This City Stinks

I mean it actually stinks. There's an odor that's hanging in the air, and it is foul. My neighborhood smells like fertilizer and smog. The area around L's school smells like sewage and smog. There is nowhere to go to get away from the smell.
We really need some rain.

Gift Certificates
L's school sells gift certificates for a huge number of places. Each company gives a percentage to the school. Most give between 1% and 5%, and with those profits: the school bought $4000 worth of new textbooks. And there's a little family owned restaurant in South City named "Crusoe's". Their food is fabulous, plentiful and cheap. Their bar, dining rooms and outdoor areas are spotlessly clean. And they donate 20% of their gift certificate sales to L's school. (And, presumably, any other schools who sell their gift certificates)
Twenty Percent! And their food is fabulous!

You gotta love the small business owner.

Misc. Stuff

Another picture from Colorado:


L has to make something for the academic fair. That's a science fair to you and I, only more PC. That way you don't get 200 model volcanoes. The students can submit anything that has anything to do with academics.

Of course, L wants to make something spectacular. He wanted to make a battle bot. We told him he could make a battle bot without the weapons. You can't bring weapons to school. But last night I had a brilliant idea.

L's favorite drink is caffeine free Pepsi. (Oh, he is so the son of his father. Sigh) Anyway, I think he should build an automatic soda can opener. It would have an actual use after the fair, and the materials would cost a lot less. Buck would like him to build a can washer and crusher. Nice, since washing and crushing cans is one of L's chores.
I think L will like the opener idea better.
We'll see. I'm presenting both ideas to him after school. And he can always build his battle bot. Although we've hit an obstacle there. L wants to use his K'Nex robotics kit controller. K'Nex used to sell a chip programmer, but they've taken them off the market because Dish TV is afraid people will use them to hack their satellite boxes. Never mind that they're incompatible. Dish TV sued everybody, and K'Nex is one of the companies that decided it was just too much trouble. I guess they'd rather spend their money developing toys. I can't say I blame them. I'd rather develop toys than pay lawyers any day.

The Interesting Story About North Korea

If you've read or watched the news you probably know about this already. If not, here's a synopsis:
September 9th is the Anniversary of North Koreas founding. Like our own independence Day, they celebrate with explosions and displays of military power. (In America, it's called air shows) Everybody loves it.

Ok, so on Thursday, South Korea reported an explosion in North Korea. They claimed there was a mushroom shaped cloud 2.1 to 2.5 miles in diameter. They claimed there was a crater that could be seen from a satellite. And they claimed seismic activity was consistent with two explosions; one at 11 p.m. Wednesday and on at 1 a.m. Thursday.

NEIC doesn't list any recent earthquakes in North Korea. I couldn't find any satellite images featuring a new crater. Doesn't mean nothing happened. Just means I haven't found evidence with my little pc and dial-up connection.

And there's the question of censorship. If this (these?) blast(s) happened on Wednesday/Thursday, why did South Korea wait until after Sept. 11th to announce it/them?

Quotes From Around The Blogosphere
"Democracy is not a spectator sport"

"Ivan bears down on Florida. After three hurricanes, I don't think chads will be hanging. Let's just hope the power is working for those brand-new electronic machines. You know they won't think of battery backups."

"I say - if it's in the toilet you can't eat it.
Is it bad that I even have that phrase in my vocabulary?"

Tomorrow Is My Cousins' Birthday

Oh, and it's a big-deal day for the rest of America too. I wanted to point out, though, that about 1 in every 365 people you meet will have a birthday on September 11th. These people feel a little lost on their birthday. My cousin -the child of an immigrant- is ashamed of his birthday now. He's embarrassed.

So I'm writing today to say that tomorrow I will remember him. I will send love and cake his way (he lives 2 doors down) as he steps into Teenhood. Yes, tomorrow my cousin turns 13.
If he were Jewish, he would get a rite of manhood. He's Catholic, and he got his rite of manhood when he was 10. The day he learned to shut up about his special day.

We all experience loss, it's part of life. Fortunately, his loss is temporary. After all; how many people remember the date of "The day that will live in infamy"? I think it was December 6th. But I'm not sure. Pearl Harbor happened before I was born. The history books say that a bunch of planes bombed a military base, ships sank, people were traumatized, and people died. The history books say America changed that day. I don't know how America was before then.

My Grandma can tell me more about growing up during the Depression than she can about Pearl Harbor and the war that followed.
I guess my point is that History remembers war, but People remember life. It's our own little slice of it that touches us most deeply.

I remember the planes and the horror and the fear for my child. And I also remember that tomorrow 10 Million Americans will have a birthday. One of them is my cousin.

Open Mouthed In Wonder

President Bush visited my state again, dammit. Amid the rhetoric, he had this to say:

"We've got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practice their love with women all across this country."

I am not kidding you. But wait, there's more. V.P. Dick Cheney was in Iowa yesterday, and boy did he say the wrong thing:

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on November 2nd, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again," the vice president said, "that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind-set, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we are not really at war."

Wow. Did I read that correctly? Did the Vice President of the United States threaten us with a terrorist attack? Did he actually imply that our country would be hit by terrorists, and that the US would do nothing in return if John Kerry were president?

The Last Year of Grade School Is A Very Hard Year

It really is. This year L gets to adopt a kindergartener, attend special 8th grader events practically every month, do 30 hours of service work, and pick a High School.

It's that last one I want to write about; although any of them would make for an interesting story.
L wants to attend CBC with all his heart. He has to pick a back up school, just in case he doesn't get in to CBC. That's the stressful part for me. How do I find another school which so perfectly fits his needs? (More like how do I find a school we can afford which fits his needs?) There are a few that are simply out of our budget. Even with me working a 9-5 job, we don't have an extra $13,000 plus clothes, gas, lunch money and the trappings of teenhood. The money just isn't there. Some of the schools are too far away. I'm not willing to get L out of bed at 5:00 am to get him to school by 8:00 am. When would he sleep? Some of the schools are strongly oriented towards athletics. L is not an athletic person. He's the son of a Geek and an Artist.
I can't choose his school for him, he must decide for himself.

There's something else I won't make him do. I won't make him get Confirmed. For the non-Catholics out there, Confirmation is a sacrament where a person chooses to commit him/her self to God and the Catholic faith. Most Catholic parents have their children baptized into Catholicism at a very young age; far too young for the child to choose the religion themselves. So Confirmation is literally a confirming of your parent's choice. It's you saying, "Yes, I want to be Catholic, that's my calling."
Well, we're not Catholic. L was baptized Catholic, and he's spent 8 years attending a Catholic school. He's gone to church and received the sacraments of First Penance and First Communion. He had no trouble with those. He wanted to fit in with his class, so he did it along with all of them. But he's not sure if he wants to receive Confirmation. He knows he doesn't want to be Catholic, so taking the sacrament of Confirmation would be lying to the Church and himself. L is an honest child. It doesn't seem right for him to lie. (To which I agree wholeheartedly, BTW) And, if he gets confirmed, he's almost certain to get into CBC. His academics are good. His test scores are through the roof. His teachers like him. Several influential people have said they would write to the principal of CBC and tell him how wonderful L is; and what a valuable addition to the school L would be. He fits the bill for their desired diversity. And, please Gods-Goddesses-Universe Itself, CBC is right for my son.
CBC chooses students who are Catholic first, students who attended Catholic schools but are not Catholic second, and students who are not Christian at all third. If there's any room left. Last year there were 100 students on their waiting list.
So we pick a back up and pray that L chooses to be confirmed; because he wants it, not because he lied.

Backyard Critters

So tell me again why the great outdoors has so many critters, because it can't possibly be just for my entertainment. Other people must suffer too, right?

There's a spider who spins her meal catcher at our back door. We call her big ugly. Because she's big and ugly. I say she because the females are generally larger than the males, and this critter is about the size of a nickel.
Anyway, when I went to the grocery store last night, she had already started on her web. I know it takes a lot of calories to spin a web, so I was very careful in opening the back door. I didn't want to ruin an hour's worth of work. I did my shopping and came back home, but on the way through the back yard, I somehow got a slug in my sandal. Oh My Gods, it was so gross. It was a tiny slug, and my big toe had squished it. To reiterate: it was gross. Like freakishly disgusting.
And I still had a whole yard to walk through. And a monster spider to get past. And my toe was now sticking to my sandal, as if someone had put a piece of double-sided tape there.
So, making faces of disgust, I came in the front door with my arms full of groceries and let the menfolks know that they would be retrieving the rest of the food. Because I stepped on a slug and it's squishing in my sandal.
They both burst out laughing.
Yeah, frickin' hilarious. (actually, it was pretty funny in a how-much-can-the-universe-gross-you-out sort of way)

As of this morning, Big Ugly had not removed her web. I had to break her anchor thread and let the web lift on the breeze before L would leave the house.

Linky Love
Somebody new linked me! I found her through my site stats. As usual, this new person in my cyber-life is more spiritual, more eloquent and more positive than myself. I don't know why y'all keep adding me to your blogrolls, but thank you. I'm honored. :)