STEVEN HARPER PIZIKS
BLOGGIN' WITH THE BIG BOYS

An Intermittent Web Log about Writing, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Autism, Adoption, Harps, and Sundry Other Topics


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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:
 
http://news.yahoo.com/s/po/20080328/co_po/logcabinmiffedathowarddeansremarks
 
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:
 
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20080324
 
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