Happy As Kings

Homeschooling as a Form of Child Abuse

I'm glad I discovered that making people angry is the point of the blog with the above title as a post.  Now I needn't reply.  If you want to give the blog traffic, Google will take you there.

I'm also glad I never had to put up with that teaching style ... and I was in the Army.

Involuntary tweeting

I have two email addresses with two Twitter accounts attached to them.  The trouble with this is that I have never registered with Twitter.

The first Twitter account appeared about a year and a half ago.  My main email address received a notice that a Twitter account had been established for a name I didn't recognize, other than it being a recognizable first name and last name.  I made a futile attempt to cancel the Twitter account, but from what I found, once a Twitter account is established, it can't be disestablished.  This may be incorrect but, after an hour or so of searching using both the Twitter site and Google, I was unable to find cancellation information.  I can't tell if this was because there is no information to find, or if I didn't hit on the right combination of search terms to disclose the secret.

Since I could not zap the Twitter account into nothingness, I changed the Twitter password, and when I last checked, Twitter suspended the account, whether from disuse or from something else about which I know nothing.  The downside for me is that if I ever wish to have a Twitter account with the information about followers and such going to my main email address, I can't do it because the email address is now tied to the bogus Twitter account.

Now shift to an alternate email address, one that I have not used in a while.  I opened up this alternate address the other day.  Lo and behold, what to my wondering eyes, and would ya believe it, I had another Twitter account.  What are the odds? This account even had 175 (now 176) followers!  All without having tweeted a word.

Since I'd been twice-gifted with Twitter accounts, I thought that perhaps the cybergods were trying to maybe, like, send me a message?  "You Need To Tweet!"   This time I decided to play along.  I changed the Twitter account password, of course, and have "tweeted" three times:  once about what happened (involuntarily joining the Twitterati), once about being irritated by it (what good's an account if you can't vent?), and once with a homeschooling URL (may as well make it relevant). Who knows, maybe someday I'll want a Twitter account of my very own, and not one that has been thrust upon me.  I could use this second involuntary account for practice.  This morning, though, when I tried to log in (still playing along), my password didn't work -- three times my password didn't work, and since I'd copied & pasted it, it wasn't as if I'd mistyped.  Had someone hacked my hack?  The nerve!

I'm still in the dark about the reason for registering an account to an email address that you can't access -- and yes, I did change the email address's password, and no, it isn't the same as the password for any other address I have, and yes, I've re-changed the Twitter account password, and no, it isn't "password."  My writing talent may be limited, but I have a flair for inventing passwords, or I used to.  This Twitter episode may mean I will be humbled concerning my talent for password production.

I'll be keeping an eye on the Twitter account, and if you want to follow along to see whether it gets hacked again - if that is what happened - I believe you can do it by finding "@MilitaryHomesch" on Twitter.

Eight Things About Me

I caught this at Natalie's on a fly-by.

The rules are simple…Each player lists 8 facts/habits about themselves. The rules of the game are posted at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed. At the end of the post, the player then tags 8 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog.

Eight Things About Me:

1.  My family is military, and not just one or two: 

• 7th & 6th great grandfathers in the American Revolution ... on 'our' side
• great-grandfather in the Civil War (North)
• alleged connection to Col. Bonham at the Alamo
• grandfather was in WWI (the Somme)
• Dad was career military and one of the last of the real, live horse cavalry
• Mom was a WAC (in China when the Red Army took over)
• her brother was in the Army and Navy
• their first cousins were in the Air Force as airmen and WAFs
• I was a WAC
• my cousin was wounded -- forever -- in Vietnam
• my husband was career Army
• two of his brothers were Marines
• his dad was airborne infantry at the Battle of the Bulge
• my father-in-law's 2nd wife was a WAC
• my brother was in the Navy
• my sister was a WAF
• her husband was career Air Force
• my eldest son was in the first Gulf War.

I think that's it.

2.  I lived about half my life outside the United States (always on the Atlantic side -- never did cross the Pacific).

3.  I take lots of photographs.

Tuna in the Aquarium in Bermuda.

 

Bearby waiting to leave in the car.

Me on my bike -- on a proper German bike path.

Die Prinzessin behind the Belgian curtains.

The family looking out the clock at the top of the D'Orsay museum in Paris.

La Belgienne sitting in the American window.

4.  I have lots of books.

5.  I can say "the lady eats the apple" in five languages.  (English, German, French, Mandarin Chinese and Spanish -- can't say anything else reliably except in German, but I can say that sentence)

6.  I have forgotten every. last. syllable. of Czech that I spent three months learning for a weekend in Prague including "the lady eats the apple."  (I used the same company for all the language courses, hence the ubiquity of the sentence.)

7.  Despite being 'mostly German,' I have been asked if I am a "swarthy" nationality no matter where I go.

• black in Bermuda
• Mexican in Arizona
• Iranian in Germany
• Indian in South Dakota
• Yugoslavian in Germany
• Greek in an airport in Belgium
• Italian in New York and many other places
• Puerto Rican at an Army service club in Alabama
• "Mex" in an Air Force nursery (what we'd now call a daycare center) by another kid

8.  If we "are what we eat," I'm tea.

Now to find people to tag:

One Live Momma, Daryl, Chris, JJ, Dana, Scott, Susan,

and Judy? (although "8 things about me doesn't really come under the heading of "information you need to know before you consent" to be governed)

Testing, testing [blows in microphone]

Download DS-10052.wav

Well, so far the file's sitting on the Compose a New Post page . . . will it publish?

And after this I really must get on with reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory onto the recorder for the grandkiddies, or do housework, or something useful other than playing with all the toys.

Mutual admiration society

Thank you to Helen Hegener of Home Education Magazine.  I didn't know she was a funny-papers-fan, too.  And, to let her know, HEM is my favorite homeschooling magazine.

I've collected comics for years, although 'the collection' isn't organized, or even in one place.  One batch from the early '70s is in a small photo album, others are pasted into albums with photos taken at the same chronological time, and others are loose.

The current favorites are taped onto the closet doors in the kitchen.  The perennial favorite is brown and curling at the edges.

The links to online comic strips are in the left navigation bar, waaaaay down at the bottom (no clue as to how the blog program decides where these things go).

See you in the funny papers!  (an old-time phrase that I've never understood)

Doris's Diary

Link: Doris's Diary.

What must a Chinese keyboard look like?

Why, thank you!

Thanks to Izzy for the kind mention.  I didn't know she was reading along.

Playing with the new toys

Hmmmm, so easy to find a new distraction.  Clicky-clicky here, clicky-clicky there, and 'Viola!' (since I do 'garden' better than I do French) the cash keeps the economy in motion as the grains of sand trickle through the hourglass.

As with most things, I guess it's best to begin at the beginning and continue on to see where it leads.

(aha!  I found the 'insert image' button)  OK, I clicked, but it's taking it's time . . .  Oh!  There it is.  It's smaller than I thought.

  In any case, the fellows pictured are the men of the house building the base to set our new stone bench on in the back garden.  The Supervisor (Junk Yard Thug, who goes by the oh-so-fitting name of Pudding) is sitting on the bricks.

Now to see if another photo will go in . . .  (where'd the button go?)  (ah, I see it.)

Waiting . . . 

Here The Men are carrying the set to put in front of the base so we won't have to carry it so far to place it on the legs.  I helped with the placement, so it wasn't as if they did all the work . . . just most.  Credit where credit is due.

And, finally, the approval committee.  (this uploading takes longer than I want it to)

My goodness, what teeny images.  This will take some exploration (such as reading that 'how to' section) .

The approval committee consist of one Nervous Siamese Princess (Dinah), and the aforementioned Thug (who makes Princess nervouser and nervouser than she was before).

The images need work, but since this isn't t.h.e. most critical blog in the world, the learning curve can wait for another day.