Year: 2010 Page 4 of 7

Lorena and I split a Whiskey River Burger at Red Robin to celebrate Mothers Day after meeting on Sunday.  We liked it so much we decided we are going to do the same thing again next year!  Christian and I started the weekend with biscuits and gravy at Pam’s Farmhouse restaurant on Saturday morning.  It was Troy’s idea to go there before our twice monthly GaugeCam work session at Dr. Birgand’s lab in the Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department at NCSU.  We think this is a tradition that could continue for years.  After the lab session, we met Youngin, Lorena, and Kelly at McDonalds for lunch, then spent an hour or so at the Crossroads Barnes and Noble before going home to work on school stuff and a new computer setup at the house.

Kelly drew Betty Blonde and studied for her Precalculus test, so we did not get to work on her fall semester schedule as we had planned.  We talked about it quite a lot and came up with what we think are good ideas, but we did not write anything down yet.  The innovation, kind of inspired by a comment by Deanne and her daughter’s studies is our thinking on what Kelly might do for languages.  She wants to get a non-Germanic, non-Romance language started before she gets out of her bachelors degree.  We are trying to figure out how to make that all work out in the time we have available.

Kelly speaks Spanish well since we speak it most of the time at home, but wants to continue through Rosetta Stone for about fifteen minutes per day.  She currently studies French every day for about half an hour.  Our current operating plan is for her to continue to study French on her own while she is at the Community College, take the CLEP test for French after a couple of years, then go up to Quebec to immerse herself in French for the summer before she goes to NCSU.  We have French speaking friends who live in Quebec City, with whom we were very close when we went to church with them in South Florida.  We think that might work out well.

We looked into the available languages at NCSU.  They have a lot available, but the thing that looks most appealing is their two year Russian program.  She needs to look into that further, but it might fit the bill.  I think Christian might like to try that, too.  If they get two years behind them at about the same time, it would be great to get them over to Russia for a semester or two.

Linux scarves!  I am seeing this as a huge positive trend not to mention leading edge fashion statement.  VERY impressive.  Lyle’s blog post is here.  I could not resist pointing to the image from my page.  You guys pretty much have Ubuntu covered.  On a related topic, we installed the new Ubuntu LTS (Lucid Lynx) 10.04 release on two computers so far (a third to follow possibly as early as tonight).  It just keeps getting better.  We use the LGPL released QT Creator and QT libraries (Thank you Nokia!) on Ubuntu for cross platform programming for both Windows and Linux.  It is just awesome.  Click the green scarf to go to Lyle’s blog.  Christian’s effort is the picture on the right.

I hand carried Kelly and Christian’s high school transcripts into the Wake Tech Community College yesterday.  The government schools and I think even the private schools have a way to do all that electronically, but they like to have the transcripts in a sealed envelope or hand carried to the adviser for homeschools.  That is really understandable.  They have no way to know whether it is valid or not.  We also took in all the ACT and CLEP score documents.  The adviser was able to enter them into the system and get us going even though none of it will be official until the scores arrive from the official sources in a couple of weeks.

The adviser with whom we worked was very nice.  She has one boy currently attending Wake Tech.  Her second boy just finished up his Bachelors Degree at UNC Chapel Hill in Physics and was accepted at Boston University for his PhD.  It was fun to talk to her about that.  Christian initially declared for pre-engineering associate degree, but after we talked to the adviser, looked at schedules, and discussed it all for an hour or so, we decided to rethink his plan a little.  There is little room for anything other than engineering classes in the engineering program at both Wake Tech and NCSU.  Christian and I both want him to be able to take a few electives in things like graphic design and programming.

I called my old professor and very good friend, Carroll Johnson from my Masters Degree at University of Texas at El Paso.  Carroll said that since Christian probably will attend graduate school, his Bachelors degree field did not matter so much as the courses he takes.  He said a Physics degree would allow him to go in a lot of different directions.  That was good advice, so Christian and I tried to put a schedule together for a Physics degree.  After about an hour, we realized that the course offerings at Wake Tech were insufficient for him to graduate in four years.  He would have to go directly to North Carolina State University to finish according to that schedule.  That is not possible, so we were back to square one.

Originally, when we worked with Campbell University, Christian was going to study Mathematics.  It was not a perfect match for what Christian wanted to do, but it was not bad either.  We decided to take a look at NCSU’s math offerings.  We were amazed to find a program that appears to fit Christian’s undergraduate interests better than either Physics or Electrical Engineering.  The Applied Mathematics Bachelors Degree program provides a 15 elective credit block for as a major for application of math and a 12 “anything” elective block.  We think it will be a perfect way to prepare Christian for a broad range of future options at the same time it lets him follow some of his passions that are not so technical.

Our transition from homeschool to college is happening fast now.  Kelly has one CLEP test this month and one in July.  That is the end of her homeschool.  We visited Campbell University, a wonderful little Christian school south of where we live, but decided not to go there at the last minute.  We decided to spend a year or two in the community college that is five minutes from our house for three main reasons.  First, it is WAY cheaper.  Second, we found that North Carolina State University has a very good Statistics program.  Kelly would have studied Applied Mathematics with a concentration in statistics at Campbell, but that was not what she really wanted to do.  When we investigated the Statistics program at NCSU it just fit a lot better.

The third reason is Christian.  His plan was also to attend Campbell, mostly because that would solve a lot of transportation problems.  He always wanted to study physics or engineering, but thought an undergraduate degree in math with a lot of science would be sufficient to get him into a good engineering or physics graduate degree.  That all changed for the better when we decided NCSU was the best fit for Kelly.  They have a plethora of engineering programs and a good physics department.  He is already doing volunteer research work in one of the Biological and Agricultural Engineering labs there, so aiming at a degree there was an easy choice to make.  He is leaning toward electrical engineering right now, but does not really need to make a decision on that for a couple of years.

With all that in mind, Lorena, Kelly, and Christian all went to Wake Tech yesterday afternoon to talk to admissions/academic advisers.  The upshot is that both of them will graduate from the Chapman Family Homeschool on June 15, 2010.  They have both been accepted as full time students at Wake Technical Community College for Fall Semester of 2010.  We are excited to get started on this new phase of their education.

Oh yeah, I do not want to forget to mention Lorena will be going to school with them, too.  Full time!

Just when I was thinking I did not have much left to write, I get loaded up.  First, my cousin Trisha started a new blog and she is off to a STELLAR start.  She recently received her Masters Degree in Elementary Education and is substitute teaching for awhile in some VERY interesting places while she looks for a full time position.  One place where she has applied is a place called Fields, Oregon, population 22 with a 2 hour drive to the closest grocery store.  The crazy part about it is that Google Maps has a street view of their “downtown” and there is a “downtown” bypass.  I will have more to say on all this later.

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On a second note, I had jury duty yesterday. It was interesting to say the least. There are too many stories to tell them all here. I was in the jury pool for an armed robbery. They called up at least 50 potential jurors and, by the time I left, they had gone through at least 25 of us without finding a pool of 12 they liked. I think the assistant district attorney liked me, but I was asked if I knew anyone who had gone through an armed robbery or theft or anything like that recently. Well, Lorena’s home town is struggling with all the drug cartel violence in North Mexico, so I told them about our close friends (Benjamin and Rita) who have been through two armed robberies, one of which included a pistol whipping. Then I told him about the home invasion at my in-laws house that happened last week and the hand-grenades that were exploded at the U.S. Embassy in Monterrey in November when my Lorena and the kids were only two blocks away.

I forgot to tell them about our friends, Daniel and Lila, whose daughter’s drug trafficking murderer was on the street again only one day after committing the murder. I also forgot to tell them about the shoot-out in our friend Iraklio’s neighborhood that took the lives of 11 drug cartel members and two kidnap victims. The defense attorney asked me if I had negative feelings about gangs and if I could separate my feelings about gangs from my judgment about the people on trial. I asked him if he thought that drug cartels counted as gangs.

He said, “Yes, I think they probably count as gangs.”

I said, “Yes, I believe I could judge them fairly based on the evidence presented.”

I told him I thought I could judge them based on the evidence, but he threw me off the jury anyway.

I actually enjoyed myself, met some nice people, and had my confidence restored, if not in particularly in lawyers, at least in the legal system. While it is not necessarily a pretty sight, you can see why it is a good system relative to whatever else is out there.

We started the transition out of homeschool this month.  It really caught me by surprise.  We always had a plan, so I do not know how it snuck up on us so fast.  I will talk about all of that in another post.  In our plan, Kelly will be a half-time homeschool student until the end of the 2010 when she will transition from a half-time load at college to a full-time regular student.  Christian’s plan is to spend half-time in college and half-time in homeschool through the end of the school year.  We are still organizing all this, but we believe we have most of the permissions we need from the college to move forward with our plan.  There are only a few CLEP tests left to take.  Kelly will take the ACT once more while Christian will take it twice.  I will try to describe the whole transition with the help of the kids.  There are many things to consider.  Volunteer work, internships, summer programs, athletic activities, etc.  We look forward to making this all happen.

Special note:  The last four or five weeks were busy with travel, work, visitors, and test preparation.  It was a challenge to write, not only because of the busyness, but because of my own attitude.  I had planned to back way off on the blogging as the kids transitioned out of homeschool.  Yesterday, though, I ran into Lynn from A Mother’s Journal at a church event.  We had a very brief visit in the hallway that inspired me to get back into the blogging habit after this short hiatus.  I realized there are still a lot of things about which to write and that I like to write.  Thanks Lynn!

This past weekend we went to Hickory NC to visit some friends and go to special meeting.  While I was there I got to sew my first skirt!  My seamstress grandmother and my friend’s mom both helped me out.  The seams are a little (read: a lot) wobbly, but I’m learning!  It’s a pleated blue and white flower print knee-length bubble skirt.  Pictures will come soon.

Quick Update: Christian and I are working full time, Christian gets his braces on today, the PreCalc. CLEP is coming up soon, and Grandma and Grandpa from Mexico are visiting, so things are BUSY.

The other day I got an e-mail from an old friend that I hadn’t talked to in a while, then another one from another old friend, and one from a new one! All those letters set my mind on my friendships.

I have some good friends. Some I’ve known for half my life, some I’ve known for almost all of it, and some I’ve just recently met. Some friendships took a while to bloom, some I’m still working on, and some have been steady forever. Some are people I’ve known for a long time, but never took the time to become friends with. Some started talking to me, some I started talking to. Many I don’t see or talk to often, many I haven’t seen in years, a few I’ve never seen and a very few I get to see every single day. Many are related to me, many are not. A lot of them were born in the 90’s, a few were born in the 80’s, a few more were born in the 70’s, and a lot were born before then. Most share my worldview, some don’t. A few I can call up and immediately start conversing without any preliminary pleasantries or awkwardness. A very few I can have an conversation about serious things with. Sometimes I forget their birthdays, and sometimes they forget mine, but it’s okay. A few of them are the kind of friends I can stay up late in the dorms and gossip with. A few of them I’ve played pretend battles and Frisbee and capture-the-flag and freeze-tag and water-wars with for years and years and years. Some are grown-up and I’ve never played any of those things with them, but we’re still friends anyway. Most are girls, some are boys. Some I’ve studied the Bible with, many I have nothing in common with, many I’m sure I’ve annoyed, all of them have influenced me in some way or another. A lot of them I need to keep in better touch with, and I take too many of them for granted. I think some of my friends don’t even know that we’re officially pals, but we are. (: I love them all!

This weekend was a lot about food. It started early Saturday morning at Pam’s Farm House Restaurant. Pam’s is a cash-only establishment with an attached bar (The Goat) that is not open at any time we would ever think about going there. It reminds me of Lucy’s (with the King’s X attached bar) in El Paso, probably my all-time favorite breakfast joint. It is right around the corner from the Sun Bowl so I sent my buddy Warren there when Oregon State played there last year and he agreed with my assessment, but that is another story. Pam’s is high on the list, if not number two. They serve biscuits and gravy that are out of this world. One plate is enough for two people. Andrew, Troy, Christian, and I all met there at Troy’s invite. We owe Troy big time.

On Sunday, Lester and Esther invited us to Jasmine after meeting. Jasmine is a Middle Eastern food restaurant we like a lot, but it did not open until noon, so we ran down to Moe’s Mexican food. That was good, but then it was Mexican food and I never complain about Mexican food. We went to Barnes and Noble after lunch to see Giada De Laurentiis. You can read about that below. Lorena and Kelly watch her in the gym while they are on the elliptical machine. She was impressive. Not only is she very cute, but she was kind, upbeat, and very engaged with each and every customer during the many hours of signing books. Lorena and Kelly loved it. Lorena said something in Italian to her and even pronounced the names correctly. They are dying to try the recipes in their new book.

Three weeks ago we were at the local B&N and we saw a sign advertising the Giada at Home: Family Recipes from Italy and California book signing. We’re big fans.  Not like rabid fans, but big fans nonetheless because she’s pretty and she’s Italian and she cooks awesome stuff and she’s rich and she’s famous and also she’s pretty.  So today, after meeting and a leisurely lunch at Mo’s, we moseyed over to the aforementioned local B&N for the aforementioned book signing.  Mom and I got to chill out in the PINK balloon waiting area because we were in the PINK balloon group.  This made me feel happy! There wasn’t much to read in the PINK balloon waiting area though. Just a book about a girl with two daddies and another book about Herman and his truck so I went and got a copy of CLEP PreCalc, a Girl’s Life issue and a Triathlon for Women book to flip through. Guess which one was actually read. Starbucks kindly revived us with caramel frappe samples halfway through and cinnamon gum was consumed by the pack.  The totally-prepared-expensive-Nikon-camera-packing-my-daughter-loves-Giada-so-I-brought-20-of-her-books-to-sign-and-y’all-better-not-get-in-my-way lady next to us talked loudly on her phone about mermaid-themed cocktail parties and stuff. We (actually Christian) helped a sweet elderly couple turn off the flash on their camera. Bathrooms were made full use of. After two hours of waiting, they finally called on the PINK balloon waiting area group to go get our books signed.  And THEN!!!!! :

Seriously, how fun would it be to go on a book tour and smile a lot and wear big sunglasses and be doted on by adoring fans? I’m thinking extreeeemely fun.

It was so worth the wait (:

She was such a sweetheart! She was always smiling. Like ALWAYS. And she was really, really pretty 🙂  And the cookbook is amazing. It’s filled with gourmet recipes that are beggggging to be made.  I’m very tempted to put together a menu from the book and host one of those fancy schmansy themed dinner parties with a discussion topic for the guests and placecards with scrolled lettering and many courses of small servings of artistically arranged food-that-looks-like-it-came-from-another-planet on mostly empty white plates and classical music and decorative flowers and lots of Italian words. Lots and lots of Italian words.

March was another heavy month.  The kids took no tests, just worked through the daily routine every day.  The focus for the entire month was, and will continue to be test preparation.  In that way this year has been different from other years.  We believe Christian will have a similar year next year, but Kelly will be moving into a new era as she starts at the community college.  Our next tests will not be until mid May.  Kelly is scheduled for Precalculus.  Christian is to take Western Civilization I.  In the meantime, we will have to adjust our schedules because both the kids will start a three week stint working forty hours per week at Centice Corporation where I work.  I will write more about that a little later.  That should create a little bit of a challenge as we will need to keep up with test prep, Betty Blonde, musical instruments, and household chores.

Yesterday we changed direction and started reading On Writing Well aloud.  Normally, I read while Kelly draws Betty Blonde.  Christian usually draws, too, but is now the reader.  Although I have done most of the reading in the past, we went through a fairly long period when Kelly was the reader, so it is good that Christian now gets his turn.  He read the introduction and the first short chapter.  The theme of that first chapter is that there is not one right way to write.  We are all inspired now to write.  I was kind of burnt out on writing every day in my blog, but this has given me new wind.  Kelly promised she will jump in here, too.  Christian will spin back up his efforts at Nerdhow.  We want to read a little further in the book, then make a plan on how to do this most effectively.

Along that same line, my boss Andrew has been telling me about how much he enjoys Twitter.  I have been pretty skeptical, but then yesterday, Kelly told me about how she follows Adam Baldwin and Andrew Breitbart on Twitter and gets a big kick out of it.  Maybe there is more to this twitter thing than meets the eye.  I am going to have to look at it a little more closely.  Troy has a Twitter account for GaugeCam and I should be helping to posts some tweets there, too.

We are just back from a fabulous four day weekend in Dallas, Texas with our friends, the Larson family.  We did a ton of good stuff, saw a lot of old friends and ate way too much food.  Just one of the highlights of the trip was our visit to the Sixth Floor Museum of the Texas School Book Depository.  Of course, I remember where I was when I heard about the Kennedy assassination (I was a third grader on the playground at Harrison Elementary School in Cottage Grove, Oregon).  It has always been a bigger than life event.  The visit to the museum and the walk on the grassy knoll brought all that back down to earth.  The gun, the descriptions of the people, the boxes of books–everything about the whole event seemed so ordinary when viewed in this new context.  I was not expecting such a deep emotional response to the whole, especially after having lived in South Florida amongst the Cuban community who have strong feelings about the people involved.  It was interesting.  I am very glad we went there.

We also went to the “hands” exhibit a the Baylor Medical Center.  I will let Kelly tell a little bit more about that and the other things we did during our visit.  We thank the Larson family and all our other friends in Dallas for their remarkable hospitality and a memorable visit.

I turned 16!!

I went to the mall and got a pretty dress. I talked with my family from Mexico and Oregon! I met the Chick-fil-a cow. I decided to have raspberry-blackberry pie instead of cake, because really, when you can have pie, why would you want cake? I also baked a dark chocolate cake (from scratch!) last night, because even though pie is better than cake, cake is still a birthday classic. The first layer kinda crumbled, but Christian and I fixed that with a LOT of dark chocolate frosting. In a few days we’re going to Texas which is awesome, because everything’s bigger in Texas and I’m assuming that includes birthdays.

Mom also made vegetarian pizza. I don’t… dislike vegetarianism quite as much as I used to. It was really, really, really good pizza.

On a related note, all that pie and cake and pizza (even vegetarian pizza) adds up to a lot of calories. But that’s OK because, other than the fact that I have a high metabolism, I’m totally motivated to start training for a triathlon now!! Dad got us a book on training for a triathlon the other day. It looks so fun! And pretty doable!! I really want to go for it 🙂

I’ve been listening to talk radio a lot lately. It’s awesome. It’s not that I haven’t listened to it before, I have. Since the womb practically. I was born in 1994, the same year as the Contract with America and just 7 years after Rush became nationally syndicated. There are old 90’s videos of a wee me saying his very fun to say name. Rush Limbaaaugh. Rolls off the tongue. The little duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuun dun sound byte at the end of his show segments is dear to my ears. I could fall asleep to the sweet, sweet sound of Rush’s liberal lambasting. Yes, talk radio is very familiar to me. So are politics. I have many political memories stowed away in my head…

• 1st grade (2000-2001) Bush elected. Grandma and Grandpa from Mexico are over and Dad has the radio on all night. He yells up the stairs to us three different times, telling us whether or not Bush has won. Eventually Bush did win.
• 2nd grade (2001-2002) 9/11. Oddly enough, Grandma and Grandpa from Mexico are at the airport that morning and our cousins are in New York City (I think they were planning to eat lunch at the top of one of the towers that day) when it happens. After Dad calls Mom, I grab a granola bar and a butter knife to be prepared in case of the apocalypse. Grandma and Grandpa get to stay another week. School is different that day.
• 3rd grade (2002-2003) Iraq war starts the day of my 9th birthday party. Missiles fly and people protest. I feel like a part of history after I record it in my diary.
• 4th grade (2003-2004) Saddam Hussein captured while we’re on vacation in Cabo. We don’t believe Grandpa when he tells us. Cringeworthy radical Republican stage. While trick-or-treating in my teacher’s neighborhood I see a Kerry sign in her yard. I fight a strong urge to TP the place. Moving on…
• 5th grade (2004-2005) radical Republican stage lingers because of 2004 elections. Dartboard had pictures of Kerry on it. Kerry caricatures drawn, political cartoons and posters made and filed.
• 6th grade (2005-2006) Political blogs are confusing!!!
• 7th grade (2006-2007) I make a list of all possible 2008 presidential candidates and tape it to the pantry wall. It is soon forgotten in the move to North Carolina.
• 8th grade (2007-2008) Debates, Conventions and all the hype watched streaming online. SNL skits are pretty funny. Willow is totally my favorite Palin kid. Civil political discussions with liberal swimteam friends are awkward. Obama and Palin caricatures perfected. McCain’s jowls are super hard to draw.
• 9th grade (2008-2009) Bad time for Obama to win! Anger+hormones= much crying. But it was OK in the end!
• 10th grade (2009-2010) The world of talk radio is opened to me. I kind of understand the whole health care thing. Paul Ryan is super cute (for a 40 year old US rep.). Beck is entertaining. Mark Steyn’s accent is awesome. Willow is still my favorite Palin kid. Politics are still really confusing, but not as confusing as before. Palin and Obama caricatures are absolutely spotless. The 2012 election looms as the first time I get to vote and Rush is as diligent as ever!

For the past few years we have had two and a half months of hard academic work from right after the holidays in January until Easter break in March.  It seems like we get pretty discouraged every year because of all the very hard work with little time for leisure or rest.  We usually decide we have to do something a little differently next time, forgetting that life gets really crazy starting in late March.  This year is no different.  We have worked hard this year, but over the weekend we have made plans for trips two trips to Texas and one trip to Idaho and Oregon.  It will be great to get out of North Carolina to see some friends and not think to much about school or work.  In addition to that, we found that Lorena’s folks are coming to visit us here for a couple of weeks in April.

Now that I am back in the loop (after my “day job” imposed blogging hiatus), I have started following my favorite blogs again.  Luke over at Sonlight Blog had a particularly interesting post (soon to be a series it appears) on the process of making a video.  Very, very cool!  I think this could be something Kelly, Christian, and I should be watching.  It could be a super help for some of the stuff Troy and I are doing at GaugeCam, too.  When we make a video, we just start filming.  I think that is probably just great for home movies–it works for us, but when it comes to making a video that tells a story or explains how to do something, it is abysmally deficient.  I am going to run this by the kids tonight and maybe even turn this into a spring/summer homeschool learning project.  We are looking forward to it Luke!

This year our hits for the front page were down a little, but our overall number of hits on the blog were up significantly.  I think that is probably due to the fact that many people arrived at the blog from searches on things like CLEP preparation and Amigurumi.  Only hits to the main page are counted by the hit counter.  Here is the annual hit counter screen capture:

I have something called StatPress for the blog that shows my monthly stats.  For example, in March, we averaged 41 unique visitors per day and 297 page views per day (not including spiders and RSS feeds) or about 7 page views per visitor.  None of this counts the hits we get on the Betty Blonde comic or the main page.  All in all, I think we had a great year.

This year, starting today, we have added Google Analytics so we will be able to tell how we did with a little more precision.  We started this blog back in 2004, about the same time we started our homeschool (for the second time).  We did not know is was going to be so much fun.

I have been a little slack in my blogging over the last month or so because of a very pressing work schedule.  Kelly has done a much better job at posting than I.  A lot of other stuff has fallen to the wayside, too, but I am now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.  I have actively started to engage in a work on the GaugeCam project again and will be making some blog posts as well as writing some code for that project through the summer.

Note: This post is one in a series on how we prepared our homeschooled children to take various College Level Examination Program tests. The introductory post for this series explains why we take these tests, what parts of the preparation worked for us, and what parts of the preparation did not work.

This exam, in terms of preparation, was very similar to the CLEP Western Civilization I exam and the U.S. History exams. You can read more about her preparation methods at that link. She used both note cards and a heavily annotated timeline to help her study. The CLEP Western Civilization II (REA): 1648 to the Present book helped a lot, but she one thing that was a little disconcerting was that, even though she got very high scores on the REA practice tests, she got a B on the actual test. She thought this might have been due to the fact that the “theme” of the test was a little different than what was in the REA book. Still, she felt like she would have been able to get an A level score if she had a little more time. All in all, she was satisfied with both the book and her preparation.

Results: Kelly took the Western Civilization II test when she was 15. According to the REA preparation book criteria, she would have gotten a grade of a high B in the class. She received college credit for a one semester course for her score on this test.