Seven Quick Takes

I've been very here-and-there with the Seven Quick Takes, especially since we had so much company in August and lots of things on the calendar for the beginning of the school year. Things are a bit quieter today, so I thought I'd give it a try.

1. It's been a big year for prayer requests it seems and this week is no different. Please pray for Kevin Sinnott, a student at Southern Catholic College, who drowned while swimming in a lake this week. We were delighted to learn that two dads who had been out of work for awhile that we've been praying for have found jobs. Others have been added to our job prayer list this week too. Two close friends have learned this week that their mothers have serious forms of cancer. Please pray for them!

2. We had our first Lit discussion of the year this week - on Homer's Iliad. It's exciting to be finally getting to the ancients (we've been talking about doing it for a lot of years), but boy did we end up with a lot of mythology enthusiasts in the group! I've been reading up on my mythology stories the last few days just to get an idea of what they're talking about. ;)

We've also been re-watching (about half-way through at the moment) Michael Wood's In Search of the Trojan War which, happily, is available on Netflix Watch Instantly.

3. What with helping with the upcoming history issue of mater et magistra magazine and helping Ria prepare for the SAT Subject test in World History (her choice, even though it's probably more work to prep for than the U.S. one), we've been encountering a lot of history around here as of late. We're particularly fond of the board game Perspective: The Timeline Game and have played it multiple times this week. It bugs me that I can't quite figure out whether it's still in print. Anybody know?

4. We have three Girl Scouts in the family! A mom from our local homeschool group who has been involved with scouting for many years decided to start her own troup. It's close by and the girls are thrilled! It is also connected with the Catholic scouting organization and so, among other things, they get to earn some gorgeous badges on different mysteries of the rosary. They're working on a patch for the Luminous mysteries for next month (the month of the Rosary). We'll be hosting an event at our house once maple syruping season comes around. I keep running into more and more people who are interested in tapping their maple trees. What fun!

5. As you can see from my two most recent posts, our gardens are overflowing in a few spots. The only things that are still producing are the tomatoes and the zucchini, but the tomatoes are really going. I picked about 25 tomatoes yesterday (most of them not quite ripe, but I was a little worried about the vines that were withering in places and thought I'd play it a little safe). I think there are at least 50 green tomatoes still on the vines. Hope the weather and the vines hold out!

The apples are also well on their way. We need to start making some applesauce this weekend with the new Kitchenaid mixer attachment (we've owned a Kitchenaid mixer for almost 20 years and just finally bought our first attachment!).

6. Ria's working her way through a new book offered by Catholic Heritage Curricula (and published by the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation in Nashville, TN) called The Human Person: Dignity Beyond Compare. It combines religion, ethics and philosophy and looks really great so far!

7. The inner geek in me is having way too much fun trying out the Eye-Fi Memory Card (via the Amazon Vine reviewer program). John and I bounced around town last night, trying to get a download from a "hotspot" and seeing where it worked. The geotagging is great (though bloggers need be aware of the potential security hazards of letting people know exactly where a particular photo was taken), but we haven't fully downloaded a picture yet from a "hotspot". It is pretty neat, however, to take a picture at home, and have the picture automatically and wirelessly download onto the computer and then onto Flickr (or other photo site of your choice). It took a bit of set-up initially (ours isn't the most friendly camera to the technology), but I was able to do it without bringing in my tech-savvy husband and it's working great now. Fun stuff!