Month: February 2010

It is snowing hard here in Raleigh this morning.  The weather is too warm for it to stick, but it surely is beautiful out there this morning.

It was an amazing day yesterday.  My boss announced to our group that he and his wife were going to have a baby in October.  Shortly after that, we got a note from Tia Minita that she and Tio Rigo were expecting a baby, also to arrive in October.  Then, cousin Trisha sent a phone message with a photo of our cousin Mark’s new baby girl that arrived yesterday afternoon.  They come in waves!  I get so buried in school and work I often forget there are bigger and more important things going on in other places.  We are looking forward to meeting all these new kids and I am revving up to take a run at that “favorite uncle” title again.

Kelly and Christian both took the ACT college entrance exam in early February.  The results to the multiple choice portion of the test were posted yesterday.  Both of them did great.  We are learning more and more about these tests.  This year Kelly came up a little in the categories of Reading and English.  There was not a whole lot that she could do to improve as she was pretty high last year in those categories.  She still has a little bit of room to improve, but I think improvements will come as a result of learning how to take the test more than new knowledge.  She also improved a little in Science.  She is well above average, but has more room to improve there as she has not yet studied all the material on the test.  She had a dramatic jump in Math this year.  She still has not covered everything that is on the test in math but she is a lot further along this year than she was last year.  Her scores are good enough now that we believe she could get into just about any school she wants, most of them with a good scholarship.  By this time next year, though, if Kelly is not already in college, she should be able to further improve her scholarship chances.

Christian made a good sized jump in his scores, too.  He got good enough scores to get into many schools, but, as he is two grades behind Kelly, has not yet covered much of the material on the tests.  He really did get great scores for an eighth grader.  By the time he takes the test again next year, he will have covered a lot more math and science that is on the test.  In addition, we are going to continue doing a lot of reading and English work.  Our expectation is that he should be well positioned to make quite an improvement next year.

Betty Blonde is so much fun. I can do whatever I want with it. If I’m feeling a little 80’s, I’ll indulge an 80’s rock star. If I feel that Betty Blonde (the character) has been a little clichéd lately, I can make her repaint speed limit signs. If I feel like drawing buff guys (and I often do. They’re my favorite to draw. Scandalous!) I’ll bring in the Hankster. Betty Blonde is a limitless creative playground for me. But for a limitless playground, it’s really hard to break the limits. Christian and I often argue over whether or not to break the unwritten rules of Betty Blonde’s world. Christian’s world of Betty Blonde has a different set of rules than mine. Characters can do crazier things. While my Betty Blonde will do crazy things, she does crazy things within the laws of physics. For example, in Christian’s graphic novel, Betty Blonde and co. build a gigantic mountain and jump off it to get to China, all while citing pseudo-physics that totally apply to Christian’s Betty Blonde’s world. The same thing might look kind of off in my strip. At the same time, nearly all of my Betty Blonde’s punch lines would never dream of entering Christian’s Betty Blonde world. We’re going to try to achieve the best of both worlds in the strip soon though, because Christian has tons of great ideas.

Right now however, I’m feeling very warm towards men’s and pair’s Olympic figure skating. We’ll see where that goes!

We are going through a major transition here in the Chapman household.  We have established some goals that we all need to complete by the end of the year.  For Kelly, it has to do with getting everything finished for her high school graduation and to get ready to start college full time this fall.  For Christian, it has to do with finishing the necessary math and CLEP testing to start in part time to college during winter semester of 2011.  To that end, I am probably going to try to put Kelly on a one blog post per week schedule while I will go to a 2-3 post per week schedule.  The schedule is aggressive but doable.  Time is at a premium through July with this new schedule, planned vacations, swim team, workouts, music lessons, etc.

There are still a lot of ifs, but we are arriving at a plan.  If we can swing the financing, if I do not have to move because of my job, if we can get the transportation worked out, if.., if…, if…  We plan to put Kelly in college next year.  So, we are not exactly diving into the deep end of the pool like Luke.  Nor does it look like we are we easing into it like Ruthie’s Mattise (I smart move on Mattise’s part I would say).  Rather, due to know forethought of our own, it appears like she will take the middle road.  She will be taking a fairly light load the first semester with only one hard class and a couple of middling hard classes.  Not a bad plan.  In the meantime, she plans to take five more CLEP tests between now and mid-summer.  That sounds kind of bad as I write it out, but I do not think it will be to onerous.  She has been preparing for all of them but one for about a year now.

We are trying to figure out what to do with Christian.  He is scheduled to take two CLEP tests between now and then end of the year and four CLEP tests next year.  We hope he can take a couple of college classes at Campbell during Spring semester.  I am not sure whether they will let him, but we will ask.

I haven’t been on too many college campuses in my life, so I had few preconceived opinions when we arrived at Campbell to tour the campus.  Our guide was an exuberant Italian-American woman from New Jersey whose two homeschooled children were enrolled at Campbell.  Oddly enough, we found out that her sister had dated the same celebrity my cousin had worked for.  It’s a small world. After the introductory video, we piled into a bright orange golf cart and drove around campus.  It was a really cold, really gray, really dreary day, but I could see how beautiful the brick buildings and trees would be in the spring and fall.

I only got to see the auditorium from the outside, but it looked amazing.  Our guide told us that anyone could participate in theater.  I’m hoping to do that if I have the time since I’ve always wanted to be in a play!  The dining hall looked cool. Call me a sheltered homeschooler if you will, but I’m actually looking forward to eating there.  Yes, I’ve heard of the horrors of dorm food!  After checking out the dining hall we went to the building where I expect to spend most of my time. The Math and Mass Comm. building was relatively new and very nice. The classrooms weren’t huge, proof of the low teacher to student ratio at Campbell.

I’m so excited to start in the fall. Campbell is extremely accommodating to homeschoolers. They will take all of my credits and hopefully will give me a good math degree.  Yesterday while looking at the course catalog with Dad, I found out I could get a math major with a good minor in journalism.  So that’s the tentative plan right now, and I’m very excited to implement it!

I do not want steal Kelly’s thunder, but I wanted to talk a little bit about Friday’s visit to Campbell University.  We did not get off to a great start.  On the drive there, the road was blocked so we had to take a detour.  Then our GPS unnecessarily took us on a serpentine route through Fuquay-Varina.  We called ahead because we knew we would arrive about a half an hour late.  This morning I mapped it on the Internet, something I should have done before we drove down there the first time.  We are less than twenty miles from the Campbell campus on a route that avoids all the rush-hour traffic we encountered on Friday.

The Campbell campus is beautiful.  There is new construction going on in several places and recently completed construction in several other places.  All this nestled among building built from the late 1800’s on.  The campus is small enough to walk just about anywhere in less than 15 minutes.  We talked to the admissions lady who deals with homeschool students.  She had homeschooled her own children and even though the focus of her homeschool was fundamentally different than ours, she understood a lot of our issues and had lots of good advise about financing which was quite encouraging to Dad.

I will let Kelly describe her thoughts on the academic trip, but when we returned home, Kelly and I were able to sketch out a plan that would not only give her a hard major, but also give her a minor to prepare her for the Masters degree she wants, and still have time to take some cool electives and participate in a club or two.  All in all, we had a great time going down there, we have lots of things to chew on for the next bit with respect to figuring out how to pay for it all, and some academic things to accomplish to be ready to get a great start at the school.

On top of all that, we kind of figured out, this might be a good choice for Christian.  Christian and I sat down and mapped out a plan for him, too.  It included the same elements:  a hard major, a creative minor, and a path to a good Masters degree program.

So here in the Chapman household nothing much has been happening (other than the very exciting college, academic, ACT etc. stuff which Dad has already filled you in on.)  February is generally very dreary around here.  Mundane things excite me more than usual.  Like yesterday I used a men’s shampoo and now I smell like how I imagine one of those gray hair dye male models smell.  I finally decided what kind of animal my nondescript white amigurumi is going to be. I drew my absolute best Mr. Nobody a couple of days ago. The day decided to be partly sunny today, instead of depressing like most other days in the month. Ah, the little things!

Thank goodness this weekend is shaping up to be exciting though!  Some of our best friends are coming up from Charlotte to spend the weekend, we have a couple of secret projects in the works and in a few hours we’re going to tour Campbell! I’m so psyched for that.  When we get back, I’ll write a blog post about it.

Every now and then I kind of wake up and realize that I have too many irons in the fire, I am getting further out of shape (and fatter!?!!), and I am just going through the motions while life spins out of control.  That is a good thing.  Not that my life is spinning out of control, but that I become aware of the fact.  I think one of the best indicators is that I feel a general sense of malaise when I get home from work.  There are too many things to do, so I make myself a piece of peanut butter toast, pour myself a glass of milk, and start refreshing Free Republic in the hope that an article will appear that is interesting enough to make me forget that I have other, more important responsibilities.  Eventually, my torpidity gets so bad that my conscience kicks in.  That is where I am now.  It is all quite invigorating, really.

The next thing that happens is that I make a list, prioritize it, and go to work.  This time it includes the following:

• Programming and machine vision volunteer work

• The USGS in Vancouver, Washington (clean water–I know, I am a Republican.  We hate clean water)
• GaugeCam.com (with NCSU and my buddy Troy)
• Help for a buddy in Atlanta
• Help for a buddy in Charlotte (KamVu.com)

• Campbell U. investigation for Kelly
• Wake Tech for Lorena and Kelly
• CLEP test planning for Kelly and Christian
• Endless planning, correction, etc.

• Big new Betty Blonde initiative (very hush hush–stay tuned)
• Work on BleAx and C++ programming with Christian
• Plan a web/SMS accessible Arduino project with Christian
• Find a pottery class for Lorena and the kids

• Set up a workout schedule
• Start eating right (Lorena and I have a plan!!!)

Man, that is pretty good start.  I will put some order to this and start working today!

Tomorrow afternoon, the whole family plans to make the trek down to Buies Creek, North Carolina to visit Campbell University for the first time.  We think that might be a great place for Kelly to study.  It is a smaller school, but with a lot of stuff going on.  It is going (has gone) through the kind of transition we saw at George Fox University a number of years back.  I think it used to be a sleepy little Baptist College, but has decided they will try to compete aggressively and turn their school into something great.  They have carved out a great niche.  They just remodeled a beautiful building for their law school right across the street from the Capitol building in Raleigh.  They have a super Pharmacy school.  Their main campus is in a small rural town just about twenty miles south of where we live.  We will try to take some picture and let you know how it goes.

Jonah Goldberg has a post over at National Review’s the corner blog titled On Rigor and Academia.  I have been harping on my kids about this for about five years now.  We have an agreement in the family that they can study anything they want as long as the get a hard science or engineering degree first.  Of course, after they are out of homeschool (starting next year in our case), we have a whole lot less control over such things.  I think the transition from the exercise of control to the exercise of influence needs to start at about age two–some argue even younger.

Still, it is arguably easier to get into a great Journalism masters degree program, law school, medical school, or (hopefully) a hard science graduate program with an Electrical Engineering or math degree than with a degree in sociology or women’s studies.  I struck up a conversation on an airplane with a law student on an interview trip recently.  We talked about preparation for law school.  He pointed me to this website.  I found it interesting that the best way to prepare for the LSAT is to get a degree in engineering or physics.  My kids are young and they could chose a different path, but I want them to have all the information I can provide to them to help make the right choice.

Update:  It just keeps getting better.  I take this quote by Mr. Goldberg from a follow-up post:  “Or, I can sum up my view of why the humanities are less rigorous with even more pith: There’s no math.”  I LOVE it.

The ACT this year felt so much better than last year’s.  Last year, there were many math and science questions that I didn’t know where to begin with, whereas this year I felt I could understand and ace every single question if I had had more time. Unfortunately I don’t think I paced myself perfectly, but I still feel a lot better about this year’s test, even the essay.

I have recently discovered the joys of vegetables that aren’t peas or lettuce or brocolli.  When I was immature and unenlightened, I would go to Subway and order a plain ham and cheddar on wheat with only lettuce and tomato.  But ever since I discovered the wonderful tangy taste of mustard (on an airplane, too!), food has slowly revealed to me a side of itself that I’d never seen before.  Ham and cheddar is still my favorite. But now I eat ham and cheddar with cucumbers and green peppers and mustard!  Portabello mushrooms are no longer rubbery over-sized fungi.  They’re steak flavored rubber.  Pickles and veggie pizza are growing on me.  Those crunchy fat green bean pods that come with the vegetable trays at the grocery store are my current favorite vegetable after I tried them for the first time a few months ago. Still working on olives and raw onions though.

Kelly and Christian both took their second past at the ACT college entrance test yesterday.  Both of them felt like the did quite a bit better than last year.  All got me to thinking about a series of comments by Ruthie made after the monthly homeschool update post last week.  We are right at the point where we need to quit thinking about the transition from homeschool to college and start actually doing things.  Ruthie’s comments that it is better to transition into college slowly rather than diving into an intense workload has changed my thinking on the way we are going to attempt to do this.

Our original plan was to put Kelly into school full time next year with a 13-15 hour schedule at a university rather than the community college.  Lorena and I talked about it all when the kids were taking their test yesterday.  Now we think it might be a good idea to transition her into college a little more slowly.  We are going to start looking at putting her into two classes at the community college during fall semester–maybe Calculus I and Biology II.  Then Calculus II and Chemistry II during the spring semester.

We want her to do something hard, but have plenty of time to do it.  Her whole load for the year will consist of those four classes and and at least one more CLEP tests:  American Literature.  She will finish Precalculus before the end of the year this year, so we plan to get her going on Thinkwell Calculus after that.  We know she will not be able to complete it, but it will give her a jump-start so that her first math class will not be so new to her that she drowns in it.  She will continue through Rosetta Stone French, but probably not take the French CLEP test until after she has had a chance at at little immersion–who knows when.  She will have to do the American Literature preparation with only the REA book and the local library.

The community colleges in North Carolina do not students into any classes unless the parents accompany them.  Therefore, we will just have Christian load up on CLEP tests next year.  He will do Chemistry, Calculus, one more History class, Psychology, Sociology, possibly American Literature.  All that will give him what he needs to get an associate degree the year after that with a fairly gentle transition from homeschool to the community college his first semester.

Well, that is the plan.  Maybe we can make that work.  Thanks for the help Ruthie!

Wednesday night after our bible study, our buddy Kendall told us he had made a remote control lawn mower.  Of course we all wanted to see it.  The following video arrived in my email yesterday.  We were humbled.  Now are now waiting to see how he is going to computerize the thing.  Maybe he can use and Arduino card. These kind of projects have to be helped by the fact that there are TWO engineers in that household. Congratulations on an awesome project Kendall–you win!!!

The kids ACT test is tomorrow at St. Augustine’s College. Lorena and I enjoyed just hanging out together for a few hours last year while the kids took the test. We plan to do that again tomorrow.

Homeschool-wise, January was a very busy, but fairly uneventful month.  Other than Kelly’s last Western Civilization I CLEP test, there was nothing more than nose-to-the-grindstone studying intermixed with bad weather.  On a sad note, Lorena has been helping our homeschooling next door neighbors pack boxes and move to a new (much bigger) house.  So Kelly’s dear friend Jenna and all the rest will be gone but not forgotten on Friday.  Our next big event for which there is really not much we can do to prepare is the annual ACT test at St. Augustine College this Friday.  Kelly’s next CLEP test is Western Civilization II test in March if she does OK on her practice tests and feels comfortable with being able to pass.  Also, this month, Lorena will try to find out what it will take to get Kelly enrolled in Wake Tech Community College for next fall.  We think we will probably sign her up for Calculus I and Biology II (with lab), but will have to check with the school to see if we can get her in.

Here’s a few pictures for you Youngin!  A coat is covering the pillar, but there is a hallway behind the back wall that you see, and a small areato the side of that where the fire pit originally was. The open area is where the tractor was supposed to go, but we put the fire pit in there and extended the wall on the far right and made it wrap around the big room with the pillar inside it.  We had a lot of fun.

Roasting marshmallows in the parlor

Le Maison

Our friend Nathan, in the parlor

And here’s our house before we ruined all the pretty snow!

Well we’ve had an amazing snowy weekend!  We ate a lot, almost like Christmas time, and we made the best snowfort of our lives.  It was epic. We woke up on Saturday morning all ready to get cold and wet and make snowmen and such, but unfortunately the snow was pure powder with a frozen upper crust.  Not prime snowball/snow-fort/snowman making weather. We stayed inside and made churros (Special on that coming up soon) and sulked around.  Sunday morning, everything was frozen so we couldn’t make it to meeting.  After we had a little Bible study on our own we went outside to explore some more, eventually discovering something amazing.  The upper crust of the snow was frozen through but still relatively soft and breakable, so if one just made a small hole in the ground, one could pry up big squares and blocks of solid snow.  Way more manageable than last years hand-packed snow blocks.  With the help of our neighbor friends, we quickly amassed a ton of blocks and piled them up.  The end result was a circle shaped snow fort that went as high as my chest with a pillar in the middle and a hallway leading to another small room and another, larger room beside that. It was kind of S shaped. We had intended for the second, larger room to be a parking spot for our tractor/sled-puller, but the tractor wouldn’t start so we just hauled our fire pit in there and roasted marshmallows. Very awesome.

Does anyone read Pearls Before Swine?  It’s my favorite syndicated comic, right after Calvin and Hobbes and FoxTrot and maybe Cul de Sac. Probably before Cul de Sac, but after FoxTrot actually. Anyway, PBS tends to be a bit darkish, but it’s really hilarious sometimes.  Really one of the few comic strips that I actually laugh out loud on. I always look forward to Pastis‘s (the author)  horrible puns.  You can tell when he’s going to do one because his entire set-up sounds so odd, but you never can tell what the pun will be. Yesterday’s was a classic example. It does contain a swear word (from a classic movie), but it’s still funny. Or un-funny. It goes both ways.

He’s definitely one of my major inspirations in the humor department.  He’s not always funny, but he is funny more often than most others.  I wish I could get Betty Blonde to that point. It’s very difficult for me to not write awkard-ish humor.  I think it’s a stage of life thing… adolescent age, adolescent humor. But I know what’s funny!  I laugh at funny things! Generally speaking what’s funny in real life isn’t that funny in a comic strip though. I find it very hard to transfer a ‘you had to be there’ joke to comic strip format.  Maybe it’s just a matter of practice.

It snowed hard here at our house, thawed a couple of times, refroze, and left the roads a complete mess.  I will be working from the house today.  The kids had a great time yesterday in the snow: