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No time to note time

Like all of you I would like more hours in the day, or more hours of sleep.  Unfortunately one is sacrificed at the expense of the other.  I can stay up late get the living room vacuumed, read the book that takes way to many brain cells (quick no googling what does the hypothalamus do?) about the new therapy were thinking of starting with Eli, work on my portion of the organic food co-op I belong too (spreadsheet balancing and maintenance), knit something,create a picture schedule, bake bread or muffins, and/or blog, but I can’t parent on that little sleep.  My to do list is huge and I have to give up on many of the things I would like to get to.

Maybe I need to start sending the kids to bed earlier… ohhh lets say 3:30 bedtime should give me enough time to get some of the stuff on my list knocked off, and get in to bed in time to get a a full nights sleep if I gave the baby away.


2010 08 31 Erron Friends
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The Home Stretch

This one month, post-a-day blogging challenge only has a few days to go, and likewise my summer “vacation” ends in a week.  Next Tuesday classes will begin and life will go back to more of a routine.  I put the finishing touches on my syllabus today and tomorrow it will go out to the printers.  I have a few meetings this week and next Tuesday will be the first time I leave the house before 8 AM in over 4 months. 

We have done a lot around the farm this summer, we have managed to go on several fun trips: people got married, kids had birthdays, mountains got climbed and lakes got swammified, but still I would love for the summer to never end.  Hell, I’d take the snow and staying home.  I am very lucky that I have a job that gives me a lot of flexibility time-wise.  Only about a quarter of my work week is “gotta be there right now” time and the rest can be pushed back or forward to fit around life.

I didn’t really have this plan in mind going through school, becoming a teacher and having a big family, but am I ever glad this is where life has taken me.


2010 08 31 drkyle Friends
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Tea Time


The cooler fall weather allowed to me having a tea party with my kids today.

No, not because it's too hot to drink tea in the summer or because we're too busy at the playground to be bothered with such indoorsy silliness. It's way less direct than that.

In the summer, we sleep in the basement. It's lovely. It's cool and dark and way more welcoming than the stuffy upstairs bedrooms. The downside, unfortunately, is that the open layout of our house makes it so that any noises on the main floor (like children shrieking during a sock war for example) are also quite loud in the basement. It also meant that Angel the wild kitten was able to go downstairs at the slightest hint of a sleeping body in order to "snuggle" (AKA "Purr as loudly as possible until the sleeping thing wakes up")

Olivia usually naps twice a day. These naps usually look something like this:

The smoochy snuggly sleeper is truly delicious like nothing else. But she's getting big. I know, calling my skinny baby big is rather amusing, but she used to look a lot more like this:
(Please note the bad wrapping job. See what you learn in a year of wrapping?)

Anyhow back to the tea party. Well, almost. So yeah, this baby of mine couldn't sleep in the noisy basement all summer. And she was getting bigger and bigger which made it harder to get things done during her wrap-naps. Sometimes I did manage to get her transferred up onto my back once she'd nursed to sleep:
(This one is a good wrapping job, despite her wonky head. Promise! She had neck support right up her whole neck. Plus if I tried to lay her head down flat and tuck it under the wrap she got angry.)

Anyhow yeah. So the tea party. So since it's cool enough that we have the beds back upstairs into actual bedrooms with actual doors, I can now put the sleeping baby up in bed during her naps. It's quiet, the cat can't jump on her face, and I can actually move around at a normal person's speed, not the speed of someone trying not to crang her sleeping baby's head on a wall while mopping.

During this morning's nap I got a whole pile of cleaning done which meant that during this afternoon's nap when Lily asked if we could have a tea party I was able to say "Yes! Let's get some water boiling!" rather than "I really wish I could but the table is covered in crap and the dishes are all dirty and I don't have the time for that right now." (Do I sound like one of those Ikea commercials yet?)

So my afternoon looked a whole bunch like this:

And this:


And this:


It was really really great. Nick and Lily so often have to wait for things or just plain not do things because of Olivia and it was really special to just sit with them and drink tea and visit. There's a part of my heart that is sad that Olivia's napping in bed rather than in the wrap, but it's balanced out in knowing that she was more than ready and I now have these new opportunities to be alone with the big kids. And judging by the looks on their faces as they doctored up their cups of tea, the party was just as big a hit with them as it was with me.
2010 08 31 KimProbable Friends Comments Off Permalink

I’m A Bad Beta Tester

Well, at least for the Cataclysm beta.

If you look around for any length of time on the Cataclysm beta forums you’re bound to run in to people saying “being a beta tester isn’t about getting a private preview of the expansion, it’s about giving feedback and making the game better!” To those people I’d like to say: fuck you. Yes, it is about me getting a preview. And I’m going to bet that it’s about a whole bunch of other people getting a preview too. You know why? Because being a tester, a good, effective, software tester is work. Hard work. And it sucks. A lot. We’re not getting paid so don’t expect detailed bug reports from us.

Now I haven’t been completely selfish with my time in the beta. I’ve run through both the new goblin and worgen starting areas and I have given feedback using the little tool that pops up after completing quests. Most of my feedback has revolved around whether a quest was fun or not, if it was really fun I said so. If it was “meh”, I didn’t say anything. When I found something that was glaringly broken (like the time I managed to get under the terrain and fly around in limbo), I reported it. Am I going to report typos? No. That would require me to pay close attention to the quest text and that’s boring.

I’ve had the client crash on me several times and I’ve never got mad, unlike other some other people who simply don’t understand the concept of user testing. Hey, geniuses. THE GAME ISN’T FINISHED YET. They want you to find the broken parts and tell them that it’s broken, not to whine about it on the forums. But that’s the catch. Blizzard is allowing random people, most of whom probably don’t have any business participating in software development, to test their game.

I’ve come to learn a few things about Warcraft’s rapid development schedule. These people work amazingly fast, getting a new build up every 5-7 days… and that’s the one that we see. They’re always a build or two ahead internally. For my personal perusal of things like class abilities and talents (for almost every class because I play almost every class) I find that things change too quickly for me to keep up with all of them. I have decided that I don’t really care about the beta much any more. It’s almost like the live game – no one I know to play with – with the added bonus of things breaking or crashing constantly.

I’ve also come to the conclusion that just reading the news feeds from the people who just seem to care more than I do about documenting changes is more my style. I get summaries of everything and I don’t need to spend hours finding everything myself. I want to play World of Warcraft, not help build it. When the game finally launches, I’ll be in line with the masses with my fistful of money. Right now I’m not so interested in effectively paying to test their shit.

2010 08 31 Chad Friends Comments Off Permalink

The Dog Catcher

Just thought I’d take the time to quickly share a training session from Dash this morning.

Get it!

2010 08 31 drkyle Friends
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Summer Blog Challenge post #28

Jacob’s Story

Snowflake Method History

Just when I was getting ready to cash in and call it a career, I got word that the big boss, the guy who got me into the business, wanted a job done. When it’s him, there’s no question. And he wanted me there, personally, to see to it. That doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. When it happened a couple of days in a row, though, my hackles started to rise. Still, he’d never let me down before, so I didn’t see any harm in it. Until I was staring up at a law man who was looking to bring me in.

Doop Longsleeve saved me, just as the hammer was about to fall. He cleared my name and offered me vast sums of money, and a plot of land outside of town, if I would follow him on a quest for some magical thing. The strange thing is, he offered the same job to the guy who collared me. I didn’t get to find out what his bargain was for, though he seemed pretty keen on earning it.

We made our way through picking up some other guys, but one of them was already with Doop when he came and got Emeril and me. Gary was a good kid. He seemed pretty serious about this adventure, and he was always trying to make sure he was pulling his own weight. Just like my little brother, if I’d had one. He was pretty naive, though. He made a lot of mistakes, so I kinda took him under my wing and showed him the way the world works.

Eventually, we made it to the place where our quest was supposed to end. We had to face challenges to get the artifact. I don’t want to talk about my challenge. Let’s just say they put everything I bargained for on one side, and the magical artifact we were hunting for on the other side, and I failed.

Emeril and I came out of our challenge room to find that the members of the Order for Natural Magic, who had challenged us, were dying on the ground next to a pile of envelopes. Emeril questioned them, and they said the challenges were the only gifts they could give us that meant anything. Didn’t mean anything to me, but one of the envelopes had my name on it, so I tore into it.

Turns out, everything I was scared of losing – money, power, freedom, they were all taken from me by Doop Longsleeve. His agreement, it was a double-edged sword. On one hand, I had a lot of money in a bank in my city, and the plot of land was just as he said it would be. But I was also freshly accused of crimes that I didn’t even commit. No way I could collect that money — or the money I’d squirreled away before chasing after wizards. The other two guys, the barbarian and the knight, they started in on each other after reading their agreement papers, and Emeril broke that up quickly.

We all told our sob-stories — the two others starting up another fight as they learned more about each other — but when Emeril told his story, I could see where it was going. I killed his father to break into the business. It’s not like I wanted to. By the time I’d gotten that far in, if I hadn’t taken the last step, they’d have killed me, no questions, no qualms. So I did it. But now Emeril knew. I had to get out of there. I have no illusions about my fighting ability, and if I were to get revenge against the wizard, I had to survive. But Emeril, you see, he was a step ahead of me again. Lucky for me, he’s more concerned with justice than vengeance, and he was more concerned with seeing Doop brought in than seeing me dead. Plus, he is a wanted criminal too. This wizard didn’t take any chances. Still, Emeril somehow broke up the other two and got them to see that Doop had played them against each other, just as he had Emeril and myself. And I suppose that is true.

Once we’d all agreed that Doop was the target, Gary walked in, not sure of anything. The dead bodies made him start, but he shrugged it off quickly. He said that Doop had betrayed him, and probably all of us, but that he’d won the fight against the god he was destined to tangle with, and that it was over. We took him to Y, where he met with the king and flirted with some princesses. He did okay. Me, not so much. There’s no question that Emeril will kill me once Doop is taken care of. I just have to think ahead and not do anything foolish.

–Gnight

Liam

2010 08 30 liam Friends
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Just Dropping By

Before we moved to Chicago we had a bunch of local friends and family and while there were a bunch of expected visits there was also the occasional drop in.  People would call, give maybe a 10 minute lead time and Erron and I would frantically get the worst of our mess tidied up.  I’d say we are cleaner and messier at the same time now.  We can’t let things go all to hell because of the kids, but the kids do sure make a clean house messy in a flash.

 

This morning while Erron and Elijah were in town I happened to be upstairs putting Micah down and my phone rang.  It took me about 15 seconds to realize I was talking to Kelly M’s mom.  We had seen them at Kelly’s daughter’s birthday a month ago and said if you’re ever driving by give us a call and stop by.  Turns out they were driving by, and got my number just in time to call about stopping by.  They had just passed our turn off the highway so were about 15 minutes away.  Sure!  Come on by!  (Oh crap…  I’ve got to get some stuff done…)

 

To be honest, when I go to a house I do give it a once over to see if it is clean or tidy or whatever, but usually that doesn’t really matter as I am there to visit with the people, not the house.  I know this is probably the same for other people, but still there is that feeling that people will be judging you and you want to make that impression just a little better if you can.  So I quickly got the dishes off the counter and gathered up the randomly strewn bits of kids clothes that happen to get shed during the day like a cat losing fur on a summer day.  I ordered the shoes and swept the front room, I made sure the girls had pants and the table was cleared.  It was a bit fun to have our first drop in visitors to the farm.

 

We had a great visit, they stayed about 6 hours and their granddaughters and our kids had a great time while we visited.  It is always fun to show off the house as we feel so lucky to have found a place like this that suits our family so well.

 

Not a whole lot else to say except, if you’re ever driving by give us a call and I’ll do a 10 minute tidy for you too.


2010 08 30 drkyle Friends
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Day One Recap

As I wrote yesterday, I've joined in a Game On challenge for the next four weeks. Today was my first day and while I promise I won't do recaps of my day each day I wanted to take a look back at my first day.

My first impression is that the drinking 3L of water isn't quite as difficult as I thought it might be. I have a tumbler that's 591 mL so I've been keeping tally so that I drink 5 tumblers worth of water. It's currently 10 PM and I've got about 1/3 of my last tumbler to go, so polishing it off will be pretty easy. The one lesson I learned was to not chug back a full tumbler of water just before putting Olivia to bed since by the time she'd finally finished nursing I was in serious fear of my bladder exploding. Ka-pow!

The biggest area of effort was predictably my foods. In keeping with the requirements I ate 5 small meals which were:
1) Oatmeal with honey and kefir and a nectarine
2) Two yellow peppers filled with last night's spaghetti sauce leftovers
3) A spinach salad with tuna, strawberries, sunflower seeds, and balsamic vinegar
4) Chicken breast, rice, asparagus, zucchini, carrot sticks
5) A nectarine, some grapes, a piece of cheese

I had a hard time between meals one and two because I got hungry. I thought the kefir combined with the oatmeal would be enough protein to keep me going, but my stomach was growling and I was pissy when I got morning snacks for the kids. It's frustrating enough to feel like I'm spending my day preparing foods and feeding everyone else on days when I eat frequently, but when I'm still handling all this food and not getting much myself it's rather annoying.

I did pull out some celery part way through the day (I can eat as much celery and cucumber as I want but I'd rather go hungry than eat cucumber) and all I can say is: there's a reason why you can eat as much of it as you want. Poor celery. I'd like you if you didn't taste so bad. Or feel so bad. By the end of this month I'm either going to love you or never speak to you again.

On the exercise front, I grabbed my iPod and the doggy and went for a 20 minute walk when Liam was home. It was nice to walk at an adult speed. Anyone who has walked with toddlers or flighty-brained kids on bikes knows what I'm talking about.

I took my vitamins this morning to get my good habit points, and on such a cold gloomy day it seemed especially wise to be popping some B complex and vitamin D. I still need to get my flower essence blend made up tonight.

Overall, I'm really glad to be doing the challenge. I think that it's just enough pressure to keep me on track and to see some nice results on the scale, but flexible enough that it's not going to put me into a crash and burn by day three. I've got a kind of love-hate relationship going on with the whole Game On thing today, so here's hoping that as the days go on I spend more time on the love side of things than on the hate side!
2010 08 30 KimProbable Friends Comments Off Permalink

Critical Thinking & Trust

My face hurts.
I am a critical person and I’m sure that the trait is perceived differently by different people. Some may see it as being pessimistic, negative, cynical, distrustful or even confrontational. In some cases I don’t think I would argue that I can be any or all of those things but it does depend on the subject matter. Of course your perception of my attitude also depends on the subject matter.

Every day we make choices. Some are simple choices: “what should I have for breakfast?”, “which clothes should I wear?”, or “should I get out of bed?” are choices we all make every day. Other choices have far more gravity: “how should I treat others not like myself?”, “what career path should I take?”, or “what is my stance on environmental issues?”

For most people, many of their decisions are guided by societal norms or are encouraged by people in authority. It is these decisions – if you are keeping score – which I am most critical of. Since no one knows everything we rely on outside influences to help us make the “right” choices. In some cases the guidance comes from people that are close to us and that we trust implicitly such as parents, doctors, or priests. The rest of the time we are influenced by people that want us to trust them but try to sway us without building any meaningful foundation. Trust is a powerful thing that can be easily abused. My personal stance is that trust (and respect, but that's another topic) is something that is earned and never assumed.

When ever you are presented information, it needs to be processed regardless of the source. This is critical thinking. In its broadest sense, it has been described as “purposeful reflective judgment concerning what to believe or what to do.” The list of core critical thinking skills includes observation, interpretation, analysis, inference, evaluation, explanation and meta-cognition. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness.

Fancy diagram blatantly ripped off from another web site. That's how I roll.
From personal experience I find that people tend to not give enough consideration to most of the "important" decisions they make. Many people tend to simply accept what they are told at face value or are swayed by emotionally-driven, distorted, prejudiced, or otherwise biased arguments. In essence, people want to believe things, especially if the result of making those decisions results in a positive outcome for them. Television commercials and other advertising is a prime example of this. Most people rarely investigate a product beyond what is advertised and often find that the real deal doesn’t quite match up to what was advertised. If you’ve ever had a burger from any fast food place, you know what I’m talking about.

Exaggeration and embellishment of positive traits and downplaying or outright denial of flaws are common tactics used to help circumvent the critical thinking process. After all, if you become too emotionally invested in whatever it is you are being told, I would be willing to bet that you aren’t making the most objective decisions.

I am not going to claim that I don't make bad choices. Being human makes me incapable of making the "right" choice every time. What I ask is that people at least try to be critical when making decisions. If someone tells you that something is "so awesome", ask yourself why is it so awesome? Are there any non-partisan sources of information I can check to confirm that? If someone tells you that something is bad or wrong? Question that too. Usually the answer is obvious; common sense is (or at least should be) common for a reason, after all.
2010 08 30 Chad Friends Comments Off Permalink

About me

I want to reply to Shaun’s comment from In Reply, but it’s too heavy tonight, and it requires too much thinking.  So instead I worked on improving my blog, I created categories, I’m going to add to the menu, and I finally wrote something in the about me section. Yes, it had been empty until today.  This blog will never be anything, but templated, I don’t have Chad’s mad skills, but it’s a bit more complete.

I would tell you to go to About Me and read it there and count it as my post for today, but incase some counter thingy does get done (I don’t mind if it doesn’t) I want tonight to count, so here it is regurgitated, please place comments, if you care to, in the about me section not here, if you don’t mind.

About Me

I left this empty for a very long time.  I hate ‘about me’ pages.  I open them, and look blankly at the screen.  What do people want to know about me?  What is there to know even?

Often pages like these tend to be somewhat bullet pointed:

Stay at home mother, by choice, to 4 awesome kids, attachment parent loving, Autism mom, blah blah blah, but you know all of that from the title

So, then there’s the flaky useless info, also often bulleted:

Born May 28 1978, Gemini, fun loving, chocolate addicted, blah blah blah, and I never know whether I should use the first or third person.

What I guess I can tell you is who I think I am most days, and who I aspire to be, and what this blog is here for. So here it goes.

This blog was born out of desperation to reach out and communicate with those I love.  After moving to Chicago to follow Kyle’s (my husband) career path I felt lonely and deeply isolated.  I resented having to move, and though I talked with friends back home, I never had the courage to unload how I was feeling with them over the phone.  In the days of being able to reach anyone anywhere, thanks to cell phones, and Skype, where you can now talk face to face over long distances, I loved the the shelter that speaking through type over a computer screen afforded me. I didn’t have to hear their reactions, or hesitations in their voices, or see it on their faces.  People could take my feelings, let them absorb for awhile, and formulate a comment. Or they could read it anonymously, and I would never feel rejected because I wouldn’t know if they read it, or not.

My blog became a place to vent, and be introspective.  I think you get a lot of the real me here.  Who is that?  Well, you decide by browsing the posts.  I can tell you I have been truly whittled to my current self from my experiences.  My most challenging ones have been losing a daughter I loved so deeply, who’s beauty is still breathtaking even in memory, facing Autism daily by being the strongest and best mom I can to Elijah, the boy who came after Kate, the one who was supposed to help make it all better, having a largish family of four kids, five and under, moving internationally twice in two years, and working toward organic self-sufficiency on our hobby farm.

My interests vary over time, but you’ll find them in my posts.  Currently they are about nourishing and healing foods, discovering the best ways to manage Elijah’s quirks bio-medically, and through therapeutic means.  Knitting is my other therapy. Deep down I feel like I’m some sort of artist, and knitting lets me create some form of self expression in short mindless bursts.

Characteristically  I strive to be, and I would hope that my friends may agree that I succeed sometimes to be, first of all human, to care and love others, to be understanding, accepting, compassionate, non-judgmental, loyal, available, and  supportive.  To be the type of person you can confide in.  I long mostly to be comfortable in my skin, and like… no, LOVE, who I am.  Though a pessimist by nature I work at its overcoming by trying to force a sunny view.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, tune in for when it doesn’t, I tend to blog most when my world is going to shit.  I long to be open and opinionated, and not care about backlash, or what others think, but I am an un-overcomeable people pleaser, and my heart bruises easily.

I love when a post gets comments. I love them! I should work harder to comment on the blogs I read.  Offering up comments is a form of generosity.  I love knowing that, hey, you read my stuff, and you were either moved by it, agree with it, or you have something for me to think about.  You can disagree, but comments that are hurtful or defamatory, well, you should keep those to yourself,  and move on to other blogs that fit you better, where the writers are thick skinned.

If you can think of something you’d like to know about me, drop it in the comments box, and I’ll get back to you.


2010 08 29 Erron Friends
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