Cant Keep Quiet!

No, not the presidental race.  Hurricane season.

In 2004, school started and was in session for less then a week when hurricane Charley decided to come visiting.  This year it is Tropical Storm Fay that is expected to hit this area sometime tomorrow or Wednesday.

School started today for most counties in Central Florida.  Most of these counties have closed their public schools for tomorrow.  We won't know if we're back in session on Wednesday until tomorrow afternoon.

There are some important differences between Charley and Fay.  Charley was a level 3 hurricane when it hit Florida's shores.  It was also very, very fast.  Fay is still just a tropical storm.  It might be a level 1 hurricane when it hits Florida's southwest coast tomorrow morning.  It's also moving slowly and a bit erratically.

For a while it looked like Fay would just skirt the coast of Florida.  Now it looks like it hit between Sarasota and Naples.

Hopefully this is a one day only event for the entire hurricane season.  I definitely don't want to get into the school starts/school's on hold cycle that happened in 2004.

If you're interested, read my farewell to 2004's hurricane season.

Technorati Tags: hurricane Fay

In Orange County, Florida teachers went back to work this week.  As usual, it was a busy week.  Since we have a new principal, he felt it necessary to have many, many meetings. As a resource teacher, when I wasn't in meetings I was trying to get information together for the special education teachers and trying to help parents and students out.

Yeah, I didn't get a lot done.

The administration decided to open the school today for anyone who wanted/needed to come in to get things done.  I felt it would be a perfect time to get caught up (or nearly caught up) on everything I couldn't get done during the week.  No parents, students, or teachers knew I was there.  Perfect.

As I left the school campus I saw these two right at the campus entrance.  I probably could have walked up to them.  They just didn't seem to care how close anyone or any car got.

Hanging Out

Apparently, some time this summer I changed my name from Laura to Valerie.  I don't know when.  Yes, I should have been paying better attention. 

When I went to sign in today I found that my name was now XXXXXXXX, Valerie.  It seems that with a new principal comes new names for the staff and faculty.

For example, one of the people I worked with changed her name last year as a result of a divorce.  This past Monday she came in to find that her mail box had her married last name and not her maiden name.  It took a long time to get it changed on the mailbox from her married name to her maiden name last year.  She's not real happy with the change back to the old name.

I'd understand if I had a common last name and the new secretary had worked with someone with my last name at her previous school, but I don't have a common last name.  Matter of fact, I'm the only one in the county school system with my last name.

Oh well, I've crossed out Valerie and written in Laura.  We'll just have to wait and see if it gets changed the next time the signin sheets are put up.

Technorati Tags: school

For the next week or two I probably won't be writing very much.  It's back to school time and I'm swamped.

Most teachers go back next Monday but I actually went back last week.  Despite have a couple of finals as well, last week wasn't that bad.  This week, though, has been worse.

There've been a lot of changes at my school and each day just seems to bring more and more changes.  A little over two weeks ago it was announced that my principal was being reassigned to a different school and a new principal would be taking over.

This new principal is bringing over a lot of people from his previous school.  It seems like he's bringing more each day and some of the changes have been surprising.

I don't have a good track record with schools that switched principals while I was there.  I'm trying to remain positive that third times the charm, though.

For nearly 12 years now, my dog has acted like an air-headed, happy-go-lucky mutt whose only care was who would rub her belly next.  It turns out that Artie has been hiding her brains behind a stupid grin/act for all this time.

A couple of weeks ago, Artie started having problems with incontinence.  It started out just happening in the morning before she woke up and then got to the point where she was dribbling all over the place.  When I took her to the vet it turned out that her urine was way too dilute, especially for a dog that hadn't had anything to drink in over 12 hours.  Urine and blood tests also came back showing that she had way too much protein in her system than was good for her.  Basically, her kidneys aren't working properly.

Since then she's been on medicaton for the dribbling and a special low protein diet ever since.  Well, she's been on medication ever since, the diet she just won't eat.

I'm not a big fan of shoving pills down my dog's mouth.  I'm not afraid of it, I've done it several times and she's never tried to bite me, I just don't like to do it.  So I bought some pill poppers/pockets.  I managed to hide the pills in those for less than a week.  Then she figured out what was going on and would just eat around the pocket and leave them.

That is, when she was eating the food she'd eat around the pill pockets.

I started out giving Artie the dry low-protein food mixed with canned low-protein food.   She'd eat the whole thing up.  That lasted about 3 days.  Then she'd eat the canned food and leave the dry food.  Now she's leaving the canned food as well.

I mixed up a piece of cheese in her food tonight to tempt her.  She brought out a mouthful of food, dropped it on the floor, and pushed it around until she had just the cheese.

She's never been this smart.  We've always been able to get her to eat something she didn't want to eat by mixing it with canned food or some other treat.

Right now, besides the pills I'm shoving down her mouth and a few biscuits, the only thing I'm sure she's eating is grass.

Any suggestions? I'd mix cat food in her bowl but that would defeat the whole "low-protein diet" diet.

If this continues tomorrow I'll have to call the vet and see what he suggests.  I'm not keen on buying a different type of low-protein brand at $30 a pop to see if she eats that.  I still have most of the last bag I had to buy.

Technorati Tags: dog, low protein diet for dogs

As you should already know, a man went on a tragic shooting spree in a church in Knoxville, Tennessee on Sunday.  The church was the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and the man was Jim Adkisson. It's been determined that Adkisson chose the church because he hated the church's liberal teachings.  Adkisson also believed that all liberals should be killed.

Oddly, if you do a search of Foxnews.com using the words knoxville tennessee shooting you get 36 hits but none are about this particular story:

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Technorati Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Fox News, Jim Adkisson, Sean Hannity, Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church

Alan Grayson is running for the Democratic candidate for the 8th district of Congress.  The position he is running for is currently held by Ric Keller.  Keller is best know for the "Cheeseburger Bill" and well, not much else.  At least, not much when it comes to his work in Congress.

But Ric Keller is for another post.

Alan Grayson has been fighting against contractor fraud for more than 16 years.  Since the beginning of the Iraq War, he's been battling against the no-bid contractors and the Department of Justice.  One case involves a refrigerator truck that KBR was using to hold bodies of Iraqis.  The bodies had been in the truck for two weeks in the Iraqi heat without refrigeration.  Needless to say, it wasn't pretty.  Now, refrigerator trucks can be used to hold bodies, but then they can never be used to carry food or ice.  KBR, however, continued to use this particular truck to carry ice.

Yeah, gross.  And any ice or food carried on that truck becomes a bio-hazard.  You can read more about this case and other cases in a Vanity Fair article.

I found a new tv ad that Grayson has put out over on Daily Kos. It looks great.

In case you haven't figured it out, I plan on voting for Grayson. If you want to help Grayson out, please visit Act Blue or Grayson's campaign website.

Technorati Tags: 8th Congressional District, Alan Grayson, Ric Keller

Just a couple of things I felt like writing about.  Neither will change the course of the world.

So You Think You Can Dance

Last night Will was voted off SYTYCD.  While I thought Will was technically proficient, I couldn't connect with him.  He was never one of the guys that I cheered for and wanted to see go as far as possilbe.

Part of that had to do with my annoyance at the judges for fawning over him and trashing his partner for the first 5 weeks.  No, Jessica wasn't great but she wasn't the only reason that that couple didn't shine.  Will played a part in that as well, yet he was usually praised or his mistakes were hardly mentioned.

Last night, the show once again set Will up on a pedistal.  Comfort did her dance and Cat lead her off stage.  Will danced and Cat lead him over to the judges to ask why did they think he was on the bottom.  Courtney danced and Cat lead her off the stage.  Twitch danced and like the girls, he was then lead off the stage by Cat.

Favoritism.  That was Will's problem.  Unfortunately for Will, it was a problem caused by the judges.

Parent cruelty

Some parents can be very cruel to their children.  No, I'm not talking about physical abuse or verbal abuse (although both are problems).  I'm talking about parents who hang an outlandish moniker on their children because they think it's clever.

It's not just celebrities that do this.  They just get all the publicity for their children's names.  Some that people get all uptight about aren't even all that bad (Honor might be uncommon here but it is common in the U.K.  It's also a pretty name).

Consider, though, Talula Does The Hula From Hawaii in New Zeland.  Yes, that was what her parents named her.

Back in February, this 9 year old child was involved in a custody battle.  During the case, a lawyer for the girl told the judge that she was so embarrassed by her name that she wouldn't tell it to her friends.  Instead she had them call her 'K'.

This young lady was smarter than her parents.  She knew that her name could cause her to be mocked and teased.  That's not something to intentionally put a 9 year-old child through.,

New Zeland Family Court Judge Rob Murfitt, who ordered the girl to be put in court guardianship so she could change her name.

The findings of the court were only released to the public on Thursday.  Other names registered in New Zeland include Kaos, Cinderella Beauty Blossom, Number 16 Bus Shelter, Violence and Benson and Hedges (twins).

As reported in this article

Auckland child psychologist Glen Stenhouse said strange names revealed a lot more about parents than they realised, and in the worst cases could amount to abuse.

"Choosing a mildly strange name really says more about the parent than the child. It's a form of attention-seeking. You have to wonder about their ability to be a competent parent if they start their child's lives with a name that is going to bring them ridicule."

Technorati Tags: children's names, SYTYCD

Last week shock jock Michael Savage lived up to his name and his occupation by saying that autism was a "fraud" and a "racket" and that 99% of autistic children were actually just brats.

Here's what he said

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Technorati Tags: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Autistic, Michael Savage

Not!!!

Once again McCain has opened his mouth and proved that he is far from being an expert on foreign policy.

Today on the "Good Morning America" show, McCain downplayed conditions in Afghanistan.  He then went on to say

We have a lot of work to do.  It's a very hard struggle, particularly given the situation on the Iraq-Pakistan border.

In case you don't know how the borders are drawn in that region of the world, here's a map I got off of Crooks and Liars.

Looks to me like the Iraq Pakistan border has a very large cushion named Iran.

This isn't the first time McCain has opened his mouth and shown that he doesn't know what he is talking about.  During a GOP debate in October 2007, McCain said

The first thing I would do is make sure that we have a missile defense system in place in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and I don't care what his objections are to it.

On July 14, 2008, he said

I was concerned about a couple of steps that the Russian government took in the last several days. One was reducing the energy supplies to Czechoslovakia. Apparently that is in reaction to the Czech's agreement with us concerning missile defense, and again some of the Russian now announcement they are now retargeting new targets, something they abandoned at the end of the Cold War, is also a concern.

Three months before he said that he told Don Imus that he would "work closely with Czechoslovakia and Poland and other countries."

If he's a foreign relations expert, McCain should know that Czechoslovakia was split into two countries January 1, 1993.  Neither is called Czechoslovakia.  Instead their names are the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

At a news conference in Jordan on March 18, 2008, McCain said

Al Qaeda is going back into Iran and is receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran.

Here's the problem with that statement:  Iran's population is mostly Shiite Muslim.  Al Qaeda is Sunni Muslim.  Iran views The Sunni's in Al Qaeda as a threat to their country and have worked very hard to close their borders to Al Qaeda fighters.  Iran has also accused the United State of funding, training and arming Iraqi Shiite militants.

If McCain or anyone else wants to claim that they are an expert on foreign policy, then they can't keep making stupid mistakes like these.  They definitely shouldn't be making them over and over and over again (I'm talking to John "Czechoslovakia is still a country" McCain).

If you want me to believe that you're an expert on anything, you need to actually know what you're talking about.  John McCain just continues to prove that he is no expert on foreign policy.

Technorati Tags: Czechoslovakia, Iran, Iraq, John McCain, Pakistan