Thursday Thirteen #79

Thirteen of my favorite pictures from last year I further decided to make them photos that I had not already put on my blog (because, of course, those were probably more my faves but you've already seen them, right?). Of course, most of them will be of the chillens because , well, that's my job, my passion, and my life. Most days anyway. I had a fab idea for a TT yesterday and, of course, it evaporated before I could write it down. ARGH. Oh well...off to the pics. 1. This is our lovely friend Elizabeth in her turn as Hope Leslie Trite in Alibis last December. Elizabeth is indeed a beautiful girl with much talent and I loved this picture even before I was able to (finally) effectively use red-eye removal on it. Now it's simply ravishing...heh. 2. I, of course, am bowled over by pictures of cute sleeping children. Especially when they are my cute sleeping twins. It's funny how they like to be together always, even when sleeping. 3. Another sort-of sleeping twin shot. Only one twin and I are sleeping here and Dave decided to be part of the bunch. 4. I think Friend Husband is just as cute as he can be and when he dresses up in his regalia... well. I just swoon. He good-naturedly let me take photos of him in December when he marched yet again in his university's commencement procession. I want to throw in another pic of the back of the regalia because of its tremendously shocking color scheme. Remember, we both graduated from The University of Texas at Interregional at Austin, where the school colors are...wait for it...burnt orange and white. Yick. So, forever, he gets to wear the lovely Longhorn colors on his back when he marches. Better him than me. 5. I took this picture of David one morning when we were watching a video and talking. That is, I was talking to one of his sisters or someone and when I glanced over at Dave, he had made this tremendous and solid tower with videos. I was so astounded by it that I took his photo next to it. It may not seem like much but when I see this shot, I remember the astonishment that I felt when I saw that he'd done that without blinking an eye. What a little engineer he'll be! 6. This photo just cracks me up. Most of my friends (ahem, GINA) and family think that Zi is just a perfect angel child always. She isn't, believe me. This is Zi. The following picture was taken about a minute later and was, of course, the one that made it into my blog last year. 7. The following two pictures are of me at Laurel Court, last year. Friend Gina and I just got back from the trip to Laurel Court that happened this year as a result of the friendship of one of my quilting buddies with the owners of the estate. I took many many pictures of the house itself with it palatial appointments, but these are a couple of me pretending to be a pretentious woman of the manor-born. Doesn't sit too well on me, does it? Maybe I should have slapped some makeup on that evening. Another note is that the lighting in that place was dim at best so I had to do a lot of photo lightening on these. They look a little washed out but that's the best I could do. The first is of me sitting in a throne-like chair in the billiards room. The second is of me on the beautiful staircase. I don't like how the Corinthian orders look in this room, but it's not my house so I don't get a vote. It's neat to visit it but I always feel like I'm leaving a small museum rather than a home. 8. This is another Zi pic that just cracks me up. 9. I don't know if I already put this picture up but I don't remember having done it. This was from our trip to Florida last year. All of the children are standing in a replica of an eagle's nest. 10. I love me my summer vine-ripened tomatoes. And as an added bonus, the counter was clean for a change. 11. Can you tell that I take a lot of sleeping child photos? Of the five children, Sarah, David, and Keziah were the ones who would be moved when they were sleeping and would sleep anywhere. It was a great and grand blessing. 12. This is the very first picture I took with my new digital camera, of my very own dad, who gave it to me for my birthday. 13. Just because...

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Heard at my house today

Abby:  "Mommy?  Why do they call underwear 'linguine'?"

Too Much Fun For A Friday

Ok, you have to understand something to start. I have been in an absolutely foul mood today. This was brought on by a combination of factors, one of which is that I'm an idiot who has to go to a bridal shower tomorrow and I haven't yet bought a gift. Went to the gift venues of choice for the happy couple only to find out that 4 out of the 5 of them only featured items that you could buy online.

I very much dislike giving a bride a piece of paper that reads: "Thank you for shopping XStore! Your confirmation # is ZV83014710470000. Your merchandise should be shipped on or before the middle of next week if the day doesn't end in Y." Kinda tacky, that. Almost as tacky as the fact that I find myself trying to scrape together a cruddy little gift at the last minute. Sigh. I knew I should have knitted her a bunch of dishcloths but NOOOOOOO.

Ok, so back from the tangent. I'm in a bad mood. Sarah asks for help with her math. Oh, goodie! Just what I wanted to do on a simmering afternoon of snarkiness. Oh well, at least we were in the basement where it's cool. So we start doing the math. Well, she does the math and I tell her, "Yep, that's what I got!" because I'm too lazy to find the Solutions Manual.

Then we come to the part of the show wherein we are supposed to be finding perimeter, area, and volume of goofily shaped... shapes, just to prove how studly we are at this (that would be "not very"). Perimeter is a cinch, we both knew what the formula for the perimeter of a circle is (also, for you math and language purists, yes I know that's the circumference, but they try to confuse the issue by asking for 'perimeter', so there ). The problem was that Sarah refused to acknowledge that the same diameter-radius thingy that she used to find the circumference of the circle was the measure she needed to use, along with the Pythagorean theorem, to find the last measure she needed to find the total perimeter of this stupid figure. The way to illustrate to her that this was the exact same measure was to growl at her while pointing at the book. This worked well and had the added advantage of making us both dissolve into giggles.

Ok, the next problem that she really really needed help with was the volume of a cylinder. Sadly, while Saxon felt it necessary for her to know this measure, it did not provide her with the overt formula for this thing. No, that would be cheating. So we looked through the index, vainly attempting to find the formula for the volume of a cylinder. I thought it was area of the circle times the height (hey, it made sense to me) but I didn't want to inflict this on her if it wasn't right. We searched. We grew frustrated. I finally resorted to looking at the volume of a cone, which they had an overt formula for. Within that formula was hidden the Holy Grail of the cylinder formula. Woohoo! We were on!

(Oh, and in case you have the driving need to find the volume of a cone any time soon, the formula is 1/3 times the volume of the cylinder formed by the circular bottom and the height of said cylinder if it was indeed a cylinder rather than a cone. Oh well, Saxon explained it more succinctly even though they didn't talk about the volume of a cylinder.

So then we needed to remember how to find the area of a circle. Sarah blurted it out quickly: "Pi RSquared", which is the radius of the circle, squared, times 3.14. Y'all know that, but I have to say it because of the next part.

There is an old joke that we tell around here when we get real loopy (no, I promise this tangent is necessary to the story). It goes like this: The backwoods/hillbilly/Aggie/hick/whatever the name for someone not city-born boy goes to college, the first one in his family to do so. When he comes back home for a visit, his daddy asks him what he learned in college so far. The young man thought for a moment, then replied, "Pi r-squared."

His daddy shook his head sadly and said, "Boy, I told you college wouldn't teach ya nothin'. Pie are round...cornbread are square."

Got that? Good.

So I have to look up the area of the circle because that's the kind of careful educator I am, I wanna make sure my girl has it right before she further ingrains an incorrect formula in her brain. Sure enough, that's the correct formula and she tucks right into the problem. While her head is bowed over her paper, I whispered, "Cornbread are square," and did one of those uncontrolled dry snorts you get when you're unsuccessfully trying to hold back a laugh. She immediately burst into loud and sustained laughter, which permitted me to do the same. After doing that for a while, we had to stop so she could finish the problem.

Then I became a prophet.

I said, "One day, Sarah, you will be taking the SAT in a completely silent room and you'll get a question wherein you'll need to find the area of a circle and you'll remember 'Cornbread are square' and you'll snort and laugh so loudly that they'll kick you out." We laughed about that again, after which Sarah asked me what the SAT was and I answered her.

She had looked down at the next problem and I had gone on to muse about why colleges in this area use the ACT rather than the SAT and a quiet voice answered, "Will they let me take the test more than once?" This visibly confused me and she added, "You know, when they kick me out the first time."

Oh my. It's good to have a belly laugh now and then but twice in one half-hour will put me under the ground.