Chloe of the Alps

I survived another week. That seems to be the best I can do anymore is just managing to survive a week. I'm doing a quick blog now before I thrust this computer away from me for the night. I've been attached to it all afternoon and evening. It's hot; I'm hot, and I need to get up and away from this machine. The positive side of being attached to this beast for so long is that I got my final written and my grading done!

I had to get it done tonight, because the rest of the weekend will be completely filled with the normal weekend chores and getting the xmas tree and decorations up. I promised the girls we would start on it tomorrow. Since M worked the light show tonight and Hunter & L are keeping themselves busy (between arguments), I thought I should be productive. I've put off writing this final for weeks now, and it feels great to be done. Database finals are tough to write, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Here's hoping the students will be equally happy with it. I'm thinking they probably won't like it as well as I do. ;-)

L & I just finished up a series of Poe's short stories for our bedtime reading. After a few weeks of Poe, she wanted to switch to something else for a bit. I love Poe, too, but I certainly understand wanting to mix it up a bit. Since she let me choose the next story, I chose Hawthorne's Rappaccini's Daughter. I love that story, and I thought it very appropos for her, the horticulturist's daughter. After we finish the story, we are going to watch the movie on Netflix (a free online selection,--YAY!!) and then compare the book and the movie.

It's a nice way to introduce her to Hawthorne, too. Most of his longer works, while very good, tend to ramp up VEERRRY slowly. It can be hard to stick with the slow start and get to the good stuff, and I think many readers just give up, declaring Hawthorne hopelessly boring. This way, her first introduction to him will be very positive, so when she's a little older, I'm hoping she will be more patient with his longer works.

I sent L with Dumas' "The Man in the Iron Mask" to read this week as her literary complement to her history unit. She said she couldn't read it because of all the hard names. I'm a little irritated. The text itself is certainly at a level she is capable of reading and comprehending. She just can't get drawn into it because she can't get the characters straight because of the weird names. Since my parents have the movie version (starring DiCaprio, which I've never seen), my mom offered to let her watch it instead of read the book. She will watch it and then read the book. I think once she learns the characters and their names from the movie, the book will be fine. This will give us another chance to comparatively discuss the book version and the movie version.

L decided that Chloe should model Dej's winter hat earlier this week. As you can see, Chloe is thrilled to be such a style maven.

I have some really interesting blog posts floating around in my brain. I just need to find the time and energy to get them typed up. But for now, I seriously need to be done looking at a computer screen for a while!