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Choc. joking!!! the answer is Justus.

Thanks. It is a big deal. When I was a new hire, I was straight up told that I would probably never achieve the level I was at currently, let alone the one I just got promoted to. So big middle finger to those old guys.

Nightly.net

If Boebert loses I take full credit. Right now the margin is like 70 votes. I sent out a reminder to vote in my newsletter and told students to remind their parents to vote and I offered to cover any staff duty so they could drop off their ballot. That has to be worth 70 votes. Your welcome America.

Hate to say it, but yeah... putting a 92 year old through withdrawal might kill her.

Soooo this more a memory I treasure but still happens food wise. My step-mom had to feed like eleventy billion kids for breakfast in the morning when we'd spend the night there at her house before my Dad married. For me it was early morning cartoons like GI Joe and breakfast taco which were basically tortillas with scrambled eggs, cheese and cut up hot dogs and potatoes. IT WAS SO GOOD WITH HOTSAUCE and morning cartoons. OMG. Best way to start out a school day. Now it's just depressing news.

When I was about 4, somebody bought me plastic "wigs"-one gold, one silver and one bronze. We looked like Star Trek characters with those things on our heads and it triggered a life-long love of and obsession with metallics, especially gold.

I voted! F Greg Abbott.

GET FUCKING HYPE looks awesome I can’t wait

Kinda nice those new Chevy commercials play Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere". We'll here her voice for a bit.

Oh no! This happened to me too. I know exactly how to help! I can get you all your money back plus the shoes themselves. It’s very simple. All you need to do is send me twenty thousand dollars, cash, by direct courier. Mortgage the house, sell a kidney, whatever, don’t worry, you’ll get every penny back + interest. The important thing is you have to do this immediately. You can’t wait. Or else!

Finally watched this. Thought it was great, the best bit of TV Star Wars yet. (I haven't seen Andor yet). Not really sure what people's complaints are about, there were some hokey effects (like Obi running from the water) but nothing that made me go "wow that looks cheap". I mean, do people remember what the OT special edition looks like?? I think the only time I though this was ridiculous was when Leia was running from her kidnappers in the forest and one of them got stuck on a low lying branch , that was pretty bad.. but I mean, small complaint. All the Vader/Obi stuff was spot on. And sits high amongst some of the best moments in all of Star Wars I think. Star Wars in general is not the sacred cow it used to be to me, so I managed to just watch and enjoy this over two nights. I'm looking forward to Andor now, hope it hasn't been over hyped.

I felt this show was truly excellent. The first Star Wars show that wasn't "Star Wars Lite" and really felt like something great on it's own. It fulfills the promise of what we were all excited about when Disney bought Lucasfilm. Obviously we all were excited to see Luke, Leia, Han back and the ST. This though fulfills the idea that you can set all different kinds of shows in the Star Wars universe. Im not saying that this is what Star Wars "should be" because I don't think thats the case. There is certainly room for stuff that is more traditional Star Wars with Jedi and the Force and lightsabers. At least there better be cause I love that stuff. This show was just great though.

So I have a mechanic friend whose Dad also worked on cars into his 70s. He built a 1946 Chevy Coupe upgraded with a 350 V8 for a customer some 10 years ago, and the owner ended up selling it back to my friend's Dad. The Dad wants to sell it wanting $18,000 for it, but is not getting any bites. It's been sitting for 2 years now, but driven on weekends. I am just in love with this car! I came into an inheritance which I really want to save for retirement, but damn tempting to offer my friend's Dad $15K cash for it! I can't stop thinking about it, actually. Someone stop me! I need someone to reason with me, and give me a reason not to buy, seriously. Here is a pic of a car that looks really close, but has a different shade of red...

Got some trail time in!

At the school I support, we had a Dreamcatcher graduation ceremony for Native American women who are learning to be business leaders. I was able to see a Navajo Feather Dancer dance in order to open the ceremony. It was really interesting.

For me, it's classic Loony Tunes. I'm in my 40's, and I'm just as entertained watching Loony Tunes now as I was when I was a kid in primary school. I recently started collecting these on DVD. I haven't watched these in I don't know how long, but I recently came across a 6-volume DVD set in the video section of Barnes & Noble, and it revived my interest. I have three more volumes to go. Each volume is over 6 hrs long. I'm super excited about it, but I probably won't watch these right away. I plan on saving them for a rainy day.

I have this fifth grade student "T" that isn't necessarily a bully, but is continuously messing with other students and shows zero accountability and ownership. He's one of those kids that if he were at most any other school he would have been beat up a few times. Yesterday at recess I see T run into another student and immediately apologize. I make a big to do and celebrate it--high fiving him, telling him I am proud of him etc. I look over and see the other student upset. I check in on him and he said, "after T apologized he leaned in and whispered, "I am sorry your mom has a big booty".

I wish the candidates' minions would come take their stupid damn signs away.

hard disagree

I'd definitely be happy with Buttegieg. He's just so even keeled and almost unruffleable.

In retrospect, somebody in their mid 20s is totally a child hahaha

You're not that young lol.

I'm not into collecting stuff like I used to be, but I still love Star Wars (the original trilogy) almost as much as I did when I was a kid. And I love dragons and cats and doing arts and crafts. I kinda miss Saturday morning cartoons. That was the day to look forward to, no school, no chores (or very few) and the whole morning to just laze around and watch cartoons and kids' shows!

I actively collect various toy lines from when I was a kid. I may not have big wars or stories going on with them anymore, but I'm just as happy every time I get a new one as I would be at 7. In fact, I'm going to a toy show this weekend.

There should be a special award for picking a person who dies twice

I went over to JacobE's the Friday before Halloween so I got to see his awesome kids in their awesome costumes (Spiderman and Edward Scissorhands, which I misgendered as Freddie Kruger). It was pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good!

me and lyra been walking around the last two days saying KING CHALLLLLLLS in our most ridiculous, fakest, most terrible english accent the last two days and we can't stop laughing about it. no R at all.

I’ve watched the first six episodes so far, they seem to be 3 episode arcs so I’ve just been enjoying them as little mini movies. I don’t really have any complaints about the show at all. The writing, production values and lack of quota cameos has been bench mark really. In particular I wish other Star Wars shows had as much focus as this one does. But for me personally it’s just not that exciting. I don’t know if that’s just over saturation, if it’s just due to some personal life stuff getting in the way of me being engaged in anything or just that I don’t really associate Star Wars with more mature content. This is just pure personal preference because I know others are really digging it, but that element of it doesn’t work for me. I use Star Wars as pure escapism. No rules and a pretty juvenile universe. When I want the more mature and realistic content, I’ll get into some Expanse or BSG. But for Star Wars I like that it’s just cool for the sake of cool, who cares why. When I go to watch Andor, I know it’ll be good and well done but I’d rather just rewatch the Obi Wan/Vader duel.

I also submitted a request to evaluate E for autism and also an alternative diagnosis that I think matches better, but would require genetic testing. Unfortunately, this alternative diagnosis is not a pretty one. I don't like going and looking for bad news, but I think we need to figure out what exactly is going on with him.

Yep, highlight of the week for me. Thoroughly enjoying this show. I read season 2 starts filming later this month - that is supposed to cover the remaining 4 years to Rogue One.

I haven’t even started yet. I’ll get to it!

First day of new school tomorrow. I will take prayers, good juju, whatever you got for Q. She is so nervous about making friends. They put her in the all 5th grade class, which I think is better for her socially. She will do fine academically. And new teacher says no homework other than reading for pleasure. I am all about that. Her former school assigned so much busy work that just contributed to stress for us because she had soccer practice, Girl Scouts, or something going on most school nights. E has been having a rough time. Teachers have been out sick, and he's started eloping from class. Principal called me Thursday frustrated as hell and its a good thing it wasn't in person because there might've been hair pulling. Honestly, I'm convinced she is half the problem. She was talking back to him when he was escalated and I told her she wasn't helping and she flipped out. She is a control freak and wants compliance and wants it NOW. This is her 2nd year and while some families like her, I hear through the grapevine that many families do not, and she is a total bureaucrat. Thankfully the school psychologist intervened and helped come up with the rewards plan I have been advocating for all along, but the special education teacher is either too lazy or too ignorant to implement. FINALLY someone who gets it. Friday was his first day on the new plan, and he was super successful. Is it a lot of work for them? Yes. Do they need a mindset change from negative reinforcement to positive? Yes. Even though positive behavior intervention systems are the hot new thing in public schools (lol its like a 2 decade old concept), no one actually knows how to practice it when it's hard. Also I found an ally at Cub Scouts whose older son is on the autism spectrum and has been through the same program as E. Once I brought that up she was like OH I GET IT. I am not sure we are going to stick with it, though. His den leader was kind of a prick when we met him, so it's all going to depend on if my new friend can help me get through to him.

I love reading your insights on education from an institutional perspective. I generally speak from a more personal level on these things, both from my experience and because homeschooling lends itself to being able to teach and learn on a personal and individual level. With homeschooling, we're not typically dealing with the same level of inequity as school systems as a whole, as most homeschooling families also tend to be fairly affluent and white, so my sample pool of anecdotes are similarly fairly homogenous. There aren't too many statistics available surrounding homeschooling (because of our general avoidance of things like benchmark testing, I'm sure), so I unfortunately only really have anecdotal evidence to offer. But it's anecdotal evidence collected over 8ish years and many different online groups, so I feel mostly justified in making the assertions that I do. That said, it's not uncommon for kids to fall into homeschooling after being considered "behind" in public schools only to have them "catch up" either fairly quickly or eventually. Most of the parents I see worried about their students being behind are still imbued with a public school mindset where, unfortunately, being behind can compound rather quickly without intervention because of teachers' limited ability to differentiate. That's simply not how things work in our homeschooling world. We have the luxury of a super-tight student to teacher ratio, the ability to slow down or speed up at will, and also the ability to switch gears at the drop of a hat if need be. So we as a group spend a lot of time assuaging these fears. But I have some uhh...thoughts...about this sentence: "When we talk about educational equity and social justice--whether that be racial, economic status, gender, etc--a key component is students having the skills necessary to access in demand and higher paying jobs." What other key components are there in assessing educational equity? How is it determined that students have these skills should they choose not to pursue in demand and higher paying jobs? Does encouraging natural aptitudes and interests play any part in assessing this equity? I know several homeschooling parents who've been reamed by family members because their kiddos chose not to go to college or bother with the SAT or ACT. Most of these kids discovered a passion and were allowed the latitude to dive right in. Now many of them are in blue collar careers that suit their personalities and passions. To me, I'd consider an informed and happily productive young adult a greater educational success than one who's been forced into a more "desirable" or "high-achieving" path. But this kind of thing is hard to get qualitative data on, so I'm just wondering what other criteria there might be to assessing educational quality or equity. Also, I really hope your district does a better job with phonics than either of my nephews' districts. (And I'm sure it does. Texas education sucks balls in general.) Other than learning a few letter sounds and some CVC word families, their phonics instruction is well...limited at best. And I never would have known this or noticed this had I not researched and implemented phonics instruction for my own kiddos - phonics and history have been the two most eye-opening subjects that I've taught my kids so far. There was SO MUCH left out of my own learning in each of those, and so much I don't see being taught to students now still. Just think, most students are only taught one phonogram for ch. /Ch/ - chair, cheese, chicken, chocolate. But rarely are also taught that ch also says /k/ and /sh/. Many times these are taught as exceptions, but there are so many words that utilitize these sounds! Christmas, school, schedule, chef, machine, crochet. English doesn't have nearly as many exceptions to phonics rules as people think. We're just not taught all of the rules properly.

Stickers. I own so many stickers.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o4mZ0PFCaYA&t=2s

Double point bonus

Well she has a student ID number today so that's a good sign. However, my husband said, you sure the old school received her intent to disenroll? It's a Google form. So really, heck if I know. I emailed the lady who sent me the link to see if they got it because I did it Friday night. I have a feeling they did not. She has 2 days left, no one has reached out to us.

I’m still really enjoying this show and where it’s going. The prison story line is successfully making me hate the empire, and will also presumably help radicalize Andor to the cause. Also, the show is doing a good job of making me care about Mon Mothma.

That happened with us too. Submitted both kids info to the school at the same time. Eli got registered, not a word about Lyra until several calls were made.

HAHAHA.. ha ha... Schools should scare people like in a not good halloween way. We are hiring a registrar lady right now. So it's just endless temps who quit after a week.

Today I called my daughter's new school to ask if anything was missing from the paperwork I submitted Friday afternoon, because she is starting next Monday. The lady in charge of processing her registration basically said oh s*** I forgot. It took everything in me not to scream.

Now Jerry is dead.

So apparently not only did we all think he was already dead, it turns out he's still alive.

We think she's about a year or so. The people we got her from had her for a few months (living in a condo, so no yard, and a newborn), and they got her from someone else who wasn't really taking care of her. There was also exactly zero medical records, so other than the fact that she's menstruated and therefore not spayed, we knew nothing about her. Fortunately she's a happy, healthy dog--she just doesn't know how to dog at all, other than being mostly crate trained. There's been some accidents, she chews on just about anything she can get her teeth on, barks at everyone who walks by (we live next to a school and a park, so it's a lot), and pulls so hard on the leash the kids can barely hold on. To be honest, I was perfectly fine not having a dog and would've been fine never having one. I'm a cat person. I'm fine with having one of course, especially since Katie and the kids really wanted one. I wanted one pre-trained, because I want to do as little work as possible with the dog, which clearly isn't gonna happen. That's the trade off, though--get a dog for free instead of paying exorbitant adoption fees from a shelter, then deal with all the untrained shit. We all had a hard weekend for a variety of reasons, and honestly a lot of our shit probably rubbed off onto the dog and that caused her to go ape shit too. Today was much better and I'm 95% sure we're keeping her. I'm still dealing with... I don't wanna call it PTSD because that's dramatic as hell and insulting to people who actually have it, but I'm dealing with SOMETHING as a result of all the change that's happened this year. It's not as bad as it was during the summer, but it's still there. Adding an untrained dog to it probably wasn't the smartest idea, but it's what happened.

I hate the referral process for gifted testing. I really don't think most teachers would refer difficult or neurodiverse kids. Q was also terrible at phonics, and is a bad speller, although I kind of blame the fact that she was in speech therapy at the time. I've always tried to have my kids sound words out, and then I get back a spelling test and there is a R in random places where there is not even a R anywhere in the word. I mean they can both read and comprehend just fine, but their spelling is pretty atrocious. No one has identified them as dyslexic because they can read, but I have to wonder.

That’s always shocking. so Blackjack the cat is healing good. He sleeps all day in my bed and eats all the kibbles. He has been very polite. But shy. All of my cats have taken to him except Tina’s cat Sherbert.

Celebrities aren’t dying any faster, we’re just getting older ourselves so the celebs are more and more directly influential/knowable to us so it feels worse.

I saw! Luna is the Fido of the 2020s.

We got a dog yesterday