This Picture Speaks For Itself

Best. Relief. Society. Activity. Ever.

We have a games activity group that gets together to play games. Board games, whatever.

Tonight we played Rock Band. And I was awesome.

It was so much fun. I Rocked!

Tutoring Update

Miss A., the girl I tutor in Chemistry, just called me to let me know that she got an 86 on her stoichiometry test. Woohoo! She said she would have gotten in the 90's except she made some calculator errors. It happens. She said her teacher said she went too fast, but her work was incredible! That's fantastic. I'm so happy.

A Proud Moment

As some of you know, I'm tutoring a high school student in Chemistry this year. She's not the most scientifically minded individual, and this kind of stuff does not come to her easily. She definitely struggles, and she does have to work hard.

We're doing Stoichometry, which is taking a whole bunch of skills that she's learned up until now and combining them and mixing them up. Balancing equations, significant figures, atomic mass, molar mass, moles, molar volumes, unit conversions, etc., etc.

Anyway, we met yesterday and it just wasn't going well. We worked until she was picked up and I told her that I'd meet with her while Meghan had her piano lesson the next day (today). Apparently, she went after school for more help from her teacher, and by the time I met with her this afternoon, she actually had the whole thing down!

I made up a few practice problems, which she flew through. Then I made it a little harder by adding a couple of extra factors to consider and she just laughed and did it right off!

I was amazed. I'm really proud of her. She was so happy. She called up one of her friends to come over and study with her because her friend is struggling and she knew she could teach it to her. They have a little test tomorrow with ten problems. I'm sure she'll be able to do it!

This just makes me happy. If you can master stoichiometry, you can pretty much do anything in chemistry. She might just pull off an A this semester! Next semester we do gas laws and such, so I anticipate some difficulties there, but I really feel we've gotten over the biggest hurdle.

Whew!

A Nice Little Hello

So, I guess a few people have found my blog. Hello to you. I've mostly been writing to myself, so don't expect too much out of my blog. It is what it is.

Pea Soup Fog

It was foggy all day today. Usually the sun comes out and the fog burns off. Today it just hovered all day. It was a soggy day with the mist just hanging around and dripping off of the trees. So annoying. Everything is wet and drippy. Not wet like when it rains and there's enough water for the water to sheet off, but everything is coated in a very fine, fine mist.

My tomatoes will probably rot now. It's just that time of the year. Tomorrow I'll go out and pull off any that look like they'll make it. As soon as I can after that, I'll pull up the plants. Poor tomatoes.

Some of the little groundcover plants around the pool equipment have started to go moldy. I hate that. I'm not sure if a good hot sunny day will take care of it, or if it's something more serious.

Here's hoping for some sun tomorrow!

Home Improvement Day

Today I did some work around the house. John put up Christmas lights this weekend, which said on the box to only put three sets together. He put four. There is a little fuse inside the plug of each one and it keeps blowing out. I replaced it once, but I'm going to have to split them and use another extension cord. I put them on a timer so they'll automatically come on and go off, but since they keep blowing the fuse, they don't really need the timer. Tomorrow I'll add the extra extension cord and replace the fuse again.

Then I put weatherstripping around the front door. It's the most leaky door ever. I pulled off the old, worn, useless stripping and put in new. Some spots needed a double thickness. Now the front door is pretty tight and hard to open. Along the bottom I put in a new sweep and discovered that the old one had been cut along the bottom edge, which is why it didn't work. Why they didn't just attach it higher, I will never know. The new one slides nicely along the threshold and then-pop, off the end of it, leaving a nice little gap. I need to get the kind that runs along the underside edge of the door to get a proper seal. I also made some progress toward sealing off the gap between the stationary part of the sliding glass doors and the wall. Big huge gap there. I found some foamy rope that I could stuff in there. I'll caulk around it and that should do the trick.

What we really need to do is replace the whole door. I think we'd save enough in utility bills to pay for the thing in one winter!

Figured out an excellent solution for the Squig's Christmas present. With Sam's big fancy present I won at the raffle, we have the dilemma of wanting to get the other two something nice, but obviously can't afford to spend what his present is worth. You'll just have to wait until Christmas to hear what we figured out. It's perfect and she'll be happy.