Ell Jay by the Gay Bay

Just a hello to everyone in LJ-land. I'm in San Francisco for two more nights ... looking forward to finally meeting bluecarp in person tomorrow!

Happy belated birthday to heyfoureyes! From 31 it just keeps getting better. And thanks for breaking the incredible news about MWMF.

silverseabear, good luck on your trek across this strange place called America.

daddicade, we'll be sure to catch one more round of beers at the pub before you head home to England, eh?

A big hello to the foxy cuteness that is technodyke. And apologies for another missed birthday! Say hi to PDX for me. Maybe we can do coffee some time ...

tesao is your point of reference for the word "dub". Hopefully someone will explain "rub a dub dub" to me some day.

tyrsalvia, enjoy Burning Man (I will resist the temptation to be irreverent and abbreviate it BM) and good luck with the eyewear.

jillbertini, your new nic is da bomb.

fairiegodmother, glad you are feeling better! I've been a little out of sorts myself lately - got these raging headaches the last four or five days, which is bad enough. But now it's these damn cramps ...

TNG, Math Genius

Last year, The Next Generation was having trouble with his math. But you'd never know that now, the way the kid is doing fractions and multiplication and division.

a63: So, you can see that 4/12 is the same as 1/3 ...
TNG: Oh, I get it ... fractions are kinda like division, huh?
a63 {bouncing up and down excitedly}: Yes!!!!! Fractions are EXACTLY the same as division, in fact it's just another name for division.

He's doing really well with multiplication and knows most of his times tables. When he doesn't know the answer from memory, he can work it out by counting off (e.g. for 6*5=30 he'll count "five, ten, fifteen ..." until he gets the answer). So this tells me he understands the concept too.

He did several long multiplication problems tonight from the workbook I got him - multiplying two- and three-digit numbers. He got every answer exactly right. (I checked his work with a calculator.) He even did more examples than I asked.

So I'm really really excited about this. He's mastering the concepts and the techniques, and he's got the enthusiasm for the subject. He ought to have a good year in school.