The Great Pizza Battle

The basic idea is to share a number of different tidbits that you'd generally not waste a whole post with. It's kind of like my old 3 Things Thursday meme, except it's on Friday, and people read it.

I thought I'd begin these fragments with some local flavor. The Chicago area is renowned for it's great pizza. When we moved to this town 9 years ago, we found a great local pizza place. Local, it's actually only a block from our house. It's a really cool place with a hunting lodge decor. The pizza is great, but they also have great hot dogs and polish sausage. They have complimentary peanuts and insist you throw the shells on the floor.

I don't know all of the exact details that led to the situation I am about to describe. I have heard many conflicting reports, so I am going to be vague to insure I don't pass on misinformation. The pizza place was located in a small complex that includes a hair salon and 7-11. Last year the owners of the pizza place bought the two houses across the street, and had them razed. I thought at the time that this was merely an expansion. In truth the restaurant had let its lease run out and was rebuilding across the street.

A few months later a new pizza place opened in the old one's former location. It was started by a former employee, who wanted to have a place of his own. I tried it a couple of times. The secret to a good pizza, is the sauce. This sauce was not close to the quality of the former tenants.

This summer the building of the new establishment started in earnest. Yesterday they opened. Now we have two pizza places a block's walk from our house. The only time I have ever seen two pizza places so close to each other is in downtown Chicago, and those are generally filled up with tourists. Our small suburb doesn't get a lot of tourists. It's just going to be a short time until there is only 1 pizza place on the block again. I'll keep you posted.


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This week we are finishing up our ed 5 week study called Passport to India. It was a Sonlight class and everyone really liked it. Each session we watched a video like this one. We collected $25.00 for Bible Clubs in India. This would generally allow 25 Indian children to attend bible clubs. Sonlight matched our gift, which will allow another 25 children to attend.


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We play a lot of games in our family. One game we really like is Mastermind. For a game that reinforces logical thinking, the box is packaged most inefficiently. In the olden days (when I was a kid), the mastermind game which has a rectangular shape, had a box to match. These days they have put the rectangular game in a square box. The packaging was obviously not designed by a master mind!

Speaking of which, the blog Thrifty Jinxy is giving away a Mastermind game and a new game called Animal Mastermind (I'm not sure how that one is packaged.) Click here to enter the contest.





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Those are all the fragments, I have for you today. Make sure to hop on over to all the other particpating blogs.



Keith Time: The International Impact of Keith Part I

Big 40 minus the birthday boy

My brother Keith would have turned 40 today. He died 18 months ago so he never quite made the milestone.

When My Mom turned 40, my Dad put a banner across our garage that read "Jeanne's 40 today. But don't tell anyone!". We lived across from the local library at the time and man people people became aware of the event.

When I turned 40, Amy had a surprise party for me and had one of my favorite musicians, Alan Levi, fly in from Alabama and sing at my party. He performed the following song among others .

When Amy turned 40, relatives teamed with me so I could give her 40 rolls of quarters. (Amy love quarters)

Keith died 18 months ago, so he never quite made the milestone. Keith was born on veteran's day and loved that his birthday was celebrated by many people even though they might not be aware they were doing so.

Today as you reflect on the men and women who served our country in the military. Reflect also on the men and women boys and girls who left the party before we had a chance to throw them one.

Nearly A Quarter Century of Fruit and Fiber.

Word Count Wednesday: 100 Words or Les

It’s funny how quickly food triggers memories. Last night while eating a blueberry bagel, I remembered a conversation from 24 years ago. A friend and I were driving home from a wedding when we had this exchange:

Friend: Do you know what you would love?

Me: No, what would I love?

Friend: You would love a blueberry bagel.

Me: You know what? I would love a blueberry bagel.

I subsequently tried my first blueberry bagel and I loved it. 24 years later I still love them!

Keith Time: Fred Astaire on Dick Cavett

HSD Rewind: Puppyisms

HSD Rewind

Originally broadcast February 2009 (edited for the 2nd decade of the 21st century, which includes name changing)

A common theme of this blog has been the sayings of my youngest daughter which I call puppyisms.

Here is what I wrote about it last year . . .


I would have no problem at all filling a daily blog with just crazy things my children say. So far the youngest is the most quotable. Today, I was putting on her bathing suit on and then her clothes over them. This generally takes me two minutes because she is a very squirrely three year old. During those two minutes this conversation occurred:



Me: Let's get dressed for swimming.



Puppy: Is today Monday or Tuesday?



Me: No today's Thursday.



Puppy: Oh Man!



Me: ?



Lucy: I love Monday. Is Monday soon?



So, most people might be thinking what is so special about Monday? Monday is a good day for her; she has some classes she really enjoys at our Home School Co-op. I don't think that's why she said it. I think she has my random genes. She just says things as they occur to her. Things that would never occur to anyone. Like the next thing she said.



Puppy: Butera loves me.



Me: You mean Butera, the grocery store?



Puppy: Yes, Butera loves me.



The problem is that she says so many crazy things, generally in a 2 minute period, that I can't possibly remember them all to tell Amy when she gets home. Point in fact, she said something very random indeed after the Butera comment, but now I have no idea what it was. She just marched in the room chanting "Hello Pumpkin. Hello Pumpkin." I guess, that will have to do.


MEANWHILE BACK IN 2010 . . .

Same puppy, different year. She is still as random as ever. We were at Aldi the other day and she was off the wall. She was pushing the cart, climbing on shelves. Just acting nuts. Then she stops what she's doing, becomes all calm and controlled and says to woman next to us. "I really like your hair." The lady thanks her and then she's crawling the walls again

Keith Time: Amy Remembers Keith Part II

I Know Funny, I'm A Clown Fish!

You can tell that it's mid fall: the weather is getting colder, the leaves are falling, and the clocks have all been switched. One sure way to know that it is mid fall, is that the Homeschool Blog Award nominations have been announced. The great people at the HSBA each year sponsor awards for homeschoolers in a number of categories (20 this year).

I became aware of the HSBA last year, when I found out I was nominated in the best home school dad blog. Since the name of my blog is Home School Dad, I thought I would be a shoe-in. A very good blog called Families Again won the award instead.

The award I really wanted to win was funniest home school blog. Win, I wasn't even nominated. It was very disappointing, becasuse in the words of Marlin in the epic movie, Finding Nemo: I'm a clown fish, I know funny. Now, technically speaking, I am only an honorary clown fish.

Yesterday they announced the 2010 ballot. Not only was I renominated in the home school dad category, I also was nominated in the funniest category! Some days it really pays to be an honorary clownfish!

To vote for me in the home school dad category click here. To vote for me in the funniest blog category click here. To vote for all the categories click here. Even though I live near Chicago, the HSBA does not follow the vote early vote often method. They ask that you only vote one time per person in your household. The exact rules are at their site.

As glad as I am to be nominated, I am also looking forward to looking at all the other fine blogs that have been nominated. In a future post I will share my ballot.

Keith Time: A Quick Keith and Dave Joke

The Dirt on Homeschooling.

My wife had a cool idea for a meme. She called it bloggers' remorse. The basic idea instead of talking the pretty stuff, the cool stuff, the things that WORK for their families. You talk about what doesn't work. For example,what really stinks about home schooling? What are the horror stories too awful to mention for the world to see?

This can be a challenge. It's so easy to post about the good stuff, the funny stuff, the cute stuff, the really cool stuff. Today, I want to talk about the not so pretty side of homeschooling.

Like having a 4 year old, outread your 9 year old. (More on that later.) Or, something our family is struggling with lately is a clean vs. dirty house. I'm not talking about piles of books, piles of clothes, piles of papers, etc. I'm talking about DIRT! When my wife was homeschooling, she was in the process of training the children to follow routines for cleaning, schoolwork, cooking, etc. (Read my lips B O R I NG!!) When I started homeschooling, I tried to do what she did. But one problem. I'm not her. I wanted to have fun, teach the children cool stuff, enjoy being with them 24-7. And I do enjoy all those things. But there's still a lot of dirt. Now, left to my own devices, I wouldn't mind a little dirt here and there. Neither would the kids. However, funny thing happens every day between 3:30 and 4:00 pm. My wife comes home from work. When she walks in the door, the first thing she sees is...you guessed it...DIRT. So I've tried to cut down on the school work and attack the dirt before she gets here, which frustrates me because, I didn't get as much "school" done as I wanted to. So either way, I am frustrated when she walks in the door, and sometimes I bark at her. And she barks back, and starts ordering the kids around. Clear off the table! Sweep the floor! Scrub the bathroom! Clean up after the bunny. So, at times in our dogless home, there is barking going on. We need to work on this. My first thought is, anyone selling a dog? If that doesn't work, we will need a magical homeschool genie to swoop down and show us the three easy steps to obtaining a clean home while homeschooling three active, creative, children. Until that happens, we're going to work on speaking to each other with kindness and love. And maybe, sweeping a little of that dirt, under the rug.

Keith Time: Amy Remembers Keith Part I