Sirius, also known as the Dog Star, is the brightest star in the nighttime sky and is part of the constellation Canis Major. It is not visible at night this time of year because the sun is between us and it, but it can be spotted around sunrise. I have heard it said that on a very clear day (no clouds, haze or smog) Sirius is bright enough to be seen near the sun in the daytime sky which is why these are called the Dog Days of Summer. Many centuries ago people believed that the heat from the sun combined with the additional heat from Sirius is what made summertime so hot. At a distance of 8.6 light years we get no heat from Sirius, which is good because the sun needs no extra help right now.
VICKI COMES HOME. After three and a half weeks of staying at Pauline's house Vicki is now back at home at night. She still spends several hours a day helping her mom around the house but she is now more confident in Pauline's ability to do some things for herself. I'm glad to have her home.
A FATHER'S ROLE. I have always figured that part of my job as a dad is to aggravate my kids, just to keep things stirred up a bit. For example, Nate loves to come up to me when I am eating and ask for a bite of my food. As an only child this goes against my grain. So to make the best of it I make Nate say, "I'm a moocher!" before I'll give him any food.
I'm a little more creative with Ben. Sometimes I'll call Pauline's house to talk to Vicki and Ben will answer the phone. After we say hello and talk a bit I'll pause and then ask, "Well, what did you call me for?" Of course his reply is, "I didn't call you. You called me." That's where I disagree with him and we have a friendly argument. About half a minute later he gets confused and says, "Well, I guess Mommy dialed the wrong number."
A few weeks ago Ben received an invitation to a birthday party at Hollywood's for one of his friends, Will Keaton. It made his day. Tuesday was the day of the party and Ben had a great time. I had him pretty worried on the way to the party though. I took a different route to White House and mentioned something about being lost.
I am sure this will all come back to haunt me one of these days.
FLATTERY WILL GET YOU EVERYWHERE. Last weekend Vicki and Nate were shopping. At one point she was trying on a long, flowing skirt and Nate started talking. After he repeated the word a several times Vicki realized he was saying "pincess." When she turned and asked, "Do you think I look like a princess?" he affirmed her saying, "Look like pincess, look like pincess!" That and the glow on his face made her day.
FENDER BENDER. Friday is the day when Aunt Mar goes to town for her hair appointment and to run a few errands. This Friday was no different. When her errands were done and since it was about 90° F she decided to drive to McDonald's for a milk shake. She had just passed Shoney's on Memorial Boulevard, driving in the right lane, when a car coming from the opposite direction turned left in front of her. It happened so quickly she could not avoid a collision (the other driver admitted to not even seeing Aunt Mar's car before he turned). She basically T-boned the other car in its right door but at such a low speed the airbag wasn't even deployed. No one was hurt. Mom called me as I was on the way home from work and I turned around to check on Aunt Mar.
Unfortunately the other driver was driving without a license or car insurance. He received a citation but the fine was only $50! The damage to Aunt Mar's car was estimated at $1700. What was even more odd to me is that the guy at the car dealership that gave Aunt Mar the damage estimate told her that the other driver could make a claim with Aunt Mar's insurance to have his car fixed even though he was not carrying insurance or a driver's license and did admit to being at fault in the accident. Something just doesn't add up there for me.
As we were leaving the scene of the accident I told Aunt Mar she may as well get her milk shake after all the trouble she had been through for it.
I'M A MOODLER. I try to keep this newsletter focused on what happens in our family life but I had a very positive experience at work the other day and thought I'd share it. One of the problems we face in our school system is a very tight budget. In the past it has been very depressing to go to the Tennessee Educators Technical Conference and see all these neat things that are available for teachers only to have to come home and make do on limited funds.
I found Moodle a few months ago and installed it on our web server to provide web space for our teachers for free. Some of our teachers had been using an outside service to host their classroom web sites (like TeacherWeb) and paying the subscription out of their own pockets. They don't have to do that now. And what is so nice is that Moodle is open source software and is distributed free of charge. (I had one company that wanted to do the same thing for our school system for $18,000 plus the annual tech support fee.)
I held our first Moodle workshop on Wednesday morning. After I introduced the software and set accounts up for everyone I gave them the rest of the time to play around with the system. It was so rewarding to see their eyes light up as they would discover a tool in Moodle and then say, "Hey, I can use this for!" I went home feeling especially good about my job that day.
Joe
