Crickets

Our house is chirping with Ned's food.  A bunch of little crickets make a lot of noise.  But Ned sure loves to eat them.

Good News

I let Garbanzo out on Sunday night, and a while later we smelled some skunkiness.  I went outside and found the cat and he hadn't been re-sprayed. Yay!

Also, I got a call from Yosemite, and they had my wedding ring.  They FedEx'd it and it got here today, and is now back safely on my finger.  Double yay!

Choose Your Own Adventure

I've been reading some of "Choose Your Own Adventure" books from my childhood with the kids. As I'm reading them, Ive been wondering if it is possible to get to every page and if there are any interesting properties, such as loops, in them. Today, using the magic of AT&T's Graphviz, I generated digraphs of two of the books. Behold, House of Danger:

And here is Space And Beyond by R.A. Montgomery:

Skunked

Last night, Garbanzo ran outside around our bedtime. We didn't worry about it too much, as he'll come meowing to the door in a few minutes to be let back in. This time, he didn't.

Around midnight, I woke up and saw him at the door, so I let him in. I vaguely noticed a smell, but I let him in. Then the smell hit me, and I realized we had a skunk problem on our hands. I corralled Garbanzo to the laundry room, to minimize contamination and come up with a plan. I noticed he was wet when I pet him, so I grabbed some paper towels to squeegee him off.

Then the smell kept getting worse. I moved him out to the garage. Very quickly, the garage became foul. R suggested that he needed to get outside ASAP, but he was hiding under the van. I opened the side door, and open the garage opener to scare him out and to get some fresh air in there. He ran for it.

I did some other tidying up, left the garage door open, and went back to bed soon enough. Clearly, this was not a problem I could deal well with in the middle of the night.

For the rest of the night, he sat outside our bedroom and howled. And stank.

We spent this morning trying to eradicate the smell from the house. Amazing stuff, skunk spray. A little goes a long way. We are making good progress, but it still persists around the house. From his short time in the garage, both of our sealed cars became rank.

R found the Mythbusters' approved anti-stink solution, and Garbanzo was freaked out enough to let her clean him without much complaint. He smells much better, but I think he got hit in the face, and it was hard to wash there.

Ned

Ed is the last surviving tadpole. Ned didn't survive the shock of moving to the new tank, I think.

PS. It turns out that Ned survived, and Fred and Ed didn't. Title updated.

Fred, Ed, and Ned

Today is EJP's birthday. He's 5 now.

Aunt E sent him a unique birthday gift that is prefect for his creature loving mind. Bull frog tadpoles. They arrived in the mail last night. E named them Fred, Ed, and Ned.

Unfortunately, Fred didn't survive the night.

RCP has now bought supplies, such as a tank and food, and is putting together their environment now, in hopes of saving Ed and Ned. If all goes well, we'll have a couple bull frogs for a couple years.

GATE

Gilroy Unified School District has a couple programs to be proud of. One is the Dual Immersion program at Las Animas Elementary, which over the course of 5 years, teaches both English and Spanish. We are very excited that EJP will be one of the participants in the fall as a kindergartener.

Another program is the GATE program at Rucker Elementary. This is a 3 year program that focuses on challenging the best students to learn more depth and better study skills than the traditional education. We had hoped that SKGP would be a part of the program, but she was denied. However, we have a chance to appeal the decision. Basically, they want to know why they should re-look at their decision.

It occurred to me that with the help of my very smart, well spoken readers, we could write the best darn appeal they've ever seen. If you'd like to help, I've created a Google Doc, and spent 3 minutes writing some thoughts. You should be able to edit it by clicking on:

http://docs.google.com/a/pacehouse.com/Doc?id=ddbqfpjj_329583xjngj&invite=f8psv6g

(Let me know if that doesn't work!)