I’ve been thinking, if there was a zombie invasion, who would I rather hole up with: the Baptists or the Mormons? Both these Christian sects are in good shape to hold off zombies. They keep provisions and have killer homemaking skills, they have guns and people who know how to shoot them, and a broad [...]
A few months ago, Neil participated in the Math Counts competition, which was enlightening and humbling. The program was great: all through the year, he had to work out tough mathematical challenges. In February, the Silicon Valley chapter put the students who’d been in the program to the test. It turns out, that compared to [...]
My last few posts have been rather down, but I was beginning to cheer up. Then, last night, I kept waking up from dreams based on Natural Born Killers.
Then today, I loaded my children in the car to take them to the Grange, where I could check out a (sort of) a homeschool group activity. [...]
Last month, to teach Neil a bit about the stock market and to watch its current trends ourselves, Peter set up a stock market game for the family. To say I was pessimistic at the time may have been a bit of an understatement. I had recently seen this graph based on the Congressional Budget [...]
On Tuesday morning, Kelly started moaning and crying and then ran to throw up. Normally, in these circumstances, I simply declare her sick and she has to stay home for the day. But by then, the news services in full-on panic mode about a new viral strain that had been dubbed swine flu. Peter and [...]
I originally planned to take the children to the De Young Museum today; and another homeschool parent had told me about a free hands-on science day as CSU-Hayward; but in the end, I decided what I would rather do this weekend than on any other is to visit the Charles M. Schulz Museum again with [...]
Kelly loves the farmer’s market, and already, at the age of five, she’s got the farmer’s market vibe down. She walks around all the booths, trying samples and greeting the farmers. She points out her favorite produce for me to buy (today’s take: English peas for snacking, Romanescu broccoli, salmon dip, though I passed on [...]
I saw this Dilbert cartoon and thought, hey, that’s the economist I‘ve been listening to:
In our family’s fantasy stock-picking game, I cynically chose an “Armageddon-is-coming” mix of stocks: guns, ammo, aerospace defense, gold, Russian gas and oil, and a nice chunk of cash to grab for when the banks completely collapse.
To my surprise, I’m actually [...]
Yesterday, Peter called me from his office to tell me about the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party/Protest which had formed on the street below his office. This TEA Party was people protesting out-of-control goverment spending, such as the TARP bank bail-out (which as far as I know no-one, right or left, liked); the blasted-through-without-being-read trillions-of-dollars [...]
I got paid by my client on Thursday, about which I was very happy. I love capitalism, no matter how brutal, unfair and “chaotic and unforgiving” our president may deem it as being. I sacrifice my free time and work hard, and then I get money which I may spend however I wish.
I reiterated my [...]
