Hanging My Beak In Shame!

OK, so I haven't blogged well in a long time, if ever. But, well, whatever. I have put up several pics from the last months over at photobucket, albums "winter to spring", "christmas pageant 2008" (never mind that it's Easter...) and Loki.

Loki is our new pup. He's Titus's cousin. We went to meet him in early march, and he looked like this.



Now, he looks like this.


And he lives up to his namesake.

We have had this past week off, so I have done all the things that have been sitting around, like blogging and taxes and such. We even visited John's family and went to the aquarium. Am I really this gray? Sheesh.

Speaking of gray, my mom went home last month. But uploading my pics, I found this on. Yes, it's true. I got Grandma Harvey to use the computer. Here is proof, for posterity.

And now, everything is done, just in time for school to come back. 10 more weeks. It's gonna fly!

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More KidIsms

Previously, I've documented the presence of such Aviary terms as "fire-steaks" (barbeque) and "dirty sugar" (never did figure out what that was - just not good tasting). The moth came up with a new one yesterday.

I am home with the kids, so we're tromping around. We got out of the car at the local strip mall to go to the video place. It smelled... well, fragrant. They had just dumped a huge load of mulch, and that stuff stinks when first delivered. Tim gets out of the car and says, "Eeeewww, it smells like New Jersey out here!!" 

Of course, I laughed a great deal. Then I tried to figure out: why New Jersey? So I asked.

"Dad always says New Jersey stinks!"

ain't it the truth!

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Is Stupidity Contagious?

So, I have this one student. We'll call him Bill. Bill is a generally nice kid, funny, with good intentions. He tries to do his work. But he, well... He'll be a successful person because he does his work. But chemistry is not his bag, if you get my drift.

Bill wants to do well, so he tries to align himself with those who do well.

First he sat next to an A student we'll call Matt. Matt always does his work, is quiet and studious, and seems to have a good background, with firm basics. A few weeks into sitting with Bill, he suddenly had a hard time deciding whether 400 was bigger or smaller than 200. No joke. His grade dropped from an A mp 1 to a low C mp 2. He told Bill to move, because he, Matt, needed to concentrate. So Bill moved. That was in the middle of mp3. Matt is back up to A level work, understanding how to apply gas laws on his own.

Where did Bill move? He moved over next to Andy. Andy came into our class in the mid of the year, and is a very hard worker. He wants this credit with a high grade. He got an A MP 3. 

Yesterday, Andy didn't know what the word "constant" meant, though we had gone over it, and couldn't tell what half of 600 was.

So, you medico types out there, is Bill killing his table-mates brain cells? Or just numbing them? Since Matt seems to have recovered, at least partially, it's probably numbing? 

Time to have a talk with Andy, I think.

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