Tuesday, October 24, 2006
If you’re not watching Lost and Heroes…
…Then you’re watching something else. That means I can’t help you! You are beyond help! I now have two shows that are must-see, and the rest of every channel’s line-ups and schedules could just disappear, for all I cared.
It’s been hard on my 10, soon-to-be 11, year old. She’s gone from a school of 25 students to a class that’s almost twice that, and the work load has increased and is coming at her from all sorts of different angles. I was not a good student when I was in her grade, and I was not a good student in the subsequent grades to follow. I’m not sure how I got away with it, but I managed to fit more time in front of the TV and Commodore 64 than I put in school and homework combined when I was in grade six.
Kristen is persevering, though. At first I saw the signs that were similar to the way I felt at that point of my life. When I saw something that I didn’t understand, I would just clam up and try to be as invisible as possible. Kristen, it would seem, even though she is a social butterfly within her age group and gender, would just let things slide by if they were beyond her grasp. But things are changing…
She came home with a POW (problem of the week) that she had handed in the previous Friday. This is a math problem that she has an entire week to solve and needs to be handed in before the end of the last school day. She came home with one that had, in big red numbers, 4.5/10 on it. Less than 50%. And even though she has never even closely hinted that math is her favorite subject, she would usually get very good grades anyway.
This was a quandary. Not only did she have this lowly graded paper, but she had a new one to do and no desire to learn what she had done wrong on the previous one. We had a firm discussion about learning from our mistakes, particularly mine. I told her that I suffered in school because I didn’t ask questions, and I would most definitely not have made it through college and university if I let those fears of being noticed take me over again. I asked a tonne of questions to the point of being annoying. Not as annoying as the guy who would doze off and ask about exactly what the instructor had mentioned seconds previous, but annoying enough. I didn’t care; I was paying to be there!
Kristen asked her teacher the next day how she was supposed to go about answering the previous POW. She even asked about the next POW that wasn’t due for three days. She was ever so proud when I came home and she showed me that the poorly marked POW had now been changed from a 4.5 to an 8.5 because of teacher error. She had, in fact, done most of it right in the first place. Not only that, but she had finished her next POW and gotten confirmation on its correctness with three days to spare. I am a proud dad!
Yesterday, our adventure didn’t take us very far. Besides work, we walked around the block with Lilly. It’s so cool to live in a neighborhood where jack rabbits roam freely. I’m pretty sure Kristen and Rylee have named each and every one of them, and I’m sure that Rylee has named a few of them twice.
I’m taking the next week to finish two projects before I start spending too much time on TILAH. I have a story to finish and an animation to complete, so if I’m absent for the next week, you’ll know why. I’m also setting up a Myspace page for TILAH since it seems like such a good promotional tool. There’s nothing too important there yet, but I’ll work on it when I can. There’s still over two months until the official launch, but I’m pretty sure that time will fly by before we know it, and I’ll be neck deep in deadlines. If I do post, we’ll consider that a bonus, okay?
Wouldn’t you know it, but the book that I had been waiting over a month for (possibly two) finally came in at the library. Now, I could cancel the request and pay the fine (a whopping two dollars) or I could take it out and try not to read it while I’m so busy. Yeah, right! I took it out on Saturday and started reading it before I fell asleep that night. I immediately new I would love this book. It is called A Dirty Job,
and it is about a Beta Male inadvertently becoming a, well, uh, Death, actually. Not THE Death but a Death. Not only that, but his wife dies after giving birth to their daughter leaving him a single father, he runs a second hand store with a 16 year old emo girl and a nearly 40 ex-cop on disability as employees, and there seems to be a homeless man who goes by the title of The Emperor. Frequent strong language that should be avoided by children, but extreme graphic wonder and explicit writing that is enjoyed by me. I hope someone out there gives it a try. I, however, will only be reading it during my 20 minute C-train rides and hour long visits to the toilet.
Ciao for now!
It’s been hard on my 10, soon-to-be 11, year old. She’s gone from a school of 25 students to a class that’s almost twice that, and the work load has increased and is coming at her from all sorts of different angles. I was not a good student when I was in her grade, and I was not a good student in the subsequent grades to follow. I’m not sure how I got away with it, but I managed to fit more time in front of the TV and Commodore 64 than I put in school and homework combined when I was in grade six.
Kristen is persevering, though. At first I saw the signs that were similar to the way I felt at that point of my life. When I saw something that I didn’t understand, I would just clam up and try to be as invisible as possible. Kristen, it would seem, even though she is a social butterfly within her age group and gender, would just let things slide by if they were beyond her grasp. But things are changing…
She came home with a POW (problem of the week) that she had handed in the previous Friday. This is a math problem that she has an entire week to solve and needs to be handed in before the end of the last school day. She came home with one that had, in big red numbers, 4.5/10 on it. Less than 50%. And even though she has never even closely hinted that math is her favorite subject, she would usually get very good grades anyway.
This was a quandary. Not only did she have this lowly graded paper, but she had a new one to do and no desire to learn what she had done wrong on the previous one. We had a firm discussion about learning from our mistakes, particularly mine. I told her that I suffered in school because I didn’t ask questions, and I would most definitely not have made it through college and university if I let those fears of being noticed take me over again. I asked a tonne of questions to the point of being annoying. Not as annoying as the guy who would doze off and ask about exactly what the instructor had mentioned seconds previous, but annoying enough. I didn’t care; I was paying to be there!
Kristen asked her teacher the next day how she was supposed to go about answering the previous POW. She even asked about the next POW that wasn’t due for three days. She was ever so proud when I came home and she showed me that the poorly marked POW had now been changed from a 4.5 to an 8.5 because of teacher error. She had, in fact, done most of it right in the first place. Not only that, but she had finished her next POW and gotten confirmation on its correctness with three days to spare. I am a proud dad!
Yesterday, our adventure didn’t take us very far. Besides work, we walked around the block with Lilly. It’s so cool to live in a neighborhood where jack rabbits roam freely. I’m pretty sure Kristen and Rylee have named each and every one of them, and I’m sure that Rylee has named a few of them twice.
I’m taking the next week to finish two projects before I start spending too much time on TILAH. I have a story to finish and an animation to complete, so if I’m absent for the next week, you’ll know why. I’m also setting up a Myspace page for TILAH since it seems like such a good promotional tool. There’s nothing too important there yet, but I’ll work on it when I can. There’s still over two months until the official launch, but I’m pretty sure that time will fly by before we know it, and I’ll be neck deep in deadlines. If I do post, we’ll consider that a bonus, okay?
Wouldn’t you know it, but the book that I had been waiting over a month for (possibly two) finally came in at the library. Now, I could cancel the request and pay the fine (a whopping two dollars) or I could take it out and try not to read it while I’m so busy. Yeah, right! I took it out on Saturday and started reading it before I fell asleep that night. I immediately new I would love this book. It is called A Dirty Job,
and it is about a Beta Male inadvertently becoming a, well, uh, Death, actually. Not THE Death but a Death. Not only that, but his wife dies after giving birth to their daughter leaving him a single father, he runs a second hand store with a 16 year old emo girl and a nearly 40 ex-cop on disability as employees, and there seems to be a homeless man who goes by the title of The Emperor. Frequent strong language that should be avoided by children, but extreme graphic wonder and explicit writing that is enjoyed by me. I hope someone out there gives it a try. I, however, will only be reading it during my 20 minute C-train rides and hour long visits to the toilet.
Ciao for now!
