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Watcha Doing? Version 2015.5
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Sarah
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Oct 01, 2015 02:25AM
We were walking along the towpath at dusk last night and we were treated to a group of bats flying around us. We stood still while they flitted around us then fly off and come back again. It's the first time we've seen any in that number and closeness. They are so cute.
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I'm sorry about your grandmother, Amanda.With so many things going on, I don't wonder why you are so tired. I hope everything gets better soon. Your family is in my prayers.
Good to see you check in Amanda. Sorry to hear about your grandmother. Hope you and your family is going okay. Glad your new job is going well though.
Sarah wrote: "We were walking along the towpath at dusk last night and we were treated to a group of bats flying around us. We stood still while they flitted around us then fly off and come back again. It's the ..."Come to our place in summer. The things crash around all night. Mind you, we're talking about flying foxes so their bodies are about 30-40cms long, not to mention the wings. Sounds like your bats where much cuter.
They were pretty tiny yes so I didn't need to duck out of the way in fear of being knocked out by them ;-) Now if they had been fruit bats or those flying foxes then that would be a different story. I wonder if they are making the most of the warm weather and the amount of insects about before the cold whether sets in. I might wander up there again later to see if they turn up again.I had a rubbish night sleep last night. I slept through my alarm and was woken by artillery fire at 10am. This week has been crazy with the training grounds near by. On Tuesday night it went on well past midnight which I was really surprised at. We're moving at the weekend so hopefully it will be a bit quieter that way.
So sorry for your loss, Amanda. My thoughts are with you and your family. Hopefully you'll not be quite so exhausted once you are able to get a normal routine going at work.
It sounds like the camping trip was very... exciting! Glad no one was seriously injured and especially not bitten by a rattler! That is so scary!
Bats are an irrational fear thing with me. I know there is no reason to be afraid of them, but somehow I still am. *shudders*
Kandice wrote: "Bats are an irrational fear thing with me. I know there is no reason to be afraid of them, but somehow I still am. *shudders*"One of my friends is terrified of bats. She hates the way they crawl about when they are not flying.
Sarah wrote: "We were walking along the towpath at dusk last night and we were treated to a group of bats flying around us. We stood still while they flitted around us then fly off and come back again. It's the ..."I think bats are really cute too. We have a few flying around our garden at night. They are really small so we think they might be pipistrelle bats.
Not sure how I'd feel if one got tangled in my hair but generally I like bats. I was thinking they might be pipistrelles (sp?) it's difficult to tell though.
We moved into an old farmhouse that hadn't been lived in for a few years, at least not by humans. The bats took up roost in the cellar and they would crawl down the old chimney and enter the house through the flues. Let's just say, that we didn't become friends.
Sarah wrote: "Not sure how I'd feel if one got tangled in my hair but generally I like bats. I was thinking they might be pipistrelles (sp?) it's difficult to tell though."Lol, I think I would get a bit freaked out if one got tangled in my hair too. Rather that than a spider though!
Neil Gaiman's bookmark
What am I doing? Working on a painting and coughing - am off work with bronchitis - tut!
Get better soon, Deborah!
Sandra wrote: "Neil Gaiman's bookmark"
I want one!
Where did you get that bookmark? I need one!
lol! Someone posted the picture in booklikes, but she was asking for one too. Nobody really knows where it came from.It is cool, isn't it?
It looked like it could come from etsy.com so I did a quick search and here it is:https://www.etsy.com/listing/22872364...
Lots of really cute ones in the shop!
Very, er, crafty! Unfortunately, I would only loose them. I cannot seem to hang onto a nice book mark. I have to look for cereal box sides or library return slips or sticky notepad pages for my dead tree books.I have bought nice ones in the past, and they disappeared, never to be seen again.
I had a bookmark that disappeared while I was reading in bed! I search everywhere for that bookmark, which was a very cute etsy bookmark btw, and never found it. It drove me nuts trying to figure out what happened to it!
Tasha wrote: "It looked like it could come from etsy.com so I did a quick search and here it is:https://www.etsy.com/listing/22872364......"
Oh, and they are magnetic! really cool!
OK all, in the US or not, how many periods did you have in high school?I had six, my kids have six, But I keep reading books where kids have eight periods???
Also in other parts of the world how do you guys separate classes at the high school level, I'm sure it is different. Just being curious nothing all that important :-)
When I first started h.s we had 7 periods (we had early arrival and late start so early was 1-6 and late was 2-7. Then after sophomore year we went to block scheduling, 6 periods (which I hated) and Monday/Wednesday was periods 2,4,6 Tuesday/Thursday was periods 1,3,5 and Friday's were periods 1-6. The classes Monday through Thursday were 100 minutes each :( then shorter periods on Friday since we had all of them. Block scheduling sucked because we had a lot more homework since we didn't have each class everyday..of course when the school was voting in regards to block scheduling the person that had the student voted could have cared less because he/she was a senior so it didn't matter to them since they were graduating.
My kids friends have that blocked schedule, I don't think I would like that.
Yeah the only class I liked having that long was journalism, lol :) gave me more time to work on my articles in class :)
There are 7 at my children's school. You take 6 and begin 1st or 2nd to alleviate the traffic. Once you are a Junior you may have enough credits to take as little as 4 classes. My daughter, a junior, is taking only 5. It helps with your GPA.
I had 6 periods (back in Uruguay), but in general I had only 4 courses a day, since 2 courses had 2 periods in a row. We had two 15 minutes recesses between periods 2 and 3, and 4 and 5.My daughter here in PA used to have 8 periods until last year. This year, due to a huge building remodeling at her school, they are having blocked schedule, that's 4 long periods and they don't have all the courses everyday. So far we are not really liking the block schedule, but she has been only for a month under it. Se has 8 minutes between classed to go from one room to the following. It was 6 minutes last year, but again, is being slower moving around with all the remodeling being done.
All very interesting, my kids could possibly take less classes, but if you are an athlete, like my son, or on cheer , Like my daughter who is also in student government are ASB, it is almost impossible.I think my oldest son who is now in college, only took one elective class all of high school, and that was Spanish 3 , Yes they counted that as an elective.
Each school here is different, so there is no rhyme or reason to Australian schools. Different amount of subjects you take each semester, different amount of classes (periods) each day, different length, different timetables (5, 7, 8, 10 day timetables), once you through in College (yr 11-12) in my state, you have different lengths of the school day depending on day or school.We're pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Once you go to high school (y7 or 12 years old) you're pretty much expected to manage your timetable and what's happening each day at school yourself. It's too complicated for parents, particularly if you have kids at multiple schools.
Pretty much all my Mum did was ask me every now in then as I was walking out the door "Do you have your PE gear?" "No Mum, I don't have PE today." "Well I don't know! I can't keep up"
We always had 10 38 minute periods but as you get older there are sone classes that are blocked and are every other day for 2 periods. Some years there were 9 periodd with the tenth being extea and having to ride late bus then they went back to 10 and I don't know if its a 9 or 10 period achedule they do now
And lunch was only 19 minutes then 19 mibutes of study hall in either order depending how you were assigned
Yup half a period to eat and half a period for study hall. Orevents crowding in cafeteria. Just have to learn to eat fast or swallow whole
I think my lunch break was at 11 am which is odd since thesr days I eat lunch at 4 pm
10 classes!!! That is a lot of potential for a lot of homework!I think a lot of American parents would have trouble with that Australian system, they like to know where their kids are at all times, I think we are a bit guilty of micro managing our children, I mean now my oldest is off to college at 18 and I have to keep my fingers crossed he knows what he's doing, because I have absolutely no control over it anymore, which is a good thing.
And you have the whole cafeteria thing we don't... dear god. That's pretty poor.Your poor teachers as well! You'd all be bouncing off the walls!
We have recess around 11am which is between 15-30mins as a break and then lunch is usually 45mins-1hr depending on the school. But they all have two breaks and longer so you could burn off energy, get you outside in the sun to wake up and such.
And 38 min periods?! You'd just have time to open your books, and start discussing something and it'd be all over. My high school was 60 min periods and that was sometimes too short. Lexx was just saying his high school had mixed period times so you would have a long period 90mins-2hrs of a subject every timetable cycle so you could do deeper/longer discussions about things.
I guess since it's what you grow up with you just get used to it. Some teachers could make time fly other teachers could make that 38 minutes seem like eternity.
There is the ability to micro manage in the Aussie system too Berit. Just we don't tend to bother. My kid is at school between 9-3 and that's all we need to know. And that they pass/get As in all their classes at the end of semester. We don't really care that it's 2.20pm and I know little Jimmy is in room 2.31 with Mr Bloggs doing Underwater Basket Weaving.
Travis of NNY wrote: "I guess since it's what you grow up with you just get used to it. Some teachers could make time fly other teachers could make that 38 minutes seem like eternity."Oh of course. And I understand, some of my teachers would have made it seem like forever as well...
Blargh, just finished a week of long, 11-hour days. My week's vacation is catching up with me, now that we're at month-end, and nothing is done. (Well, not nothing, but my two problem children I'm far behind on, and didn't quite realize it.). I discovered that my assistant is going to need to be re-trained on some auditing areas, had to re-do a bunch of stuff she didn't catch, which was a bummer. Happy it's the weekend!Well, back when I was in Jr. High, I believe we had 8 classes, but 7 periods. Each day we'd drop a different period (I think - it's been a while), so we'd only have 4 days each of all the classes, or something like that.
In high school it was the standard 6-period schedule. Homeroom was 2nd period, so I think it was a little bit longer. Then at 15 I switched to running start, and only had 2 classes at the high school each day.
My daughter doesn't have any electives this year, but when she took her two years of Spanish that did count as her elective. Because she has all weighted classes, her average would suffer by taking an unweighted elective. I don't think I thought about that stuff when I was her age! She plays sports and does tech for the school plays in addition to school, so she's not slacking, that's for sure!
At my kids school you can't count the first 2 years of Spanish as an elective, because it is a requirement to graduate, and that is why the UC and CSU system only count 8 waited semester grades, because every school system has a different curriculum.And I have to say the drama kids at my kids school probably have the most grueling of all schedules, and they definitely put on some great performances!
There are so many things that kids today have to worry about that we definitely did not when we were younger, speaking of my daughter is taking the SAT tomorrow, I get to start this applying to college thing all over again :-)
We have PSAT on 10/14.As far as grueling drama schedules, that's no joke! My daughter has lettered in dram each year and the only way to do it is to put in over 90 hours of tech. That's a lot! She'll be there 6 hours tomorrow.
When I was in high school In Southern California, in the late '60s we had 7 periods.
Just got home from an unexpected trip to the hospital. My dad fell off a ladder onto a concrete path in our garden! He has cracked a couple of ribs and has severe internal bruising and the doctor has said his ribs could take up to six weeks to heal so he will be sore for a while. Not a great end to the weekend sadly.
Oh no Lisa! Your poor Dad! I hear ribs can be very painful. Good thing he is OK though. Lots of TLC required.
Lisa, best wishes to you and your dad!
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You'll love this one...!! A book club & more
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