They want to know WHAT??

So, we got this "official" census thing in the mail the other day. I was like, "John, didn't we just have a census?"

And he was like, "Yeah, but this is The American Community Survey and it's still required that we fill it out or we get in trouble."

Then we opened it up.

How much money do you spend on healthcare?
How do you heat your house?
What time did you go to work yesterday?
What are your weekly food expenditures?
in the words of  Yul Brenner... et cetera et cetera et cetera

I want to know:

1. why is ANY of this stuff mr fed's business?
2. who the hell is paying some bean counter to read about my spending habits? Me? Did you say me? CRAP now I'm REALLY mad!! I'd be even madder if I hadn't passed the buck to John to fill it out!

Believe it or not, the first question was apparently a stumper. How many people live in your house? Sounds easy, right? Until the next line that says, include anyone who lives in your house more than two months a year. As you two probably know, my mom lives with us 2-3 months a year. (Daggone, our healthcare $$ just went tru da roof!) Then, the next line says: unless they live somewhere ELSE more than 4 months a year.

Dealing with the federal government makes me want to channel my (not so) inner grumpy smurf: I hate bureaucrats!

 ~~~~~

I took my students on a field trip to the Philadelphia Science Festival last week. They were amazingly well behaved. Got the whole thing put together in 2 days with the help of another teacher.

I still can't believe my first field trip was with 100 students. And I didn't lose anybody. Permanently, anyhow.

~~~~~

New Scientist continues to amuse. Mexico has apparently decided to pass some GREEN laws. Yeah, Mexico!! I wonder if your population will follow those laws any better than the... oh, drug, kidnapping, murder laws that you already have on the books? But New Scientist sees them as TRAILBLAZERS!

Also, in big big BIG news, it seems that as these baby-boomers age, they are taking way more illicit drugs than the generation before them did. Question: how do you know if Gramps is suffering from dementia or if he's just on a bad trip? And why would anyone be surprised that the generation that brought us the summer of love would still be into drugs? Personally, I think that's probably the only way they can live with their memories!

How fitting is it, then, that the final story I read today was about Generation Y - or Generation Me. Born in the 80's and later, these kids were the ones coming through when the Baby Boomers had control of policy. And the policy was Self Esteem!! Well, it apparently doesn't work. Instead of producing successful young adults, we're producing a bunch of depressed narcissists. In the quote of the month, the article states: "Studies had shown [back in the 60's/70's] a correlation between high self-esteem and positive life events. People jumped to the conclusion that self-esteem was the cause of those other things, and it's not, really."

Um, no shit, Sherlock. You get the esteem bump BECAUSE you were successful. This is logic. That many of the Boomers seem to lack. But hey, if we say all the right things, like Mexico and its green laws, we'll obviously make a positive change. Or at least feel like we made a positive change, which will bump our self esteem. All good!

And now, back to your regularly scheduled program.

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