Photos with My Husband

Pre-1900 Book

I know you've all been wondering when I'd get around to this one. I must say, it was tough. I believe that, no matter how "timeless" the story, books were written at a certain time, for a certain audience. There's no way the author of Gilgamesh would know what life would be like today and how we'd want to be entertained. Sure, the story might be timeless, but the writing style of old books bothers me. I clearly didn't take this into account when making this goal.

Anyway, I decided on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Bad decision. The book might as well have been called "How To Build a Victorian-Era Submarine and Explain How It Works in the Most Boring Way Ever." I took me weeks to read the first hundred or so pages. I decided to switch books right before Christmas. There was no way I was finishing The Worst Book Ever before the end of the year. I thought children's literature might be easier, so I chose Alice In Wonderland.

This book, I liked. So much word play. I took me a couple of days to read, but mostly because I was lazy about reading.

December Mail

Holiday cards are out! Happy Holidays!

December Volunteering

This weekend, I volunteered twice. The first was with One Brick at Holly Nights at Pennsbury Manor. This was my first One Brick event last year, and I had fun handing out hot cider to people who then went wassailing. This year, however, the split us up a bit and most of us were candle watchers. I was teamed up with someone else from One Brick and we spent about 2.5 hours walking through the kitchen house making sure people weren't too close to the candles and that the candles didn't need to be changed. (Pennsbury Manor is where William Penn lived, so there's not electricity, candles were the only way to see.) Not as good as last year, I have to say, but I still had fun.

Then, a mere 12 hours after I finished at Holly Nights, I was at St. James School for their community work day. St. James School is a private school for low income middle schoolers. They're in their second year and are opening a classroom a year. Right now they have fifth and sixth graders. It'll eventually be fifth through eighth. They had a pipe burst earlier in the week and it leaked onto their donated books that they hadn't sorted yet. So, we went through the books and threw out (I know, I was sad, too) the books that weren't salvageable. It was actually pretty quick work, so we were then tasked with sorting by what books would be good for middle schoolers. A lot of people seemed to just drop off old books of theirs, happy to get rid of them, without a thought for the audience. We had books that were for much younger children, books for adults, and encyclopedias from 1985. A word to the wise, children aren't going to be helped by books that think the USSR is a world power. I know throwing out books is hard, but no one wants those.

November Volunteering

Illness prohibited me from volunteering outside the home. I was scheduled to go to Cradles to Crayons, but I was pretty certain I was dying (or had a pretty bad head cold and could barely get through work). Luckily, I've recently taken up the task of writing One Brick Philadelphia's newsletter. So, I'm going to have to count the time I spend writing up articles and trying to get the program to work on my ancient macbook as my volunteering. You should probably sign up for One Brick Philadelphia and get my awesome newsletter. Oh, you'll also get invites to various volunteering opportunities in the Philadelphia region, blah, blah blah. Mostly the newsletter. Though you'll probably be inspired to volunteer. Because I'm such a good writer. As displayed on my blog. So you already know that.

November Mail

Sent a sympathy card.

Photos

 With my husband

 Not all that far up Mount Lemmon

San Xavier Mission