We had a fairly non-eventful weekend. That seems to happen more often than not though, which is fine by me. I worked in the morning and then we went down to Racine for a book signing/author talk. The author was John Green and he just published his third solo book (fourth published book including collaborations) Paper Towns.
For those of you who don't know, I was first introduced to John Green in 2007 through my Young Adult Materials course. We had to read his first book Looking for Alaska which won the Printz award (a prestigious award for young adult authors, more info here). I thought it was a great book and I highly recommend it. A few weeks after we read Looking for Alaska, one of my classmates mentioned that John and his brother Hank were doing an experiment called Brotherhood 2.0. Brotherhood 2.0 was created because John and Hank realized that they were mostly communicating through chat and email and not actually talking to each other. So they decided that they were going to communicate only through non-textual ways (hence the video blog). They alternated days, only filming during the week and being exempt if there were a holiday.
Originally Brotherhood 2.0 was created for the brothers to communicate with each other but it grew to something bigger. Eventually the followers of the vlog, readers of John's books, and people familiar with Hank's work became known as Nerdfighters. John sang a song about being a nerd fighter and eventually that just became the name of the community following the brothers. On May 29, 2007, Erik was able to get John to wish me a Happy Birthday. It was the greatest birthday gift (and completely free).
So on Saturday we went to Racine for the Tour de Nerdfighting (as opposed to John's book tour). There were actually two events, one at the Racine Public Library and another one later at a community center. We went to the library one because we thought that would be easier with Timmy. It actually went fairly well. Erik walked around with Timmy a lot while I sat and listened to John and Hank. Erik actually got to see them first when they arrived downstairs and I guess he said hi to them and everything (a little bit jealous on my part). I was able to get my books signed which was great (because I guess technically he wasn't supposed to because he had the other event to get to and everything). We had been practicing with Timmy to say John Green and nerdfighter, both of which he refused to say when the time came. Oh well. Timmy is a lil' nerdfighter and that's all that really matters, not whether John Green knows he's a nerdfighter or not.
John talked a little bit about the importance of libraries (YES!) and read from Paper Towns before opening it up to questions. One of the questions was about the dead author...pretty much are books written for the author or for the reader. John would argue (and I would say successfully) that books are written for the reader. If a book were only written for the author then the author wouldn't have it published to begin with. Books are meant to be read and enjoyed by others. Another question was about the English classness of books, meaning are books written to be dissected and is there more meaning than what is written on the page. Again John would argue yes, and that even if one doesn't necessarily understand all the symbolism in books, a book can still be a great read. He talked about reading Huck Finn when he was 11 and how it was a great book about a raft trip. At 11 he didn't get the book was about slavery. But this didn't mean it wasn't a good book to 11-year-old John. He also talked about the imagery from A Catcher in the Rye and how one doesn't necessarily need to understand the symbolism of the red hat that Holden wears is the same color as Holden's dead younger brother's hair to understand that Holden has had some sad things happen to him in his life. It was truly very interesting and I highly recommend going author signings.
Pictures from the Tour de Nerdfighting can be viewed here.
Sunday we decided that we were going to go hardcore with the potty training (a strange concept, I know). Timmy did go pee in his potty at least once. We let him run around naked so that he could better know when he had to go to the bathroom. We had a few accidents which Timmy cleaned up first and then we cleaned up again (just to make sure everything got taken care of). I foresee us doing some carpet cleaning in the near future. This morning he's been doing a lot better with the potty training but it's slow going. I know it will take a little bit but it's still frustrating.
So, for those of you also doing potty training, or who have done potty training in the past...any ideas?
