Jilli, insent.

(didn't go see it, but didn't get outraged at the inaccuracies)

Well, I'm not outraged at them; it's just not like the story as I've been wishing someone would tell it ever since I got hooked on that corner of history. Which is probably to the good, given that so far a major source of my own artistic inspiration seems to be reading other people's books or watching other people's movies and saying, "What?! That's not how *I* would do it! Is no one going to tell that story the way I want it told? Really? Nobody? Well, FINE. I'll go write it myself." I then stomp off in an inspired huff, and 100,000 words or so later I at least have the satisfaction of having told myself the story I wanted to hear.

ah ... well, I took my degree in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology (and hasn't THAT turned out to be practical!) so I know the history, and when the ads started coming out I was sitting there appalled, working on the assumption it was supposed to be at least quasi-realistic. And, as one of those things that's inspired a fair amount of poetry, I was getting fairly cranky about it. But understanding that its connection to reality was pretty tenuous, I started ignoring the glaring historical inaccuracies and just watched the pretty.

America's Test Kitchen just did a low-fat cheesecake recently, but the one thing that they said to do was not to substitute the sugar in it, since in baking, sugar is considered to be a liquid, and Splenda is a solid in baking terms, so the texture ends up all wrong if you use Splenda. They ended up going with a mixture of low-fat cream cheese, yogurt cheese (drained yogurt) and cottage cheese, run through the food processer to get rid of any texture issues.

I KNOW there are good no-sugar cheesecakes though -- I've eaten them. And its good to keep the fat when something is low-sugar because the fat tasting good makes up for a lot.

Of course, they were from commercial bakeries and this is of no help.

Toddson, I knew we went to the same college, but I didn't realize we had the same major, too... heh.

Well, it was one of their better departments ... and when I was there at least one very charasmatic teacher.

I started ignoring the glaring historical inaccuracies and just watched the pretty.

You know, it's entirely possible that if the pretty in question had included one of my personal favorite pretties, I would've felt the same way. I have a blog friend who watched it in the theater like three times because she was all "Gerard Butler! SQUEEE!!!" And I look at his pictures and think, "Really? Squee? Not seeing it."

I liked block teaching, despite the fact that I taught in several classrooms, so I was always worried I'd go to the wrong room. I don't think I could go back to 45 minutes.

I liked the two hour block when I was teaching, mostly because it forced me to really plan and work out my teaching. I can bullshit easily for 45 minutes, and I know that there are times that I would have skimped on preparation if I only had to teach for 45 mins. Two hours made me get my shit together.

K-Bug has a block schedule. And she has so many credits that since she is taking a zero period class, she doesn't have anything during her 5th or 6th periods. On a regular day, she is done with school at noon. On Tuesdays, she is done at 10am.

Both kids are officially at school and have started their respective "last firsts". Her last first day of High School and his last first day of Elementary School.

Damn, I'm such a sap.

Her last first day of High School

Oh my! Has she got her eyes set on colleges?