Sit On It

The neighbor around the block put out a couch for the garbagemen to pick up that looks nicer than my couch. And it rained all day yesterday.

Very Interesting...

I don't know who made this... But I totally want a third shot of Charlie Rose!

One Branch at a Time

My son just had a cool idea for making paper a green way: The lumberjacks should prune the largest limb from every tree. They'd have plenty of wood and the trees could live too!

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Mashup I am not going to make: "Paper Planes" and "Authority Song"

The Long Weekend

We had a nice holiday weekend. It lasted forever. (Yes, literally. I don't know where you think you are but we're still there.) We went to the park, to see Night at the Museum 2, played Monopoly, and generally ran around. I barbecued steaks last night but I forgot I had a yam I was supposed to slice and grill too. But we had corn on the cob. Which we cut off the cob.

No Sugar Tonight

Ten days without sugar and today both my parents tell me how fat I'm getting. Grrr.

TV or Not TV

We finally got an outdoor antenna! My husband put it up a few days ago. I should take a picture of it. (Maybe that's why my neighbor wouldn't wave "Hi" to me today.)

The picture comes in beautifully. Watching the American Idol finale with my kids Wednesday night was the most enjoyment I've had from watching TV in a long time. The project actually cost us about $110, but I hope it will pay for itself. I just couldn't handle the newscaster turning into Max Headroom all the time.

1... 2... 3!

(boxesandarrows.com)

Everytime I see this picture on the interwebs it gives me the heebie-jeebies.

I know it's supposed to mean togetherness and teamwork, but all I can think of is, "OK, on the count of 3, everybody PULL!!!"

Aaaaaaaaghhhh!

Is This Okay?

Cat yodeling, just plain funny or just plain mean? You be the judge.

First Harvest

Here's what I had for dinner. The spinach is from my garden!

Take the Money and Run

Got to go on a bank and store run with my mom! : )

Ugh

I feel like crap. And no, it's not a hangover. Nobody's here. The kids are at their friends and J's at his mom's.

He Plays One...

Yesterday I called my doctor's office to make an appointment. "Can you hold, please?"

"Sure..."

I'm listening to the hold music, working on a report flagging some invoices as house account sales. House, house...

The nurse comes back. "Can I help you?"

"Yes, I'd like to make an appointment with Dr. House."

She laughed, "Well I can't blame you there, he is pretty awesome!"

Tricky

My kid thinks he's tricky, doing a load of laundry that consists entirely of his own clothes.

Ha ha ha! He did his own laundry. : )

Oh heck, he used the last of the soap.

Truly

My 14 year old said this Sunday while we were looking at the newspaper:

"There's a lot of help needed, but there's no Help Wanted."

Awful Baby Names

I heard someone mispronounce a word on the radio last night and thought to offer a list of bad baby names:

HercuLeAnn
Charlemander
Draculana
Sarcassie
Darth
Magnesia

S'cool

Here's an interesting book review in the Wall Street Journal for the book "Why Students Don't Like School" that led me traipsing across the internet early this morning for more info about "flow". Even though I'm not an educator, as a worker and a manager and a mom, I want to learn more about motivation and learning. Here are some quotes:

"When we confront a task that requires us to exert mental effort, it is critical that the task be just difficult enough to hold our interest but not so difficult that we give up in frustration. When this balance is struck, it is actually pleasurable to focus the mind for long periods of time. For an example, just watch a person beavering away at a crossword or playing chess in a noisy public park. But schoolwork and classroom time rarely keep students' minds in this state of "flow" for long."

So that's why I had fun Friday working on a database project. (I love SQL but my complete lack of internet programming is holding me back. I want to and can't make a digital dashboard.)

"Is drilling worth it?" The answer is yes, because research shows that practice not only makes a skill perfect but also makes it permanent, automatic and transferable to new situations..."

Good! Another reason to tell my kids why they should do their homework. And while searching for more info on that quote I found this post by Foodservice Educators Learning Community, that says "This insight actually gave further validity to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Flow Theory, ...which suggests that when the skill of the individual is in sync with the level of the challenge, the individual is in a state of flow and so engaged that, among other things, they lose all sense of time. When the challenge is beyond the skill level of the individual s(he) becomes anxious and when it is below the skill level s(he) becomes bored."


Which is interesting. I'd like to learn something about teaching, how can you increase someone's skill level?

Current

Today's the day I finally got caught up at work. Yay!

I haven't been totally up to date in almost a year. : )

Now I'll get to do some cool projects and make some groovy reports, revamp some charts, maybe even dynamic metrics. Yippee!

I went over to see my Dad to tell him the news and he was eating a hamburger! Not the bun but some of the meat. I had a nice visit with him and my stepmom.

Mayhem

I finally got my copy of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I'm really enjoying it! Thanks, Jim of the Velvet Blog for pointing it out. I never would have heard of it.

I visited my Dad Sunday. He was up in the chair eating a bowl of vegetable beef soup and some apple. He lost over 100 lbs. and he's finally starting to gain a little back.

When Dandelions Attack

We sicced the whole family on the dandelions in the front lawn. It was really nice working together. A little friendly competition to see who could get the most and the best. It was nice to think about how frugal and organic we were being and how fortunate it is that grass doesn't scream.

A dozen more dandelions popped up last night.