07.18.07
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 7:28 am by Meg
I’m sitting here listening to the rain pour down this morning. It is waaaay to early to be up on a summer morning. Everyone else in the household is sound asleep and even the dog didn’t want to get up when I got her out of Boy’s room to feed her.
But I have contractors coming this morning and they said to expect them between 7 and 8 AM, so someone needs to be awake.
I am excited. We have discussed replacing the two large sliding glass doors ever since we moved in here in ‘99. But no one that has looked at them has been able to come up with a solution. They kept saying that the doors are over-sized and couldn’t be simply replaced.
Then this spring the doors started jumping off their tracks. After hitting a brick wall with two new contractors (one wouldn’t return phone calls, the other came out and took measurements and promised to try to come up with a plan that wouldn’t block the light, but could be opened and closed. (Let alone that one sliding glass door holds a cat door so the cats can go out onto a screened-in porch.) And then I never heard from him again. - small town contractors, I’ve had nothing but trouble from them.
I was about to give up, and then a new window company (at least new to me and not in my phone book) was working in the neighborhood. Their name is Custom blah, blah, blah Windows. Okay, I’ll give it a try.
The guy comes out (the owner), he looks at the problem. ‘oh, thats a standard XYZ. We can just pull out the old ones and drop new ones in.’ WHAT! Where have you been for the last decade?
And today is the day. The cats are corralled in a back hallway; when they show, I’ll put the dog back in with Boy; and I’m wide awake waiting for them.
On a different note, I may have turned the local newspaper on to what happen with the AP tests. Hopefully, they will find something out.
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Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 12:40 am by Meg
Here’s the full list,
2. Let go of your need to make all the choices all of the time. Other people have better ones sometimes.
13. Stop imagining that people are saying things about you. They’re mostly just worried about themselves.
18. Don’t get too attached to any one material thing. It’s just stuff.
22. Change is unavoidable. Embrace it, on every level.
26. Get a passport, even if you never plan on leaving the country.
What would you choose?
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07.16.07
Posted in COLLEGE, Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 3:42 pm by Meg
Or maybe just my local public high school.
Oh wait, I’m doing that already. ‘Cause I’m homeschooling.
But I still ended up having some interaction with them because Boy took two AP tests last May. He took both Statistics and Geography.
We’ve been waiting for the test results because they are suppose to be mailed out the first week of July. And they haven’t been coming.
Then late on Friday we received a call from the local high school that they had an overnight letter waiting for Boy. Someone had sent it there instead of to our house. I’m lucky that there aren’t very many people in my town with the same last name, because the high school wasn’t sure of our contact info.
We got the letter today and guess what!!
Somewhere between the high school and Collegeboard - THEY LOST HALF OF THE STATISTICS EXAM!!!!
Now we have the option of canceling the test (and getting our money back) and retaking that half of the test!! The fact that it’s been 10 weeks since he’s even looked at anything connected to statistics is immaterial.
AAARRRRGH!
And the reason that it went to the high school?
The proctor at the high school only had them fill out their personal contact information on one part of one test - the first half of the statistics exam.
You should have seen me trying to not swear at the vice-principal as she explained this all to me. of course, she blamed Collegeboard for the mess up.
Me, unless they lost half of everyone’s statistics exam, is blaming the idiots at the local high school.
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07.13.07
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 8:09 am by Meg
Here I type up a longish post, and I meant to talk about the shield, but forgot.
Robin asked here about the leather for it.
I get both the leather and supplies from Tandy Leather Company. You buy the leather in rolls. As you can see in the picture from cutting them out, I still have a fair amount of leather left over.
The shield isn’t floppy. The reason why is that we used 10/11 oz (weight) leather for it and there are two layers. Leather is measured by how many 1/64 of an inch it is thick. So, each ‘oz.’ is 1/64 of an inch. Because it is a nature material, it is not uniform, so leather is always given as a range of thickness.
One third of an inch of leather is pretty stiff on its own. We were going to leave it just the leather, but decided at the end to put a thin, heavy weight sheet of cardboard in the middle. All three layers were then glued together and lastly, the silver conchos are actually through all three layers and screwed into nuts on the back. It’s solid.
He got the idea when we went to the Ohio Ren Fair last fall. The leather worker there had shields, but we decided not to make this one like hers. She had used thin pieces of chrome-tanned (thin stuff that can’t take an impression) leather over 1/2 inch plywood boards. They were really neat with fancy rivets and conchos making patterns, but not what he wanted. Which is good because I don’t have the tools to cut a good circle out of plywood.
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Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 12:21 am by Meg
Blah!!
It’s been a very busy week and I’m just now raising my head.
Let’s see,
First - 4H Fair. Submittals were Friday night and Saturday morning. A week ago I blogged about what the kids were entering. They did well. Girl is especially happy with photography, weather and leather going to State and possible some more photography and computers as well.
Fair submittal is always a little time to catch up with friends that I don’t see very often. I got a good chuckle running into a friend who had moved up to Chicago. She was at fair because she was down visiting friends who wanted the support. My chuckle was because while she has been in Chicago for a couple of years now, I’m the one who has the HOUSE contacts. She said that she was feeling very stranded without a homeschool group. They are also having trouble figuring out how to do 4H in Illinois.
As soon as the kids were done, we hit the road for our first summer travel. This trip was a quick trip up to Buffalo. Our nephew had his 3rd birthday, and we went up for the party and a chance to see Hubby’s family. It was good to see people though we missed out on seeing Hubby’s brother’s kids. They were off in Wyoming with their Aunt. I did get to see (and hold) our newest niece. Sara was born in February and is this smiley, giggly little bundle. Absolutely a joy!
The one damper on the weekend was that Boy has been under the weather since his birthday. At this point it’s been an upset stomach and some abdominal pain. We took him to the doctor on Tuesday, but she just thinks it’s a pulled muscle and will pass with rest. We’re still worried, but his appetite has come back, so hopefully he’s on the mend.
We got home late on Monday and the last three days I’ve been basically off-line as I have been up-grading my computer. I think I’m finally done (except for some small issues). I’ve been running XP on an older computer. I’m not sure how old it is. Dad had bought it ‘as is’ right before he passed away in 2001 and I’ve been upgrading it piecemeal ever since. It had been working okay, but ….slow.
So, I got this $200 computer. It came with Vista. I did not want Vista, yet. My plan was to pop out the new hard drive and just toss my older one in. It was nearly as large and that way I could ‘hold’ the Vista in case I wanted it down the road.
Hah, The new machine is 64 bit and the older hard drive (I’ll only bought it last year!!) won’t even boot it up. Okay, new plan. I’ll overwrite Vista with XP and then slave the older drive into the machine. Hmmm, everything I’m reading online says doing that is not, let me repeat that, not a good idea. Okay, plan three. I’ll just slave the old drive in and use the Vista.
And it won’t boot up.
okay, how am I going to get anything transfered? And for that matter, where are my Office CD’s?
That got me through Tuesday. By Tuesday night, I realized that I had to use Microsoft’s little Easy Transfer Utility. Okay, put the old harddrive back into the old machine, but I need a screen for it and a connection into the house network. The only second screen is Hubby’s and since it’s summer and he’s a prof…..he’s home and using it. So, I stay up very, very late Tuesday night/Wednesday morning hajacking his equipment so I can begin moving files. But it’s a two stage process. The first step just moves programs.
The first two snags show up - The program won’t move the Edutrack software that I use and my pda’s document handling software doesn’t work with Vista. (Yes, I considered throwing the new machine out the window and continue on the dinosaur)
Wednesday saw me using my new machine, but missing all my links and files. They were suppose to transfer with the second part of that Easy Transfer Utility. Which I finally used today, Thursday. Now this second part is suppose to -
You can transfer most files and program settings. Specifically:
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Files and folders
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Program settings. Settings that keep your programs configured as you had them on your old computer. You must first install the programs on your new computer, because Windows Easy Transfer does not transfer the programs themselves.
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User accounts and settings. Color schemes, desktop backgrounds, network connections, screen savers, fonts, Start menu options, taskbar options, folders, specific files, network printers and drives, and accessibility options.
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Internet settings and favorites. Internet connection settings, favorites, and cookies.
Don’t believe it, at least not if you use Firefox. It also transfered a bunch on shortcut icons without their links working - messing up the new icons with working links that I had already installed - following their instructions to first install the programs.
But I do have to say that this machine is much, much faster than my old one - after I scrubbed off useless software. So I’m happy. I just have one more snag to deal with. PC-decrapifier can’t seem to remove AOL.
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07.06.07
Posted in The creative side of life at 11:50 pm by Meg
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07.05.07
Posted in Life, the Universe and All that Jazz at 11:44 pm by Meg
And we’re in pretty good shape. Which is good, because after we finish submitting our stuff on Saturday morning we are heading off to Buffalo for the weekend. (Our nephew is turning three and my sil is having a big party for him.) And I do not want a late night finishing things up either today or tomorrow.
So, tomorrow night the kids submit the crafts stuff and then Saturday morning everything else. For tomorrow, all we have left is to take the clamps off Boy’s leatherwork (it’s drying) and then for Saturday, Girl has one and a half posters left to do and then to bake some yeast rolls. Not too bad. Definitely not the panic we were at last year.
So, what are they submitting this year?
Boy is doing all 5 possibilities in photography and a leather shield. He is also entering some photos in the open show.
Girl is doing the photography, a leather portfolio, 
a Lego structure, her collection of smashed pennies (it’s up to 58 now), a gift bag, 
yeast rolls, and three posters - a weather poster about the seasons, a wildlife poster about the Indiana environmental license plate, and a computer poster with screen shots of the web page that she designed.
So, keep your fingers crossed for us.
I’ll leave you with some pics I took as the shield was made. I’ll try to post one tomorrow of it finished after the clamps come off.
You start by cutting out 2 large (nearing 24 in. in diameter) circles in the leather - 
Then you stamp your design into the leather and stain it to color the leather and bring out the design.
Then you attach the straps on the back with rivets and the top and bottom with screw conchos.
Now wait for me to show you what the final shield looks like!
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07.04.07
Posted in Meme at 10:07 am by Meg
Thanks to Jo, I now have one of these things for real. (though I was part of Doc’s general handout). So, now I need to pass it on.
Here’s how the Thinking Blog Awards work - These are Ilker’s Rules:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think.
2. Link to this post so everyone can easily find the exact origin of the meme.
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote.
So, now who to tag —
My first two tags are the easy ones.
When I first started homeschooling, the local support group had a core of 4 or 5 families. ‘Zann was one who I really looked up to. Her advice was laid-back, but reachable, and the model that her family of unschoolers made, helped me find my feet and start our journey. Her youngest is now in college and the last year has been a trying one for her (she recently lost a son), but I highly respect her voice and can not see not giving her my first award.
My second award has to go to Indiana Jane (you can also find her here.) Our state Yahoo group has nearly 1300 people on it and is an open, welcoming place for homeschoolers of every type. Jane started the list and is still a voice of calm reason and advice.
My other three tags took a little more thought. I didn’t want to give the award to anyone who I knew had already received it. At first I thought it would be a stretch, but then I realized that the other three bloggers just found themselves naturally.
My third award goes to Carrie over at Mommy Brain. I’ve known Carrie for about a year and half since we were both on Ron and Andrea’s atypical forum. I get the feeling we are both very different people, but I find myself enjoying reading her posts and more often than not thinking about what she has to say; even when I don’t agree.
My fourth award goes to Woodstone Prairie. She’s homechooling a couple of kids with severe disabilities. I can not go on enough about how much respect I have for her. Listening to her dealing with their tribulations with style and gentleness leaves me in awe.
My last award goes to Kris at Paradise Found. I’m not sure how to explain it, but more often than not, after I read one of her posts I’m searching the web for some thing or another.
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