Month: February 2015

Friday Roundup February 27 2015

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Here’s what caught my eye on the internets this week!

Polish game recreates communist shopping hell – it’s like an anti-Monopoly. A printable English version is here.

Rock, Paper, Scissors of PC Victimology: Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews – It’s National Brotherhood Week!

Unschooling: The Case for Setting Your Kids Into the Wild – “What if they want to be doctors? They will be doctors. What if they want to be lawyers? They will be lawyers.”

9 things everybody should know about measles – Also, #10: for nearly everyone, it isn’t a big deal to get the vaccine or to get the measles. So, you know, get the vaccine if you have a chance.

The Life Of A Hand Model: Inside The Secretive World Of Parts Modeling – Remember George Costanza and his oven mitts?

we r reel homskoolurs nao!

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Homeschoolers always have a map on the wall. We haven’t put one up in this particular house… until this morning! I realized a while back that some of my kids have no concept of nonlocal distance or political boundaries (or time, beyond an hour or less, but that’s for another day.) Homeschooling for so many years and so many ages means getting to do things again and again. Faith and Abby went through this years ago, and Bede, but now Gilbert, Trixie and Gloria are getting up to speed.

So I bought us a couple maps: a world map and a United States map. They’re both laminated, so I also got some Vis-a-Vis wet erase markers – the kind teachers use on overhead transparency film. The plastic is very smooth and will make using the markers a breeze. They’re good maps. The world map is the same size as the US map, which makes it a little small in my opinion, but the US map is about right.

Above, Bede telling me where New York is. Doesn’t the red duct tape just make the whole thing pop! Ha, ha. I’ll put it up with a better method; this was just because the kids wanted them up today, now, this very minute.

Those show the scale pretty well, I think. Bede is the size of a smallish adult.

The map purchase necessitated deciding what projection I wanted. Now, I favor the Robinson projection (no surprise there!) but this one is Winkel-Tripel, which is okay, I guess. (squints) It will do for now.

What's that? You think I don't like the Peters map because I'm uncomfortable with having my cultural assumptions challenged? Are you sure you're not ... ::puts on sunglasses:: ... projecting?

Ahem.

Clementine have the blue eye

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Bugga tailored a dress for Clem, from long to short sleeve. (Clementine hates long sleeves.) Excuse to use the Good Camera™ and the nifty fifty lens. I have a Canon Rebel T3. It’s not the newest but it’s such a nice camera.

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Dorothy too. Honestly, this camera is awesome. If you want natural light photos of kids, this is the way to go.

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Faith the baby wrangler.

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Snowy and cold here today. The kids want to go out in it because they are young and foolish. Well, some do. Faith woke up saying, “I’ve had it with winter. Let’s move on.” I may try to find mittens and boots to enrobe the goofs who want to  venture out, or I may not.

Faith just told me she’s baking cookies! SCORE. And I’m making meatloaf + baked potatoes for dinner. Yummy day!

ETA: post cookie crumbs!

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The wee Glees

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

This was taken to send to some soon-to-visit cousins. My father is turning 90 (!) in just a week or so, and there will be many Friends-And-Relations present. He has nineteen grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

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(42% of grandkids accounted for above.)

The outtakes from this session were pretty amusing. One of the cats chose just that moment to hork up a hairball, so keeping everyone’s attention on me was tricky. Hairballs are much more interesting than mothers holding cameras. I think I have at least one photo of everyone where the back of their head is all that is visible. I finally succeeded by making horking hairball noises myself. Dorothy and Clementine were still a tough crowd, as you see.

“gunpowder” definitely before “cannon”

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

Quiet day. It’s snowy, and we’re supposed to get more tonight.

The cold and mud together keep many of my children indoors, which means tabletop games. Or, in this case, carpet games.

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There’s Abby offering a consolation handshake to Gilbert, whom she has just trounced at Timeline. Timeline is really fun; you lay down your cards, one per turn, in chronological order on the game’s timeline. So, the barometer, before or after the corkscrew? Agriculture comes before those, but what about the wheel? Xerox copier or transistor radio, which came first? The cards have the date on the back, which you reveal after you guess. Get it right, then you leave it in line. Get it wrong, discard that one and draw a new one. Winner is whoever gets rid of their cards. We only have one set, but there are many variants and expansion sets. The older kids have an advantage but everyone likes it.

Today is higher tech though, because it’s Sunday in Lent and that means it’s a Wii day. So I hear the unsoothing tones of Punch-Out. That Glass Joe, he had it coming.

High Sierra frame pack on deep sale

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

I was wandering through Amazon and I noticed they have a High Sierra frame pack on crazy sale. It’s usually $280 and it’s only $99! Abby has a High Sierra daypack and she loves it. Looking at the Amazon Associates page, it looks like the sale ends Febuary 27.

High Sierra Tech Series 59405 Titan 65 Internal Frame Pack – the sale one.

High Sierra Fat Boy – the daypack.

 

Food Storage Large Family Edition: Wire Shelves

Posted on by Phoebe Gleeson

We have a lot of people, and a lot of food. I lean towards the form follows function philosophy of design, and I favor plain, boring clean furnishing. That’s not to say I favor clean houses, though, if mine is any indication. Ahem.

Anyway!

We have two sets of shelves for food. Our house has a few areas for food storage, but not to the scale we need. So we added these, one in the smallish pantry, and one here in the entryway:

whitmor steel shelves

They are a Whitmor Supreme 5-Tier Shelving Unit. They don’t come with the cat or the toddler, sorry.

They were very easy to assemble. In fact I farmed it out to the teenagers. They sell vinyl liners for the shelves so you can put small things on them, but we cut cardboard to fit. The wire on the edge makes a little lip for the cardboard, so it doesn’t slide around. The cardboard makes it easier to place the cans, too. I only have the bottom shelf done, because we started using the shelves before I realized it would be easier.

I think I’ll paint the cardboard to jazz it up a bit.

So, it may not look fancy but it really works well. The shelves are very strong. The packaging says each one can hold 350 pounds. I was worried about wood or wood-based shelves buckling under the weight of the cans. That won’t be a problem with these.

Next up is large family drinking glasses!