The Death of Shop Class?

Last night I attended the "Back to School Night" event at Rece's school. We initially gathered in the gymnasium (which was a very cool old-school, if you pardon the pun, style gym) where some of the faculty went over basic school info and some of the various groups and clubs (PTA and the likes) got to speak about what they do. Pretty standard stuff. After this we were on a school schedule where we got to visit each of our student's classes in the order they would during their school day. We were given 5 minutes to get to each class and each teacher would then talk to us for 10 minutes - this was complete with school bells indicating when that class visit time was over. I thought it was a pretty cool way of doing it.

7th period was wood shop. In both junior high and high school I had taken wood shop and remembered having a great time learning how to work with tools and creating things with my own two hands. Heck I still have the scar on my finger from when I got it caught in the jig saw. Anyhow, Rece's shop teacher told us that he had been doing this for a very long time. During his talk, he mentioned that there were now only 3 shop classes left in the entire Newport/Mesa school district - 2 wood shop classes (one of them his) and an auto shop class. This struck me as very odd, as I can easily remember the shop classes always being the most difficult ones to get into back when I was in school - they were always the most popular, especially with the guys. Beyond their popularity, the classes taught us that we were able to fix and create things from raw materials. We learned how to use tools and how to use them safely. We were given a chance to create something useful and often times in a creative way - my mom continued to use a chess board and cutting board for over a decade after I had made them!

I stuck around after the other parents had started to leave and talked with him for a couple of minutes to discuss this trend. He told me that this was not just the case in our school district, but also much of the other districts in the state. This was quite a shock to hear. He did mention that this seemed more the case with schools in California than with schools in the midwest - where there still appears to be a good amount of "industrial art" classes going.

Why this affected me so much still puzzles me now, but it just seems sad that so much has been eliminated from schools since I was a kid. Some of the art/music classes were already being cut back when I was in high school - and now seem almost a bygone era. Why is this? Why are our schools so focused on only academic topics and turning away from a more well-rounded collection of learning? Don't they understand that the world isn't all about numbers and writing and history?

I thought I had more of a point to this, but I can't seem to articulate it very well. It bummed me out to see how the schools have changed so much since I was that age.

This entry remembers enjoying band, wood shop, metal shop,
drafting, and over 6 years worth of art classes!

Get a grip, people!

Finally! Somebody out there put something together that helps illustrate how rediculous it is to worry about dying from terrorist attacks...

So folks should stop changing their friggin' lives over something happening to them that's more remote than dying just walking down the street!

This entry is more worried about dying from a hernia than from a terrorist!

Riding the cyclone

This weekend was Rece's 12th birthday. We ended up going to Wild Rivers with some friends and had a blast! After the wet and wild fun, we came back home to shower - then went right back out to have more fun at Boomers in Fountain Valley. Afterwards we went to Marie Callender's for some pie (in lieu of birthday cake). Rece seemed to really be enjoying himself and it was nice to see him so happy on his special day.

With the start of school, I'm beginning to also see the start of some challenges for Rece. With ADD, he's already got a lot to work around in respect to maintaining focus and on-task with school. While I'm not too worried about him in the classroom, my biggest concern is his homework. He's already starting some bad habits that I'm hoping to help him unravel and get on track. Now that he's with me full-time, he'll have more stability and the ability to form some consistency in his work habits.

This week is already starting to look very busy for the both of us. Monday he's starting his second round of karate lessons and that's going to be something he needs to manage into his system without it getting in the way of school. For his birthday I got him guitar lessons, which I won't allow him to start until he's done with karate and doing well with school. I admit that I feel a little bit of guilt for hinging a gift on his performance, but at this point I need every tool that I have at my disposal to get him to do what he needs to do.

Wish me luck!

This entry wants the best for his son in all aspects of life!

If u die

So after my earlier boring post, my friend Christine reminded me of one of the funnier things that happened during the drive yesterday.

We ate lunch at Pea Soup Andersons and as usual I ordered the Travelers Special. This is a meal of unlimited beverage, bread, and their signature split pea soup. I wasn't especially hungry, so I only ate 3 bowls of soup on this visit. After the meal we got the bill and I was quite surprised by what the waiter had written on it...

(click image for larger view)

Call me crazy, but that looks an awful lot like "If u die." It seemed a bit disturbing at first, but quickly became rather funny after Christine guessed that the last word was probably "diet" which made sense because I was drinking iced tea ("It" not "If"), Rece had a vanilla shake ("V" not "U"), and Christine ordered a Diet Coke ("diet" not "die."). We were quite relieved, as you could probably imagine.

This post was made possible by a clairvoyant waiter with poor handwriting.

Mattress drive

On Saturday (yesterday) I drove 4 hours to pick up some things from my dad's place, one of the items being a 2-3 year old mattress. Christine was nice enough to volunteer to ride shotgun and help keep me entertained along the 4-hour (each way) journey. It was a nice day trip, really.

We stopped by Pea Soup Anderson's as we passed through Buelton on highway 101. Christine hadn't been this way before so I decided to also give her a motor tour of Solvang (AKA "Soul Fang"), which she seemed to find very cute.

We arrived at my dad's place around 1:00 pm and hung out awhile resting from the drive and talking. Then we loaded up the car and took off. One of the things I can't seem to get comfortable about is when I have things strapped down to the roof of a car I'm driving. So for quite some time I was rather nervous that our job securing the mattress wasn't enough. This resulting in 2-3 stops in the first 1.5 hours of the trip back... not to mention my driving like an old man. Once we reached Santa Barabara, I had had enough and decided to find a Target or some other place where I could purchase more sturdy rope. I ended up purchasing 50 feet of 1/2 braided nylon rope - the kind folks use to climb up mountains - and lashing the mattress down to the roof rack in a very secure manner. It was just enough to relieve my apprehension and no longer worry.

Yep, another post that isn't all too interesting. Where did my funny go? Hmm? I think my brain is still waiting for me to pick it up at Pea Soup Andersons...

This entry loves to slurp pea soup!

The boats have arrived

Just a quick note to add that my good friend Christine also tried to find an incense boat for me during her trip to Oregon over the long weekend. She found (and bought) me incense, but was unable to find a simple boat to hold the sticks.

She eventually came through and found not one, but TWO of them (at a college campus store of all places - duh) and gave them to me a couple of nights ago. Yay!

This entry has been enjoying burning these delightfully scented punks.

Incense boats and a pink sippy cup

And so it came to pass that Gabe didn't blog for 2 weeks...

What did you do during Labor Day weekend, you ask? If you can believe it, I did very little. In fact, I did my very best to do as little as possible! Improper grammar aside, and to re-quote one of my favorite movies, "I did absolutely nothing, and it was all I thought it could be." In order to confuse the point of me doing nothing, I'm going to tell you what I did end up doing.

Friday I was at the end of my rope, as far as social interaction goes. I was earnestly craving some alone time. Of course, being the male that I am, I was more than happy to offer assistance to one of my friends (who just happens to be an extremely HOT brunette) with her laptop. I took the laptop home with me so I could work on it in comfortable solitude. The problems were minimal, mostly fixed by the basic ad/spyware scan and removal and basic updates and defragging - plus un-tweaking her manually configured wireless configuration (the problem she needed to have fixed the most).

HOT brunette friend had to postpone picking up her laptop until Monday, so most of my Saturday was spent doing some necessary errands and the rest of the time relaxing at home. One of the tasks I held myself to was picking up some incense. The incense sticks were easy enough to locate, but it was the incense holders (or "incense boats" as everybody seemed to call them) that proved to be difficult to find. Not to be deterred from the pleasure of burnt fragrance, I made due with a candle and a plate.

My dad had driven down for the weekend with his little family to enjoy some time off. He loves Orange County (the sick bastard) and comes here as often as he can. He dropped by and I helped him with a new website he's been trying to put together. After this I announced that I was officially burnt out on helping with any computer problems and I was done for the duration of the weekend. I hadn't eaten much, and my dad was wanting to take a walk, which lead us to drive out to Newport Pier for donuts and coffee. Along the way we stopped at Pier Records (where they sell bongs) in an attempt to locate an incense boat. They had the incense sticks, but not the boats for some reason. The guy working there suggested the Jamaican store (go figure) down the block, but they turned out to be closed. So we spent the remainder of the evening talking and dad eventually called it a night, because it was night I suppose, and took off. I forced myself to stay awake until around 3:00 am playing Civilization 4 and reading.

Sunday was spent doing even less than Saturday. The trick of forcing myself to stay awake until the early morning worked - resulting in my sleeping in until after noon. The afternoon/evening was passed by watching a couple of movies:

Lucky Number SLEVIN - a decent and entertaining movie, despite my having already figured out some of the big twists within the first 30 minutes. What I liked best was that it was a good attempt at something different.

Capote - Great acting and a good story, but honestly it was like watching a Kubrick film on Valium. It was all I could do to stay awake through the whole thing.

My dad called and convinced me to join them for dinner in Seal Beach. Dinner was very good and rather expensive, so I was glad that he paid - which was only fair considering that I would expect him to have warned me of the prices if he had expected me to pay, right? That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Oh, so backtracking a bit... my dad's little girl had left her sippy cup at my place the night before. I wanted to return it to her so I brought it along to dinner. Well, I drove to Seal Beach and found myself walking down Main Street with a pink sippy cup with "Princess" in big letters on it trying to locate them. Either I was rather conspicuous or it was just my paranoia, but I swear people were staring at me funny.

For some reason I felt this post would be a lot shorter and much more entertaining... but, well, it's 4 days late and I can't seem to find the funny button anywhere. Aw, hell...

This entry was brought to you by the elusive incense boats!