9/2/09

~sniff~

I took Angel to school orientation tonight.  She got her class schedule, but they said some kid's may be changing and to basically ignore this one.  She'll get a possibly-revised schedule on the first day.  But we wandered around and looked for classrooms so she could get the gist of things.  I'm not too thrilled that she has lunch in the middle of her science class, but I guess they would know if that works or not.

They said to expect up to 90 minutes of homework per night - and this is how they recommend budgeting the time.
15 minutes looking for the assignment
11 minutes on the phone with friend to get the assignment
23 minutes complaining about how mean the teacher is and how he/she hates kids
8 minutes in the bathroom
6 minutes staring at the wall
10 minutes finding a snack
7 minutes looking at the TV guide
10 minutes waiting for Mom or Dad to do the assignment for them.

They also talked about the long-term project....
-is brought home the day before due date
-is to be started at 9:30 PM and finished no earlier than 11:50 PM
-requires multiple trips to WalMart and/or Meijer
-said trips are to be done after 11 PM
-one person (not necessarily the student) will end up in tears
-one parent will be up all night finishing the project
-the other parent will call the school and say the student is sick.

I think what really made these funny was the fact that it was on a PowerPoint presentation by the assistant principal. 

Afterward, we went to Taco Bell.  As we sat there, Angel turned to me like she was holding a microphone and asked me to tell the audience how I really felt about her going to junior high.  I thought that was pretty funny.  I told "the audience" that I was scared and concerned and happy.  She thought I was a nut for being scared for her.  I told her that it was just because it's so different from what she's ever done and it's just a Mom thing.  But over all I'm proud of my baby girl.

She's going to go to the cheerleading meeting after school on the first day.  Oh fun!  They offer both sideline cheer (for actual sporting events) and competition cheer.  I think she needs to stick with sideline for now.  I don't really want to deal with competition.  She'd have to try out for that anyway and I'm sure they'd pick girls with cheer experience - of which she has none.

So....vacation is nice so far.  The weather has been gorgeous, mid 70s - can't get any more perfect than that!!  Monday we just hung out around the house all day.  Yesterday we went to the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village again.  The Rock Stars' Car & Guitars display was pretty neat.  They had ZZ Top's Eliminator, one of Elvis's Cadillacs, one of Alice Cooper's, a couple of the Metallic guy's cars, Janis Joplin's Snoop Dogg, the original Soundgarden van, Cheryl Crow's mustang, Miley Cyrus's Smart Car (that we got to get into) and of course, one of Kid Rock's (that actually had up to date tabs on the plate!) to name a few.  My computer's having fits, so I haven't downloaded my camera yet.  I'll put them up as soon as the exorcism is complete.

The Museum is really cool.  There's a farm equipment section, cars, planes, trains & bikes!  We even got to help build a Model T.  The workers there said that car has been disassembled & assmebled 483 times.  The first time we stopped by, Angel got to put a bolt in to hold the body to the chassis.  The second time, she & Randy put in the radiator.  If we would have gone back, we could have had our pictures taken in it, but we didn't stick around.     

Then we went into Greenfield Village so Randy could check out the Menlo Park area.  They have Thomas Edison's lab & machine shop & stuff.  It's pretty neat.  Then we planned on getting a frozen custard, but the hours changed since the last time we were there and are now only open on the weekends.  Booooo!  Guess it was a sign.  So we rode on the carousel and came home.

We met Barry on the way home to get the other half of my birthday present. It was delivered to Randy's work, and since he's not there this week....Barry grabbed it for us.  He got me a Yaesu VX-6R dual band handy talkie to go with my 7900 for the car.  It's been on the charger since last night, but I don't feel like messing with it right now.  I can play tomorrow.

I got a new windshield on my car today!  It's been cracked for a while, thanks to a rock thrown up by a passing truck.  It's so shiny!  Love it!  And then we got the back door awning put back up.  It was a much bigger project than it should have been.  Guess when they built on the back part of the house, they were cutting costs and put the studs on 24 inch centers instead of the normal 16 inch.  And of course a stud sensor can't pick that up thru the siding & cheap foam sheet insulation.  But we figured it out and it's finally up.  Tomorrow we'll fight with the front one.

Well, that's all the excitement so far!  I'm out.