Ultimate Frisbee

Cleaning out the garage last weekend, Jacob found the pink frisbee. The kids have been having a lot of fun with it. Jacob is actually pretty good at throwing it. Catching it .... not quite so much.

Signs of the Times

Driving from Fond du Lac to Green Bay on Hwy-41 you encounter so many billboards, it feels like you are coming up to the Dells or Branson, MO, or as the very least something noteworthy. While they are "tourist tacky" - they aren't advertising ski shows, McDonalds, or wax museums. Mostly they are for local businesses like car dealerships, teeth whitening, hip replacement, and injury law.

Lately, we've noticed that many are empty or replaced with "Advertise Here" banners. I've also noticed that the number of people I know who have lost their jobs is going up, and the people who have cut back on hours or are worried about losing their jobs is even higher (probably because it includes about everyone I work with).

From a practical standpoint, I know this planet has finite resources which will not stretch to keep a growth economy booming indefinitely. I tell my students this all the time. But I also wonder what it would be like to NOT have a growth economy. What if we all are working less, living off less, and having fewer things? How many jobs will disappear and will they reappear somewhere else? Should they reappear somewhere else?

While I don't know what the future will look like, I kindof hope that as we struggle through these interesting times - we don't emerge with the "supersize me" economy that we had before.

Cowboy Buttsex

I am wondering if Google Blogger is going to flag that title - but I just HAD to. I will fill in more on Memorial Day weekend when I get the pictures uploaded. Sunday morning we went to the park because it was 8am and the kids were outside laughing like crazy over these bubbles that Jacob had gotten from school. Since it was (relatively) early and everyone's windows are open with the nice weather, we walked down to the park to make noise and blow bubbles.

When we got there, I noticed that someone had painted an anarchy symbol on the picnic area wall. Sigh - teenagers and their spray paint. When a cop showed up 5 minutes later with a camera and gloves to pick through the trash - I noticed that the anarchy symbol was not the only graffiti. While much of it was stupidly sexual - my favorite was "Cowboy Buttsex" painted across the back wall. What does that mean? (Ok - I know what it 'means,' but what meaning is there is painting it across the wall). There was an illustration of a heart with a triangle and a dot in the middle. Ok - what's that? Fortunately, the kids didn't pay any attention to it - it kindof blended into the dark wood. They probably could have read it (at least through cow boy butt) if they'd noticed.

I don't know exactly what it means that I found the whole thing kindof funny. Yes, yes, vandalism is bad. But I wonder how many parents had interesting things to explain over the weekend.....

Lemmings

So I went outside to track down Astro this morning (his tie-out is no longer since Allison pulled down the laundry line - but given the rusty state of the base - that was inevitable). Three people on the block had their trash out at the curb. Our trash day is Thursday (tomorrow). So I, of course, pulled our trash to the curb.

Typically, it wouldn't be that big of a deal to miss trash day, because our trash can usually isn't even half full. But this week it is full of garage junk - so we can't afford to miss it. There were two other people on the block outside trying to figure out if today was somehow trash day. We were all pulling our cans to the street. I'm 99% sure it's tomorrow and not today. Better safe than sorry. We're all lemmings.

Sunshine

Ha!

Today I walked to pick Allison up from school. It's been a long day - first going on Jacob's field trip to the zoo, and then work, and then getting Allison. So Allison was lobbying for being lifted onto my shoulders. I said no, because "you're getting big, and I'm tired." To which her reply was "no Mom, you're big and I'm tired."

Picture

Pretty as a penny, roller skate skinny

I need to get a picture posted. I took one with the camera, but it's all the way upstairs....

Twenty-four hours of excitement in Appleton. First - a haircut, for Allison, by Mom! Yeah, that went well. But I think it ended up kindof cute - just at her shoulders. She's not complaining. I bribed her with blue nail polish. The first pass ended up with one side shorter than the other. The second pass evened it out, but a little shorter than intended.

Then I lost my watch. I looked everywhere for it. The cleaning woman looked everywhere for it. It had to be in the house. I took it off to give the kids a bath yesterday. 24-hours later, at 8pm tonight, the watch is sitting in the middle of the bathroom rug. Very weird. Gremlins? Oddly, I don't think it was the kids. Who knows?

Then tonight we went roller skating again with the girl scouts. Jacob loved it - and after one time around with a hand holding - he was like "mom, you wait over there." Allison wasn't quite as keen, but she went around several times on her own. One of the other mothers took her back to the skate rental bar and had her wheels tightened. That really helped. She still said she had fun. Wednesdays seem to be a new highlight for Allison. It combines her favorite school and after school activities - library, her new playtime with Melanie (a 1st grader who is her "social skills" class partner), YMCA aftercare, and often daisy scout events.

5K in the Cold

On Saturday morning, I got up with some co-workers and ran/walked the SoleBurner 5K. It was an interesting 5K - not quite 50 degrees and raining. There was also a house fire at 9:04am (race at 9:00am) where the firetrucks had to go along the race route. It was like parting the seas of runners. But it was fun and a good cause - it's amazing how many people know someone who has or have themselves survived cancer.



Sunday the weather was better. We had a nice Mother's Day - I slept in a little, we went to lunch at one of my favorite restaurants that was closed and then reopened (albeit a little different menu), did a little shopping, and then Brian took the kids to the library while I read a book in the sunroom. The kids and I went to the park while Brian cooked dinner and then two very exhausted kids went to bed.

Not allergies

Well - Allison does not have allergies. For anyone who, over the years, has commented on her consistently runny nose - 'tis not due to allergies.

It was fun (insert sarcasm) to take a child to a nearly 2 hour doctor's appointment where they poked her repeatedly with little sticks (which she was no big fan of). She had a strong reaction to the control - which meant the test results should be informative. The doctor did mention seeing kids with sinus infections that lasted several years - so we're going forward with that theory - and she was diagnosed with a sinus infection yesterday. Fortunately, Allison likes the flavor of the antibiotics - unfortunately, this furthers her Dad's complaints that his penicillin allergy always kept him away from the "good" medicine as a kid.

I suppose it keeps him out of the army - though perhaps they're lowering their standards these days.

In economic news - I'm not getting the (2%, but really only 1% if even anything) raise that was supposed to go in effect last July but was postponed until this June and has now evaporated. Also, all state employees will be required to take 16 days unpaid leave over the next 2 years. Ok - so I'm thinking this fall semester will be my "Unpaid Leave Fridays." I get the need for budget cuts - I really do - but in this case I'm only paid to teach students so how will that work? Lucky for me my classes usually fill up because otherwise I might be out of a job completely.

On what planet?

So I caught a student cheating on Monday. The students do group lab reports and one group handed in their report and left. The second group went to hand in their report and asked where the pile was. Realizing report #1 was MIA - I went looking for it and found a student had snatched it, taken it back to her desk, and was copying the answers from it.

I grabbed it, shook my head, and put it back at the front. The student later came back with "well, they said it was OK," "I didn't think it was cheating, but I can see how YOU think it was," and "I wasn't going to hand in my paper, but we were going to hand in someone else's paper in their group." This is all from a 45 -yr old non-trad student. On what planet was that not cheating?? I could have and should have given their whole group a zero.

Today in lab we had course evals (students rate me). Student A was moping around, sighing that she didn't understand anything, and her group was moving too fast. She was muttering under her breath about how none it made any sense and they never get any explanations. Apparently - at least one of my evals will be GREAT!!

flowers and trees

To all in the neighborhood - keep your yards free of the fricking dandilions!!!

The kids and I took a bike ride on Sunday to the big hill park (not the one by the house) and on the way home we had to stop at every other house to pick dandilions. I guess it's better than picking daffodils or tulips like in our yard..... still, I find squished dandilions in every conceiveable place - from pockets to bike bags to hair and shoes.

I suppose I should learn to stop and smell the (kid-friendly) roses.

Home with Allison

Allison is home sick today. She's been congested (I thought allergies) but then it's moved to chest congestion and this morning a 101 fever. Fortunately, I've already canceled today's class for an all day meeting I wasn't too keen on attending anyway. So, what do you do with a kid who is too sick for school, but not sick enough to really want to veg on the couch? I most certainly want to veg on the couch.

Allison is actually up playing webkinz right now. She had a webkinz last year and wasn't too interested in it. She got another one for Easter and is enjoying it much more. She will load it up and login, but then forgets the password. I think it's because it just shows up as *** on the screen rather than the letters.

I would love to spend the day playing with my new recipes, but that would require a trip to the store and a girl who would want to help. That wouldn't be a great mechanism for spreading germs..... Instead, perhaps we will clean out old toys from the kids bedrooms. I think we can probably jettison the rattles and alphabet blocks now.

BTW - I was FLOORED on my last exam to have multiple students ask me the definitions of both "abundant" (many) and "inundated" (flooded). I might excuse the latter if it weren't in a sentence that said "The airport is in a floodplain that gets inundated during a 50-yr flood."

In order to avoid saying "The airport sits in a floodplain that gets flooded during a 50-yr flood" - what other choices did I have - "submerged"? They probably don't know what they means either. One poor kid (who is very nice) prefaced his questions with "I feel a little silly - being an English honors student and all - but what does this mean?"

Having never characterized myself as an "English" (the subject) person, I guess I assume that if I know a word than everyone else does too.