Wow! Science

So everyone who reads my blog (all 3 of you) know that I've gone back to school this semester to finally finish. It's been a lot of work, but it's also been really great. I wasn't ready 15 years ago, but now I'm actually happy about learning.

so with that!

I'm taking Environmental Science, which I highly suggest, and the last two chapters have been about water. That most important thing we all need to survive.

We're talking about pollution, fishing and over fishing, and the article I chose to focus on, the lack of access to water for drinking and hygiene in lesser developed countries.

Reading about this, I was reminded of a girl scout Journey, Wow! Wonders of Water, that our Brownie troop did 2 years ago. the journey teaches the girls about the water cycle (check), pollution (check) and how they can help, before putting them out into the world to ACTUALLY help.

Here in Florida, so surrounded by water as we are, this is REALLY important information.

So for my assignment for my class, I wrote, drew and colored a comic book to go along with this Journey.

I'm posting it here for Girl scouts, homeschoolers, and anyone who has a child around 7 to 9 years old who is really interested in making a different.

Growing up

When you become a parent, you resolve to give your kids the things you never had. I'm pretty sure all new parents think it at some point, especially during the pregnancy, before you realize, you never had a lot of those things because they are expensive.

I stopped to think last night, I also want my kids to have the things I DID have. I had friends, I had sleepovers. I had Girl Scout camp and band and jrotc. I was free to pursue my interests and hobbies. And my mom never told me no.

I mean, of course she told me "no". But when I wanted to be a Girl Scout, she signed me up, and dropped me off for meetings, and was even cookie mom every year I was a scout. 

When I was in band, she found a way to get me a flute. She put up with my terrible skills while I practiced at home, she came to every single concert and competition. 

And when I joined JROTC, she supported that too. She paid for my uniform, my dues, picked me up from practice every day. And chaperoned our out of town field meets. 

When I took a photography class with a lab, my mom found a way for me to have a camera. When I played in a metal band, she helped me get my bass guitar. 

My mother never stunted my creativity. Or my interests.

I want to be that mom.

Kaeley has a wonderful opportunity to be in band in 4th grade. She got fitted for an instrument yesterday and got picked as a clarinet. I am super proud. Now to find a clarinet.

Whoops - July Reading List

July 
6.46 Unbound - Jim C Hines (7/24) library 5 Stars 
5.45 He’s My Only Vampire - Aya Shouoto (7/?) borrow/Shellie 2 Stars 
4. 44 Indian Summer - Aaron Mahnke (7/?) own/nook 4 Stars 
3.43 The Story of Owen - E.K. Johnson (7/?) library 2 stars 
2.42 Island of the Blue Dolphins - Scott O’Dell (7/?) own reread 5 stars 
1.41 The Wrath & The Dawn - Renee Ahdieh (7/1) library 5 stars

seriously?!! how did i forget this? well, kaeley was on a trip out of state, connor was being a handful. I missed my girl, we'll blame it on that.

As you can see i don't have exact finish dates for july. because i'm a slacker. 

Unbound. this series i suggest to everyone who reads. it's a series of books about BOOK MAGIC. like, how awesome is that?

He's my only vampire was bad. like, why did i read this bad. like, i want that hour of my life back bad. 

Indian Summer. Ok, first off, i love Aaron Mahnke. I love his Lore podcast, it's my favorite and i gobble it down every two weeks when it's released. So to support him, i bought his books (except the newest one, i haven't gotten it yet). This one was a little slow, and a bit predictable. but i think that's only because this is a genre i read all the time. It was still enjoyable. and i read the entire thing in his voice. Really, go download the 2nd episode of the Lore Podcast from iTunes. you'll understand what i mean.

the story of owen...dragons. in canada. i didn't love it

Island of the blue dolphin was a re-read with kaeley for her summer reading program. 

The Wrath and the Dawn. I can't say enough good things about this book. it's a retelling of 1001 Arabian Nights. I cannot WAIT for the second one. 

August Reading List

August 
3.49 Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor (8/25) free/library 5 stars 
2.48 Dog Training for Dummies - Jack Volhard (8/16) free/library 3 stars 
1.47 Dragonbane - Kenyon (8/16) free/library 5 stars

so yeah, not much recreational reading time right now. I started back at college in August, and in all the prep and cramming for the placement tests, i haven't had much reading time for ME.

I'm totally counting my textbooks towards my totals.

Dragonbane and Days of Blood and Starlight were both excellent reads. Kenyon is awesome. I've read bad things about the final book in the Laini Taylor series. and i'm debating reading it. I'd rather stop now than read a heartbreaking ending i think. which i know, makes me lame. 

but i'm the chick who refuses to read any more of the Kim Harrison Witch series because i don't want one of my favorite characters to die. if i don't read it, it won't happen! 

Open For Business!

I opened my Etsy shop!

Paula's Miscellany. I'm currently selling my Standard Size Midori insert printables, i'll be adding some Cahier size ones soon, and some new standard size ones. Feel free to message me with suggestions.

here is a preview!

 

Page on a day, with water, mood and weather tracker.

 Reading Log, simple, rate your own way, perfect for book clubs.

Week on Two Pages, with daily water tracker. all are undated.

This is a bit of a niche item, it's a Hurricane Tracking log. the kit includes printables for both East and West coast, a blank supply list and the National Hurricane Center's suggested supply list.

As thanks for reading my blog, and checking this out, use the coupon code Back2School until August 31, 2015 for 10% off!

Rabbit Hole

This is my new Fauxdori by Selwynn's Traveler on Etsy. Isn't it purty?!

These are the inserts I designed, printed, and bound. I'll be putting the printables for sale on etsy in my shop by the end of the month. 

And I go back to school August 21st!!  I'm so excited. I'll be taking Intro to Education, Environmental Science and Prep Algebra. I got a pill grant so I'm really excited.

Craft Time!

I've been paying more attention to my planner and all the fun things that can go into it. Right now I'm carrying the small size PlanAhead ring planner, it's the same size as a Personal Filofax, but not as pretty.

I tried dressing it up with duct tape, it didn't go well. So it's plain black. I also have to fill in my own dates, so it's only filled out until December. I have hopes that I'll get a new, pretty planner for Christmas. And then Kae can have this one.

I also discovered Midori and Fauxdori planners. And I want one. With printables, they're so customizable. And I've been spending much time on etsy deciding what I need. In the meantime o thought. I can make one!

Well, sorta.

I started with pink and black felt I already had in my craft stuff, and glued it together with spray on glue.

It's Kae's, pink and black with pink elastic and a cupcake. 

And then I busted out some faux leather. 

It didn't turn out as well. 

I sewed a couple blank inserts for Kae 

 Which she's using to keep notes for a story she wants to write. She took notes while I told her about Japan's involent in WW2. 

I've decided I'll buy my fauxdori covers, and have 2 in my etsy shopping cart that I can't decide between. 

June Reading List

June
9.40 Dead Ice - Laurell K Hamilton (6/28) library 4 stars
8.39 Vampire Mistress - Joey Hill (6/?) own 1 star
7.38 Velvet Haven - Sophie Renwick (6/?) own 4 stars
6.37 Sins of the Heart - Eve Silver (6/11) own 5 stars
5.36 reality is Broken - Jane McGonigal (6/10) library 2 stars
4.35 what your 4th grader should know - e.d. Hirsch, jr (6/9) library 4 stars
3.34 House of Leaves - Mark Danielewski (6/9) library - 5 stars
2.33 Harry Potter azkaban - Rowling (6/7) re-read/own
1.32 The Girl at Midnight - Melissa Grey (6/6) library 5 stars


of all the books i read this month that i owned, only one of them "Sins of the Heart" was any good. They're all getting traded in to the used book store for credit and new books.

the two non-fiction were..alright. Reality is Broken was boring to start, and very pretentious. What your 4th grader should know was alright, it was more for Kae to read than me, and we'll revisit it at the end of her 4th grade school year.

The Girl at Midnight and House of Leaves were the favorites. House of Leaves is horror, and very disjointed, which adds so much to the actual fear of it. "That suggests that what you fear most, is fear itself. And that is Very Wise." - Remus Lupin.

Well

We got a dog..

This is Dyson. He's a year old Hound/Lab mix that we got from Animal Control. 

He was already fixed, came with his shots and chipped. For $15. 

He and Connor get along really well.

Kae is getting there. She's still kinda scared of him.

Look at that face.

Oh Jeez it's back

The pit...

We went backwards to the pit.

It's become a running joke with our group, a game of "would your rather" and the other is always "cross the pit."

Would you rather have dinner with your in-laws OR cross the pit.

Would you rather potty train a toddler and a puppy OR cross the pit.

The pit.

 At least I didn't get stuck this time. I rolled an 18 of 20 and strutted my tiefling self right over. 

We found out that every time we don't push forward to the next room, we get jumped by more Kobalds. Not looking forward to next week. Maybe the DM will take pity on us. I mean, we retreated to the pit.

Desk demon

Saturday night my desk broke. The keyboard tray fell off. I was leaning on it ::shrug::

Then Sunday night, while we were sleeping the whole thing collapsed. La la la zzz zzz zzz crash! Sh*t! Dafuq was that?! 

So today the kids and I went to ikea. 

I got a bookshelf, and a laptop stand. Now I just need to find a chair, and I'll have a cozy reading/knitting/computing corner. 

The Pit

Our Dungeon Master, Nyomia, is one of the nicest people. I'm sure she expected us to figure out the pit, and finish the whole encounter in like, 2 hours.

Nope.

That's me! Hanging from the edge, with my Raven laughing at me, and the elves face palming. 3 hours and we got across a 10 foot chasm.

We're special

May reading list

May 
3.31 10 best college majors for your personality (5/30) library 5 stars 
2.30 Skirt a Day - Nicole Smith (5/?) library 3 stars 
1.29 The Dead Travel Fast - Eric Nuzum (5/?) library 5 stars

I didn't read much last month. I got distracted by video game lol

Forgotten Realms

So the DnD campaign we're running is Forgotten Realms. Which i'd heard of but couldn't place, because the universe is so huge it's hard to remember everything.

I'd read the first couple Dragonlance books, and played a few video games set in the DnD universe. And that's where stuff started to make sense. 

baldur's gate, neverwinter nights, and the neverwinter mmo are all in this world. And the events of the neverwinter mmo follow the main story exactly, if you bother to read the quests! So I wasn't completely lost. Hurray!

Typically when you play one of the games, you start in a city, you. Wander into the local tavern

And are recruited for a mission by...someone. The captain of the guard, a wanted poster, a drunken brawl, something.

You wander out and bam! You get jumped.

I called this one early on, I said, leaving this tavern will bring kobalds. And sure enough. Our first encounter was a small band of kobalds.

Kobalds are stupid, and smelly. They speak draconic, but act like rabid rats. 

We had 8 minions (1 hp) with spears, and 3 regular non-minions with crossbows. 

Our healer got stinky, the rogue got glued to the ground, the other Mage caught fire. 

I hid behind a tree, flanked them, and blasted 3 of 4 minions. 

Shhhh you can't see me.

All in all it was a lot of fun. We won the day, found some silver. And discovered the dwarven mine shaft we were looking for. 

I had fun. Our DM is very forgiving of my newbness, she's really happy to answer all my questions, and understand that I don't really "get" it yet. This isn't like mmo's. The dice are confusing, and I had to be reminded a lot which I needed to roll. And math. So.much.math.

Role playing out loud is also harder for me. I'm pretty social, and have no problems being a total geek, and in that regard i'm among my kindred, on the other hand, I don't know my character well enough to BE her.

Do I see myself continuing with this? Yes, absolutely. I'd love to make an all girl game with my friends and hang out and have hard cider and kill dragons. 

Stay tuned until next week ;)

New venture

So I'll be blogging a little (maybe a lot) about a new past time for me. 

I joined an online community a while back called Gaming Mommies. It's mostly on Facebook, but i can link groups later, or you can google-fu. There are sub groups for just about anything your geeky mommy heart desires. I'm in :

- Pokemon

- Anime

- Archeage

- Crafty

- Reading

- Dungeons and Dragons

The last one, D&D, is new to me. I've been around it second hand since I was a kid. Friends older brothers played, tried to get us to play, there was math. We went outside instead.

My beast plays in a bi-weekly Saturday group of 4-6, right now they're running Star Wars. The ladies wrangle the kids instead of playing. I'm sure we could if we wanted, but the children might kill each other.

So Saturday night we had a character creation party. Online. Via Ventrilo. It took forever.

I'm now the proud owner of a Tiefling Witch named Numinya.

With a raven familiar named Orrin

Hiiiii

I'll post our first game session opinions tomorrow 😉

Metro Zoo

So in the beginning g of April we went to the Miami Zoo. I know, I'm late. I didn't forget about my blog. I'm just lazy

I always love these viewing areas. This is part of the Asian aviary exhibit 

The zoo was doing a huge thing on dinosaurs, great big animatronic dinosaurs everywhere

Connor found a his size one

This crazy was up in a tree, I thought it was a chimp nest until it started movie no

I found skunk ape!

He had to have his picture taken with the turtle 

Ross made a new friend

Emu are nasty, there was one that followed us around the pen, eyeballing kaeley

I've been freaking out people on Facebook with this picture for weeks. A Brazilian bird eating spider. It was as big as my face.

Elephant butt! 

April Reading List

April
6. 28 - Jason - Laurell K Hamilton (4/26) $$/Nook - 2 Stars
5.27 - Dead City - Joe McKinney (4/20) free/library - 5 Stars
4.26 - Ready Player One - Ernest Cline (4/17) free/library - 5 Stars!!!!
3.25 - Nightlife - Rob Thurman (4/14) - free/own - 4 Stars
2.24 - Still Alice - Lisa Genova (4/10) - free/library - 3 stars
1.23 - The Shadows - JR. Ward (4/9) free/library - 5 Stars!!!


let's see

The Shadows was excellent, I'm pretty much always happy with the Warden. I'm SO excited for the spin off series, and the next main BDB book will be The Beast, so we're revising our friends from the beginning (Wrath, then Rhage, so i guess Z will be next).

Still Alice, this one was hard for me. i enjoyed it to the point where it gave me some insight to Burdette. but it wasn't the most well written book. i'm sure i'll enjoy the movie more when i get around to watching it.

Nightlife, I like Cal, i like his brother. I enjoyed the whole premise. but i'm not really sure if i'll find the next one.

Ready Player One. Read this book..now, go do it now. pull up ibooks, get on your kindle, your nook. put it on hold at the library. just go. no...i'll give you a minute.. you back? ok. This books was excellent. probably my absolute favorite read of the month. it's video games, books, comics, pop culture. all from the 80's. i got all the references. but what i really loved, more than anything, was the message. "go fix the world, instead of living in social media, go fix your life, instead of creating a fake one online." I can.not.wait. for his next book, Armada. it's The Last Starfighter meets Galaga.

Dead City. This book was also really good. It's what The Walking Dead tv show could have been. Had Rick not been in a coma to miss the start of the zombie apocalypse, the confusion. our main character is a cop, on the front lines of the start, and so much of it is "well, these are PEOPLE...are they sick? are they dead? do we shoot them? omg they're eating other people." it was surreal, and terrifying. our MC is a parent, i literally felt his fear and frustration of not being able to get to his family, to his baby son. there were parts that made me sick to my stomach with parent-fear. and i loved it. I'll be starting the next one Apocalypse of the Dead in just a couple days.

Jason...oh Jason..Laurell...really? let's put this out here right now, this is straight up smut. there is nothing, and i mean literally, nothing else to this particular book. at least with Micah there was a point. but no, Jason has no point except group sex. It's not BAD. i'll put that out there too, i have no problem with it. and honestly i LIKED that she went over all Anita's relationship tangles in the beginning. it was a good refresher of who everyone is to her before Dead Ice comes out (august i think). I loved the Anita books in the beginning, probably books 1-6, i'll even go so far as to say books 1-8. then she just lost it. LKH went through a nasty divorce, and her characters changed. she got remarried, they changed. she got into a poly relationship, so did Anita. and that's ok, really, because her art imitates her life. If you don't like that, don't read them. but, BUT. she lost her continuity. we started drowning in HUGE lake sized plot holes. LKH has since gotten a new editor to put her back on track. she's killed off people who didn't need to be there to keep the story good, and the issues are going back to "preternatural case of the week" rather than, what big evil bad vampire do i have to kill, again. because it's the same one, over and over. but, didn't we already kill you in the last book?! yup.

I'm currently reading
The Maze Runner
The Dead Travel Fast
Apocalypse of the Dead

March Book List

March
4.22 - The Walking Dead vol 2 - Robert Kirkman (3/30) - library - 4 Stars
3.21 - Dead Heat - Patricia Briggs (3/20) - library - 5 Stars!!!!
2.20 - Trigger Warning - Neil Gaiman (3/5) - library - 5 Stars
1.19 - One Yard Wonders - Rebecca Yaker (3/2) - library - 4 stars


favorite this month was Dead Heat. I love Patricia Briggs, and i LOVE her urban fantasy series (her high fantasy i've never read, but i'm sure it's excellent). This book is an Alpha and Omega book with Anna and Charles, and i think we're finally catching up time-wise to the main series with Mercy. though, she could just keep writing A&O books until she catches up....i'd be ok with that....

i didn't have a least favorite, Trigger Warning was excellent, as usual for Mr Gaiman, i've yet to dislike something by him, even the Sandman comics are fantastic.

speaking of comics, i've been reading the Walking Dead comic, and trying not to pass the show, because i like them as separate entities. volume two is pretty much entirely the prison. i do see how much they left out of the show though, and what's changed, and that's fun.

i'm behind on my reading goal for the year by 2 books, so i'll need to pick up my pace this month. and read more crap from my shelves, and less from the library (As i look at the two books i checked out on monday sitting on my desk....)

My coat

Well, my sewing adventure went pffffft

I finished my turkish vest. But it doesn't fit. I measured a billion times, and it ended up too small. Simplicity patterns either run really small, or my mom the advanced seamer measured wrong.

Disappointment from my coat aside, I also made a windmill bag. And I'm very happy with how that turned out. I'm looking around for another easy project I can make for me. I have a whole pinterest board started.

O M G

How could I forget to post about Connor's birthday?!?!?!

Buddy got his new big boy bed from Grandma Debbie

We went to cartoon cuts to get another haircut. Pretty sure they gave me back the wrong kid. That is not my baby

We played in the kids area at the Wellington mall

Loves his new baby Conner

And the train set that has kept him busy for literally a month. Best.gift.ever.