Day 844 of 1000
Betty Blonde #23 – 08/18/2008
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I checked my frequent “stayer” status for Marriott Residence Inn today. After this trip, I will have been there for 184 days this year. If I add the other hotel stays for the year in San Francisco, Denver, and other hotels here in Prescott, the number is well over 200 days. That is not so good. My goal for next year is less than half that amount.
My company has had me on the road for about 2½ weeks per month for the last year. It is very gratifying work with a great bunch of people, but it is hard to be away from the family so much. That should change in the next few months and we hope to move back out west sometime this spring or summer, but in the mean time, the company CEO was kind enough to send Lorena some flowers to thank her for putting up with my absence.
Day 833 of 1000
Betty Blonde #16 – 08/07/2008
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This morning noticed our friend Troy liked an article on the subject of “busyness” so it showed up on Lorena’s Facebook page. Lorena and I talk about this. This is one of my problems. I like to keep busy, but sometimes it gets in the way of reflecting on life and engaging with people. And it IS a point of pride. That is ridiculous. There is absolutely no value in remaining busy at the expense of engaging with family and friends. I recommend this article.
Day 830 of 1000
Betty Blonde #14 – 08/05/2008
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The graduate school applications are all complete, we had a great Thanksgiving with LOTS of leftovers, Christian has one problem left on his take-home test (the computational problem, not the really hard proofs problems), and we are reconciled to the fact that there are two and a half weeks of pretty serious pain left for this semester. The big deal is that we are now in a waiting game to see which schools, if any, accept the kids. We probably will not know the whole story until March or April. At least we have that money monkey (Was that a freudian slip or what?) off our back for now. Life is good.
This will probably be our last Thanksgiving with both the kids living at home. The turkey is in the oven, Christian, is studying by the fire, Lorena and Kelly are cooking and the cats are relaxing.
All fresh fruit!!!
Day 829 of 1000
Betty Blonde #13 – 08/04/2008
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Everyone one is still in bed at 9:30 on Thanksgiving morning. Christian stayed up later than everyone to work on his Linear Algebra take-home exam. I stayed up late to give him some moral support. Lorena and Kelly stayed up to watch some wedding video of some of their friends. I woke up this morning at about 7:30 to the cat staring me in the face and yowling like crazy. So I got up to feed her, check the turkey (it has to be close to room temperature before I start cooking it–we are ready to go), have a cup of coffee, and do my morning reading.
There is a fascinating philosophical cat fight between Frequentists and Bayesians going on in the world of Statistics. A blog articles titled Statistical Zealots over at Simply Statistics is about that fight. Be sure to read through the comments. Some of these people are serious as a heart attack about this issue. Kelly and Christian have been telling me about and I meant to read up on it to figure out what it is about. I consume statistical consulting services in my work, so I am sure I will run into this in the future and it will be important to understand the issues. It might take some real work to understand all the issues. Fun stuff.
Another monster topic of great importance today is that my wife and daughter made a lemon merangue pie for us last night. My Finnish grandmother, Ida Jenkins, always made lemon merangue pie, from scratch, at Thanksgiving when I was growing up. It was very tart with a TON of merangue. We plan to make this an annual tradition. This is the first year, so the girls just followed the recipe. It looks awesome. Next year, I am going to lobby to up the tartness and up the merangue.
Update: Here is a blog post with amazingly helpful description of the philosophical issues behind the Bayesian vs Frequentist cat fight. It helped me a lot in my understanding, has some reference links, and even a pointer to “the ugliest blog in the world” which is about Statistics!
Day 828 of 1000
Betty Blonde #12 – 08/01/2008
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We have finished all the graduate school applications except one. Lorena and Kelly are making lemon merangue pie tonight. I am in charge of the turkey, so I will pull it out of the refrigerator later tonight so that it is room temperature when I start cooking–Igor’s tip to help us cook a moist turkey. Christian is getting hammered with his Linear Algebra take-home midterm, so he will spend most of the weekend studying–poor guy. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Christian works on a take-home test.
The family hangs out in a group study room.
Day 777 of 1000
Aunt Julia had a birthday last week. I wrote her an email note. We both marveled out how good it is to be in our 50’s. I never would have imagined that I would enjoy this age so much. I kind of get the sense that the 60’s will be even better. This is especially true as our kids get to the end of their teen years and struggle to figure out what they should do, where they should go, the whole marriage thing, how to make a living, whether to continue their education, and etc., and etc. and etc. That is a great time to be alive, too, but much harder in many, many ways. Happy Birthday Aunt Julia.
P.S. This picture is not really a picture from this birthday. I found it, thought it looked good and needed something for this blog post. Who knows when or where it was taken.
Day 775 of 1000
This a picture Kelly snapped while at work at the fabulous new NCSU Hunt Library today. As I am stuck out in Prescott without the family working through the weekend, I got a little melancholy. Lorena, the kids and I started going down to the NCSU Hill Library (the old one) when the kids started community college three and a half years. At first it was fun because we got to watch the posturing and histrionics of the college kids while Lorena, Kelly, and Christian studied and I worked on volunteer research for NCSU.
When the kids moved on from community college to NCSU, we continued to go about every other Saturday, but now it was even more fun because the kids were part of the drama. Then, at the beginning of 2013 the best college library in the world opened over on the Centenniel campus. Now, we only have a few short months to go to the library together. I want to enjoy every chance I get to be with the kids before they go off to graduate school in the west. Fortunately, the plan is for me to be home for a couple of weeks after this trip and I plan to make the most of it. I am very thankful that they still do not mind if I tag along.
I have written a good number of posts about the issue of “socialization” in homeschool over the years. Since the subject still comes up regularly, I thought it might be good to make an index of some of the more interesting posts on the subject. I will list the posts in reverse chronological order with a brief description because some of the titles are not very precise with respect to the content of the articles. I would like to state for the record that we know home schools, government schools, children, parents, and teachers vary. These posts are about our experience and observations.
Day 765 of 1000
Yesterday was my birthday. I turned 58. For some reason, I had more time to reflect on life this year than in years past. Lorena and Kelly dug through a bunch of old photos and found one from almost exactly 25 years ago and put it up on Lorena’s Facebook account. I think the picture might have gotten me into a reflective mood. My father-in-law says that, for boys, the blood does not really start getting to their brain until they are about 25. I think it was just about when this picture was taken that the blood started to get to my brain. I was 32 or 33. My buddy Curt in Tigard said it very well in a comment that went with the picture on Facebook.
He said, “Ken – those were the good old days; when we weren’t good and we weren’t old.”
Well said. Those were the days when we knew what was right, but struggled mightily to do it. It gave us joy to do what was right, but there were lots of temptations. I awakened to the fact that this life and death struggle between right and following my own path would not end until I died, but it was worth it. The temptations were still the temptations, but they were not worth it. It was really quite a slow and gradual awakening for me and I started later than most. It all started to occur at about the time I started my Masters degree. After my Masters degree, I got married, we had two kids, and went through a pretty rough patch of career challenges.
By the grace of God, literally, these life circumstances kept me considering the difference between what was right and taking my own path. I knew I was a different person when I walked into one of our church’s Gospel meetings in a new town when I was a little over 40 years old. I saw an old friend from my high school days who also knew what was right, but struggled with the implementation. It dawned on me that we were both in the right place, trying to do the right thing. I was filled with an overwhelming joy knowing that it was way more important to me now to do the right thing than to do what I wanted. It was true for my friend, too. I actually wept.
Life is much better at age 58 than it was at age 33. I do not think it does any good to say stuff like, “if I knew then what I know now, things would have been different.” I did not know that stuff then, but I was on the path to learning it. That is a good thing. I cannot say there was not joy in my life back in those days. There was. Still I got hurt because of my own wantonness and other people did, too. It could be said that my wantonness was not as bad as that of many others, but really, that is bogus. It is also true that my wantonness was worse than that of many others. Those are all things to regret and try to make amends, but they are also important to put behind you and not let it have control of your life.
I guess the upshot is that I am really glad to be 58 years old. Life has never been better. There is still temptation, but the benefits of not taking my own path are right in front of me and impossible to deny. I can hardly wait for 59.
Day 756 of 1000
This is a special time of year for Lorena’s family and friends in Mexico. El Grito de la Independencia is celebrated around midnight, the night of September 15th. September 16th, Mexican Independence Day is a holiday throughout the country. We love it for several reasons. Lorena’s best friend from the time after we were just married is a Puerto Rican girl named Vanesa. Her birthday is today. We always fondly remember her birthday and it reminds us of the great experience we had at that time and place.
Add to that the annual church convention in Lorena’s home town that occurs right around this time and we get quite nostalgic. All of the friends and family with whom Lorena grew up are together for a great time of communion and worship. I can think of no place I would rather be at this time of year. We love Mexico in general and Monterrey in particular. We plan to be there this time next year.
Day 752 of 1000
Carla, a friend of ours and a mother from Georgia wrote something on Facebook this morning that really resonates with us at this time in the life of our family:
Once upon a time, long ago, in the “Dark Ages,” I was a teenager. I felt rebellious, I felt unsettled, I had crushes, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wasn’t always crazy about what my parents thought, I was highly influenced by the opinions of others, I had acne, I experienced ‘peer pressure,’ I was self-conscious, I didn’t have my own car, I had homework, I got angry, I had frizzy hair, I argued with my siblings. So don’t tell me “You don’t know what I’m going through….”
Day 745 of 1000
I will be in Arizona on Christian’s birthday this year so we had a birthday cake and celebrated a little early with a birthday cake and some candles after dinner last night. It was nice. I thought I would write down a few things about him to celebrate this milestone.
Here are a just a few random notes:
HAPPY 18th BIRTHDAY CHRISTIAN!!!
Day 721 of 1000
Kelly came back from her internship at the Johns Hopkins University-Applied Physics Laboratory just in time for a visit from the Larsons. They are dear homeschooling friends from Texas. Age-wise, the twin boys fall right between Christian and Kelly. That have gotten along famously since late elementary school. We spent a great weekend with them visiting the NCSU Hill Library and the North Carolina Museum or Art, playing games, talking, playing music, going to church, and generally just hanging out together. The Larson’s are great musicians–voice, violin/fiddle, accordian, piano–really they are amazing.
At any rate, it got me to thinking about the Larson’s homeschool trajectory. It was a little different than our trajectory due to the normal reasons: differing interests (medicine, law, and business rather than engineering and math), amazing music skills, access to great Texas homeschool resources, differing teaching styles and curricula, etc. Still, the spirit of their homeschool was more similar to ours than just about any we have seen. They put worldview above other academic subjects, skipped two years of high school to put their kids into the community college, focused on hard science and math, but backfilled with music, international travel, language, hunting, and community service.
Some of the things they did much better than us include their participation in things like youth symphony, youth court (as lawyers and judges), EMT training, medical research, and I am sure there are others. It is great to see these boys prosper in ways that would not have been possible in a government or private school setting, but what we admire the most is their humility and the joy they derive from the path they have chosen as a family.
Day 635 of 1000
Service that would make Chick-fil-A proud, really cool, retro uniforms, and great food is not enough to impress Lorena, but if they can provide chiles with the hamburgers, too, then Lorena is VERY impressed. Now Lorena is a BIG In-N-Out fan just like Christian and Kelly. I became a huge fan myself about a week and a half ago when I found out they have what they call Protein Wrap Burgers–Hamburgers wrapped in lettuce instead of a bun!
Our Happy Happas is a new blog that chronicles the thoughts of a highly educated stay at home mom and her highly educated husband about raising and educating their two little girls as the raise and educate their two little girls. I know them both, have talked to them about what they are doing and how they are doing it. The big cultural influences in the family are Korean and Midwestern (Ohio and Chicago).
The thing I like about the conversations I have had with them is that they are not only very thoughtful, they are balanced. It seems like the parents of high performance children in American society today want to make the children’s education and performance more about the parents than the children. The writers of the Our Happy Happas blog do not have that problem. They seem to work equally hard on the joy of their children as in their education. They have a few good posts up already on the speed at which children learn compared to adults and handmade Korean language flashcards. The flash cards give a good taste about how they approach the education task. I am looking forward to making this a daily blog stop.
Everyone seems to have something fun and interesting in their family. I just learned the most interesting tidbit about Lorena’s greatly loved grandmother. Before she became a serious Christian, she used to get together with all her comadres in the neighborhood to drink liqueur, smoke their own hand-rolled cigarettes, and gossip. I was amazed. I did not tell Lorena about my mother’s once a year predilection for Swisher Sweet cigars.
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