Good Hair Day

Puppy has lots of hair. Okay Puppy had lots of hair.

Here is her hair in action circa last August.

Her is her hair in Action last November in melodramatic fashion

Up until today it had never been cut. Today it was cut. Why? Because Puppy heard about Locks of Love and decided that she wanted to donate her hair to be used for wigs for cancer patients. We did some research and even though Locks of Love doesn't use all the donated hair on wigs for cancer patients (They sell some of the hair to wig makers and put the money they receive towards operating costs.) we were satisfied that theirs is a worth while charity and honored puppy's request.

Here are some pics from today's festivities. . .

So long hair!

Getting ready.

Supportive siblings or voracious readers? You decide.

The hair before.

The hair after.

Her reaction to seeing her ponytail w/o her head connected to it.



A sucker for a good haircut.




Here she is sporting the new doo at the library.


Puppy is growing up. In less than 24 hours she has lost her first two baby teeth and had her official first haircut. But more importantly she is growing in understanding the needs of others. Sure she screams sometimes when she doesn't get her way. But this hair brained scheme was of her own volition. We weren't sure about the idea at first, but she was. She is even looking ahead to a year or two when her hair is long enough that she can donate again. One cool thing we did not realize is that our hair cut place cut her hair for free and mailed the hair off to Locks for Love as well.


Watching (and letting)our child give to others sure works for us. To see what works for others click here to join Works for Me Wednesday at We Are That Family.

NCAA Tournament Picks - A Precursor

I love systems. Back in the good old days when the NCAA tournament was 64 teams I had a great dare I say perfect 120 point system for scoring the NCAA tournament picks. There were 6 rounds. 32 games and winners in the first round. 16 in the second. Eight in the third. four in the fourth. Two in the semifinals and one game in the 6th round to determine the eventual champion. If you pick a team to go to the second round and they do you get 1 point if they don't zero. Pick a second round winner and you get two more points. Three for third round winners. 4 for when your team advanced to the final four. Five if they make it to the Championship game. Six more if the won it all.

So if you picked Duke to win it all last year, like I did you would net 21 points on the Blue Devils alone. I love my system because it was incremental and elegant. I loved the way the numbers broke down per round 32 possible points in round 1 32 more in round 2. Which made for 64 possible points in the opening weekend. 24 possible points in round 3 and16 more were available to the successful prognosticator in round 4 for 40 total points in the second weekend of the tournament.
In my system, many people are eliminated by the second weekend as there are only 16 points available onc you whittle the teams to four. It's how you pick the second and third round that often make you victorious among your peers.

When a few years back they expanded the field to 65, I had no real problem with it. The play-in game was scored as a1/2 point if you picked the victor. This would make for an excellent tie-breaker.

This year the field was expanded to 68 teams and instead of a tiebreaker a 7th round was added to the schedule. Using my current system it made for a rather inelegant 122 point tournament. Revamping my system to have 1 point for round 1 winners 2 point for second round winners up to 7 for the champion yielded a cumbersome 171 point total. The point distribution was very lopsided as well with 96 points in rounds 2 and 3 alone. I was going mad trying to decide between the two flawed systems and each time I would explain it to my wife, she would say you need guys!

I finally figured out a great system for scoring a 68 team single elimination tournament. At least one that has 64 teams in the second round. 1/2 point for picking a round 1 winner 1 point for a round 2 winner and 1.5 points more for making it the sweet sixteen. 2 points for picking a team who makes it all the way to the elite 8, 3 points for picking a final four team, 4 points for your team making it all the way to the championship game and 6 points for winning the whole ball of wax.

It's incremental, but not elegant and what I like best about it: The total points of the tournament now equal 100 which turns out to be elegant after all. Well at least I have a functional system until the committee messes with the number of teams again.

Selection Sunday

Sunday's Cool
A Link Up and a Look Ahead

A link up: Crazy Uncle Dave's Sport-O-Rama is my sports blog. I don't update it nearly as often as I'd like to. That may explain why today's link-up about our NCAA Brackets is over 11 months old. It is timely though as the field of 68 was just announced and the tournament starts on Tuesday. Last year Amy and I kind of split our contest. I picked Duke to win it all and they did. Amy picked Butler to win it all and they made it to the championship game. She ended up scoring more overall points than I did. Amy and I will make our picks tomorrow and I will try to post them at Sport-O-Rama prior to Tuesday's tip off.

A Look Ahead: I will try to continue with the Lenten observations I began last week. I also have a few promised posts that might come up this week. Puppy will probably say or do something crazy. So you never know what you will get. One thing I can tell you is that sometime in the next fortnight I will explain what I mean by countdown to 500 which has appeared in the upper left hand corner of this blog for the past few weeks.

Good luck making up for that lost hour and have a great week!

Of Carrots and Sticks

I promised SB 136 update so here is one. But before I do, here is what may seem like an aside.

The Brookfield Zoo of Brookfield (Go Figure!), Illinois had a program. They allowed public and private schooled children as well as home schooled children as well as their teachers/chaperone's to attend the zoo on field trips at no cost. Last Summer the field trip policy changed. Only Public and Private schools were listed as field trip eligible on the zoo's website and Home Schoolers were listed as ineligible. One exception was given on the website, stating that home educators who registered their students at the Illinois Board of Education would be able to attend field trips free of charge.

This change was not received warmly by the home school community. I remember my reaction was that since Illinois Home schools are considered by Illinois law as private school's they should already be field trip eligible and not have to do anything else. Other's saw it as a way to try to force home educators to register with the state when they were not legally obligated to do so. The reaction was a surprise to Agnes Kovacs, Manager of School Groups and Teacher Programs at the zoo. She told me that the zoo was just wanting to make sure that only school groups were getting in and just wanted to get some proof that the students were homeschoolers. The zoo now accepts proof of home education from H.S.L.D.A, and other home school advocacy groups as well as registration with the IBOE. She advised me yesterday that other advocacy groups have been recently added besides the ones at the website.

Not 6 months after this zoo issue was resolved State Senator Maloney
introduced SB 136 to make all Illinois Home Schoolers register with the IBOE. Now I understand the zoo's interest. They want to make sure that their free field trips for Illinois students is not abused and can be maintained. I can understand that as I went on such a field trip almost 40 years ago and that trip had a great impact on my life.

What I don't understand is Maloney's interest. He offers no incentives to home schoolers for registration. His motives are explained a little more in this e-mail I received from HSLDA . . .

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From the HSLDA E-lert Service...
======================================================================


Illinois--SB 136 Epilogue

Dear HSLDA Members and Friends:

Following up on his decision to table SB 136, Senator Maloney asked
several of us involved in the SB 136 hearing to meet with him.

Yesterday Sen. Maloney reiterated to us his belief that the government
needs to know the names and addresses of all homeschooled children. We
reiterated that this was neither necessary nor useful. After all, if
merely knowing a child's name and address could produce a quality
education, a quarter of Illinois public school students would not
still be without a diploma after four years of high school.

Sen. Maloney reiterated his concern about homeschooled children
"falling through the cracks." We reiterated that according to
published figures from State Superintendent Dr. Christopher Kock (who
was also present at the meeting), three-fourths of a million public
school children (765,989 to be exact) were truant for 2008-2009--so
that is where the state should focus its efforts concerning children
"falling through cracks."

Sen. Maloney reiterated his worry that nothing could be done to those
who violate the law while asserting they are homeschooling. We handed
him a copy of the State Board of Education's own webpage that points
to the Levisen case and describes exactly what procedure should be
followed.

While it was obvious that Senator Maloney still wants to increase
government control over homeschoolers, he said he would not move
forward on anything of this nature without first talking to us.

Before filing SB 136, he never asked for the input of those who would
be affected--the thousands of homeschool families in Illinois. We
welcome his new willingness to talk.

We are not asking families to take any action at this time. We will
continue to watch the situation carefully and let you know if and when
it's time to put down the books and drive to Springfield.

Sincerely,

Scott Woodruff
HSLDA Senior Counsel

Maloney needs to realize that home educators in Illinois aren't going to accept registration for registrations sake. I won't register for incentives like field trips. I will register if the law demands it. However, I will actively oppose any bill that even smells like SB 136. I still have not been given a good answer to how the state will pay for making sure home educated children don't fall through the cracks when they already can't fund the ones seeking public education. While this post may truly be an epilogue for SB136, I am sure it is not the end of the registration issue in the state of Illinois. I wonder what is next, more carrots or more sticks?

Thanks to the folks at Life Nurturing Education for putting this in the recent carnival of Homeschooling. Click here to go back to that carnival.

Write a song for someone

A few weeks ago I posted a song here about Allen Levi, one of my favorite musicians/bloggers/people. I e-mailed him the link and received this response:





i'm honored by your creative gift. i've written lots of songs but not been written ABOUT in any before (that i can recall anyway). ... i posted two new blogs this week. i still have to make myself do it, but the writing is a good discipline for me. ... Hope y'all are good. You're a good man. every blessing, allen





I thought it was really cool that I could impress such a prolific song write like Allen just by writing a song about him. I also found it strange that no one had ever written a song about him before. So, my challenge for any of you would be song writers out there. Write a song for someone, it might be the only one they ever get.





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I was working on some phonics work with Spider Droid and we were coding some words together. I wrote a few words down on a dry erase board and asked what he would do with them. His reply: draw a black hole near them and it would suck them all away.





It was funny and poignant thing to say because reading may not be his thing, but he sure has his science down.





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A few weeks ago one of my former pastors who is now pastoring a Church near San Diego, CA had a massive heart attack. It is a miracle that he survived. His heart stopped around 30 times when they were putting a stent in. Each time they had to stop the surgery and start his heart again. After the surgery, he was in a coma like state for almost a week. All of a sudden, He was out of the coma like state and just days later he was at home with his family.





On Sunday my sister told me that a former pastor of ours had died that morning. He was substantially older than the first pastor I mentioned but still younger than all the kids grandparents. I will be at the wake at the same time that many of you checking in from Friday Fragments will be reading this.





Please pray for the families of these two men of God as they deal with the the two different outcomes to illness: recovery and death.





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I was at Old Navy a few months ago and would you believe: They have a mannequin that looks exactly like Princess Puppy? That's just weird!

For more fragments head over to Half Past Kissing Time.