I was up with the roosters (OK, not really, I slept until 8) and out doing yard work. Mindie joined me and I showed her how to run the lawn mower while I ran the string trimmer. I reminded her a couple of times not to run over the cord but I don't think it sank in until the mower suddenly "stopped working." The cord was neatly severed. Luckily, it was just a ratty old extension cord that's easily replaced and nobody was injured or even mildly shocked. Almost as lucky is the fact that she had just about finished mowing the back yard anyway.

We came in and she went back to work on her web page, which is turning out to be an absorbing and multi-skill project for her. She's learning some new photography skills and may soon be ready for the good camera instead of a crummy phone camera. She's also been sketching like crazy with plans to upload them to the page as well. So soon I guess I'll be sharing my multi-function printer with the flatbed scanner built in. After piddling with that for a bit, she was off to whomp some Rock Band booty. She's surprisingly good at the game.

Shannen slept in, as usual, until I woke her up. Poor little night owl. She had apparently been up late reading some books on Egyptian mythology. Thanks, Rick Riordan :-) She's really following in my footsteps with her love of the classical world. Luckily, I think she has a much more solid Christian foundation that will keep her from faltering as she studies. Anyway, after a little breakfast, she dragged out "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" and spent a good three hours reading aloud from it, reader's theater style.

By the time Shan was done with C.S. Lewis for a while, Mindie was bored with Rock Band, so Shannen took over. Mindie came in to watch thriller movies with me. I take that back, first she finished up a documentary about the economy, national debt, and the history 20th century American fiscal policy through the modern day with me. It was preaching to the choir for me, but Mindie got some good stuff out of it and we had an interesting (and I hope enlightening) discussion of different worldviews. Mindie was under the misapprehension that "everybody" wants the government out of their lives so we talked some about the broad spectrum of what citizens want from their government. Apparently our strongly Libertarian views have influenced her more than we realized. After that we went on to a haunted hospital movie (I love 'em). This led to a neat discussion on the "less is usually more" philosophy of horror media and how there could be exceptions (this movie provided the hands-down scariest-looking antagonist I have ever seen - she will be haunting my nightmares for a while and honestly, I don't normally get affected by makeup or CGFX). Now we're watching a nice haunted house flick, but the tension was getting a little too intense and it was time for a break. You know it's time for a break when a character goes into the bathroom and you announce to your daughter, "She's going to open the medicine cabinet then close it again and something scary will be behind her in the mirror" then you watch exactly that scenario unfold and you still try to remove one another's body parts. :-P So we took a break, discussed horror tropes (thinking Mindie might be borrowing my new copy of Stephen King's "Dance Macabre" soon, she has some good thoughts on the subject and seems interested) then decided to do some cool-down before going back.

Oh, and it rained today. Only for about 3 minutes, and not very hard so probably not a measurable amount of precipitation but the smell was heavenly. I've been in a lot of wet places in the world but there is no smell I've ever encountered that's quite like a west Texas rain. Rain in west Texas smells of growth and green and fresh ozone all mingled with rich soil and something else that I can't even place. I wish I knew how to bottle that smell and give it away to the world. I think it might end all war if everybody would just sniff a bottle of "West Texas Rain" when their tempers start rising.