Purple.

Various states are passing or trying to pass laws restricting gay marriage.  I've already said what I think of gay marriage but I do worry about the future of Texas.

If Texas is on the verge of being a purple state then it would probably be only a matter of time before it becomes a blue state.  If that happens then the three highest populated states would then be blue (apparently Florida is also on the verge of being purple) and they would have enough clout to almost push any agenda they want. 

I'm a conservative but I don't want all of the states to be red either.  Quite a few of the "liberal" views I'm all for and if the majority of states are red then the Republican party would oppose many of them.  Much like if most of the states are blue then I bet quite a few Democrats would oppose some of the bills and laws passed through.

When the Founding Fathers created our system of government they put in a series of checks and balances, currently I think that the most effective check we have is our inability to agree on anything.

The curse of the modern family.

Is this curse taxes or medical problems or the crushing desire to raise your children properly?  Nope, it's laundry. 

We have a kid's birthday party coming up, I'm starting a new career, and there is a mountain of clothes to wash and put away. 

Sometimes I really think that nudists/naturalists have the right idea.

Attitude.

I was talking to a friend today about how people learn.  Some learn by reading, some by listening, and some by other ways.  That got me to thinking about attitude, some people don't learn unless the right attitude is displayed.  Of course that goes both ways and some people won't teach unless the "proper" attitude is shown.  All of that got me thinking about this short story.  It is a work in progress of course.

Roger:  Tower, this is Delta flight 2430 out of DFW and we need assistance.

Tower:  This is Air Traffic Control, who is this?  Where is Captain Wilson?

Roger:  I'm Roger, all of the crew are injured or down; I don't have more details.  Sorry about that.  I still need assistance.

Tower:  Roger, this is Carl; what happened to the crew? 

Roger:  I'm not sure really, I was sleeping and I heard some yelling and screaming then I definitely remember hearing someone say "AW HELL NO!", I was fully awake then and I saw a lot of the passengers beating the crap out of the rest of the passengers.  Some of the passengers were some kind of terrorists, it did sound like they were speaking Farsi, and the other guys were a little drunk.  Their company is flying them down to the coast for a company meeting.  After they beat them down they started calling the flight attendants over for shots, shots for everyone as they put it.  When the flight attendants started getting woozy we looked in the cabin and found the crew down and out.  I think I'm the only sober or conscious person on the plane right now.  That's why you're talking to me and that's why we need assistance because I have no fucking clue on how to land this bird.

Tower:  Don't worry about it Roger, we're trained for this and we'll walk you through this without a problem.  First off, what I'll need you to d-

Roger:  Umm, nope.  You're a little too calm for me.  I'm the only sober person up here and that Crown looks real good.  You want to teach me how to land this thing and you're going to have to make me.  You got some guy down there with an attitude against their boss?  Someone who's nickname is "That bastard"?  That's who I need to talk me down.  Someone who can make me forget that if I screw this up then a lot of people will die.

Tower:  I'm fully trained, I can bring you all in saf-

Roger:  Shut up you little punk ass bitch...I know what motivates me and you need either a hot senorita or someone yelling at me, one or the other and make it snappy.

Tower:  This is Glen, from what I've heard you whine so much you couldn't make that senorita very happy.  They don't call me "That bastard" That implies they talk to me.  Now are you ready to be a hero or do you want to whine some more?

Roger:  What do I need to do Sir?

Tower:  Do what I tell you and if you screw up I'm shoving my size 12's up your ass sideways.  First off...

Cranked that out in about 15 minutes.  The dialogue pieces normally take a lot more time, which is why this one is so rough.

Celebrity Status.

I'm doing my usual laundry/kitchen prep/dishes/backpack check whilst thinking about what I'm going to write about.  Unfortunately, for the past few days I've had snippets of various songs running through my head and I couldn't think of much of anything else.

One of the songs has some controversy around it because the estate of a famous musician is claiming that the new song is a rip off of the dead guy's work.  That caused some random firings in my brain and I came up with this idea.

As pretty much everyone knows there are different levels of fame.  Picture you're a celebrity in some way, maybe an actor or singer or inventor; you probably have someone, in your field, that you look up to.  How would you react if that person contacted you and wanted something from you?

I was talking to a brother about some song and how I like the remake so much more than the original.  My brother misunderstood me.  He thought that "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails was the remake and Johnny Cash did the original.  Nope.  I explained that, from what I heard, Cash heard the original and liked it enough that he wanted to do a copy of it. 

NIN is (or was, I'm not that familiar with their popularity right now) a big and popular band.  But Cash is JohnnymotherfuckingCash and who could pack a concert hall 30 years after their biggest hits?  You know Cash could, could NIN do that now or 10 years from now?  I don't think that NIN will stand the test of time like Cash has but that must be a hell of an ego boost to have one of your hero's ask your permission to do something.

I'm back.

The state hasn't approved me yet but I'm doing stuff like I'm working.  I can't do anything related to my license because that is majorly illegal but I can do other stuff.

My day won't be revolving around a small child anymore.  I still do that parenting stuff like transporting (I do feel like a cabbie at times) but my day isn't going to be focused around a short person during the week.  It's...liberating. 

I'm not sure, but I think that the air might even smell better tomorrow.

Wow.

It's all starting to get real.  I've learned that no matter how much you want something to happen, no matter how much someone tells you it will; nothing happens until it happens.  If an ex-girlfriend says she's going to go all out for a birthday party for me I don't believe it until it happens (that happened three years in a row, she forgot each year).

If the state gets back to me on Monday then I can start work on Monday.  Whenever I get the email from them is when I start.  Am I excited?  Yepper.  Am I a little worried?  Yepper.  Am I going to jump in with both feet and sink or swim?  Damn skippy.  Hopefully it will turn out better than when my parents tried to teach me how to swim.  Apparently, I don't float.

I may not float but I know how to do paperwork and I can do marketing.  We'll see.

Newness.

A new job I'm starting soon.  A new industry.  Working at home.  And a new computer.  Since the old computer couldn't keep up with the new job we decided to get a new computer.

You know that saying:  You can't teach an old dog new tricks?  It's not that the dog can't learn the new tricks I think it's the dog thinking that your new tricks are nothing more than a scheme to make me waste time.

New computer with Windows 8, so far it's just new and shiny.  I pretty much just use it for Excel and Word.  The old programs worked fine but will the new? 

We'll see.  And we'll see if I can figure out how to adjust the sensitivity on this new keyboard.

Success.

I had an interview today.  I know so little about the business that I'm not even sure what questions I should be asking.  I stuck to the basics and let the interviewer do most of the talking.

I asked a few questions and called him afterwards and asked a few more.  I got the job, I get the impression that as long as I have the license and don't annoy the owner then I have the job.  I can deal with that to get my foot in the door and learn the basics.  Later on will I leave to go somewhere else?  Why should I? 

Working at a bigger place would give me certain benefits but working at a smaller place gives other benefits.  I'm used to working at smaller places and I like that I have the owner's cell number and can call him with a question. 

Oddly enough, the money is almost limitless at smaller places; the deciding factor on how much money you make is you.  Lots of limits and safety nets at larger places.

A Review.

I finished the remake of Little Fuzzy.  Fuzzy Nation was good but all of the things that were changed for the new one I thought of as nostalgic in the original. 

Little Fuzzy was published in 1962 and it shows; characters routinely have a cocktail hour around five, they smoke cigarettes, cigars, and even pipes.  When a female character becomes engaged it's assumed that she'll quit working once she's married.

The villian in Fuzzy Nation was the typical business villian, sell my mothers soul for a buck; will do everything for the almighty cash.  Some business people are like that but I much prefer the Victor Grego business model, whatever he needed to do was okay but he also knew when to cut his losses. 

In the Fuzzy series it was hinted that Fuzzies were from another planet which explained their diet, unique physiology, and reasons for possible extinction.  The new one kind of wimped out on that, the science may have been more accurate but it wasn't as fun.

The only character that came from the original was Jack Holloway, in the first he was an older guy that had been a prospector for years.  He was tough and he was a loner, he reminded me of Jack Palance's character in City Slickers.  The new one seemed young, he reminded me of the Kevin Cline character in Silverado. 

Read either of the books and you will be pleased, I think that the original will be around a few decades more whereas the remake won't. 

Trepidation.

I'm a voracious reader.  And like a junkie sometimes I'm not too picky.  That...desperation, let's say, has led me to some truly awesome books (rather impressed with a Nancy Drew book I read when I was 19) and some sorry excuses for English (Time Slave comes to mind). 

Being a fan of speculative fiction aka science fiction, I eventually read the Fuzzy series by H. Beam Piper and loved it.  Was it my usual cup of tea?  Nope.  It was just a good read.  Then I noticed that John Scalzi rewrote it.  I like Scalzi's work and am a fan of his work but I wonder.

Is he going to treat it with the respect it deserves and just tweak it a little a bit or is he going to butcher it?  I'm used to movies butchering novels (John Carpenters Vampire$ for a major example; definitely read the original by John Steakenly Vampire$) but the idea of an author possibly butchering the work of another author I like is somewhat disturbing.

Will he butcher it?  I'm going to publish this and find out,  I'll let you know.

A Realization.

I'm about to write my blog and I come upon a realization.  For years I've been dealing with a group that has all of the earmarks of being a cult that is ran like a group of drug dealers.  I know what you're thinking.  Yes, I was eating a Girl Scout cookie. 

I eat Thin Mints, they are the damn near perfect ratio of mint to chocolate in existence.  My heart will always love the Andes Mint Chocolates but still the Thin Mints are where it's at.  I'll eat an Andes and I won't be thinking about the Thin Mints but I buy the Thin Mints so much more often. 

Those little Girl Scouts, always acting so cute and sweet; damn drug pushing bitches.  Why can't I buy some Thin Mints all year?  Does the cookie factory close down on their off time?  Hell no!  They are increasing demand.  Making their addicts go into withdrawal in order to increase demand and cause panic buying.  Pretty soon someone will overdose on one of their (new) cookies and the sales will go through the roof because everyone has to try the new (killer) cookie.

I know I sound like a junkie when I say that if someone od's on some new chocolate cookie I'll try it and I'll be immune to it.  It's true, I'm safe from a chocolate overdose because I've been training my body for decades to eat quantities of chocolate that the normal person will die from.  I've been in training and I'm ready to go in coach. 

That new killer chocolate cookie that the Girl Scouts have ready for some damn world takeover plan will not be my downfall.  I will eat it and I will take one for the team to save someone else from having to risk death by eating their next step in world domination.

A Slight Miscalculation.

I've taken the classes and passed the tests.  I've paid the state for the license and for the background check.  The FBI says I'm not my evil twin (considering I've done I don't know how many background checks and passed them all I'm not really surprised).  I'm ready to get to work.

I just have to find a company that will hire me.  Until I'm hired I can't advertise my services though.  In the back of my head I'm planning my marketing strategy, wondering what areas I'll mail blind to.  Usual stuff like that.  I just have to find a company that will hire me.

That's the kicker, I need to be hired.  Thinking about the marketing and waiting for the state has distracted me from a simple truth.  I need to polish up my resume.  By polish I mean sanitize.  I'm not ashamed of my time in the topless bars but I know that not everyone thinks of it as "just a job" like I do. 

Yepper, time to crank up the euphemism skills and get to typing.

"New" Things.

My wife and I don't have the best luck with technological gizmos.  I don't know how many vcr's/dvd's/computers and other devices we've had that just stopped working for us.  We only started having this problem when we started living together, before that neither of us had a problem.  Some weird synergistic entropy thing I think.

Our laptop hasn't died yet but I'm surprised it's lasted this long.  My wife and I not early adaptors and we are okay with using something until it stops working, like a car or a computer.  A family friend knows about our picadillos and "loaned" us their old desktop computer. 

When I say "old" I mean that it has all of these 2003 Windows programs on it.  Not a problem because we don't really need some cutting edge machine for what we do.  I do think that it needs some maintenance because it took about an hour to get into this blog.  It does have a publisher program so when I start working I can do my marketing. 

It's like getting a new car, you wonder what will be the surprise and will this surprise happen at a good time or bad?

My dream.

Last night I had a dream, it wasn't good or bad to begin with but it started to go bad towards the end.

I managed topless bars for years and I was good at it.  The numbers that you want to go up would go up and the numbers that you want to go down would go down, simple really.  In my dream last night I was managing a topless bar and I see a male dancer I used to work with on stage.

What the hell?  I ask the other manager and she says that a lot of the male dancers came in together and their on the list already.  Why are they here?  What happened to their club?  I don't know but I'll find out later.  In my dream I'm thinking to myself that it's not a problem, I've managed both men and women we keep the relatively few men interspersed between the women and it won't be a problem.

Then the bad part of the dream starts, I start noticing more dancers coming in that I recognize and I don't want to deal with their drama.  Again it's a lot of dancers but no one knows -or is saying- what happened at the other clubs.  I'm running around this club dealing with the normal situations that happen in a busy club thinking about one thing:  There is gossip out there and I can't find anyone to tell me.

Then the dream gets worse.  A manager comes in I recognize, we'll call him L, he was apparently transferred to work with me.  I've never worked with L but I've cleaned up some of his messes before.  Apparently his drug policy was if you bring it then you need to share it.  I've even hired a few ladies that told me that L had hired them when they were 16, the three ladies that told me this I immediately checked their ID's to make sure that they were of age.  In my dream L sees me and wants to shake my hand.  I see his big smile as I wake up.

I dream about naked women and I'm thinking about the drama I have to deal with and the lack of gossip.  I don't dream often but when I do they are a bit odd.

Valentine's Day.

As I write this it's bit past midnight and there are probably quite a few guys thinking that they need to do something for Valentine's Day.

Please don't be the idiot that calls up the nice restaurant after work and thinks that you can get a reservation, even when you tell them it's for Valentine's Day we still don't care enough to bump the person that reserved weeks ago.

Chocolates and flowers are good but do be careful, I've seen some people get bored with the standbys, make sure that your significant other doesn't get bored with them.  We'll use chocolate (because chocolate is proof of so much that is good in the world) as an example.  If your SO likes lusts after chocolate in a rather unnatural and deviant way then you should be happy that you have them in your life and strive to make everyday one of wonder and beauty for them.  Also you can change up the kind of chocolate you get for them, I've seen chocolate covered potato chips (my first thought was "ewww" then I tried some on a whim and I couldn't stop stuffing them in my mouth), some good quality chocolate toffee; what the hell, get some chocolate syrup and pour it on yourself and let them lick it off or vice versa.

You could do a double boiler set-up (very easy, see picture) in your kitchen and dip your own fruit in it (mind out of the gutter if you please), strawberries, cherries (real not maraschino), bananas, apples, peaches (awesome if firm enough), pound cake or angel food cake, you could even do jalapeno's or Pringles if you swing that way.

You forgot Valentine's Day and it's okay, read my blog and you can get recipes for a pizza (your SO will appreciate the home cooked aspect) and here's a fun way to end the evening.

Taxes.

I did our taxes just a few minutes ago.  I have a love/hate relationship with taxes, I like what the government gives me due to the payment of taxes but I don't like paying them.  I'm willing to bet that is the most common sentiment about taxes in this country.

I have to give the IRS credit for their website though, it's easy to use.  Unfortunately, if a IRS representative or the website gives you bad advice then it's still your fault.  I have a problem with that but really I have a major problem with the whole tax system.

I do like the idea of simplifying the system but the flat tax people I think are going to extreme to be taken seriously.  Most of them say that they want their taxes to fit on a postcard; okay, have you looked a postcard recently?  There's not really a lot of room on it and don't you think the security on a postcard might be a bit lacking?  I'm thinking front and back on two pages is enough for most people.  That even includes all of the security information that the IRS needs.

I don't think that's going to happen in my lifetime though.  I do think that our government is full of cowards that don't want to rock the boat.  Major rocking would happen with any real revisions to the tax law.

Someone starts rocking the boat and I'll vote for them.

Still Sick.

Yepper, I'm still sick.  I'm better than yesterday but that's all.  My whole family is pretty healthy so we don't get sick that often.  Unfortunately, when we do it hits us like a train.

I've lost weight in the day I've been sick.  Pretty much all water weight so it will come back but that should tell you how I've been.

When I'm sick I have no appetite.  I try to force myself to eat something because if I don't then I'm worse off.  Today I didn't force myself to eat anything because I didn't know how it would react with my body and would it want to come out in a quick way.

In case I haven't mentioned it yet, I really hate being sick.

Better Living.

The saying "Better living through chemistry" has a drug connotation to my peers.  I don't follow that.  I'm sick and I feel like hammered dog crap.  We have medicines that make us feel better that we didn't have fifty years ago.

Medicine, it does a body good.

Parenting.

As I've said numerous times before, this parenting thing is the hardest job I've ever had.  They change on you from day to day.  One day they like potatoes and the next they don't.  One day they like your fried rice and the next day they don't.

They can be screaming so much that you just tune them out like rain falling on the roof, and then they stop screaming and you wonder what they're trying to hide.  Sometimes I feel like the worst parent ever because the only way the kids will listen is if I yell or spank them.

I think the only thing keeping my sanity intact is knowing that if I don't keep on them to do the right thing then they might turn into one of those people; you know whom I'm talking about, the annoying, demanding, rude, bullies that you see on the Maury or Jerry Springer show.

It's hard because the thing I want to do most is make my kids happy.

A Small (Bar) World.

I received two postcards today about selling rental properties.  I always call these people to see what they are offering.  So far they've always offered about 50-60% of the property's value; one prospective buyer even typed in my information on the county tax website while I was on the phone and offered me 50% of the taxed value. Since the properties are worthwhile I've never taken an offer but someday I might get some crazy person that will offer 200%.  If so I'll sign that contract so fast it will make your head spin.

One of the companies I called was an individual owner/investor and we spent about 20 minutes talking about topless bars because we both worked in them.  About 20 years ago he was a circuit dancer (he and a group of guys would travel around to small bars and dance for a night or weekend) and would work at the club I worked at.  We talked about some of the guys we used to work with, some of the pitfalls of the business and how glad we were to be out.

How small is this world when he can work at a place 20 years ago and I managed the place about 8 years ago and we know some of the same people?

Expectations.

My mind works pretty odd and for some reason I thought about a lady I worked with over 20 years ago.  When I worked with her she was going to UTA for a degree in PoliSci.  I left that company and didn't think of her again, I didn't really like her that much.  Fast forward about six or seven years and I see her again at the mall.  We talk for a bit and I find out that she had graduated college with her Bachelors degree in PoliSci and she's working as a bookkeeper at a carpet store.

Recently I wondered how many people have a degree and don't use it for anything other than it looks good on their resume.   I never went to college but when I was thinking about it I was going to do a history degree with a polisci minor or possibly a double major in both.  Looking back on it I probably would have switched my major to business.  Now I wonder if my life would have been that much different if I had a business degree.  After graduating what would I have done?  Hit up restaurants with my resume seems to be the most likely.

The bookkeeping lady?  She seemed very unhappy at the carpet store.  For me not going to college was okay, but that's me.

Computers.

I don't really care that much for computers.  I consider them to be nothing more than tools.  I'm not one of those early adapters that must always have the newest model, nor am I the one that's always trying to tweak it just a little bit.

As I said, it's a tool; it's good for some jobs and completely useless for others.  Some games, writing, some research, some shopping, and spreadsheets are great on computers; notice how I didn't mention reading or creating?  When I read I want to hold it in my hands and turn the pages and smell the paper.  How about creating, have you ever tried to create something on a computer?  I despise Play-Doh (as every parent should) but it might be a better medium for creation in the 3D realm.

Am I some crazy Luddite that wants to get rid of computers?  Of course not.  I just get annoyed when I have problems with my computer.  Today the problem was this computer doesn't have Word.  Do you know how hard it is to write somethings without the correct template?  I could do it on a spreadsheet (I can make them dance) but it would be better in the long run to do it as a Word document.  And I don't have Word on this computer.

Yes, I know that I can download it but that always brings up more concerns.  Money, safety, and can my computer handle the extra stuff floating around in the memory?  I said that I'm not an early adapter, I don't know if Word was taken off to save space by the previous owner.

Of course, since I'm not tied to Word I can look around and do some research about the competition.  That is something I like about computers, you can research the competition and force companies to strive to be efficient and innovative.

A requested post.

I never know what to write about.  Today I told my wife that I never know what to write, she suggested soap.  The controversy between girly and manly soap.

Fine.  I don't care if the soap is in a bar and "manly" or in a bottle with lots of flowers on the label and "girly"; does it get me clean and rinse off easily?  If yes to both then I'll use it.  Except for the girly soap with dirt in it.

I know it's not really dirt, they call it moisturizing beads or some crap like that; it's dirt to us laymen.  Deal with it all of you marketing weasels.  Whenever I use the soap with dirt in it I feel like it doesn't rinse off so I spend I don't know how long trying to get that damn dirt out of my chest hair.

My grandmother used to make lye soap, I would like to have some of that.  I sure as hell wouldn't use it, just keep it because my grandmother made it.  I'll even give you her recipe as written by my father over a decade ago.

The Ingredients:

2 gallons hog cracklings (6 pounds)
1.5 quarts water
1 can lye

Mix ingredients in a wash pot.  Build a fire around the pot.  Stir mixture until all cracklings are completely dissolved.  Push the fire away and souse with water to put it out.  Continue stirring soap until color turns cream or white and begins to thicken.  Place a washtub over the pot to protect the soap from dust and smoke and leave it overnight to harden.  Slice and store in a safe dry place.  This soap can be used for washing clothes, dishes, dirty hands and in real hard times for taking baths.

Some of the people who had more time than my mother made fancy soap by putting in perfume and pouring it up into flat square pans so that pieces could be cut evenly and square.

Wasting Food.

I was raised pretty poor and I was the youngest of five so I have a major problem with wasting food.  Additionally, I don't like having something just sitting on a shelf and not being used.  Even in bars I hated having something not moving, the more expensive bottles I understand don't move quickly but the cheaper bottles need to move before someone knocks the bottle over and it's broken.

In my pantry are nine (yes, NINE.  I counted them twice) DIFFERENT types of cereal.  There are five people that live in this house and I don't like cereal.  The other four have two different types each.  Some of the cereal no one likes, we have them because my wife let the kids pick out their choices and of course they picked out the most colorful box at their eye level.  She'll probably say I did it but she's lying.  So now I have a few boxes of cereal that no one wants to eat.

I hate wasting food.  What can I do with them?  There's a local donut shop that makes some interesting donuts (and my personal favorite, the brisket kolaches).  Some of these donuts have kids cereal or candy bars sprinkled on them.  I used that for my inspiration.

I made a basic bread (boring) and put crushed Cinnamon Apple Jacks (kids don't like it) and chocolate chips in it.  Since it was Cinnamon Apple Jacks I also made a cinnamon butter to go with it.  Next time I'm going to increase the cereal amount and reduce the chocolate, really get rid of that cereal.

It's sweeter than a regular bread but I think that next time I'll not crush the Apple Jacks so you get a big piece of them.  Considering that I have about a quarter of a box to experiment with I might as well.

My Plateau.

I've increased my cardio workout at the gym unfortunately it might not make that much short term difference.  I seem to be famished all the time.  I know that it's better to eat three smaller meals and numerous snacks during the day but I'm still hungry.

In South America and Africa many impoverished peoples eat cassava as a major staple in their diet.  It's high in calories and carbs yet it has crap for protein and most other vitamins and minerals.  If you're poor and that's all you have to eat it will keep you going but a diet that relies heavily on cassava will be bad for you in the long run.  That's why some botanists are trying to crossbreed the wild and domesticated varieties of cassava, the wild doesn't grow that well but it does have much more beneficial vitamins and minerals.

Great, maybe these botanists could come up with something that had about no calories that I could crunch on.  If you could make it taste like chocolate then I could do a few calories.  Don't use carob, I can tell the difference.

I'm getting grumpy because of the constant hunger and the not losing weight again.  It's much better if you readers deal with my grumpiness instead of my kids.

Superbowl Sunday.

Here it is, the one day out of the year where we determine which football team is the best.  I don't understand it.  I don't understand spectator sports in the first part so that's just me.  A joke on Facebook put it best:  "The two states that legalized pot are getting together for a 'Superbowl'".

It just amazes me that a lot of people can tell you the stats for their favorite team but they can't tell you some basic things about politics.  What happened to our priorities?

What I did today.

At a former club I worked at an employee asked me what I did on my day off.  Simple little game you play at work.

Well, my wife is a bit on the frugal side and she wants to have a garden in the backyard.  She doesn't want to rent a tiller though so she was looking into alternatives to regular gardening.  She looked into container gardening, raised beds, hydroponics, and aquaponics.

One guy (a customer at the club) said that he knew what hydro was (and he really liked it when he could afford it) but what's aquaponics?

Like hydroponics but better and more efficient.  You have the plants in the growing medium aka gravel and water floods it and then drains.  The major difference is that the water has fish living in it instead of you putting chemicals in it.  You feed the fish and the fish do their business in the water, it floods over the roots and the plants filter out the nutrients.

But of course you have to feed the fish and that is why I was making a worm garden last night.  We never did get an aquaponics system going but my father talked to my wife about the idea and he went crazy with it.  His aquaponic system was actually the largest system in the state.  Some day I will find the pictures of his system and post them.

What's this post about?  We need the house painted and called a company for their quote.  Their bid was closer to $10,000 than to $9,000.  That's why I spent this day painting a bedroom.

Kindergarten.

My wife and I were talking to our middle child's kindergarten teacher today and she mentioned something that made me wonder.  She said that her four best students were students that were held back the year before.  She believed that the reason they were behind the previous year was because they were months younger than the other students.

When you're five years old five or six months can make a huge difference.  This made me wonder how beneficial a longer kindergarten year would be to the world at large.  In kinder the kids are taught the basics and after that their schooling is about learning new things and not relearning the basics.  If a kid doesn't learn something in the beginning then they are trying to play catch up the rest of their school career.

If the kids spend more time learning the basics then they should have a better grasp of those concepts and will be able to expand on those things with ease later on.  Everyone has heard of those high school and college sports kids that were functionally illiterate and were just passed because they were jocks.  When those kids were in kindergarten they weren't jocks, if they had a little more time to learn the basics then would they have any problems later on?