5&Dime Friday

Hello! I have lost time this week - I've been a day behind for the entire time, and I'm like, "It's Friday? Really?" This is the sad, sad result of going to meetings all week for various wonderful institutions - somehow this is the year of the Board. Next year WILL NOT BE. Trust me on this. Anyway! This is a really, really, REALLY quick five and dime -- the number of things I'm seeing on the web are adding up, and I've not spilled them in a long time! So, without further ado:

Jo Gratz remains the coolest girl on earth. That is all.

Didja notice Leila guesting away on Book Riot this past week? Also on Book Riot, much amusement due to the additional shenanigans of our old bud, Minh, with the Celebrity Selfie Book Club. I love that idea a WHOLE lot and need to re-imagine a whole lot of selfies now.

Hat tip to Emm Roy, cartoonist.
In addition to being Asian American Heritage Month, May is National Mental Health Month, FYI for 2016.

And on the same topic, you won't want to miss Kelly talking depression at Disability in KidLit. She's solo for her first piece, and then part of a panel in the next. I appreciate the booklist(s), a great deal.

Just to take a quick sec to plug Disability in Kidlit -- as a reader and as a writer, I find this site really, really valuable. Sometimes a perception check can help - and having someone with a particular real life experience with a particular issue articulate their opinion on a book which deals with that particular issue can help me assess what I thought I knew, and see more clearly how assumptions and stereotypes fall short. Check it out.

The Forever Girls - more than the sum of their parts. Poor Ariel and Rapunzel may be my favorite characters thus far.

“She could wear it in her corset, where it would be a constant reminder of his love—probably because it was uncomfortable.” Oh, ladies. You know you want his whalebone in your stays. (Wow, that sounded bad.) Don't worry, you've just got a busk in your corset.

Running in circles never looked so fun. I need to go to this Kindergarten. Stat. What is it, with all of the cool pedal desks and encouragement to fidget and twitch that kids get nowadays? I am flat out jealous, and still mad I don't have my hovercar. Pfft.

And again, on the same topic, Tech Boy ran across this piece on 19th-and-early-20th century writers who had VERY DEFINITE opinions on sitting or standing whilst writing. Interesting that Virginia Woolf wrote with her typewriter on a dresser, so she could stand, and Roald Dahl... sat in a sleeping bag in a wing-backed chair with his feet propped on a suitcase full of ...logs? Because, reasons. (In my always-cold-even-in-August basement office here, I'm all about that sleeping bag idea, however. Tech Boy is already researching ways to make my dining-table-turned-desk into a Japanese-style kotatsu. Conversely, we can turn my elliptical machine into a desk. Options, people.)

Can you even believe that we've been doing this 48 Hour Book Challenge for ten years????? I've had to bow out for one reason or another for the past couple of years, but once, I read competitively, doing without sleep/bathing, for no other reason than it's fun to rock your obsessive gene occasionally. That was fun. Join the fun for twelve hours, June 19th-21st, 2015.

Pictured below, it's the Field Trip Image of the Day: The Army Corps of Engineers Tidal Bay Model we "discovered" (it's been there since 1952 or something) in an out of the way corner of Sausalito, California when we were trying to dig up new places for our Scottish visitors to see (after we'd exhausted climbing Lombard Street, climbing Alcatraz, climbing Nob Hill... are you catching a theme?). This was one of our favorite places, and you haven't lived until you've squeed over a tiny Golden Gate Bridge in a three-acre, working hydraulic model of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento - San Joaquin River Delta Systems-- tides and all. Had I known that this was here when I was teaching, I *SO* would have dragged my students here, every single year. It's been decommissioned - they do all this sort of tidal modeling on computers now -- but it's amazing. If you're coming to ALA this summer with kids in tow, tack on an extra day for a little sightseeing; this is only a ten-or-fifteen minute drive from the City, and if you call ahead for a docent, the Army Corps people love to answer questions.

Happy Weekend, whether you're lazing with books and bbq-ing or dashing about, starting the commencement-ing.