Saturday, February 2, 2013

Randomday: Candlemas

Today is Groundhog's Day in the midwest, and Candlemas in some, more liturgical, Christian traditions.  I hasten to stress I am not part of those liturgical traditions, but I was thinking about my mother, who passed away on this day 9 years ago, and how she always liked to burn candles.  Some of my earliest childhood memories involved her and the candles she bought at the Wicked Wick in New Mexico on our summer trips out there.  It always seemed to cheer the house up on a gloomy day.

Today was a pretty day in the Northwest.  So was yesterday.  When I stepped out of my classroom after noon and grading 2 classes worth of quizzes, I was greeted by an almost deafening chorus from the woods behind the school... what sounded like millions of frogs.  Apparently they knew that sunny days don't come that often in Washington, and were out to seize the day and woo all the pretty female frogs and make lots of little tadpoles.  So that next February the frog chorus will be even more deafening.

Tertia has the opportunity to be on the girls' bowling team for her school.  I spent yesterday evening filling out about 20 pages of athletic release forms, and this morning going around to the doctor's office to drop the sports physical form off and the cobbler shop to see if we can turn her spare shoes into bowling shoes. I had never given any thought to which foot is her bowling foot before, and I'm still not sure it really matters.  What I'm a little more worried about is the fact that she can't tie her shoelaces.

My sister shared the viral a capella tribute to John Williams with me today, prompting me to realize that I have been neglecting Tertia and Quarta's education.  I asked Quarta if she had ever seen the Star Wars movies, and she said, "Just the last three."  I probed further to try to figure out which last three that was... the first last three, or the original last three.  She wasn't sure, it was so long ago.  Even more disturbing, she was hazy about who Han Solo is.  This must be remedied.  We started this evening.  Unfortunately, Steve insisted we start with Episode 1.  I mean, it's not that unfortunate, I guess.  Quarta actually remembers many of the characters in a general way.  She enjoyed Jar-Jar a little too much.  How will it warp a young  mind if she encounters Jar-Jar Binks before Han Solo?  I hope it will be okay.

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