Death in the family

My mother just called me to tell me that a cousin of mine just died, she was in her 50's and had all kinds of medical problems, she recently had a leg amputated due to a childhood accident it had given her problems her whole life, she was actually happy to have it removed and was doing well beside her diabetes. It is ironic that she died from a heart infection stemming from a bunch of recent dental work, some medicine she is on was ruining her teeth and she finally got approval from medicare (or whatever med agency was helping her) to get her teeth worked on. So she was going back every week to make up for lost time. She was feeling bad yesterday and died while getting dialysis at 4pm today. My mother called me a half an hour ago, my wife won't be home for another 30 minutes, so I can't really reflect on this in peace cuz I got the kids and have to make dinner.

FUTSAL & SOCCER

My big guy has been on a tear he had 5 goals in his last two futsal games, in one they were down 3 zip, he somehow got kicked in the face on the sideline in the first half, then after sitting out most of the half started the second and took a nasty fall onto the hardwood floor and sat out most of the second half, he pulled himself together and asked to get back in and helped lead a come back to tie game at 5-5 with two late game goals. He ended the season with a hat trick in a blow out season finale.

After opening the outdoor soccer season with a only an assist in a loss, he followed up with hat trick in our second game and two goals in the third game.

Porno comments

I have been getting a number of comments to my postings on this blog in Chinese. I just commented to one of the comments asking that they post an English translation, then I remembered babel fish, in one comment they were talking about my tribe's milk? and here is a translation of another comment:

How does the big milk younger sister paste the chart area 0204 movie watching dew point autodyne immoral woman female student to console oneself the pornographic station adult to laugh at the av violent snares of love to like the video beautiful woman lascivious av adult pornography telephone spicy younger sister video chatting the sexual relationship sentiment color vcd self-consolation chart obscene beautiful adult forum Taiwan pornography forum adult chatroom autodyne bare female to paste chart video adult free a piece of movie Ms. av adult net adult pornography pornography Taiwan spicy younger sister vesicle the pubic hair pornography news bare female autodyne pornography movie a piece of forum sexual affection skillful beautiful woman to escape the bra personality color heaven av portrait pornography video to chat makes love the video adult movie bedroom drama sentiment color to chat the net hot sentiment color Taiwan female superior sexual affection secrets Taiwan av female superior masturbation self-consolation movie

Why would they post porno stuff to my blog, no one is looking at my comments section looking for porn

Budding Evil Genius

My 5 yr-old son has really shown a propensity for manipulating his brother and test his parents' boundaries. The other day as we are leaving to take his older brother to school right before we get to the door he says uh-oh and pulls a lego star wars figure out of his pocket and very visibly puts it on the kitchen counter. His brother was already in the car. About three minutes into the trip he tells me that his brother has a star wars lego figure in the car, knowing that house toys are not allowed in the car with out parental approval.

I get on his brother's case about knowing he is not allowed to bring toys, particularly very small easily breakable ones that they love, in the car or outside of the house, and I point out that his brother remembered to leave the toy he was playing with at home.l

I forgot to have him hand the toy to me, so of course he took it into school anyway, and let some kid look at it at the end of the day and lost some rare character's light saber. After getting his teacher to unlock the classroom and let us look for it, to no avail, I tell him this is why you shouldn't bring collectible toys out of the house, and he says, "I wish I never listened to my brother." I ask why and he says that his brother told him they should sneak the lego figures into the car so they could play with them.

So he told him to bring it in the car, had me watch him not bring his in the car and told on his brother for bringing it in the car, all in a ten minute span. Sounds like a set up, right.

I asked my therapist, who has written a number of books on children, if she thinks it was possible that my 5 yr-old actually planned this out to set up his brother? She said yes particularly if he has done anything like this in the past. They both tell on each other all the time, and he has manipulated his older brother into adding him in a number of sneaky endeavors, the biggest of which usually involve snacks, like discovering a hidden cache of gummy fruits that were destined for birthday party gift bags and getting his brother to open them because at three years old he did not have the strength to do so himself. There was also the time where he showed his brother that they could eat Easter candy without permission if they hide the wrappers, again he needed his brother's help opening the candy.

So yeah, I think my little guy is capable of hatching a plan to get his older brother in trouble. Since then I told my 2nd grader to just tell me if his brother tries to get him involved in any other schemes that he fears will get him in trouble and sure enough almost once a day that little mind is hatching some devious plan to advance his goal of world domination over candy, toys and video games.

A side note to his thinking ahead, this morning he asked me if we were late to pre-school and I said not really and though he usually is pushing to make it on time, he seemed bummed, so I asked him, why did you ask and he said, "I want to be late, if we are late to school that means I don't have to go for as long." I said wow, yes you are technically correct.

CA shares rock bottom in U.S. reading scores

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2010/03/24/MNCH1CKMAA.DTL

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.

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!!

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

A History Of Chuck E. Cheese Violence

http://grahamten.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/a-history-of-chuck-e-cheese-violence/

Screen Time May Take a Toll on Kids' Relationships

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100303/hl_hsn/screentimemaytakeatollonkidsrelationships

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?"

Research finds brain link for words, music ability

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100220/ap_on_sc/us_sci_words_and_music

Dog's Company Keeps Missing Girl Alive

Pet credited with keeping child warm in woods

Now I am seriously a cat person, but I do not know that cat would do this

Why Househusbands Are the Future