Several Updates

 The boys have started school again, and James, who appeared to register no reaction to the news that he would be repeating Saxon 5/4 Math when I informed him of the fact back in July, is now embarrassed that he is doing last year's math (and grammar) over again. With that said, he's flying through the "easy" material at the beginning of the book and hopefully working up some good momentum for the sections with fractions, long division, and exponents.

Owen has been less truculent so far, although you never know when he's going to suddenly square down and refuse to do something reasonable (like put periods at the end of his sentences) for several hours because of something unreasonable and unrelated, like having the wrong color roof on our house or not being able to own his very own podracer from Star Wars.

Felix is also having a decent start to the school year. He reads Bob books or "Baby Monkey, Private Eye," or goes upstairs and gets into all of the toys that Owen would usually shout at him about when they are up in their room together. He's been getting better about keeping his glasses on, which at first could only be accomplished by letting him watch a movie or wear his oversized Bills jersey.

I am sifting through the schedules of 7.5 hours of students and trying to find a way to make them line up in a way that lets me take care of all of my teaching in one day, gets me to the right campus at the right time with an appropriate amount of travel time, and maybe even lets me eat a meal or two along the way.

We are rehearsing with our pianist for the movie music recital tonight and looking forward to working with a live human being instead of the Finale playback, which is prone to jerking into inappropriate tempos and either disappearing into inaudible softness (during piano dynamic playback) or nearly blowing out the cheap laptop speakers we have hooked up to the computer during loud playback. An additional frustration with the computer playback is that if you unplug the speakers or the computer Finale will crash, and that none of your other computer functions can make noise while Finale is controlling the sound. Finale is kind of the worst.

Kindle books always come in multiple groups. After remarking to J several times over the course of August that I didn't have anything new to read and that all of my holds were taking forever to come in, I all of a sudden have The Bomber Mafia, The Four Winds, The Daughters of Sparta, Homer's Daughter, Six Frigates, Next, and the newest Andy Weir novel.

I was sitting outside yesterday afternoon, reading in one of the lounge chairs with a glass of wine while the boys biked back and forth on the sidewalk. After fixing a leaking hose (because of course something would break) I had to go back inside...for a sweater. I think that fall is around the corner...