Serenity

I'm wearing my Serenity t-shirt today. It means more to me than ever.

Ever since Firefly, the word "serenity" has extremely (extremely) positive connotations for me. It encompasses not only its original meaning but all the honor and humor and family-like bonding from the show.

With my friend Serenity's death from cancer two weeks ago (!), it has come to encompass even more. It is a reminder to live now, to appreciate, to cherish, and to never take for granted. It means not only a state of being but a deliberate act of joy and remembrance.

Serenity = Love

I can't imagine a more wonderful legacy for my friend.

Firefly on XKCD

This saves me from having to send several e-mail messages.

Start here: http://www.xkcd.com/577/
Click Next three times.
Be sure to read the hover text on each page!

Thanks for the heads-up, Abbi!

UPDATE: There is a fifth installment! Click Next four times.

But... but... but...

I found this on http://www.xkcd.com/ today:



Unfortunately, "Jaynestown" is actually the sixth episode (since the pilot is considered episode 0), and Jayne actually receives the rain stick in the fifth episode, "Our Mrs. Reynolds."

Shoddy research, xkcd.

The Doings Report

I'm sick. That's the big news in *my* world. And I'm feeling quite pouty about it, because I had thought I was being successful fighting off this cold with Emergen-C. Of course, there's no telling how awful I'd feel without the Emergen-C.

We had a pretty quiet week. MJ and Chloe finished off "Buffy." I watched most of the last episode with them, so I, too, know how it all ends. It's pretty nervewracking watching a Joss Whedon finale, because he does not hesitate to kill off the characters we love most. And Mal (Nathan Fillion, beloved captain of the Firefly Serenity) made a brief appearance as a very bad man entity. Evidently a few of the actors from "Firefly" had roles in "Buffy;" the girls filled me in on all the connections. The word (?) "religiosity" is used in both series, too.

Frank got the house caught up after whatever it was that was our most recent excuse for not tidying up after ourselves. And then on Friday I didn't have to work much, so I puttered around "helping" him (not really very much).

On Saturday, we had our lovely dinner and egg-dyeing party. Frank outdid himself with the menu. We had some Cajun boiled shrimp as an appetizer, French onion soup, chicken breats with a yummy mushroom-and-pâté sauce, sides of bread and mashed potatoes and sautéed carrots, and then bread pudding in whiskey-rum-amaretto sauce for dessert. We kind of forgot to have salad between dinner and dessert. And, needless to say, none of the Easter eggs got eaten that night.

We had a very fun night. Lori and Brian went to Italy for their honeymoon a few years back, so we picked their brains a bit. Also, Brian is really into fantasy novels and D&D, so he and Frank and the girls had a lot to discuss. And we covered a lot of cinematic territory, debating the relative merits of various films, secret girl- and boyfriends, and so on.

We also traded some brainteasers. Here's the one that Chloe figured out much faster than the Dungeon Master was prepared for a week ago:

The chamber you're in is filling with water, and there's an alphabet on the wall that you can use to enter your answer. There's no escape. If you don't figure out the riddle, your entire party will drown. The riddle is:

I live in fear but not in light,
I dwell in darkness but not in spite.
What am I?

And here's one Lori actually had presented to her (and solved) during her job interview at Microsoft many years ago:

You're on a deserted island and you're bitten by something poisonous. A witch doctor *poof* appears and gives you two bottles of pills. He tells you, you will die unless you take one pill from each bottle every day for 50 days. Then he *poof* disappears. You do as he says, but on the 48th day, you remove a pill from the first bottle, then accidentally shake two pills from the second bottle onto your hand. Now all three pills are in the palm of your hand. You can't tell them apart; they are identical in every way. If you take the wrong pills, you will die. What do you do?

I got the first one, but I wouldn't have gotten the job, or at least not after three glasses of wine. If you know the answers, put them in a Comment and save me some typing!

On Sunday, we woke the girls up to find eggs (there's a switch), and then they thoroughly explored their Easter baskets (after being testily informed that of course the Easter Bunny wouldn't have forgotten their Cadbury Eggs). Then we went out to Grandma and Papa's for Easter dinner (pesto!) and a rousing game of Cranium.

Then we came home and collapsed.

Happy Monday!

Thursday 13

Thirteen Things I'm Glad I Own (or share ownership in) We have some friends who are gearing up to set sail on their catamaran, the s/v Don Quixote. They've been purging belongings, in stages, for several months, realizing with each purge that the things they found essential last time are just not. I lack their perspective. I have many, many essential belongings. Here are 13 of the most essential. My MEBs. 1. My books. I am not one of those people who can read a book and call it done. No sirree, Bob. I read decent books at least twice, and I read good books... well, I haven't found a limit yet. 2. Ten thousand photos. They're jumbled, stacked, piled, stuffed, tucked away, saved to disc, boxed up, packed up, scattered about, and even occasionally framed or put into albums, and every one of them is precious. Especially photos of my babies! (at any age) 3. My bed. Our bed. The marriage bed. Haven, heaven, honeymoon, home. This is where I sleep, enjoy my books, read with my kids, talk with my kids, snuggle with my kids, sleep with my kids (rarely these days), contemplate the universe, and, above all, revel in and renew the force and solace and source that is my precious marriage to Frank. Plus our new bed is damned pretty. 4. The Super Toilet. Yes, it's sheer indulgence. Yes, it was too expensive. But oh how I love our Toto Washlet! Try sitting down on a heated toilet seat in the middle of a cold January night, just once, and then tell me it isn't an essential item! (And our friends like it, too!) 5. The computer. As a kid, with a dad in the industry, I had the privilege of playing with one of the first personal computers ever. I've been hooked ever since and now can't imagine life without one. This is where I WRITE, people! 5b. The wrist brace that lets me use the computer without agony. 6. Our video entertainment paraphernalia. Compared to the more video-oriented members of my family, I barely watch any TV at all, but our TVs and players and library of movies are cherished possessions nonetheless. We have movies to suit any mood, and having them *right there* when I need them is a pleasure. 7. My eyeglasses. The trees have leaves. My daughters have eyelashes. I can proofread billboards. I can see the computer screen without squinting or leaning waaaay forward. My eyeglasses are a wondrous thing. 8. My Crocs. Actually, all my shoes. But especially my Crocs. Hmm, it's about time for a new pair... 9. Certain treasured items of clothing. My Seahawks jersey, my Firefly t-shirt, my LIFE is Good t-shirt, my ancient but comfortably oversized "Windows 2000 Resource Kit" button-down shirt, my plush and racy-red bathrobe that Frank bought for me. Wearing these items never fails to make me feel good. Comfort clothes. 10. Our Sonicare toothbrush. I haven't had a cavity since we went sonic years and years ago. (knock wood) (yes, I know an atheist shouldn't be so superstitious, but I am ever All About the Contradictions) 11. The washer, dryer, dishwasher, microwave, and refrigerator. I lived on a boat without these for a while. (No, the boat refer does not count.) I appreciate them very much now. Very much. 12. The stuff in my hopechest. Mementos, letters, dried wedding flowers, newspaper clippings, baby clothes. It's our accumulative time capsule. 13. The jewelry Frank has given me over the years. Especially my wedding ring. This was one of the easiest TTs I've done. :-) Get the Thursday Thirteen code here! View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

A Boy Named Jayne

FanVid Credit: enjia

And on a lighter "Firefly" note

All you fans of the Big Damn Series, Big Damn Movie, and our lovable Big Damn Heroes might enjoy the Big Damn Site.

South Park Jayne cracked me up.

And as long as I'm link-happy, here are some more:

http://browncoats.com/
http://www.fireflywiki.org/
http://www.myspace.com/nathanfillion
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=147037658 (Jewel Staite's MySpace page)

I am Dua Khalil

http://whedonesque.com/comments/13271

The link above is to an essay by Joss Whedon on the recent "honor" (????) killing of 17yo Dua Khalil, while dozens looked on and even videotaped but did nothing to help her. Joss is the creator of (among other things) our much-loved "Firefly" TV series. Here, he gets political—or perhaps simply human.

If you want to watch the horrific video—and maybe we all owe it to this girl to at least look head-on at what was done to her—the video is available here.

You can help! Speak out against violence against women. Contribute. Join the I Am Dua Khalil awareness campaign. Use your online presence to publicize the essay or story above, or simply link to my blog.

I am Dua Khalil, and I refuse to accept honor killings and the inequality of women as an acceptable status quo.

Some of our favorite Firefly quotes

WARNING! SPOILER ALERT!
Skip this post if you haven't watched "Firefly" yet! (And get yourself to Blockbuster!)

The ship:
Serenity, a battered but lovable Firefly-class spaceship

The crew:
Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds
First Mate Zoe Alleyne
Pilot Hoban "Wash" Washburne
Ship's Mechanic Kaylee Frye
Hired Gun/Public Relations Specialist Jayne Cobb

The passengers:
"Ambassador" Inara Serra
Dr. Simon Tam
River Tam
Shepherd Derrial Book

"Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal." -- Wash (while alone on the bridge, playing pretend with toy dinosaurs)

"If wishes were horses, we'd all be eatin' steak." -- Jayne

"You are very much lacking in imagination." -- Mal
"I imagine that's so, sir." -- Zoe

"No, apes are noble creatures, you're some sort of man-ape-thing that went horribly wrong." -- Simon (about Jayne)

"They weren't cows inside. They were waiting to be, but they forgot. Now they see sky and they remember what they are." -- River
"Is it bad that what she just said makes perfect sense to me?" -- Mal

"Don't you love this party? Everything's so fancy and there's some kind of hot cheese over there." -- Kaylee

"Oh, I got heathens aplenty right here." -- Shepherd Book (referring to the crew)

"...I'm thinking of growing a big black mustache. I'm a traditionalist." -- Simon (to illustrate his new status as a criminal mastermind)

"Well, my sister's a ship. I just have issues going way back." -- Simon

"I aim to misbehave." -- Mal

"I never married." -- Book (upon being called 'Grandpa')

"Now Inara - she's gotta have some really funny whorin' stories, I'd wager." -- Jayne
"Oh! Do I ever! Funny and sexy! You have no idea! ((pause)) And you never will." -- Inara

"You want a slinky dress? I can buy you a slinky dress. Captain, can I have money for a slinky dress?" -- Wash (in response to a comment by Zoe, his soldier wife)

"Ta very much for a lovely night then." -- Badger (after holding the crew hostage)

"What does that make us?" -- Mal
"Big damn heroes, sir." -- Zoe

"Yes sir, Captain Tightpants." -- Kaylee

"So. Would you like to lecture me on the wickedness of my ways?" -- Inara
"I brought you some supper. But if you'd prefer a lecture, I've a few very catchy ones prepped. Sin and hellfire. One has lepers." -- Book

"I'll be in my bunk." -- Jayne (after seeing Inara lead a female guest to her quarters)

"Enemies? You? No! How can it be?" -- Simon (to Jayne)

"Noah's Ark is a problem." -- River (assessing Book's Bible)

"I'm starting to like this poetry thing. 'Here lies my beloved Zoe, my autumn flower, somewhat less attractive now that she's all corpse-ified and gross...'" -- Wash

"Time for some thrilling heroics." -- Jayne

"This must be what going mad feels like." -- Simon (upon seeing a heroic statue of Jayne in a town square)

"Please, we're very close to true stupidity here." -- Book (in a moment of pending violence)

"His brains are in terrible danger." -- River (upon seeing Book's shaggy hair out of its usual ponytail)

"Well, my days of not takin' you seriously are certainly comin' to a middle." -- Mal (to Jayne)

"'Day' is a vestigial mode of time measurement. Based on solar cycles. Not applicable. ((pause)) I didn't get you anything." -- River (on Simon's birthday)

"I don't like him... Something about him bothers me." -- Zoe (about Wash, in a flashback)

"Thank you for the wine. It's very...fresh." -- Inara

"I can be terse. Once, in flight school, I was laconic." -- Wash

"I call it Vera." -- Jayne (about his favorite gun)

"Also, I can kill you with my brain." -- River (discouraging Jayne from betraying them)

"Well said. Wasn't that well said, Zoe?" -- Mal
"Had a kind of poetry to it, sir." -- Zoe

"Who's flyin' this thing?! Oh. Right. That'd be me. Back to work." -- Wash

"No power in the 'verse can stop me." -- Kaylee, and later, much more ominously, River

"Besides, why would I want to leave Serenity?" -- Inara

"Tell you what, you buy this ship, treat her proper, she'll be with you for the rest of your life." -- Used Ship Salesman

Unschooling all the time

It occurred to me that choosing to write about my kids' learning on a day when they were sick was illustrative of another reason unschooling works: learning happens all day, every day. There are no school hours, no weekends off, no holidays, no spring breaks, no teacher work days, and no sick days. You might say our kids have to go to school every day. We prefer a slogan of the unschooling community: "Everything counts."

Below, I've chosen a few "rot your brains" examples to show how learning comes from surprising sources:

Watching movies and television

1. Chloe and one of her cousins were flipping channels the other day and landed on the "The Phantom of the Opera." They got hooked and watched through to the end, whereupon they came sobbing out into my mom's livingroom to say what a good movie it was. They had missed the beginning, so Chloe put it into her Netflix queue. She's been watching that this weekend, singing the songs, discussing the movie, etc. Coming up next in her queue is the Lon Chaney original. Doing my part, I pointed out that it started out as a legend and then a book, so we're headed to the library tomorrow to check it out. It's a literature unit a teacher would approve, and it's been entirely self directed.
2. I mentioned in another post that my friend Stephanie had gotten me hooked on "Firefly." Well, now I've gotten the family hooked on it. It's led to so many interesting discussions. For example, the political environment of the show is similar to that of our post-Civil War era, with the Alliance in charge and the "browncoats" (including our hero, Captain Mal) struggling with resentment and bitter defeat. We picked up the official published guide to the series, and it has information about, for example, the design of Mal's gun, a high-tech one-off of a Civil War revolver. We've also discussed the look of the show and how they use lighting, somewhat old-fashioned film techniques (often faked in CGI shots!), and costumes to create atmosphere. And then, of course, there is all the shared enjoyment of what is simply a fun, expertly crafted bit of entertainment!

Video games

Quite a few unschoolers have learned to read by playing video games. There's a lot of text on screen, for one thing, and reading is required to go out on the Internet and look up cheat codes and such.

For most kids, game playing is an indisputable physical workout. I've never seen so much wiggling and laughing. And amazing social interactions take place when kids gather around or even just discuss a game.

Video games are now being credited with kids' developing "higher skills" (e.g., problem solving and analytical thinking), to the point that educators are starting to catch on. This article outlines how they are starting to use games as learning tools (although they think they have to write special games for it -- talk about making yourself feel needed!).

But it's more than that. Just ask any unschooling parent who has watched a video game inspire a kid. They play, and then they start making connections. Rather than reinvent the wheel and describe this process, I'll simply direct you to an excellent article by unschooling parent Mary Gold, If You Give a Kid a Nintendo.

Reading the funny papers

I talked some in my last post about all the learning that's been triggered by my kids' interest in manga and anime. But our first experience with funny-papers learning happened way back at the beginning of our unschooling. The girls discovered my old Far Side, Bloom County, and Calvin & Hobbes collections. Wow! All of a sudden, we were discussing biology, liberals vs. conservatives, freedom of the press, the Reverend Moon, transmogrification, drawing styles, and innumerable social events of the 80's (e.g., rock-and-roller cola wars). It was lightning-paced, it was vibrant, it was FUN!

Going on vacation

We've done more than our fair share of traveling. Our number one goal while traveling is always having fun. We never -- NEVER -- structure our days around learning, and we never sit down to teach our kids anything (unless they ask us to). So, all in the name of fun, the girls (and Frank and I) have learned about geology, history, evolution, biology, social and cultural issues, natural disasters, meteorology, politics, physics, writing, economics, mathematics, various interesting careers out in the real world, various really nasty jobs out in the real world, foreign languages, etymology, entomology, enology, conservation, pollution, government funding, and, of course, map reading.

Oh, yes, and vocabulary. :-)


The point is, learning is natural and unavoidable. It's not constrained to a classroom, a schedule, a curriculum, or a season. And it's inspired by everything.

I'm back!

Here I am, returned both home and to blogging. Last week, I finished up my latest contract at the Velvet Sweatshop and immediately flew off to Georgia for a few days visiting my best pal, Stephanie. (She and her husband, Rick, moved to Athens last summer, having had enough of Northwest weather. Seems like they got out in the nick of time.) We did some sightseeing and shopping, but the highlights were a bunch of time spent having complete conversations, a fab multicourse dinner at a restaurant near their house, and their introducing me to Firefly, an excellent TV series that should never have been canceled -- check it out on DVD!

Now, I am settling into life at home. I have to be away from Microsoft for 100 days (required after every 365 days worked there as a temp, ever since a certain lawsuit filed against the company). My Big Plan is to enjoy some time with my kids. Frank's work continues, so I get to revel in my time off, knowing we still have income. Pretty cool.

I am very tardy in announcing the birth of Molly Eileen Lewis to proud parents Jerry and Cori. She arrived January 19th, a few weeks ahead of schedule. She weighed in at just under 6 pounds and had to spend a few extra days at the hospital to finish "cooking," but mother and baby are both doing well. J-man gets out of the Marines late February (not late March as I previously told you, Jorene, yay!), then the family is moving home. They'll stay at Grandma Judy's while they get settled. Grand-aunt-ma Ronnie is very excited to get her hands on that baby, but we're not sure when that will happen.

Our other item of news is a sad one: We said good-bye today to Snowball the rat. She died in her cage this morning after living several months with a large tumor and showing distinct signs of old age. MJ and Chloe are pretty sad -- Snowy has been with us through a lot of adventures -- but they find distraction in a couple of comedians called Rodney and Lestat.

Anyway, we're all doing well. I'll try to fill in more details of the past few months in subsequent posts.

Happy New Year!