Category: Misc

Every three months, our apartment building tests the fire alarms. That's good. What isn't good is that doing that makes several long, shrill noises that drive May absolutely wild. She's incredibly scared of strange noises and all her doggy sense leaves her head and she makes all kind of trouble. If you're not in the room with her, she'll do her best to get to you (usually via scratching the heck out of the door). She goes everywhere she knows she's not allowed, including on our upholstered furniture. And she starts to burrow. Today when they tested, she tried to burrow under Matt's desk. She damn near knocked the flatscreen monitor off the desk. It tipped back and the window caught it and there it (thankfully) stayed. She also managed to pull out one of the power supplies and interrupt our cable modem service.

I really feel bad for the puppy though. I hate seeing her scared. And now that she doesn't hear or see so well, she gets even more scared. I finally have to tie her up so she'll stay still for two seconds and settle down. I really wish they'd test the alarms without sound.

What else? Oh yea, we've been sick the last few days. Just a nasty cold. Matt had to stay home though. You can't program when you're head is stuffed up to the max. We watched a lot of TV and drank a lot of tea. Mmmmm … tea.

I've been coughing all day long. My throat is scratchy and dry. But I am not getting sick. I will not allow myself to get sick.

So I will be drinking plenty of water, getting plenty of sleep, and sucking down Halls Defense Drops. I don't have time to get sick.

California is known to be liberal, Hollywood is too. So why is it that California keeps electing Republican actors?

We like to let may go to sleep (this is easy because she sleeps almost constantly) and then put a bit of fragrant food (she loves bread) right under her nose. It's quite amusing for us to see her wake up to the smell of her favorite food. Almost indescribably amusing and funny. Plus, she gets a nibble.

Students in England will no longer “fail” national standardized tests under new guidelines issued by the government, reports the Lincolnshire Echo. They will instead get an “N” grade for “nearly.”

People who grade tests have also been instructed to stop marking math questions as right or wrong, but instead use the terms “creditworthy” or “not creditworthy.”

The new guidelines come from the government's Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. They cover English, math and science exams taken by 7-, 11- and 14-year-olds in all state schools and some private schools.

Matt’s Rant
The grade of N (nearly) blows my mind. What if you get 4% correct. Do we call that nearly? Should you go home with the impression that you nearly passed if you failed to get a single question right.

I think the moron who came up with this plan mush have received an nearly in vocabulary. Maybe he got a nearly in math. That would explain why they will now mark math questions creditworthy or not creditworthy. You know, for all the partial credit you can get for 5+4=8, or does it equal 10. Is that creditworthy or is that nearly?

All summer we had the best weekends ever. It didn’t matter if it rained or stormed during the week, it was always beautiful on the weekend. Now I have to admit, we didn’t always take advantage of these weekends. I think we even started to take them for granted. Now it’s fall and the weekends are cold, overcast and rainy. I just hope for one more nice weekend, doesn’t even have to be warm, so I we can one last bit of outdoor fun before the WI winters drive us deep indoors.

Matt and I have had a very lazy weekend thus far. It's pretty cold out and so we've been staying close to home. I've been very crafty lately. Matt thinks I'm insane.

We did run a bunch of errands this morning though and we tried out a new restaurant for dinner. Sadly, it wasn't that great. It's called the Sushi Box and they had OK sushi. Their crunchy shrimp rolls weren't crunchy enough, but they were really well priced. We decided we'd probably go back for the sushi, but not for their entrees. They were very bland. The other highlight was that I got to try a Japanese beverage called Yogloo. It looked like strawberry flavored skim milk, but it tasted a lot better. They had other flavors too including mango.

Then Matt and I had a nice time watching some TV. Parenthood is such a funny movie!

OK. Bedtime.

Matt and I are watching the Miss America competition. It's one of those kitchy pleasures. And as we're watching, we're cheering for Miss Wisconsin, but not because we have state pride (we don't even really want to admit we live here). No, we want her to win because we assume that if she does, they'd have a parade.

A parade would be awesome because it's kind of boring around here and a parade would be a lot of fun to go to (the kitch factor again).

Greenway station is about to open. I haven’t made up my mind if this is going to be good or bad though. The niece thing about is there are lot of nice to upscale restaurants and shops, that are opening there that you can’t find anywhere else in Madison The bad part about is that it's two block from our apartment and will probably bring a lot of traffic, noise and mess Guess we’ll know in a few months.