A new belt

Isaac has been taking taekwondo for several months now and the other night, after class, he took his yellow belt test.  He has been studying Korean terms and practicing his forms (the pattern of moves he needs to know for each belt).  He had it all under his “belt” as test night came.  I took him to the dojang and he was cool as can be for his normal training session.  After class, most people headed out until only black belts and the 5 people being tested remained.

Each student had to do two of their forms and answer Grand Master Kang as he asked them questions about Korean terminology.  Isaac did great on the items as he had studied so much.  I knew that he would also have to break a board with a kick but I figured there was no way to safely practice that at home.  So, the moment of truth came and it was Isaac’s turn.  He lined up and positioned the poor guys who had to hold the board and took a practice kick to make sure his aim was right.  And then, my poor helpless son kicked the board so hard that it cracked perfectly.  In fact, I heard the board, long since dead, come back to life, just so it could scream in pain.  His eyes lit up and I have never seen him more proud.  I think I was also as proud as I have ever been.  He didn’t know what exactly to expect so he just jumped in with both feet…well, really with one foot..but he went for it!

Each student got to keep their board pieces but had to line back up for another round of questions…this time the hard ones about family life and respect and helping one’s parents by doing chores and obeying, etc.  This was probably the toughest part of the whole test, especially for the kids.  Kids had to think on their feet and speak extemporaneously.  He answered every question (though, now I have some leverage!) and was passed with no hesitation.  Grand Master Kang awarded him a yellow belt with a green tip.

The last few evenings since that night, Isaac has done almost nothing but practice his forms and think “taekwondo”.  His pride is warranted and I am delighted that he has found something he enjoys so much.  I think I may have to toughen up some for his teenage years though…

8 Comments

warren, March 9th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Awesome, Family

Sleeping is weird

Sleeping is biological and necessary and all that but it sort of cracks me up how weird we are when we sleep…by “we” I really mean my family.  I sleep entirely normally.  Anyhow, last night I went up to check on the kids and noticed Abigail in one of her crazy sleep poses.  She was a terrible sleeper as a kid but she seems to have turned a corner…most nights she sleeps all night.  Now she just seems to go into “bunker” mode at night.  She still talks in her sleep but it’s usually pretty interesting so I see nothing weird there.  Anyhow, in bunker mode, I think she surely must be protecting herself from Madeline.

Madeline, you see, is a needy cat.  She also sleeps weirdly.  When we first got her, she was very young and sucked her tail every night.   We took her to numerous cat psychics and analysts and, after spending our kids’ college funds on it, they concluded that she was taken from her momma at too young an age so was consoling herself with her tail…sort of like a kitty pacifier.  So, imagine your restless cat who sucks her tail at night waking up in a fit and smacking you in your sleeping  face with a tail full of cat slobber…it’s not pleasant.

Now Isaac is consistent in his sleep weirdness…he sleeps on his stomach under double the blankets that the rest of us use.  I am certain that I would suffocate under the enormous weight of the blankets but he seems to thrive.  It must be 110 degrees under there but he sleeps like that year round.  Actually , I figure that the heat from the blankets works like a kid-greenhouse.  The kid grows like mad and I am convinced that it’s blanket related.  He already wears the same size shoes I wear and he hasn’t even hit puberty yet!

I won’t give details on Emily but let me assure you friends, she is a weird sleeper too.  Now, I can almost guarantee that she is going to get on here and leave a comment saying some untruths about me.  Something like that I snore at night.  It’s simply not true .  That’s Mo (the cat) who snores.  I am a perfect sleeper!

5 Comments

warren, March 4th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Fun, Thoughts

Dead-out

We’ve had a fairly cold winter so, unlike most years, I have not been able to simply look outside and see if the bees are flying to know they are ok.  I prepared the bees this fall by treating them with various things to make sure they were healthy, I made sure they had plenty of honey and pollen to eat through the winter and then I crossed my fingers.

Still clustered, but dead

A few weeks ago, we had a warm day and I was able to check the 4 hives at my house.  To my dismay, 2 were dead-outs.  All of my hives at other locations are fine so I was surprised to find some at my house that were gone.  We live atop a hill in Charleston, WV and we get serious wind.  I have a windbreak around them but I suppose that the extreme drafts might have gotten to them.  That is the one characteristic that separates the hives at my house from the ones I have elsewhere.  It has been said that one cannot freeze bees…if they stay dry and not too windy.  If either problem exists, all bets are off so I figured I fell prey to the wind.

Heads down in the cells...telltale sign of starvation

I opened the hives and immediately knew that the wind was not to blame, but rather the cold…sort of.  You see, my bees didn’t freeze, but rather starved to death.  The cold makes bees cluster together.  As it gets especially cold with no warm days interspersed, the bees cannot break their cluster.  Without breaking cluster, they cannot move through the hive either.  Since their honey stores are spread throughout the hive, they need to be able to move around periodically to eat.

Some honey nearby where they were clustered

Plenty of honey one more frame over...

So, I opened 2 hives and saw the tell-tale signs…bees still clustered together,  many bees with their heads deep in honeycomb cells, and honey nearby, but not right where they died.

I hate for a colony to die, and when it is related to something I might have done wrong, it irritates me even more (fortunately, that doesn’t happen often anymore).  But when it’s due to nature, I guess I feel a little bit of relief.  It’s never fun, but it is a reality of beekeeping.  So, I just hope for warmer days here and there so the bees can move to food and also for a quick Spring!  Come on Spring!

10 Comments

warren, March 2nd 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Bees

Clipping my toenails

I was messing around the other night on facebook (definitely an evil place) and I was pretty bored…so I updated my status to “gonna clip my toenails”.  A friend suggested that I blog about it and it occurred to me that I have strong opinions about toes…and feet…and actually, ankles too.  You see, I really, really hate feet.  Baby feet are ok but once a person starts to support their own weight on their feet, all bets are off.  Feet turn instantly gross and get worse as time goes on.

I know some people have a “thing” for feet but I truly don’t understand.  Most people have funky, crooked, hairy toes with nasty toenails and crusty heels and stuff growing between said toes (well, maybe most people don’t have all of those, but any one of them disqualifies feet for me).  I did a (very) little bit of looking for pictures of feet that I could use as examples but could not continue.  Please, I beg you, do not search google images for “feet” or “toes”…honestly, it isn’t really safe to search google images for much of anything, but what I found was particularly disturbing.

Anyhow, since I have to clip my own toenails regularly, I have grown accustomed to my own feet and can go on with my day after a trim (and after a good hand washing).  The kids and wife are on their own though.  I can handle belly button lint and ear wax and those little white crunchy things you sometimes cough up from the back of your throat…but toe jam?  The horror!  No chance!  I figure that there must be some traumatic event in my history that made me like this because my brother shares a similar aversion…

Ok, that’s probably a whole lotta too much information, but in the interest of transparency, I thought you should know.

Anybody else share my madness?

12 Comments

warren, February 26th 2010 | Tags:
Posted in Thoughts

Everyday Math

The kids bring home papers from school and, like most parents, we look over them to make sure they are doing well. Most of the stuff is pretty typical fare, but I can’t get over the math papers that Isaac brings home. You see, he is being taught Everyday Math…it’s a curriculum that is mandated by the state (or maybe county? I think state) and it is crazy. The whole idea is to do math problems that one might encounter in their day to day life.

I am not exactly sure how I feel about it. I know the teachers are mandated to teach math using the curriculum so I do not blame his teachers one bit. I honestly doubt they like teaching it either. Anyhow, let me give you an example:

Directions: Estimate the answer. Write a number model to show how you estimated.

Problem A: A prairie vole (a mouselike rodent) has an average of 9 babies per litter. If it has 17 liters in a season, how many babies are produced.

Isaac’s number model: 10X17 = 170
This answer was marked wrong
The “correct” answer: 10X20 = 200
The real answer: = 9X17 = 153 (Isaac’s answer was closer)

I understand that the idea is to round numbers so you can get an easier problem that is doable in one’s head…but let’s give a little credit here…most 4th graders can handle 10X17!

Problem B:  In the next hour, French people will save 12,000 trees by recycling paper.  About how many trees will they save in two days?

Isaac’s number model: 50X12,000 = 600,000
This answer was marked wrong
The “correct” answer:  50X10,000 = 500,000
The real answer: = 48X12,000 = 576,000 (Isaac’s answer was closer)

There were 5 problems and Isaac “missed” 3 of them.  Now, I love learning to estimate.  It’s super helpful when I am at the grocery store, but this stuff is absolutely ridiculous!

I learned to estimate very well after I learned how to actually get the right answer!  Isaac and most of the other kids do know how to get the right answer, but they are definitely not as fluent with it as they should be.  So, as long as the kids need to estimate their grocery bill, they will be well equipped (although Isaac may be too accurate).  However, if we need to build a bridge or send a woman to Mars, she is out of luck…though I figure we can get her close…

I don’t often rant on here but why on Earth are the powers-that-be messing with math programs that taught engineers and scientists to build great dams, and discover new medicines and send men to the Moon?  Surely the times have changed since then, but those “old” techniques worked.  Update the problems…kids don’t need to know how to calculate how many bales of hay can fit on a hay cart, but they do need to know how to calculate!  I truly don’t blame teachers.  Most of them are disgusted by it as well.

Okay, I am going to stop at that…there are other similar examples of how the new curriculum is making math less useful and more difficult, but I’ll save that for another day…

12 Comments

warren, February 25th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Thoughts, WV

Poop = Spring

Sunday was absolutely beautiful in WV. The high temperature was in the 50s and the snow started to give way to small signs of spring. Daffodils are breaking  through the ground and my bees were able to get out of the hive to poop. Bees, you see, won’t poop in the hive. They also cannot fly outside in cold temperatures. Bees are cold-blooded so if they break the cluster (bees cluster together very closely in the hive in cold temperatures and rub together using friction to stay warm all winter), they very quickly slow down and die. What’s a bee to do then? Well, they hold it of course…sometimes for months!

See it? Yellow spots...both sides in the snow...relief!

Why am I fascinated with this?

So, it always brightens my day in the early spring when I see yellow…I love the yellow of daffodils, the yellow of forsythia, and the yellow of fresh bee poop!  When temperatures rise such that any of my three yellows are possible, I get out and frolic a bit (not like the rabbits frolic of course).

Fifteen minutes after I washed my car!

I washed Steve Sunday morning and parked it in the driveway so I could watch it shine in the sun.  Much like birds are able to find a clean car, so too can bees.  Of course, remember that there can be as many as a quarter of a million bees in the hives at my house…and all of those bees have had their legs crossed for a long time.  My formerly green car now has a yellow tint…but you know what…I love yellow…it means spring!

Smart pills!

Emily says I am preoccupied with poop and animal anatomy so you can imagine my fascination with this pile of deer poop in my yard.  My Dad used to call those pellets smart pills.  I don’t think they really worked very well, but that’s another story.  Anyhow, Momma deer are now with fawns so my finding smart pills gives me hope that I will get to see newborn fawns again this year.

Oh yeah, check out this bird’s song!  Beautiful…and very springy!  Charleston is starting to break through I hope (though we have snow forecast for the rest of the week…but I choose to ignore that).

By no means do I want my yard overrun with natural fertilizer, but I have to tell you, a little poop means spring and in my book, that’s a great thing!

5 Comments

warren, February 23rd 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Audio, Bees, Nature, Thoughts

Maple Syrup…teaching the kids to work

When I was a kid, my parents fully believed in child labor.  My brother and I shoveled snow and cut wood and actually had to clean up after ourselves.  We also carried maple sap through the woods from trees that we tapped to the storage barrel where it was stored until we cooked it into maple syrup.  Every spring we’d haul gallons and gallons of sap on our backs…well, as long as I was bigger, my brother hauled gallons and gallons on his back while I “encouraged” him.  We built a huge fire every weekend and boiled the sap into syrup and generally had great times making the sweet magic from the trees.  Anyhow, with their “advanced” age and lack of kids living in the house, my parents are now, fundamentally opposed to child labor (i.e. they don’t heat with wood).

Not wanting to deprive my kids of the joy that is  child labor making maple syrup, we are tapping our tree this spring.  Yesterday the temperature fit the bill for when to tap (below freezing at night, above during the day) so we did our work.

When I was a kid, we drilled a hole by hand and tapped a piece of pvc pipe into the tree to let the sap flow into our collection buckets.  Our buckets were typically anything we could find that would hold liquid…from milk jugs to pop bottles to commercial sized grease containers.  I found a place to order taps meant for maple sugaring and they work but sort of lack that originality that I remember as a kid.

Anyhow, we tapped our tree with two taps and the sap began to flow like mad.  I only have small containers to capture the sap so I will have to get the kids out twice a day to collect it.  They only have to walk 50 feet to do their chores though.  Maple syrup for them may be waaaay too easy.  Maybe we need to heat with wood…

9 Comments

warren, February 22nd 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Green, Nature

Coffee will do…I guess

Well, Lent is upon us.  I still have my shirt after yesterday so I figure it will be a pretty easy going Lenten season.  I don’t typically give up stuff for it but my family does.  You may remember last year that Isaac gave up farting on the cat and Abigail gave up wearing Mom’s sparkly eye shadow.  This year Abigail is giving up chocolate…typical girl.  Isaac wanted to give up school but I told him that was not an option.  After much debate, he finally decided to give up graham crackers…way to go trooper!

Anyhow, I have had an ongoing struggle against caffeine which I won’t attempt to beat this spring.  I think a big part of it is a correlated addiction to pop.  So, this year for Lent, I am going to buck my typical lack of Lenten cheer and actually give up pop.  So, without pop, I still need a caffeine delivery system (I’ll work on that addiction another time).  The only other alternative to pop is coffee so I have been practicing drinking coffee and actually pretty well like it now.  It’s strange that I had to convince myself that I like something but I suppose lots of things in life are that way.

So, for special occasions like delays from school, we stop by the local convenience store and grab a couple of cappuccinos (Isaac likes them a lot) so we can be fully caffeinated as we greet the day!  Convenience store cappuccinos aren’t as flashy as “real” cappuccinos but at $1.29, I don’t really care…plus, they are just plain tasty…forget the purism!

At work I don’t (yet) have a cappuccino machine so I stick with the regular style coffee…strong, bitter and black…like my heart.  Most regular men would be satisfied with a regular-sized coffee cup, but, because of my caffeine disability, I prefer to drink from a barrel.  My barrel of coffee drains about half of the pot at a time.  I believe coffee will do…

Not only is WV wild and wonderful, but Isaac and I are as well when we are fully caffeinated!

11 Comments

warren, February 17th 2010 | Tags: ,
Posted in Adventure, Family, Food, Fun

luv and such

So, I am a pretty practical guy.  It drives my fashion (I always wear sensible shoes), my politics and even my romantical side.  I understand that lots of things go into driving our economy so I am proud to do my part and participate in the Valentine’s day festivities…but my practical side kicks in too.

Emily and I have been buying small things the past month or so and calling them early Valentine’s day presents (there were some great after-Christmas sales, afterall).  Still, being ever-so-slightly brighter than a toaster over (which I also got in an after-Christmas sale), I knew that I had better have something in hand for the Mrs. come Valentine’s morning.  The boy and I went to the local big-box purveyor of Chinese goods and I quickly spotted my prize.  You see, Emily has been complaining about having only one small non-stick pan in which to cook my eggs and sausage in the morning.

China-Mart had a super deal on 2 Farberware non-stick pans and their bases were even coated in red enamel…and folks think I don’t speak the language of love!  I proudly placed my take on the cashier’s stand and she looked at me funny.  I sort of figured she was a bit jealous of the catch my wife had found, but I usually can’t read women very well.  Anyhow, we headed home and I hid her present so she would be surprised!

Just like a kid on Christmas morning, I woke early and fetched my gift and woke Emily and presented her with her apron and the new red pans.  At that point, things get a little fuzzy.  I guess she must have slipped getting out of bed, or maybe she had a nerve twitch, but somehow, the pan handle must have fallen into her hand and as she swung her arm to catch her balance, the pans whacked me in the head.  I don’t remember much else except waking up in a hospital bed with IVs stuck in my arms.

So, while my Valentine’s day was somewhat unusual, I am sure Emily liked her new pans and I saved us some cold hard cash by pocketing the pudding cups and packs of crackers that came with my hospital meals…all in all, I’d say it was a pretty good Valentine’s day!

6 Comments

warren, February 15th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Family, Fun

Proud of the fight

Isaac is taking tae kwon do lessons and is doing really well. We take him 3 nights per week and he has made a bunch of great progress. We had mainly hoped that the exercise and discipline would be a big benefit for him. I had a lot of mixed feelings in his taking lessons though. I am certainly not a pacificist, but encouraging your kid to fight seems like a whole different level of crazy. I know tae kwon do and most martial arts are intended to be used for defense, but I have to tell you, if you have ever seen tae kwon do practitioners in action, you’ll quickly see that it is not a passive defensive art. If you tangle with someone who is well versed in tae kwon do, and if you don’t know when to stop, you may not wake up from a fight.

Ok, that sounds dramatic but its methods are comprised of violent and aggressive actions that could easily be misused. Tae kwon do uses a tremendous amount of kicking and specialized punches meant to deliver ultimate force so misuse could easily result in serious injury. So, a big part of class is discipline and respect and knowing when to use the art. Another part of class, however, is practical. Each night, the students spar. The older people (i.e. not 6 year olds) and the black belts really go at it and hit hard. Isaac is not a black belt or an older kid but he is getting bigger and his age is starting to “play” hard. Imagine my nerves when Isaac volunteered to fight last night.

I was a bundle of nerves hoping he didn’t get hurt and that he didn’t hurt someone else. Isaac and the other student walked to the ring, bowed all around and took their fighting stances. The instructor called, “fight” and the boy went to town. He fought and fought well. He is nimble and fast and was -now get this – a lot of fun to watch in a fight. Isn’t it weird how I went from fear to pride instantly? Anyhow, he delivered a bunch of punches and kicks and took a lot too.

The best part of the fight was that we made eye contact as he walked out of the ring after the fight. We both smiled and nodded our heads in understanding. He’ll be just fine.

9 Comments

warren, February 10th 2010 | Tags: , ,
Posted in Adventure, Awesome, Family
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