I believed in Severus Snape
SPOILER ALERT . . . . . . . IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE DEATHLY HALLOWS, READ NO FURTHER.
I believed. I was right.
I cried buckets. RIP Dobby, Fred, Lupin, Tonks and Hedwig.
It was a wonderful book. A wonderful series. Now I have to keep my opinions under wraps, so my kids can find out in their own times.
Thanks J.K.R.
Someone else like me
I'm trying to get a news ticker on this blog. I have one on the one for class, and it is nice. But because this blog goes through our server rather than Blogger's, I have issues.
One of the stories that popped up on my ticker (set to "working mom") pretty much sums it up for me on the economic impacts of having kids:
If I continue my accounting of the annual bill for my working summer, I can't omit one number that begins to explain why my work can't possibly cover the costs of the childcare that makes it possible: government statistics say that mothers like me have to stomach a 7% hourly wage penalty per child. I have three kids. That's 21%. Ouch. The survey cites the usual reasons--loss of job experience; employer discrimination against women with children; and the one I'm most interested in for the sake of this argument--a tendency to seek lower-paying, mother-friendly jobs. I have to be in a flex job, working freelance from home instead of full-time in my old office at Fortune magazine. How else am I going to stop at four o'clock to pick up all these kids from all these camps?
I fail to understand why, as a nation, we persist in structuring the year this way.Stephanie Losee continues to explain the true cost of working. It's not a choice for a lot of families like ours. We need two incomes, plain and simple. The price we pay is a high one, folks.
Read the full
article
Gah. Too much (home) work
Okay. My name is Mommy-tracked, and I admit it: Taking six hours of grad school classes within a month's time was not smart.
I'm drowning here. Okay, I wouldn't be drowning if the Harry Potter book wasn't due to land on my doorstep in a few days, tempting me to read the book rather than write the two five- to six-page papers I have due before August starts.
Um, yeah. I can do it. Really, I can. I just have to avoid HP temptation and not blog much.
Sorry guys.
On the upside:
Second child has learned how to read a bit. He's very excited.
Youngest child has figured out how to use the potty doing No. 1. Anyone who has tips on getting her to do No. 2 is welcome to offer them below. Blackmail of more jellybeans is not working.
Eldest is awesome child who is helping me get through this with some semblance of sanity intact. I owe her. What to get child to show her how much I appreciate her help? Ideas helpful.
Fiddling
I'm messing around with the blog, so please ignore any goofy layout or settings. I'm doing it when I have time. Apologies.
Back to School, Day One
So, I survived day one of grad school.
Actually, it wasn't that hard. I showed up with my notebook, my pen, and sat at the computer. The class is taught by a former co-worker, and they've lumped grad students in with undergrads (joy). There are probably 10 of us.
Our task today: Set up a blog on Blogger.
Seriously.
Two of us already blog, so it took us about five minutes. Several others had never heard of a blog or Blogger or TypePad or Wordpress.
Seriously.
If you are a communications undergrad (and as best I can tell, I'm the only grad student in there), how can you NOT know about this? I was amazed.
So, I now have two blogs, one here, and one for
class. I have to do a major project. No idea what that might be, but if you have ideas for a multimedia one that I can do in a month, shout out below.
The rest of the class will involve things that I barely know how to do . . . building a website using Dreamweaver, podcasting, vidcasting, all those cool toys I barely know how to use.
But day one was just easy. Hope it stays that way.
