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June 5, 2008: Library Donation
When I was a judge for the Philip K. Dick Award, I received many,
many books, the vast majority of which were either unreadable or
uninteresting. I got two and a half boxes worth of them, in
fact. I only wanted to keep two of them, both finalists.
The rest sat in my office, taking up space and squashing the
carpet. Today I finally had enough of tripping over them and I
called the library. Yes, the receptionist told me, the Friends of
the Library Book Sale takes paperbacks, trade paperbacks, and hard
cover, and they're always thrilled to get more.
I loaded them into the car along with three boxes of other books
we'd culled the last time we weeded through the shelves. Drove
over to the library, where they gave me a little hand cart. I put
the boxes on it, hauled them in, and they thanked me.
Now my office looks nicer and all those other books are out of the
garage, too.
June 5, 2008: Ad Shock
It's strange--long ago I installed Ad-Blocker Plus to my Firefox
browser. It wipes 99% of ads from web pages. It's
wonderful, and I
adore it. Best program ever! I have no objection to
advertising as a
concept, but so much of it is manipulative, sexist, intrusive, or
untruthful that I can' stand to look at, and as a result, I feel no
qualms about circumventing it, even when it means that I'm getting
content for free, even when I should be paying for said content by
putting my eyes on ads.
At any rate, I've been
browing ad-free for a long time. As a result, it comes as a bit
of
shock on the rare occasions I have to switch to Internet Explorer or
SeaMonkey to do something Firefox can't handle and an ad shows up on
the web page. There it is! In color! Moving!
Vying for my
attention! It's weird to see it, and it always gives me a bit of
a
start.
June 5, 2008: Some Writing
I =have= managed to write some in the last few days.
I finished the
third chapter of the book about Morrigan, the Irish goddess of death
and battle. Submitted it to the writer's group on Monday, and
once
they've given it a going-over, I can send it on to Ye Agente to see
what she thinks of it.
June 5, 2008: Maksim's Psych Eval
Today I took Maksim to see a psychologist. So now all three
of my
children have seen specialists and counselors. Whee. I was
startled
at how routine this was becoming. I was used to quiet hallways
filled
with the soft sounds of white noise generators, to signing in with a
receptionist who didn't refer to the patients by name to preserve
anonymity, to sitting in the particular sort of furniture that these
offices always seem to have. And then there was the meeting of
the
psychologist and the questions. I repeated the same information
I've
been repeating about my kids ever since the adoption, and I felt like
an actor who'd been required to say the same lines so many times, he'd
forgotten what they meant in the first place.
Maksim,
meanwhile, had been prepped for the meeting. We told him he'd be
seeing a doctor who didn't give shots, who just wanted to talk and who
might even play games with him. He thought that was pretty
cool. But
he's still shy around new people and he sat very quietly in the chair
in the psychologist's office.
There was a large
chunk of time in which Mackie was sent into the waiting room while I
talked with the counselor in private. Here I got a bit of a
start.
The waiting area had no toys or books in it. I mean, none.
There were
some news magazines, but that was it. Fortunately, I had my
laptop
with me, and I set Mackie up so he could play with it.
I
told the counselor that I suspected it was school that was bugging
Maksim. He behaves just fine when he's home--not angelic, but
normal--and then he gets into trouble at school. The sort of
behavior
that gets him suspended from school he never does at home or with the
neighborhood kids. The counselor agreed there may be something to
that, and we'll have to look into it.
After that, Mackie talked to the counselor in private for a little
while. At the end of that, we made another appointment.
So we'll see what happens.
June 5, 2008: Almost Over
Finals week is nearly over. I've given and graded
all the finals I
need to. I only have one class left, and they've already taken
their
final, so the hard part's over. Now it's Ye Little Stuff.
Cleaning my
room. Sorting papers. Dumping junk. Ordering supplies
for next
year. Posting grades. Printing a hard copy. Cleaning
out my hard
drive. It's amazing how much stuff needs to be done and how much
of it
requires me to run all over the building!
June 4, 2008: Local Zoo
My house is turning into a zoo. I found ANOTHER
grackle in my office
today! I have the feeling it was the same one. And one of
the cats
brought a chipmunk into the house. It got away, and now we can't
catch
it. It's scuttling around the basement, darting around boxes and
baseboards, having a high old time. I told Sasha and Maksim I'd
give
them a dollar each if they caught it, and that kept them busy for
considerable time, but they weren't able to pull it off. It's a
zoo in
here.
June 4, 2008: Yipe!
I totally forgot that I'd committed to writing a 1500 word essay
for an anthology on writing. Fortunately it's due on June 20, so
I do
have time, but there was a stomach-wrenching moment when I thought I'd
gone over deadline.
Yipe!
June 2, 2008: More Hands Across
the Water
I got another e-mail today about Hands Across the Water.
This one
was from a man who's been in Guatamala since late January trying to
adopt a two-year-old boy. Kathi Nelson at HatW has been feeding
him
the same line of bullshit she fed us and a host of other people, the
same lies, the same tricks, the same everything.
If
you're reading this page because you're interested in internation
adoption, DO NOT USE HANDS ACROSS THE WATER under ANY
CIRCUMSTANCES.
You will be extremely sorry.
June 2, 2008: Suburban Follies
Today we (Kala, the boys, and I) were driving home from a quick
bite at a Mexican restaurant we like. To get home, we pass
through a
T-intersection that also involves a set of railroad tracks and a chunk
of roadway that really got chewed up over the winter. The vehicle
ahead of us was a Ford Behemoth with Super-Titanium Suspension (tm),
Mountain-Destroyer Tires (tm), and a 24-cylinder engine.
Commercials
show this vehicle hanging upside-down from Mount Rushmore and wrestling
grizzly bears before stopping for a breakfast of wild chainsaws it
caught and killed itself.
So when this
monstrous truck reaches the railroad at the T-intersection, what does
it do? Does it rip the railroad ties out of their bed and use
them to
start a campfire? Does it bend the rails into origami? Does
it
flatten the bumpiness by sheer force of personality?
It does not.
This
fearless vehicle (bought and paid for by an equally fearless driver)
screeches to a complete stop at the tracks, then achingly climbs over
them at a pace the average octengenarian could beat in a wheelchair
with one flat tire.
Once clear of the tracks,
this fearless monster of the mountains spurted forward to the chewed up
road. Certainly the Mountain-Destroyer Tires (tm) were laughing
at
such a puny outing! Surely the Super-Titanium Suspension was
dying to
strut its stuff! Definitely the 24-cylinders were raring to prove
their power!
No such luck. The Behemoth
SWERVED INTO THE OPPOSING LANE to avoid the section of chewed-up road,
lest the Mountain-Destroyer Tires (tm) become scratched. Yes, the
suburban warrior has conquered all!
So you have to wonder--if you're going to drive like you have a
Festiva, why not just buy a Festiva?
But wait! There's more!
Another
intersection further down the road is getting extra traffic lately
because a local road is closed for construction. We arrived at it
just
in time to see a red minivan sail through said intersection and whip
into a left turn. Three cars slammed on their brakes. Horns
blared,
and things got rather busy at this point (not for me--I was four cars
back), but I heard the sound of breaking glass. The red mini-van
whooshed past us. The driver was holding a cell phone to her ear
as
she yakked merrily away. She hadn't even noticed that her illegal
left
turn had caused a fender-bender.
Cell phones and 4x4s. The bane of suburbia!
June 2, 2008: Birdhouse
This afternoon I was in my office when I heard the heavy flutter
of . . . wings? I ducked and looked around. A grackle was
flapping
around near the ceiling. What the hell? We usually leave
the back
door open during the day so Sam can get out to the back yard--with an
85-pound watchdog who hates strangers in the house, we don't worry
about burglars--and it was therefore no mystery how it got in. I
wondered how long it had been trapped inside, though, and how much crap
it had dropped around the house.
I ran out of
my office and shut all the other basement doors, then shooed the bird
upstairs. This took some doing--it wasn't to fly everywhere =but=
upstairs. Finally it got up there, though, and perched above the
kitchen sink. I opened the front door wide and made sure the back
door
was still open, then herded the stupid bird out of the kitchen.
It
flew into the living room toward the open front door, then for no good
reason, abruptly changed course and shot toward the living room
windows. WHAM! The stupid bird fell to the carpet,
stunned. At first
I thought it was dead, but it was still moving. Birdbrain.
I grabbed
a big bowl from the kitchen, dropped it over the little idiot, scooped
it up, and dropped it over the fence into some tallish grass to let it
recover. A while later it was gone, so either it flew off, or
something dragged it away and ate it.
May 29, 2008: Term Papers
Term papers are done! They're graded at last!
Oi. A weight is lifted.
May 29, 2008: More Than Me
When Kala put Aran to bed, she discovered Maksim was still awake
and asking to go to the bathroom and get a drink. She spoke
sharply to
him--he does this a lot, and he should have been asleep an hour
ago. I
went in a bit later to say good night to Aran and found Maksim curled
face-down under his blankets with his face cupped in his hands.
"What's wrong, Maksim?" I asked.
"You love Aran more than me," he said.
I sat down on the bed beside him. "I do?" I said.
"What makes you say that?"
"Because he's a born brother."
Uh
oh. I was wondering how long it would be before something like
this
would come up. I hugged him. "That's not true at all," I
said. "I
love you and Aran and Sasha the same amount."
"No you don't. You get angry with me because I misbehave."
Kala, overhearing this, came in as well. She hugged him, too.
"Just
because I get angry with you doesn't mean I don't love you," I
said.
"I always love you, even if I get angry with you. I've said that
lots
of times before, you know."
"You can love someone and still get angry with them," Kala said.
"No you can't," Mackie said to his hands.
"Do
you get angry at Sasha sometimes?" Kala asked, and Mackie, who was
still hiding his face, nodded. "Do you love him?" He
paused, and then
nodded. "See? We always love you."
We did this for a while, reassuring him, and then put him back to
bed.
May 29, 2008: Maksim's Alien
What have I gotten myself into?
Three nights ago, Maksim wanted a bedtime story. "But I
don't want a =boring= one," he said.
"All
right," I said. "There once was a little boy named Maksim, and he
was
soooo bored. He went out into the backyard, and there he found a
giant
rocket ship! Way up at the top was a door, and leaning out of the
door
was an alien with three eyes. 'Come on, Maksim!' the alien
called.
'Let's go!' And Maksim climbed up, up, up the ladder to the
control
room."
In the story, Maksim and the alien went
to the moon, where they discovered gravity was very light and they
could jump very high. But a thousand tiny moon aliens thought the
rocket ship was very tasty, and they attacked it, intending to eat
it.
The alien didn't know what to do, but Maksim spun the rocket ship
around very fast, and the aliens were whirled off the ship, and then
the three-eyed alien took Maksim home.
The next night, Maksim said, "I want another story about Maskim
and the alien with three eyes."
This
time, it was raining, and Maksim couldn't go out to play, and he was
very bored. But then the rocket showed up in the backyard.
He grabbed
his umbrella and ran out to it. The alien with three eyes helped
Maksim into the ship, and they took off, this time for Mars, though
Maksim was worried that he wouldn't be back in time for his
kindergarten concert. When they arrived on Mars, the alien
revealed
that his girlfriend had been kidnapped by a martian dragon, and they
had to rescue her. (Sorry--I was making this up as I went and
didn't
have time to think much.) They found the dragon's cave, but the
dragon
saw them and breathed fire. Maksim opened his umbrella as a
shield.
It worked, but the umbrella burned up. The alien said the only
way to
get past the dragon was to sing it to sleep, but the alien couldn't
sing. So Maksim sang his first song, and the dragon went to
sleep.
While Maksim sang his concert songs, the alien untied his girlfriend
(who had four eyes because she was a girl). Just as they made it
to
the cave's entrance, Maksim finished his seventh song, and the dragon
woke up. They ran for the rocket and made it just in time.
They
blasted off and made it back to Earth.
Tonight, Mackie wanted yet another story about Maksim and the
alien. Oi!
This
time, it was snowing, a true blizzard. Maksim saw the rocket out
back
and ran to it, but couldn't resist putting a snowball in his
pocket.
It was so cold, the alien with three eyes suggested they go someplace
warm--Mercury! The night side of the planet was very hot, and the
alien had stashed a treasure there. Once they arrived, Maksim and
the
alien followed the alien's treasure map and found a metal box.
But it
was too hot to touch, and the sun was going to rise soon, cooking them
both! Then Maksim pulled the snowball out of his pocket and used
it to
cool the box. They picked it up and got it back to the rocket
just in
time. Inside the box was a big bag of M&Ms! They ate
them all the
way back to Earth.
I have the feeling tomorrow I'll have to come up with something
else. Yeesh . . .
May 29, 2008: Oh, the
Embarrassment!
Sasha has hit the "families are embarrassing" and the
"everyone is looking at me" stages of development.
He
didn't like the flip-flops I declared he needed to wear to the concert
because "Everyone will see them. They look dumb, and everyone
will
stare."
"Do you stare at everyone else's feet?" I countered.
"No," he said.
"And no one will stare at yours," I said.
While
we were waiting for Mackie's concert to start, I was amusing Aran with
the bare-hand puppet game. Sasha, who has never been bothered by
this
before, was suddenly mortified.
"Da-a-a-a-d," he whispered harshly. "Only babies do that.
Quit it! It's embarrassing!"
Later
at the department store, Sasha admonished me for talking too
loud.
"Everyone can hear you," he said. "It's embarrassing!"
I gave an evil smile. "You have no idea what embarrassing is,
kid. Do you want me to show you?"
"He will," Kala cautioned.
Sasha folded his arms. "Yeah. Show me."
I took a deep breath in preparation--
--and Sasha's self-confidence shattered. "No! Never mind!"
"Then keep it to yourself. No one's looking, no one cares.
They all busy thinking =you're= looking at =them.="
The
weird thing is, this all hit at once, as if someone threw a
switch.
None of this bothered him the day before, but suddenly that
day--POOF!
Everything was embarrassing.
May 29, 2008: A Sudden Concert
and Bad Shoes
Yesterday
Maksim
got home from school and said he had a concert that evening at school.
"It's the kindergarten concert," he said.
Um . . . what? I asked him what time the concert was supposed to be.
"It's tonight!"
"Honey, we can't go if we don't know what time to be there."
This
got him very upset. He ran to his room and hid under his blankets, his
face cupped in his hands. This always gets =me= upset.
I
searched through his backpack. No information paper. Then I checked
another folder of papers he'd brought home just before he'd been
suspended. There it was--an announcement about the concert. It started
at 6:00, and the kids were supposed to be there at 5:45.
I
showed Maksim that we'd found it and he was much happier.
Unfortunately, we noticed that we wouldn't have time to make supper, so
we'd have to eat at a fast food place--not our favorite thing to do,
though the boys were thrilled.
Meanwhile, I went into Sasha's
room and nearly fell over. The smell was horrible. Had a mouse
died in
his room? I tracked the smell . . . to Sasha's shoes. They were
=horrible=. I bypassed the house trash and threw them into the garage
trash. I made Sasha wash his feet, which he only did perfunctorily, and
put on flip-flops. Since there's a shoe store near the boys' school,
Kala and I decided to combine the concert with shoe buying.
We drove to a fast food emporium for supper. Over hamburgers, I asked
Maksim, "What songs are you singing tonight?"
"You'll have to wait and find out," he said loftily.
We
finished early enough to stop at the store to replace Sasha's dreadful
shoes. He tried on a pair he liked and walked around in them.
"How do they feel?" Kala asked.
"Good," Sasha said.
I felt around his feet and had him wiggle his toes. "Are you sure
they're not too tight? Do they pinch your feet anywhere?"
"Maybe a little bit," he said.
"Then take them off and try the next size up," Kala said.
Sasha
protested this, but we insisted. I think there was a bit of Ukraine
hanging on. The shoes he liked nearly fit, so he'd take them. He hadn't
assimilated the fact that the same style was available in a size that
fit. When we put him in the slightly larger ones that fit perfectly, he
was surprised and happy. We also bought him some sandals.
And then we crossed the street to the school for the concert.
I
like the fact that Fortis splits spring concerts by grade. It keeps the
concerts short and sweet. The kindergarten concert started on time, and
the music teacher kept the commentary to an absolute minimum. The kids
lined up with Maksim right in the middle. He scanned the audience
looking for us but didn't see us. The other children caught sight of
their families and waved, but still Mackie didn't see us. At last he
found us and burst into a smile and waved.
The kindergarteners
sang seven songs and did short dances to some of them. It was all
extremely cute, and it only lasted about 25 minutes.
Afterward, Mackie ran over to us. "What did you think of my concert?"
"It was just fantastic," I said, and he beamed.
Then
it was off to a department store because we'd promised Aran he could
buy another FunKey. FunKeys are the latest kid computer craze. You buy
a special game port to hook up to a computer. Then, for $5 each, you
can also buy different little animals, each with a computer chip in the
bottom. You slot the animal's feet into the game port. The port
connects to an Internet-based game, and, depending on which animal you
have connected to the port, the player can access various parts of the
game world. It's genius marketing, really. The animals are inexpensive
enough for kids to buy with their allowance, and the company can always
create new ones, each with its own section of the game world, thus
keeping the game from becoming boring.
Aran loves them, and
since he always seems to have money, he buys FunKeys like crazy. He
already has six or seven, and now he has one more. We also bought the
boys some summer pajamas.
And then home.
May 27, 2008: Out of the Closet
It was wardrobe shifting time today, and it was also clean
out closets
time. (What did you think I was talking about in the
title?) I went
through all the sweaters and fleeces I don't wear and put them in a
donation box. Kala pulled all the clothes she can't wear and
knows she
won't wear and put them in a donation box.
Then came the nasty part.
I
made Sasha pull every coat and jacket out of his room and lay them out
on the dining room table. He collects these things like other
people
collect coins, but he never wears them. I had him put all of them
on,
one by one, and pulled the ones that were too small, including his
favorite red-and-blue windbreaker. This windbreaker is the only
coat
he would wear, even in winter when it was too cold. He actually
hid
his winter coat so he could wear the jacket. He claimed he had
lost
his coat, so we told him he'd have to pay back every cent we had paid
for it, whereupon he somehow managed to find it. But every day it
was
a fight to get him to wear anything but that windbreaker, even when it
was dangerously cold outside.
I had Sasha put on this
windbreaker and hold out his arms. The sleeves were clearly too
short. Over mighty protests and howls of dismay that would have
sounded more appropriate coming from Maksim, the jacket Went
Away. (It
was too stained and nasty for donation, but I pretended otherwise, then
slipped it into the trash when Sasha wasn't looking. If he knew
it was
there, he'd dig it out.)
In the end, the back seat of the car
was filled with clothes. I drove down to a donation box and
dumped
everything in. Closets are much neater, and we have more room in
the
basement now.
May 26, 2008: Memorial
Weekend Trip
My sister Bethany turns forty soon, and she decided to have a
multi-day party at a rented cottage on a lake over Memorial Day
weekend. This was a nice idea, except the place is just over
four
hours north of me. In Michigan, everyone goes north when they go
on
vacation, and on holiday weekend Fridays, the northbound highways are
clogged with traffic. On the following Monday, the southbounds
highways are clogged.
I decided to avoid this
by going up on Saturday, when the traffic had cleared out, and
returning on Sunday evening, before it had a chance to start up
again.
I packed up the boys and off we went.
The drive
was uneventful, but long. The boys alternated between watching
videos
on portable DVD players and complaining about the drive. I
ignored
them and listened to my iPod. At last we arrived.
The
first day was pre-party. My mother and grandmother came up, and
of
course my sister and her partner John and his son Jason were all
there. The cottage--a five-bedroom affair with a large loft--sat
at
the edge of an enormous lake. It was still a bit chilly, but the
boys
went swimming several times anyway. I had Corey with me and
played him
down on the dock. That evening we had a fire in the fireplace and
roasted marshmallows.
The next day, we finished
party prep and people started to arrive. There was quite a large
group, all told. Bethany had organized a book exchange (bring
one,
take one) and a joke-telling session along with the other usual
birthday activities.
At seven, I packed up the
car, bid everyone good-bye, and drove home through gathering
twilight.
Aran and Mackie fell asleep fairly quicky, but Sasha didn't. We
got
home at around 11:30. It was a long trip, but Bethany only turns
forty
once, so it was worth it!
May 22, 2008: Senior Exit
Senior exams are finished. I've graded them, seniors
are gone! Prom
and graduation are this weekend, but I'm involved in neither, so I'm
all done with them. Congratulations, class of 2008!
May 21, 2008: Crazy!
I'm also going crazy at work. I have senior exams this week,
and
they have to be graded quickly. I collected freshmen research
papers
earlier, and those are still waiting in a big pile. Those take an
enormous amount of time to grade. Coming up, I 'm supposed to
give my
freshmen an essay test, a grammar test, and a final exam, all within
two and a half weeks (a requirement of the school), and somewhere in
here, I'm supposed to continue teaching media literacy.
Kala
was away for four days as well, leaving the entire house to me.
Between school and home, I haven't written a single word in over two
weeks. I'm stressed and unhappy with just about everything, and
you
can probably see why I haven't posted much lately!
May 21, 2008: Here We Go Again
Yesterday Maksim was suspended again. He was
continually bugging other
students, and then he was fighting. He's missed over two weeks of
school this year due to suspensions so far.
May 21, 2008: Homework Issues
We're having more homework issues.
Sasha regularly comes home
with math homework that he's completely clueless about. I've
talked to
his teacher, and talked to her, and talked to her, but she STILL sends
this shit home. I wrote on today's 50-problem outing, "Sasha
doesn't
have the skills to complete this, and I don't have time to teach him
tonight." He had this in addition to reading and science homework.
Meanwhile,
Aran's teacher wrote in his planner that his Civil War scrapbook
project was DUE TODAY (Monday) and he was presenting later this week
and where was his stuff?
WTF?
We knew about the
scrapbook, actually. We were told it had been modified for him,
though
we never got details. We were also told he was working on it with
Mr.
C---, his special education coordinator. Kala wrote a long note
in
Aran's planner (his teacher's preferred method of communication) asking
what materials he needed, when he was presenting, and so on. She
never
responded. So we thought he was all set for it. Apparently
not.
I
wrote a rather snippy note back pointing out the previous note and
repeating the request for the presentation date and that his scrapbook
materials be sent home. I also asked for details about how the
assignment had been modified for Aran and what work he'd done with Mr.
C---. Tuesday, I checked the planner. His teacher had
written only
that his materials were in his backpack now and he was presenting on
Thursday.
Fuck this.
I got a three ring binder, had Aran
punch holes in the stuff he had, and I stuck them into the
binder. We
put a couple pictures in it, too. Then I printed up a copy of the
Gettysburg Address (since his scrapbook was focused on Lincoln) and had
him read it aloud a few a times. He practiced it today,
too. That'll
be his presentation.
I've had it up to here, and I'm looking into transferring the boys to a
different school for next year.
May 18, 2008: Whacking Day
I bought a weed whacker today. This is a big
step. I don't generally
trim my lawn, you see. I grew up in a house that had several
acres of
lawn, and mowing it was an all-day project. The idea of trimming
it
was laughable. So I never got into the habit, really. But the
grass
around the outdoor altar was more than I wanted to pull by hand, and
the fence looks ragged, so I decided it was time.
At the
hardware store, I considered my options. Electric
ones--yuck! You
have the cord following you and getting in the way. You also have
to
=find= the outdoor extension cord, untangle it (since it =always= gets
tangled no matter how carefully you wind it), use it, then rewind it
and store it. Gas-powered--slightly better but still not great.
Heavy,
smelly, and a pain to start, no matter what the box says (30% EASIER TO
START! proclaims the label. And how do you measure that,
pray?) And
they take a gas-oil mix, which is royal pain in the ass.
At the
very end of the row, however, I found . . . rechargable weed
whackers!
Hmmmm . . . battery-powered, so you don't have a cord. No
gasoline.
Cheaper than a gas one, too. The only trouble is, they were a
total
unknown. How well do they work? So I snagged the local
clerk to ask.
"I'm not really sure," he admitted.
Our
conversation caught the attention of another customer, though. "I have
one," he said. "It works great! It comes with two
batteries, and they
each last about 20 minutes when they're fully charged. And the
batteries match any other yard tools from the same company."
Well,
cool! I bought it. At home, I let the battery charge for
about four
hours, and the charger light still hadn't turned green. I slotted
it
into the whacker anyway and tried it out. It worked perfectly
fine. I
managed to get through the entire back yard and most of the front yard
before the
battery died.
May 18, 2008: The End of Freedom
Yesterday Aran mowed the lawn for the first time.
He's eleven
years old, well over the usual age when kids start mowing the lawn, but
autism interfered. Lack of muscle tone and fear of loud noise
wouldn't
allow for it. Now, however, he's largely overcome both problems,
so I
took him out.
"I'm kinda scared," he said.
I showed him
that if he let go of the mower handle, it shut off automatically.
"So
it can't hurt you," I said, and he felt better.
I mowed the
first strip around the yard to set the boundary, then handed the mower
over to him. It wasn't easy for him, and I had to stay with him
the
entire time. Occasionally I had to take over and show him how to
go
around an obstacle or get into a tight place, but Aran did most of it.
It spelled the end of freedom!
May 17, 2008: Ow ow ow ow
Now that the karate show is over, sparring classes have started up
again. Last night, I showed up with my expensive new sparring
gear in
tow. Soft, squishy helmet: check. Soft, squishy hand
guards: check.
Soft, squishy foot guards: check. Hard, solid chest guard that
would
leave a Roman centurian envious: check. Mouth guard that makes
you
drool if you don't suck it in constantly: check.
There
was a mix of kids, teens, and adults. As an second-rank orange
belt, I
was the lowest-ranked adult student there, and was paired with a green
belt. Tang Tsoo Do karate is known mostly for its kicking and
less so
for its punching, so all the drills we did were kicking. My
partner
and I kicked back and forth--roundhouse kick, spinning back kick, side
kick, wheel kick. We worked on dodging and footwork.
This
was my first time, so I watched everything carefully. I had more
stamina than my partner, but he had both rank and experience on me.
The
last ten minutes of class were for actual sparring. The
instructor
called each set of partners up and we fought for one minute. I
decided
to play to lose--not only was it my first time, my partner was far more
experienced than I--which meant I went on the offense and ignored
defense. I knew I probably wouldn't be able to stop him from
hitting
me, but in getting close enough to hit me, he would get close enough
for me to hit =him=, and I wanted to see if I penetrate his
guard. If
I could do that once or twice, I'd be happy.
The
only hits that count are on the chest and on the sides of the
torso.
Kicks to the head also count, but not punches. (The danger of
kicking
your opponent in the head is that it's easy to lose your balance, and I
didn't try, though I do have the flexibility for it.)
We
bowed, and the instructor called for the fight to begin. It went
pretty fast, and both of us were far more aggressive than the kids who
had fought before us. At one point the instructor warned the kids
to
back away from the area. "These are two big men," he said, "and
you
don't want to get in the way if something goes wrong." I did
manage to
connect with a roundhouse kick once, and another time I snaked a hand
in, jerked one of his wrists down to expose his chest, and punched him
with the other (a sneaky, but legal, move I learned in an earlier
class). Go me!
Meanwhile, I was taking a fair
number of kicks. My partner was very good with a spinning back
kick,
and it was hard to block it in time. One time I tried to dodge
one of
these right when he mistimed slightly, and he cracked me a good
one on
the upper right leg, which has no padding. Oh, it hurt! I
didn't
notice it until after the fight was over and we were sitting down, but
once I did--yeek! No bruise, but it's stiff and sore.
The
above sounds extremely adversarial, but it really wasn't. We
=were=
fighting and we =were= fighting as hard we knew how, but there wasn't
any animosity behind it. Most of the time we were grinning
through our
mouth guards. Afterward, my partner gave me a few bits of advice
to
help in the future.
For a few seconds I
considered that it was rather . . . unfair? Difficult?
Harsh? that I
was partnered with someone so much better than I was. But then I
realized that it was to my advantage. If I'm used to fighting
someone
who's =better= than I am, it'll force me to learn faster, and when I
fight someone of an equal rank, I'll be pleasantly surprised at how
easy it is.
And today my leg is in some fairly
serious pain. I went on a long bike ride to stretch it out--ow ow
ow
ow ow--which helped, but it's gonna be sore for a bit.
May 16, 2008: Announcement!
I have received word that my story "Which Warrior?" will
be appearing
in the anthology WITCH WAY TO THE MALL?, edited by Our Lady of the
Hamsters, Esther Friesner. Yay! I had enormous fun writing the piece,
and I'm glad it'll see print in this anthology.
WWTTM,
incidentally, is an anthology along the lines of the Chicks in
Chainmail series--humorous fantasy about witches in modern suburbia. My
story is about a man who recently adopted two children from Ukraine,
only to discover Baba Yaga followed them home. The story bears no
resemblance whatsoever to my own life.
Really.
May 14, 2008: Brain Goo
My brain is leaking out of my ears. I collected vocabulary
journals from my college reading class today. It's a major
project.
Unfortunately, I also have two sets of media literacy packets to finish
grading with another two sets coming due on Friday and three sections
of English 9 term papers due on Monday. This means the only way
I'm
going to have a hope of grading the vocab journals is to do them
NOW.
And so I did. I blasted through them in one sitting. They
are
corrected, graded, and recorded.
I have no brain left.
May 13, 2008: A Letter . . .
. . . to Sasha's math teacher.
Ms. ________--
I'm
concerned about the homework Aleksandr's been getting in math
class. A
couple days ago, he brought home a worksheet filled with algebra
equations, but he didn't have the slightest idea how to do them.
He
didn't even understand that they were to be solved stacked up and down
instead of by putting an equals sign at the end. I had to teach
him
the concepts of variables, balancing equations, and order of
operations. It took the two of us over 45 minutes to do four
problems,
at which point I called an end to the homework. Today he brought
home
a graphing worksheet. When my wife started helping him with it,
she
asked him what 4 + -5 was, and he said, "Eight."
Algebra
and pre-calculus are simply beyond what Aleksandr can do. When I
was
working with him on the algebra equations, he had to count on his
fingers to figure out simple addition and subtraction. He had
absolutely no understanding of short division. Despite meetings
we've
called with the school, Fortis refuses to classify Aleksandr as special
education for mathematics, so we're rather stuck. I'm really
afraid
that I just don't have time to spend hours teaching him math. My
wife
and I are willing to help him, but we can't =teach= him.
Can
we schedule a meeting to discuss how to handle this? Aleksandr
gets
very frustrated and upset, and we're have a difficult time as well.
--Steven Piziks
May 13, 2008: The Audacity!
I've found an open-source computer program called
Audacity. It
allows you to record various types of sounds straight to your computer
and play with them. One of its nicer functions is that you can
hook
your computer to a stereo, play a tape, and Audacity will record the
whole thing. Then you can cut the tape into sections, turn each
section into an MP3 file (complete with track label, artist, album,
genre, and year), and save it on its own.
I'm
thrilled! I have a whole mess of tapes that went out of print
before
CDs were invented, and I've been wondering how to preserve them.
One
of my favorite harp albums is on tape, but I have no easy way to listen
to it these days. I spent a chunk of the evening recording it to
my
laptop, converting it, cutting it, and naming it. Poof!
Instant
electronic album! It's now on both my computers and my
iPod. It's not
perfect. I cut some tracks a little too closely and one track
somehow
got misnamed. I'm hoping there's a way to edit out the hissing
noise
you get with tapes. But it works!
This is so cool.
May 12, 2008: iPoddie
Our economic stimulus money arrived. Ironically, I'll be
spending the vast majority of it in Ireland.
However,
one thing I did finally buy was an iPod. The classic version with
"only" 80 gigs of memory. Since I don't download songs
indiscriminantly, my music library will take up only a tiny bit of that
80 gigs, and I won't be keeping large numbers of downloaded videos on
it, either, so why fork out the extra $100 for 160 gigs?
Anyway,
I got it home and spent most of Saturday converting all my WMA music
files to MP3 files so the iPod could read them. This took quite a
long
time for both my desktop and my laptop. Then I had to recreate my
Windows Media Player playlists on iTunes, the program that runs the
iPod on the computer, and tell it to copy and synchronize everything to
the iPod. Whew!
But now my entire musical library is on my iPod, and I don't need
to bring music CDs in the car anymore. Yay!
I
like the iPod, really. Easy to use, lots of memory. It
holds all my
electronic photos, too, so I can show off pictures of the boys at a
moment's notice. :)
May 11, 2008: Aran and
Musical Notation
Sometimes Aran's musical ability and memory fight with his autism
and his learning pace. Here's the situation:
1. He hasn't quite mastered musical notation.
2. His phenomenal memory allows him to memorize songs
quickly. After he plays a song once or twice, he has it memorized.
3. He keeps the music on the piano in front of him and looks at it
while he plays, even after he's memorized the song.
4. His autism does not allow for changes in music.
The main disconnect comes between 1 and 4. He plays the song
perfectly on the keys but makes mistakes when he reads the music.
Get it? He knows the note should be an F and he plays an F.
But he
misreads the music and thinks the notes are telling him to play, say,
an A. This freaks him out.
"It's an F, not an
A!" he wails. At which point, Kala or his teacher or I have to
tell
him he was simply playing it right and reading it wrong.
This
is the reverse of most musicians, who read it right and play it
wrong.
Aran hardly ever makes mistakes when he plays a song, but he makes
plenty of mistakes when he reads music. It's weird.
May 11, 2008: Rough Week
This last week was kinda rough. Okay, it was extremely
rough.
The boys behaved wonderfully at school during the week previous to this
one, and then apparently decided to make up for it this week.
MAKSIM:
Wednesday, he punched a boy in his class. While he was waiting to
see
the vice principal, he got into it with another kid in the
office. He
was suspended for six days. This had the added effect of wiping
out a
multi-day sub job Kala had already accepted. We've decided that
Mackie
needs to see a psychologist. He behaves fine at home, but he
seems to
be on a hair trigger at school. I'm starting to wonder if school
reminds him of the orphanage and that puts him on high alert while he's
there.
SASHA: He has a major project for his
social studies class--make a display about the country Honduras.
We
knew it was due in mid-May, but that was all we knew. We told
Sasha
several times that we needed to see the instructions for it, but he
kept saying he couldn't find them, that his teacher wouldn't give him a
new set, etc. Finally, Kala threatened to walk into his classroom
the
next day after school and get them directly from his teacher if he
didn't show up with a full set. Miraculously, the instructions
appeared and we discovered that two sections of the display were
already past due, and Sasha hadn't even started. This set off a
yell
fest. Sasha claimed he had no idea that any of this stuff was
due, and
I demanded to know what he thought was going on when everyone else was
turning in their materials. I removed all of Sasha's computer,
video
game, and TV privileges until the ENTIRE project was completed and set
him to work on it.
Unfortunately, this meant
that I had to stand over him and help with it. Sasha's version of
writing an essay or report is to find something about it and copy it
word for word. I'm working on breaking this habit, but since
Sasha's
reading level is rather below most reference works, so I had to read
them aloud to him (which helps) and then rephrase them to make sure he
understood them, then ask him to repeat the information back to me,
then have him write down what he told me. I would check his
grammar
and spelling so he could rewrite everything properly. This was,
as you
may imagine, an arduous task for both of us, in no small part because
Sasha was resentful and angry throughout. It was no fun for me
because
I couldn't just tell him to do it, leave to do my own thing, and return
to check on him every so often. I had to stay at the table with
him
every moment.
We did this every evening for
four evenings. All I was doing was teaching school, karate class,
and
helping a recalcitrant Sasha with his project. It was exhausting.
And
then, on top of that, on Friday Sasha reached step four on the
discipline system at school. (Step five involves out-of-school
suspension.) I was on the verge of letting him have some of his
privileges back after the Week of Much Work, but I told him I had
changed my mind in light of his school behavior. I also told him
he
and Maksim couldn't go see SPEED RACER.
ARAN:
Aran behaved just fine all week, actually. No problems at
all. Kala
took him to see SPEED RACER on Saturday and reported that it was a
headache-inducing movie without the faintest shred of a plotline, but
Aran loved it, which was the whole point.
May 11, 2008: Er . . . What?
Just now Sasha bolted upstairs and announced, "I have
access to the midnight whore!"
A moment of startled silence between Kala and me.
"Sorry," I said. "What was that?"
"I unlocked the midnight whore!" he said. "On City of Heroes."
"I think you'd better spell that last word," Kala said.
"H-o-u-r," Sasha said. "Whore."
"Hour," I said, trying not to laugh. "Midnight
Hour.
Whore is . . . something else."
"What's whore, then?"
"A woman you pay to have sex with," I said.
"Gah! No! No! Not that! No way!" And he
fled the room.
May 8, 2008: Sasha's Life,
Condensed
The following is a report Sasha wrote about his
life. He wanted to
write it in order to share it with friends and teachers at
school. He
asked me to proofread it for him. I corrected only his spelling
and
his grammar, not his word choice. It's his early life, much
condensed.
About Me and My Life
I have in my family my two big sisters and my brother and my mom.
My
real father died of a heart attack. I never saw him with my own
eyes
because when he died I was just a little baby. Yeah, me and my
sisters
have different fathers. My two older sisters, their dad left my
mom,
then she I think married my dad. I don’t remember that good, but
I
remember that Dad was in the army. My mom and grandma told me,
and
also showed me the picture of him in the army as young man.
I
also had four best friends. Three of them died, and one was
left. One
who died was in 9th grade. The second one was an adult. I
don’t
remember the other third one very well.
So anyway, when I last
saw my sisters they were 20 and 18 years old, but now the one who is 20
years old is now 23. I don’t know old my sister who is 18 years
old
would be, but I know my mom’s age. She was 43 years old, but now
she
is 46 years old.
My little brother’s dad was evil. I call him
that because he hit me and my brother. Before we came to the
orphanage, he took my mom’s money so he could buy beer. Well, the
money that I gave mom so she could buy food--I had to work my butt off
to earn that money--he took it off my mom’s hands and left. If my
mom
wouldn’t give him the money, he would beat my mom up by kicking her and
punching her. He did that, and so I also remember he went to
jail.
When he came home after that he was nice and quiet for 1or 2
days.
Then he became nastier than last time. Later, the police took me
and
my little brother out of the house.
So that’s how I became in an
orphanage. I didn’t see my brother for 1 year and 3 months. An
American family came and adopted me and my little brother. And I
kinda
like my American family. If they didn’t adopt me, I would be
history.
In the orphanage, I got beat up all the time. I also didn’t
eat much
because of those bullies. They always take my food when the
teacher
was not around. I was hungry to death.
So yeah, that’s my story about me.
May 6, 2008: Aran's 11th
Aran is eleven today.
The celebration
started at supper. He wanted hamburgers, corn on the cob, and
potato
chips. Afterward was yellow cake with chocolate frosting and ice
cream. And presents! He got THE BEE MOVIE on DVD and a Nerf
rifle*
(the only sort of toy gun we allow in the house) from us. From
Aunt
Sarah and Uncle Tim he got a remote control car ("A remote car!" he
said.)
Much playing followed.
Happy birthday to Aran!
*There
was actually a problem with the Nerf rifle. It was hidden in the
garage, but yesterday evening Maksim came to me and announced that he
was playing with "the new rocket toy." I couldn't figure out what
he
was talking about, so I had him take me outside and show me. I
found
Aran's present open, slightly battered, and scattered all over the
front lawn. The sharp, pointed kitchen scissors lay beside the
box.
Mackie had turned a new toy into a used one in a very few
minutes. I
was, of course, furious, and Maksim had the earliest bedtime he's ever
gotten. Today, Maksim wasn't allowed to play with the new toy at
all.
If Aran noticed his present had mileage on it, he didn't say anything.
May 3, 2008: Behavior Update
We got through an entire week at school without having a single
behavior problem from any of the boys. Sasha did all his homework
every day. Aran collected his stickers and did his work in
class.
Mackie's worst day was when he got on yellow on the traffic light and
earned two stickers, which means he doesn't get in trouble at home but
doesn't earn a "good job" sticker, either. The rest of the days,
he
got three stickers and was on green or was off the light altogether.
It was a good week.
May 3, 2008: House, Garage, Iron
Saturday, we hit critical mass. For various reasons, the
housework had been rather neglected lately. The house was a
=mess.=
And then there was the garage. It was piled with junk, a lot of
it
garbage that had been too big to break up easily when it was cold out,
and some of it stuff that just hadn't been put away properly. It
was
almost impossible to get around in there. The house and the
garage had
hit critical mass for me, and it was time to Clean Up.
First
came the house. Everything was put away properly. The
bathrooms were
given a good going-over. The shower curtains were taken down and
washed. Floors were mopped. It wasn't really spring
cleaning, but it
was close.
Thence to the garage. First was the
dreadful job of disposing of the border rails of the garden plot we'd
torn up two weekends ago. The trash company had refused to take
them,
so they'd been sitting on the front lawn. I piled half of them
into
the hatchback--they stuck out like a mutant rooster tail--and Sasha and
I drove to the dump. The car was riding very low, and I was glad
we
hadn't tried to put in more than half. The dump charges by the
cubic
yard, and when we got there, the guy in the office told me the charge
was $22, minimum. Per trip.
"Oh," I said.
"Look, the rails I have in the car are all I could safely haul, and
that's about half of what I need to dump. They're also half a
cubic
yard. Can't we pretend it's all one trip? I'm going to do
both trips
right away. I really don't want to pay a charge for two cubic
yards
when I'm only dumping one."
In the end, the man
let himself be persuaded. Sasha and I dumped the rails, returned
quickly back home to load up the rest, and drove back to the dump
before he could change his mind. Whew!
Then it
was the garage proper. The boys and I hauled everything out into
the
driveway. M----, one of the neighbor kids who Sasha and Mackie
sometimes plays with, wandered by and offered to help. I put him
to
work. We crushed cardboard for recycling (a huge job), dumped
trash
into the garbage bins for pickup, put sleds into the back shed, and
more. The pushbroom handle was broken, so I used the leaf blower
to
clear the floor. Then we started putting everything back
in. A pile
of stuff ended up at the curb, including two car seats that we can't
use anymore and a tricycle Mackie outgrew.
Now there's plenty of clear space in the garage! Yay!
Afterward,
we went to see IRON MAN. We offered to take M---- with us, since
he
helped so much. He dashed home to get permission, and his mother
came
over to confirm. Off we went.
The movie was
really good. I wasn't a big Iron Man comic reader, though I was
familiar enough with it. The reviews I'd read were overall very
positive but said the movie lost focus in the end, being unsure who or
what Tony Stark was fighting. I disagreed with that assessment,
but
that may be because I was familiar with the comic. The movie's
third
act came straight from the comics. I loved Robert Downey Jr. as
Tony
Stark. He was wonderful in the role and captured the character
extremely well. I wouldn't have thought to cast Gwyneth Paltrow
as
Pepper Potts, but she was fantastic as well. The timing and
energy in
their scenes together was excellent. The Iron Man armor was a
treat to
watch, too. Highly recommended.
May 3, 2008: Karate Show
Friday I returned to school and had the usual slightly-frantic day
you always get when you come back from being absent. Got home and
got
stuff together for the karate show.
The
students at the karate school have been rehearsing for a show, and
Friday was the big day. It's the karate version of a dance
recital,
but probably more exciting. Because of my teaching background, I
had
been tapped to be the announcer.
To tell the
truth, I was dreading the whole thing. I'm decent enough on
stage, but
I don't look forward to it much, especially under these
conditions. It
was a show full of kids under ten, and it was going to be chaotic and
probably filled with mistakes and difficulty. I know the audience
was
expecting this, but it didn't make me feel much better. The
school had
also rented a middle school auditorium for the performance, but we
didn't have access to it until just that day, meaning none of us had
any idea what the space was like. We hadn't even done a full
run-through of the show, and even though I was supposed to be the
announcer, I only had a vague idea of what was going on. I had
written
a partial script, but was going to be winging a large part of it, and I
hate winging it.
Aran, on the other hand, was
looking forward to the entire thing with great enthusiasm. So I
kept
all my reservations to myself.
My mother and my
in-laws were going to be coming, but Aran and I had to be at the
auditorium rather earlier, so we left soon after Aran got home from
school and before my mother arrived. Drove over to the school and
found various karate schoolers unloading equipment for set-up. We
got
mats laid down on the floor, and I got a clip-on mike so I could run
sound checks. I also worked out the light board so we could get
some
decent lighting on the stage. I also assembled the kids and gave
them
a lecture on backstage safety.
"Do you have a background in theater?" one of the instructors
asked, noticing that I knew my way around an auditorium.
"I have a degree in it," I told her.
"Oh! If I had known that, I would have tapped you a lot
earlier."
"That's why I kept my mouth shut," I said with a wide smile.
We
did a quick run-through of the cues, got the kids set up, ran the music
through the amplifier, and chewed our nails. Eventually, it was
time,
and the show began.
I announced from backstage
as a disembodied voice, partly because I didn't have the material
memorized and partly because I didn't want to stroll on and off stage
every few seconds. I introduced the school, gave the "no cell
phones
or flash photography" rule, and the kids went into the show. They
went
through various forms, acrobatic moves, board breaking, and weapons
demonstrations. Some of the adults demonstrated self-defense in
some
skits. One of the black belt instructors broke a stack of six
patio
bricks. It went mostly smoothly, really, and the audience was
appreciative. Aran loved it.
Afterward, we got
all our family together. Aran's birthday is in a few days, and he
got
presents from my in-laws--a stack of Goosebumps books, which he
loves.
My in-laws headed off, and the rest of us went to a late supper with my
mother. At supper, Aran got more presents from Grandma Penny--the
Mario Kart game and a much-needed new remote, both for the Wii.
We
monopolized the table for quite some time, really. Aran got a
small
birthday parade with his free sundae, which also precipitated dessert
orders for Sasha and Maksim. It was a good dinner out.
At last it was time to go home. Arrived at nearly
10:00. Mackie was wiped! So was I.
May 2, 2008: Beltaine, 2008
The boys found the candy baskets fairly early in the morning and
thoroughly destroyed their breakfasts. But that's the way it
works.
Kala and I slept in, and when I got up, I offered to make pancakes, but
Mackie and Sasha didn't want any. So I made them for Aran and
me.
(Kala rarely eats breakfast.) Naturally, about an hour later,
Mackie
came into the kitchen begging for food. I turned him away.
"You
refused breakfast, so you'll have to wait until lunch."
Next
we colored eggs, the symbol of fertility and spring. While they
were
drying, we went downstairs and disassembled the altar. Everything
was
dusted and cleaned, the cloth changed from the dark winter one to the
green spring one. Then it was back up to set up the outdoor altar
and
bring the Goddess statue out to it. We trimmed the grass and
cleared
out dead leaves and set up candles and other accoutrement.
That
done, the boys went inside while Kala hid eggs for the Beltaine egg
hunt. The boys liked that quite a lot. And then it was
lunch
time--grilled hot dogs, potato salad, baked beans, home-made foccacia
bread, and soda. We were so full, we decided to have the pie
later.
It was delicious!
Joyous Beltaine!
May 2, 2008: Pre-Beltaine
Wednesday I got home from school and set about prepping for
Beltaine. This involved a trip to the store and a whooooole lot
of
kitchen time. The store trip was for strawberries, whipping
cream,
cream cheese, hot dogs, eggs, ice cream, and other treats. At
home, I
made a batch of cookies and a complicated strawberry pie with a cream
cheese base. I did cheat and use a store-bought crust, but
hey--I'd
already taught all day.
I watched DOCTOR WHO on a portable DVD player while I worked,
which was fun. Mackie, for once, didn't really want to help.
By
the time I was done, it was bedtime for the boys. Once they were
asleep, I put out candy baskets and set them out at their places on the
dining room table. I was exhausted and went to bed soon after.
April 28, 2008: FLDS Junkie
I'm becoming an FLDS junkie. I can't leave the issue
alone. Whenever
a new bit of information about the group in Texas shows up, I read all
the versions of the story on-line. I look at the videos.
I'm reading
books.
Child abuse and institutional abuse have always been a
hot-button issue for me. It doesn't take much to get me going on
either one, always have. I've written fiction that explores the
two
themes more than once, and I have plans to do it again. (These
aren't
exclusive themes; just ones that have cropped up more than once.)
I
guess what really gets to me is that this sort of thing is going on
RIGHT NOW. It was going on RIGHT NOW in THIS COUNTRY with people
who
grew up thinking IT WAS OKAY.
Everyone focuses on what it was
like for the girls. As a male, though, I want to know more of
what
it's like for the boys. What's it like growing up as a
throwaway? The
women are at least taught that they can help the community by having
babies, but the boys can't do that because the alpha males take up the
wives. How do you emotionally deal with nocturnal emissions in a
culture that tells you they're a sin (even though you'll have them if
you don't masturbate, which itself is a sin)?
How much of the
attitudes do you really believe and how many do you just pretend to
believe because it's convenient or out of survival? What do you
do as
a male if you want to leave the community?
How do you handle
fallilng in love with a girl, only to watch her be married off to a man
old enough to be her grandfather? How do you handle lying in bed
at
night, knowing what he's doing to her?
What's it like to know
you're only one of a dozen children, and your father doesn't
particularly care about you because you're the fourth boy and have no
value except as a strong back?
And so on.
All the books
and articles I've looked at focus on what it's like for the women and
girls, but none of them come from the throwaway boys' point of view.
And
I want to know more about the politics of the polygamous family.
The
wives competing for the alpha male's favor. How the different
children
are treated and mistreated by different sister wives. The
differing
status of different wives.
Like a fifty-car pileup, it's
horrifying and fascinating. I want to untangle everything and
understand it thoroughly. And then I want to break it all up so
it'll
STOP HAPPENING.
And don't get me started on the guy from
Austria. Not FLDS, of course, but the most horrifying of abusive
fathers. He chains his daughter in the basement, fathers seven
children on her, and keeps them all locked up down there. For
nineteen
years. You want a difficult integration into society, look no
further. How do you bring someone who's never seen the sun into
the
real world at age nineteen?
April 27, 2008: Flight Weirdness
Every few days or so, I get an e-mail from Travelocity informing
me that there's been a change in my Ireland flight plans. Either
the
departure time of one of the flights has changed by about five minutes
or the flight number has changed. I'm assuming this has something
to
do with the Delta/Northwest merger. It's unnerving, though.
What
really bites is that I chose to fly via Delta despite a slightly higher
ticket price because I HATE NORTHWEST. Northwest, as I've
observed
elsewhere, deservedly has the worst customer satisfaction rating of any
airline in the world, and every time I've flown with them, something
has gone wrong. Every single time. Although it appears that
Delta is
swallowing up Northwest more than anything else, I'm not happy about
the whole thing, and these e-mails aren't making me feel better.
April 26, 2008: Reinstallation
I finally broke down today and reinstalled Windows XP on
the boys'
computer. They've downloaded so many things indiscriminantly and
sucked up so many viruses that the poor thing just doesn't
operate
well. The viruses even managed to destroy McAfee. So I
started over
again. It didn't take as long as I had feared, at least.
I
reinstalled Firefox, removed IE from the desktop, installed Firefox's
script-blocker and ad-blocker, and I'll have to give the boys yet
another lecture on Internet safety.
Sasha's currently reloading his World of Warcraft software.
April 26, 2008: IEP Exhaustion
Yesterday was Aran's bi-annual IEP (Individual Education Plan)
meeting. I hate these things. They're exhausting,
emotionally and
physically. They're always an enormous reminder of how far Aran
has to
go. We set Aran's educational goals for the next year and work
out
what sort of support he'll get from the school. It's looking like
next
year he'll have a parapro in the room with him full-time to keep him
on-task. Junior high school is going to be a major shift for him,
and
he'll need the help.
Sometimes I feel like
Homer Simpson. I read other people's blogs or hear their
conversations
when they mention their kids. "Yesterday Willameena took her
science
project to school, and the teacher entered it in the all-state
program. Now the NSA is talking about using it as a model for how
to
conduct proper research. We're so proud." "Oh? Well,
Dakota is
reading three grades higher than his age level and is already
asking
about algebra. His teachers just can't keep up with him."
"I know
what you mean! We had to skip Wexford ahead to another grade
AGAIN.
We'll be paying college tuition before he gets a driver's
license! I
just don't know how we'll afford it."
And then there's my family:
"Yesterday
Aran actually moved on to the next story problem in math without being
told," his teacher said at his IEP. "I was amazed and praised him
highly for it."
"Maksim didn't try to hit anyone in class even once," reads a note
in Mackie's backpack. "He had a good day today."
"Sasha"
[who will be old enough to order beer at his own high school graduation
party] "finished all his vocabulary and got a 70% on it," wrote his
teacher in Sasha's planner. "Great work today!"
I
don't begrudge other people's right to brag about their own
children.
I just wish I could chime in once in a while without hearing the
Simpsons theme song in the background.
April 25, 2008: Writing LOL
http://pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Writing_Report_FINAL3.pdf
A new study shows that:
--two-thirds teens admit to using
l33t-speak (like "OMG" and "LOL"), emoticons, and bad Internet-style
punctuation in their school work (They had to do a study for
this? All
they had to do was look at the paper I grade every day.)
--although
85% of teens use at least some form of electronic communication such as
e-mail, texting, or IMing, 60% of them don't think of it as "writing"
(Not that much different from the old days when teens would howl about
having to write a 300-word essay, then happily scribble a five-page
note that begins "I'm soooo bored," fold it into a football, and flick
it across the cafeteria.)
--86% of teens believe good writing is important to success in life
(but not, apparently, in the classroom)
The full study, which is quite well-written and uses proper
punctuation, is at the link above if you want to check it out.
April 24, 2008: Torturing Kittens
We're having a bit of a problem at
Nameless High School. Two problems, actually. First, the
seniors have
somewhere acquired a Sense of Entitlement. This SoE has
apparently
granted them the right to have five--count 'em FIVE--senior skip
days.
The second problem is that the president of the student council
"scheduled" these skip days and released this schedule to the student
body. This, combined with the aforementioned SoE, makes the
seniors
think that the five senior skip days are in some way official.
I
don't do senior skip day. Seniors at Wherever, Michigan get out a
full
two weeks before everyone else. They therefore get two weeks
worth of
skip days and don't need any others. If seniors got out at the
same
time as everyone else, I'd no doubt wag my finger and tell everyone
that there's no such thing as senior skip day but quietly fail to make
significant lessons plans for that day. However, seniors get out
way
early, so I make life difficult for seniors who do skip school.
This
year, the seniors have outdone themselves. FIVE skip days?
I learned
yesterday from one particular student that the reason for the huge
number is that they don't want any more five-day weeks between now and
the end of school.
The principal is less than
thrilled about all this and is scheduling a assembly for the senior
class to inform them that this will end now, and there will be
consequences for seniors who miss school on Mondays and/or
Fridays.
These consequences may include being excluded from prom.
Meanwhile,
I informed my senior-heavy media literacy classes of a new
policy.
Anyone who misses class on Monday or Friday has to hand-write a
300-word essay about the topic we cover in class that day. "You
weren't here for the discussion, and I need to know you learned the
material," I said. "Staple the essay to your weekly packet when
you
turn everything in. Without the essay, I won't grade your
packet.
That means you'll have a zero for the entire week, so I don't recommend
skipping the essay."
You would have thought I was torturing kittens.
"Those skip days are SCHEDULED!" one student protested.
"By whom?" I demanded.
"The student council president!"
"And he has the authority to change the school calendar since
when? Is he on the school board?"
Then the "what ifs" began.
"What if really are sick?"
"The essay will give you something to do while you're recovering."
"What if my grandmother dies and I'm out for three days?" (This
exact wording came up in BOTH media lit classes.)
"Let me know and I'll send you a condolence card," I replied
heartlessly.
"What if--"
"Enough
'what ifs' " I interrupted. "That's a game my freshmen
play. We still
have a lesson today. If you have problems with the new policy,
feel
free to talk to the principal, though I should warn you that I ran it
past him this morning and he thought it was marvelous."
According to my students, I missed my calling; I should have been
an Inquisitor.
April 20, 2008: Pope Burns
On the radio I heard a tiny segement of the Pope giving
mass in Yankee
Stadium. He sounds like Mr. Burns on THE SIMPSONS. I
thought it was
some sort of joke at first, then realized it was really him.
April 20, 2008: Yard Project
I loath yard work. Have I mentioned that more than thirty
times? Probably. But I'll say it again--I loathe yard work.
There's
this garden thing in my backyard. It was there when we moved
in. It's
a plot of earth surrounded by fence rails set into the ground. I
hate
gardening as much as I hate yard work, so I've never done anything with
this garden thing. For four years, it's sat out there with the
stuff
that was in there growing more and more feral. The jungle caged
inside
the rails gets about five feet high in late summer, whereupon I (or,
lately, Sasha) go out there with hedge clippers and slash it into
submission. It's ugly and a blight and every year I say I need to
get
rid of it. Last year I was really going to do it, but the spring
was
really really rainy, and then it turned into an insanely hot summer,
and I didn't get around to it.
Today was a mid-60s day with no rain. Good day to get rid of
the blight.
I
called the hardware store to see if they had any tillers to rent.
They
had only two left--a huge one and a small one. They were willing
to
hold the small one for me for half an hour. I dashed over there
to
pick it up. Turned out today was a popular day for tilling.
While I
was there, two more people came in to ask about renting small
tillers.
I was glad I called! I also bought a large and a small crowbar.
Brought
the tiller back home, summoned the boys, and set to work dismantling
the stupid rail border around the garden plot. I had thought this
would be fairly simple. Wrong! The people who'd installed
it
apparently figured Michigan was an earthquake zone. There were
four
layers of rails, all staggered. Rather than have a single spike
driven
into the corners to hold the thing together, the builders had driven
stakes into EACH LAYER in DIFFERENT PLACES. This meant that each
rail
had to be pried up enough to loosen the stake so we could get the
crowbar under the head of the stake and pry it out. Three
times. Per
rail. Two rails per layer per side.
The bottom
layer was sunk into the ground AND held down with foot-long stakes that
could not be pried out. Finally, I hit on using the long crowbar
to
lift one corner and then Sasha and I just muscling it upright and
tearing it out of the ground. My arms are still sore from that.
Mackie was put to work gathering the stakes. Aran hauled
rails to the curb for the trash.
Once
all that was done, I ran the tiller over the ground. The boys
raked it
smooth. I also tilled a chunk of the old flowerbeds that I didn't
like
maintaining. I had to stop a couple times to untangle roots and
chicken wire from the tines. Yes, chicken wire. Apparently
the
previous owners had put down a layer of the stuff in their little
garden. Gods know why. They didn't have a dog and didn't
need to
discourage it digging.
Once that was done, the
boys cleaned up the yard while I brought back the rototiller.
Then I
bought grass seed, a sprinkler, a new length of hose, and three lilac
bushes. When I got back, Kala and I seeded the garden area and
planted
the lilac bushes in the old flowerbeds. The sprinkler is
currently
watering everything.
I'm wiped!
After
supper, I went to the store and bought strawberries, ice cream, fudge
topping, and whipped cream. I made strawberry splits for everyone
after all the hard work. And one for me.
April 20, 2008: Q
So--AVENUE Q.
My mother-in-law came up to
babysit, and Kala and I drove up to East Lansing for dinner and a
show. First we drove to the Wharton Center to make sure we could
find
the place, then headed into town to find dinner. We went down the
student strip near Michigan State University and here realized we'd
made a mistake--all the eateries were inexpensive places that tended to
serve your dinner in red plastic baskets. Nothing wrong with this
if
that's what you're looking for, but we wanted someplace nicer.
After
some hunting, though, we found a Japanese/Korean restaurant that also
served sushi. Ah ha!
We ordered two rolls of
sushi, one spicy and one not, and two entrees. I had a Korean
chicken
dish which looked more interesting on the menu than it turned out to be
in reality. Kala ordered udon, which she said was really
good. The
sushi was wonderful. The entire meal was under $40. We
would have
paid closer to $70 for the same meal down in Ann Arbor. I often
forget
how expensive my part of the state is.
Then it was off to the show.
Our
tickets were in row D a bit to stage right--great seats. The show
started, and it was great! The contrast of felt muppets talking
in
Sesame Street-like tones about adult topics made for hilarity.
Ever
wonder how puppets have sex? Well, now we know. Can muppets
be gay?
Yes, they can. Do they experience Schadenfreude? Sure thing!
One
bit turned out to be unintentionally ironic. A song in the show
is
titled "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist." And I happened to be
sitting
next to an African-American couple. Dearie, dearie me.
The show was well worth the admission price.
April 20, 2008: Q Lead-In
Quite some time ago, fellow UWGer Erica Schippers showed me the
famous fan video that combines the song "The Internet Is For Porn" with
images captured from World of Warcraft. (In case you're on of the
five
people on-line who hasn't see in, go here:
http://tinyurl.com/3hsn3m )
Anyway,
I learned song itself is from the Broadway show AVENUE Q, which is a
parody of SESAME STREET done for adults, complete with R-rated humor
and situations.
Rather later, I discovered
AVENUE Q was coming to the Wharton Center up in East Lansing. I
told
Kala about it--she had seen the video clip--and wanted to see the show,
too. There were good seats available, so I bought a set of
tickets
on-line. I also bought the CD because I like it better if I
already
know the music going into a show.
All this is a
roundabout way of saying that, unfortunately, I'm a living example of
why certain people argue that the ability to violate copyright and
illegally spread music around via the Inernet is a =good= thing.
The
main argument of such people is that copying music for free and
spreading it around encourages people to sample music they otherwise
would not have and then they'll go out and later =buy= the stuff.
In
my case, I saw the illegal version--the on-line video is a violation of
copyright--and a result, I bought the CD and two fifth-row tickets to
the original show, thereby benefitting the copyright holders.
Ironically,
I don't support this argument. The people who own the copyright
should
get to decide whether or not they want copies of their work spread
around. It's their property, after all. The owner must
decide whether
or not the potential benefits outweight the liabilities. Also, I
think
I'm a rarity. Most of my students download enormous amounts of
music
for free, but when I ask them how often they then go out and buy albums
by the artists they download, they shrug. "Never," is the most
common
answer. "Almost never," comes in second.
April 20, 2008: Denial
I'm discovering the wonders of long stretches of
denial. They're
lovely! I've never tried them before--I prefer to hit problems
square
on, regardless of the pain--but this denial thing has its uses.
April 17, 2008: Wordless
My
life is horrid right now. Major family issues. It's nothing I feel I
can go into right now. I will eventually, but not yet. I'm mentioning
it here to explain why posts may get a little sparse for a while.
April 16, 2008: Crash!
My desktop computer at school crashed today. To be
specific, it
froze and I had to reboot it, whereupon it went into an endless reboot
cycle that I wasn't able to break. The IT person was out of
the
building, so I was SOL. We have something like 150 teachers and
staff
in the building and probably seven or eight hundred computers that get
used every day, but WE ONLY HAVE ONE IT PERSON. When she's out or
over-scheduled, you simply do without. Well, that's not
true. =I=
don't do without. I'm more computer savvy than that.
I
could probably have rebooted from a Windows disc, but that would have
involved digging through various drawers in the IT person's office to
find one, and I didn't feel like doing that. So I went to the
library
and snabbed a laptop from the stack set aside for students to use.
The
laptop would do me for a while. It didn't have a login for the
attendance/grade program, but the a/g program has an Internet portal,
and I have that portal bookmarked on my Yahoo! home page. I got
the
laptop hooked into the network and accessed the attendance program so I
could run that portion of my classroom.
However . . .
The
laptops have touchpads, and the mice in the building are all
traditional plugin types--no USB mice. The touchpad was annoying,
as
was the keyboard itself. And I couldn't make changes to the
laptop
because you can't download stuff to them. And the librarian
really
needed the laptop back ASAP so the students could use it in the library.
So
during my prep I went down to one of the teacher workrooms. This
particular workroom has two computers in it. One doubles as the
print
spooler. The other is a regular networked computer. It
never gets
used because we all have computers in our rooms. This one wasn't
even
turned on. I unhooked the CPU, brought it down to my room, and
stacked
it on top of my dead one. Hooked up my network wire, keyboard,
monitor, and mouse. Then I quickly downloaded Firefox and the
associated add-ons. That got me 80% up and running.
No data was lost, incidentally--that's all on the network, which wasn't
affected by my computer's little problem.
I'm
hoping tomorrow IT can rescue my computer without cloning it.
I've
loaded a lot of software onto it and tweaked it so it does what I want
it to do, and reloading/retweaking will take enormous amounts of
time.
Brlg.
April 15, 2008: Happy Tax Day!
Okay, here's where I do the happy dance. See, I'm
obsessively
organized. I always know where the forms are. I have a filing cabinet
with everything in it. I can lay my hands on every form, every receipt,
every document you might name. Kala keeps a hanging folder for
receipts, and in it is a manila folder for the different types of
expenses: office supplies, research, utilities, phone, and so on.
Everything starts sorted, and stays sorted.
Come January 30,
when the law says all our various income forms must have arrived, we
get out taxes done. We used to do them ourselves, first by hand and
then by computer program. Once we got a house and we did the adoption
thing, though, things got way too complicated for us, so we got an
accountant. Since he charges by the hour, it behooved us to keep
everything sorted and categorized, which chops a hundred bucks or so
off his final bill.
All of this means that tax time is painless
for us. I don't stay up until four a.m. trying to track down this form
or that, I don't tear my hair out trying to figure out where I mislaid
the receipt for my new computer, I don't wonder where the hell I stuck
the mortgage information that allows me to deduct the space I use for
my office. It's all there, in its folder. Right now, the 2008 stuff is
already neatly gathered in its hanging file, waiting for tax time 2009.
Doing
taxes involves picking up the folder with its pre-sorted forms and
receipts and dropping it off at the accountant, who says, "Oh! These
won't take but a second!"
So there! I shall sit back and watch
everyone waiting in line at the post office and snicker behind my hand.
It's my reward for staying on top of everything for the rest of the
year. Neener neener neener!
April 13, 2008: Rental Car
My car insurance company recently sent us a bunch of
discount offers
with the latest insurance bill, and I went on-line with them to rent a
car for the Ireland trip. Much filling out of on-line forms
ensued so
I could compare prices. I'm going for a tiny car because a)
there's
just me and Corey in it; b) I don't see a need to spend enormous
amounts of money on a rental car; and c) I figure a smaller car will be
easier to use in
unfamiliar places.
Ultimately, the various
companies come with a few Euros of each other. However, Enterprise's
site kept giving me a weird error message when I entered the code for
the discount offer, though their rate was already competitive without
it. So I called them directly instead. The agent on the
phone said
the discount wasn't valid overseas, but the rate she quoted me for
renting a car was lower than the one the web site gave me. I
mentioned
this and asked if all charges and taxes were included--insurance, for
example. She said they were, as far as she could tell.
Additionally,
Enterprise's location is quite near the center of town, where my hotels
will be. I reserved the car. I just hope there'll be no
nasty
surprises waiting when I get there!
April 13, 2008: The Horror!
Last night we went to see Nameless High School's performance of
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.
I'd
shown video clips of it on YouTube to Mackie a few months ago to see if
he'd be interested in seeing it--didn't want to waste money on tickets
for something he didn't want to see. He loved the talking
plant. So
did Aran. For days afterward, Mackie asked when we were going to
go
see it, and I always had to tell him it wasn't for several weeks.
At last the big night came and we drove up to Wherever to see it.
The
show was great fun and quite entertaining. I'd seen it on stage
before, so I knew what to expect, plot-wise. Mackie and Aran both
thought it was the greatest thing ever. I also had fun spotting
some
of my students, who were in the production. As he did the last
time we
went to a stage show, Sasha pretended to be bored but secretly enjoyed
it.
After the show ended, the cast showed up in
the foyer. Mackie stared. "They're real!" he gasped.
It was very
cute. I also said hello to one of my students who was in the
show.
And then we drove home. Mackie and Aran both conked out about
five
minutes into the drive. A good night out, overall.
April 11, 2008: Reservations
After several days of
web-surfing, e-mailing, and making phone calls to Ireland, I finally
have hotel reservations in Dublin. I need a hotel for the first
two
nights after I arrive and for the final two nights before I leave.
Finding
these lodgings took a great deal of research. I didn't want to
stay in
a fleabag, but neither did I want to fork out thousands of
dollars.
Another requirement was that the hotel(s) needed to be within
reasonable walking distance of the Temple Bar district. These are
nearly impossible requirements to fulfill.
I found a guest house I liked the look of. The Eliza Lodge (
http://www.dublinlodge.com/)
has a wonderful location and decent prices for a single room. I
filled
out their on-line reservation form and got a robot reply that said if I
hadn't heard back in 36 hours, I should contact them. The
allotted
time passed, so this afternoon while on my prep period at school, I
called them (on my cell phone--it would be difficult to explain a call
to Ireland from my classroom phone). It turned out they had a
computer
crash right around the time I made my reservation and they never got
it. Unfortunately, they had no single rooms available for the
dates I
was was arriving. Sigh. But they =did= have a room
available for the
two nights before I was leaving. Yay!
I made
the reservation and asked for an e-mail confirmation. When it
came, I
responded with a note to the effect that I'd like to be notified if
they got a cancellation during the first part of my trip.
And then it was back to the web for more looking.
After
much more surfing, reading of on-line reviews, and checking of maps, I
finally settled on the Days Hotel of Parnell Street. I was hoping
to
avoid staying at a chain hotel, but it was the most reasonable place I
could find that was both clean and within walking distance of Temple
Bar. Made the reservation on-line and got the confirmation just
now.
If the Eliza Lodge later tells me they have a room for me, I'll just
cancel.
So my hotels are all set. Now I just have to rent a car.
April 10, 2008: The Evening After
Conferences
I slept for a while this afternoon, then ate supper, then watched
some pirated TORCHWOOD on-line while I baked some stuff in the kitchen
to try and improve my mood. It sort-of worked.
At least there are cookies now.
April 10, 2008: The Day After
Conferences
Today I woke up still physically and emotionally tired, and I
still had to teach all day. In the good old days, we had the day
after
conferences off as a comp day, but recently the district switched to
all buildings having the same comp day in order to save money with
busing. It's nice having a four-day weekend over Memorial Day,
but
it's horrible the day after conferences.
I
taught all my classes all day. I could have thrown videos in, but
I'm
enough of a perfectionist that I can't bring myself to do that unless
conditions are truly extreme. At lunchtime, I did go out.
My prep
period falls during the lunch period, so I get ninety minutes for lunch
if I want it, and I had to get away from the damn school
building. I
drove to a little restaurant a ways away and had a hot lunch.
Felt a
little better and returned for the second half of the day, though by
seventh hour, I was exhausted again.
I fled the
building the moment the final bell rang and arrived home feeling tired,
annoyed, and anti-social. Ten will get you five that tomorrow the
absentee rate among staff will be high. I ain't subbing on my
prep
period if they fall short of subs, I can tell you that.
April 10, 2008: Conferences
Yesterday we had spring parent/teacher conferences.
They were, as
usual, s-l-o-o-o-w. In six and a half hours, I had exactly 12
parents. I brought the new laptop with me and used it as an MP3
player
while I blasted through a pile of essays that I hadn't been able to
finish. Once those were done, I switched to DVD mode and watched
DOCTOR WHO.
I
rather suspect that conferences are going to become less and less
popular an event. At the school system where I teach, parents can
log
into the school system and see the teachers' gradebooks (for their
child's marks only). They can see up-to-the-minute grades and
contact
the teacher by phone or e-mail if they see a problem. This, in
turn,
reduces the need for a conference. I wonder if eventually
conferences
will be reduced to once a year, and that mostly so parents can come in
to meet the teacher rather than confer.
Anyway, I got home
exhausted at 9:15 and had to spend considerable time unwinding before I
could go to bed and reasonably expect to fall asleep. Despite the
slowness of the evening, it was very tiring. I was at school for
almost fourteen hours. The older I get, the harder it becomes to
handle this.
April 5, 2008: Sasha and Work
Yesterday evening, I said I was going out for a bike ride and
Sasha asked to go with.
It
was a cloudy evening in the forties, and we rode back country rodes
together. Sasha said that he wanted to get a job one day.
"Well,
you have to get good grades first," I said. "School is your main
job.
Once you're getting As and Bs in school, we'll talk about a job."
"Oh," he said. "Okay."
"But,"
I added, "in the summer, you can get any kind of job you want, since
there's no school and you don't have to worry about jobs."
"How old do I have to be?"
"You're fifteen now," I said. "You can get a job this
summer, if you want."
"I can mow lawns for people and rake and stuff," he said.
"You
could. But you could also get a job at a grocery store or a
restaurant
or someplace else. Grocery stores need people to put stuff on
shelves
and straighten things up and bag groceries and sweep the floors."
He
seemed dubious about this. "I too short. I can't reach the
top
shelves, and everyone would laugh at me. I couldn't do the job."
"That's for them to decide, not you," I reminded him. "If
they think you can't do the job, they won't hire you."
We
talked about other possibilities for summer jobs--busboy, working at a
nursery or horse farm, and so on. I'm planning to encourage this
heavily. It'll give him something to do this summer besides
sit around
the house and complain how bored he is.
"How much money would they pay?" he asked at one point.
"They'd
have to pay you at least $6 an hour," I said, rounding up a
little.
"So if you worked twenty hours a week, you'd probably earn
between $80
and $100 after taxes."
He thought about this. "How long would it take me to buy an
Xbox?"
Sigh.
Sasha
also talked about slightly longer-term career plans. He wants to
attend Eastern Michigan University and study early childhood
development. I'm paraphrasing a little, though. What he
said was, "I
want to go to EMU and teach kindergarten or first grade. Middle
school
kids are too hard to teach."
I was a little
surprised. He =wants= to go to college. Whether he wants to
stay in
teaching or not will be up for grabs, of course. That desire may
be
heavily influenced by the fact that both his parents are teachers, and
he may find something else he'd rather do. I'm just happy that
he's
looking to the future and trying to decide what he wants to do.
April 5, 2008: Writing Of Late
My writing habits of late have been terrible. I've done very
little. In the last four days, I've only done about a chapter on
a new
fantasy novel and some rough character work on a mainstream book.
On the other hand, I took almost no writing time off during spring
break and winter break, so maybe I'm due for some down time.
April 3, 2008: The Internet Is
For . . .
Tickets!
AVENUE Q is playing at the Wharton Center in East
Lansing in two weeks, and we gots Saturday evening tickets, we
does!
And my mother-in-law is babysitting.
This'll be fun.
April 3, 2008: Karate Kamp
Easter came extremely early this year, and many schools
intelligently
decided to disconnect spring break from it. Unfortunately, not
=all=
schools did, meaning spring break is being spread around. Meaning
I
had one spring break, the boys had another. Meaning there's very
little work for substitute teachers, since all the subs are available
but fewer schools are in session on any give day.
At any rate,
the boys are on spring break next week, but I'm not. This limits
what
the boys can do, since doing anything special would have to be
something that 1) Kala can supervise by herself during the day and/or
2) won't interfere with my weird work and sleep schedule.
Unfortunately, this would relegate the boys mostly to watching TV and
playing video games for most of the week.
Enter the karate school.
The
school is running a day camp next week for kids on spring break.
It's
not free, but it's fairly inexpensive. I had it in mind for Aran
and
Maksim, since they're the most difficult to keep occupied. I
brought
the idea up to Kala, and she thought it was a great idea. But I
wondered how the two boys would react. I talked to Aran first.
ME:
Hey, Aran. The karate school is putting on a day camp next week
during
spring break. They'll have activities and games and all sorts of
things to do.
ARAN: Oh. That sounds great.
MAKSIM (overhearing): They are? Can I go? I want to
go! Can I? Please?
Okay, that was easier than I thought.
An
added benefit is that if Kala gets a sub job, she can still do
it.
Sasha won't be going to the camp, but he's old enough to stay home by
himself.
March 31, 2008: Karate Equipment
Today I cornered the instructor after class (which was, no
surprise, more forms). I told her I needed to know what was up
with
equipment, since I'd been put off so many times, and the tournament is
Saturday and what do I do now?
She got an "oh
crap" look on her face and apologized. The dojang can order
equipment
for someone, but it wouldn't arrive in time. She said maybe I
could
borrow some from a fellow student at the tournament. Someone
would be
sure to loan me some. She also gave me a list of what I would
need.
I
wasn't wild about the idea of paying an entry fee and showing up on the
off chance someone would be able to loan me what I needed. I also
knew
that I'd need a mouth guard, and I doubted anyone would be up to
loaning me one of those. I left class, went home, and got on the
computer.
The advantages of having a black belt in Google-Fu.
I
found a site that sold what I needed, measured my hands, head, feet,
and chest to make sure the sizes would be accurate, and ordered it by
second-day delivery. Everything should arrive by Thursday or
Friday.
There.
See, this is one of the many reasons I
wouldn't at all mind living in the middle of nowhere. As long as
I had
a cell modem or cable modem or satellite modem, who needs a city?
I
thought about not ordering it at all and skipping the tournament, but
then went ahead anyway. I'll need the equipment eventually, and
the
next LAMP tournament will likely be out of state. This one's less
than
an hour's drive away, so I don't want to miss the chance.
March 30, 2008: Karate Snarl
A karate tournament is coming up. It's this coming Saturday,
and
the instructors at the school are encouraging everyone to
participate.
And here's I get snarly.
The tournament has
events in forms, breaking, and sparring. Forms are a set of
pre-determined fight moves, done as if you're fighting a small army of
invisible enemies. They get more complicated the higher your belt
rank. Breaking is breaking boards or bricks and looking as cool
as
possible while you do it. It's way more than just stacking up
some
boards and crashing through them--it's half choreography and
showmanship. Sparring is fighting an opponent one-on-one.
You don't
try to hurt anyone--you get points for touching them on the chest or
stomach.
I'm a self-directed learner. At least
once a month, the instructor will ask a class, "Who wants to be a black
belt one day?" I don't raise my hand. I don't care if I
become a
black belt or not. Belt rank isn't important to me except as a
marker
to remind me what I've learned. For me, the belt rank isn't the
goal;
skill and fitness are. If get a black belt, that's fine. If
I don't,
that's fine, too. I don't need a belt to say how much karate I
know.
When
it comes to tournaments, I have no interest in being judged. I'm
well
aware of how good my forms are and where my weaknesses are and don't
need to hear it from a judge. I'm not at all interested in
breaking
boards right now. I can do it in a number of fascinating ways,
and I
have a good sense of theatrics already. I don't need a judge to
tell
me that, either.
What I don't know is how I'd
stack up in a fight. That I can't do on my own. I want to
spar and
see how I'd do against someone else. That's the =only= event that
interests me at a tournament.
For the last two
weeks at class, the instructors have been emphasizing tournament
preparation, but it's all been forms and breaking. I don't give a
shit
about that. But when I ask about sparring, they always say, "Oh
yeah--we'll do that at the next adult class. Come then." I
go to the
adult class, and what do we get? Forms and breaking.
Last
Friday evening, when I went to the adult class, it was breaking the
entire class period. One of the instructors loves to talk.
And talk
and talk and talk. Karate isn't something you can learn by
listening.
You have to learn it by doing, but he felt the need to explain
everything in great detail three or four times before letting anyone do
anything. I finally broke in with a question, and when he
answered it,
I said, "Great! Can I try it now?" And got looks of relief
from my
classmates.
But I thought half the class would
be breaking and half would be sparring. Nope. It was all
breaking. I
mentioned this to one of the other instructors.
"Oh!" he said. "There's a special Saturday class from ten to
noon tomorrow. Come to that and we'll get you set up."
Okay.
This I did. I showed up at ten. And the class was filled
with
children, with only two adults who both outranked me by two
belts.
Well, I thought, I can probably spar with the adults anyway. I'll
lose, but it'll be a good challenge.
We lined up, and the instructor announced that we were going to
work on forms for tournament.
I left.
On
Monday, I'm going to go in and have a conversation with one of the
instructors and tell him exactly what's going on. I'm very upset
about
all this, really.
March 28, 2008: Agreeing With Dean
Sorry, Log Cabiners, but I agree:
The
Log Cabin Republicans are idiots. Whenever the Republicans
sponsor
and/or pass anti-LGBT legislation, they shout with surprise and whine
and bitch and moan. What were they expecting? The
Republican Party is
never going to accept them, never going to change its view of gay
rights, never going to be anything but an obstacle to equal
rights. To
the LGBT population, the Republicans are a rabid dog, and associating
yourself with it is sheer idiocy. Log Cabiners are stupid to
think
otherwise. Howard Dean is absolutely right.
March 28, 2008: Contacting Lough
Crew
Cairn L at Loughcrew is unique in all Ireland. It's the only
passage tomb with a pillar in the middle of the central room. If
you
want to visit it, however, you have to get special permission from the
Office of Public Works, and you have to have good reason (such as
research). This from the Lough's web site. I tried
e-mailing the
people on the site to ask about getting permission, but the mail
bounced. Today, I called them. The woman I talked to at the
OPW said
that although the OPW has a key to the cairn, I actually have to get
permission from the landowner first. She gave me his name.
"Do you have contact information for him?" I asked. "Phone
or e-mail?"
"I'm afraid not," she said. "You can write him, though."
"Uh . . . do you have his mailing address?" I said.
She sounded a bit surprised. "It's Lough Crew, County
Meath." Then she added as an afterthought, "Ireland, of course."
Ah. It's one of =those= addresses. You don't need a
street name or house number when you live in a castle.
I
wrote the landowner a letter introducing myself and giving my
credentials. It went into the mail yesterday. We'll see if
he
responds.
March 28, 2008: Driving Snow
So last night I drove out to Redford to see my friend Kurt, and we
get a Snowstorm. I can't win. Anytime I go somewhere, a
storm blows
up while I'm out. This has happened for each of the last three
major
snowstorms we've had.
The snow is getting truly
tiring. We got quite a lot of it last night, more firmly
entrenching
the 2007/2008 winter as the snowiest on record. I'm not bothering
to
shovel--we're supposed to get weather in the high 30s, and it's all
going to melt soon, so screw it.
March 27, 2008: Shortest Edit Ever
Yesterday I got my editor's letter for the Ghost Whisperer
book. It said exactly this:
"It was fine."
Shortest. Edit. Ever.
. . .
Go me!
March 26, 2008: Silly Sign
After the Great March Storm this week, a local college
bookstore which
is known for putting odd things on its sign had this offering:
LOUSY SMARCH WEATHER
Snarf!
(It's a Simpsons reference, in case you're scratching your head and
saying "Eh?")
March 24, 2008: Romantic Men
Last Valentine's Day I castigated the media for portraying the
impossibly romantic male and trying to make men feel inadequate for not
living up to the image. Today's Dear Abby column has a take on it:
I'm sure she's going to get lots and lots of mail about it!
March 23, 2008: Torchwood (For
Adults)
I found TORCHWOOD by accident.
I started
watching the new version of DOCTOR WHO on DVD because I heard it was
actually good. Over the years and back in the days of videotape,
several friends of mine tried numerous times to get me hooked on the
older DW, saying it was a really good show if you played along with the
bad special effects. I tried, I honestly did, but I just didn't
like
the show. After the fourth or fifth, "Okay, you didn't like that
episode, but you'll really like =this= one; it's so cool" comments, I
said enough was enough and refused further offerings. (Sorry to
all
those Whovians out there who love it.) Because of this
experience, I
didn't pick up the newest incarnation until just recently.
I
watched the first season on DVD and liked it much, much better.
Good,
snappy writing, good acting, and watchable special effects. As a
bonus, Rose was built like a real woman instead of a stick.
Coolness!
Then we hit the episodes with Captain Jack Harkness. Oh, did
I fall for him. Hard.
The
reason? Captain Jack reminds me very strongly of Kendi from my
Silent
Empire books--fast thinker, a smart-ass, charming, impulsive, and
sometimes more pragmatic than he probably should be. They're not
perfect matches. Jack has a much more . . . active sex life than
Kendi, who set his sights on Ben fairly early and never wavered after
that. But I created Kendi to be the kind of person I'd find
really fun
to read (and write) about. I wouldn't get along with Kendi in
real
life. He would drive me crazy and I'd probably end up shooting
him in
the knee or something. I feel the same way about Jack
Harkness--great
fun to watch, but not someone I'd actually want to hang out with.
Anyway,
I loved the character. And then I found out I wasn't the only
one,
that he turned out so popular he was given his own
series--TORCHWOOD.
And the first season's DVDs had just come out. I bought them last
week. They weren't cheap, either, but I needed the treat.
My reaction? This is good TV SF for =adults.= And I'm
liking it that way.
TORCHWOOD
made me see the prejudice of American SF shows. SF in America is
for
kids and teenagers. Any adult viewers are incidental. As an
adult,
when I watch any incarnation of STAR TREK or DARK ANGEL or FIREFLY or
THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES, no matter how "adult" the show supposedly
gets, its always written with ten-year-olds in the room. Watching
is
like trying to have an adult conversation when kids are present and the
people are carefully talking around the topic, using hints and cute
euphemisms and censoring what they really want to say.
TORCHWOOD has shooed the kids out of the room and locked the door
so the adults can talk without worrying. I'm loving it.
Hey,
look! People have sex. They have many kinds of sex, with
many
combinations of pairings. And the world doesn't automatically
punish
you for it. People fall in and out of love. They stray from
their
partners. They do stupid things with co-workers in the heat of
the
moment and then have to deal with the "oh, um . . . good morning . . .
did anyone make coffee?" situation at the office the next day.
And
many times life sucks. Situations are harsh and sometimes the
choices
are all bad and you can't do anything about it. And often you
don't
get to know why something happened or how it turns out. Sometimes
the
best option is to let someone die. And people =change.=
When
something enormous happens to them, they don't go on a week later as if
none of it happened.
And the Blitz is a huge part of the British psyche.
I
only have one episode left of the first season. My cable company
doesn't carry BBC America, so I can't watch second season on TV, but I
have a black belt in Google-Fu and I've found a couple of web sites
that (probably illegally) stream the latest episodes, so I'll catch
them there. (I'd get them legally if I could, but they aren't
available to me.)
Loving this show. Really.
March 23, 2008: Um . . . Easter?
We don't celebrate Easter in our house, of course.
We do a similar
sort of thing at Beltaine on May 1. But Mackie heard about Easter
and
the Easter Bunny somewhere (school, I imagine) and has been asking when
the Easter Bunny comes for days and days. I wasn't going to do
=two=
sets of springtime celebrations, thanks, but I didn't want to
disappoint Maksim, either. So I stopped at the store and bought a
few
candies--some M&Ms, some Reese's Pieces in a carrot-shaped package,
and three caramel-filled chocolate eggs. Last night I set out
bowls
with the candy in it and a piece of paper with Sasha, Aran, and
Mackie's names on them. They found them this morning. A
mini-celebration. :)
March 23, 2008: A Gig
I haven't done a harp gig in a long time. This is because
I'd
mostly stopped playing professionally. I realized one day that I
didn't have any hobbies that weren't business-related--both writing and
harping were geared toward earning money. Whenver I sat down to
play
Corey, I was thinking, "I need to practice ______ because it would be
good at a wedding," or "I should learn more ______ music for
parties."
It wasn't =fun.= So I stopped playing professionally in order to
have
something that was mine.
But recently I got an
e-mail from a member of local fandom (a friend of a friend) asking for
a harpist to appear at a party. I decided, what the heck and
agreed to
it. I quoted her my friends and fandom rate, which is much lower
than
my usual rate, and she was quite amenable.
The
only snag was the the party was on the Saturday when Kala would be out
of town. However, Sasha could handle babysitting for a couple of
hours. Saturday evening I packed up my stuff and drove across
town.
Found the place with minimal searching and was greeted by several
friends.
It was an Easter Toga Party With
Kids. Most of the children were Mackie's age or younger.
They
clustered around Corey with questions and wanting to try playing
him.
I got used to this at ren faires. As long as they don't touch the
sounding board, I let them explore. I'm there as entertainment
for
them, too, after all.
Also there were a couple
friends from around Ann Arbor, including Tammy. (Hi,
Tammy!) She'd
brought HOME-MADE CHOCOLATES from her home business Tammy's Tastings (
http://tammystastings.com/default.aspx)
and she gave me a sample plate with one of each of her new
creations.
She was a bit critical of the way they'd come out, but they tasted fine
to me!
I played for something over an hour, and
it went very well. When the time was up, I socialized a bit, then
packed up and left. I couldn't stay longer because I didn't want
the
house to be a smoking hole when I got home. It wasn't. :)
March 22, 2008: Morning's
Exercise
I only went to karate once last week. Too busy after
Monday, and
on Friday I wasn't going to drive again even at gunpoint. This
morning, I gritted my teeth and got on the treadmill. Like many
people, I always gain some weight in the winter. Karate had
helped me
keep it under control, but lately life has interfered too much. I
was
hoping the weather would stay clear enough that I could continue riding
my bike. I'd rather bike for two hours than run for twenty
minutes,
frankly. But no dice with the current weather. So it was
back to the
torture device.
I jogged for forty minutes while watching a TORCHWOOD episode, then
showered and announced to the boys that it was time to shovel
snow.
More excercise! Even the little electric snow broom takes energy
to
use, and in any case, the electric cord isn't long enough to let it
clear the entire driveway, so the half close to the street needs to be
done by hand.
So I'm exercised out for the day.
March 22, 2008: A Night's Surfing
I spent most of yesterday evening tweaking the laptop with limited
success. I was hoping to find a way to transfer some larger files
directly from my main computer to the laptop instead of via a flash
drive, but the two computers won't talk to each other, so that was a
bust. I spent a fair amount of time surfing web sites about
Ireland
and leafing through some travel guides I bought and trying to decide
exactly how best to spend my time there.
In Dublin, I