Sunday Salon, March 15th

The day after PI DAY!

Weather: Rain

Yesterday: was the most special Pi Day ever...at a special moment in time the date and the time combined to be the first seven digits of PI: 3.1415926. (See photo above of a selfie my daughter snapped at just the right time.)

In honor of Pi Day: we played the Pi(e) and Prejudice Game. The Game entailed watching the long version of Pride and Prejudice (with Colin Firth, dreamy man) and eating pie or drinking sparkling wine every time a character acted in a certain way. For example, if Lady Catherine De Burgh acted snotty,  Mr. Darcy had trouble expressing his emotions or gave off a stink face, if someone gave a confusing speech, or if Mary pontificated we would have to take a bit of pie or sip our wine, sometimes even doing both. We did this for the length of the very long production...five plus hours. Ha!

Banoffee Pie: In honor of Pi Day and so we'd have enough pie to eat during the game, Carly and I made a very strange toffee and banana pie (Banoffee) made from boiled sweetened condensed milk. It involves boiling the can of milk for 2 1/2 hours, allowing for cooling time, then after compiling the pie, allowing time for it to set up in the fridge. Lucky we were watching a LONG movie. Here is the recipe for Banoffee Pie.

Polka dot world: Our street trees, flowering plums, are shedding their petals. Everything in our neighborhood is covered with them. It is a polka dot world. (The blue thing in the two photos is my foot in a blue shoe.)

40-bags-in-40-days update: four more bags this week.

• Pantry-I made another stab at the pantry, this time cleaning out a bag of food to give to the food drive which is taking place at school this week.
• Shoes-I cleared out a bag of old shoes and organized the ones I am keeping. I even found my old slippers which I'd been missing for several years.
• Sheer drapes- several months ago I bought new sheer curtains for our bedroom. The bag has been sitting around since that time. Yesterday I removed the old, dusty sheers and put up the new ones. I threw away the old ones. (Technically this was a bag for a bag but I am counting it.)
• Small junk drawer- the desk in the kitchen has several drawers. Apparently I have been using one of them for small things for years and the thing was full of paper clips, brads, pens/pencils, etc. I threw away another small bag from unusable or other old items. While I did this Carly cleaned up the cup where we store our pens and pencils on top of the desk. She sorted out over 50 of them to throw away or for me to take to school.  Do you recognize a theme here? We hoard pens!

Book read this week:

• Fairest by Marissa Meyer---book 3.5 in the Lunar Chronicles, this one telling the story of Levana, the Lunar Queen.

Currently reading:

• Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle--- an Alex Award book told in reverse, which is very odd.

Abandoned books this week:

• Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment by Tal Ben-Shahar--- not that I don't want to be happy, I just don't feel like working on happiness lessons right now.
• Some Luck by Jane Smiley---I've heard this book is good but the audiobook is tremendously boring. I listened to one half of a disc and decided I can't do it.

Quote of the week:

Why am I a reader? Well, I was lucky enough to grow up with only three TV channels in black and white. I was lucky enough to grow up without video games or Facebook to isolate me. I was lucky enough to grow up when testing hadn’t taken over schooling, and the most wonderful thing a teacher might say was, “Go to the library and pick out a book.” And I was lucky enough to grow up without the Internet that seems to have turned many of our children into skimmers and scanners rather than real readers. Don’t get me wrong—I appreciate the amazing technological world we live in, but I am so thankful for dirty Pepsi bottles, Ben Franklins with comic book racks, and reading simply for the sheer joy of it. -Bill McBride, author

Have a great week!