Science

It's a science night...I just finished creating 2 modified versions of the 5th graders' science test...the first, for A., involves reading short paragraphs about 3 popular molecules and answering questions, and the second, for R.L., involves matching words & pictures for popular molecules (officially -- water, salt, and oxygen).

See, they're mainstreamed into a science class that studied chemistry, but they have a horribly uninteresting substitute, so I figured the important thing for them to know about chemistry was a little bit about some things they'll run into life.

Meanwhile, as I'm typing up the last of A's paragraphs (about salt), Alton Brown is explaining emulsifiers on Good Eats...seriously, Stace, tape this show and use it for your chemistry class...at least, the parts with the styrofoam balls and push pins. ;-)

Murphy's Law moment of the day: I pick Patrick up from school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because he has an afterschool work experience/class thing. I sat there today for about 25 minutes, and finally called my mom (rather than him, so he wouldn't get in trouble if he had his cell phone on) and asked if she knew why his class was running late.

"Oooooh!" she says. "It's Thursday! Oh, he stayed home from school today."

Sigh.

Oops

Okay, so the FTP server is down. The site's updated on my hard drive anyway. Others will just have to wait to read the newest masterpiece (not). :-)

Always Trust the Ears

First off -- by the time y'all read this, I should have uploaded a few updates to my temporary website, including updates to one story and a whole new story. ;-)

This is pointless, really, but it always amuses me how I can recognize voices, even behind alien makeup and all that -- because when it comes to music, I am pretty much tone deaf. Although I love to sing, I only do so alone 'cause I know I'm no good at it.

Anyhow, Sci-Fi is showing The Clan of the Cave Bear, the movie made of Jean M. Auel's book -- the only one of the series I really enjoyed, though I read the first three.

So, I've seen it a few times, and the voice of the narrator always nagged at me, because I knew it from somewhere.

Then, tonight, it hit me. It's the Female Changeling! Well, at least, to Deep Space Nine fans. :-) It's actually Salome Jens, who has appeared in quite a lot of TV (including much sci-fi) and several movies. Am I good, or what? :-)

Incidentally -- the movie is a good, but not great, adaptation of the book. By necessity, it must leave out much of the Neandertals' biology, customs, psychology, and the other anthropological stuff that made the book so fascination (and which was absent from the sequels).

After suffering through a day and a half of my hot-and-freezing-cold mood swings that I get when I have a fever, I am finally feeling somewhat alive...which is good. Turns out there's something of an epidemic of a weird strain of strep throat that involves some additional weird infection thingie going around the Moorpark/Simi area.

So, it's back to the daily grind I go, while I begin to count down the days until spring break. :-)

Stuff

So, it's been a while. I'm still working on the eloquent thing, and I decided I shouldn't wait until I could come up with something.

This is gonna be very random, so bear with me.

The last couple of weeks have been very hectic. My grandpa and aunt both ended up with pneumonia -- grandpa the day before grandma's internment, and my aunt the day after. She had blue nailbeds by the time she got off the plane. Both are okay now, although grandpa won't go to get rechecked.

I, of course, managed to catch the cold that both of them had before they had pneumonia, thus adding to the Year of Unending Illness that is traditionally your first year of teaching...but when have I ever been traditional, eh?

Meanwhile, I've had another IEP...this one was hurried, 'cause the mom needed ot pick up the girl's sister, but it went okay. It's always nice to say, "Your child met and exceeded all of her goals."

Patrick's IEP was the week of grandma's internment...that Tuesday, I think. Of course, I couldn't ask for a personal day, with what all went on with grandma. Somehow, the OT that did his assessment came to the conclusion that he has limited upper body strength, despite the fact that he can literally pick up his 6-foot-tall cousin. But whatever.

We have Drama going on at school, but that's a whole 'nother thing. People with martyr complexes are very hard to deal with...but fortunately, I have a couple of really good aides that take the pressure off a bit.

My cats are on a canned food kick, which they haven't been for a while. And, of course, being cats, they think that every time I go into the kitchen, it is necessarily for their benefit. :-)

I've been really enjoying Battlestar Galactica, in its reincarnated version. Kara (Starbuck) is a fascinating character; I'd like to see more of what makes Adama tick, but I think the fact that we haven't is deliberate. Meanwhile, my interest in both Stargate and Atlantis has been waning...but when Enterprise (which is finally watchable, of course) goes off the air, it's the only sci-fi on the air that's caught my eye, so I guess I'll have to do.

I've been wanting to go see a movie lately (very odd for me, since they give me headaches that verge on migraines) but there's nothing I really want to see. Later in the year, of course, there will be Star Wars, War of the Worlds, the next Harry Potter and a few others that I've watched trailers for with iTunes, but....

Speaking of -- I think I've won about 8 songs now. Definitely beats last year. :-)

I think there was more, but I have officially lost my train of thought.