My mom sent me an email today, wondering where I had been and what I had been doing that was causing me to be so quiet. So, this post is for those who have been wondering the same thing!
Reading
I have been devouring Barack Obama’s two books, The Audacity of Hope and Dreams From My Father. I began describing a bit about them in this post, but quickly saw that “a bit” was turning into full-fledged book reviews, so watch for reviews on both of those books in the very near future. I will just say that they are both excellent reads!
I also recently read Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel’s Avatar, which was the third book in her Kushiel’s Trilogy. Avatar was better than the second in the trilogy, Kushiel’s Chosen, and equally as entertaining as the first, Kushiel’s Dart. As a reward for finishing my taxes last week, I purchased Kushiel’s Scion, which is the first in the next trilogy, following the character Imriel that was introduced in Avatar. I would have begun it right away, if I wasn’t finding Obama’s books so engrossing!
Writing
Two weeks ago on my LeapingFromTheBox blog, I put up a button so that readers could email me questions they might have about homeschooling or unschooling. That has proven to be popular, and so I have been crafting and posting response to the questions. Some are proving rather challenging to answer, as they deal with areas I do not necessarily feel quite so versed in, such as learning disabilities. But I did my best and thankfully have had a few other readers leave comments, readers who have a bit more experience in that area.
Learning
I have drooled over the Teaching Company Great Courses catalogue for years, wishing for this course or that course. After reading Timothy’s description of The Story of Human Language in his blog post A Brief Description of Why I’m Ignoring Y’all over at Sometimes I’m Actually Coherent, I knew it was time to bite the bullet and buy a course. I mean, my birthday is coming up and all, and I don’t want this old brain to turn to mush from disuse! This course is 18 hours long, broke down into 36 thirty minute lectures. By the time I was into lecture two, David was watching it with me, and Bill has watched the last three lectures (I will be watching #8 tonight). The presentation is very well done and the topic is most interesting! I wonder if Bill would like a course for his birthday? This one on Modern Economic Issues looks interesting! All their courses go on sale one month out of every year, so only buy them on sale! And, if you are willing to part with them after watching them once or twice, they seem to hold their resale value very well on E-bay.
Life
I finished calculating our taxes last week and filed them this week. Again this year, as in year’s past while doing our taxes, I was reminded that I really should have a better way of keeping track of our expenses rather than just a spreadsheet. So I am trying to take the time this April to get Quicken set up. And also to tackle some of the odds and ends that have piled up on my desk. You know, things like bank accounts you cannot look at online because you do not have the proper pin numbers and it takes two weeks to receive them via snail mail when you request them. And when you do get the snail mail, you set it aside until it has passed its expiration date and then you must request a new pin number to be snail mailed to you. Fun things like that!
In addition to all that, there is the usual bills to pay, chauffeuring to be done (Charles got his learner’s permit yesterday, finally!), and LeapingFromTheBox website updates to keep up with and pages to expand. The stuff of life!