A Classic Housewife in a Modern World

Once upon a time in another bloggy life I had a regular weekly feature called “Come Shoot The Breeze With Me,” some of you may remember. It was a big fat collection of a whole lot of nothing and a whole lot of everything all in one place and it was beautiful because it was simple and undemanding and gave you something to take away.

And I stopped doing it??? Who knows why?

I have since come to my senses. And in true “shooting the breeze” fashion (which for you non-southerners is the act of sitting around and chatting informally and comfortably) here’s what I know for this week:

It’s back to school everywhere this month – maybe your kids are homeschooled, maybe they’re public or private schooled. Maybe school has started, maybe it hasn’t. But it’s in the air one way or another and there’s little you can do to escape it (unless of course your children are older or younger than school age or you don’t have any yet – but I digress.) Here’s a few Back To School links for you, either way.

• There’s a NOT Back To School Blog Hop, for homeschoolers, going on over at My 3 Boybarians. Every Monday in August is a different theme, and they’re halfway through, but you can still play along and find other blogging homeschoolers.
• I’ve been setting up and getting used to My Homeschool Plan this week – looking for an online planner? Check it out.
• New Nationwide Study Confirms Homeschool Academic Achievement- I thought the breakdowns about how income levels, parent education and money spent affected (or didn’t) the percentile scores were interesting to see.
• An interesting idea, not sure how I feel about it.. K12 is basically an online correspondence public school program (and just as free as your local public school but no school buses or cafeteria lunches.)
• This week I stumbled across this JAW-DROPPING youtube video of a 20/20 piece called “Stupid in America” which takes a seriously hard look at the state of our public school systems. Y’all this is harsh. And scary. And there are many who are going to argue. I found this article which discussed each of John Stossels points, including some additional background info and article links for some of them. And it was then I realized “YALL! This piece aired in 2006!!” It’s not like this is new news, this is old news that some of us are only just now hearing about. Truly, if you watch nothing else, watch this.

Fun, funny or really cool…I’ve had a lot of interesting things come across my way this week. How about the Evian Roller Babies commerical (TOO CUTE) or the all-natural swimming pool or the theft-proof and anti-puncture bicycle that reads your fingerprints and features a calorie-monitoring system? Cool, huh?

And last but not least I’ll leave you with some juicy morsels I found floating around the blogosphere this week. Feast your eyes on these:

• Alyssa is giving away a free Flip MiniHD Camcorder
• Texans, today is the first day of the sales-tax holiday weekend
• “A Nursing Doll? Oh My.”
• A Different Kind of Christmas Catalog
• The Reward (this made the radio, y’all!)
• My internet hosting company is having a FREE FIRST YEAR special right now.

I know I didn’t find ALL the goodies this week. What did I miss? Now it’s your turn. Come, Shoot the Breeze With Me!

(Link up to anything, anything at all. Any kind of link post, review, question you asked, etc. To limit you further would be well, not in the spirit of good breeze shooting. This list will stay open all weekend so you’ll have plenty of time to share over the weekend.)