Getting Near the End

Peter came home from his first training weekend with the National Guard with this stylish haircut.  It accentuates the scars on his head from his adventurous childhood.  I took him to get his i.d. card made this week, which is not as flattering a picture as this one.  They told him not to smile, that the sergeants tease you mercilessly if you smile, with the end result being that his i.d. card is... not his best picture.  I prefer when he smiles, but maybe that's just me, and I have never tried to be a drill sergeant.  He also gave his Junior thesis presentation today, and is very glad to have that over with.  He did a fantastic job, on the theme of leadership, and did not look nervous at all.

Daniel is working this week at a temporary job that gives him some experience with public transportation into Portland.

Tertia is in the midst of practices for her school's production of Snow White, in which she will play the part of a maid at the castle.  We took her this week to visit her high school for next year, and she signed up for the bowling team and the color guard (Peter's reaction: "Does this mean I can't make fun of the color guard anymore?")  We'll see if she actually does all the activities she'd like to.  If I had my way, all my children would be recluses.  I am not so sold on the American minivan Mom role at the moment.

Quarta received a perfect score on the National Latin Exam Intro level this year, which comes with a letter of commendation for her from the organization.  I'm just a little bit proud of her for achieving this honor!

The school year is grinding us all down, not so slowly but very surely.  I am neck deep in grading the Dies Irae, part 2 of 3.  It is that quirky dark sense of humor that we Latin teachers have that makes me assign the 18 verses of the Dies Irae in the last quarter of the 7th grade year.  I have a class that appreciates such things this year, at least a little bit.  Dividing it into bite-size chunks helps them, but especially me, with the grading.  And here is a link to a fascinating bit of musical history regarding that medieval hymn.  I bet you will be surprised at all the places it shows up in modern movies.

Tomorrow I give my classes their pretest for the final exam: this is a quiz that contains two pages of information from the final exam, and if they get a B+ or better on that material, they do not have to take that portion of the test next week.  In 8th grade we finished our last required Caesar reading and we're trying to finish up the story of Odysseus.  In 7th grade history today we talked about the Fall of Rome.  I guess the end of the school year must be really close.  But all I can feel is utter exhaustion.