Kate has had to deal with all sorts of bullies in her time. At her elementary school, she was bullied for being white. I encouraged her to understand her peers and sympathize with them, that they must be so frustrated in their home lives to lash out the way they did toward her ( Read more... )

Tomorrow may just be the day when I finally get the plumber into the house to install the heat exchanger and pressure gauge for our defective heating system. We got our settlement in October and have been talking with this plumber for weeks trying to schedule him to come in. I can't imagine how frustrated I'd be if we'd actually had to go with the ( Read more... )

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Wow, I've definitely been AWOL on the blog front for the last several months but April has to be the worst blog month in my history of blogging ( Read more... )

Thanks to Facebook, several of The Moms have done this with their kids. As I'm pondering issues of life, identity, mortality and the like, I gave it to Kate to get a glimpse of how she sees her ol' mom. Here's the result ( Read more... )

I've been on a blogging hiatus. Too much going on, most of it I can't blog about because it's grindingly mundane or just too damn personal to be spreading all over the internet, especially in light of the sorts of people who have been looking me up in recent weeks ( Read more... )

The Seattle School District is the largest public school system in Washington. It contains 97 schools and serves about 45,000 students. Unfortunately, every year the Parent-Teacher-Student Associations have to raise money on their own to keep programs, retain teachers and support staff, and safe-guard things once believed to be inextricably linked ( Read more... )

After a busy but very fun PAX schedule, I spent Labor Day laying low and doing little more than combing through recipe books and magazines so I could make out a menu plan and go grocery shopping once I get paid. Since Kate came back to Seattle two weeks early, needing school clothes and supplies on the heels of our Finland/Gencon two-week whirlwind ( Read more... )

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People have been asking how it went, so here's a little clip that the school put up. I took video from a different angle of the whole performance (including Kate's favorite, Back in Black) but this will give everyone who doesn't have Mom-level devotion a taste.

Click to view

Kate was scheduled to go back to Canada to spend some time with her dad on Sunday ( Read more... )