I keep these two rocks on my desk. To the best of my knowledge they have never weighted paper. They are purely ornamental. They are from my days as a geologist.
When I say “days as a geologist” I really mean “those years in college when I got my degree in geology”. I never actually practiced geology “professionally”, though I did get a couple of pretty bitchin’ job offers that would have allowed me to continue. Continue in Houston, sure, but continue none the less. I took a pass. The economy was way way different then and there was something about working for Big Oil that I found distasteful despite their insane huge flat screen monitors and sincere interest in basin analysis.
The one on the right is a weathered chunk of basalt from Hawaii. I got in on a huge long “field trip” I took where my class and I studied the volcanoes and slept in tents on the beach and swam in the ocean every day. Up until the trip, we had spent an entire semester studying the area and tuning our compasses and readying our rock hammers and raising the needed funds to buy the tickets that would fly us to the edge of the great caldera. On the ground we clamored thru caves and over endless acres of pahoehoe and we were instructed clearly and repeatedly to take very careful field notes that would be reviewed and scrutinized and graded and factored in and taken into account and whatnot. The weather was awesome. The volcano was awesome. The caves were awesome. There was this beach covered in green sand with these perfect swimming waves that I dove into over and over again and I maybe didn’t take a lot of good notes every single day. I remember thinking I didn’t really care. I was learning. I was plugged in. I was having fun. I was gonna relax and let this one just kinda happen. I totally became friends with some guy who I just sorta knew from class and after that trip I’m not sure we even ever talked again. I don’t even remember his name. He probably doesn’t remember mine, either.
Anyway, it dawned on me tonight when I saw them that I no longer remember where the other one even came from. I thought that was kind of a trip. It’s sedimentary, so I’m guessing probably Montana. And just to be clear, I have a lot of these random rocks around. I finally just moved a bunch of them into my garden a few years ago. I didn’t remember the stories behind many of them, either. But these desk rocks seemed like I should for some reason. Sorry, random rock.
I’m gonna share this with you guys. I keep it on my desktop for when I need a pick-me-up.
This is my guy Maldo – fresh from Pittsburgh Blue or Crave or something, I’m sure – backstage with Bee at the Target Center. Sometimes I like to close my eyes and pretend that after this picture was taken she turned to him and asked if he knew which way it was to the gun show. Or maybe they just talked about hair products or the Badgers or Glee or something, who cares, it’s surreal and it’s awesome and you’re welcome.
Also this: he swears up and down it was an amazing show, despite the apparent lack of a glowstick war.
Sweet fancy ray moses I think it’s maybe working again.
So the whole thing crashed and I lost a bunch of posts and a few comments and I installed a new [vintage] hard drive and got my music server back operational and then no offense dear reader but my autumn priorities remained outside in the sun and the leaves and lakes and seriously how much fun is it to spend a lazy sunday afternoon sweeping the garage while listening to the Vikings postgame show, right? Right. But now a few nights of rebuilding and reinstalling and stripping down something called a “theme” and it probably won’t get any prettier than this so you better be here for the content.
Am I the only one who wonders why the portions at Sea Salt seem to have gotten smaller all summer?
Check it! The neighbors just got chickens!
They drove all the way to Wisconsin to pick them up at Uncle Whatever’s farm. They put them in a box and punched some holes in the box and put the box in the back of their minivan and drove them home. 94 was closed because of flooding so they had to take tons of detours and it took hours and hours longer than it should have and those eggs better be so damn good you have no idea. (My favorite part of this story is how they stopped to get food on the way home and the kids had chicken nuggets. They ate in the car. That’s what we in the business like to call “letting them know who’s boss”.)
The [adorable] 5-some is currently living in a dog kennel in the garage while the finishing touches are put on their new hen house. After that, construction will begin on 5 tiny Volvo station wagons. (To help them feel at home in the neighborhood.) In about 4 months they’ll start rocking out eggs. Like one every 26 hours or something. Quick math: 5 eggs a day = 35/week = kick ass omelets for everyone and more. OMG I can’t wait.
They let junior “adopt” one of them. He named it Mary. I have no idea which one it is. I lost track like 10 seconds after he named it. I hope that’s not going to be a problem.
Great stuff.
One day you’re decorating your bikes so you can have a parade and celebrate the sun, and the next you’re digging them out of a snowdrift.
Seatbelts!
My neighbor Alan left these on our front porch the other day.
He’s done it before.
I’m sure he’ll do it again.
Just because he’s cool like that.
I thought they were pretty great.
How about this spring? Sure is whizzing along. Like an Indy car. Which I’ll be watching in 3 days. Because that’s what you do on Memorial Day weekend.
And here we go with the bulleted list again. Seems like this is all I do lately. Some of you will assume it’s a creative rut – or worst yet, just taking the easy way out – but I know you loyal readers out there know the real truth: it’s both the easy and creative way out.
- The first BBQ smoker smoke-out smokefest of the season went down the weekend before last and it was smokerriffic as usual. Bylerly’s had chicken on sale and I went a little nuts and smoked and pulled like 40 chicken thighs. They were, in a word, su-poyb. We had some friends over for dinner and there was still easily enough for 6 more lunches, 2 dinners, and 3 batches vacuum-packed for the freezer. I could say that I’m sick of BBQ chicken sandwiches, but I’d be lying. Because I’m not. Because they’re awesome.
- I dug the weedwacker out of cold storage to knock down some tall grass around my yard. Go figure, it didn’t start. Out of gas. Not surprising, it probably hasn’t been started in 2 years, and I think I only got it running one time after I brought it home from a garage sale. Off to the station to get gas. Mix in oil. Drive home. Fill weedwacker. Pull. Pull. Pull. Push little primer button. Make sure choke is set right. Pull. Pull. Listen to junior telling me how “it’s not starting” and “I think it’s broken”. (Genius!) Pull. Curse. Prime. Pull. Rest for a few minutes. Pull. Pull. Pull. ALMOST START. Pull. Pull. Whimper. Pull. 30 more minutes of resting and pulling. Give up. Shoulder almost unusable. Have to ask wife to lift cold beer to lips. Next day, take to hardware store for tune-up. 3 weeks minimum before they can get to it. Decide to fix myself. 28 screws to get to carburetor, but it’ll be worth it. Drive home. Open trunk. Show wife how it won’t work. Pull. Starts. First time. Whimper. Stupid weedwacker, stickin’ it to me.
- At farmer’s market the other day. Shopping for a croc from this pottery dude who’s always there. I like his stuff. So I’m ready to pull trigger and I go up and I pick up the croc I want and I kinda hem and haw and look half interested because that’s how I play it when I’m scheming for a deal. It’s like $38. The lady comes over and she’s really nice and we talk it up and then the potter comes over and he’s nice, too. We talk for a while then the potter dude goes to help someone other rube shopper and I put on my game face and break out the “would you take $35 for it?” routine and the nice lady gives me this little half frown and says “I’d rather not, but if you really need the $3, I suppose I’d take it.” And I’m thinking to myself “well, no, I don’t *need* it, I just spent $3 on a stupid scone from the French Meadow, and while it was good, $3 for a scone is just absurd” so I said
Our neighbors have one of those house security system things. It’s mostly there to keep me out of their beer fridge while they’re on vacation, but it also serves to detect break-ins and fires and stuff. This evening while cooking dinner, the babysitter smoked up the kitchen enough to trigger the full house alarm. She unfortunately had no idea how to turn it off, so she picked up the phone and tried frantically to find someone who did. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
When the alarm wasn’t reset in time, the alarm company mothership tried calling the homeowner to verify everything was ok. Because the babysitter was on the phone, the mothership couldn’t get through. Because the mothership couldn’t get through, the local fire and police were notified. Because the local fire and police were notified, my pre-dinner entertainment was much better than average.
I’m the ‘neighbor contact’ on their alarm system so my phone rang pretty much right away. The mothership dude asked if I had a key to their house to let the fire and police in when they got there. I almost said no – just so I’d get to see some police dude kick down a door – but then I thought back to all the free jalepeno poppers they’ve given me and decided earn some karma and just let them in. As it turns out, the sitter was in the house and it didn’t matter anyway.
When the fire department got there they parked their truck right in front of our house. We went out to look around and one of the paramedic dudes offered to let us climb up inside the truck and look around. He even posed for a picture. It was quite a scene.
Last Sunday’s Strib featured an interesting pair education-themed articles. I say “interesting” because after I read the second one I went “huh, that’s interesting” and then more or less read them both out loud to Libby. She more or less pretended to listen, said “huh”, and then went back to doing her cryptoquip. Ahh, routine.
Since I normally grab my coffee and dive right into the hypefest that is the OpEx section, the first story I read was an editorial feature titled “How’d I’d Fix My High School”. The article was a follow-up piece from a request the OpEx editors issued a few weeks back for high school students to write in with their ideas on how to ‘fix’ their [broken?] high school. I guess like 130 kids submitted something. Is that a lot?
The 130 were culled to 19 for the story. Of those 19, here’s a breakdown of what the kids mentioned as ‘fixes’. And yes, I’m dumbing them down to fit them into my little category buckets.
- Deal with disinterested / troublemaker kids [6]
- More funding / better spending [4]
- Smaller classes [3]
- Downplay Sports [2]
- Better security [2]
- Other – diversity, grading changes, teaching values (!), etc
[Note that I separated 'funding' from 'class size', but that some kids mentioned it in the same context.]
While I wasn’t surprised by the “no money for chalk” comments, I did find it curious that so many kids mentioned the ‘rotten apple’ issue. (And, to a lesser extent, the sports stuff; as a former b-squad soccer player, that one stung a little bit.) So while the kids recognize that more money would help, many of them seem to think that what [little] money there is is being wasted on doofs who take up all the teacher’s time.
Huh.
After flipping thru the comics and the Target ad, I stumbled onto the other story. This one being an above-the-fold feature in the Metro section titled ‘Making a Wish’. In it, a reporter went around and asked teachers what they would spend money on if they were given a blank check to improve their classrooms. Presumably the check would bounce if it was too big, but the maximum was never explicitly stated.
Here’s what they said:
- A set of drums for the band
- New HVAC for the school
- Additional teachers
- A belt sander
- Subsidize sports fees
- Video cameras
- Laptops
- Graphing calculators
Ok, I think there are more, but that’s enough. The laptops and graphing calculator requests are starting to get me worked up.
So on one side you’ve got kids saying that troublemakers and huge classes are the problem and on the other you’ve got teachers asking for belt sanders and video cameras. I’m not saying either side is right or wrong, I’m just saying that it’s interesting that NONE of the teachers mentioned hiring additional counselors for the ‘troubled’ kids, and only one mentioned hiring teachers at all. Maybe they’re just hoping that the elephant in the room will be able to hide behind the new drums for a while? Or maybe they’re just being defensive?
At this point I’m sure it’s somehow painfully unfair how I’m interpreting the teacher’s responses. (Seriously, I’m sure it is, but that’s the fun of having a blog, I get to say all kinds of crazy shit.) I’m also sure that the problem of ‘difficult’ students and misdirected spending is so big and complex that when a reporter shows up with a fake check and asks what you’ll spend it on it’s easy to say “uhh, some video cameras?” instead of going on the record as saying some of your kids are a real bitch to deal with. But I still wish they would have. When people see teachers daydreaming about laptops for every student, it might make them wonder how bad things really are. And in some cases I think it’s actually pretty bad.
How I’d Fix My High School [strib]
Making a Wish [strib]
