Sorry to the 7 of you who follow the blog regularly, I’ve been keeping it real on Facebook. Not much time or desire to post here – although every time I say that, I usually make a bunch of posts. I’m crazy like that. So what’s up since I last checked in?
That’s it, really.
The past 11 days has been the kickoff of the Nerd World Tour starring my daughter.
On the 11th we traveled to the District Power Of The Pen competition. My daughter is the captain of the 8th grade team. The teacher/advisor couldn’t make it and essentially left my daughter in charge. Naturally she crushed it. She is my kid after all. In addition to taking on the adult responsibility for the team, she still competed while helping everyone be where they needed to be. Of the 6 members of the 8th grade team, one placed in the top 12 and the team as a whole took 2nd place. 5 of the 6 team members did well enough to advance to regionals in March.
On the 18th it was MathCounts. MathCounts is competitive math…like the Mathletes in Mean Girls. My daughter didn’t make the main team, but she competed as an individual. And, like in the movie, she was the only girl from her school to compete. Not sure exactly how well she did, but we know it wasn’t enough to move on. It was worth it just to see some of these kids in action – seriously fucked up sick math skills. Even more interesting (or perhaps not so much) was that easily 90% of the room was Asian or Indian in ethnicity. You can talk about stereotypes all you want, but I’ll always believe stereotypes are often stereotypes for a reason. It was also (again, as you may have guessed) probably 90% male. So you’d think being the caucasian girl would mean standing out like a sore thumb, but oddly enough, most of the girls weren’t asian or indian…and none placed in the top spots. (another stereotype reality?)
Not sure any of it matters, but the observations were just too obvious not to make.
Then earlier tonight on the 22nd we hit the school science fair. My daughter and a friend put together some thing on intelligence or different kinds of intelligence or IQ vs test scores or some shit. She has an awesome super-long title for their entry that I can’t even begin to relay. They totally tested and graded kids from their school and came up with some kind of right brain/left brain IQ/Test Score abstract thingy hickey.
Honestly, I know shit about it. They did it entirely themsleves and were here over the weekend until 4am putting it all together.
I don’t think they were expecting much other than having some fun and entering the Science Fair and gloating in their nerdom.
Basically, each projected is judged by two random judges from the panel of several and their scores are averaged to give a final score out of a possible 40. Based on your score, you’re then awarded a rating of either Good, Excellent or Superior.
They hand out a couple of “Good” awards. Basically, thanks for playing. One group literally grew salt crystals another kid copied the definition of centrifugal force and paster a couple of roller coaster pictures next to it (I think one was mine!).
The “Excellent” award piles was huge. They even announced that most fell into this category. They’re calling names and handing them out and the kids are lining upo to take photos and the pile of certificates is getting smaller and smaller and smaller until it’s gone and my daughter and her friend are still sitting there with being handed a “Good” or “Excellent” certificate. You can totally see the “Holy Shit” moment click in their eyes as the pile is dwindling.
Before they pass out the “Superior Awards” they explain that to reach this level you had to score at least 35 or better. They also explain that anyone getting this rating is invited to the District Science Fair in mid-March. The handed out a handful of “Superior” certificates – my daughter & friend included – and pull these groups and parents to the side to hand out paperwork and explain the process to those interested in moving on.
So the first leg of the Nerd World tour is over, but the next leg is just around the corner with Regional Power Of The Pen and District Science Fair competitions on the horizon.
Pretty awesome stuff.
We went out this weekend on a whim and bought a roomful of furniture we really can’t afford. It felt good.
If you’ve followed this blog for any amount of time, you might remember that we bought a new couch/loveseat right about 4 years ago. About 9 months after we got that furniture we moved into this house. The couch/loveseat never really fit in here. On top of that the coffee table and end tables are a mishmash of things we picked up a long the way…and we never put any lighting in the living room here. We’ve been using the one recessed can over the fireplace as the main source for three years. Ghettofabulous were we.
Plus, we never really ended up liking that couch. It got awfully uncomfortable over time.
For whatever reason, we hit the furniture store and dove right in with a new couch/loveseat, a set of tables and some lamps on the order. It will all be delivered in two weeks.
So we got home and figured that since we really shouldn’t have purchased new furniture, why not consider doing some of the other stuff that we’ve been wanting to do to ‘finish’ the living room. At this point that includes new flooring and re-doing the fireplace. Dumping the current TV/Stand in the basement (with the current couches) and getting a newer, flatter TV to wall mount along with some sort of cabinet/storage for along the sides of the fireplace. Might as well go all in.
That’s where we stand. I’ve started looking into options on all fronts. We’re hoping to get out and see some things first-hand in the next few days.
The most open of all the projects is the fireplace. It’s that same stupid gas fireplace with tile around it and a wooden mantle and trim that every house built in the last 15 years has. We’d like to lose the tile and mantle – basically strip it back to just the fireplace – and then go from there. Not sure if we want to go minimal or do the whole wall. But there’s a gazillion ways to go with the fireplace.
As far as flooring, it currently has carpet. The long term goal was to do hardwood throughout the house (as it already has hardwood in the entry/hall/bathroom), but it’s pretty expensive and doing it all at once makes sense. We’re in no position to put hardwood in the entire downstairs. But the living room carpet is cut off from the rest of the house’s carpet by the vinyl in the dining/kitchen – so that break allows for pretty much anything. Right now we’re thinking of trying out laminate flooring as a temporary compromise. It’ll be cheap as a DIY project, get closer to the final look we’re after and give us a chance to live with it and see if it could be a larger solution to flooring in other areas of the house.
We might just end up at IKEA for the side storage. I hate the place, but what we have in mind seems like it could be had cheap and easy at IKEA and this time we gotta go cheap and easy. You do what you have to, I suppose.
I don’t want to downsize the TV (currently 55″) and the LED TV’s are sweet. I’m just not sure the budget (which is $0) can handle it. It’d be a shame to do all of this and get and middle-of-the-road LCD, but of all the things that’d be easy to re-upgrade in the near future, the TV would be easiest. We’ll see. We don’t have surround set up in the living room (I think it gets messy and the basement theatre is a cliche I’ll follow) and I did get a new receiver/speakers/sub at Christmas to replace our 16 year old receiver/speakers/sub, so there’s opportunity to incoporate those into the room more naturally.
The upside is that all of this would result in a room that actually looks planned and designed to some degree and changes from an awkward diagonal-with-the-tv-in-the-corner layout to a much better flowing square-with-the-room layout. The downside is that we have to find a way to pay for it. Should be interesting.
Plus, moving some stuff to the basement almost guarantees we’ll be force t finally refinish after The Great Flood of 2009. We’ve gone three years without that 800 square feet of house that we bought. Funny how time gets away from you.
We’ll see, I guess.
Not a lot of longform thoughts needing to be shared lately. When that happens the ol’ bloggy blog gets neglected.
Seems like I have a lot of shortform thoughts though. Those get shared on Facebook and Twitter.
Follow me on Twitter or send me a friend request on Facebook (with the understanding that I’ll probably ignore it) if you really need more Gonch in your life.
Now that I said it, I’ll probably have a shitload posted here in the next week.
Copyright © 2012 Lord Gonchar