It's been a few days since I posted, and I have a few topics that have been on my mind lately, not all of which can/should be posted on a public forum, unfortunately.
1. Spygate
2. Pitchers throwing intentionally at batters
3. The doggies
4. The baby who is kicking me as I write this (thump)
5. The Apple Store
6. House projects and the lack of time to do any of them
7. Airfare
I guess I'll start from the top.
1. Spygate. I read an article about the New England Patriots and their video cheating and such, and the part I found most telling was this:
In Friday's Washington Post, NFL reporter Mark Maske quotes former Giants quarterback Phil Simms contending that stolen signals are no guarantee of victory: "'I've been in games where we knew every signal, every call by the other team, and we still lost,' Simms said by telephone yesterday. 'We [the Giants] had the San Diego Chargers' signals in 1980. We knew every signal. We knew every play. We were calling out what they were going to do: 'Here comes this. Here comes that.' They still scored 44 points.'" After more Simms quotes, the article moved to other matters. Who was on the New York Giants' coaching staff in 1980? Bill Belichick and Ernie Adams. (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/080517&sportCat=nfl)
Goes to show that a) even with all the knowledge in the world, true athleticism and human creativity cannot be shut down and b) Mr. Belichick needs to go to cheaters rehab.
2. Steve and I were watching the Orioles-Yankees game on Tuesday night. It was a 12-2 blow out by the Orioles. The starting pitcher, Daniel Cabrera, hit Derek Jeter on the back of the hand with a pitch. OUCH. Jeter was a hurtin' puppy but thankfully got away with no broken bones. Cabrera was visibly upset by this. He was hanging his head in remorse and was not making any scene of it.
I can't remember how many innings later, Orioles batter Luke Scott (O's fans have been calling him Luke Scottwalker) was standing in the batters box. He took one pitch very inside and then took the next pitch to his head. Luckily, Luke Scott got out of the way in time. Before Luke Scott even recovered from the flinch, the home plate umpire had already ejected the pitcher. Luke Scott yelled at the pitcher to not throw at someone's head and the pitcher yelled back and got all defensive. The benches cleared, including the bullpens. No punches were thrown. The over-the-plate camera showed that the pitcher was missing the plate by a mile as Scott was not crowding the plate.
The pitcher's reaction shows me he was guilty as "charged" else he would have reacted like Cabrera did. MLB suspended him for 3 games. I was really happy to see that the ump didn't flinch; he saw it for what it was without even an argument.
I was reading Curt Schilling's (Boston Red Sox pitcher) blog (http://38pitches.com/2008/04/18/intent/), and he was saying in one post that anything thrown behind a batter is clearly intentional to hit him or make some kind of a point. And frankly, I think the same applies to throwing at someone's head. I'm sorry, if you've gotten to the Major Leagues, you know how to control and throw a baseball. You may have off days and can't get the ball in the strike zone, but "wild" pitches like that? Sorry, I don't buy it.
3. Oh how I wish Napoleon wasn't regressing but he is. He's forgotten his crate training and peeing in the crate again during the day. Totally maddening, and we don't know why he's decided to regress. I guess we're going to have to start taking him to daycare again, else I'm going to have to start getting up at 5am and give him a structured walk him for an hour to get him REALLY tired. I don't have the energy for either scenario right now, though....
Napoleon has also been keeping me up at night with his whining. He doesn't want to be in the crate because he wants to be in the bed with us. Fine. IO goes in the crate, Napoleon comes to bed. Except that when Steve finally settles in for the night, Napoleon all of a sudden wants to go back and be with IO. So then Steve has to get out of bed and put Napoleon in the crate. Needless to say, I don't get it.
4. The new baby. I think this baby will be as active/busy as DJ is. This baby is very active in utero, at least I can feel alot. Yikes! It's almost consistent, too. If I settle down for the evening on the couch or sit at my desk at work a particular way, the baby starts thumping me. I feel you in there!!
5. The Apple Store. My laptop has been giving me fits the last number of months. It's been crashing unexpectedly, but most often while playing World of Warcraft. Yesterday, it started shutting off all by itself while I was ripping CDs. Unlike WoW, that's not video intensive. And it was doing it very consistently.
So I made an appointment at the Apple Store, took it in, and of course, I couldn't get it to crash while ripping a CD. Of course. The tech ran some diagnostics, which of course it passed, and then I said, "Let me login to WoW and get myself to a spot that the laptop hates." Sure enough, I hearth into Shattrath and wham-o. The screen goes black and the machine shuts off. The tech was impressed. He's ordering me a new motherboard which, even though it's technically a separate component, will have a new video card, too, because it's soldered onto the motherboard. I should be getting that back on Saturday.
Tonight, though, we're going to get my parents a new computer. We're going to take them to the Apple Store and look at various models and hopefully they can decide what they want. I've been promising them this for months and it's about time I just do it. So voila... we're doing it.
6. In reading Dave's blog, he's doing all these house projects to his new place and it's making me feel lazy. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm tired, I have a toddler, and I don't have the time to do anything. But I want to work on the beds outside! They need attention! Or they need a very strong plant killer. ::sigh:: I also want to clean up the basement, and organize the house some more as we still have boxes that we haven't unpacked since we moved in nearly 2 years ago.... yikes.
7. My folks called to tell me that they'll probably drive down with us to the beach this year because airfare is ridiculous. And to the airport closest to the beach, it is... $600/person is outrageous. We'd do better renting a Suburban and driving than dealing with that! But i looked on Southwest.com, and wow... they have half decent prices, like $85/person one way for a senior citizen. That seems reasonable!!! Except that it's flying into a city that's 2 hours away. Now my brother is flying there, too, renting a van and driving, so... if they don't really want to drive the 8 hours with us, they could make the trip in half the time flying and driving with my brother. That'll be a discussion over dinner tonight.
I was listening to the radio this morning and they were saying that airfares are going up because of fuel costs. Southwest may have raised their fares, but they aren't ridiculous like USAir, who will be charging $15 per bag. Want to charge me for using the bathroom, too? Sure, I'll leave the quarter on the tank.... Airlines = FAIL.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Monday, May 19, 2008
Parenting musings due to McDonogh incident
Be forewarned: This isn't a feel-good-happy blog posting. I'm not going to be able to address all of the issues embedded in this incident. There are race, class, and other social issues involved here that I could write a book. Instead, I'm writing this because I want to address the topic that is closer to me right now: parenting.
On Thursday, both the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Examiner broke a story about a Sophomore at McDonogh having bludgeoned his mother and attempted to do the same to his father.
This hit home in 2 ways: 1. The less "deep" way, a McDonogh student did this. 2. How could a child do that to their parent?!
A few months ago, another high school boy killed his entire family while they were sleeping. Again, at the time, I wondered, what would drive a kid to do that? Like the McDonogh kid, everyone said this kid seemed normal, well mannered, good grades...nothing to indicate some kind of psychosis. That incident hit home because it was a kid living in the general vacinity and it was a kid/family situation, but not nearly as closely as this incident.
Like the other incident, this incident makes you ask, why? What would drive a kid to snap like that? And then it makes you look into yourself and pray, please may I not do to my kid whatever the others did to make their kids snap. And, what can I do to help my child control their impulses? But I kept going with this line of thinking... am I really going to do something that's going to make DJ and/or his unborn sibling crack? I mean, what could I do to cause that?! I can't even fathom what I might do... !!
I've spent the last few days thinking about this... I mean, sure, every teenager, myself included, all wants to "kill" their parents, but at no point, not ever, ever, ever do you ever consider the real act. Never even crosses your mind. It's just all part of the asserting your independence and figuring out who you are phase (though you do that again in your mid-20s), but again, it's just frustration with both the parent and the teenager trying to figure out safe boundaries. It's not revert-to-instinct-and-kill anger.
Being a McDonogh grad, I still have connections into the school. In the case of this particular incident, I didn't go searching for details, but the details came to me (maybe God knew I needed the closure...?). The kid had an above 4.0 GPA, so clearly he was an honors/AP student who could most certainly handle the workload McDonogh was throwing at him. Apparently, he'd gotten an average grade on a test, and was afraid to tell his parents.
Excuse me?
You have an above perfect GPA and you're afraid to tell your parents that you got an average grade, not failing, but *average*. Wave the red flag and stop that car!! There's something very, very wrong there.
Ok, I've been afraid to tell my parents about a bad grade, so I can say I can empathize with the feeling. But I certainly had nowhere near this kid's GPA; I was a full GPA point below him! He's a National Honor Society first-rounder and probably future Ivy League-r, and I... yeah... National Honor Society never saw my name on their ballot and the Ivy Leagues rejected me, twice. So the kid had an off day. Don't we all have off days?! Isn't that all part of learning and maturing, is learning how to deal with yourself when you have off days (or streaks) so you can turn it around to get the desired results the next time?
I'm not the world's perfect parent; never will be. But common sense tells me that this was an extreme case of "push".
Yes, McDonogh is a top area college preparatory school with pressure of its own to get its students into the top colleges of the country. But during my time at McDonogh, I never felt like the curriculum, the teachers, or the environment were one of extreme "push". Sure, they'd push you to perform your best, but nothing above and beyond what was reasonable. They were actually a pretty good judge of what you could do. This is not to say there wasn't pressure; but the pressure I felt was from my way-too-smart-for-their-0wn-good classmates. A sizeable chunk of my classmates went to some of the best schools in the country. And even then, I didn't always feel the pressure from them. The existence of that type of pressure is not the school's fault. If anything, that's healthy pressure. And since graduation, there hasn't been THAT much turnover that would change that atmosphere. At least not that I can tell, but I'm an outsider now so I couldn't know that for sure.
Therefore, that leaves the pressure having come from home. Yikes. That's some serious "push". Why? And to what end? The reality is that with 1 average grade, his final grade would be completely unaffected, and thus his overall GPA would be also unaffected. So his chances to get into college are fine. The question to ask is if this is a pattern, what's wrong? Is the class just not his forte? Are there too many extracurriculars going on? Is it that he and the teacher aren't meshing?
I know we don't have the whole picture and a lot of those questions are entirely hypothetical based on the very little information I have. And we'll never get the whole story, if the family even knows... But it makes me feel better to think this is the scenario... to think like this it gives me hope that I may have the ability to control this type of outcome and that this won't happen to my family.
But the lesson here is for me, as a future parent of teenagers, is moderation! And learn my children's limits! Make my expectations clear, but also have compassion and be willing to teach the "off day" lesson. And if it's a pattern, use my analyst and troubleshooting skills and figure out what's going on...
And pray that God can give me the wisdom to raise happy, well adjusted children.
On Thursday, both the Baltimore Sun and the Baltimore Examiner broke a story about a Sophomore at McDonogh having bludgeoned his mother and attempted to do the same to his father.
This hit home in 2 ways: 1. The less "deep" way, a McDonogh student did this. 2. How could a child do that to their parent?!
A few months ago, another high school boy killed his entire family while they were sleeping. Again, at the time, I wondered, what would drive a kid to do that? Like the McDonogh kid, everyone said this kid seemed normal, well mannered, good grades...nothing to indicate some kind of psychosis. That incident hit home because it was a kid living in the general vacinity and it was a kid/family situation, but not nearly as closely as this incident.
Like the other incident, this incident makes you ask, why? What would drive a kid to snap like that? And then it makes you look into yourself and pray, please may I not do to my kid whatever the others did to make their kids snap. And, what can I do to help my child control their impulses? But I kept going with this line of thinking... am I really going to do something that's going to make DJ and/or his unborn sibling crack? I mean, what could I do to cause that?! I can't even fathom what I might do... !!
I've spent the last few days thinking about this... I mean, sure, every teenager, myself included, all wants to "kill" their parents, but at no point, not ever, ever, ever do you ever consider the real act. Never even crosses your mind. It's just all part of the asserting your independence and figuring out who you are phase (though you do that again in your mid-20s), but again, it's just frustration with both the parent and the teenager trying to figure out safe boundaries. It's not revert-to-instinct-and-kill anger.
Being a McDonogh grad, I still have connections into the school. In the case of this particular incident, I didn't go searching for details, but the details came to me (maybe God knew I needed the closure...?). The kid had an above 4.0 GPA, so clearly he was an honors/AP student who could most certainly handle the workload McDonogh was throwing at him. Apparently, he'd gotten an average grade on a test, and was afraid to tell his parents.
Excuse me?
You have an above perfect GPA and you're afraid to tell your parents that you got an average grade, not failing, but *average*. Wave the red flag and stop that car!! There's something very, very wrong there.
Ok, I've been afraid to tell my parents about a bad grade, so I can say I can empathize with the feeling. But I certainly had nowhere near this kid's GPA; I was a full GPA point below him! He's a National Honor Society first-rounder and probably future Ivy League-r, and I... yeah... National Honor Society never saw my name on their ballot and the Ivy Leagues rejected me, twice. So the kid had an off day. Don't we all have off days?! Isn't that all part of learning and maturing, is learning how to deal with yourself when you have off days (or streaks) so you can turn it around to get the desired results the next time?
I'm not the world's perfect parent; never will be. But common sense tells me that this was an extreme case of "push".
Yes, McDonogh is a top area college preparatory school with pressure of its own to get its students into the top colleges of the country. But during my time at McDonogh, I never felt like the curriculum, the teachers, or the environment were one of extreme "push". Sure, they'd push you to perform your best, but nothing above and beyond what was reasonable. They were actually a pretty good judge of what you could do. This is not to say there wasn't pressure; but the pressure I felt was from my way-too-smart-for-their-0wn-good classmates. A sizeable chunk of my classmates went to some of the best schools in the country. And even then, I didn't always feel the pressure from them. The existence of that type of pressure is not the school's fault. If anything, that's healthy pressure. And since graduation, there hasn't been THAT much turnover that would change that atmosphere. At least not that I can tell, but I'm an outsider now so I couldn't know that for sure.
Therefore, that leaves the pressure having come from home. Yikes. That's some serious "push". Why? And to what end? The reality is that with 1 average grade, his final grade would be completely unaffected, and thus his overall GPA would be also unaffected. So his chances to get into college are fine. The question to ask is if this is a pattern, what's wrong? Is the class just not his forte? Are there too many extracurriculars going on? Is it that he and the teacher aren't meshing?
I know we don't have the whole picture and a lot of those questions are entirely hypothetical based on the very little information I have. And we'll never get the whole story, if the family even knows... But it makes me feel better to think this is the scenario... to think like this it gives me hope that I may have the ability to control this type of outcome and that this won't happen to my family.
But the lesson here is for me, as a future parent of teenagers, is moderation! And learn my children's limits! Make my expectations clear, but also have compassion and be willing to teach the "off day" lesson. And if it's a pattern, use my analyst and troubleshooting skills and figure out what's going on...
And pray that God can give me the wisdom to raise happy, well adjusted children.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Happy Mothers/Birth Day
As usual, my birthday falls within days of Mother's Day. So celebrating the two together is nothing unusual. :)
Steve gave me the most wonderful gifts this weekend. Between Mother's Day and my birthday, I've been quite spoiled! For Mother's Day, besides a nap in the morning, Steve gave me Rock Band. WOOHOO! I'm also probably the only mother on the planet that got Rock Band as a Mother's Day gift. LOL
Last night, Steve took me out to dinner for my birthday.... Charleston in Harbor East. Oh man is that place fan-tastic. We each had a 5 course meal, though to be fair, each course was appetizer sized. Steve got a wine pairing with each meal of which I took a sip or two of each. There were some wines that by themselves, were difficult to drink. But when we got the meal and tried the wine with it, they were absolutely perfect. Amazing how the wine "changes" based on what you're eating. I'll post the menu later; I forgot it at home. Suffice to say, it was nothing short of WOW, that was AWESOME.
Besides the quality of the food, Charleston prides itself on its service (as well as wine selection). Our initial waiter had the Robert Smith (from The Cure) hairdo that just had to go. He also postured a lot... ok, so he drove me bonkers. He apparently shoved off our table and went to a different one by the end of the evening because we were being attentively waited on by a young lady who had a much more genuine personality than "Robert Smith". Aside from that, though, the experience was truly an experience, and it was really nice to spend some quality time with Steve, even if he was constantly checking his iPhone for signs that his servers had crashed... which they did right around dessert. ::sigh::
Steve gave me the most wonderful gifts this weekend. Between Mother's Day and my birthday, I've been quite spoiled! For Mother's Day, besides a nap in the morning, Steve gave me Rock Band. WOOHOO! I'm also probably the only mother on the planet that got Rock Band as a Mother's Day gift. LOL
Last night, Steve took me out to dinner for my birthday.... Charleston in Harbor East. Oh man is that place fan-tastic. We each had a 5 course meal, though to be fair, each course was appetizer sized. Steve got a wine pairing with each meal of which I took a sip or two of each. There were some wines that by themselves, were difficult to drink. But when we got the meal and tried the wine with it, they were absolutely perfect. Amazing how the wine "changes" based on what you're eating. I'll post the menu later; I forgot it at home. Suffice to say, it was nothing short of WOW, that was AWESOME.
Besides the quality of the food, Charleston prides itself on its service (as well as wine selection). Our initial waiter had the Robert Smith (from The Cure) hairdo that just had to go. He also postured a lot... ok, so he drove me bonkers. He apparently shoved off our table and went to a different one by the end of the evening because we were being attentively waited on by a young lady who had a much more genuine personality than "Robert Smith". Aside from that, though, the experience was truly an experience, and it was really nice to spend some quality time with Steve, even if he was constantly checking his iPhone for signs that his servers had crashed... which they did right around dessert. ::sigh::
Friday, May 9, 2008
Who ate too much grass?
The doggies!
The drama from Wednesday night was entirely due to their eating too many grass clippings. They both had two full meals of their food yesterday and not a morsel was vomited. Apparently, we can't let them out for long periods of time now the day our grass is cut...
The drama from Wednesday night was entirely due to their eating too many grass clippings. They both had two full meals of their food yesterday and not a morsel was vomited. Apparently, we can't let them out for long periods of time now the day our grass is cut...
Thursday, May 8, 2008
Doggy drama
Last night, we let the dogs run around outside in the back yard (4 ft fence FTW!) until they exhausted themselves. About an hour after they came in (and had promptly plopped themselves in the corner of the sofa on their blanket), IO got up off the couch and started to wander. Random wandering makes us nervous, so we asked him to get back on the couch which, like a good dog, he did.
A few minutes later, I got ready to go to bed, and gave Steve a kiss goodnight. I go to give the doggies one last pat on the head when I see that Napoleon has vomited all over his front paw and the blanket (thankfully!) he was laying on. Fantastic.
While Steve goes to wash Napoleon off, I start to clean up the mess. I wasn't finished 2 minutes when IO vomited on the OTHER blanket we have on the couch. Uh-oh.
Clean that up, put both dogs in the crate, and settle down for The Watch. Sure enough, IO vomits again in the crate and once more once out of the crate. Napoleon vomits another time on the kitchen floor (Steve saw that one coming and was rewarded with relatively easy cleanup), and one more vomit incident from IO (who eats a lot more grass than Napoleon does).
Now I'm starting to wonder.
I saw an awful lot of grass in the first "rounds" of vomit from both dogs. Grass tends to make dogs vomit. But you know, we also just opened new batches of food for them. It's the exact same food they had previously, just a new bag. But being that I had read an article about the brand of dog food we feed the doggies supposedly being the cause for lots of dogs vomiting only just a few weeks back on the ultra-paranoid italian greyhound list that I read, I am starting to wonder. Honestly, I wasn't convinced from reading that article that the food is to blame here. Seemed like a lot of coincindences, but what do I know? Link is here; draw your own conclusions. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2008/04/pet_food_recalls93.html
Meanwhile, I kept thinking. We'd fed it to them yesterday morning, and we had no doggy vomit in the crate 11 hours later. So is it really the food or is it the fact that Brian had just cut our grass today and the dogs were feasting on the clippings?? As of right now, the jury is still out. We fed them this morning (they were famished!), and Steve hasn't let me know yet if the doggies are ok upon arriving home.
Also for the first time in years, we let the doggies sleep in separate crates. I think they were so tired from being outside and from all the vomiting that IO was grateful for the alone time (he really isn't a fan of his noisy roommate when the roommate is being noisy), and Napoleon was just d-o-n-e and didn't argue with the arrangements. In fact, they each went into a separate crate on their own accord, so who knows??
A few minutes later, I got ready to go to bed, and gave Steve a kiss goodnight. I go to give the doggies one last pat on the head when I see that Napoleon has vomited all over his front paw and the blanket (thankfully!) he was laying on. Fantastic.
While Steve goes to wash Napoleon off, I start to clean up the mess. I wasn't finished 2 minutes when IO vomited on the OTHER blanket we have on the couch. Uh-oh.
Clean that up, put both dogs in the crate, and settle down for The Watch. Sure enough, IO vomits again in the crate and once more once out of the crate. Napoleon vomits another time on the kitchen floor (Steve saw that one coming and was rewarded with relatively easy cleanup), and one more vomit incident from IO (who eats a lot more grass than Napoleon does).
Now I'm starting to wonder.
I saw an awful lot of grass in the first "rounds" of vomit from both dogs. Grass tends to make dogs vomit. But you know, we also just opened new batches of food for them. It's the exact same food they had previously, just a new bag. But being that I had read an article about the brand of dog food we feed the doggies supposedly being the cause for lots of dogs vomiting only just a few weeks back on the ultra-paranoid italian greyhound list that I read, I am starting to wonder. Honestly, I wasn't convinced from reading that article that the food is to blame here. Seemed like a lot of coincindences, but what do I know? Link is here; draw your own conclusions. http://www.consumeraffairs.com
Meanwhile, I kept thinking. We'd fed it to them yesterday morning, and we had no doggy vomit in the crate 11 hours later. So is it really the food or is it the fact that Brian had just cut our grass today and the dogs were feasting on the clippings?? As of right now, the jury is still out. We fed them this morning (they were famished!), and Steve hasn't let me know yet if the doggies are ok upon arriving home.
Also for the first time in years, we let the doggies sleep in separate crates. I think they were so tired from being outside and from all the vomiting that IO was grateful for the alone time (he really isn't a fan of his noisy roommate when the roommate is being noisy), and Napoleon was just d-o-n-e and didn't argue with the arrangements. In fact, they each went into a separate crate on their own accord, so who knows??
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