April Showers Bring... Books!

Nothing quite like a good book on a rainy day. Or a sunny one. Or a somewhat windy with high clouds day.

Apparently I found plenty of good days this month. Here are the good books I weathered during April:

Stealing Princes – Tyne O’Connell – This is book two in a series. The first one is Pulling Princes. I liked the first one; it’s a lot of fluff, British girls' boarding school and all that. The second book I was not as hot on; the main character sort of drove me crazy for most of it. Anyway.

Poison Study – Maria Snyder – This is a very clever plot. A young woman accused of murder has the choice of death or becoming the king’s food taster. The characters and relationships are great! One word of warning – this has a few adult moments – like when she remembers why she killed the man she murdered.

Weedflower – Cynthia Kadohata – I really loved this book by the same author as Kira-Kira. I actually liked it even better! It’s about a young Japanese girl during WWII and her experience in an internment camp. Really good!

Sorcery and Cecila – Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer – This was so much fun! It’s written in letter format by two different authors writing as young women in post-Napoleonic England. The best way to describe it is Jane Austen meets Harry Potter. Oh yes, there’s magic too.

The Circuit – Francisco Jimenez – I actually read this for school and really enjoyed it. It was written by a professor at Santa Clara University and is his story of life as a child migrant farm worker in California.

Breaking Through – Francisco Jimenez – This is the second book about Jimenez’s life, focusing on his young adult years. These books are so insightful and really give you a glimpse into his struggle and success.

Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger – Can you believe I had never read it? And now I’m supposed to teach it in a week. So, I’ve read it. And I’d like to edit it! But the themes, symbolism, and journey are very profound.

Physik – Angie Sage – This is book three in the Septimus Heap series. The first two are Magyk and Flyte. The fourth just came out – Queste. These are fun, fantasy books. They follow Septimus (a seventh son of a seventh son) and his family and friends. A good read for kids who like Harry Potter.

Until next month...

p.s. - If anyone knows of any good books for reading on a tropical island, I'm looking for books to read in Hawaii... (Yes, I did take one look at Mitchner's Hawaii... and thought better of it. I'm not going to read the whole time!)

Arabian Nights

We're sliding down the last sand dune to opening night of my son's play this week. Aladdin is just about to fly in on his carpet (although the girl playing the carpet might not appreciate that.)

Saturday morning I finished the final touch ups on his costumes. A HUGE thank you to my mom who sewed 90% of them for me! My son strode around the house in them on Saturday when they were done. He's still not too sure about this whole "harem pants" thing, but he'll live. His "street" costume hat is the best. I took a clean butter tub and covered it with red felt to make a fez. We're still trying to work out the best way to keep it on his head.... I tried bobby pins but the kid doesn't have enough hair! So I put elastic on it, but I was really trying to stay away from the whole elastic under the chin thing. Oh well, it is what it is.

I really do love making costumes. I've had such a ball every year making my kids halloween costumes and play costumes. Actually, my daughter has made her halloween costume for the last two years. Guess it's hereditary. I have a "Guinevere" costume cut out and sitting in the closet that I plan on finishing someday for myself. I bought the pattern about 3 years ago when it was on sale. Then it took me another year to find the fabric (a gorgeous forest green heavy satin). Another year later, I cut out the pieces. Talk to me next year and it might be sewn together!

Ah, one must always have a project.

Twilighter

Are you a Twilighter? I am.

Apparently MTV did a survey and the fan base for the "Twilight" series is going be known as Twilighters. If you haven't seen this site yet, check out the four interviews that MTV has done about the upcoming movie (12/12/08!!)

And if you haven't read the books yet... go now! Get the books! Here's a link in case you need it! :-)

And Now For Spring Break...

OK! Enough working!

Monday was spent cleaning (as you know) and grading papers.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were spent doing special projects at my last employer. It was a pretty good deal actually. I got to work, which meant income, something you don't see as a student teacher, and the projects were great. The CEO basically said, "OK, you're a teacher now so let's work on some curriculum development." If you don't know where I used to work, it's a great company called Global Imagination. Check out the Magic Planet.

But enough work already! (I didn't even mention yet that I spent EVERY EVENING doing lesson prep for all the stuff I'm going to teach when I get back. Sigh.)

I officially pronounce myself on vacation starting Friday. Hooray!

Spring Break Clean!

Hello my name is Ann... and I am a clean-a-holic.

It's my first day of spring break and what do I want to do first? Clean. I can't possibly think of starting on anything else on my list of things to do during spring break until my house is clean. I have accepted the fact that I'm crazy. I'll just have to deal with it... after my house is clean.

Yes, (my sisters will laugh at me here) I still clean "corner to corner". In fact, I clean from the sliding door downstairs on the east side of the house to my room upstairs on the west side of the house. Always. I also clean to music. My favorites being the soundtracks to "Star Wars" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". (Take that dirt and dust!)

My favorite cleaning tool is the Magic Eraser. I love it. It makes my life so much easier. It literally erases the dirt in my ceramic sinks and bathtub. Scrubbing? No way. (I feel like a commercial.)

I feel so much better tonight. I just wandered around the house for a minute looking at the clean surfaces. I know, it's crazy, but I feel better.

Now for the rest of the week.

A Good Laugh for Spring Break

Wahoo! It's Spring Break for me!

I had my students doing creative writing and art projects (break out the markers) on this last day of class before the break! At least I didn't show a video like many of the teachers (although I was sorely tempted to and would not have felt guilty in the least).

One of my fellow English teachers posted the funniest list on the workroom refrigerator. It's the top 20 funniest student analogies. I laughed so hard I had to sit down!

So here I share them... hope you have a good laugh!

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a ThighMaster.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. Coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

6. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

7. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

8. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

9. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

10. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

11. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

12. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

13. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long it had rusted shut.

14. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

15. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

16. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

17. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

18. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

19. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

20. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

A Stitch In Time

I taught my daughter to cross-stitch tonight.

It's kind of a funny story why.... She has to do a project for her Honors Social Studies class and she decided she wanted to do a project on the Nu Shu language. This is the "secret woman language" used by Chinese women. You may have heard of it from the book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

Anyway, she's been doing research on the topic and when she and her dad were out shopping on Saturday, they bought a cross-stitch kit for her to use in the project. She planned to do the cross-stictch (of a pretty Chinese woman with a parasol) and then stitch characters from Nu Shu around the side.

Sounds good, right? Only she's never cross-stitched and this is a rather complicated pattern on 18 point fabric. Hmm....

But, if you know my daughter then you know she is undaunted and rather stubborn! She is determined to do this. So (after going out and purchasing a hoop - they forgot to get that part) I sat down and showed her how to cross-stitch.

I used to cross-stitch quite a bit when I was younger and even up until I had children. I think the last piece I did was when I was expecting my daughter! But it all came back. In fact... I liked it.

I forgot how soothing it is to do something creative with your hands. It made me think. Not that I can take on another project! But maybe... it would be nice to have a little something to make while I'm watching the latest episode of Extreme Makeover Home Edition (one of the few shows I watch). It sort of feels like a slow slide back to quieter times. Like my great-grandmother might be sitting in the chair across from me.

In the mean time, it's my daughter sitting across from me. And she's doing quite well.