Because I know there are still a few people who come here for the cute-kid pictures, I give you the official SteelyKid portrait for the 2013-14 academic year. This is actually a photo of a photo, because that’s the easiest way to convert the print they sent us to a digital format, and also because it gave me an excuse to play with GIMP a little. It’s not the greatest reproduction, but it’s good enough for blogging.
I’m not entirely sure what’s up with her hair, here. There were a few days when she went in with a braid, and this might’ve been one. Or she might’ve asked somebody to put it up for her before the picture, though you’d think they’d’ve done a better job than that…
We had our first parent-teacher conference about SteelyKid this week, at which I was somewhat disconcerted to learn that she already has standardized test scores. Not quite sure how they managed that. She’s been deemed to be at “Level B” in reading, which is probably an underestimate, but she lacks confidence, and will sometimes refuse to read things that she knows perfectly well how to read, for fear of making a mistake. They’ve started sending short books home with her every day, though, and she powers right through most of them.
She’s also developed a fascination with Scooby-Doo books, which is kind of maddening, because they’re really pretty awful. We’ve had to buy three for home, though, and she’s working her way through the apparently limitless stock of them in the school library. But hey, it could probably be much, much worse…
The poppy will be appreciated by readers in Commonwelath countries as it is Remembrance Day today!
Scooby Doo has the greatest moral, though: it’s never a ghost or a monster or something supernatural. There’s always a rational explanation.
http://storycollider.org/podcast/2013-08-04
Actually, the most annoying thing about the Scooby-Doo books has been that one of them really did have a supernatural explanation. There was a real ghost of a real witch, who was raised by an evil guy and started blasting people with real magic. She was eventually banished by a spell cast by a modern descendant of the people who originally killed her.
It completely violated all the conventions of the Scooby-Doo story, which was extremely distressing. Not for SteelyKid, but for me.
… Let’s just all agree that that story is not canon.
Let’s just all agree that that story is not canon.
And I would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling … adults!
One of the minor horrors of the modern age is that in Scooby Doo made-for-TV movies, the supernatural is real. Usually there will first be a rational explanation for the first part of the mystery (the town fathers ran a fake witch along the road using a fruit-picker), and then in a sudden twist the local writer raises his ancestor the WITCH from beyond the vail. Or the zombies come out. Or the aliens arrive.