Archives for June 2009

Learner’s Permit for Em

Emily was a tad nervous getting her learner's permit. But she'd had plenty of time to prepare and even one false alarm for the test. The previous week she, Dylan, and I went to renew Dylan's license and have her take the test. But it turned out that the DMV didn't do learner's permit tests at that location. The test allows you to miss up to 6 questions. And that's exactly what she missed - 6. She's been driving me around a lot since then and is doing really well. Now, we need to get the ol' Bonnie cleaned up so that she can drive it after the new year when she gets her full license. … [Read more...]

50 NYT Words

The venerable New York Times keeps track of when readers use an on-line service to look up a word in one of their stories. Here are the 50 words most often looked up in 20009. I put the ones that I knew in italics. How's your vocabulary stack up?sui … [Read more...]

Puppy in the house!

When Rachel and I were trying to figure out which breed of dog to get, we knew that it's personality should match that of our family. When knew a lot about dogs, but we also knew that we wanted a dog who we'd have to vacuum around. I'm just sayin'...Jelly Bean, the 6-week old Basset HoundThese really energetic and athletic dogs - terriers and sight hounds like greyhouds and dalmatians - are great for the right people. We need a dog whose first preference is to lay around, closely followed by taking a nap. You could also reverse that order of priorities and we'd still be happy. Of course, all … [Read more...]

A Painful Month Without My Blog

Bloggers beware! Just in case you didn't know it, Goggle/Blogger.com has a policy against spam blogs. Spam blogs, as you might guess, are designed to direct its readers to some kind of commercial and/or scam site. I got snagged by this for the last month because Blogger has an automated method of detecting spam blogs. That is, they look for any blog post with lots and lots of web links. Two posts ago, I put a post with a lot of web links to cool websites. Unfortunately, the automated spam blog blocker isn't too smart and it marked me as spam simply due to the large number of web links in the … [Read more...]

Dylan’s 18!!!

Eighteen years ago, I couldn't have begun to guess where life would take us today. But as this lil boy grew and developed, I knew that he would be smart and strong and full of life. Even as a little infant, my adult friends remarked about how he seemed to be an "old soul" with deep soulful eyes and intelligent brows.As he aged, his mother and I discovered his zest for life. I find the picture to left curiously prescient about the way Dylan drives cars today. I also love all of those books scattered behind him. We spent countless hours reading those classic children's books to him - Just … [Read more...]

MJHS Class of 2009

It's hard to believe that my 18-yr old has finished high school. He did really well on his GPA. He did really well on his SAT and ACT test scores. And he did really well on his scholarships, earning more in funding than his actual hard costs for tuition, room, and board.He's now set for college in the fall at MTSU, where he's planning to study Marketing. He'll be rooming with his best friend, Connor Miller, in Rutledge Hall.The graduation ceremonies were a lot bigger than I expected, with over 400 students and thousands of their closest friends and family members.I hauled the whole family … [Read more...]