Archive for April, 2014

Oh, snow–but it was ice out

Walking the dog to the park on a decent day yesterday (today being terribly cold and rainy) I came across this remnant of the mountain of snow piled up in the cul de sac.  Yuk!  On the other hand, many of the area’s lakes enjoyed ice-out this week.   Nearby White Bear Lake was declared open on  Wednesday morning  (it’s a bit of a judgement call, evidently).   According to records that go back 86 years this year’s ice-out fell nine days later than the median date but well ahead of the record of May 4, 1950.  

I am looking forward to the dirty-snow-out coming soon.  Then I feel it really will be Spring.
Dirty snow pile
P.S. I noticed the postal-deliverer wearing the USPS summer-shorts uniform, so that’s a good sign. : )
 

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Oh, oh—sociology professors say that “most of what we do for our kids at schools doesn’t matter”

Read this New York Times essay on why Parental Involvement Is Overrated and weep for all the time you spent helping your child become well-educated.  It doesn’t help that

“most parents appear to be ineffective at helping their children at homework.”

Many a time my kids asked me to help them do math, which I really dreaded—not because I could not come up with the answer, but due to the constantly-changing way schools taught it.  After being told many times that I got the right answer the wrong way and thus provided absolutely no help, I began bearing down on studying the latest-and-greatest math book first before working out the problem.

By the way, I made the student go through the materials with me—that made this an effective approach for parental mentoring, or so I thought.  Now I wonder if I should’ve even bothered.

However, one time one of my daughters did say that my way of explaining a puzzling math problem made a lot more sense the either the teacher or the book.  That’s one time out of hundred other times that my good deeds did not go unpunished, but like the single outstanding golf shot out of hundred bad ones in any-given round, I remember this fondly. 🙂

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My Minnesota Twins fail on fantasy front

Supposedly hope springs eternal at the start of every baseball season, no matter how miserable the prospects for your home team.  Sadly the statisticians at the Wall Street Journal burst that bubble by skewering my squad—saying yesterday that It’s Not a Fantasy, the Minnesota Twins Are Bad.  Their “Roster Reality” ranking leaves the hapless Twinkies last. Fantasy team owners figured only 3 players rated a position in the first 276 drafted. That is bad.

Being a homer, when I did my draft I filled my last position with Byron Buxton—the number 1 prospect in all of Major League Baseball.  Unfortunately if BB does make it up to Minnesota this year it will be after the Twins get eliminated from contention.  On the bright side I expect that will again happen with plenty of games remaining to let the up-and-comers get in some good playing time.

By the way, the Twins rallied this afternoon with 2 runs in the 9th to win out over the hated White Sox and prevent them from a 3 game sweep.  That’s a 1 game winning streak!  Woohoo!

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