Universities Have Colleges, But Colleges Don't Have Universities.

On the way to school this morning that's how I tried to explain my graduating from a university twenty-years ago as opposed to graduating from a college, but Jeffrey said he didn't get it. Which is ok -- he did  make the mental calculation that with my age now, I must had graduated Stetson University when I was twenty-two years old. Both the kids are pretty good at mental calculations ... Sarah needed some help yesterday figuring out adding two volumes (I mean, measurements of length times width times height) stacked on top of each other, and I must admit that both their math skills are excellent! Jeffrey and I even spent time this weekend answering riddles on YouTube.


The myth of the Minotaur? That's bull.


Yesterday I finished reading David Elliott's Bull, a poetic retelling in the main characters' voices of the story of Theseus and the Minotaur out of Greek mythology. ISBN 9780544610606 But here the Minotaur -- the half-man half-bull whom Minos' queen Pasiphae gave birth to after canoodling with the white bull Poseidon sent as a sacrifice who ... wasn't sacrificed -- who ends up imprisoned in the Labyrinth is actually Asterion. His half-sister Minos' daughter Ariadne tries to save him and Theseus uses that good intent to find the Minotaur (Asterion) and kill him to be the hero and savior of Athens.


Poseidon, Minos, Pasiphae, Deadalus, Theseus, Ariadne, and Asterion all get their words in.


Asterion, ruler of the stars. Coming back down to Earth we come to another poetic fable set in present-day Israel, where the story of Romeo and Juliet -- I don't think I have to italicize that since it's so well known -- gets retold, with quite a few quotes from Shakespeare, in Pamela L. Laskin's Ronit & Jamil (ISBN 9780062458544) where Ronit's an Israeli girl and Jamil's a Palestinian boy. Going with my own beliefs I'm tempted to put Palestinian in quotation marks, but why be more confusing? Anyway, Ronit and Jamil meet through their physician fathers and have to be -- or think they have to be -- very careful about where and when they meet. And not to get embroiled in that conflict.


I'd tell you how it ends, but that WOULD be telling!


This weekend was actually quite a relaxing one. After Martha got off work at Burger King Saturday we stretched back for a while and then headed to Robert and Sharon's house for a cookout with many members of our extended family in town including Martha's aunt Shirley who was visiting from Garrison about an hour south of Minot. For Mother's Day we were first in church for the morning and when she woke up Martha developed a strong headache on the left side of her head. The kids and I picked her up at church where she was going to stay for second service after I got the call when I got home, so instead we went to lunch at Ground Round from there.


Martha spun the wheel for Mother's Day and got us two dollars off our meal, anyway.


And if you've ever been to Ground Round, two dollars off isn't necessarily a lot. Oh well -- we got home, we crashed (at least Martha and I did; the kids needed to but didn't), and after Martha and I spent some time working on what metabolic types we are and figuring out what foods to make and shop for to get our weights in balance. Mine is or at least it's close; Martha's ... not so much which is why I push and pray for her to be successful and stick to this. I eat or try to eat the right amount as it is, but it's often such a cross between keeping sociable -- if you don't eat what we put out, something must be wrong -- and keeping stable -- if you don't have your health and strength you don't have much of anything -- that it's easy to throw caution to the wind!


Especially the way the wind's been blowing around here, David