a room with a view

Here is what the Marine sees from his balcony. Can't wait for more....

sick day

Re-Pete and I are home sick today. Her fever was high yesterday, past 103, which is normal for her. Even with Tylenol, she only goes down to 100 or 101. She's cutting jokes and rhyming words today, even if she is still in bed at quarter till 11. We're watching Pocohantas. I love strong female characters, but hate that there always has to be a character that's the "butt of the jokes" or the "bad guy that gets what he deserves in the end". Hmmm. I sure do love Grandmother Willow.

Sunny for President!

She's got my vote!

dosage

Dr Doches says:

Everything, every chemical, drink, food, product, is a poison. It's just a matter of dose. Too little calcium, and your heart stops ala Schiavo, too much calcium, depending on method of exposure, can mean target organ failure. Which means "anything the calcium touches" can be destroyed. If you eat calcium containing food, that's different. Your body can absorb only so much, then you just pee it out.

A little alcohol, no effect. 6 drinks an hour for 4 hours will probably kill you, unless you're Yabu.

The average cigarette has 1 to 2 mg of nicotine, a lethal dose is between 30 and 60 mg for an adult, much less for a child. (Did you know nicotine acts on your body just like an organophosphate, a nasty but effective pesticide).

and speaking of wood in the classroom

(cymbal crash)

I had a boy once who was very interesting. He liked to wear sweat pants a lot, and he sat in the back of my room. Every now and then he would leave class after the bell with a "tent" in his pants. Proud as all, head held high.

Gave a whole new meaning to "knocking on wood"

A slip of the Freudian tongue

I had the students in my class conduct a scavenger hunt of sorts on covalent compounds in the class room. There are clues and questions on the worksheet and the answers are taped around the room, answer side down. The kids seem to enjoy this as it invovles movement along with their minds working, along with a little socialization.
There were questions like find 4 objects in this room that are covalent compounds (any thing with water, paper, or wood)
Some of the "answers" are duds and say
"I am not a clue"

One of my students, a sweet girl, comes up to me yesterday and wants to know why her sign says
" I don't have a clue"

Heh, been chuckling over that all evening.

happy birfday to me

Happy Birfday to meeeee!
I'm now thirty-three
(plus 8)
I work like a monkey
and I drink like one too!
(as long as it's Gosling's and Coke!)

The 1st time

I love hearing how couples 1st meet. My inlaws went to high school together in Roswell.THey've been married 40 something years. My parents met at a dance. Daddy was in the service, dating my mothers friend Carol. Daddy asked my mom to dance, convinced she was wearing falsies. That was on a Friday night. They were engaged by Sunday and married for 35 years. I met my husband through a guy I was dating at the time. I took one look at his butt and said, "Damn, I just have to talk to that guy." Within two weeks we were living together, and having been for over twenty years now. Half my life. I am amazed when I think of that.
Sooooo, if you have an Significant Other, tell your story of how you two met in the comments.

Potty talk

As is typical with most 5 year olds, you never quite know what's will come out of Re-Petes mouth. Case in point:
We were at Wendy's last night eating dinner. Re-Pete decided she needed to go potty "really bad" (scrunched up face and everything). So we hot foot in to the nearest stall. She begins to "push the poopie out". Loudly. With groans. And squeezed shut eyes. With a running diatribe:

"It's stuck Mommy!"
"I'll punch it out" and proceeds to punch herself in the leg and tummy.
"Oh, it's coming!"
"I think it's stuck on some Cobwebs"
"Here it comes! Can you hear it too?"
"It stinks"
"Oooo, look at it"

This is pretty normal bathroom talk for her, except maybe the cobwebs. We walk out of the stall, wash our hands, when another woman walks up to the sink, smiles, and tells me "This was the best bathroom break she's had in a long time"

Ahhh, life with children.

I did it, I got a new car! It's so pretty!

Here is a version of mine....

Mine has a sunroof- the girls had a great time standing on the seats with their heads hanging out. Grinning like fools, calling out to people. In the parking lot of course. Moving very slowly.

Road trip!

Can we have your liver?

I was discussing some of the pros and cons and the controversies around cloning with my students the other day. Usually someone will make the comment about how it's not "natural" or how it would be nice to have a "spare" in case one of your organs fails. I take the one kids,usually a male, who makes the most noise about it in the class and say, "Okay, let's make a clone of you for spare parts. First we'll take some of your cells and remove the nucleus. Then we'll take several eggs from one of your female relatives. Your sister or mother or cousin. We'll remove the nuclei from those eggs and replace them with yours, for a full set of DNA. Then we'll put the refurbished eggs back in the woman and wait 40 weeks."
It's about then that they realize they have just made a baby. Puts a whole new spin on it. Having a baby with their mother or sister grosses several of them out, but the whole cousin thing doesn't seem to.
They have this idea that a clone would be a full size replica of themselves, likened to Hollywood Fiction. It really surprises them the science behind it.

Another reason we need a stronger push for science literacy in our country, but that's another post.

Then I tell them:

"Ok, one day your liver begins to fail. And you have to go to this person/clone and say to them, Uh, Can I have your liver? (In my head I'm John Cleese in a white coat, saying this in someones kitchen, with an English accent)."

Some students still don't get it, so I finish with:
"One day you parents sit you down and say, Sweety, we know you've been having a lot of fun, and actually think you have rights and expectations for a future. But, well, you're a clone of your mother/father (depending on their sex) and her/his liver is failing. So, uh, Can I have you liver? (again, with a certain Cleese-like lilt)

Gets 'em every time.

The new semester has started off well, no major glitches. I have a student in one of my class whose life expectancy is in her lower 20s. She in her mid teens now. And here she is in school. I guess I can see the point, get her out amongst friends, but I know I would want to spend every moment with her I could, were she my child.
Just thinking of her makes me thankful for my children's health.

One day last week I cleaned house for 5 hours straight- laundry, closets, sweep, mop, vacuum, up and down stairs. I was tired!
But today, after a full day of teaching, I am exhausted. So exhausted (since you asked) that I fell asleep after dinner.Haven't done that in awhile.

I was watching Anthony Bourdain. In Hong Kong.

He is awesome. I would love to throw a few/several drinks back with him. I'm pretty sure he could drink me under the table. I would definitely let him pick the restaurant we went to, and maybe pick my meal, as long as it was pork (his favorite).
Do you think it would creep you out to know that total strangers all over the world know small details of your life? I would not care to be a celebrity. Stinking rich, yes. Known by my looks world wide? Not so much. If you're a celebrity and you scratch your ass in public, some tabloid will print it, wondering if you have crotch rot. Thanks, but no thanks.
Time to sleep, I'm making more typos that typons, or whatever non-typos are called.
Sweet dreams

more uselessknowledge

Seems I'm on a roll with all these wonderful facts:

• Male circumcision lowers the risk of getting AIDS.
• A pre-1982 penny contains about 28,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 copper atoms that 28 quintillion copper atoms
• If you like your ham "cocked and smocked" and coated in edible plastic, go here

Moon over what?

So Richard thinks he can take some really beautiful pictures and cheapen them? Well, take that!

h/t to fugly.com

Now I've seen it all, I hope

I've been teaching long enough to teach many many siblings. I'm now teaching with a lady I taught many years ago. I've almost been teaching long enough to start teaching the children of my fomer students (ack!). I've seen my students through college, marriage, military service, childbirth, divorce, death of a parent, even the death of several of the students themselves. As you can imagine, some of these experiences had been more uplifting than others.
But now, I've been flabbergasted! One of my former students in on the Georgia Sex Offender page, for false imprisonment of a minor except by a parent, whatever that is. Now, some of the people there are kids just old enough who had sex with a girl just a little too young, and now they have this dead elephant to drag around the rest of their lives. Go see some of the pictures of these creeps. Man, they are fuck-all Nasty! And the question just begs to be asked- what mother in her right mind would allow her child to be alone with one of the men? Ugh.

Useless Knowledge

I realized recently, after looking at my site meter and discovering just how many people Google "useless knowledge" and come here looking for some, that here at HofUK I don't give much knowledge, useless or otherwise.

So did you know:

• grocery shopping burns about 200 calories per hour
• house cleaning burns about 270 calories per hour
• playing pool for an hour burns 230 calories
• walking a 20 minute mile for an hour burns about 300 calories
• but a 15 minute mile for an hour burns about 450!!!!
• and one 5 minute wrestling match burns a whopping 550 calories!!
• Your brain needs about 260 calories a day, which is equal to about 60 M&Ms.

Go here and scroll down to the bottom for more useless info,

I am a lucky woman. I have the greatest friends! One of my Friends is like a gazelle: long, lanky, full of grace. Another one bubbles over with laughter whenever we get together. My two very closest friends here both have skills I wish I had. I'm very glad they like me and are willing to use their skills on my behalf.

Kim, the gazelle, can organize anything. She is amazing! She can get more stuff packed into such a small space- whether is kids clothes, her clothes, the stuff she accomplishes in a day- doesn't matter. If I need to know how to pack or organize a thing, I know Kim will help me.

Michelle (my Belle!) always makes me feel better. Such courage she has, such spirit! I feel timid and mousy sometimes around her. And she can decorate/paint! Which I happen to suck at, by the way. I recently told her I had come to a decision that I needed to paint or move. Preferably move since I'm so bad at painting. She offered to help me paint! Here's another thing I love about her- her laughter. Those of you at Helen know how funny she is and how much she likes to laugh.

So what do I have to offer? Well, I like to cook for people, and I'm becoming pretty handy at fixing washers and dryers. Can dish washers be so far off? Give me an online computer and I'm set for fixing that sucker, I bet.

Whatcha Watching?

Back to work today, I'm afraid. My days of leisure are behind me, a distant memory to replay in my mind when everything gets to be to much for my overworked mind.
Ah, Hell, I like work. If I didn't work I'd stay in the house compulsively cleaning. Or sleeping, or worse, watching television, maybe even those insipid soap operas!

Speaking of soap operas, I used to watch them with my mother- As the World Turns, Days of Our Lives. Bo and Hope were teenagers and Marlena and what's-his-face were normal non-cloned people. This was 25 years ago, too. Glad to see they've got good job security there. And Young and the Restless- is that still on? Victor was divorcing some woman and dating Nikki- who worked in a hair salon at the time, and she wasn't all hoity-toity, either. I wonder if there are women who have been watching those shows since the early eighties, when I was? When I was about 18 I finally realized I did not like those kinds of shows. I didn't get into Dallas, or Dynasty, or any of those glitzy larger than life shows. I liked ER for a while, but once George Clooney left the show I just stopped watching.

When Pete was born she had some pretty serious medical issues and had to stay in the ICU at Scottish Rite Children's Hospital. The hospital was about 70 miles from our house, so I would stay with my mother who only lived 20 minutes from there. I would get home kinda late at night and would need to de-stress before I went to sleep. I would watch Trauma: Life in the ER. I would catch myself thinking, "At least my daughter's illness wasn't that bad."

I watched Superman with Dean Cain and Terri Hatcher with my son, he loved Ms. Hatcher, wanted me to cut my hair like hers. Heh. Oh yeah, West Wing was a fav for me, as well. My mother would call me right after it was over- what did you think? After she died I couldn't watch that show for a while. Now I guess I'm hooked on Grey's Anatomy, a guilty pleasure, to be sure. It's gotten a bit silly this year, maybe they can pull it out of the garbage can.
Pete has really gotten into Law and Order, she's watched about a thousand of those shows over the last week. Well, maybe only 50. But still, that's a lot of doink-doink.

Ah, to have my days filled with enough stuff that I don't feel compelled to watch TV.