My oldest son's literary class recently had a reading. I was stunned. I've read a lot of his stories over the years and he always had good themes and ideas but the quality was so so. This was an very well written piece that he presented. At the same time it was his statement of independence from stupid adults (mainly his parents and step-parent ( Read more... )

Had a good Halloween this year. A few weeks ago, I found the local food store was selling the snack size O Henry candy bar in it's own bag! For years I could only find them as part of a variety pack. So I bought 6 bags in 3 weeks and I think I was the only one buying them. Ummmm, so hard to find, so good to eat ( Read more... )

A while ago, I went searching through the stores for a gift for a 3 year old. I saw a transformer toy and thought, "Great, he would love to change this toy back and forth." But after closer examination I saw that the toy didn't transform into anything. The arms and legs didn't even move. By definition this toy should "transform ( Read more... )

The boys and I had a great time at the Renaissance Fair. We finally got to be a part of the Tortuga Twins show. For those of you who are out of state, The Twins are 3 guys who do a 50 minute show from a 20 minute script. Lots of ad-libs and picking on audience members. It's not really what they say it's how they say it. Anyway we attended ( Read more... )

As you know, I am the sponge mixer at the local bread factory, around 180,000 loaves of bread are sent out over 3 shifts. It's a good job, out of over 100 employees there are only 9 of us (6 bread, 3 buns) who get to create the dough. My part includes adding artificial ingredients to the salt, water, yeast and flour. The A.I.'s are powdered and ( Read more... )

L had a great time in New Zealand. The choir director took me aside at the airport to say not only did L not get homesick but he didn't want to leave. He wanted us to meet him there so he could go see more of the country. His favorite parts of the tour were the Antartic Center, the Koala Preserve, the ocean, and going on the luge (a cement luge ( Read more... )

a). This is is a huge country! I only drove 2/3's of the way east-west and 1/4 of the way north-south, so I covered about half of the continental US. We drove through the Great Basin, the Rockies, the plains, the salt flats, Sierra, and the sage brush desert. Whew ( Read more... )

L flies home tonight! I'll bring him and S to the little house in Big Lake where we will hang out for a couple of weeks. Then it's a road trip to California to drop them off with their mom. She is in Sacramento with her partner and the 2 little ones. She's getting acredited to be a Waldorf instructor. They'll all be back here by Aug 10 ( Read more... )

AFI came out with a new top 100 films list. They were all good choices. It was good to see 5 silent films made the cut (The General #13). Being a film buff I would make different kinds of lists, usually based on feelings, such as ( Read more... )

Ok, I tracked down the itinerary of the trip in New Zealand. They started off at Rivendale, over to Gondor, Helms Deep, then they have a concert for Xena and Hercules in Teribithia. They're skipping Mordor because it has terrible acoustics ( Read more... )