Paradise ponders...

Paradise ponders...  Yesterday morning I had three of my neighbor's kids over for their first tutoring session with me, on programming (with a touch of actual computer science).  We spent about a third of the session just exploring why they wanted to do this (all three seem highly motivated).  They have very different goals and interests – one wants (badly!) to build robots, another is mostly just curious about how programming works, and the other is interested in the math.  Since none of them have any substantial knowledge even of the basics, I'll keep them all together until we get past things like base arithmetic, Boolean algebra, etc.  After that might be a different story.  All of that assumes they want to come back, of course :)

Debbie gave them an extra reason to come back.  While we were working, she was cooking – and when we'd finished she served up the results to the kids: an oatmeal cake that was extravagantly good.  The cake itself was delicious, but so was the icing: a gooey confection of pecans and coconut.  She served these enormous pieces that I could not possibly have eaten, and two of the kids (the two girls) wolfed them down in no time at all, along with mugs of milk.  The youngest kid (the one boy) had a bit more trouble, understandably, since the piece of cake was roughly the size of his head!

I forsook eating cake with the kids, as I knew what was coming later that afternoon: baked Ora King salmon and roasted vegetables.  Once again, superb.  This time Debbie remembered to put Peppadew peppers in the mayonnaise sauce, and it was (of course!) delicious.  The roasted veggies included Brussels sprouts, parsnips, and carrots.  Man, what a meal!  The only problem with a meal like that is the aftermath: I could just barely move for about four hours...