Bits and Pieces

One of my teachers got engaged this week. It was an arranged marriage of sorts; some of her family knew some of his family; the families got together to make sure all the parents approved; they spoke some over a few weeks; then he came to officially propose. It wasn't arranged in that either of them was forced into it, but it was more arranged than many marriages. My teacher is happy with it that way; he's a nice guy (and very good looking) and they have enough in common. Now she's planning a trip to Pakistan to get her wedding outfit.

I've been re-reading the Little House books. I'm up to On the Banks of Plum Creek. It was time for Pa to make his trip to town, and they're close enough that it's only a day trip. This meant that Ma could go to (in her best dress that she wore to the sugaring-off dance in the Big Woods). Carrie was too young to stay home without Ma so she went too (in a new pink dress and bonnet, looking like a little rose) but Mary and Laura were old enough to stay home all day. After all, Mary was going on 9 and Laura was going on 8, and there were no wolves or Indians in Minnesota.

From the best I can figure on the map, when the Ingalls travelled west from the Big Woods in Wisconsin, they went west and south to end up in Kansas. Then when they left there, they went north and east (although not much east) because they settled in Minnesota, which borders Wisconsin. Later they went further west, to the Dakota territories, which border Minnesota. When I was younger, I thought they went way out west, like at least as far as Alberta (which, in the states, would be around Montana). When I was older I realized that they didn't make it any further than Manitoba. I had no idea how slow it was to travel by covered wagon.

Speaking of covered wagons....on one of the math cards at work, one of the fraction questions was about a wagon train getting 7/8 of a mile in a day. From the best we can figure, by the time they reached Oregon, they would all be dead.

That was about as bad as the word problems one of my students was writing. You have 10 kittens, and together they weigh 20 grams. How much does one kitten weigh? She was surprised when I showed her just how little 2 grams is; we're not sure where those kittens came from. On the other hand, she also wrote a problem about Skittles that weighed 100 grams each (or thereabouts). Yes: in her world, Skittles can crush kittens!

The church library will have a budget this year, although a very, very small budget. Still, we should be able to purchase a couple new books. It looks like we're going to be counting on donations, sales, used bookstores, and damaged books. That last category is my favourite. One of the guys at my church runs a Christian bookstore, and whenever he gets a damaged book in a shipment it's written off and can't be sold, so he brings them all to me! Usually the damage is something small, and sometimes we have to look for it; the books are still good.

And that's a wee bit of what's going on in my mind lately!