My nephew is 14 and he is just not motivated. He would be perfectly happy to sit alone in his room playing video games all day long, except for the few minutes he wants to come out and act silly to get attention and laughs. Schoolwork is definitely a chore - I don't understand how a 15 question grammar worksheet that he knows the answers to can take 2 hours to complete. I let him walk around a lot when doing his school work, we're about to start up soccer league, and dh is looking at a few other projects to get him to work on in the house. And then there are those rare days when he is responsible, completes tasks, and acts like a normal human. The difficult part seems to be getting people who don't have 14 yr old children (like my mother who remembers my childhood as being all rosy and wonderful) to understand that this is life right now.

I dragged myself out of bed (finally) and got in a short strength training session, a cardio session, and a jump rope intervals session. This makes 5 weeks that I've been consistent about working out!

First Weekly Report of the Year!

I read The Iliad last week. I started on New Year's Day and dh did all these really sweet tasks around the house while I just sat on the couch with the cat and read and read and read. I finished it Friday night. This week I am reading Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay. I love all of his books and this one was just as good as the rest!

I'm actually planning on the 999 Challenge which could automatically result in meeting this goal as well. I just finished 2 years in an EMBA program so I'm busting to get some serious reading time in!

We use Quicken and online banking. He hands his receipts to me (at least once a week) and I track it all and pay all the bills. We discuss decisions to be made, but the routine stuff is easy to handle. I have handled it all since we were married. A few years into our marriage dh made some comment so I transferred it all over to him, showed him how Quicken worked, how the online banking worked, and let him have at it. It was hard for me because I am much more comfortable having the control over it. About the second month we had a late fee because he hadn't sat down with the bills in quite awhile. I decided that making him do the bills was going to hurt me much more than it hurt him so I took them back. ;-) Since then I go over the general overview with him a few times a year and point out specific issues when necessary. For example, around August this year I sent him a summary of our food expenses to show him that his Starbucks and daily lunch was a large percentage. I can nag him that he has to stop getting his coffee every day, but the raw numbers are what really gets his attention. I just decided that it takes less time for me to do it all than to clean up behind him. He has his strengths and I have mine. I say all of this, then have to laugh that he has just stepped in to be the bookkeeper/administrative assistant for our church. He can do it when it's his job, he just doesn't pay attention to it often enough at home.

That online test was interesting. I scored 451 wpm with 91% comprehension. It looks like that would equate to something closer to 550 wpm on paper. I read a book on speed reading when I was in high school (so years ago) and learned to scan some texts, plus I test well. I read a lot so I get lots of practice.

Hey - it worked! I had wanted to know how to do this for awhile. I also had never paid attention to the big Post Reply button on the left. I learned two things today. I'm ahead for next week, yay! Thanks for the tutorial.

I would recommend two that I read this fall. Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman was great. My 14 year old nephew read it in one day and loved every bit of it! I also discovered Elizabeth Goudge and really enjoyed two books by her: The Heart of the Family and The Castle on the Hill. I look forward to reading more in 2009. I've been using this thread to start my list for 2009!

I've been wondering how to do this. Thanks!!

Mine is up here.

Mine is up here.

Very funny, thanks for the laugh!

I have been using HST this year and I like it a lot. It seems to handle change pretty well since I have changed a few things. I came up with a nice round school year and then plans changed so I had to go redo that. I came up with beautiful lesson plans and have had to shift assignments and some entire groups of things, it is about as easy as HST advertises. Watch a bit of the video and start putting real world stuff in there. The help text is pretty extensive (same as the manual) so look stuff up as you are interested in it.

Another one I saw a few minutes ago "Isn't it funny..." "I missed a knock-knock joke? Anyone want to share it?"