Papago Biking

This weekend was nice and cool for us, only high 80's, so we decided to have an active weekend. Saturday we went hiking around some trails we hadn't tried before near Papago Park, and we liked them so much that we went back Sunday and did some biking around there too. It felt really good to be on my bike again after a long summer where it was just too hot to do anything. It's also nice to start finding places to bike that are off the roads here (although Sunday mornings are pretty quiet). I'm sure there are plenty of off-road trails, I just need to find them - or be told about them by any local readers of this blog :-)

Even Sally got into it for a while today which was great, and she decided that next time she wants to go off the main trail too, so I can finally use my mountain bike for what it's intended for - stupid things that make you fall off and hurt yourself - yay! My bike was performing really well - amazingly well considering it's about 12 years old now - and that's got to be thanks to the guys at REI who massively overhauled it after my years of neglect. Best $100 I've ever spent :-) The bike rack I bought 2 years ago (and have hardly used) for the bed of my truck also worked really well - no bikes being launched into the middle of the freeway or anything like that!

I think sometime this winter, we probably need to either head up to the mountains or well out of town to try & find some good places to ride. But we need to build our stamina up first, an hours drive to get out of town, just to do a 30 minute ride is a bit dumb... well unless we can find a great burger place somewhere near the trail end ;-)

Yay, finally we drop below 100º

Well here we are in the middle of September, and it looks like we're finally going to have our first week that dips below 100º! The temperature had been hovering around 110º for months but now that winter is finally arriving, it's starting to cool down a bit. Best of all, my 7am jog should be a lot easier from now at mid-70's instead of high-90's :-) Yep we definitely moved here for the winters, not the summers...

FuManMo is open for business

I can't believe I did it! I opened a store on Cafepress. Gettign the store set up easy. Not easy, figuring out the graphics using software called Gimp that took some time. I'm so proud of myself for figuring all this out. Yes Ross did help, mainly by telling me to relax when I was toally frustrated with the Gimp software. Finally, after a few weekndsI got a logo made and the first shirt, hopefully of many, and is up and ready to be bought by anyone and everyone.

You can check it out at www.cafepress.com/FuManMo

We (Ross and I) picked one of the many nick names we have for the cat as the shop name. So, if you need a pressie (that is English for present) for that someone special check out our place. Also, if you want something on a t-shirt, or anything else cafepress sell, let me know and maybe you too can be a contributor to the not yet famous FuManMo site.

Now, to sit back and wait for the money to start rolling in--hee hee hee

Mini British Invasion?

Hey, I noticed that this blog got a lot of hits from the UK lately, specifically Cork, Manchester, Kearsley, Irlam, Salford, Birmingham & London! Yes we have the technology, scary huh? That's great though, if it's anybody I knew from way back when (13+ years ago now?) drop me a line in the comments here and say "Hi!", I'd love to hear from you.

If you're just a complete stranger however, enjoying some kind of anonymous twisted voyeuristic kink, well that's cool too! You may well smell of hand lotion and Vaseline, but we like you anyway ;-)

If only we'd had email and the internet back in the early 90's, I wouldn't have lost touch with so many people back in Blighty... well if I hadn't been a damn ex-pat, too busy chasing them Yankee dollars... and sunshine... and those naughty American birds... the list goes on ;-)

Assembly

We had an assembly today at school. It was spilt up so the seventh and eighth graders went at different times. It was called Charting Your Course, and as you can imagine it was about making the right choices and looking towards the future. It had pretty good music though and the kids seemed to be paying attention.

There was the story of the 13 year old male arrested for fighting who turns his life around in time for high school. The girl who dropped out of high school, then at 21 her mom takes off so she has to raise here younger (12 year old) sister. She goes back to school and graduates. And lastly the guy who gets paralysed playing high school football but does not give up. Rah Rah!

Personally, I thought it was hokey. I do wonder though why it is cool to fail. I didn't get that when I was in high school and I still don't get it.

Anyway, my students were laughing, "it made me think about my life", it was alright, thought it was nice, better than sitting in class, that sort of thing. At least one kid got something out of it.

I'm in the top 2% of intelligent people in the world?

Check this out for a little bit of brain teaser fun - http://www.manbottle.com/trivia/einstein_s_riddle. I just solved this in about 10 minutes, although I did use a spreadsheet to lay out the information. I guess Einstein didn't have a spreadsheet, so he's probably still a bit smarter then me ;-)

Albert Einstein's Riddle. He wrote this early during the 19th century and said that 98% of the world population would not be able to solve it.

1. In a street there are five houses, painted five different colours.
2. In each house lives a person of different nationality
3. These five homeowners each drink a different kind of beverage, smoke different brand of cigar and keep a different pet.

THE QUESTION: WHO OWNS THE FISH?

Hints:
1. The Brit lives in a red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The Green house is next to, and on the left of the White house.
5. The owner of the Green house drinks coffee.
6. The person who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the Yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The man living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The man who keeps horses lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
12. The man who smokes Blue Master drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The man who smokes Blends has a neighbour who drinks water.

I can't believe she almost cried!

So, here it is the fifth week of school and a student almost cried in my class. I gave them their first test on Friday August 31st. Right before a three day weekend. I gave them their scores back on Tuesday September 4th and they were not happy. I was looking across the room and noticed one of my student was looking at me and it looked like she was about to start crying. I realized I did not explain strongly enough the grade they had in their hand was a test grade and not the grade in class (total).

I got up and addressed the class explaining again how this was the grade for one test, the first test of the year. Class grades are higher than the test grades. Although, some may have gotten a F on the test no one, repeat no one, in any of my classes has an F in class. Also, the first test of the year is always the worst test in any class. They will get used to the tests I give and get better at them. And when I do a review and tell them they can use their notes they will take notes from now on! She felt much better after I re-explained about the grade she was holding.

I also decided to give some extra credit. These students really care about their grades. The extra credit is worth seven points and is the same type of problems as their test.

Let me tell you, the hardest thing to teach in math is adding and subtracting negative numbers. I can't think of a way to teach it that clicks with them. I tried number lines and other manipulatives. They just get stuck the a negative is subtract and go from there. Oh well...they get adding and subtracting fractions and we have moved onto graphing. I hope they can keep their x-axis and y-axis straight.

REI blows! Meet Cabela's...

I'll readily admit I'm a city boy, and like most city boys who like to pretend they're hardy outdoor types I shop at REI. There's not a bike, snowboard or kayak I haven't bought full of good intentions and then stored lovingly in the garage. I like to think of it as 'reverse Dorian Gray' syndrome. In Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", a painting of Dorian ages horribly while he remains as youthful as the day it was painted. For me the reverse is true, I'm aging horribly while all my outdoor gear remains youthful and untouched by time, or gravel, or snow :-)

Cabela's knows my type and probably doesn't care for it much, and I don't blame them. Cabela's is for real outdoorsy people... and red-necks... and I love it! The first sign that something special was about to happen was outside the front door: a giant fire truck painted up with the stars & stripes and a few eagles. Sensational! At first I thought Stephen Colbert was in town till I realized it was for real. But this hardly prepared us for what lay inside...

As you can see from the top picture, which only shows about 1/4 of the store, Cabela's is about 3 times the size of any REI I've ever been in, and has diorama's of real stuffed and mounted animals everywhere. There was mountains covered in real animals and for some reason, a real plane? There was lowlands where elephants watch over lions killing zebras, while nearby cougars chased gazelles. Then they had animal shooting games that dads could play with their kids, 'cause you know, killing Bambi is fun for the kids! Finally they had the biggest selection of guns & rifles I've ever seen in my now obviously very sheltered existence. It was truly a red-neck Disneyland and I was impressed.

In case you were thinking that I'm obviously too principled to shop at a place like this, well I'm probably going to disappoint you. They had some very cool (& cheap) sit on top kayaks, just perfect for tooling around on a lake during the endless summers here... and I think we have the perfect spot for it... in the garage ;-)

Spawn of Glendale!

Todd McFarlane, inventory of comic book hero "Spawn" and legendary toy designer had a new flagship store opening up out in Glendale (on the far west edge of Phoenix) at the Westgate Center so we decided to go check it out. As we drove there we realized that when we first came to Phoenix over a year ago, Sally had interviewed with a school out here, and we had driven by the Westgate Center and nearby "University of Phoenix" stadium when they were just at the foundation level! How time flies.

Little did we know until we arrived, but McFarlane's store only opened up last Friday, and bar a few restaurants, it is one of the first stores to open in the Westgate Center! That left us wondering around in this gigantic and beautiful outdoors mall that didn't have anything or anybody in it, which felt very weird. It was kinda like watching some 60's European scifi movie where there is only 1 person left alive on earth! Endless buildings all immaculately empty. Kinda like finding the Marie Celeste I guess? Well without the mystery...

Anyway it looks like theres a bunch of cool stores going to be there so we'll have to drive back in a few months and check it out. I'm happy just because there's going to be a Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville here. If you remember our Vegas trip, we ended up in a Margaritaville one night with Tracey, Bren, Bowe & Noranne, and my personal highlight was the girl in a bikini who slides down an erupting volcano into a giant margarita. I thought that kinda thing only happened in my dreams, and maybe the occasional "Something Weird" video ;-) Jimmy Buffet may make crap music, but he sure knows how to compensate on the stage show!

Crowded House: The Revenge

So if you read the blog back in April, you'll know how I enjoy calling my buddy Jim from Crowded House concerts, to share (ahem!) the moment. Well yesterday lunchtime I'm driving on the freeway and my phone rings. Seeing as I yell at other people drifting all over their lanes while on the phone, I try not to answer while I'm driving so I let it go. When I checked my messages later it was my buddy Lee, calling from Seattle's premier holiday weekend music festival, Bumbershoot. He was half way through the Crowded House concert and loving every minute of it - damn I wish I'd been there. And to make me even more jealous, I just read this morning that Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam was on stage with them too for a couple of songs.

For everything we do love about Phoenix, the music scene is a bit lame here. Every week when I look through the paper, all the upcoming concerts are 80's metal hair bands or the latest Britney Spears wannabe. At least we have my buddy Jim's favorite band here, Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers.

The Photo? That's Lee on the right enjoying some band called Mellotone. Wonder what happened to them, they were good ;-)

9/2 note: Arrgh! It gets worse :-) Sunday night my buddy lane in Portland called, he was watching Crowded House playing there. Man, everybody saw them this weekend but me... I'm so sad...