Today's challenge for Photo Friday was Three.

This was a play at 3rd base in a league game as one of the girls from the Teenager's school stole 3rd base.

~Easy

If there's no Public Option, then nothing has really changed, has it?

~~~~~

There's a lot of debate about health care in the USA, but it all boils down to one central concept: 
Should everyone have access to a doctor, both before and after they get sick?

If your answer is yes, then you have to admit that SOMETHING has to be done.  Let's get it started, and fix any errors down the road.

If your answer is no, then we have a fundamental dsiagreement in principle, and nothing more to talk about.  On some things, there is no middle ground.

~~~~~

If later facts change anything, then we have something to discuss.  Otherwise, it's already old news

~~~~~

McGraw Millhaven spent an hour on the story of a bereaved mother calling the PM of Great Britain and dressing him down for spelling errors in a condolence letter that he hand wrote to her.  While this is interesting, it's a story about the PM of Great Britain.  It's not worth an HOUR of your show, or my life.

Also, from what I've heard, Gordon Brown is blind in one eye and has notoriously bad handwriting.  Perhaps it's sloppiness, not poor spelling? 

In any case, the leader of Great Britain took the time to hand write a letter.  That says a lot about the man, whatever you think of his politics.

~~~~~

Oh, and I don't have any idea of what Gordon Brown's politics are, nor do I particularly care.  He's really not my problem.

~~~~~

Gay marriage was voted down in Maine.    It's bullshit, but again,  it doesn't affect me.

Or maybe it does.  If they let gays get married then I'll have to buy a wedding present for my Sister-in-Law and her partner, and my little brother and his partner.  Probably for Margo & Vicky, and Murray & James too.  

OK.  I am now officially opposed to Gay Marriage until the economy improves or I'm done paying off my furnace.

~~~~~

Can you tell I'm getting remarkably unconcerned about most things.  If it won't affect my daily life, then I really don't give a shit, and don't have energy to spare for it.

~Eas

A small tournament, but it was nice for Youngest child to win her first team trophy as a middle schooler. She only won 2 games, but she was part of the overall team total that allowed the team to hold on and win, despite getting shut out in the last round.

~Easy

The Teenager had her first formal tonight.

*gulp*

~Easy

Today's Photo Friday challenge was softness.

This picture is from last December, shortly after we'd brought home the newest addition to the family.

~Easy

Here's another re-run for you while I play WoW:

Specify Color of Goat

 Originally published 6/3/2004

~Easy

(The link works now.  Mea Culpa.)

Last Friday we finally had our meeting with Youngest child's teacher, Ms Crazy and the school principal.  Needless to say, she denied saying anything about my wife, saying that the children must have misunderstood, but she did acknowledge that she does not believe that there were ever any dinosaurs.

I did find it interesting that the onus was put entirely on us.  The first words out of the principal's mouth were "what do you want to do?".  Fortunately, I do have some experience in adversarial meetings like this, and I had already marshaled my thoughts.  As I saw it, there were three options available to us:

1. Demand a full investigation 
2. Switch our daughter to the other teaching group
3. Let it go, and hope for the best

The first option was what we were hoping for, though I was never optimistic about it.  Barring a police report, schools are loathe to initiate investigations involving the children.  The school would need to interview all of the children, and in the process get parental permission for all of these interviews.  This would blow the issue way up, and make our daughter the center of a controversy.  Since Ms Crazy is popular with some of her students, there would invariably be some kind of blowback on Youngest child.

My wife and I had discussed option 2 at some length.  The way things are set up at this school, there are two "teams" of teachers in the core classes: Math, Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies.  We already knew that it would not be possible to simply switch Social Studies teachers, Youngest child would have to switch out all of her teachers in these four core classes, and get placed in different classes for all of her other subjects.  Youngest child really loves her homeroom teacher, and switching her would be somewhat traumatic. Additionally, we've had experience with the Science teacher on the other team, and we would rather take our chances with Ms Crazy than go through the probems that this Science teacher will create for us.

In the end, option 3 was what we ended up with. 

Our concern here was that somehow our daughter would not receive fair treatment in the class.  Until now, there have been no problems with her grades, and the gist of the parent teacher conference that started this whole thing was that Youngest child was a good student. Ms Crazy assured us that she had no ill feelings toward our daughter, and that Youngest child would get a fair shake.   The principal apologized for the misunderstanding, and stated that he would monitor the situation.

Since then, Youngest child says that Ms Crazy isn't treating her any differently, and things are more or less back to normal.  We have heard that the principal has been spending some time in the classroom with Ms Crazy, and I did get the impression that this is not a done deal with him by any stretch.

So we'll see what happens.

~Easy

That's how many years are on this body.

Today I celebrate the fact that I've lived this long.

Tomorrow I'll bring you up to speed on the problems with the teacher.

~Easy

Another Halloween is in the books. 

~Easy

This was a new concept to me, but apparently these have been going on for quite some time.  Basically, you park your car in the lot, and then decorate the trunk.  Then the kids go around to each car the same way they visit house on Halloween.

Needless to say, this was right up our alley.

~Easy