Wednesday, March 24, 2010

More than 1 million baby slings recalled

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100324/ap_on_bi_ge/us_baby_slings_recall

We used a Baby Bjorn and it worked fine, however I would say you have to really careful about the position of your baby's head and neck, which you should be careful about at all times really.

Monday, March 22, 2010

School Board

My 2nd grader goes to a school that has an international studies theme. The aforementioned cuts have resulted in his school loosing it's foreign language program, which only consisted of Spanish. I have heard that only one grammar school in the district, the largest, will keep it's foreign program. Now this does make some sense seeing how the highest number of students will have access to the program at this school. However, with our school's theme being international studies would not it make sense for us to have a foreign language program? My boys are worlds ahead of where I was at their age with Spanish, having started with some instruction in preschool and having it twice a week in grammar school. Back in my day we were not able to study foreign languages until high school which has left me knowing a bit of French and Spanish vocabulary but not being anywhere near fluent in either language. I mean if they had to cut science programs from all but one school wouldn't it make sense for that one school to be the Math & Sciences magnet school? It sucks too because though my son stresses out about it, he is doing really well in Spanish and is at the point where he can go up in front of the class and recite a couple of paragraphs of information in Spanish without reading off of note cards. That will be lost if he does not have Spanish at school for the next three to six years. Also he has interest in learning other languages, if he is able to continue Spanish for the next three years he can gain a pretty good grasp of the language and move onto learning another in middle school. It looks like another case where if parents can afford it they will have to dip into their own pockets and pay for private instruction if they really want their child to gain knowledge outside of the three R's, or learn a sport, or get daily exercise, or participate in the arts .... double merde!!

Friday, March 19, 2010

File Under, This Can't Be Good

From the Office of (my town's) Superintendent of Schools:

(My Town’s) State Aid to Drop 60%

After months of awaiting word from (the state capital), (my town) was notified Wednesday that the school district will receive 60.1% less funding next year.

Fewer dollars next year – a total loss of $5,488,485 – means that some programs, services and staffing will have to be eliminated, school officials say. At public meetings over the past two months, administrators and Board members have warned repeatedly that there will be reductions in programs, services, and personnel, both in the schools and at Central Office.

The next meeting of the Board of Education will be on Monday, March 22, 7:30 p.m., in the ____ Annex.

----------------------------------------------------------
How does a School Board operate with that kind of loss of funds? One of the reasons we chose to move to this town was all of the diverse programs that the school have. I was looking to sign my 2nd grader up for his schools orchestra next year, who knows if that will even exist anymore after these cuts.

MERDE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Windows Update

After about two weeks away from it I am back to working on the essay for my graduate school application. Initially besides directly answering the basic questions that they require you to cover in the essay I had just been downloading all kinds of experiences, anecdotes, traumatic stories and whatever else from my life that I hope at revision time I could craft into a narrative that will convey that while I have not been working the in the field that I have chosen to seek a masters in and frankly I have not been working outside of the home practically at all for 7 years, I do have the life experience to meld with my undergraduate psychology degree that will make me a good candidate for being accepted into a competitive Master's of Social Work program.

So I am 75% through the unfettered emptying my brain of every possible story and angle that I could possibly use to help me with this essay, and after two weeks of snow storms, school closing, and just being generally busy, distracted, uninspired and then ultimately a little scared to stare at the screen tasked with writing an essay that will determine my future and career, I sit down today a couple of hours later than I planned and start trying to get the process going again. There are five questions that have to be answered, I'll focus on first one because it is shorter, more simple, basically why did you choose this program at this school?
After about 15 minutes of b.s.ing things finally start to flow and then bzzzap, the computer starts to shut down, fuck am I going to loose everything? I got a update warning when I first logged on, which I chose to postpone or delay or whatever the choice for do it later was, I did not realize that it would comeback and not give me another chance to approve or deny the update.

This gave me flash backs to college and my work as an editor when cpu problems usually meant if you didn't save the file as you were working you would have to do it all over again. Well luckily things computers are better than when I first started using them because after a couple of minutes everything turned it self back on and all of my updates to the essay were still there. Still it's a reminder to save my file as I go along. Seems like a good time to break for lunch

Monday, March 01, 2010

exactly

I took our family car to the shop today for a few minor things and a weird whooshing sound that started a few days ago. It wound up being the water pump, which was going to take a few hours to fix, so I needed my wife to come home from work, so I could use her car to pick up the kids from school.
I told this to my 2nd grader as when I picked him up, but he often does not listen very closely. When we pulled into our driveway he said, "Where exactly is our car?"
I said, "It is exactly in 'town X on street Y.'"
He said, "Why did you say exactly?"
Me - "Because you did"
Him - "What does exactly mean?"