Happy Dance

I have to say I love the "Happy Dance". Yesterday after working in the yard all day planting bushes in the cement I only call dirt when I'm not digging in it I brushed off my hands and hopped in the van. It was time to take Inga to her allergy shot. Click. Click. The van was dead. Someone left the the dome lights on all night. Dead battery. Karl is out of town. Nope I don't have AAA. But I do have jumper cables. But I don't know how to use them. My girl friend came over drove us to get the shot and then we set about jumping the van. We both had visions of things blowing up. Do you hook up red first or black first. Other car on or off? I texted a picture of the top of the battery to Karl. And Yeah! Happy Dance. Happy Dance. We did it before any husbands showed up to help us!

Old Flannel Shirts Anyone?

Not too long ago Erik was given an old raggedy hoodie by an older boy who sometimes plays with his band. And thus began Erik's homeless fashion look. I call that hoodie his Brazilian street urchin sweatshirt. It has marker all over it and convenient holes in cuffs for your thumbs. Erik loves that sweatshirt. Yesterday he arrived home without it. Shocking. He lent it to girl. Sigh. Now we had huge problem it was predicated to be 44 degrees on Wednesday and Erik was supposed walk to drum lessons after school. Of course he has normal coats but of course he was absolutely not going "to wear a "GAP COAT"! "MOM". "I think they use slaves to make their clothes." MOM. Ridiculous. MOM! Thank goodness Karl has a red flannel shirt which apparently looks appropriately homeless. Of course Karl is out of town so we had to call him to get the okay but the stars were aligned and it was okay with him even though I believe his grandmother made it for him. Whew.

Inga also has a homeless flannel shirt which she stole from her boyfriend but I had to laugh because it turns out he stole it from his Dad. So Dads beware those kids are after your old flannel shirts. Lock up your closets.

Today found me at Salvation Army looking for flannel shirts that didn't look too new. I have to say on cold gray day like today maybe a raggedy, soft, stolen from your Dad,flannel shirt is the best thing to wear.

A Tree for Me

One of my favorite nurseries has an annual half price sale every October. That is one dangerous postcard they mail out! They sell perennials but mostly it is a tree and shrubs place. I don't have a huge yard and I already have pretty many trees...But I did need some new shrubs. When I moved in I really didn't know what would thrive and what wouldn't or what the deer would find ever so tasty. After ten years I have figured things out some so I thought I'd replace all scrappy or dieing shrubs with new sure to be happy and alive ones. My girl friend and I headed down the road. (I should mention she is a very bad influence!)

The first time we visited it was a beautiful fall day. I was a good girl and only bought three bushes. The second time we visited everything seemed to be "just right" and I was a very bad girl.

I fell in love with a tree.I found a Pagoda tree or Katsura tree.This particular variety of tree grows a huge weeping canopy all the way to the ground. When I was a kid there was one in the park across the street. It was a magical tree thirty or forty feet across with weeping limbs that created a secret space perfect for hiding and building forts. Mine is a smaller variety but it should still make a decent fort.This is a tree for the grand-kids!

The nursery guy assured us he could fit three trees and fifteen bushes in one minivan and dammed if he didn't! I ended up with five bushes and one tree. Of course this morning when I got up it was snowing. Not very good gardening weather. Hopefully it will shape up because I have some holes to dig!

Spirit Week Slideshow

Click on the white arrow. Next click on the white box in the lower right corner.

Inga's Coming Out Conference

On October 12th 2008 Inga Koch gave her very first poster talk at a professional conference! Yesterday afternoon Inga presented her summer research project at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting of the American Astronomical Society at Cornell University. No shrinking violet Inga had no trouble communicating her project to lead scientists from around the country. Enough people stopped by to chat so that she kept pretty busy for the whole two hours. The man with the blue shirt and the strange pocket is a principal investigator at NASA's Goddard Space Center. You can't really hear Inga in the video but you get the idea.

Inga did the work at Astronomy Camp outside Tucson last June. She spent a week at the Catalina observatories on Mt. Lemmon. Teenagers from around the country spend the week staying up all night observing the night sky with "big boy" toys like 60" telescopes at their disposal. She loved it. Some nights I believe they just spread their sleeping bags out on the concrete floor of the observatory. Not much sleeping going on and lots of group cheers for things finally located! She hopes to go back if schedules match up next summer.

Oh yes, her project was characterizing the 5992 Nittler asteroid which happen to be named after her uncle Larry. He was given this asteroid or the option to name it as an award several years ago. Getting to name an asteroid was fairly common among yesterday's crowd because there were several other scientists who wanted their asteroids studied too. Inga could set up a nice home business if only we had an observatory in our backyard. And no clouds. No clouds in Upstate NY now that would be some kind of global warming...

This should all look pretty good when applying to college if only we could find one she likes! We are hunting for a school where there will be other pink/purple haired science loving chillins. Nope MIT isn't a good fit...

Farah Fawcett

I have to go to the hairdresser in a little while. I hate going to the hairdresser. The last time I really liked my hair was around 1978. I loved my Farah Fawcett hair! Since then nothing but dread. And I have had some really ugly haircuts as my kids are happy to point out when looking at old pictures. It is hard to tell the hairdresser what to do while simultaneously avoiding the mirror. Even with my glasses off there is that giant mirror right splat in front of me. I guess some people like staring at themselves for forty-five minutes? Some people have stage fright. I have mirror fright.

Inga and Erik have an evacuation drill today at school followed up later in the day by a Pep rally. Erik wants to know if he can go out for the Pep rally and keep right on walking all the way home. Not a big football fan. The evacuation drill is the modern day equivalent of the "old duck and cover drills". This time they are preparing for an event where they need to move 2,000 kids to another location in ten minutes. Crazy. Shudder the thought. Imagine trying to move that many teenagers quickly? I recommend texting and candy.

For The Kids

Our JV girl's soccer team walked off the field with their coach because the coach felt it was not a safe or appropriate atmosphere for soccer. And we did forfeit the game. Some parents are blaming the referees however I really don't think it is the refs job to control parents. No one in the crowd around this horrible man stepped up to stop his behavior. The other school district is denying anything happened other than our girls were playing a"physical" game. Our local athletic association is looking into the case. The parents on our side of the fence or not shrinking violets so I imagine what can be done will be done.

At lunch yesterday I asked two highly involved soccer moms at the table what they thought about the incident. They said we always have a problem with Vestal and Vestal parents. Never before have the comments been racial but they are constantly harassing our kids from the sidelines. Unfortunately they also said last Fall two of our parents went over to the Vestal side to apologize for the behavior on our sidelines. My friend Jackie told me her son on the JV soccer team was constantly being being screamed at by parents when he took over a new position. They felt obligated to tell him how to play his position. Sounds like parents and family members need to be banned from the games until people are able to be civil. Erik's History teacher told the kids yesterday if that had been his kid he would gone over to the guy and socked him. Great. Now we have the potential for a parent brawl.

As for racism people seem to think the South is somehow more racist than the North but the confederate flag seems to flying pretty high in my corner of the North. North/South we just haven't come as far as we need to go. Or maybe there will always be some stupid drunk fat guy on sidelines who just needs to be removed. For the kids sake.

Spirit Week

It's Spirit Week at the High School! Every day has a different dress-up theme. Yesterday was "Decade Day" dress as your favorite decade. Today is "Color Day" each class wears an assigned color. Wednesday is "Team Day" wear your favorite team shirt. ( Inga will wear a Team Edward shirt which is a character from her favorite book series, Twilight.) Thursday is Crazy Day which needs no explaining except to say nighties are forbidden. And Friday is Raider Day ( all of our sports teams are called Blue Raiders) and the Pep Rally. I didn't go to a normal American High School with sports teams so I have no way of knowing if this is all common practice. I do know we had a Japanese exchange student living with us one year who found the whole thing very very strange.

Speaking of school spirit here's a sad story from our local paper this morning. Yesterday our girl's soccer team had an away game. An adult spectator for the other team started yelling racial slurs at two of our fourteen year old soccer players. Other team members tried to defend the girls and told the man to shut up. The girls started to cry. He continued and the referees did nothing despite parent complaint. Our team walked off the field to jeering and catcalls which continued as they loaded the bus. It sounds like a TV episode doesn't it? In fact there was a Friday Night Lights episode with the same situation. Sad but true. So much for spirit.

Woolly Bears and Life

Yesterday while walking my crazy bookcase hopping dogs I came across this woolly bear caterpillar. When I was kid we used these little guys as a snow -day predictor. We would peer at them trying to determine if the black bands were bigger than the orange ones. If they had really wide really furry black stripes then it was going to be a long very snowy winter. Lots of orange meant no snow days. Also the direction they were traveling had something to do with it. Okay this guy I came across is more than half orange folks!

It was Thursday so Inga had voice lessons. I don't know how much she is learning but it certainly is a stress reliever for her. And Inga is a kid who needs that. I tried to make a movie of her singing with my digital camera which came out okay but it of course the camera creates .mov files instead of .avi. I can not figure out how to edit .mov files on a pc. No one has Macs in spite of the cute commercials and why don't all files work on both platforms? I ask you why must they purposefully aggravate me? It is the same with mp3 players and itunes. Why don't those tracks work on non- Apple players? Re%*)ds!

In spite of the aggravation I do love electronic gadgets. When it's time for dinner I just text up to Inga, "Time For Dinner". Way easier than yelling and teenagers seem to respond to texting like it was some form of mind control. I text her "Walk the Dogs" and she comes downstairs with the leashes in hand. Cool. I love filling my mp3 player up with songs that make my kids scream in pain while riding in the van. I find some sweet revenge in that. I love our Wii. I think might just get that Wii Fit for Christmas. But best of all I love my Kindle.( Electronic book) Since I bought it I am never without a book while waiting and I am often waiting for someone. It is very consumerish of me but still I love my gadgets!