by people I respect.

So, I may complain about having to work at times and sometimes it feels like I have too much on my plate, but more and more I see that in many ways I truly have the best of both worlds.

Seven years old!

We had a lovely birthday weekend recently, in which M's current obsessions (science and fancy men's wear) were fully satisfied. Unfortunately I don't yet have a picture of his fancy new velvet vest (thanks, Grandma!), but I'll get one up soon. M is just a happy fellow, blessed with an even temperament. Here's what life is like in M-land...