Fragments, Photos, Tweets and Rants.

Yes you can sing my title to the tune of Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes if you want to. You got to know I will! That said, I have been blogging like crazy lately. I still have a lot to say and Friday Fragments is a great place to tie up loose ends

Fragment 1: I blogged earlier about former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich this week. Maybe I didn't mention that when he ran he said he was going to clean up corruption left in the wake of the previous governor. Now that George Ryan is in jail and Blago soon to join him I really like this new license plate and slogan proposal.

Fragment 2: I also have blogged some what inadvertently about the Pioneer Woman over the past two posts. They were really peripheral blink if you miss them comments beyond the main themes of the posts. It got me to thinking though that I do have a few pictures of her I wanted to post. Amy and the bigs went to a book store in Naperville this spring to get her new book.

She signed Spider Droid's book. and posed for these pictures.

She was impressed with his profound Lego skills. If I was The Next Big Thing on the Internet, I would have probably been "Next!" She, was incredibly gracious.

Fragment 3: As you may or may not know bad or inaccurate commercials drive me crazy. Today I was listening to Pandora while weeding the garden. (If you don't believe me check out this tweet.) A commercial for Lowe's came on and they said July 4th was finally here. That really ticked me off. (If you don't believe me check out this tweet.)

You see they Didn't say July 4th weekend was finally here. They made a single day into a season and then call the season by the day. This sort of thing really irks me, because making the day something it isn't, obscures what it is. In the Little House books, especially Little Town on the Prairie and Those Happy Golden Years, the 4th of July was a special day nestled in between 2 ordinary days. This gave it special meaning.

Our town's 4th of July fireworks were June 25th! 9 days before the actual event. Now they used to always have them the Saturday before the 4th, which I could understand. I even sort of got it when the 4th of July was on a Saturday, and they held the fire works the Saturday before. But 9 days? I mean they should have called them the Father's day fireworks since they were held closer to them, then the 4th of July. Many of the local area festivals which usually coincide with the 4th of July are ending on Sunday this year. I don't get it. The date has significance!

The timer just rang which means I have to stop this ranting and move on. (If you don't believe me check out this tweet.)


Fragment 4: I stole this picture along with the picture from Fragment 1 from the same Facebook account. I could type a lot more, but I think the picture speaks for itself.

Those are all the fragments I have for the time being. Click here to head back to Half Past Kissing Time for more Friday Fragments. (If you don't believe me, check out this tweet.)

The Next Big Thing on the Internet?!?

When I started this blogging adventure 2.5 years ago, I fully expected to be the next big thing on the internet. I didn't necessarily want to be. I just thought I was slated for fame. Now that it hasn't happened, I am not sure at all as to why not. Let's examine the package that is HomeSchoolDad.

1. I am young. (If 46 can be considered young.







2. I am vibrant (If taking 3 minutes to get off a couch can be considered vibrant.)







3. I am fun and exciting (I am actually fun and exciting. No, really.)







4. My children do things like this . . .




So, I don't understand with all that going for me, why I am not the next big thing on the internet. Maybe I should change my name to Ree and become the Pioneer Home School Dad?

Here is my first question for you. Why are you not the next big thing on the internet? Since an early age I have been a big fan of Steve Martin. It probably stems from watching him make balloon animals from unblown balloons on The Muppet Show. I memorized all of his stand up albums which are pure genius. I even love stuff I now disagree with. For example he once said:I believe that Ronald Reagan could make this country what it once was: A barren wasteland covered with ice. I love Ronald Reagan but that is classic misdirection and liberal or conservative, you have to admit: that's funny.

I say all this because I have been following Steve Martin's twitter feed. He has been doing this bluegrass thing and his new song about Paul Revere from the POV of his horse is lovely. If I ever had the chance to say something to Steve Martin, I would probably say something like, "Thank you for showing me that it was okay to view the world a little differently." This brings me to my second question for you: "If you got a chance to see a childhood (or adult idol )of yours, what would you say to him, her or it?"

So those are my two questions and I am sticking with them. For more of Thursday Two Questions click here.

Good Lorenzo Charles Reflection.

I was staying up late working on my other blog, tweeting and watching the White Sox lose yet another extra inning game when I saw a tweet from a former pastor of mine regarding this piece at SI.COM. For whatever reason I felt compelled to link it here.

Maybe it's because my last post here was about the NCAA tournament. Maybe because I remember the 1983 NCAA Finals very well because I graduated high school this year. Maybe it's because Lorenzo Charles was 47 and I'll turn 47 in a few months. Not sure exactly why I am sharing it here. But, like my pastor tweeted, it's a great article by a great sports writer. This is also a golden basketball moment . . .





My thoughts, condolences and prayers go out toLorenzo's friends and family.

Hopefully I'll post here again before another former pastor tweets about some sports moment. I was waiting to post until the Sox got rolling again. As Dr. Phil would ask "How is that working?"

Garden Variety Wordless Wednesday

For more Wordless Wednesdays click here.

For a really good Chicken Wing recipe from the Pioneer Woman cooks click here. Not exactly wordless, but man can't live by salad alone.

Dances with Puppy

When we were at Taste of Chicago last week there was an opportunity to get Puppy to do what she loves best: dance. At one of the booths a lady was teaching some traditional Mexican dances.

Puppy and I came forward to participate

At this point it looks a little like the Hokey Pokey.

This is the traditional part of the dance where the man stops to tie his shoe and the pink clad princess looks on.

I'm sorry ma'am but I have no intention to show that much leg!

You put it all together and . . .

As you can tell that dance was not exactly Puppy's speed. But this is . . .

It's a new move called the Puppy-it's-as-easy-as-1-2-3

Here it is live.

I will have some more pics and stories from Taste of Chicago soon.

Thank you Blago, for the home school civics lessons.

It was a Tuesday, that's all I remember for sure. That's the day the kids had their enrichment course. (It's a co-op, but they don't call it a co-op. They call it enrichment courses.) Puppy and I played in a kid's area while Bunny took an art class and then Spider Droid took a chess class. I was driving to enrichment classes, (that's how I knew it was a Tuesday) when I heard on the radio that our state's governor Rod Blagojevich had been arrested on federal corruption charges. The most egregious of which was trying to sell the then President-elect Obama's vacated senate seat to the highest bidder.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich, a photo by captainleadbottom on Flickr.

It was there in the car on the way to enrichment classes, that our 2 1/2 year civics lessons began. Theses include lessons in filling vacant seats, abuse of power, impeachment, trials, hung juries and retrials. Then today as I went to run errands with the bigs, I turned on the radio and they announced a verdict had been reached in the Blago retrial and would be announced in the early afternoon. As quickly as that, our civics classroom started all over again.

Here are a few educational and pseudo educational moments from the last 30 months of Blagomania:

• When Spider Droid first heard about the Blagojevich arrest he assumed that the governor had been framed since a governor would never do anything wrong. What I wanted to say to him was "live in Illinois much?" But I went the AWANA route and reminded him of his memory verse, "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."










• Many of Blagojevich's public appearances gave us quite a lot to discuss. I tried to find a video of him quoting Rudyard Kipling shortly after his initial arrest. The only one I could find was merged with Simpson's clips. So instead here is the beginning of an interview he did with Dave Letterman shortly after the impeachment.

• The kids' impression of him was aided by the media. At one point between the arrest and the impeachment, the kids got to calling him "Governor Deadmeat" because he had been referred to that way in a local paper.






• We even did a Lego workshop about him. . .

Just kidding! Here's the real credit.

rod blagojevich, a photo by robayre on Flickr.

Blagojevich's downfall seemed to be that he felt that his years of service to the public entitle him to some sort of payback. During the past 2.5 years, even in his trial, he talked about all the great things he did for the state of Illinois. His defense seems to be (a) This is what politics is(everybody's doing it)and (b) I deserve something out of this. I am sure that in his mind, which must be an amazing place to visit, he did nothing wrong.








Interestingly enough, these are my kids' two biggest excuses for not admitting when they were wrong. "They started it"and "But I wanted it." Blagoevich serves as a warning to my kids and hopefully everyone who tries to cover up their misdeeds with excuses.








So thanks Blago, for all the civics lessons. I guess we'll just have to wait until your sentencing date to learn more.






Thanks to As for my House for hosting this weeks carnival of homeschooling and puting in this post. To go visit the carnival click here.