New Beginnings

So far this blog has been rot.  Mostly because I was unwilling to really share myself.  There are lots of reasons why, but now I'm over it.  Today for school Dylan and I decided to go out and try and catch a tadpole.  Sadly, none were had.  We did find some minnows!  Here is a picture of Dylan with his prize.  How did he catch such a cool thing?  Well first, he gingerly inched his way down to the water surface and cautiously skimmed his minnow catching apparatus across the surface of the water scaring the minnows far away from him.  The mama intervenes at this point and tries to get down the steep and treacherous blown concrete bank with a serious case of sciatica impeding her movement.  "And what happens next?"  You ask with baited breath?  Well, the mama gets her well-treaded running shoes stuck on the concrete, slips and slides down the bank like a block of cheddar on a cheese grater. In the end, the mother is sitting in 2 feet of sludge and slime bruised and bloody but resolved.  This fall has  positioned her in the center of minnow action enabling her to catch the prize quickly for her beloved son.  The son is happy and so the mother is happy. 

 The End 

Boo

I've had blogg block for a long time now.  I've wanted to blog but at times what I've written was used in attack against me by people who I considered family.  I'm over it for what its

Perspective

Mario’s Perspective, that’s what we need to have. Dylan has been playing a game on the Wii called Super Paper Mario lately. Video games have become so complex, so clever, and so capable of stealing hours and hours of time if you let it. But I digress. I’ve never been a fan of video games but my son is. I’m obliged to watch and listen to his beautiful little voice describe what he’s doing as he maneuvers various levels and bad guys and endless chattering dialog. I’m always impressed at how good he is at these sorts of things. On this particular game, the Mario character has the ability to switch between 2D and 3D views of the game like this:

Here is the traditional video game view.

And here is the same view when he changes his perspective.

It’s so amazing to me how changing perspective can sometimes make the game so much easier to play.
All of a sudden obstacles that were impossible become easily avoidable like this:

When viewed from the standard view, these thwomps form an impassable barrier, change perspectives and voila! You can just walk back behind the thin things and you’re past them in a blink.

This has been a rather long way of saying that really, point of view is the difference between a “major and completely impossible” problem and an opportunity to do some creative problem solving. Pretty smart, I like it.

Maybe video games aren’t all that bad… sometimes.

School of Various Sorts

School started for us Arizona folk two and a half weeks ago.  The scheduling here is quite nice because summer breaks aren't too long and there are several other breaks added to the year to break up the monotony of classwork.  Dylan loves his new school so far and we are overjoyed at the great abilities of all of the school faculty!  Dylan declared for the first time ever in his elementary school career that he "loves" school and hopes to be going to this school for a long time thence.  We are thrilled to hear it!

As for me and mine, things are always interesting.  I was somewhat shocked this summer to have received an award letter for a sizable grant from the Career Education Scholarship Fund.  I didn't personally apply for this grant but someone at LCB went out of their way to apply on my behalf.  I wanted to share a portion of the award letter with you...
"The mission of the CESC is to provide scholarships and grants to students who have financial need and are making strong academic process in their chosen field of study.  Your Grant Application was reviewed by the staff at the School and by a committee of the Career Education Scholarship Fund.  You should be very proud of your selection to receive this Grant, as the CESF received several hundred Grant Applications from students across the US and Canada."  Indeed I did feel very blessed and humbled that someone had gone to the effort to extend this opportunity to me and even more blessed that I had received it.   I was just about to abandon my schooling completely but because of this grand vote of confidence (and the money of course), I decided to soldier through and obtain my degree.  I do love what I'm doing and I'm so glad that I will at long last finish a program.  I become almost giddy when I think of doing this work professionally for the rest of my life as well.
Our Owen is receiving a large amount of satisfaction from his new job and is making leaps and bounds in learning all of the little technical business things that goes along with doing his work as a therapist.  He is happy.  We are altogether the most satisfied we've been collectively in some years.  The photo is of Dylan on his first day of school.

Cheers,
Rebecca

new blog (by dylan)

i have a new blog and it is called Aleins VS Vlilans.

Poetry Corner

I love to read and memorize poetry.  Because of this fact, I will share a prose that I'm musing from time to time.  I promise that I will write more than other peoples' poetry on the blog sometime soon.

He wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
by: W.B. Yeats

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Our Boy