A Serious Call For Help.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at Alasandra's Homeschool Blog. I urge you to stop over and check out her cat and dog edition. Next Week I am hosting. If you home school I encourage you to submit a post. Especially if you never have before. Submission ends Monday night. But the more time you give me, the better off it will be for all of us.

Speaking of time, this is a busy week for me. I am trying to restore order to a chaotic home school class room, prepare my classes for our home school co-op that starts Monday and prepare 2 blog carnivals that I am hosting next week: The Book Review Carnival on the 17th and the Home School Carnival on the 19th. As a result I will not be posting here again until Saturday.

• Click here to see the current issue of the Home School Carnival. Click here to submit an article for the issue I am hosting on the 19th.
• Click here to see the current issue of the Book Review Carnival. Click here to submit an article for the issue I am hosting on the 17th.

Next Time: Six Word Saturday

Six Word Saturday

My six words for today . . .

A brief history of restaurant water.

I remember when I was a kid, we didn't go out to dinner very often, especially to "sit down" places. We went often enough I was at least acquainted with the restaurant culture. You would be brought to your table and there would be a glass of water set at each place.

Now sometime in my 20's water ceased to be set out unsolicited. It is still to this day available in most sit down restaurants at no charge to the patron, it just needs to be requested.

At about the same time that water was becoming an item that needed to be ordered it was also becoming bottled. Now the same water that you get at the water fountain or from the tap at no cost can be purchased. Recently we've found out that tap water is generally safer than bottled water as there are more regulations about how it is produced than bottled water. Not to mention the problem of the proliferation of plastic bottles.

Today, I was at one of those / fast food restaurants with my two oldest kids. I call it a / restaurant because it combines two fast food chains under one roof. I don't want say which two restaurants but let's suffice it to say that the menu was filled with poultry prepared in a method derived from the bluegrass state and pirated seafood items. I ordered milk for the kids and a cup of water for myself. I was charged 10 cents for the water! I have been charged for a cup of water before, but it is usually as a means of getting people not to just get free water never for paying customers. I wonder if this is a harbinger of things to come?

So that's the state of restaurant water from setting it out in advance to putting it on the tab. For other Six words amble over to Show My Face Dot Com

Next Time: Library Week Part II

The Frozenated Awards

First of all I'd like to apologize to anyone who tuned in yesterday expecting the debut of Some Things Thursday. I got busy and never got a chance to do it. I will start it next week I promise.





Today I debut a little thing I called the Frozenated Awards. When I was in college I spent the part of a summer in Mexico. While I was there I saw an advertisement for Icee, the Slurpee wanna-be. It was one of those signs that is in English but you can tell that it was translated to English. Under the picture of the Icee Bear in big bold letters was the word: Frozenated.





I have lived in 1 foreign country and spent significant time (airports don't count) in 6 others. My Frozenated experience wasn't the only time that the intertwining of different cultures or languages have caused hilarious results.





From time to time I will be giving out Frozenated Awards to blog posts that find the humor in intercultural adventures. My inaugural winner are The Curious Experiences of a Family in Beijing.





If you haven't linked to it already this picture says it all . . .

If you see something that is worthy of a Frozenated Award please send me a link and I will seriously consider it.

Next Time: Six Word Saturday

1 Year Ago Today . . .

The FAQS of Life: My life in Frequently Asked Question Format

Special Blogoversary Edition

Q: Do you know what is special about today?

A: Yes. Today is a special anniversary.

Q: An anniversary of what?

A: It's the 4 year anniversary of date multiplication day. Just 4 years ago on 1-6-06. You see 1 times 6 = 6.

Q: Doesn't that happen quite frequently? Aren't there 4 just this year?

A: Oh, that's right! January 10th, February 5th, May 2nd and October 1st.

Q: Is it maybe a different anniversary?

A: Can't think of any.

Q: Does this ring a bell?

A: Literally, no it does not ring a bell. But figuratively, yes, this here blog is a year old today.

Q: Are you doing anything special to commemorate the day?

A: Yes?

Q: Are we back to that joke again?

A: Yes

Q: What are you doing to commemorate the day?

A: I thought you'd never ask. I have been making changes to the format of the blog over the past few weeks and I am unveiling them today.

Q: What's new?

A: Not much. We had fish today. Don't usually have fish at home. It was quite tasty.

Q: No I mean what's new with the blog?

A: Well first of all, I am starting a new segment where I feature a new blog in the top right corner of my blog.

Q: Cool. What's it called?

A: Featured blog .

Q. Catchy. Who are you featuring now?

A: Cornforth Adventures. It is an excellent blog. I have known the Cornforth's for several years and it is nice to follow someone in cyber life who you know in real life. She has great music on her blog. I'm even listening to it right now. She is also been a consistent commenter and encourager of this blog. Even when we don't see eye to eye she gently states her points without destroying me in the process.

Q: Will you basically be featuring blogs that you already link to?

A: No. I will probably feature all those but I will also be featuring many others.

Q: Has your blog changed a lot over the past year. If so what about it has changed?

A: Yes, it really has evolved. In the first few months I was changing links and music and other things on a weekly basis. It was wearing me out. I did a lot of experimentation over the first few months as well. I really learned my lesson from the NABLOPOMO incident. Blogging is not an end in itself.

Q: Didn't you write about that in the End of blogging?

A: Sure did. Tackled it in Danger: Blogging as well. It is a theme I kept going back to. I constantly need to be reminded to put this blog in it's proper place. Another thing that changed was that the blog often took on a more personal nature than I thought it would when I started it.

Q: What do you think that was due to?

A: It was definitely due to the passing of my Brother last April.

Q: How did blogging affect your grieving process?

A: I think it both helped and hurt. It helped in the sense that I had an outlet to air my feelings. It hurt that it created an idea inside myself that because I blogged about it, I had dealt with it fully. But that's enough about that now. Ask me another question.

Q: Gladly. What have been some of the more surprising aspects of blogging over the past year.

A: I think most surprising is that I have started 2 more blogs and each of my oldest kids have started their own. Lucy can't wait until she can get in on the act.

Q: Isn't she already the act with all her Lucyisms?

A: She sure is.

Q: Do you have any more?

A: This past week she was on her way home from AWANA. She asked Amy if she (AMY) was a Christian and Amy said "yes, why." Lucy told her that she (LUCY) was not a Christian. Amy asked "why not, don't you believe in Jesus?" Lucy said, "Yes, but I'm not a Christian". Amy asked why not? Lucy said, "because I don't want to go to Medieval Times".

Q: Medieval Times! What's That?

A: It's a dinner theatre experience where there is jousting and knights and much merriment.

Apparently Lucy had heard about Jesus being King and tied it together with Medieval Times.

Q: That's quite a story, How do we move on from that?

A: Ask me what I'm doing tomorrow.

Q: Why can't I ask you right now?

A: Aren't I supposed to be handling the jokes?

Q: And shouldn't I be asking the questions?

A: Good point.

Q: What are you doing tomorrow?

A: Eating the leftover fish. Oh! On the blog! I am making a change t0 3 Things This Thursday. From now on I will call it Some Things This Thursday. That way if people only have 1 or two things going on they can still contribute.

Q: Any closing thoughts you'd like to share?

A: I'd like to thank everybody who followed the blog this past year and say I am looking forward to having you along for the ride in the years to come.

Next Time: Some Things Thursday

The Day is Finally Here

I have been anticipating this day for a long time. It is my 1 year blog-o-versary at Home School Dad. Head over there for a celebration.

Today also happens to be the day they announce who is going to Baseball's Hall of Fame via the writer's election process. I have spent the last 7 posts here preparing for today's announcement.

Today I'd like to recap who I would vote for given a ballot, give my predictions for who I think will get in and also some general remarks.

There are many scientific ways to determine who should be in the hall of fame. This year I attempted to develop one of my own. I call it the BILYNM index. What I did was on Christmas Eve took the list of HOF candidates and read them to my BIL Mike. Mike is a writer, a baseball nut (not to be confused with the seasonal 31 flavor's ice cream variety of the same name) and a pretty nice guy.

I asked him to respond yes, no or Maybe to whether the players should be enshrined in Cooperstown. I will admit that I omitted Mike Jackson from the list just because of the double Mike factor.

Here are the results:

Andre Dawson: Y
Bert Blyleven: N
Lee Smith: Y
Jack Morris: M
Tim Raines: N
Mark McGwire: N
Alan Trammell: N
Dave Parker: N
Don Mattingly: N
Harold Baines: N
Roberto Alomar: N
Kevin Appier: N
Ellis Burks: N
Andres Galarraga: N
Pat Hentgen: N
Eric Karros: N
Ray Lankford: N
Barry Larkin: N
Edgar Martinez: N
Fred McGriff: Y
Shane Reynolds: N
David Segui: N
Robin Ventura: N
Todd Zeile: N

Mike's Summation: If Lee Smith doesn't get in, no one should get in.

Speaking of which, the last time that any player on the ballot failed to get the 75% of the vote needed for election was 1996. I think there's a chance that no one will be elected this year.

If I was a 1o year member of the BBWAA I would vote for 7 players this year. Roberto Alomar, Harold Baines, Andre Dawson, Dale Murphy, Tim Raines, Lee Smith and Robin Ventura.

I Predict

I think there will be 1 player elected to the Hall this year and I think that player will be Andre Dawson

I think the top 3 vote getters will be Dawson, Roberto Alomar, and Bert Blyleven

Along with Alomar I think 3 other first ballot players are likely to get more than 5% of the vote and stay on for 2011. They are Barry Larkin, Fred McGriff, and Edgar Martinez

So this end my build up to the hall of fame announcements. I will be be back today or tomorrow with an HOF recap.

The New Year in Review

I posted this a few days ago. But I just decided the word I want to get out, might get out well as a half dozen words. So, here is a subtitle for this post, Six Word Saturday Style . . .

I need your book reviews, Please

It may seem a little early in the year to review it. But it is never too early to review some books. On January 17th I will be hosting the 35th edition of the book review blog carnival. The 34th edition is now up at Book Dads. It's just skipping from one Dad to another when I take the helm of the fortnightly carnival later this month. In the mean time I am looking for submissions. If you have reviewed a book on your blog recently and have not submitted it to a previous book review blog carnival edition, now is your chance. I know a lot of my followers review books at their place from time to time, this would be a great time to share with the class. You can submit a post by linking here .

Next Time: 1 year ago today ...