Hamsters and fishes and chickens, oh my!

In honor of today being the last day of third grade, I thought we would have a nice little Tuesday Morning Bullet Post.

• Yesterday's mail brought us another envelope of Box Tops for Education from a blog reader - thank you to all who have helped to support Neatnik's school!



• Look for some School at Home posts over the coming weeks. I am not particularly thrilled with the summer reading list sent home from school but The Secret Gardenand Peter Pandid make an appearance on this year's list, so that's something.



• I entered Neatnik's summer reading club minutes on the county library's web site yesterday. The goal for the entire summer is 480 minutes of reading. Neantik's got over 930 minutes logged since June 1st. The hours in the car this weekend sure helped.



• :: sotto voce :: I knit on a sock for the Neatnik in the car on Sunday afternoon. Got half a leg finished. Just thought I should slip that in here unobtrusively since this is *supposed* to be "the wool and the word". That is all. Back to the "word" now...



• Neatnik has already redeemed her Barnes & Noble summer reading incentive. She picked Braving the Lakeas her reward book. This is one of those decision-driven books and it has an online extra component. Nice.



• She's halfway through her Borders incentive and has read 65 new books this year, including two loaned Kindle books from Lendle: The Pizza Mysteryand The Mystery of the Stolen Sword.



• I've read over 100 new books this year but I know it would be more if I spent less time puttering around on Lendle. If you view my profile over there, you'd understand.



• I am in the middle of two books: False Pretensesfrom the library and Moving Is Murderon Lendle.



• False Pretenses begins a spin-off series following the last Sophie Trace novel, The Right Call.I like the author's style but in this book she has dueling dialects: Cajun and four-year-old lispy. I may not finish it; I really hate it when authors write a dropped "r" for little kids.



• Moving Is Murder is starting out slowly but I am hoping that things pick up soonest. I would feel badly about not finishing a Lendle loan: after one loan, you cannot loan again and it would mean I didn't finish a book some other Lendler might have.



• Lendle alerted me last time I placed a request. Said I have a lot of books on request and reminded me that I only have two weeks to read a book and maybe I wouldn't be able to read all the lends in the allotted time.



• Go ahead and laugh; Number Guy laughed out loud when I mentioned that to him.



• Besides, I am requesting for two readers: the Neatnik and I both. There are are more juvenile books available on Kindle than you might expect. Sadly, the Agency Model publishers seem to be the biggest offenders with respect to disabling lend privileges. Do they not realize that they are diminishing their returns this way?



• I told my class about Lendle. One student in particular was interested. She owns a first-generation Kindle and signed up as soon as she got home from school. She also has told me that she is Catholic so I told her about Rome Sweet Homeafter class yesterday. She was way impressed and said she was going to order it from Amazon last night.



• We currently have a pet hamster, Magellan, and an assortment of tropical fish. Magellan is a family pet but the fish are Number Guy's responsibility. We may be adding to our little menagerie soon: a local kindergarten teacher hatched a half dozen chicks in her classroom this month and they are ready to find a new home. Yup, we are looking into becoming backyard chicken farmers.



• I was inspired by Jessie.



• Spent some time last night with fellow parishioners who already have a little flock of Bantam hens. They sent us home with some fresh eggs and I scrambled them up this morning for Neatnik and Number Guy. She said they were the best eggs ever. Scheduled to pick up our chicks Wednesday.

The sun is shining at the moment but we are anticipating heavy storms later today, so I should probably end here and see if I can't enjoy the rays while they last. Uh, oh, between starting that sentence and finishing it, the sun went away and it is looking all dark and omnious now. The weather has been so bipolar lately.