lydamorehouse | Entries tagged with school

Mason has left the building.

This morning was like old times. All three of us were up before the crack of dawn and bundled into the car. I took Shawn to work first and then, instead of taking Mason to Washington Tech, like the old day, I took him and his backpack (and duffle bag) to the airport. Any minute now, he'll be winging his way back to school in Connecticut.

We'll miss him.

Per my previous blog, one of the things we did this last weekend was go out to Tavern on Grand, as it will be shuttering some time this year (early June is what the papers said, I think.) The place was packed, which was a little freaky for us, since we are still avoiding crowds as a general rule and masking in most public places. We decided we really wanted to do it, anyway, so we we masked as much as possible, and managed to have a decent night out. Hopefully, we did not tempt fate. Fingers crossed.

Otherwise, it was a quiet weekend around chez Morehouse. I'm still working on finishing up my gaudy Valentine's quilt. There is so much glitter, so many hearts. I will be surprised if anyone wants this thing when it's finished. But, it is kinda cute? I should have it pieced fully by tonight, so perhaps there will be in-progress pictures tomorrow.

Tonight is going to be a long one. Shawn has a Friends of the Ramsey County Library board meeting tonight that she can't skip. As I am the family chauffer, I will be in attendance as well--just skulking around the stacks, looking for manga to read. I just finished a couple of first volumes. Last time I was stuck hanging out at the library, I was in the grown-up section and picked up Mieruko-chan by Izumi Tomoki, which... I'm uncertain why it ended up shelves with adult materials. The horror elements are reminiscent of Ito Junji, who somehow, always ends up shelved as adult. My biggest guess is that the art style is fairly ecchi? There's a lot of fan service--but, like, not all that much more than you might find in standard shounen manga, many of which are shelved in teens. I really wish I could be a fly on the wall for some of these decisions. I mean, I'd be fine with all the fan-service stuff being shelved as "adult"? or all as "teen"? But, be consistent is all I ask. I mean, maybe something very ADULT is on its way in this series, but volume one was very typical of "girl sees horror stuff."

The other manga I picked up and read the first volume of was a very strange series from the 1970s called Orochi by Umezu Kazuo, I say it's weird because our titular heroine doesn't appear to be human, and clearly has some supernatural powers? Like, she has the ability to reanimate the dead, but isn't aware enough of human nature to understand why this might be a VERY BAD IDEA. I picked up two volumes of this one and will probably try to read the second before I pass too much judgment on it as a series. The library had all five volumes, so if I decide I like it enough to continue, I can read the whole series.

I'm also still doing a few things for Cheryl Morgan at Wizard Tower, but given the Chengdu blow-up, I suspect she's not in a hurry to hear back from me.... https://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?p=29370

My long-haired son and his short-haired best friend, waving at a colleague in Rice Park. They have their backs turned so it looks like they are saying goodbye to the past, or possibly "hello" to the future beyond their parents/the camera's eye.

Image: My long-haired son and his short-haired best friend, waving at a colleague in Rice Park. They have their backs turned so it looks like they are saying goodbye to the past, or possibly "hello" to the future beyond their parents'/the camera's eye.

Last night was Mason's graduation from Washington Technical High School.

I will admit that, other than cheering for my son and his friends, I fully expected to be bored out of my MIND. Instead, we had some lovely moments last night, not the least of which was being reminded of JUST HOW DIVERSE Mason's school is. I think the best example is that the students all handed the (student) readers a slip with their name on it--how they wanted it read--because so many students have the kinds of names where they might go by Victor Yi at school but Yi Xue-Gang at home. They might want to be Victor Yi or Yi Victor or... their name might be the only word that grandma will understand tonight so they want it to be said in the full "at home" way.

My son also had this option, though, which is super cool. Everyone is listed in the program by their legal name, so at first we were like, "Are they not going in alphabetical... oh. Of course!" Because several of a sort wanted first name last or last name, depending.

It also says something that no one pranked this, at all. No one had the reader read "Bobby McFarts A Lot" or anything like that. Everyone understood that this was just what you do. And that was just quietly cool as f*ck, you know?

Plus, the student body voted for the teacher speaker.... and picked the straight-up Communist, who used his speech to promote all forms of collective bargaining, and shouted out the Line 3 water protects, Black Lives Matter, #StopAsian Hate, and Stonewall all in one godd*mn AMAZING speech, that brought me to the "This is the America I wish were true," kind of tears.

The student speakers included one bubbly student who had no problem with public speaking at the Roy Wilkens Auditorium and Mai Sun who we automatically loved because we remembered Mason telling us stories of when they had classes together and both of them thinking the other had been called when the teacher said their name.... who, poor Mai Sun, was kind of blown away by the fact that they didn't dim the lights, so she could see EVERYBODY and it was possibly the most sincerely adorable speech (somehow with singing???) that I haver ever seen.

We also had a School Board member who spoke indirectly (but not subtly) the language of Black Lives Matter, while also breaking down into tears over the loss of her colleague to COVID.

Heckuva a day!

Mason has just started his PSEO* classes at the University of Minnesota. As predicted, he's loving them. He's taking American Foreign Policy, Modern Literature, Chinese I, and Pre-Calc all through the U, and then he sneaked in an art class at St. Paul College (one of the few benefits of distance learning: no distances to travel between classes!)

It's been so fun to hear him after he emerges from his room to tell us all about what he's excited about with classes... and then today?

We got the call from one of his teachers... Mason is a semi-finalist for the National Merit Scholarship! https://www.startribune.com/more-than-275-minnesota-seniors-named-national-merit-semifinalists-nmsf-2021/572361201/ In fact, if you go to the document at the bottom of the article, you'll see he's the only student from Washington Technology Magnet to qualify this year. (This news made my paladin very sad. He can think of a lot of his colleagues who deserve it as much as he does. And, of course, it doesn't feel great to be the one white kid to make it in a school that only has 6% white kids .)

I mean, I'm still awfully proud. Now we just have to figure out the application to be in the running as a finalist. Fingers crossed, but even if he doesn't make it, being a semi-finalist is pretty dang cool.

Mason on the first day of senior year of high school in 2020 (at 17)

Mason on the first day of senior year of high school in 2020 (at 17)

My dude: Mason on the first day of school 2020 (a high school senior.)

---
PSEO is something I've talked about before, but if you are just tuning in, it stands for post-secondary education opportunity. It's a way for high school students (at least in our state) to take classes at their local universities or colleges while still part of the public school system. So, basically, Mason gets to finish up his high school credits at the University of Minnesota. He has full U of MN privileges--he has a student U ID card, a U e-mail address, he can join any university club or organization (provided that he would be otherwise eligible) and basically gets to function as a U students, even though he's still in high school. Of course, this year he's doing distance learning like everyone else, but he gets to do university level distance learning, so that's a bit of a bonus.

At least today I can sit on my front porch in the sunshine.

Yesterday, the first "ahhhhh, we're all working at home!!" day was miserable. When it wasn't grim and dreary, it was either snowing or sleeting. Today, we have bright sunlight and moderate temperatures (for Minnesota, for this time of year: 38 F / 3.3 C).

I also had to go and pick up my taxes from the tax guy and so I made a trip out to Saint Louis Park (a nearby suburb.) I was surprised how much traffic there still was. I was kind of expecting apocalypse conditions, but, apparently,a surprising number of people are still going where they need to go. Today was also "pick all your stuff up from school" day at Mason's high school, and, while he didn't need anything per se, he did need to talk to a counselor about next year's PSEO. (He'd called the University to double-check, but the deadline hasn't changed, despite EVERYTHING CHANGING.) So, we did that and some other drive-through kinds of errands, including picking up some of Shawn's prescriptions. So all and all today has turned into a busy day. I think I was out of the house more today than I have been in three or four days.

Meanwhile, Shawn has taken very seriously the whole 'do all your normal routines,' and so has been getting up at 5-the bleep-thirty am just like normal. I actually yelled at her this morning that if she wants an authentic experience, she should sit in the car for a half-hour. But, whatever. My baby needs her routines.

For myself, I've been quilting. I finished up the big velvet one... well, except the actually finishing part of finishing. I need to still get batting, but we have a backing for it picked out. I don't really want to get the batting online because I want to support any shops that might be open and need the influx of business.

So, in the meantime, I started a new quilt....

quilt squares kind of a mess? But I'm having fun.

Image: quilt squares... kind of a mess, but I'm having fun!

Anxiety quilting for the win! This one is so very, very crooked because I'm doing different size pieces, which is kind of too much of a step up for my abilities? But, I really continue not to really care. Right now, this is all practice and more for fun than anything else.

How are things where you are? What are you doing to pass the time?

I'm in a weird mood today.

Ironically, it's due to something I was reading (which maybe isn't 'ironic,' Alanis, but more coincidental, as today is 'what are you reading Wednesday.')

Thing is, some time ago, I got another invite to a possible anthology that would revolve around magical realism. As part of that, the editor sent me a sample story. I finally had a chance to read it today, and now I'm trying to think about what I would have to say in a magically realistic way. I tend to think of myself as a straight-forward writer... for the most part. I know that I have a tendency towards genre trope perversion, and I can be, as my former agent apparently used to say to sell my work, "Weird, but compelling." Which, when you think about it, pretty much could sum up magical realism as a genre. But, I'm just sort of in that nebulous phase of story writing where I'm just trying to wrap my head around what I might write and how I might write it.

This feeling is probably exacerbated by the fact that all I really want to write is more fan fiction. I've been on a streak. I have a number of pieces going, one of which is extremely self-indulgent, which means that it's tremendously fun. Who knew I had a secret yen to write slice-of-life on the farm stories? NOT ME. But, apparently, I do. (Yes, this is still Bleach fic, so WTF. I should at least be a Silver Spoon fan.)

So, what have I be reading?

Honestly, not a huge amount. I did read the first volume of Nyankees which I LOVED because it was precisely what I wanted/expected. It's cats as people (and sometimes as themselves), running around doing hoodlum things, like fighting over food, territory, and lady cats. It's dumb AF. It's AWESOME af. 10/10 would recommend.

Also, some time before Christmas, I ordered a DVD version of the Bleach Live Action film, which finally showed up on Monday.

a montage of a bunch of bleach characters staring intently out at the audience--literally everyone is good looking

a montage of a bunch of bleach characters staring intently out at the audience--literally everyone is good looking

image: a montage of a bunch of real people Bleach characters staring intently out at the audience--literally all of them are super good-looking.

I bought the DVD from somewhere in Malaysia because the people I go watch anime with expressed an interest in seeing this and the hostess does not have Netflix. It is, so far as I know, still available to stream from Netflix, but let's be honest I own almost everything else Bleach related, so I should probably just own this.

I am thinking about trying to find a copy of "Bleach: The Musical," but then I would own a musical and... even though I love "Manly Dance" from the Bleach musical, I do not know if I could ever force myself through an entire musical, even one based on Bleach. You ARE talking to the one person who intentionally fast-forwarded through the music in Disney's "Frozen." In fact, I fast-forward through any musical number in almost anything I watch. And, no, I have never gotten into "Hamilton," which I do, in point of fact, know makes me a freak of nature.

Look, I don't like tomatoes, either, so I am possibly the only person I know who isn't terribly fond of pizza, which also makes me an outlier in American culture. (I love white pizzas, though, thanks to discovering such things existed when we went to Rome a zillion years ago with my parents.)

Anyway.

The other thing we've been dealing with again is Mason's late-night schedule. So, I've probably talked here, before, about how our clever boy has figured out how to get a later start at his high school. He doesn't have to go in until 8:50 am most days (Wednesdays are an exception because Washington has something they call "Foundations," which appears to be like home room, on Wednesdays.) He's arranged this because his PSEO classes allow him to be flexible about when he takes them. So, he's signed up for evening classes both semesters. This semester he has one on-line class, economics, and one in-class class, which is print making (which my art loathing child is hoping isn't too focused on drawing skills since he has NONE.) Between these classes, which often go until 7 pm;his robotics season, which has him staying until at least 5:30 pm; and his work, which, when he goes can go as long as 7 pm, Shawn and I have been struggling with pushing back our dinner schedule so we can all still eat together/eat decently.

We're old.

We have been old, in fact, since we were young.

We like to eat at 4:30 pm. Don't judge!

Okay, you can judge, because everybody does--even Mason's friends called him an old man when he would leave a gaming session to go eat at our ridiculously early hour. But, at least try to sympathize with the idea that a family that is used to eating at one time is now STARTING meal preparation THREE HOURS LATER than usual. We don't eat these days sometimes until 8 pm, which wonderfully European, but TOTALLY NOT US.

Shawn and I are thinking that we're just going to have to institute a kind of second dinner option, wherein we eat some kind of (potentially healthy) salad/appetizer some time closer to 5 pm, so that we all aren't hangry by dinner time. Mason, meanwhile, has always had the option of snacks either at St. Paul College or at his work. I pack extra food on robotics days. So, he'll make it one way or the other, but Shawn and I have previously stared balefully at potato chips or just sitting and being sad until dinner time, so the pre-dinner dinner might be a solution for us.

I don't know how normal people even do this late eating thing. I suppose you also don't have breakfast at 6 am and lunch sometime around 10:30 am, eh? WEIRDOS.

Anyway, did y'all read anything interesting this week?

Not necessarily in that order.

Yesterday was a lot of picking up prescriptions for Shawn, doing laundry, and general "oh, you've been away, this needs doing" stuff. Including a trip out to our new vet in Maplewood to pick up more of Deliah's prescription for her pain meds. Considering all the cat illnesses we've had this year, Deliah is doing really well. ( Cat medical issues under the cut )

I also took Mason in to Washington for an appointment with his counselor. The way things work at Mason's school, the counselors are the ones who set schedules. He brought in the courses he'd signed up for already at St. Paul College (a history class and an English comp) and worked things out for himself so that he FINALLY HAS A DECENT START TIME. Yes! He's not going to have to be at school next year until almost 9 am (8:40 or something more like that, because of how classes are).

For Mason, this is ideal.

As a teen and college-age adult, I craved the earliest morning classes. That's when my synapses are firing best. But, I was also never one to stay up until so far past midnight that it's technically the next day.

But he got all his requirements sorted and decided to take AP (or CIS, "college in school," I can't remember which,) Statistics, since he didn't quite manage to test out of Calculus I and didn't feel like retaking it again right away. I think that was wise. He also may end up really enjoying statistics.

That's all good news on the school front.

Meanwhile, Shawn texted me and said that she did NOT place at the State Fair for her rugs. Boo! Robbed!

As I predicted: suddenly, there was an influx of entries. Last year, there were only two (three ribbons are available) and other weavers must have noticed, because this year there were SEVEN entries. Shawn noted that the woman who won in BOTH categories (same woman, two separate size rugs) not only had been last year's winner, but also is what is known in the weaving business as an "art" weaver. Usually this means a smaller, hand loom. Not an industrial, working-class loom, like ours. We suspect we were dissed for being too "country" as it were. Shawn and I are going to make time to go, if only because we need to check out the competition.

Last night I worked at Maplewood Library, which was strange on a lot of fronts. First off, I haven't worked in so long that I made a few rookie mistakes (the game CDs do not go on the shelf!) and generally felt like "what is work??? How done?" But, luckily, the people I was working with felt the same way as they hurried to get some of the end of the night stuff done on time so that they could watch "Big Brother" in the backroom. I have not seen an episode of "Big Brother" since it was first popular a thousand years ago; who knew it was still going? They were both super into it, though, which I found very charming. And, honestly? It was pretty dead. Yesterday was the first day of the State Fair and you could tell. Every place that wasn't the Fair Grounds was pretty slow.

Also I heard all sorts of stories about weird things that happen in libraries, including, last night, about the time that one of the circulation staff discovered a dead body.

This is actually a sad story, as it involves a homeless person who probably OD'd. Apparently, the library used to have a small homeless camp sheltering UNDER their back deck. This is not surprising, as libraries are becoming the front lines for homelessness and other social work care. When I was working last night, three people came in for "care packages," which are just basics: a water bottle, a protein bar, some other stuff like that. But, they just come up to the information desk and ask for one and the staff puts them together in a plastic bag. I do not think this is standard. I think this is something that the Maplewood staff took on themselves.

At any rate, the story of the dead body is basically that the staff person was taking her lunchtime walk, which brought her past the homeless camp, and a regular resident there had a "not home" sign on her camp for just too many days for the staff person to be comfortable with, so she got a social worker to investigate and sure enough, she was "home," just dead. The mystery is: who put up the sign? Speculation is that there was a boyfriend well known to the staff and that the boyfriend supplied the drugs, knew she might OD, and put up the sign. Not cool, boyfriend. But, that's it. I mean, Roseville, will get dirty diapers in their book box, but not so far as I know, dead bodies under their deck....

Maplewood, for all that it is a suburb, does have it's share of weirdness. I have worked there when fist fights have broken out and the police needed to be called. People muttering about Jesus is just background noise, so long as it doesn't disturb the other patrons....

So you know? If the staff want to hide in the backroom for an hour, who am I to point fingers?

What did I do this weekend?

Oh, right, on Saturday, I agreed to work at Roseville from noon until 5pm. That was fine. I mean, work, but I don't mind the actual labor and I rather enjoy my colleagues... and, of course, the books. I came home with at least one, like I always do.

I SHOULD have gone to Powderhorn to watch the May Day parade (which may be the last one)t, but Sunday was already the sort of day when I woke up late for a video chat with

naomikritzer is and I like to armchair travel vicariously with my friends. Last time she went to that hemisphere it was to Taiwan and i was able to find some things that Naomi really enjoyed, so I'm hoping to do the same for her again. The disadvantage is that because jiawen already LIVES in Taiwan, I'd been reading about Taiwan for years, actually, and I know a LOT less (read: almost nothing) about China. I'm enjoying reading the guide books, though. It's a weird hobby.

Today, I need to go to the post office. I'm out of international stamps (speaking of my weird hobbies). I am behind on some of my pen pal correspondence, plus I've got several new names gleaned from "friendship books" and so that means I need to take the time to write an 'introductory letter' and see if I can entice people to write me back.

Today, I am picking up Shawn early and we are headed to Washington Tech to watch Mason get inducted into the National Honors Society. He was already a member of the JUNIOR National Honors Society, but this is the high school version (which, for whatever reason, starts in 10th grade, rather than 9th.) He did not have to reapply, but admission is not guaranteed by grades--he also had be sure to have all of his volunteer hours in. An odd requirement, but it keeps him volunteering to be a debate coach, which he enjoys, but the volunteer hours are an extra bonus.
Of course, he rolled his eyes when his mom said she wanted to come to see the ceremony. I told him that parents live to embarrass their children, so he's just going to have to roll with it. Besides, I'm sure the Randalls (the family of Mason's ex-GF) will be there, because I swear this is half of why they started going out (a shared embarrassment of their overly proud parents.)

After that, I'm headed off to watch anime at a friend's house. This is a friend who I sort of know through conventions, but mostly have gotten a little closer with via email conversations about anime/manga (with me on the manga and her on the anime). The event is a weekly thing she does with another close woman friend, and I'm very much worried that I'm going to be a third wheel. BUT, I am looking forward to it, as I have no one currently in the house who watches anime with me. When Mason was younger, we shared Bleach fandom, but now I'm on my own. I'd be lovely if we all click and this becomes a semi-regular thing. So fingers crossed.

This weekend is Mother's Day and currently the plan is to make quiche and blueberry pie for Shawn.For those new to my blog and wondering "but what about YOU, Lyda??" The answer is that, long ago, I decided I am selfish and do not want to share Mother's Day. So, my family invented "Ima's Day" which we celebrate on December 5, the anniversary of my legal adoption of Mason. (We had Mason before our marriage was legal, but I suspect, though I don't know, that queer couples still have to do this? Even though I was very much a part of Mason's conception, the law considered me an outsider until we did the proper legal thing, with paperwork and affidavits and everything.)

So, that's me. How's you?

I have a window open and the sun is shining on my face. It's a gorgeous day.

Of course, I instantly looked at the leaves still covering much of our front gardens and yard and thought, "Someone should take care of that." Since I am sitting in the upstairs sunporch, apparently decided that that 'someone,' was not, in fact, me. At leas not right at this minute. I might have to go out and poke around a little. It's REALLY nice out.

We'll see. I don't actually have a huge amount of time before I have to get ready to go pick up Eleanor. It's Friday, so a group of us are meeting for our usual hangout at Claddaugh.

Mason's home sick again, though. This one was a bad one. Migraines are like that, though. He emphatically did not want to deal with the fact that rebound headaches are a thing. as is a need to recover from the first one, (and was in such a state that he convinced himself that a second absence = utter and complete failure.) Thus, we were half way to school before I made the executive decision to turn him back around.

I wish I understood how better to talk to Mason about the high standards he puts on himself. I'm sure, if I had taken him to school and he'd had some kind of physical or mental collapse the school would be looking at us demanding to know why we push him so damn hard.

We don't. This is all him. I am constantly talking to him about how grades aren't the end all, be all. I know that he definitely got the message from the University of Chicago's dean that transcripts matter, but I tried to explain to him 1) attendance isn't EVER looked at, 2) particularly if the overall GPA is good. And, GOOD, it doesn't have to be only A+s from here on out, either. What they are REALLY looking at is that you've challenged yourself, taken the hard classes that might net you a B, but are not "Basketweaving 101."

Mason seems also quite convinced that successful people never take breaks. Given that both me and his mom do, I'm guessing he either doesn't think we're successful (a possibility) or he must have superheroes for colleagues (or both.) Because I asked him, "Are you saying NO ONE in your classes is ever sick two days in a row?" He was convinced this morning, at any rate, that no, none of them are EVER out sick more than one day, and then only once every blue moon. I have no idea how to counter that. Only later did it occur to me that there's something wonky about this thinking that goes beyond the obvious. Obviously, people can do well and be out sick more than one day. However, what is this strange benchmark in Mason's mind even saying about people who are chronically sick? Are they automatic failures? When did attendance = intelligence, anyway? I have no idea what's going on with him this morning, except, I suspect, he's just feeling panicked because AP tests are coming in a week and the migraine exhausted him to the point of hysteria.

Both of which are legit.

But which make me feel even better about putting my foot down and demanding he pay attention to what his body is telling him.

I have a bunch of things to report, for those interested.

First, I booked a hotel room for Mason and I in downtown Chicago for our trip in early April to attend the Open House at the University of Chicago. We're headed down on Thursday, April 4, for a Friday, half day presentation. The tentative schedule of events includes "model classes," which, I mean, *I* will totally enjoy, even if Mason does not. Because the Friday programming starts so early, I booked our hotel through until Saturday morning so that we could have a little time to generally explore Chicago, which is something Mason has been wanting to do since forever. We go there fairly often, but almost always straight to the Field Museum, and I think he'd like to see some new stuff, if at all possible. To the end, I booked us some theater tickets. Since Chicago is known for its improv comedy, I found us a show called "Improvised Shakespeare" to go see on Thursday night.

I plan to hit the library in the next few days and raid it of any and all books on traveling to Chicago that they might have, because I love playing tourist pretty much anywhere.

Continuing with Mason-related news, Mason found out this morning that he did NOT get accepted to the Yale Global Studies Youth Summer Program for this year, alas. He did get the option to go on the waiting list, but since we were always on the fence about how the in living f*ck we were going to pay for this and the fact that Mason actually really ENJOYS a program free summer, we're letting him decide whether or not he's going to request to be on the waiting list or not. I feel pretty good about this outcome, despite an initial wave of disappointment. Had he gotten in, there would have been massive panic to rearrange our summer schedule, figure out whether or not it was worth a loan, etc., etc. Moreover, Mason only heard about the program two weeks before the application deadline. The fact that he got as far as being wait listed, seems pretty darned good.

Besides, because it's Yale, one of the many schools caught up in the pay to play scandal? I can totally just mutter, "Humph, I'm sure some rich family just paid to get THEIR kid on the top of the list." ;-)

Continuing on with things Mason is up to... Today is the first day of Mason's robotics tournament at the University of Minnesota (Williams Arena). It's a three day thing, with inspections and warm-ups today and competition tomorrow and Saturday. Mason left for school this morning saying, "Well, today the team gets to re-learn how to tolerate each other in a 10 x 10 space for 8 hours without restarting to actual murder," which when he puts it like that i wonder why he likes this activity at ALL. :-)

Shawn's birthday is coming up, on the first of April. Today, in fact, I need to take some time to get my butt to the store and get her the present she's been asking for. I meant to do that yesterday, but she ended up staying home with a terrible migraine. I could pretend that I stayed home to nurse her through it, but I actually left her sleeping to go hang out with my friends Harry and

naomikritzer at a Chinese buffet for two hours to talk Marvel movies and rock operas.

For myself, I have to remember that I signed up to work/volunteer at the MELSA pop-up manga library at Anime Detour both tomorrow (from noon - 2 pm) and Saturday (6pm - 8 pm).

Wow, we have a lot going on.

How's you?

At some point today, I have to leave this warm, snuggly house and go and get Inky's cremains. They called yesterday and said that he'd come back.

It's really coming down out there.

Mason has a debate tournament this afternoon that he's judging over in Minneapolis. As a judge, he's a volunteer, so I have to transport him there and back again. Given how quickly the inches accumulated already this morning, I'm not looking forward to trying to race him across town at 3:00 for a 3:30 meet. I told him to see if he can't get the cell number of someone at the competition, just in case we run late.

My Broad Universe mentee and I had an interesting conversation last night about iGen, Mason's generation.

She's doing some kind of coursework or other that has her considering the various "personalities" of the generation and she said that iGen is supposed to be go-getters, but her experience showed them to be fairly incapable of things once considered standard, like addressing an envelope or keeping a budget. She's very likely right about those last things. We've had to work overtime to make sure Mason has gotten skills that I KNOW I was taught in school, like how to write a check and read/write cursive. (I blame standardized testing, not this generation or its teachers, however.) At any rate, I noted that Mason absolutely fits the "stereotype" of a self-starter. I never even heard that he'd signed himself up to be a volunteer debate judge until yesterday when he asked for transportation to the meet. Mason is required as a gifted an talented student to have volunteer hours and he found some in an area he ADORES. I told her, too, how he found himself a paying job that continues to be a perfect fit and the various times that we've found out, after the fact, that there was a scheduling snafu with his coursework that Mason just took care of--often in fairly brilliant and innovative ways, like how he finagled a TA position in English as ungraded coursework.

Obviously, Mason may be atypical. He certainly does prefer his video games over a lot of other activities--but again, I don't see this as a problem. From what I can tell, Mason has found himself a good community. They are all GLBT+/queer kids and, while I hear some trash talk in his comm, it seems very good-natured and not the kind of toxic stuff parents of gamers have to have CONSTANT VIGILANCE about. He's got himself on a team that plays in an amateur Overwatch league and it 'sparks joy' for him, clearly. So, I mean, sure, kids these days and their E-lect-TRON-ics, but I think we are all better served when we consider how such tools are being used by the generation that owns them.

Whelp, there's the call. They've cancelled afternoon activities for SPPS (Saint Paul Public Schools). I texted Mason to have him double-check that that includes his tournament, but I suspect it will.

Now we just need &!*%ing St. Paul to call a snow emergency so they will plow the &!*%ing streets.

My street is nearly impassable. WEIRDLY, where the rich people live, Summit Avenue appears to have been plowed curb to curb. It's almost like there's a socio-economic division in how the city choses to clear its streets. $10 says Highland Park is plowed, too.

But, so, the whole mentee thing via Broad Universe is going well, I think. We've done a bunch of checking in. She seems pleased with my level of critique (which can be intense and daunting) and as a mentor, I feel like my job is offer routes, but, ultimately, to go where she wants. Speaking of volunteering, it's been an interesting gig so far.

Huh, apparently I just have to wait long enough... now St. Paul has finally called a snow emergency. Yay!

A friend of mine in Canada and I were trading selfies, and, while I normally don't post selfies, I thought this one perfectly captured my resting MURDER face in response to this weather....

me, looking decidedly murderous, and a snow covered tree behind me

me, looking decidedly murderous, and a snow covered tree behind me

I should probably go out into this mess to make sure we have something for dinner tonight, in fact.

*sigh*

...than using up my leftover homemade French bread for bread pudding. I don't know why, I probably should feel more like someone who lived through the Depression (Captain America?).

For those following along, it's a bazillion degrees below zero here. Mason's school is cancelled AGAIN for tomorrow. As he pointed out, now the only day he will have school is Friday and then it will be the weekend again. He says, "It's going to feel less like going back to school and more like a break in my winter vacation."

It's been lovely to have both him and Shawn home. We've done a whole lot of nothing all day; none of us is out of our PJs and it's 5:37 pm. I did some stamping, but mostly I've been cooking and eating... and napping. I really have to say that this cold weather is working for me. I'm also really glad that several local businesses have taken it upon themselves to close. My coffee shop closed. The postal workers didn't try to deliver. People who could, should stay home, inside, and warm.

In less lovely news, my Loft class was officially cancelled. I was really looking forward to it, but alas. I only got 4 people interested. (Worse, we could have used the money. Ah well.)

On the other hand, Broad Universe is trying out a mentoring program, and I signed up to be a mentor. I've got myself a mentee, and we've started working together. By chance, she's written a fantasy novel involving the sidhe and Irish politics. Considering that I wrote something similar (my first novel, which got weirdly published via a pay-as-you-go outfit: https://tapas.io/series/sidhepromised), I'm VERY excited by her novel. So, that's a yay.

I am reading something, but I'm not enjoying it. I decided to try to pick up the books that are up for the Philip K. Dick award and I started Claire North's newest book 84K. I'm... not much liking the fact that she leaves sentences trailing off, unfinished, and there are a LOT of fragments and fragmented scenes. I'm not QUITE ready to give up on it, but, man. It's tough going.

What are you reading this fine Wednesday?

I guess we only ended up with 4 inches on the ground, but St. Paul Schools shut down early last night. You might wonder WHY the capitol city in a state that often prides itself on toughing out temperatures and conditions worthy of the arctic panic closed when the forecast looked bad. You only have to look back one year to find out: www.mprnews.org/story/2018/01/23/many-students-stuck-in-schools-buses-hours-st-paul. (Last year, some students' buses didn't make it home until LITERALLY after midnight. Might be fine for high schoolers, but imagine kindergartners....)

Pretty sure our superintendent is going to close early and often, rather than let something like that happen EVER again.

I know closing school on a day like today makes a lot of parents mad and inconveniences them, but I kind of get it. I mean, I can say that, because, of course, our family is fine. I'm home today, anyway. Having Mason here is a feature, not a bug. Of course the superintendent might get in Big Trouble again, since the temperatures are supposed to plummet dangerously low over the next couple of days and schools are required to close if the temps drop into the 'your face/skin ACTUALLY freezes within a minute of exposure" range. So, people have implied that we could end up with several days off this week, given the forecast.

Honestly, I can't believe this kid's luck. He needed a mental health day on Thursday, had Friday officially off (some kind of end of quarter grading day for teachers), a weekend, and now this. It's like he really gets a Christmas break do-over, like we wanted. It's only too bad that we had to take Mom in to work, or we could have had some lovely, much needed family time.

As it is, we're probably going to spend the day filling out the Yale Global Scholars application. Mason finally finished the last of the THREE essays required for the program (and we gathered up all the documents needed for financial aid.) Whee.

All right, I promised to catch you all up on my spell-a-day project. I have skipped a few here and there, but part of that is being determined not to do anything ill-advised again.

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 24 & 25) )

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 26) )

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 27) )

I have a few days that I need to catch y'all up on.

Let's see... Monday. What did I do on Monday? I know I did a lot of household chores, because Monday is both garbage day and recycling for our alley. We amass a LOT of recycling. I also went to the pet store again. Since Ms Ball's illness, the rest of the cats got very used to the idea that wet food might be available to them at all sorts of hours. Plus, as I'm sure many of you recall, I was trying ANYTHING I thought she might eat a lot of. So now the rest of the cats are very, "What is this, hooman? This is not the good gravy stuff???" Thus, I bought a bunch of the good gravy stuff as well as some other cans of things that everyone seemed to enjoy, because why not? At this point, I look at my fat cats and think, "GOOD. There will be lots of time to figure out what's wrong before you waste away, should disease hit!"

So my memory of Monday = errands and housework.

Yesterday was far more pleasant. Even though Shawn had a migraine and ended up coming home early, the day started and ended well. As a family, we all go out to bagels on Tuesday mornings. At some point, I made a comment that I felt that Tuesday were worse than Mondays, because everyone EXPECTS Monday to suck, as it is the first day back to work after a weekend. But, Tuesdays are like stealth Mondays. They're too early in the week to start having happy thoughts about how soon it will be the weekend again, and so they're really like Monday--only without any sympathy. We decided that in the spirit of this, Tuesdays would be a day we would treat ourselves because Tuesdays are hard, too, but no one is going to say, "Ah, yeah, man, TUESDAYS, am I right?"

Then, after picking Shawn back up and bringing her home early, I went to visit my friend

naomikritzer at her place. I was able to stay a little later than usual because Mason is in full-swing of robotics, but we had also all earlier agreed that since it was payday, we would go out to Indian at our favorite place: Taste of India in Maplewood. Taste of India is one of those places that a surprising number of people we KNOW frequent. In the past, we've run into our friends the Murphys and the Fox-Manns. This time, it was just us, but it was also just what the doctor ordered.

With Ms. Ball's illness and death putting a literal pall over our holiday vacation, my family and I have been in desperate need of quality family time. I'm fortunate, in that my little nuclear family all really love each other and enjoy each other's company EVEN OUR TEENAGE SON. Which, is kind of miraculous, I've been told. So, dinner was perfect. We all got comfort foods and caught up on life, the universe, and everything in a much need fashion.

Then, when we got home last night, Mason and I played Smash for a half hour or so. I have to report that this button-masher is starting to learn a few combos. I have one character "Cloud," that I can consistently remember how to use. This is starting to excite Mason, as it means that he has a player in the house who isn't a complete push over. He still wins every time, but I'm making him have to fight for it a little.

In other news, Mason has been having a lot of fun watching various colleges start to take notice of his early PSAT scores. Mason took the test early, as practice here in 10th grade, and did extremely well. Every day, after school Mason will update us on the various folks that have started spamming him with "hey, when you get serious about university, don't forget we exist!" emails. The other fun thing he got was an invitation to apply to a summer program at Yale. It's Yale Young Global Studies Program. There is a 20 page application that includes financial aid (because holy moley is this thing EXPENSIVE.) But, we figure we should give it a try, even though the deadline is nipping at our heels already (Feb. 6.) Because, why not? Nothing ventured, as they say. Given how many people apply, it's probably a long shot at any rate.

It's really f*cking cool spam, though, you have to agree, neh?

I also spent a good part of yesterday starting to plan for Mason's PSEO (post-secondary education opportunities) next year. Washington Technology Magnet is OUT of math for our child. So, he's going to have to continue on at university (of some sort, though we are crossing fingers to get into the University of MN's program.) To that end, we are planning on attending the very first informational meeting on Feb. 18, I think it is. (It's on the calendar). I also went ahead and booked a tour of the Science and Engineering department, because, again, why not? But, there are a lot of forms to figure out and things to do for that, too--though, much like with the Yale thing above, my job is not to apply, but to heard our smol into applying for himself.

Still a full time job, if you ask me.

I also spent a lot of time on Monday and yesterday trying to get some hours set for my library job. I tried to pick up an extra shift this week, but someone got to Shoreview before I could nab it. Alas. At least I got my Feb. schedule to my boss, who was able to give me some shifts for next months. Yay.

Luckily, I don't need to pick up too many shifts. This month got covered by a surprise royalty check that was mid-triple digits, the likes of which I haven't seen in a long, long time. (Audible.com, I LOVE YOU.) Next month, my Loft teaching will carry us, too, although I won't see that money until the work is done and dusted, so not until March or April.

I did manage to do all my spell work. I will post under-the-cut below, but I do want to share the one funny observation: I thought for sure that when these spells started calling for various herbs and oils, I would have to write some scathing commentary about how NO ONE HAS THIS STUFF JUST LYING AROUND. And, yet, last night when I was shaking my head thinking, "Oh, right, like I'm going to have camomile flower heads sitting on my shelf," there, in our witchy cabinet, was a vial of camomile flowers that I harvested several years ago, dried, and carefully preserved. I have actually yet to be stumped!

To be fair, I did have to do a couple of substitutions. A spell below called for hyssop, which I didn't have, but lavender is a common substitution, and I have several jars of lavender (to be fair, we grow it and harvest it ourselves, just like we had with the camomile.) I had to make my own dragon's blood oil, but I actually HAVE dragon's blood resin in my cabinet, so there is that.

My witches' pantry is actually surprisingly well stocked!

( Spell-a-Day project (Jan. 13) )

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 14) )

( Spell-a-Day Project (Jan. 15) )

I have to leave for work in a half hour. Normally, I wouldn't take a Friday afternoon shift (or try not to) since Fridays is now the day that the women of Wyrdsmiths+ meets. (The plus is because the group now includes other women writers who have never been Wyrdsmiths.) BUT, everyone had to cancel for various reasons, and so when Maplewood called while we were out shopping for dress pants for Mason, I agreed to come in today.

We were at JC Penny's trying to find dress pants that fit our ridiculously tall and skinny young man BECAUSE Mason has a job interview on Saturday!

Baby's first job interview!

This is a job he's tried for before--it's some kind of work with the Science Museum that I honestly don't entirely understand, but which appears to be a program that's offered to science-focused teens? Washington Tech gets the notice about this every year. Last year, Mason applied but didn't get to the interview state. Likewise, his girlfriend applied last year, got an interview, but didn't get the job---so it's HIGHLY competitive. He's really going into this with the attitude of, "Well, no matter what happens, the interview is good practice." As part of that, Mason wanted to be sure to dress appropriately and, OF COURSE, he'd outgrown his previous set of dress pants.

It's been a good start to the year for Mason, actually, as we got a notice from the school a couple of days ago to inform us that he will be letting in Academics. I have no idea of letter jackets are still a thing, but we're totally getting him a jacket because BABY NERD LETTERED IN ACADEMICS.

I think the closest I got to something like this during my high school years was drama? I'm not sure you _could_ letter in drama, but I nearly won a school/drama club award for... well, basically participation, but it was more: you've been in x many plays, done x amount of stage hand work, etc. The thing I remember about that is being DEEPLY BITTER about the award going to someone else because there was accounting for regional plays/theater done outside of school. So, I wasn't in the spring musical two separate years because I was performing with adults at the Community Theater in downtown LaCrosse.

There's not a lot I remember about high school, but that feeling stuck with me.

The other big Mason news is that he's decided to rearrange his room and so we moved out one of the big bookcases in order to make room for an oak desk we found (on his request) through the neighborhood group. He very SPECIFICALLY wanted a solid wood, antique desk of some sort. We'd been thinking we might luck out at an estate sale, but Shawn just happened to surf through our neighborhood group and found a guy offering his son's old desk with the promise of "free delivery." Given the size of our car, we were like, "SOLD!" He probably would have helped us wrestle it up two flights of stairs, but it's currently parked in our foyer waiting for Mason to finish getting his room ready. And... for someone with muscles to volunteer to help us. Shawn would do it, but she shouldn't. The will is there, but her back is not strong enough. But, once all the various Jewish holidays are over, we've got a call out to our friend Sean M. Murphy, who has promised to be our "dude." We have often used Murphy in this function. He's the one who helped Mason pick out a good razor for his face, so... Murphy has long been our substitute "man around the house."

Ah, the trials of being a non-traditional family, eh? :-)

Right, so I'd better go get dressed for work.

Like, who is still FTPing files to their websites any more? OH, THAT WOULD BE ME.

The ways in which I'm still living in the early 1990s astound me. I don't have a smartphone (we even still have a landline), I have no GPS in my car, and I still write my own HTML for my web site. I know my website kind of looks like it's from the early days of the Internet, and that's 100% because it *is.* On the other hand, it's mostly up-to-date as of yesterday. I'm still hunting through various pages trying to find out which links have broken due to time, but it's in better shape than it has been in a couple of years (at least in terms of the information.) I also had to email my ancient provider because literally no one FTPs any more and I could not get a connection, despite having updated six months ago.

So, yeah, that was like something out of Mousenet.

If you go looking at my web page and discover something broken or not working (or horribly misspelled), let me know. I'm trying to get ready for my MiniCON gig (March 30 - April 1).

That's been a lot of today, though earlier I had a doctor's appointment I'd been putting off for some time. Now, I also have to go back for a cholesterol test, mammogram, and the dreaded colonoscopy. ( under the cut for possible TMI )

Tonight was way too much running around. We had Mason's conferences at 3:30pm, which are still these ridiculous student led things. I've complained about these before. They take place in Mason's homeroom, which is a teacher who never sees him, except on Wednesdays. This time, his homeroom teacher looked at Mason's schedule and said, "Chemistry? Why are you in 10th grade chemistry?" Like we would know. The real question is, who decided to advance him in 9th grade to physics? (No one thought this was a bad idea, mind you. But it was still like, "Isn't one of the reason we go to conferences to know the thought processes behind our child's education??")

Then, because it seemed silly to go home, we killed some time at the library in Roseville (where I finally confessed having lost a book), SmashBurger, and then Barnes & Noble. Then, it was back to Washington to listen to the parent conference for the Mason's New York spring break trip with his Chinese class. My big takeaway there is that Mason is going to do a lot of walking... But, I'm sure he'll have fun.

Now I'm tired and want to collapse into bed.

Today I'm going to be ferrying Mason and one of his fellow debate judges over to a school in Minneapolis. That should be fun, she says with a bit of a sigh. I'm actually looking forward to meeting the other judge (these are high schoolers who are judging middle school debaters) as he's someone Mason talks about a lot. I hope he lives up to his nerd reputation. :-)

To be fair, I have otherwise shirked a lot of the driving duties that other friends of mine seem to have had with their kids. No endless soccer practices or any of that sort of stuff.

Yesterday, I stopped by the Roseville Library to return a few books and pick up the Princess Jellyfish volume that came in for me. I haven't had many calls about subbing and, as I know my boss is set to retire soon, i had a worried thought that maybe I'd missed a retirement party or an email about whoever is taking over. So I stuck my head into the branch manager's office and he waved me in. I didn't miss anything, apparently as part of training the new person in, my boss had been delayed getting hours out to other people. But, while I was there, the branch manager offered to pay me for an hour if I would sign off on my performance reviews.

Before working at Ramsey County Library, I used to DREAD performance reviews. Let's be honest, I was writing a novel while sitting at that receptionist desk. How stellar are my reviews going to be? I also never really cared all that much about where I was working, so long as it had the kind of office culture where I could get away with long lunches and working on my novel. I am normally NOT the employee you ever want to hire for anything.

Except, for some reason, my library work. I think it helps that I love libraries and always have.

I honestly think it also helps that I'm a sub, so the stakes are always kind of low (for me.) I mean, I do legitimately love the work, but if there's an annoying co-worker or restrictive policy, I just don't interact with either for very long, you know? The annoying co-worker? I see them once a month, tops. That policy? How often am I ever going to have to deal with it, compared to how often full-time people do, you know? Plus, people are happy to see me, too, because I'm often coming in with only an hour's notice because someone's car failed to start in the cold or their child fell ill or whatever, you know? So, I'm always appreciated, too.

The point is, I now get performance reviews that say things like, "Lyda is a joy to work with" and aren't sarcastic. It's really amazing.

Plus, the branch manager and I ended up just shooting the breeze about the writing life and such afterwards. I like the kinds of people who chose to work at libraries too. They're almost always nerdy and arty and liberal and cool.

With Labor Day and our very brief trip back to LaCrosse, I completely forgot to post anything.... and I'm not entirely sure which day of the week this is. Thursday? Yeah, that seems right. I guess I missed Wednesday Reading, but the only thing I managed this week was all 48 chapters of Kiss Him, Not Me / Watashi ga Motete Dōsunda by Junko (no relation, despite the fact that Junko is my fan pen name) a shoujo, reverse-harem manga that I actually really enjoyed. Normally, I'm not a fan of either sub-genre, but this was very well done. Though I spent a lot of time having deep introspection about how much of an otaku I am, and whether or not that's actually a GOOD thing. (The heroine is an otaku who is into yaoi and shipping her male friends with each other.)

You?

But, so for the rest. I went back to LaCrosse only for a day because my parents are in the process of moving their house and so didn't have a huge amount of time for our usual Labor Day visit. We stayed at an AmericInn, which was possibly okay--we had a kind of crappy room, right off the pool with a vending machine just outside our door (thus a high traffic area), PLUS we were the very first room off one of the entry doors, which meant when people went out for a smoke it was right outside our window. That sucked and felt deeply unfair, since thanks to our big Yellowstone trip, we're VIP AmericInn members. Probably we should have hassled the front desk for a better room, but we were only there for one night and didn't want to bother.

It took us forever to get to LaCrosse for some reason. We left right at the usual time (around 8:30), but didn't roll in until nearly 12:30. LaCrosse is not that far away. We did make an extended stop at Lark Toys to play a round of mini-golf, but I would not have thought that we were there THAT long (but apparently we were.) We went to Rudy's for lunch, which is another last-of-summer tradition, which was nice. Rudy's is one of those old-fashioned drive-ins and still has waitresses on roller skates to bring out your food. The food is decent, but it's an experience more than anything. From there we went antique shopping in the quaint section of the North Side called Old Towne North. There's not actually THAT many stores here, but the Sweet Shop (which really does have awesome ice-cream and a fountain soda dispenser) is there, too. It is a neat little part of town. My only disappointment is that they've never quite been able to keep a coffee shop going there, though it should be an ideal location.

Then we went to see my folk's new place and said good-bye to the old. Dinner was at the Pizza Hut that I swear has not changed since I was in high school (1980-1985.) I was pretty exhausted from the road, so I didn't even notice all the foot traffic in the hallway outside our hotel room and promptly crashed ridiculously early. At some point, when we visit LaCrosse again, I would actually like to experience some of its nightlife, of which there is a TON.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast at the Hungry Peddler. My folks joined us there. The Hungry Peddler is a big nostalgia trip for me, since my dad and I used to go there a lot when I was younger. Then my family and I attempted to do a tourist thing in LaCrosse and find the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I have linked to a blog of someone who had a wonderful time there. We did not. I kind of think that they could sense we were pagans trespassing, and so we only really saw the interpretative center and couldn't figure out how the heck to get up to the actual shrine. We left disappointed.

Then we drove back in record time. In fact, we zipped back to St. Paul so fast that I managed to miss seeing my friend Paul who was headed down to LaCrosse for a funeral. I did managed to catch up with Paul on Tuesday, which was nice. Paul is probably one of my oldest remaining friends... that I actually make time to see. I mean, I have a ton of old high school pals that I'm in touch with on Facebook and other social media, but Paul is someone I will actually seek out to hang out with in person.

We hung out with Rosemary and her mom on Sunday because Mason wasn't sure if he was going to end up with ANY classes with his BFF, but it turns out they have Foundations (Washington's answer to homeroom) and debate together. Mason came back from his first day of school absolutely bouncing.... literally. At one point I had to tell him to stop, I was afraid he was going to shake plates off the shelves in the kitchen. But, he LOVES high school--as I knew he would. Things start to get interesting and challenging now and he's been kind of waiting his whole life for classes like that. (Luckily, he's had a few, having been advanced into a couple of high school classes while he was in middle school.) He did not have to change school, which was nice, especially, as I said, he's already been doing some high school classes.

So, that's me. I'm sure I forgot some of the things we did, but I will try to be better about posting here.

Ah, it's already Monday and I have to go to work in about an hour. (I work at 10 am at the White Bear Lake branch, and it takes me a little over a half hour to get there.) Somehow I got through the weekend without doing my homework for class tomorrow night. I have a feeling that there will be much panicked reading this evening. :-P

On the other hand I did manage some gardening. I should take a picture of the amazing bleeding heart that we have in our faux Japanese garden. (I would love a legit Japanese-style garden, but I think the closest thing I can hope for is to emulate the aesthetic of one. I'm just not that tidy and organized a gardener.) The bleeding heart is huge and gorgeous, and inspired me to pick up a couple more bleeding hearts, because: damn. I should also connect the hose to water the new plantings. Last week I didn't have to remember to do that because I was basically gardening in between the rain showers. This week looks to be fairly dry and sunny, so I'd better get out there and water things. It'd be stupid to do all the transplanting and planting just to have everything croak.

Sunday, Mason's baseball team did a fundraising gig at the Cub Foods on Larpenteur Avenue. Nine of them working as baggers raise a couple hundred bucks. When I picked up Mason, coach made sure to let me know that Mason "had good hustle."

Here's a picture our friend Sean Murphy (SMM Photo) took for us at last Thursday's game:

SMM Photography, mason slides into base

Pretty good action shots. Of course, Murphy is a serious sports photographer and you should have seen the size of his specialty lens! Huuuuuge, as 45 might say.

Speaking of fundraisers, though, Mason is going to suggest the whole bagging thing to his Wind Energy Teacher/Advisor. His wind team still has a couple thousand dollars to fundraise to make their goal, and so they're looking for ways to make that difference up in the next few weeks. My friend Naomi thought of a rummage sale for charity, and so we've cooked up something with one of the other moms from the team. Gods know, Shawn and I have a ton of stuff to contribute. We don't really have a great place to host it, but the other mom does, so fingers crossed that we can raise a few more bucks for the kids that way. I mean, obviously, having made it past their deadline, Washington Tech is committed to sending these kids to Anaheim, but it would be nice to continue to lighten the school's burden. (You can still donate here: https://www.gofundme.com/help-send-us-to-kidwind-nationals). They leave on the 23rd of this month. We're hoping to have the rummage sale that Saturday RIGHT BEFORE they leave, May 20th. I'll post details about hours and location here and on all my other social media outlets once we have everything firmed up.

That means we're starting to eye everything in the house with the "can I sell that???" look. I think the cats will be lucky to escape without being tagged "$10 OR BEST OFFER." ;-)

Right. I should go get dressed for work. See y'all on the flip side.

I think I blasted this out on all my social media, but I failed to mention it here.... Mason's "Wind Energy Team" participated in the Minnesota Renewable Energy Challenge a few weeks ago, and their team qualified to go to the NATIONAL competition in Anaheim, California. This is a pretty cool deal. Not only did these kids have to design and build a working windmill, but they also had to do an on-the-fly design and build challenge at the competition. Mason reported to me that their on-the-fly windmill actually successfully picked up ALL the washers.

Go, SCIENCE!

These are our future engineers, my friends!

The only problem is that Washington Tech is not a rich school. The kids are required to fundraise 100% of the travel expenses. Added pressure is that the principal won't start the paperwork (which has a deadline of May 1) until they've raised a "significant" amount. Thanks to a lot of big donations (that biggest one is from us, because Shawn and I decided that we would have otherwise funded Mason's travel, so we should just go ahead an donate what we would have paid), they're getting REAAAAAAALLLLLY close to halfway. I'm fairly certain that the principal would accept half as "significant," but we don't know.

Thing is, there's no need to break the bank. Every little bit helps. So, if you've got a spare dollar or five dollars for science these kids would really, really appreciate it.

Even if you DON'T have a spare buck, you should check out their GoFundMe page, anyway, and watch the video to check out the cool stuff they're up to. The narrator is Mason's friend Rosemary, and you can see Mason in several of the shots (hint: the white dude.)

https://www.gofundme.com/help-send-us-to-kidwind-nationals

A lot happened since I last posted, however. Mason and I went down to Mankato, Minnesota, on Thursday night. We had a fun time traveling together as we always do. We ended up stopping early for "road food" in Burnsville. Shawn laughed pretty hard when I called from the "Old Country Buffet," given that we hadn't even managed to break the exo-suburbs before pulling over. To be fair, Mason had had one slice of pizza for lunch (one of those school fundraising things) and I was just generally starving, too. Of course, the food there was.... meh. I always make the mistake of thinking the taco bar should be okay. (It's not.)

We only got turned around a couple of times once we reached Mankato. The in-city map was printed very small and there was the classic confusion of is Stadium Road the same as Highway 58 (or whatever)??? Turns out it was, but we at least figure that out BEFORE we drove too far out of town. Yes, there is great irony in the fact that we got LOST ON THE WAY TO THE GEOGRAPHY BEE.

We spent out hotel time doing geography quizzes based on Trivial Pursuit cards, which was our fun way of studying. Mason did bring along some atlases and such, but it was much more fun to read the questions and think... is the answer going to be the USSR? Or some other country that no longer exists because this deck was printed in the early 1990s???! We laughed a lot, which, IMHO, is the very best way to study.

On the day of, we got up early (too early in my case. I woke up precisely when the cats normally would rouse me: 5:45 am.) We were too nervous to do much constructive, so we at at the hotel (passably okay) and then thew everything into the car, checked out, and headed to the bee, which was being held in the Student Union of Mankato State University, about four or five blocks away.

Here's another attempt at a picture:

Mason at bee 2017

This is a picture of a smiling (smirking?) Mason holding up the classic yellow National Geographic magazine's frame around his face. He's wearing a blue plaid shirt and you can see his official geography be name tag over the right pocket of his shirt. The wall behind him is marble-esque and has some letters carved into it, which make up some part of Mankato State University, I suspect.

After some brief discussion, it was decided that I sit out the preliminary round. Two of his teachers were there--Ms. Lesser and Ms. Croone. Ms. Croone was there as one of the judges, but Ms. Lesser went in with Mason to root for him. I would have done the same, but we decided that me being there might make Mason more nervous. If you can't tell, one of the big themes of this trip for us was that we really, really wanted this to be as FUN as possible. No stressing about how far we made it in the competition, etc. Just to accept that it's really pretty damn awesome that we made it this far--because it is/was. Mason had to beat out not only his whole class, but also the other two grades that were eligible (there were some 6th graders in the competition: Mason is in eighth.) Out of the 500 people who got that far, only the top 100 scorers on the written test advanced to state.

Out of those 100? ONLY 10 advanced to the final round.

Mason wasn't one of those. But both he and his teacher thought that he did very well in the preliminary round, but he was eliminated. You have to get a near perfect score (only one wrong is allowed, two wrong and you're OUT) to advance.

We stayed to watch the final elimination round and it was INTENSE. There were a couple interesting things that happened. At one point, in the second round of questions, you could hear someone in the audience give the right answer. What I found fascinating is that, though there was an admonishment from the National Geographic judges to the audience, that question was allowed to stand (no re-take) and the person who answered that question went on to be the final-place winner. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but the judges decided to let it stand. I'm really surprised that they didn't give that particular competitor a different question. But, whatever.

it's also interesting to me that the winner was actually the previous year's winner... and home-schooled. I've been trying to decide if I feel like homeschooling is an unfair advantage here, or not.

Also, 90% of the competitors were white and male.

As Mason wondered out loud, "Why? What about geography has a gender bias?" Outside of institutionalized sexism and racism, I have no idea. Two of the ten finalists were obvious PoCs, but they were all male.

Other than that depressing observation, we had fun. I don't know if there is a high school version, so Mason may not have a chance to do this again, but we ARE planning to watch the National bee when it's aired. Despite the weird start, we ended up liking the state champion. Mason called him, "The Han Solo of Geography Bees" because it was very clear that he was making a lot of educated guesses that were turning out correct (you could tell by his occasional SHOCKED expression.) That made him very likable, so we will root for him in the Nationals.

The drive home was fun. Mason LOVES road trips, so we had our usual enjoyment of watching small towns roll by, commenting on especially creepy rural cemeteries, etc. We managed to leave behind Mason's school iPad's cord, but that was the only even vaguely dark cloud on the whole trip. (Cue a lot of calling the hotel, not getting answers, and then finally what I think of as a brush off, which was, "Nope we never found it." The next whole rigamarole will be getting a new one either from school, or apparently the Apple store, but that's a whole other headache. Though, it should be noted, ultimately VERY solvable.)

Saturday was Shawn's birthday. She has now successfully leveled up to level 50. When I went out to fetch the birthday cake and coffee on Saturday morning a lot of the people I interacted with asked, "So BIG plans?" I had to say, "Listen, Shawn is an introvert. It's big enough we're going out to dinner." And, it was true, after the excitement of cake and presents we spent much of her birthday doing a lot of napping and jigsaw puzzling on the porch. It was so lovely out that I did a little garden prep, but that was about the pinnacle of excitement for us. :-) Dinner was at the Indian place in Maplewood, per usual. Shawn and I both really love that place. Turns out, Mason loves it now, too, so that's extra wonderful.

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lydamorehouse

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Day in the Life of an Idiot

Journal of Lyda Morehouse

Entries tagged with school

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Nothing Makes Me Feel More Like a Pioneer....

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Monday Again...