This and That

 Katie has taken to prealgebra like a.... well, more like a rock to water than a duck, let's say. Math can get pretty gruesome here. And it also tends to take up more of our day than you would believe. But today I got small reprieve and ray of sunshine -- Travis stepped in, unasked, and did his best to make the mysteries of percents and fractions less mystifying.

After I checked her work (today's assignment was to re-watch the videos and fix yesterday's work -- I'm not actually a brutal taskmaster), it turned out that, despite a lot of laughter and what seemed like some "ah-ha" moments, she still doesn't get it. But I got a kick out of seeing them working together, and maybe tomorrow she'll get it!

Today was brutally windy and cold, but yesterday was quite lovely and I went for a walk with my parents.

Here's the view from the summit.

And another view. Because it was such a pretty day!

And, the really exciting news is... I finished Paradise tonight!!!! I read (well, actually, listened to) Clive James's translation of The Divine Comedy in December, and at that point I enjoyed Inferno and Purgatory but found Paradise a tough nut. Still, it was my first time through, and I had no footnotes, so I assumed that on a second reading I would get more out of it. And I Did. It really is great. But.... not exactly edge-of-your-seat excitement. And Mark Musa's footnotes, while certainly not excessive or very scholarly, are extensive. Pretty typically, I think, there are ten pages of footnotes for each five pages of poem. But I figured that I might as well do the thing right, so I read them all. Anyway, as I said, it's a great poem. Paradise bogged down quite a bit in the middle, but it finished beautifully.

And it was really neat yesterday when our art history lecture (having finished the Dante lectures, we're now back to The History of European Art) was all about Abrogio Lorenzetti's The Effects of Good Government. Lorenzetti was a painter in Siena, which is just down the road from Florence, Dante's hometown. And apparently good government was a topic of interest to more people than just our dear Dante. I love it when things connect!

The cold weather is playing havoc, though, with my enjoyment of H.M.S. Surprise. I am listening to this one (Patrick Tull does the voices amazingly well), and the freezing cold weather is playing merry hell with my walking time, which is also my audio book time. Today poor Stephen Maturin had just proposed to wretched Diana Villiers, and her sugar daddy had just walked in -- a deliciously awkward moment -- when I realized that the blasts of freezing wind had become so bitter that I could no longer feel my feet. I may have to listen a bit in bed tonight after the lights are out!

Oh, and, finally, this...


Katie was working on her Elizabeth Tudor paper tonight and went googling for the dates of Henry VIII's wedding to Katherine Parr and death. And she found this video, which is of Ed's very favorite (and only) song about Henry VIII. I think it's funny!