Mouse and Pig doin' a turkey good...

We went to family for ThanksGiving, so we didn't do the whole feast-cooking at home this year, but Mouse got us a turkey four ourselves.
I really looked forward to the two of us, after the holiday, making the best a) turkey and b) stuffing that was ever made. Personal consumption, yanno.
I don't want to brag, but we did.
The bird was cooked to some sort of perfection that I would never have dreamed of. It was moist-and-tender to the point that I nearly thought it had been cooked in the slow-cooker. I mean to tell you that the skin was golden brown and crispy, but the meat was nearly falling off of the carcass.
And we saved the carcass.
We made soup the next day.
I whittled away at what was left on the skeleton the next day. And we put it into a pot for rendering. We b'iled it down for hours, thinking (at times) that it wasn't doing much in the way of broth-izing. But after it had done it's business in the boiling water for a good many hours, we pulled out the bones, sieved the liquid through some faux-cheesecloth and put the liquid back on the stove.
Ursa Minor and Mouse had rolled out some home made noodles earlier. We plopped some chopped up carrots, some chopped celery and some onion, and then Mouse carefully dropped in the noodles.
The end product was the best homemade soup I've ever tasted.
Unbelievable.

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An Introduction to The Theatre...

For the last almost couple of years (I think), Ursa Minor has really loved reading this Magic Tree House series of books. I read a few of them with him and happen to think they're pretty cool.

Today Mouse introduced him to the world of the Theatre!

She got us tickets to see Magic Tree House: The Musical

It was really great. A perfect first meeting of a play to a young person. He got a bit fidgety a time or two, but I think that he really enjoyed the production. I would have to say that his biggest disappointment (if it was an actual disappointment) would have been when he leaned over and asked me if the actors who portrayed Jack and Annie (the main characters) were children (they weren't).

The production for me, well.. it was a musical. So... (I'm sorry to say)... I had some issues. But it was only because I'm old. I can't understand lyrics sometimes when they're sung along with instruments playing in the background. So I got lost in the early scenes on occasion when there was a lot of singing going on with music in the background.

My misgivings were not at all expressed by Mouse and Ursa Minor. They both loved the show (as did I, despite my not understanding what was going on in early portions of the production). And we really had a great time. I was skeptical that a Theatre Production would not hold Ursa Minor's interest (even though it was Magic Tree House), but Mouse, in her infinite wisdom, did a great thing by securing us the tickets that she did.

It was a wonderful production and we all had a really great time.

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Something tonight...

Sometimes Ursa Minor (the boy) just amazes me. Well, not just sometimes. He actually blows me away quite often. On occasion, though, it's a bit more blown away than others.

It's Wednesday. He's half-way through his school week. I would figure that by the time he got program through the school and I don't home from school for the night (he goes to an after school care program through the school and I don't pick him up until around a quarter to six), and after he's eaten his dinner, and after he's done his homework (which is minimal at best with him being in the second grade)... I figure he'd like to play with some toys for awhile. You know, wind down after a day.

But the Math-A-Thon has come again.

So tonight, after eating, which was, in itself a bit of a task because of some shredded pork that he didn't really want to deal with (even with a bit of ketchup), and after the really small amount of homework he had for the night, what do I expect he'll ask to do? I figured he'd want to go play, of course.

What does he do? Well, when I take his homework and begin to review it he takes up his Mathathon booklet and leafs through it to where he'd left off the night before.

"I want to do a good job with this because it helps the kids at Saint Judes."








But more than that, I think that he's just inspired by the challenge. I'm completely impressed by his desire, no matter what he says his initiative stems from. He's seven freakin' years old. And espousing some sort of altruism? I don't expect that the Mathathon's charitable nature is going to lead him to devote his life's brain capacity to solving the cure for cancer. He's not there yet. But I know that he loves the challenge of being able to work out math problems workbook that they provide. If he just so happens to make his own mental tie to working the math problems that he loves to making the world a better place, well, then, more power to his smart self.

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"To begin at the beginning..."

That's how Dylan Thomas open's Under Milkwood.

      [Silence]

    FIRST VOICE (_Very softly_)

To begin at the beginning:

This, however, is not a beginning at the beginning...

Blogging's been around for awhile.

My first introduction to it was KIPLog.

I started dabbling in blogging a bit after that introduction and his was the very first inbound link for any web-entity I'd ever created.

Fortunately my earliest forays into web-writing are now somewhat defunct because they were hosted at places like AOL and Angelfire.

I later registered my own domain and whatnot, but after a few years of that, I just didn't feel that I wanted to continue it.

Supposedly nothing that gets posted on the web ever goes away permanently. I can only hope that the majority of the drivel I typed onto the web in the past fades into some sort of permanent obscurity at the very least.

I'm not technically savvy, by any means. Hooves are not the best mode of entering keyboard input. But I've been on a short walk part-way around the block. Clip-clopping along the way.

This is going to be what it's going to be. I'll post or I won't. We'll just have to see where it goes and if it lasts.

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