Month: May 2013

The Lydster, Part 110: vacation homework

In general, the hardest seems to be how to MAKE CONNECTIONS to her own life.

It’s been a LONG time since I was in school, but I don’t recall having homework in third grade at all. And I’m fairly certain that I didn’t have homework during school vacations. Things are different, however, for MY third grader.

These days, they gave to read chapters from a book, and then write a REVAMP. Revamp, of course, means to renovate, make new, patch up, redo.
Thus, she and her classmates must:
R READ a section of the text, note the page numbers
E ENCODE the text by telling the gist (main idea) of your reading in your words
V VISUALIZE the text by drawing a picture of your reading
A ANNOTATE the text by writing down important details, ideas, words, or quotes
M MAKE CONNECTIONS by telling your personal experience or what it reminds you of
P PONDER the text by asking questions, making inferences, or predictions

For the winter break, the Daughter procrastinated so much that we (and I do mean we, not just she) was working on it the Monday morning she returned to school, which is unsettling and exhausting for both of us.

During the spring break, she was to encode The Indian in the Cupboard. Also during that period, she and a friend went to the Kopernik Observatory & Science Center in Vestal, NY, two hours away; the Wife took them to this Girl Power science activity.

When they returned on Friday, they’d only done one REVAMP chapter of the book, though she’d read five chapters. Saturday, we did two more. The ENCODE is fairly easy, but the ANNOTATE is difficult, especially if you have to go back and remember the specific section. This means I, who did NOT read the book or see the movie, end up having to skim through the chapters myself.

But, in general, the hardest seems to be how to MAKE CONNECTIONS to her own life. I throw some possible examples out there – “Did you ever get hurt like the Indian did?” – which she will accept, or reject (mostly reject) until she finally comes up with one of her own.

Thus, the entire Sunday afternoon after church, we are doing homework, when I could be reading the paper, or vacuuming, or doing any number of things.

I HATE vacation homework, and it isn’t even MINE!

Taking the time to see

I need to remember to spend more time observing and less time with busyness.

see?

I was waiting for the bus after work. Ofttimes, I’d pull out a magazine or newspaper to read, and I almost ALWAYS have something to read. But on this particular day – and it was a particularly lovely afternoon – I just didn’t feel like it. Using my backpack as a pillow, I lay on this granite slab in front of my work building and just observed. My goodness, the New York State flag is REALLY frayed, much worse than the US flag. I had never even noticed this before.

I tend, I think, to observe more than the average person, some of it, admittedly, mundane. Most of them get on the bus, or in their cars and immediately get on some sort of electronic device, lest not doing so would leave them adrift in the world. (That state law banning handheld devices while driving? A joke around here.)

One of the elevators in our building opens to let people on, then closes, opens, closes, opens, then when it finally closes, it buzzes as though someone had been holding the door open.

We have new phones at home. Actually, I bought them 14 months ago but didn’t install them for almost a year, when the phones suddenly going dead were too much of an irritation. What I didn’t know is that the phone announces the caller, usually badly. “Call from. Shen-ec-tdy. En why.” (That was supposed to be Skin-EC-ta-dy.) And it does it two times, then cuts out after ‘Call from’ on the third round. You have no idea how much silly, but cheap, entertainment value I get from that. (Some have suggested that I am easily amused…)

Friends are amazed by how well I know the WALK light patterns of irregular intersections in the city of Albany. I take it as a defensive measure against getting run over.

I need to remember to spend more time observing and less time with busyness, filling every available minute. It’s fun, and it relaxes me.

Feel the need to LISTEN to See by the Rascals.

Dream: In hot pursuit

Using the state trooper car as a shield, the protagonist driver pulls the car into reverse, does a 180, and drives back down the road against traffic.


This is an actual dream of mine from a few months back:

Two guys are driving around when they spot something interesting in some bushes by the road. It turns out to be a couple of cameras on the side of the road, expensive equipment. They see a name on one and decide to take them to the local police station, which is in an area of open spaces, not an urban setting. But as they approach the station from the rear, they see a cop shoot a guy who has his hands in the air. They then realize they are seen as well, and drive off in their car, being pursued by the local police.

The passenger pulls out his phone to dial 9-1-1 when the driver yells, “Where do you think the call will go to? The local cops!” Not knowing whether the whole force is on whatever nefarious activity is underway, they go to the nearby highway and begin speeding. They are pulled over by a state police trooper, which was their desire if they couldn’t get to the state police barracks. The driver tells the trooper the tale of the local cops and is about to give him the cameras when the state trooper is shot by someone, which turns out to be by the local cops, who come out of their car, guns were drawn.

Using the state trooper car as a shield, the protagonist driver pulls the car into reverse, does a 180, and drives back down the road against traffic, until they can get off the main road. They figure that, in the short term, the state police will believe THEY are the shooters, rather than the local cops. They take some back roads and try to wend their way to the neighboring state border. They’re now convinced that the cameras and the shootings are somehow related.

Then I wake up about 1:45 a.m., with my heart beating very fast. Don’t you hate it when that happens? Feel free to psychoanalyze.

Breakfast post: the weather, my niece’s new Kickstarter album

My niece Rebecca Jade is doing a Kickstarter for her new album!

My friend Dan has more than once labeled Ramblin’ with Roger as a “breakfast blog.” I still don’t know what that means, precisely. But I think the following post is more in keeping with what he’s talking about.

It was weird: the death toll in the Moore, OK tornado went from 37 to 51 to 91 to…24? I was watching a live feed on the Tuesday morning after the event from the OKC NBC-TV affiliate – the magic of the Internet – and they gave the 91 number, based on info they had gotten from the medical examiner’s office. Saw a lot of comments on Facebook about how the media was ghoulishly upping the numbers. I’ve often criticized them. but I don’t think that happened here, just a lot of multiple recordings of the same decedents by someone – the M.E.’s office perhaps. Then I get to see, Thank goodness, “ONLY 24 dead;” THAT is weird to read.

It’s interesting, too, that I actually worried a bit about people I don’t even know, such as Cheri and Dustbury, who are both fine.
***
The forecast in Albany Tuesday was for severe weather. I was at Corporate (frickin’) Woods at the northwest edge of Albany and saw nothing. But people downtown were chatting about downpours and hail; we’re talking a distance of three miles away. I HAVE seen that before, where it’s dry at the Albany airport, but evidently had been pouring at my house. They had canceled my daughter’s soccer 5:30 pm practice, probably because of a severe weather watch from 1:40 pm to, I think, around 10 pm.

10 pm, practically on the dot, I heard rumbles of thunder, heavy-duty rain. The lightning and thunder at 1 a.m. woke me from a dead sleep, but happily, the Daughter can sleep through almost anything.

Wednesday, got to work late because I had my monthly allergy shot. The power was mostly out until after 11 a.m. No computer, no Internet, no phones. Nasty weather in the midday, but amazingly nice to and from work.

We are preparing our living room to be painted by my father-in-law starting on Thursday, with help from my wife on Friday, and eventually me on the weekend. The key now is moving all the stuff, a job in itself, and something I prefer to paint, which I hate because I just can’t see the difference while I’m working between, say, an off-white and a pale yellow.

My wife and her father painted the dining room three years ago. The three splotches of test colors have been on our living room wall ever since. I’ll miss them, almost.

If I had my druthers, we’d move out for four days while painting; the smell of even the newer paints bug me at night. Oh, well.
***
My niece Rebecca Jade (pictured) is doing the Kickstarter thing for her new album. You can read all about it here. If I were to tell you she was really good, I would sound biased. But she is! Check out this review of a recent live performance of hers.

The popcorn story

By demand from Island Rambles. I mean Shooting Parrots asked for it, but IR INSISTED!

When I was forced to get rid of my microwave by my lovely bride after we got married and moved in together, one of the things I most missed was making microwave popcorn. Now Carol would say, “Oh, you can make popcorn on the stove.” Well, no; maybe SHE could, and occasionally/rarely she did, but I could not, unless you considered creating a smoky and scorched pot, oddly filled with burnt popcorn AND unpopped kernels, “making popcorn.” I used the oil, even moved the pot as instructed but to no particular success, unless the goal was to make a mess without having a satisfactory culinary outcome. It’s OK to mess up a lot of pans if there’s a payoff, but without one…

I must have mentioned me missing this appliance at a gathering of her birth family, around Thanksgiving or Christmas of 1999. When we all got together for Mother’s Day the next year, they brought ME a box of microwave popcorn, which I accepted graciously. This was just the wrong response for them.

What I was SUPPOSED to do is kvetch, “But we don’t have a microwave! What am I to do with this?” At that point, they were going to then give us a brand new microwave from Unclutterer, which we could use in the new house, where we were going to move into the following week, and there would as room for it. Instead, I figured to just use the microwave popcorn at work.

Finally, the following weekend, they brought us the new microwave, as a first anniversary/housewarming present, disappointed that they did not have a little fun at my expense. Indeed, inadvertently, I had some fun at THEIR expense, and I wasn’t even trying.

AND, after very little practice, I almost NEVER burn the popcorn.

LISTEN: Buttered Popcorn by the Supremes

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial