Why it is called "Fall"

It is definitely fall back here on the east coast, the weather has turned a bit cold, the wind has picked up, the leaves have changed colors, and they are falling. I know that you are all thinking that it is because of the leaves that we call this time of year "fall." I used to think that too, until I lived in a house with 16 oak trees in my yard. If we were naming the season after the leaves it would be called "flutter," the reason that it is called "fall" is because of the acorns. Before the leaves ever even change colors, the acorns start falling, and they fall in ridiculous quantities. You have to wear something on your head because after falling from 70-80 feet, the little bastards hurt! And if you don't go out and clean them up, the squirrels get to them, like this guy: 

                                      

Look how fat he is, just sitting there outside my door. We have quite a few of those brick pillars that he is sitting on, and every single one is covered with leftover acorns. They do it just to torment me. Oh well, we'll talk a little bit more about the wildlife later.

Funny Random Pictures of the Boy

Before we get to the Halloween pictures, here are a few random pictures of the boy doing whatever he happened to be doing when we took his picture.

This is just the Boy hanging out watching a movie on netflicks. Beki found the sweatshirt at some thrift sale, a pretty good deal if you ask me.

 We are pretty sure that the Boy is going through a growth spurt, mostly because his food consumption has almost doubled. We had chicken nuggets one night, and apparently 5 was not enough for him, so he insisted on sitting in front of the oven and watching more cook.

 Owen got a Halloween card from Grandma Nettie...

and his cousin Maddy wrote a book for him! It was really neat, Maddy is such a good artist, Owen really enjoyed it.

Owen's school class was supposed to go to the Pumpkin Patch a couple of weeks ago, but it got rained out. Now the public schools would have just said "too bad," but Owen's school just rescheduled it for a later date. Owen had a lot of fun, he got to ride on a school bus and that was just as awesome as can be. But the thing that he was most excited about was his little pumpkin that he picked out. He had been waiting to turn it into a Jack-O-Lantern, and finally Beki and I got our pumpkins and we had a little carving party.

 The Boy tried scooping the guts out, but quickly decided that Papa was much better at it, lucky me.

 Mommy and Owen drew a face on his pumpkin - it was the same face as the one on his trick-or-treating bucket. Then when mommy turned her back, the Boy figured that he would have a turn with the cutting saw.

 Yup, I was soooo good at scooping guts that I "got" to do all three.

Owen with his Jack-O-Lantern

We are pretty sparse on the Halloween decorations, but our Jack-O-Lanterns do a pretty good job of setting the mood.

                                      

Unlike the public schools out here, which do not allow holiday parties, Owen's school did things the way that they should be done, and after the students had spent the afternoon partying, they had a parade with all of the elementary students. The 6th, 7th, and 8th graders don't get to wear costumes, they come out to cheer on the other kids.

 So in case you don't know which one is the Boy, he is the one that the teacher is telling to hurry up. There was a big fire truck parked in the parking lot, and it really was distracting.

 He had never seen Toy Story until this summer when he watched #1 and #2 on the way from Utah to Idaho, but he loves Buzz Lightyear. He has a Buzz Lightyear backpack, so when he saw a Buzz costume at the thrift store the decision was easy.

 Giving the older kids high fives! I don't know why, but all of the older kids know Owen. Probably because he is ridiculously funny. His big thing now is calling you "Nacho." It comes from a CheeseIts commercial, it makes no sense, but I would rather have him saying that than some other things he could be saying.

At the ward Halloween party with his friend Moroni.

 It was like a trunk or treat, except that everyone took a room and decorated the door, then the kids went around the hallway and scored their loot.

 Hmm...which one to eat first....

Apparently he chose one he wasn't even holding.

So these last four pictures have nothing to do with Halloween. The weather was nice one day, a little cool, but not windy and not rainy, and I was feeling particularly motivated - it must be the new meds the doctor has me on - so I took all of the crap out of the right side of our shed. (Quick side note: Our shed is divided into two sides. The right side is unfinished, and looks just like you would expect a shed to look. The left side is finished, like it is sheet-rocked, has a linoleum floor and a big window. People used to live in the left side of our shed..)

 As I was taking everything out, I found that our shed was inundated with stink bugs. Stink bugs don't really make any effort to escape, I guess that they figure that their chemical warfare is enough to send people running. Well, apparently I have superior genetics, because the smell of stinkbugs doesn't bother me. I must have squished hundreds, maybe even a thousand stinkbugs and I didn't smell a thing. They do however, make a delightful crunch when you squish them!

Nice and clean, and no stink bugs!

And lastly, when we got home from Stake Conference today - by the way Beki is now the 2nd Councilor in the Stake Primary Presidency - there was a visitor in our neighbor's back yard. Beki picked up the Boy so he could see, and he kept saying, "Get closer...Get closer."

Looks like we'll be eating this week!

In case you are wondering, No, I still don't have a job, I'm not sure how we have survived for the last two months, and I have no idea how we will survive the month ahead. Right now I am rooting for us winning Publisher's Clearing House.

Renaissance Festival

So I am a geek for all things old and historical, but I have always avoided the Renaissance Festivals because I am afraid that if I went to one I might not come back. The second largest Renaissance Festival in the country is a half hour from my house, and so we had made plans to go with Dean (Owen's best friends) and his family this year. When my work situation exploded we decided that it was not something that we could afford, so we hadn't planned on going. Well, Dean's mom is the Stake Choir Director for our church, and she wanted a hymn arranged, and since I don't have much to do, I arranged it for her. As a way to say thank you, Dean's family took us anyway.

The Renaissance Festival here in Maryland is awesome. It is seriously a little town in the middle of the woods. There are numerous stages for all sorts of performers - some for kids, some for adults, and some for everyone. There are knights and jousting and sword fighting, and everything awesome like that. There are lots of food vendors (plenty of beverages of an adult nature of course) and all sorts of vendors selling clothing, jewelry, trinkets, swords, art and everything else you could probably ever imagine. And then there are the people who dress up; I'm not just talking about the performers and vendors. Probably 30% of the people who attend the festival are dressed up. Most are tasteful, some are slutty, and a few are just plain wrong: (YOU CAN NOT UNSEE WHAT HAS BEEN SEEN!!)

Owen was excited to go, and more than anything else, he wanted to go on a pony ride. So one of the first things we did was find the ponies:

Mount Up!

The Boy was so excited to be on the pony, he was leaning forward and petting it.

This was right before our pony stopped and let everyone know that he was a boy pony...Beki took a picture while he was taking care of business, but I decided to use restraint.

You only get to go around the little path once, but the boy was super excited that he got to ride a pony.

One of the knights before the joust.

This was my favorite performer of the entire day. Hilby the Skinny German Juggling Boy. His humor is just up my ally - he says lots of funny things as asides that most people don't get, but it had me in stitches.

This music group was not very good, but the Boy still got up on the bench and danced.

This is the Fairy Godmother. Owen had been a wuse when it came to interacting with performers, but the Fairy Godmother got him to come up and take a "'Bravery Stone" from her.

And of course there was a play place for kids with slides and a Pirate Ship and all sorts of climbing things.

The Boy handled the rope ladder like a pro.

Owen waited very patient for a turn to be spun around like crazy on the tire swing.

I got sick just watching.

At the end of the day we were sad to leave, but we managed one last smile from the boy for a family photo.

Oh, and next year we will be dressed up with the 30%.

White Trash Home Repair

This is my Water Heater...notice how it is not as tall as yours?

That is because it is supposed to be used in a mobile home. When we first moved in the Water Heater quit working within a week. Luckily my wife and her family are awesome, and instead of buying a new Water Heater, we replaced the elements, and everything was lovely. This last weekend as we were getting ready for bed, Beki and I heard a tremendously awful noise. It lasted about two seconds, and it sounded as if someone was jackhammering something in our house. We looked around for a half hour, but couldn't figure out what it was, so we went to bed hoping that our house wasn't going to explode during the night. (We would much prefer it to explode during the day.)

Monday morning Beki woke me up with good news and bad news: The Good News - she knew what the sound was. The Bad News - It was the Water Heater. New Elements should not burn out in a year and a half, so we were thinking that this time we might have a serious problem on our hands. In case you have never had to deal with changing the elements on your Water Heater, I shall explain how this is done.

Step #1 - You have to drain the tank. This seems like it should be straight forward, there is a drain on the bottom, you hook a hose up, turn the water off to the tank, and drain. Except that during its life, your Water Heater builds up sediment and junk in the bottom, which sometimes get in the way of draining. We were having a rough time getting the drain clear, and we were throwing ideas around about how we could get something to loosen the sediment. Beki wanted to hook up the air-compressor to the drain hose and blast the sediment back, but we didn't have an attachment that would let us do this. If only we had someone in the house with extensive experience blowing into things...

Yup, I had to blow into the drain hose and see if I could generate enough pressure to get the sediment to move and allow the water to drain. The good news is that it worked, and the bad news is that it worked, for once I got the sediment to move there was 40 gallons of water and gravity working against me. At least I got my mouth closed before I got hit in the face by nasty sediment water...

Step #2 - Take out the old elements and look for damage. Evidently there is a special tool that you need to do this, and apparently we own one, I had seen it in the shed before, and had no idea what it was. If your element looks like this:

then it is broken. (Notice how there is a hole burned completely through it?) But why would it burn out in only a year and a half? Beki checked in the bottom of the tank, and we had so much sediment that it had actually come into contact with the element, which burned it out. So somehow we needed to get the sediment out of the bottom of the tank. This is where white trash awesomeness pays off. 1 Shop-vac + 1 regular vacuum attachment + 1 clear plastic drain hose + duct tape = SEDIMENT SUCKER OF AWESOME!

I don't know what surprised us more, the fact that we came up with this, or the fact that it worked!
It was pretty gross work, sometimes the chunks were too big and Beki would have to pull them out of the tube.
In the end we got most of the grossness vaccumed out, and we were able to get back to fixing our Water Heater. Here is what we ended up with. (Warning, this is gross)

Step #3 - Put the new Element in, tighten everything up and turn the water back on!

(There are some steps that I didn't mention, such as "Turn off the electricity to the Water Heater" and "Go to the store and buy a new element," but I think you are smart enough to do that on your own.)

So it took most of our evening, but once again we can take a hot shower!

Surpise!

Since Chris has taken over the posting of the blog - I am sure that you have laughed MUCH more than if I had still be in charge and you have actually had blog posts, but you have not heard from me a lot (good or bad, you decide).

So surprise - I am doing a semi-post (come on - I have to start slow).  So while Chris is at Stake Choir practice - our good friend is the conductor and she asked him to arrange a hymn for them so he kinda of feels obligated - and the boy is sleeping - because he is really sick with a fever, hacking cough, wheezing, no appetite, no energy, etc - I will take a moment while baking Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies to drop a few lines.

School is stressful and very time consuming.  Add on top of that all the family drama that has been happening with Chris for the past month and you can imagine what my nerves are like.  My boss keeps us all pretty busy.  This month is "grant renewal month" which means that she needs ALL data NOW - so she can submit it to the NIH (National Institutes of Health) to see if they will still give us money to do research.  You see, her job now it get the money so that all the rest of us can still do research - and you can't even begin to imagine how expensive biological research is - lets just say that our lab spends ~$750,000 a year for salaries, supplies, fees, etc.  She currently has 3 large grants from the NIH (which is unheard of these days - the NIH has not had a budget increase in like 5 years (?) and so a lot of people are losing their grants and less people are being awarded grants - you have to score in the top 2-3% to get funding now - whereas five years ago it was the top 10% or so would get funded - so needless to say A LOT of good science in NOT being funded) and one is due for renewal in November and another in January - which means that we have to get the papers published NOW that we have been working on for the past 2 years PLUS a bunch of preliminary data to show "the grant panel" where we want to go next and what we are going to do with the millions of dollars that they should give us.  PLUS I get to start to prepare for my qualification exams that should happen here soon - I was thinking that I could do it in November, but since I can't get ANYTHING to work like I thought it would - I am having to delay just a little longer - I need at least ONE piece of data that supports my hypothesis, so that I might have a project that is worthy of a Ph.D.  So combine everything and I have been spending 10-11 hours at the lab each day, coming home to eat, read one book with the boy, put him to bed, talk for 10ish min with Chris and then heading to bed - only wake up the next day and do it all over again - with the same results - NO DATA!!  So Chris has really had to pick up the slack at home - which has been a little easier since he is at home.....

This coming week I have 2 presentations - Lab Meeting on Tuesday and Research in Progress (RIP) on Thursday - where all the department could show up.  So I am using the Lab Meeting for a trial run for RIPs on Thursday.  It is going to be rough - the last lab meeting I did, they all concluded that I was unable to count blue spots in a microscope and that it wasn't the experiment that were not working - it was the human that was sucking.  Even thought I had the most senior scientist in the lab count my experiments later and my data was spot on - the experiment was not working - there was not much redemption for me in the eyes of the lab or my boss, because only me and the other guy knew what had happened.  After that lab meeting, I cried for a few hours and had to call Chris just to get motivation to got back into work.  Yeah, NOT looking forward to this week AT ALL!!

Just a photo in parting - this is me with Dr. Carol Greider.  She came to do a seminar at UMD - at the invitation of the Graduate Student Association (i.e. me).  Just Google her.  We were very honored to have her come and it was a honor to be her guide for the time she was there.  That behind us is a constant temperature room - very sciency looking huh?

Dr. Carol Greider and Beki Sept 2010

So there you have it, I have done a blog post.   Now you will be glad to know that I won't be boring you all again for another couple month - Chris will return with his normal humor and amusing rants.

From the depths...

So you would imagine that if you had nothing to do all day, that it would be easy to update your blog frequently. That is what I thought, but it has become very apparent that keeping a blog updated requires a certain level of motivation, and honestly I am not really motivated to do anything. (We'll get to that later of course.) But the boy has been up to some fun stuff, and so I figured that I should make an effort.

BUT...before we get to the boy, this came in the mail for me today. I was not expecting a package, so I was very surprised to see:

That's right, I won my Fantasy Baseball League! I don't think the term "won" adequately describes the complete annihilation that I dispensed upon those who dared oppose me. (Of course I am pretty sure that I was the only person paying any attention to it, and even then, I really have no idea what all of the stats are that we were being scored on, I just made sure that I had people playing.) So yes, I am a geek and won my League of Dorks. Though as they say, Fantasy Sports are like Dungeons and Dragons for the guys who used to beat up the guys who play Dungeons and Dragons! So thanks to Josh Lewis for making my day!

Ok, on to things that matter. Owen's best friend in the entire world is Dean, and Dean's mom Katie always arranges the funnest outings for them to go on. Well, since I am now the stay at home mom, I get to go too. This time we went to visit the Fire Station. Anyone who has ever taken 3 and 4 year olds to see a fire station knows of the overwhelming joy and excitement that such a trip brings. Owen talked about this for a week I think, every morning asking if it was the day that we were going to the Fire Station with Dean.

Owen was curious why the Fire Truck was yellow instead of red.

But of course that did not stop him from climbing inside!

This was actually one of the most important parts of our entire trip. I realized that we haven't covered fire safety at all with Owen.

So the Firefighter dressed completely up in his gear so that the kids would not be scared if they ever saw a Firefighter coming to get them. (Because honestly, they look kind of freaky.)

So I am sure you have noticed that Owen is covering his ears in all of these pictures. In the garage they have the loudspeaker from the dispatch office, and it was quite loud.

Giant gloves are always a hit!

Once their little brains could not process anymore awesomeness from the Fire Station, they saw a little park across the parking lot, and ran as fast as they could to play!

It was a nice sunny day, but it had been raining the night before, so when they went down the slide...

They had to slam on the breaks to miss the giant pool of water that had collected at the bottom of the slide.

While Thomas the Train is still #1 for the boy, he is becoming more and more interested in Cars. In fact, he now had Lightning McQueen, Mater, Chick Hicks - with his Mack truck and pit crew, as well as 3 lesser known cars, Leak Less, Octane, and Shifty. He doesn't get rewards for going potty any more - now it is for his behavior at school (more later) so he is working on earning Sheriff.

He wanted to build a maze. He has seen mazes in some of his activity books, and decided that Lightning McQueen needed to have one too!

We have a gigantic activity book that we got at Costco, Owen loves to color and write and draw, and sometimes he'll even follow the directions!

On the topic of the boy and following directions - School. School does two things for children, it teaches them social interaction, and it hopefully teaches them knowledge that they will use in their lives. Well, Owen's pre-K class is not doing a whole lot of the second, which means that he gets bored and is struggling with the first. I'm not saying that they aren't teaching the pre-K children anything, it is just that Owen has known his letter, numbers, shapes and colors since he was 2. Asking him to arrange the letters in his name is not going to keep his attention very long because he has been doing that forever! (Plus, he has 4 letters in his name, not that hard.)

He likes to let us know that he was in the tub.

Well, since he is not really being challenged, he has been up to mischief in class. We received a second discipline notice that the boy was still hitting and pushing as well as being disrespectful. To nip this in the bud we asked his teacher if we could come in and have a little talk about what exactly was going on, and how we might help correct it. In a normal educational setting - i.e. anywhere not here - this would be an informal chat with the teacher, after all, it is @#%$*&% pre-K, they are 4 years old. As you can guess, when we arrived not only was it not informal, but we had both of his teachers as well as the grade-level facilitator there. Now, I have been in meetings like this (on the other side of the table of course) for 6th graders and higher, but again - PRE-K...4 YEARS OLD, can we please dispense with all of the "We're going to protect ourselves in case they sue" bull shit and talk about the boy?

Now, let me take a moment to give you some definitions.

Hit - verb: To strike a blow.

Strike - verb: To come into contact forcefully.

Blow - noun: A forcible stroke delivered with a part of the body or with an instrument.

Push - verb: To press against with force in order to drive or impel.

Disrespect - noun: Lack of respect. verb: To show or express disrespect or contempt for.

Respect - verb: To consider worthy of high regard, To refrain from interfering with.

Contempt - noun: The act of despising.

Despise - verb: To look down on with contempt or aversion.

Aversion - noun: A feeling of repugnance towards something with a desire to turn away.

Repugnance - noun: Strong dislike.

Ok, I'll give you a moment to recover from that horrible grade school flash back that list of definitions just caused you....

Moving on - when you send me a note that says that my child is hitting and pushing and being disrespectful I think that he is punching other kids in the face, pushing them over or out of the way, and treating you the way that all of the students at the Middle School where I am no longer teaching (yup, we'll talk about that) treat me. (Which if he was - and I do not believe that a 4 year old can have such a strong dislike of anything - they haven't been abused by life long enough to become that bitter and hard and callused - if Owen was treating his teachers the way I was being treated, he would be duct tapped upside down to a tree and the squirrels would eat him.)

After listening to them describe the actions of the boy, I was a little annoyed. What they described as "hitting" is the boy tapping other children on the arm. (This is the same thing that he does to his cousins and friends, it is annoying, and he does it on purpose, and it needs to stop, but it is not hitting.) What they described as "pushing" is the boy bumping into the child in front of him in line. (Again, one of those things that he does to be annoying, but not harmful.) And his "disrespect" as that he makes noise during nap time because he doesn't want to take a nap. Now, all three behaviors are ones that need to be corrected, but let's call a spade a spade and not put the boy's life in danger by overstating the severity of his actions.

Now, we did come up with a very good and simple solution, his teacher is going to send home a behavior chart everyday telling us how the boy did that day. He can either get a Smiley Face, as So-So Face, or a Frowny Face. The first day that he brought it home, he had no idea what it was, and so we talked about it. He had 4 smiley faces, 1 so-so face, and 1 frowny face. We talked about each category and what he would have to do to get a smiley face. Then I gave him the ultimate motivation. I told him that instead of a potty chart, we were going to get stickers based on his behavior at school. To get a sticker he would have to get all smilies. Now the boy has enough of his mother's perfectionism in him that once he understood that there were smiley faces involved, he was going to get all smilies. That first day has been the only time that he hasn't brought home all smilies. I just don't think that we needed to have a formal conference with his teachers and grade-level facilitator to come to this plan of action, but what do I know?

There have been plenty of funs things that Owen likes about school. For homework this week he was supposed to help his parents make play dough. Now, I happen to be the king of making play dough, in case you have forgotten:

I made an entire landscape for Owen's cupcake train using like 25 batches of the stuff. I could easily have done it, but it wasn't my homework...

I measured out all of the ingredients for him.

Mommy helped him add the food coloring to the water...

But then he was on his own...

First the flour, then the salt...

Last in goes the water...

The we mix! (I eventually did have to help here, it gets really hard to mix at the end, and the boy was getting tired.)

Then he had to kneed the dough until it was nice and smooth.

Then of course we had to play with it...

We built a nest with eggs in it...and then Papa built a Cobra to eat the eggs...

Owen tried to protect the eggs, so the snake attacked him instead!!!

Chris's Status Update

Ok, so here is the deal with me. If you recall from my last post I had been trying to contact my union for 2 weeks. Well, finally, after 3 weeks, 4 phone calls and 5 emails I got the Union person to call me back. I explained my situation to her, and she sent an email to Human Resources. Yup, that is right, the Union - who tells you that you should be a member so that you will be protected and not have to take on the establishment by yourself - sent a @#$%&*! email, that's it. So when you here people like Glenn Beck telling you that the Unions are only after more members so that they can use their membership dues to fund their own political ambitions, they aren't kidding. I must admit that I am amazed by the lack of help or action on the part of the Union. If I ever teach again, I will not be part of the Union anymore...I think I will go to their meetings and heckle them.

Anyway, sick of not getting anywhere with the Union, and with my Principal not allowing me to transfer until they find someone who is willing to put themselves in an winnable situation, I contacted Human Resources to see how to resign. The lady I spoke to there was the first knowledgeable person I have dealt with through this entire ordeal. She suggested that rather than resign, I should contact the Office of Absence Management and take a Leave of Absence. With a Leave of Absence I will be able to return to the school district next year (if I want to.) So I have my paperwork in for that, so at least I am not going to have to resign or get fired, the problem is that I am now essentially unemployed.

So now I am looking for a job, and with a Master's Degree you would think that I would be ok, except that my Master's Degree is in Music Education, which means that I am pretty much only qualified to do one thing - teach music. I know what you are thinking, because it is the same thing that everyone has said, and yes I have checked with all the private schools. The problem is that while a school might have 5 or 6 math teachers, they only have 1 band teacher, so they usually have that sorted out before the year begins. I have applied for a lot of jobs with the Government, so we will see if anything comes of that. I may also have an opportunity to work at Home Depot, so we will see what happens. We are trying to have faith that everything is going to work out, but we are starting to stress a bit. I'll try to keep up with this a little better to keep you filled in.