Friday, November 21, 2008

November Snow











An unprecedented event has occurred. Never in my memory have we had snow this early in NC. Usually, we are lucky to get this kind of heavy dusting in January or February, much less in November, before Thanksgiving no less. However, it seems to be confirmation of what my mom has said is in the Old Farmer's Almanac - colder weather this winter with a lot more snow than usual - at least for our area.




Listen to Your Reading Assignment

While I am largely a visual learner, I have found that audio reading has its benefits. Sometimes, reading assignments are so long that if I were to sit and read the entire thing, I would have time to do nothing else. But, if I listen to the book, I can do other things, like clean, crochet, cook, etc. Librivox is a website catalog of audio recordings of books that are in the public domain - which means it's free. They have most of the books I have needed for my 18th and 19th century classes. I have found that it works well if I listen to every other chapter, reading the ones in between. The only downside is, of course, that you can read faster than someone else can read to you - but it does mean that you can multi-task. And some of the readers have rather nice reading voices and they make attempts at reading with feeling and voice.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Gluten Tolerant!

Wow, after three months of near starvation (OK, a gross exaggeration), and no gluten, it now appears that I do not, in fact, have a gluten intolerance. Which is super good news on the one hand - pizza! pasta! bread! cake! And just in time for Thanksgiving, too. But, on the other hand, it means that I still don't know what's causing the headaches...

Friday, November 7, 2008

Autumnal Glory


The leaves have been gorgeous for the past few days, so I'm sure that means they are about to disappear. I took a few pics this afternoon to memorialize them - we have been having beautiful, warm weather, which I am sure is about to disappear also.