Halloween

This Halloween was great! I got 85 pieces of candy, and spread it into plastic bags and froze a lot of them so I will have candy until March. I got about 18 Snickers.

I went trick-or-treating with lots of other kids. Afterword we went through the Haunted House (pictures soon) me and my sister made. This year I was Dobby from Harry Potter. One guy gave me his hat (he took it back) to pretend to free me!

A Dobby Halloween costume is pretty easy to make. For the sheet, I took an old white bed sheet and used it to wipe up some water on my porch to make it dirty. Then I soaked it in tea for a few minutes until it was slightly stained. I wore light colored clothing underneath that. For my head, I bought a bald cap, which was pretty inexpensive. You might need to buy special adhesive to attach it. After the bald cap, I put on my elf ears. The elf ears were also inexpensive, and I bought them and the bald cap at a Halloween store. My mom put them on toward the top of my ear, not like the instructions say. They were also applied with a slight tilt, so they look like Dobby’s ears. The ears also need special adhesive. For the skin color, I mixed white face paint with at little brown, and smeared it on my face and bald cap (after the cap was put on). And that is how to make a Dobby costume!

I hope you had a good Halloween!

 

Comfort food I

Homemade banana bread with homemade cocoa:

Homemade fire:

 

Picture of the Week: The Butt Doesn’t Touch

Our dog Rudy’s butt never touches the ground when he sits:

Photo credit: Rick Gill.

 

GPS and Housework

This morning I put my husband’s Garmin running watch (with its GPS tracker) to a different use. I wore it for one hour around the house while I had breakfast and did housework. It was an opportunity to stretch the boundaries of the technology we own.

From about 9 am to 10 am I prepared and ate my breakfast, did a load of laundry, vacuumed four rooms, dusted a little, and stripped the sheets off my bed. Plus I got the mail and looked in my car for something. This is the path I walked:

The Garmin and Google Earth seem to be off a little from each other.

Here’s the data:

In one hour of basic housework I walked 0.20 miles and burned 90 Calories. The elevation spikes are from when I went up in the attic to get the vacuum and when I lifted a box of stuff into an upper cabinet.

It’s a shame that I only went a fifth of a mile in doing all of that. Maybe the data would reflect that this was good exercise if I had worn the heart rate monitor, but my husband wears it every time he runs, and I don’t want to clean the sweat off of it for this.

Perhaps if I do this again, I’ll try it on one of those days when I have to walk around putting lots of stuff away and decluttering. Maybe then I can get the entire rectangular footprint of my house to be colored in red.

 

This and That

Here is a random summary of what I’ve been up to:

It has been a lovely autumn. I am enjoying myself, and the weather is fine.

I have decided to wage war on most of the carpet in the house, starting with the living room. That means I’m ripping it out. The hardwood floors that were under the living room carpet need some serious care, but they are still better than the carpet, which was on my nerves.

So there is a pile of stuff growing and waiting for a trip to the landfill.

We are still washing the dishes in a dishpan. In doing so we (I) have caused the side of the counter’s splash board to detach because there was a bit too much water in the draining area. There were no draining boards in stock the day I bought the rack, and I haven’t been back to the store since. Plus I don’t that it would have saved the situation. Water gets around. Frosty the Snowkid claims she remembers the installation guys warning me of this when they put in the countertop in 2001 – when she was 4.

I haven’t done much with the bathroom except clear the drains manually with rubber gloves and a hanger. That’s a job that will make you reassess the meaning of life. (No picture provided.)

Frosty and I missed our kayak class this weekend because of the weather. That’s probably it for kayaking until the spring. The sight of my kayak shoved in the shed tells me that I need to get cold weather kayaking gear, that I need to get proper hanging hooks for my kayak, and that my shed is too full.

I am half way through my Teaching Reading in the Content Areas class and am still enjoying it. I repeat: I really wish I knew these techniques when I was a student.

Frosty the Snowkid is closing in on the end of her first calendar year of online school and doing great.  Unless you ask her, in which case she’s apparently going to fail out of 7th grade.

Plum loves learning about Maryland facts and history.  She seems to like war.

Paul suggests I should work towards running in a 5K in December.  I still don’t like jogging, but the wiser person deep inside me thinks that I should at least be strong enough to run 3 miles if I had to.  It’s just that when I try to move fast it feels like I’m suddenly made of jello-shaped lead weights.

I could just keep telling myself that ripping out the carpet tack strips is plenty of exercise.

 

Haunted House

Right now I am building a haunted house with my sister for Halloween. So far, we have most of the parts, we are going to buy more later. We are trying to build the walls now. Out mom has big sheets of old wall that we are standing up, and we will also use furniture for trails. To get ready for the haunted house, we had to clean out our attic. I will post more when it is done!

We now have a big space cleared. The big silver board

is going to be a wall.

 

Picture of the Week: View from Mount Wachusset

Here is the picture of the week:

 

Gathering My Thoughts About Reading

Reading and reading strategies are on my mind right now because of a course I am taking about teaching reading in the content areas. The course goes towards maintaining my certification.

I spent all of my school learning years reading every textbook like a novel. That is a whole lot of years reading from front to back with a useless highlighter in my hand.

Then I spent my years as a teacher using textbooks very little. I suppose I figured that based on my own experience, reading assignments wouldn’t necessarily be useful.

I’ve only just begun with this reading course, but it is clear that I never had training like this when I was originally certified. Never did we discuss how to improve comprehension or learn strategies that would help students search out and retain information from a text.

I am one of those people who likes school and thinks doing a little homework is a great way to spend an afternoon. If I am annoyed by realizing that I missed out on reading skills, what about those who suffer through school?

Perhaps in a future post, I’ll write about specific things I’ve learned, but I’m curious about where students, parents, and teachers in the school system are with with this.

Who knew that one is not supposed to read the entire book?

Do teachers teach reading strategies now?

If so, does it happen at all age levels?

Or are the kids still reading front to back with highlighters?

 

Picture of the week: Rain

Here is my picture of the week:

 

New Wii Fit Plus

Today at the mall, my mom bought the new Wii Fit Plus, which came out today. We already own the regular Wii Fit and balance board, so mom bought just the game.

The Wii Fit Plus transfers all of our data from the old Wii Fit, and puts it on the new one. That way we don’t have to set up a whole new Mii. And that is very helpful.

The balance board

So far, I have ridden around a beach on a Segway, had a snowball fight with other Miis, ran through an obstacle course, practiced kung fu, and much more! I also created a user for our cat Samantha, and I can weigh her on the game. You can also add dogs and babies. I can set up my own routine, which is a few activities strung together, and you do not have to stop in between each one to get the the next activitiy. The new Wii Fit also shows you how many calories you burn after each activity, and how many calories you have burned the whole day.

I really like the new Wii Fit Plus, and all the new activities and games that are included.