Writer, Professor, and Everything Else
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You Are Chicken |
 Bah! You’re hardly meat. But you are quite popular, and people aspire to taste like you. You’re probably quite skinny and free of vices. Except letting people eat your eggs. |
Mmm, chicken… I have to say that I really could eat chicken pretty much every day. And really, if I had to just eat chicken and fish, that’d be okay.
That kind of makes me a vegetarian, right?
Very funny. My favorite part is the firey bush.
I haven’t been posting much lately, mainly because my computer is visiting the great Apple store in the sky. Actually, I think it’s either in Memphis or Houston, two cities I personally haven’t visited. Long story short, I am getting a long-standing problem with my computer fixed. My basic thinking here is that if I can get my current computer to last another year or two for the $300 I am paying for repair, it’ll be worth it. I write about this on my official blog in more detail here.
But what’s killing me here is that my repair has been delayed. I thought that this would be a quick enough turn-around, maybe as long as five days, tops. But it is looking like it could be much longer than that. This sucks. With Annette’s computer, Will’s PC, and two computers in my office at school, I certainly have adequate access. But not having my computer with my stuff is really killing me here. For one thing, I’m not able to use my computer with my stuff on it. Not right. For another, Will’s computer is a somewhat old PC and the keyboard on Annette’s laptop drives me nuts– a sticky space key makes all the words run together.
Anyway. Hopefully I’ll get some word on my missing iBook in a few days.
(Slight Update: Apple emailed me and informed me that my iBook is repaired and ought to be back this (Friday, May 12) afternoon!)
In other news, I have a cold that simply will not go away. I am relatively sure that it is not allergies, though that may be a factor. In any event, it’s something all of us around here have, and there is not a whole lot in this world than the feeling of being sick in the spring/summer time. The only plus of it all is I haven’t been eating much lately because of it and I’m down another pound or so.
So, all of this combined has delayed my posting about our road-trip last Sunday to Holland, MI as part of their annual “Tulip Time” festival. I spoke with my parents about all this a bit on Tuesday, and they kept saying “oh, that’s just like the tulip thing they do in Pella, Iowa. Oh, you wish, Pella. The Holland festival is THE place for tulip and Dutch celebrating in this country, my friend.
Actually, most of the “big” events are going on this week and this coming weekend, including appearances by (I shit you not) Three Dog Night, Frankie Avalon and The Oak Ridge Boys. Not together, of course, on different nights. Anyway, we were in town on the somewhat quiet opening weekend.
After a kind of crappy lunch where we couldn’t even enjoy a beer because of the area’s overly strict Sunday alcohol laws (Annette was right– we should have just grabbed some corn dogs and went with it), we got into the spirit of things by wandering around a very nice little downtown area.
One of Will’s favorite stores was an old-time candy store, the kind of place that had pretty much everything you could imagine in bins that you could buy by the pound. Here’s Will supervising the weighing of some jelly beans.
Then we found our way to the very nice Windmill Island Park. Here are a few pictures:
Here’s the reading why they call this “Windmill Island,” a mondo-gigantic 240+ year old windmill. Though we never figured out why they called it an “island.”
And here’s why they call it “tulip time.”
Here’s Will in front of some pretty cool black tulips. Really, they were a very very dark purple, but close enough to black.
In any event, a good time was had by one and all, though I have to say that the whole fascination with tulips in general escapes me.
I came across this via the Susie Bright blog that is part of the Huffington Post (kind of an interesting collection of stuff): It’s the “Make Work Pay!” site, which lets you calculate how much time the average CEO has to work in order to make your salary.
It’s kind of problematic because the web site itself is kind of annoying– the first rule of good web site design is to not start playing music and/or video at me without asking, and that’s what this site does– and the calculator is probably a bit off. As someone on the Susie Bright site pointed out, if you enter in an hourly rate, the calculator assumes a CEO who is working 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
Still, it puts it gives a little perspective.
It’s kinda cute. Worth a look…
Formal Dress Optional, a site for a group that is (apparently) still dressing up and going to weekly showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
On Friday, I had the pleasure of being a parental chaperone-type with Will on his latest field trip, which was to “Rural Education Days” at the Washtenaw County Fairgrounds. Will’s teacher told me that this is an annual event that involves pretty much all of the third graders in the county to learn about agriculture and such. Here are a few highlights, complete with photos:
I drove myself out to the event– because I had plans after it was over, because there was no room on the bus, and because who really wants to ride on a bus with a bunch of third graders anyway?– and was quickly instructed where not to park.
The program began with an Abraham Lincoln impersonator giving a talk about agriculture and related products and industries in Michigan (sorry about the photo– I guess it was dusty in there). Given the fact that Lincoln didn’t have any connection to the farm economy of Michigan (unless I’m missing something), I have no idea why it was this guy doing the talking. I guess because this guy likes to dress up like Lincoln and because everyone thinks Abe Lincoln is cool.
Here is a picture of my charges petting a cow of some sort; you can’t see the cow since it’s behind the kids, but believe me it was there.
As you can imagine, there were many other animals that could be petted and held and admired by the kids. Here’s Will and a friend with a turkey. There was a stall that was letting the kids hold a chicken, but Will would have none of that. Of course, there was little attention paid to the fact that these cute and fuzzy animals are darn good eating.
There were many interesting talks and presentations at Rural Education Daze, including one on corn, soil erosion (I kid you not– both of these were interesting), and on dairy. But Will’s favorite was the barn where the kids walked around and sampled different Michigan agricultural products.
One more funny thing, sans photo. The dairy exhibit consisted of a college kid who talked about how cows are milked and how milk is processed. He stood behind a table with various dairy cow things (the do-hickey they use for milking, for example), and in front of a pen which held– surprise, surpise– a dairy cow. Just as our group 75+ third graders was filing in and finding places in the bleachers, the cow took the opportunity to pee. And when a cow pees, it is like a freaking fire hose of pee coming out of the back end. There was a loud and collective “EEEWWWW!!!” that simultaneously expressed horror and fascination and approval at the act. The cow appeared unmoved. I thought she was going to cap it off by taking a shit, but no such luck.
Anyway, it was a pretty cool field trip– very well done, interesting, entertaining, and incredibly efficient. The handout I received as a parental chaperone-type said students would be getting back on the buses at 12:06 and damned if the kids weren’t loading up right on time.
Say, are you feeling bad about current events? Do you want to see the glass half-full? Then check out “The Great News Network.”
Because not all news is bad news. Oh, and because every once in a while, I for one need a news story that will not piss me off.
“Learn Gun Safety with Eddie Eagle/Jason Priestley,” available at YouTube and which I found via boing-boing. Perhaps most disturbing is that “Eddie the Eagle” speaks in rhyme (I believe iambic pentameter, actually) throughout the whole thing.