Well, we successfully completed our move on Saturday, and have managed to clean out our apartment and start getting organized. As you can see, we've made some headway, but there's still come work to be done.
Alas, life goes on around us, as you can see my wife had to take some time out to study this evening. At least we're getting everything hooked up, allowing us some semblance of normalcy in this time of transition.
But at least we're in! Yay!
Well, it's finally time to actually move into our new house. For the past four weeks, even though we own the house, it's felt more like we've been flipping it. Now we actually get to start making it feel like a home.
With all of the transition, I'll probably be incommunicado most of the weekend, but I'll be back online when I get the chance.
While there are a lot of things currently wrong with the American political system, there are several that jump out at me which appear to be holding us back from bettering this country:
It's bad enough that Pittsburgh Public Schools are some of the worse in the state, but now they've gone to a new level of idiocy by mandating that no child can be given a grade lower than 50% on any assignment or test. Seriously, you could just sleep through the test and still get a 50% (though no official response has been made confirming if you still get a 50% even if you don't show up and write your name on the test).
What kind of message is this sending our kids? While the intent is to not harshly penalize students who show marked improvement throughout the semester for their slow start, this is telling kids that even if they don't do any of the work, they can still get half credit. Great! Now when they get a job, they'll think they can still get half their pay if they do nothing at all! Unfortunately, that will only get them a pink slip in the end.
It really begs the question of how the schools in our country are being run. In my opinion, way too much time is spent trying to get students to pass and make the “numbers look good”, and not enough time encouraging and nourishing learning habits in children. Once the school systems and government realize that, maybe we'll get a change in the system!
Today is a proud day for me, because my wife has now joined the blogging community. Over the weekend, I helped her get together her blog and make it look how she wanted, and today she wrote her first post. Check it out and give her a shout-out when you get a chance!
Well, in each of their first two home games this year, the Patriots have elected to wear their road whites. And what has happened in each of those games? One, they lost Tom Brady for the season. Two, they got their butts handed to them by a very average Miami Dolphins team.
Now, I'm not normally superstitious, but if I were then I'd keep the white unis packed in the travel bags for the rest of the season.
So last night, the Red Sox and Rays played for the right to take the lead in the AL East. You'd expect a sellout crowd for that kind of game, right? Especially when the Rays have been so bad for so long, it should be a big event. Kinda like Northwestern playing for the right to go to the Rose Bowl.
Not in Tampa. They drew more than their average 13,000 (reasonable off-hand guess-timation), but they always draw more when the BoSox are in town.
I'm a Red Sox fan, and was disappointed to see them drop last night's game to the Rays; but I cannot understand how the people of Tampa have not gotten behind that team. I'm a devoted Sox fan, and I don't live anywhere near Boston!
It's pretty close to being one of the most historical seasons in the history of baseball, especially if they play David and win the division typically held by the Boston and New York Goliaths. And they still can't sell out the stadium. It's absolutely rediculous.
And that's what Grinds My Gears…
So we've now completed two weeks of this young NFL season, and the picture has simply become more muddled. Yet, little has come under the microscope the last few days than the critical missed fumble call made by Ed Hochuli, the ref with the guns, in the San Diego-Denver game. While it was a bad mistake, that's all it was in this case.
In this case, the problem was not so much that the wrong call was made, but that the whistle was blown prematurely. In today's NFL, officials are encouraged to swallow their whistles when it comes to ball possession and let the replay correct any mistakes. However, Hochuli got a little trigger happy and blew the whistle early, initially thinking he saw a pass attempt and not a fumble.
However, you have to give Hochuli credit for recognizing his mistake and apologizing for it immediately. He didn't make a mistake and stand by it to avoid looking wrong or uncertain, but he took responsibility for it. So, while he should be criticized for his mistake, at least he's still setting a good example with his actions.
This Week's Ups:
This Week's Downs:
Honestly, this is starting to get old. Once again Ohio State goes out against a team this is their athletic equivalent and gets schooled trying to play vanilla offense and defense. This time against USC and Pete Carroll, the coach who no professional athlete respected and was ushered out of New England back in 1999 in favor of taking a chance on Belichick. Boy am I ever glad that decision was made!
You'd think that OSU would have gotten the wake up call two years ago after losing to Florida in the title game, or after getting beaten by a less talented LSU team last year…
GUESS NOT!
Hopefully the OSU staff figures out what they have in Pryor, or he's going to regret his decision to go to Columbus…
Well, haven't spent too much time on the computer, aside from work, lately because most of my time has been goin towards working on
the house. While I got a few big things done right away (i.e. the carpets and wallpaper), I've shifted modes to the longer and less
obvious tasks, like patching holes.
This week I finally also got to start working on priming the walls (mostly to cover up the colors we didn't like and make the
patched spots blend in), which will hopefully allow me to begin painting with actual colors sometime this weekend.
Then, besides the work we've been doing, we've also got some professionals coming in as well. This weekend we're upgrading
the main electric panel from fuses to breakers, and then next week we're bringing in a team to refinish the floors that had been
hidden under the old, nasty carpet. With those changes, in a week it's going to start feeling like a whole new house!
We're very glad that things are working out timewise though, so we can have the floors finished and cured before we have to start
moving our furniture in at the end of the month. And when I say working out, I know that God was smiling down on us last night when we
were able to bring in a quality refinishing company to give us a reasonable estimate and work on the timeline we needed. And that was
quite the relief in what has been a very busy, and somewhat stressful, time.
