Year: 2008 Page 6 of 15

With all the speechifying going on during the presidential campaign season, the kids and I have gotten an idea for a new project.  We know that it is a good thing to be able to speak well in public, but, other than when we give our testimonies in church, we really do not have much opportunity to hone our skills.  We have decided we would try our hand at some video blogging.  It dawned on me when we came up with the idea that we follow almost exactly the same procedure every time we want to learn something new.  We did it many of our academic pursuits when the kids were little–math, reading, handwriting, etc.  We also did it with hobbies–knitting, drawing, cartooning, computer programming, etc.  The process we follow is the following:

1. Just dive in and start doing it, even if we do it badly.
2. Start buying books on the subject.
3. Read through the books together.
4. Use the new things we learn during our reading as we go.
5. When we do something that does not come out so well, try to remember it takes a lot of practice to get better and realize that, even if it is bad, it is still better than when we first started.
6. Laugh about how bad we were when we first started.
7. If we REALLY like something, start over again at step 2 with some more advanced material.

So, to get us started, I have ordered three books from Amazon. The first book, Broadcast Voice Handbook, covers the use of one’s voice for broadcast media.  The reviews said it was a good book for those who are speakers of English as a foreign language, so it should be great for Lorena as well as Kelly, Christian, and I.  We will start with that book because it is supposed to arrive a couple of weeks before the other two.  The second book is titled It Takes More than Good Looks to Succeed at TV News Reporting.  It is about how to write broadcast television news reports.  It got great reviews.  I was a little discouraged with the title because it says it takes more than good looks…  That is great with Lorena, Kelly, and Christian, but some of us do not even start with the most basic necessity and it take MORE than that.  We will read that second.  The last book is titled Sound and Look Professional on TV and the Internet.  It is about the actual video presentation of the material after it is written.  The should at least get us started and give us some ideas.

In the meantime, we have decided to just go for it.  Kelly has written her first report that we plan to video this weekend and put up on Monday or Tuesday.  Stay tuned.  If it is really good, that is great, but if it is really bad, out of our ignorance, we might not even know it.  At least we have a plan on how to get better.

June 25, 2004 – Putting up our sign
June 28, 2004 – Going away potluck

Update for Ruthie:

Another update: I found Poetry Out Loud. It looks very, very cool. Thanks for the tip. This looks like it would be a great thing in which to participate.

We started homeschooling because we were angry, but now we do it because we like it very much. I laughed when I read the “Fertilizing the lawn” entry I reposted today from June 23, 2004. At the time I wrote the post, I was obviously pretty mad. It was after the end of Kelly’s fourth grade year and Christian’s second grade year in two of the government schools in Albany, Oregon. We felt the schools had performed a great disservice to our children. The year was a complete waste for them both academically and socially. We were forced into deciding between private school and homeschool.

I laugh now, though, because I only feel gratitude toward the teachers, the school, and the principal. If we had not had such strong feelings and such a sense of helplessness about working within the system to fix what we felt was egregious incompetence and even malice toward people with our worldview, we might never have started homeschooling. Within weeks of starting to homeschool, we realized we loved it. We still love it going into our fifth year of homeschool since they finished their one year stay at “The Groves”. Our kids are way better off academically, socially, and even physically.

An additional benefit was that the pages and pages of handwritten notes I took after each of the meetings with the teachers and the principal of the schools. They made me realize what a great help it is to think things out on paper. It was really quite cathartic to do that writing. It probably helped me avoid doing things I might have regretted, like keeping my kids in the system. And it was part of my inspiration to start blogging.

June 23, 2004 – Fertilizing the lawn
June 24, 2004 – Accepting the job

I struggle to write at times like this.  Everything is going well, but there is so much “daily life” stuff going on, there is not much time to reflect on life, work on projects, plan for the future, or even harass Bryan and Lyle about the fact that they have not posted their weight for a long, long time.  I got up yesterday at the normal time (5:20 AM) and went through my normal work schedule, getting home at between 4:30 and 5:00 PM.  Then, in spite of my best intentions, I did not get to bed until well after 11:00 PM.  I am one of those guys that need, or at least likes to get, eight hours of sleep per night.  Less than that or even more than that kind of fouls me up.  I decided to try to reconstruct what I did last night to try and figure out if I can reorganize a little and get to bed earlier.

When I arrive home, I normally sit eat the Greek salad Lorena has waiting for me and talk to her for a half an hour or so before I start in on homeschool.  Last night, everyone was still at the YMCA working out and there had been a wreck (a police officer was killed close to the intersection of Ten-Ten Road and Old Stage Road), so they did not get home until over an hour after I arrived.  While I ate my salad I worked on converting my comic aggregation program so that it did 4×1 layouts instead of 2×2 layouts.  Kelly wants that because it is more like the professional comics do it.  The following is the result:

I finished that about when the family arrived.  When everyone got unloaded from the car, Lorena made dinner (awesome – Tilapia, spinach, and yams) while I read to the kids from the worldview book and The Gammage Cup for forty minutes or so while they worked on their comic strips.  After that we ate.  By the time we finished eating it was 7:30.  Then, I scanned in the comics Kelly had ready for me.  There were several and I had made some changes so it took me about forty minutes.  My buddy from work then called about some technical stuff we are doing at work.  That call and some associated work I did after the call took an hour.

Finally, I got to the homeschool corrections.  I was behind because of all the work that had been done in preparation for our weekend in Denton plus some extra work they did to get ahead for our upcoming trips.  That took me until 11:00 and I still did not get everything done.  I will have another similar night tonight and I expect even another one on Thursday.  I am glad I like this stuff.

Congratulations to Kelly.  Her new teacher has moved her up four levels in piano.  The teacher wanted to correct some basic technique things Kelly had never learned properly even though Kelly could play hard pieces.  Now that Kelly has been at it for about a year with the new teacher, she has been able to make the corrections and will move back to performing music with a much higher level of difficulty.  Everyone has worked hard and exhibited a lot of patience to get to this point and I think it was time well taken.

June 21, 2004 – Visiting Washington
June 22, 2004 – Making the decision to move

It seems like every time we go off on a trip, even for a weekend, we struggle to get caught back up.  Today, the kids are working away at their homeschool while Lorena is getting the household back in order.  Right now, the chaos is multiplied because we have two additional large trips planned within the next month or so.  We are going to a four day church convention next week and we are going to Mexico for a wedding in early October.  I will only be in Mexico for a few days, but Lorena, Kelly, and Christian will be there for two full weeks.  We planned the schedule so the kids will not have any (or at least very little) school work while they are down south, but is still pretty challenging to have everything completely complete (if that makes sense) before we go.  Kelly has to do a bunch of Betty Blonde comics ahead.  We need to make accommodations for the Christian to get some practice in on his guitar–fortunately, Tio Lauro has one.  We need to find Kelly a place to practice her piano.  I think I am going to have the kids take their math books with them so they can do one math assignment every other day, etc., etc.

The old posts below were about some of our great friends (Jim and JoAnn and the Nelsons) when we were still in Albany.  I got pretty nostalgic when I read them.

Some special notes:  Ruthie and Aunt Julia–I have tried to fix the ability to click on the comment link in the Betty Blonde emails.  Could you let me know if there is still a problem?

June 16, 2004 – Moving dirt and Nelson visit
June 17, 2004 – Homeschooling in Washington state?

We spent this weekend at one of church conventions in a little place called Denton. Last year we found that it was one of the few places in North Carolina (if not the world) where there are naturally formed square rocks. Christian collected a few to add to his collection from last year. It was wonderful to be there. We heard lots of wonderful things, talked to old friends, made some new friends, and, as always, ate way too much really good food. I am very surprised that I did not gain as much weight as I thought I might. It surely looks like Bryan is going to hit his goal any day now. I hope he makes his way out here to collect on his debt. It would be great to see him, but he is so skinny and my eyesight is not what it used to be, so I do not know how much of him I could even see.

A note to all who wrote: We were completely out of contact this weekend so we did not see all the wonderful emails and notes on the blog post for Christian’s birthday, but we thank you all for all of them and will try to write a note to everyone as we get a chance.

June 14, 2004 – Family reunion
June 15, 2004 -Sleepover, weight, exercise, and the lawn

I love my mom’s twin sister, Aunt Janet. I really do not see her enough. Every time I see her, the conversation eventually get around to the point where she asks me about my kids.

When it does, I say, “Do you mind if I brag about my kids a little?”

She says, “I wish you would.”

And she really does want me to brag about my kids. She is one of those unconditional love kind of people and it is hard not to love her back just as much.

So today, I am not going to brag so much as talk about Christian a little. He turned into a teenager today. For what must be over a year, he has rued the fact that he is not thirteen years old. It is not so much that he wants to be older, it is that many of the computer sites and technical forums to which he has wanted to subscribe do not let children under thirteen register to make posts and participate. He has taken to reading the fine print at these sites to understand exactly what is and is not permitted. I am very proud of the fact that he has read and understood exactly what is required to do things correctly and honestly. He has expressed his frustration with some of the rules, but he abode by them scrupulously. That kind of honesty will serve him well.

We are going off to a church convention for the weekend right after work today, so we will not get to celebrate a whole lot yet. Our plan is to do a better celebration when we get to Mexico and can do it with all his aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents there. Really, the Mexican know how to throw a party much better than my English/Finnish clan anyway. We will have a cake and he will be able to program and work on his new computer during our three hour drive there and back, so he is pretty happy for that. I will post a picture of he and I we took last night and of he, the cake, and his sister if Lorena remembers to take one.

It really would not be Christian’s birthday if I did not mention that on the day of his birth there in the hospital in Tualatin, Oregon, we not only witnessed the most beautiful sunrise we had ever seen shining through the window, but the beautiful new baby with a full head of black hair who has brought sunshine into our life ever since.

June 10, 2004 – Interview in Kirkland, Washington
June 11, 2004 – The family will visit Kirkland

We have gotten off to a roaring start in our homeschool this year! We are in our third week of homeschool. The structure of the work we do has changed a little from previous years. Partly this is because the kids are older, but partly it is because we know a little more about what we are doing and how the kids learn.

For Kelly, that means she is now posting three days per week on this blog. Her topics will vary from week to week, but as a general framework, we have decided she will comment on a news or opinion topic on Mondays, a homeschool topic on Wednesdays, and a fashion/culture/society (girly) thing on Fridays. We will not be too restrictive on topic selection and reserve the right to change the order of things as we learn more about how to do this. I have mentioned previously that Kelly is studying hard for a good number of CLEP tests she wants to pass this year. The first two are Spanish and U.S. History II. She will read all her Sonlight literature books, but there will be less emphasis on that part of the program. Kelly finished Intermediate Algebra (II) this. The plan is for her to take geometry at a little faster pace than we have in the past, but to back down to our regular pass when she gets to pre-algebra about half way through the year.

Christian follows a plan similar to what we have done in the past. The exception is that he will try to take two or three CLEP tests this year. His first test will be the Freshman English Composition test. He took the first test exam in the program we got for him and got a high enough score to pass for college credit, but we will continue all the way through the program to try to get him as ready as possible for the test. Christian is currently in Algebra II. We want him to be very thorough in his studies for a special reason this year. Algebra II is the level to which people who take the ACT college entrance exam are tested. The ACT is one of the nationally normed standardized tests accepted by the state of North Carolina for their required annual testing. Both of the kids will take that test toward the end of the year.

Weight loss death match note: It is good to see Lyle is back in the fight after returning from convention!

June 8, 2004 – Last piano lesson
June 9, 2004 – Remote camera

Last night Mom, Dad, Christian and I sat down to watch the Republican National Convention speeches. It is awesome what they can do with technology these days! The speeches were streaming live online for our viewing pleasure. I am very interested in politics (more than I should be at times I think) but I don’t know too much about them because I’m just a freshman. So don’t expect any profound or original thoughts from me, and if I say anything incredibly ignorant, just remember that it isn’t me. It’s hormones*. 🙂 However, here is my humble opinion of the matter:

I thought the whole thing was simply fantastic. The real highlight of the evening for me was Fred Thompson, one of the few people who didn’t seem to be highly dependent on the teleprompters. He told the story of John McCain’s POW experience marvelously. Some people may think that Senator McCain is playing the Vietnam card too much, but it is my belief that his war experience shows a lot of good things about his character.

Of course it was a treat to get to hear President Bush and the first lady speak. Because of the potential emergency of Hurricane Gustav, the president was not able to come to the convention. He gave his speech over some video talking doohickey. Technology is marvelous. There were also plenty of inspiring stories of bravery, strength, and selflessness. It was really great to watch.

What I really can’t wait to hear is Governor Sarah Palin’s speech. I am so psyched about her!!! I sincerely hope that she and McCain win.

*One of the advantages to being a teenager: everything can be blamed on hormones.

I am letting the kids sleep in until 7:30 this morning because we stayed up last night to watch the speeches at the Republican National Convention on the internet. We very much enjoyed, not only the speeches, but the whole ambiance of the convention with its theme of service. We made it through Fred Thompson, before we sent the kids off to bed. It was neat this morning to find that the very next of the posts from my old blog was about Christian’s famous second grade speech. It really was an awesome thing for a second grader. You can read about it here.

Yesterday, Kelly called me from the Trader Joe’s grocery store in Cary. She had gotten talking to a girl who works their as a cashier to help pay for her college education. The girl asked Kelly and Christian whether or not they had started back to school. When she found they were homeschooled she told Kelly she had been homeschooled through junior high school, but returned to government school for high school. She said is was so bad she only lasted a week. She begged her parents to take her out, so they put her into a private Christian high school. She went on to say that she started taking classes at the community college so that she earned an associate degree there at the same time she got her high school diploma. We were all inspired by the story. Kelly is looking forward to talking to her again when they go back to Trader Joe’s.

This all reminded me of why we decided to leave the government schools again and return to homeschool. We were living in Albany, Oregon at the time. We are still very grateful to the school system there because if they would not have been so monumentally bad, both academically and in the way they hardened the spirits of their students, we might never have left. I keep many, many pages of handwritten notes in our files that describe my conversations with the principal and with Kelly’s teacher with regard to all this. Some day, I plan to write those up and post them here. It has been over four years since that happened and I still get exercised over the whole thing, so I probably should wait a couple more years before I do that.

June 4, 2004 – Tony and Martha visit
June 7, 2004 – A quiet weekend

My buddy Brett was right again. He recommended that we not miss seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. The exhibit tied right into the reading Kelly, Christian, and I are doing on worldviews. In fact, one of the scholars we heard quoted in the exhibit (William F. Albright) was quoted in our worldview reading for the day of our visit. The exhibit was very well done. It was truly an incredible opportunity to have access to them. After all those years reading Biblical Archaeological Review, it was very gratifying to see some of the objects about which so much has been written. In addition to the scrolls themselves, we were especially fascinated by the textiles, the ossuaries, oil lamps, an ink well, and many other artifacts.

We found that the museum is will exhibit a history of chocolate next – with samples! We bought a year membership in the museum and plan to go back often. We took a couple other pictures at the museum along with a third of Lorena, Christian, and Kelly standing in front of the North Carolina Museum of History that is right across the street. The history museum looks great, too and we plan to go there soon. The middle picture does not do justice to the beauty of the butterflies we saw in the Museum of Natural Sciences, but we liked the picture anyway. This was the highlight of the weekend.

You can click on the images to make them larger

On another topic, I made great progress on my Python program to take the images I scan for each of the four panels of Kelly’s comic, resize them, add drop shadows and titles, create a thumbnail and save all of that to the disk. I used it for the last three comics she did and it worked great. It is still a command line program, but it saved me a ton of time. The next step is to create a GUI for it and then add scanner/webcam support. I have some additional ideas I would like to add, but I they are too far off in the future to mention right now.

June 2, 2004 – Back to work
June 3, 2004 – A job opportunity in Seattle

You’ll notice in the post below this one that there is a picture of me holding my ipod (with it’s new pink cover, thank you very much Yuting!) in front of a very pink wall. That pink wall happens to be located in my bedroom where there are located many other pink accessories and oddities as my father has already explained.

Why so much pink?

One would think that the modern 14 year old girl would turn against this radiant color because of it’s symbolic association with traditional and oppressing femininity . But I embrace the girliness. For me, pink is not just a color. Pink is a lifestyle.

Way back when I was 7 or 8 I liked the color blue very much. Pink was for little girls. I was not a little girl. I was in the third grade! Unfortunately my grandmother liked to think that I still was a tiny baby, so for Christmas she got me all sorts of nice things like hello kitty sweatshirts and plastic horses. Why I did not appreciate them I do not know. Anyway, one Christmas she gave me something pink (I believe it was underpants or socks) “because I liked pink so much”. Little did she know. I smiled graciously and said thank you like the mature child I was, and then I did some thinking.

I didn’t like pink… did I? Of course not. Pink was a juvenile sort of color. Or was it? Maybe I did like pink. A little bit. Not much but. . .

I decided right then and there that PINK was to be my favorite color to the end of my days. I don’t know what got into me, but I’ve stayed true to my promise, and my obsession with that fabulous color has grown over the years. My real friends have learned not to laugh or groan at my color preference. And I think that the ones who do laugh are simply ignorant. 🙂

Well, we solved our big, technically challenging problem at work, I finally got the ipod cover Yuting gave to Kelly home, and have decided to put up a couple of pictures to celebrate. The first one is of Kelly holding her ipod with its new cover. Please notice the color of the walls and know that the rest of the room, the stuff you cannot see–bedspread, pillows, knick-knacks, furniture, etc.– is of that same subtle pink tone. It was such an appropriate, thoughtful gift. Kelly appreciated it very much.

Kelly’s new ipod cover from Yuting

The next picture is of Christian studying up in the bonus room. Lorena and the kids cleaned out the bonus room and are hard at their studies. We have gotten off to a great start. Both of the kids have made a big effort to stay organized and work hard. Kelly makes a game plan for each day then attacks it with vigor. The material is getting harder and the work required to learn it can be more trying, yet it is very interesting material and they are learning a lot.

Christian studying in the bonus room

May 27, 2004 – Linux up and running
June 1, 2004 – Memorial Day weekend

The hard work we have done over the last couple of days has started to pay off. We have a three layer problem. We fixed the bottom two layers and identified the potential source of the problem on the top layer. This was one of the best team efforts I have seen in a long time. There is a different owner of each of the layers–me being the bottom one–so it truly was a team effort to solve a very difficult technical problem. We have not yet put the problem bed, but we are very, very close. This is another part of my job that I enjoy very much.

This has inspired me to think about my own little programming projects. The main active ones are the volcano project and the comic aggregator. A ton of work is complete on both of them so we just have to push through to the end. Both of the projects are only a month or two away from completion if it were possible to spend all my time on them, but intermixed with my current schedule, realistically, I am at least six months off.

I often forget how long it takes to do homeschool well everyday. The kids work hard and are more independent than every. My job is way more hands off than it was in the past. Still, at the very minimum, it takes an hour to do our reading and correct the math. Then it takes another half hour or so to read through book reports, science experiements, etc. I absolutely love doing this, but it takes at least two hours per day, not including the time I spend on homeschool topics on the phone and computer during the day. That is down from three and a half to four hours per day when the kids were in elementary school. All it means is that I have to give myself a reality check when it comes to planning other projects.

May 25, 2004 – Around the World
May 26, 2004 – Hay fever

I love going to the library. I always have. I love the process of picking out books, the comfy chairs where I can sit and read comics and magazines. Saturday mornings at the library are one of the highlights of my week.

But lately, my love for the library has waned a little. The library I go to has a “children’s” section and a “young adult (read: teenager)” section. Having presumably outgrown the children’s section, I have moved on to the cozy little corner of the library that contains books about dragons, vampires, predictable teenage romances and. . . nothing else. I don’t mind the occasional romance, and I’m certainly not against fantasy, but when the entire library is filled with books that have titles like these:

• Mates, Dates and Sleepover Secrets
• Gossip Girl
• The Clique: Best Friends for Never
• Here, there be Dragons
• Operation Red Jericho

It’s tiresome. Oh there are certainly a few gems among the rubble, but every week it gets increasingly harder to find them. I can tell if they’re worth a try if their covers aren’t pink and don’t have a mystical creature on the cover.

I have ventured into the adult section of the library before, but too many of the books that I have found there are adulterated by salty language and things that would make my Mexican grandmother blush (and that’s a tricky feat) I sometimes wonder why some people enjoy those books, but there it is! I have asked my wise and well-read father for book suggestions countless times, but his idea of light reading is stories that involve lawyers, cowboys, or uncureable diseases. I’ve read every Agatha Christie that they have. I’ve ready every Arthur Conan Doyle that they have. I’ve read the Lord of the Rings at least five times. I need help! Please?

It is going to a little bit of a small post today, because we are only half way there in the resolution of the problem we are trying to solve at work. We made good progress yesterday, though, and I expect it we will have our head above water again by today or tomorrow.

There are a couple of fun things going on at home. First, since the summer is over and Kelly is on a regular schedule again, she is much more consistent on her piano practice. The teacher noticed at her lesson yesterday and gave her a new, much more difficult book of Bach pieces. Lorena and I are very musically challenged, so we have quite a struggle when it comes to finding a good piano teacher for Kelly and a good guitar teacher for Christian. Kelly’s old teacher, Jill Hickenlooper, from Oregon is the one who found Mrs. Bruce for us via internet forums and email. We very much appreciated her help and believe Mrs. Bruce is a magnificent teacher. It took a year for Kelly to get into the system–Mrs. Bruce wanted to fix a few things with Kelly’s technique before she had her do hard pieces. That was frustrating for Kelly, but now that she is well into the process she understands the need to establish the right technical base so she can play hard things well as opposed to just play hard things.

The other thing that is happening at home, is that we have ordered a new computer for Christian for his birthday. We needed to get another one because the old one is just worn out. Christian invested a hundred dollars of his own money into the computer. We bought one toward the inexpensive end of the spectrum, but still very, very nice. It is a computer for both of the kids so they can do their school work on the way to lessons, the store, the YMCA, etc. Kelly pretty much just uses the laptop for reports as she checks her email and blog on the desktop computers at home. Christian uses it for his experiments and programming lessons. It came to the house yesterday, but no one was there to receive it, so he is suffering through another day of waiting. I have told him he cannot even open the box until he has finished all of his homeschool, which is very painful. It is also very necessary. The temptation is just too great.

May 21, 2004 – More yardwork
May 24, 2004 – Big weekend

How was that I have been able to survive so long with out this knowledge. Click here.

One of the most satisfying parts of the kind of work that I do is solving hard problems to get a product to market. It is satisfying, but can be very nerve racking when you know you are the bottle neck on a given project. If you are an engineer, that will happen. I am sure that is true in a lot of other fields, too. Right now, we are in the middle of a very difficult technical issue with a product on which I am working. I worked 16 hours on it and expect to work at least that much today if we do not get it resolved. Having been through this before, it is way less emotional than it was when I just started in the field. The problem is solvable and life will go on, even if this problem does not get solved. It is hard to think that way when in the middle of a problem and people’s hopes and desires are tied to the resolution of the problem.

The funny deal is that I actually enjoy the opportunity to work really hard on something for a period of time. If it extends out beyond a month, it is way less fun, but some of the best work in engineer, or probably anything else, gets done under the pressure of time and economic constraints. This is one of the reasons that test taking is probably a pretty good model for some parts of the real world. You have to be ready for something that is difficult at a specific time and place. You do not want to be under that kind of pressure all the time, but it surely feels good when you perform well under those circumstances.

Sorry for the short post today, but I have to get to work to try to fix a tough problem.

Update: One of my co-workers, Yuting, had an extra pink ipod cover. She wanted me to give it to Kelly for her ipod. Thanks Yuting!

May 18, 2004 – Lawn work and exercise
May 19, 2004 – Working in the yard

I have always loved the start of the school year and have written about it a number of times on this blog. It is good to know that others have the same trials and tribulations as us. Audrey and Ruthie wrote some great comments about how hard it is to get back on schedule after having spent the summer sleeping in, swimming, and playing. We had exactly the same problem at the start of the school year as the Gabharts. We had a hard and fast rule that none of the boxes of homeschool books and materials could be opened, nor could they be read–not even the back cover, nor could they even be touched until the school year started. Why did we have a rule about touching and/or read the books or their covers if the boxes were to remain sealed? Christian was very literally about everything and always looking for loopholes. Kelly just loved to read so much that she would use anything as an excuse to get her hands on the books. We worked hard on getting them to understand how the spirit of the law is just as important (if not more so) as the letter of the law. Still, better safe than sorry.

The corollary to the “no looking at the homeschool books until the school year starts” rule was the “you can only read as much as is in the lesson plan for those books that are part of the program” rule. If we did not have that rule, there would have been nothing to do the second month of the year but math, science, Spanish, and grammar.

There were also some comments on how to prepare for a CLEP test. I really did not have a great answer for that. Kelly has taken Freshman English Composition and the first of two U.S. History tests. We have a method she uses that she will explain in a blog post here. It works for her, but any ideas others might have will be appreciated. I think CLEP preparation is not a one size fits all kind of thing. I can see that preparation for the first two tests Kelly took required different approaches. I am not even sure that Kelly’s study methods will work well for Christian. It turned out that the history test was must more difficult than the composition test, but that might have been because Kelly had a better foundation in composition than history. On the other hand, because the history test required the rote memorization of a lot of facts, it might have just required more time. I will try to post my thoughts on how to prepare for the different tests they take as we go along. Again, any comments from anyone else who is going through the same process will be appreciated.

Special note: Lorena has started a Flickr account to which I have linked in the list on the left side of the blog. If you would like to be added to the list, send us an email, and we will invite you so you can view her photos.
Special note 2: Betty Blonde switches from color to black and white today. Kelly does not have time to do all her schoolwork if she draws Betty Blonde in color. She will do an occasional color comic when time permits.

May 14, 2008 – More yard and robot work
May 17, 2008 – An opportunity for Rigo

I drew a comic strip about Betty Blonde and blueberry muffins a few days ago. That comic strip was not drawn on some random whim. Oh no, no, no. That comic strip was based on my recent experiences with making the most scrumptious blueberry muffin ever.

About two weeks ago, I discovered this “Blueberry Cream Muffin” recipe on Taste of Home magazine’s marvelous website. I measured, mixed, and added several large spoonfuls of sour cream and sugar to the batter. Needless to say, the muffins came out moist, rich, and delightfully dangerous to Dad’s diet.

I thought they could use a little improvement though, so I chose a different recipe. This one was entitled “Nutmeg Blueberry Muffins”. Now there’s nothing wrong with a bit of nutmeg in a muffin, right? Right. Unfortunately, I didn’t follow the recipe correctly and added a half teaspoon of powdered nutmeg directly to the batter when I should have sprinkled a little on top of each muffin while it was baking. A whole half teaspoon of powdered nutmeg does not do wonders to baked goods.

I want a blueberry muffin akin to Panera’s Wild Blueberry muffin. Sweet and chock full of berries inside, and crunchy on top. I suppose my muffins are not destined to be a culinary masterpiece, but there is still a ray of hope! Third time’s the charm they say! Right?

Right.