three shall be thy number

Kid B expressed that he might like to try a recumbent on RAGBRAI. But given that this one week is the only time he ever rides a bike he was concerned it might be too much to learn to start and stop on the crowded streets of that event. I thought it was a good excuse to buy a tadpole trike. I got a Rover, 8-speed, added a Schlumpf HSD. He was certainly slower than he has been in years past, but he said it was more fun. I'm using it to commute now. It's taken me a couple months to catch up to his mileage for that one week. I don't think that I'm over all slower than I was on the two wheel 'bent, my max speed certainly is but my average seems to be slightly higher.

My dog he got three legs, your dog fuels the trade deficit and funds terrorism.

if you only knew you'd wish that you were in my shoes

...that if it feels this good getting used
Oh you just keep on using me until you use me up
- Bill Withers

Yeah, it's good to have a purpose, to be useful. Getting old isn't much fun, but the alternatives ain't so hot either.

I'm gonna go visit Kid B at college this weekend, and watch me some women's field hockey. The school is gonna add womens lacrosse in the spring; the difference between lacrosse and field hockey is like the difference between a John Wayne movie fight and a Jackie Chan movie fight. I can't even keep up with the John Wayne movies anymore. You kids get off that grass! go play your ball games somewhere else.

teabagging queen

It seems that Rush Limbaugh is truly the teabagging queen.
How do we git rid of treasonous bastards that ridicule democracy the way the fascist dope fiend does?

THe light at the end of the tunnel

Well, the end of an era is rapidly approaching. Kid B has picked a place to go and is almost gone. Well, he is gone temporarily - to the state Academic Decathlon competition. This weekend is the final event in his career as AcDecalete. Only one more season to wrap up before graduation, I've been counting down since two-a-days. I'm pretty happy about his choice of colleges.

I'm just hoping that this bright light isn't an oncoming train.

Last iteration of it

Two-a-days have begun and we anxiously await the start of classes.

This year is my last shot at parenting a school age child. I'm hoping that it's a good one and it brings my little darling all the things that we want him to take away from childhood. I've been pretty satisfied with the results that we've been getting. It's a fine line between providing detail and bragging of course.

But the course we've taken has brought the kids into contact with some top notch, salt of the earth type people. And they've run into some real toots too. I think they've come away with the where with all to tell the difference. And they're being recognized as some pretty top notch types themselves.

I've been worried that I hadn't drilled Kid B enough on the subtleties of doing laundry and washing dishes. Today he went to the appliance repair center, paid for the repairs, carried the clothes washer home, and hooked it up. I guess if he ends up with pink underwear behind the hot hose going into the cold spigot it will school him better than any of my contrived drills ever could have. The proof of the pudding will be when he leaves the nest and has to find a place to do his washing up.

Meanwhile, Son 1 tells me he has abandoned the laundry service in favor of doing it at the coin-op himself behind several pairs of uniform pants having gone missing. I'm reminded of a story I read where the author talks about meeting the General: "There he was, washing his socks in his helmet just like everybody else".

I'm real comfortable that my kids are well equipped to take care of not only themselves, but of all the others that depend on them.

School's out for summer

Yes, we are counting the days. I wonder how the home schoolers generate the excitement, the frenzy, the Prom & all that. Well, home schooling makes me wonder a lot of things, like why would anyone want their kid to be 'that' kid. And if you, the teacher, select the curriculum where do you, the parent, get off complaining that they don't teach you stuff that's useful in the real world only to have your kids realize how woefully out of touch with reality you are? Yep, the public school provides the kids with a lot of intangible take-aways that just give me a big warm fuzzy feeling about the ability of the next generation to run things.

I guess Catholic schools may not be so bad, if you don't worry about your kids being around their clergy. For a long time it was the church rather the government that was the keeper of the knowledge and if you knew something you learnt it there, not that I necessarily would want to return to the dark ages. I guess most places it's still the church that does the schooling, places where there is a greater separation of the classes. And the people there hope to keep 'em separated, if you're under 18 you won't be doing any time. ( yeah if my kids had been home school I probably wouldn't have ever heard that lyric)

The recent plans to eviscerate the public schools and give the funding to charter schools instead are just another round of attempts to create class struggle here in the USofA. An attempt to further polarize the populace. I mean to say that the overwhelming majority of us USofAliens (90%) send our blessed little progeny off to public schools. Therefore the cost and quality of the school district or at least the perception of the school district's cost and quality is the single biggest factor in selecting a home. Well, a lot of us don't actually do any research into this, but we sure like to think we chose this place because of the good schools. The school district is the bit of the government where we are most able to exercise any pretense of democracy and the part of the government that is most likely to provide valuable services back in return. I question how we can bring ourselves to allow folks educated in private schools into public service, maybe a long penance in the armed services could make up for the deficiencies of having not been educated in public schools.

At the end of the day, I say that the single biggest reason for sending your kids to a private school is to prevent them from having to compete on a level field with the likes of my kids.

God Bless New Hampshire

Yes, the state of New Hampshire has a population less than most US cities, 1.2M. But these little town folks are not taken in by Huckabee's claim to have been endorsed by God.

All y'all New Hampshireites live free or die, w00t!