The Fascinating Life and Times of Me

I've been clicking around on the Oceanic Airlines website today, trying to find more hidden features of the site.


The best thing so far has been a page of the script which describes the Lost monster, or at least what the Lost monster might have looked like. Of course, none of the other stuff on the script page happened on the (awesome) season finale, so the whole thing might be a red herring.


Unfortunately, my theory on the Lost monster seems to be incorrect.

I added myself to friendster today at Jody's request. It seems OK I guess. Here is the self portrait I added:



It is misleading because I am not tall, and usually do not have my right arm up in the air like that, nor do I look like a shadow. I took this picture one afternoon a few summers back and I remember it was REALLY hot that day, and very bright.

Here is my other pic from that day:

Check out the wonderful, high-quality images of birds and insects on bogbumper.

While bogbumper is an awesome blog, I couldn't find any pictures of chickens, so I thought you might also enjoy this:

The Oxford English Dictionary

Molasses

The writers of ESPN's original series Tilt

A bull shark's skin

Osmium, the densest metal on the planet

Thieves

The skull of Jon Runyan, the right tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles

A chocolate milkshake from Ruby Tuesday

For the last year or so, I have really wanted to take a trip to the Grand Canyon. I don't know exactly what got me thinking about it, but it probably sprung in part from my fondness for mules. Someday I will have a mule of my own, but until that day I will have to be content with the opportunity to borrow someone else's. Look at them, with their extra-long ears and great-big eyes.


Look at this guy on the mule--doesn't he look like a real cowboy with the cowboy style chaps and everything? How much fun is he having?! He's a trail guide at the Grand Canyon.

Not only do the have mules, buy it is also supposed to be very pretty out there in the "cheap showiness of nature" that is the Grand Canyon. Here is something I might see on my vacation:


The genius of all this is that you get to ride the mules into the canyon, along the pretty yet perilous trails everyone always talks about. And they offer overnight mule rides to the bottom of the canyon and back. It is supposed to be absolutely amazing.

So all I have to do now is, you know, actually PLAN the trip instead of just thinking about it. And get a job to help pay for the trip. I'll keep posting my Grand Canyon plans here, so stay tuned. This is going to be the best vacation ever!

I’ve been tutoring a 2nd grader in reading for about four months now. I found out the other day that she is reading at grade level! This is awesome because that is a primary academic goal for a 2nd grader, one that they are really supposed to pass before they move on to the next grade. She was cutting it really close, with only a few weeks left in the year to reach grade level. I feel a little sorry for her, because she finally reached this big goal, but she will likely have to spend all of next year trying to reach the 3rd grade reading level.

The amount of pressure put on kids in California to pass the myriad standardized assessments the state has established for them is insane. This fact has been beaten to death by lots of educators who know more about it then I do, but I have seen for myself how stressed-out and anxious seven year olds can get about testing.


I remember having FUN in elementary school. These kids spend most of the day working on reading, with an hour or so for math and maybe a half hour on art, music, PE, science, or history. Language Arts and Mathematics are very important subjects. However, got must schools the focus is on reading and math because that is what the kids will be tested on at the end of the school year. Kids need to do well on the tests so that the teacher don’t get in trouble with the school and the schools don’t get in trouble with the government because their testing results don’t meet expectations. So, what you get are teachers “teaching to the test,” focusing primarily on content students might be tested on. It is kind of like a high school student taking an SAT prep course that lasts all school year long. And the question is, How is all of this helping our students?

Check out sample California Standards Tests from a variety of grade levels here.

Feel free to leave comments about your own experiences with/opinions about schools and high-stakes testing.

The blog Query Letters I Love is run by a guy who reads movie script outlines and proposals "in Hollywood". He posts some of the more, er, interesting queries here.

I got a call from my mom today saying that I got a summons for jury duty back home in Orange County. I’m going to send the county a letter saying that I relocated so that I don’t have to drive 6 hours and stay at my parents’ house just to do my civic duty.

I spent a month two summers ago on a criminal jury for a murder case. It was a pretty interesting experience and I think I might write about on this blog, but not today, 'cause it will take a while.

Several hits, to be more precise. On tFLaToM! Like some sort of psychologically unsound victim of physical abuse, I am excited by the hits and am looking forward to more. (Does that analogy go too far? Sorry.) But, dear reader, what would make me even more pleased would be some feedback! 'Cause "looking for a voice" and all that stuff. So let me know what you think! Do you even read anything, or is it as boring as I suspect? Do you like the acronym "tFLaToM"? Let me know!



Comments can be anonymous so don't be shy!

Tonight was my night to cook, and I made chicken, beef and portobello mushroom kabobs with onion, bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash. I used a marinade that I found at allrecipes.com. I left the meat in the marinade overnight and it was quite good, very flavorful and tender. I also basted the kabobs a few times with the marinade while they were cooking on the BBQ.

Here's what the kabobs might have looked like, if I had taken a picture:


The cherry tomatoes are a little pricey, but worth adding to the kabob because of their great taste: the outside of the tomatoes get roasted, but the inside is sweet and juicy. The portobello mushrooms were amazing! I marinated them for 2-3 hours before I assembled the kabobs and they really absorbed the marinade well and stayed very moist. I also really enjoyed the taste of the grilled onion. Overall, an excellent diner.

Here's the recipe:

Kabob Marinade
This is a tasty, easy to make marinade that is great for any grilled meat. It makes enough for about two pounds of uncooked meat. Modified from Allrecipes, Submitted by Jon Devore

1/2 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup prepared mustard
1-1/2 teaspoons coarsely cracked black pepper or steak seasoning
2 cloves garlic, minced


Directions
In a large resealable plastic bag, combine the oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, ground black pepper, and garlic. Mix well, and add your favorite meat. Seal the bag, and marinate in the refrigerator for 4 to 24 hours.

I’ve been listening to a biography of William Shakespeare, Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt, while I drive around town. It’s really very engaging, although if you aren’t a fan of Shakespeare or the history of England at the turn of the 17th century, you might have a better way to spend 15.25 hours.
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The coolest thing about the biography (Shakespeare is cool, I don’t care what others might think) is that it grounds Shakespeare in the society that he came from. In spite of taking a couple of college-level courses on Shakespeare, and spending a month in London and Stratford learning about the guy, I never really understood the society that created him. This is a time when they were still lopping off peoples’ heads and putting them on pikes above the London Bridge, for peet's sake.


The book paints a very close picture of the social and political realities of Elizabethan society. And it draws parallels between Shakespeare’s life, his writing, and his world. The text sometimes drifts into the realm of speculation (there is a whole chapter on how Will as a young man might have been involved in an underground Catholic movement). But even these conjectures are a fascinating look at Shakespeare’s England. The narrator of the audioCDs is a great reader, but it is also available in book form. I highly reccomend it.

Shakespeare Links:
Shakespearean Insulter
Shakespeare and the Internet
Shakespeare's Globe
Elizabethan England

I left my pet chickens (Mellie and Gimpy) out of the coop for most of the day yesterday, and they didn’t try to escape from the backyard like they used to do before we built them a coop. When I went out last afternoon to put them back in the coop, they had gone back there themselves! I guess the nesting instinct kicked in.




We live in a residential neighborhood, not in the country or anything. Usually, when the hens decided that they would act like wild birds and not the domesticated poultry that they are, they would fly as best they could up to the top of the fence to our yard, perch there for a bit, and then flap over to the other side (chickens are not very good a flying). We would see them in the front yard, or across the street (hee) in the neighbor’s yard, or sometimes in the next-door neighbors’ backyards. Usually, we would catch them and bring them back to the yard (chickens are surprisingly adept at evading humans and making you look like a jackass when they don’t want to be caught), and they almost always came back on their own in the evenings anyway.

One morning a neighbor kid came to the door with a paper grocery bag with the top folded down like a sack lunch, and Mellie was inside. I don’t know how he got her in that bag, because I don’t think I could do it. At that point I figured that the escapes had to stop, so I looked around online a bit and made up plans for a chicken tractor, which is basically a wooden-framed rectangular prism with all sides but the bottom covered with chicken wire and a really basic gate. We made it a weekend project, and it turned out pretty well.

Chickens are pretty good pets. They are friendly, especially if you raise them from chicks. They even come when you call them. Besides the escaping (which shouldn’t be a problem it you have a decently fenced-in yard), we’ve haven’t had many problems with our chickens. We did loose Mellie’s sister Scarlet when a friend’s dog (who he swore was good with chickens) killed her. But Gimpy is a good (if kind of gimp) replacement. They are big enough birds that cats don’t mess with them.



One thing about pet chickens is that they each lay a fresh, organic egg for you practically every day. I know eggs aren’t all that pricey, but you can feed chickens a good quality feed for literally a dollar a month. I buy an $8 bag of feed for two chickens and it lasts me four months, easy. And, when they roam around the yard they eat insects, which keep helps pests down. And their, ahem, manure is a really good fertilizer, if you are into that thing. Just don’t get a rooster, they wake you up WAY too early, aren’t as friendly, and don’t lay eggs.

So if you want a semi-unique pet, think about a chicken.

Chicken Links:
The Subserviant Chicken
Chicken Jokes
Mike the Headless Chicken
Backyard Chickens
Chicken as Pets
Chicken Tractor

One of my favorite blogs is the exceptional Go Fug Yourself. They gleefully and snarkily tear into celebrity and quasi-celebrity fashion faux pas. Do yourself a favor and bookmark it today.

My pet theory on the Lost monster:


Don't be too blown away by my awesome image editing skilz.

We'll see in the next few weeks it the Lost writers will actually tell us what's really up with the monster.

PS: I miss you Boone!

Today I wasted a couple of minutes contributing to the thoughtstream on [Boxed Thoughts]. This place is worth a glance if only to see what kinds of things people all over the world are thinking about at a given moment. The layout is really nifty too!

Yet another blog has entered the internet. This one is unique only in that it belongs to me.

I don't have any big plans for this yet. (To be perfectly honest, this was created on a whim). I suppose I will be messing around with learning how to post links, images and stuff. Every once in a while something interesting happens to me or around me, and maybe I will share that. I'll have to see what kind of voice this blog ends up with.

Anyway, on the off chance that someone comes across this, please feel free to leave me a comment on what I could do with my nifty new blog.