Update

I was doing so well at my goal of posting more often and then this month things fell apart! Part of it was the heat; it was too hot to think for almost 3 weeks this month. Happily, it cooled off completely for a couple days and now it's nice, normal summer temps. Part of it was lack of planning. I usually plan my weeks carefully and include "blog" two days each week (only 1 when I'm very busy with work, but summer is not that time); I realized that I was planning less because of the heat and I had forgotten to add "blog" to my days for the past two weeks. I'm back on track now and catching up with things.

To catch up on a bit of news.....

In June, my friend and I went on our "we're turning 50 this year" road trip. We drove south through the mountains, spend a couple days in Salmon Arm exploring the area, and then headed back home through the Banff area. 

The highlights of the trip: 8 used bookstores, 6 museums, and a kangaroo farm. One of the museums was the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre; I've wanted to go there since I first read a novel that takes place during the time of the Frank disaster. We also went to the Revelstoke Railway museum and learned a lot about trains and the building of the railroad through the Rockies. Oh, and on the way home we stopped at the Spiral Tunnels just a the right time to watch a very long train going through one of the tunnels. There were also some smaller museums, and we made one lady happy by coming into her museum and reading everything (it seems most people come in, look around, and leave without learning all the things). The kangaroo farm was so much fun: we fed and petted capybaras and wallabies, met a very large turkey who seemed to be very full of his own self-importance, admired some beautiful peacocks, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

The best news of summer though: I have a new baby granddaughter! She was born a couple weeks ago and is absolutely adorable. She all chubby and squishy and has a lovely amount of hair and I love her very much. Her big sister adores her and always wants to hold her. 

And now it's time to buckle down and get ready for fall!

Mandy: A book review

While visiting one of the many used bookstores my friend and I went to while on vacation, I stumbled upon Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards. I knew that the book existed, thanks to reading Julie Andrews' autobiographies, but I had forgotten about it until I saw it in the store. She had originally written the story for her daughter Jennifer as a forfeit in a game (it was going to be a short story, but it grew). In fact, Julie Andrews has written several stories, many with Emma Walton Hamilton, her daughter from her first marriage. Mandy is the first of her books that I've read.

Mandy is 10 and lives in an orphanage (a nice one, not one of the miserable ones that show up in many stories). She is exploring one day and finds a small cottage that seems abandoned. Mandy starts to clean up the cottage and the garden, clearing weeds and planting flowers. She keep the cottage a secret and enjoys having a place of her own.

In time, there are troubles with her constant disappearances, a mysterious stranger leaving her messages, and a very bad illness that leads to everything being discovered. And....I will not spoil the ending, but of course Mandy gets her happily-ever-after!

Mandy is an interesting and well-written story. The main character is sympathetic and, despite her faults, is a rather likeable girl. The other characters generally exist to keep the story going and lack a lot of depth, but it's meant to be a story about Mandy. It's a fairly straight-forward story with no major plot twists (although younger readers may not see the ending coming as quickly as I did; as an adult, I have a lot more book experience); even with it being somewhat predictable for me, I quite enjoyed the story. It's the type of book that I would have read over and over as a child and probably invented my own day dreams about.

Mandy intended for the 8-12 year old range, and I think they will enjoy it. 

Unfocused

 There are a pile of things to do this summer, some of which I should be working on today, but I am feeling very unfocused. 

Why?

1. I went to the library this morning, and it's very hot today, so I came home already tired.

2. Hot outside = warm inside, even with the fans going. 

3. I had a cold for most of the past week and I'm in the last bits of it (the mild cough and bit of stuffiness that seem to go on forever after a cold).

4. They're working either on my balcony or on one close, so the noise is disruptive. Mostly I'm able to tune things out when they're working on other parts of the building, but not banging right outside my window or the sound of sawing (especially sawing metal).

So, I'm very unfocused. I suspect that this will go on for a while until it cools down again. I'll try to get things done, but it may be slow!

Almost a book review by a student

One of my tutoring students has been reading Romeo and Juliet. She is not overly impressed by it; in fact, rather than view it as either a romance or a tragedy, she has declared it a comedy. She finds the entire story over-the-top absurd! I love talking with her about it because I view it as a cautionary tale: don't rush into a relationship and always listen to your parents. Between the two of us, we've really torn the entire story apart and it's been so much fun!

A couple quotes from her essay:

Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous dramas in history, and yet it is quite silly.

It goes on and on. In the end they are both dead. There is quite a lot of drama in this drama.

Suffice to say, she is not a huge fan of Romeo and Juliet! It's quite nice to teach young ladies who don't think the whole thing is just sooooo romantic!