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Faith-manor

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Everything posted by Faith-manor

  1. Also, check the recommendations for vet schools in your state. Ours require 250 hours of volunteer service, which us basically 23 weeks of work in a vet clinic or animal related business such as a farm with livestock, an animal shelter, etc. The work must be documented and signed off on by a legal representative of the business, someone who would know that yes, this person did those hours. It is strongly recommended that the student journal the experiences so they have a lot to reflect upon. Due to how much time this is, and the number of veterinary clinics that take summer college internships (often unpaid), it can be difficult for every student to get those hours in during their undergrad years. It is especially difficult if they need to work in the summers in order to help pay for college. Many of the young vets at our veterinary clinic indicated they began accumulating their 250 during high school. When our Dd was considering vet school, she worked in high school at a fiber and horse farm working directly with sheep, llamas, and horses as well as chickens, ducks, and the two pigs the farmer was fattening up for bacon. She kept a journal, and every week, the owner wrote a note, indicated the hours worked, and signed the journal entry. Eventually, Dd chose to go into chemistry and human medicine instead, but the owner wrote her amazing letters of recommendation for every college to which she applied, and we think that may be why Dd got so many scholarships. Dd also took equestrian lessons so her knowledge of horses was very deep, and would have been very useful if she had ended up in veterinary medicine. I will say this, the local farriers and horse dentists are crazy, insane busy because there are so few. The wait times for sheep shearers is really bad. I do think someone could make a living at a combo of these skill sets if they can buy a reasonable health policy on the marketplace. Our vet practice, (10 large livestock vets, and 3 small animal) are looking to hire someone who can perform these three services. They offer full medical/dental, and 401K. The senior partners figure that if they can be an all in one kind of livestock care company, it will be really lucrative for the business. I am sure many of their farmers and horse trainer customers would love to be able to schedule everything through on group, and know they will be in the rotation for all of these things. Often the Big Ag school for your state will offer the licensing/certification classes and clinics for these skills which is really nice because one can advertise they are professionally taught and passed exams and clinicals instead of being a fly by night "I watched youtube" outfit, of which we have far too many!
  2. And there are tornados all over. Much of the US would not be built on if the rule was "don't build in the path of tornados. As for bricks, there are actually better construction technologies available than just brick. In general, people just do not understand the particulars of other regions.
  3. The first thing I did when I got up this morning and saw the news was to call my dear nephew and niece in law. They live in Baltimore and have had various commute routes that cross that bridge. They were busy and not near their phones for about 30 minutes, so my heart was in my throat for a while. We are very, very close with them. Thankfully, they haven't had to use the bridge recently, and did call back to let me know they are okay. Much love to the people of Baltimore! I am sure that had the search continues, there will be more injuries and fatalities found, and from an economic perspective, the port will be closed causing a loss of 1.1 million in taxes per day. That is a devastating loss on top of the loss of life, the trauma of all those nearby, the witnesses, the rescuers and searchers, and so many other consequences.
  4. West Wing House Madame Secretary Newsroom Home Improvement Whose Line is it Anyway All Creatures Great and Small Beat Bobby Flay Cheers Mad About You Community Kim's Convenience But MASH beats them all!
  5. In our area, we have a glut of small animal vets. Livestock and horse vets do very well, and for the most part, seem to enjoy the work. They travel to the farms most of the time, and do not do nearly as much euthanizing as much as the small animal vets do. Other work that would be related, assuming that one is willing to live in rural/agricultural areas is farrier, shearing, and horse dental work, animal ultrasound tech. I know a gal who does all of those, and is able to work full time and make a decent living, but without the debt that many have from veterinary college.
  6. You could try running a casing on the back side of it that you can put a curtain rod through, and then mount hooks to wall and secure the rod. It will stretch it. Fabric has so much give that often quilts do not hang straight, and will stretch a little which makes it hard to make them look the way you want as wall hangings. You can also try having the dry cleaners give it a good steam press and starch it.
  7. You have soooo many critters! It had to be a crazy maker. But can I just say that with white tail deer and raccoons being the most interesting thing that comes into my yard (and rarely at that), I secretly wish I could look out and see a kangaroo just once? ๐Ÿ˜ƒ
  8. So, uhm, I feel bad. My lettuce seedlings are leggy and flopping over. I found out that maybe I could revive them by adding some more soil at their base, lowering the grow lights (apparently 5" from their stupid ears is not low enough), and putting a fan on them to stimulate breeze which might make them grow thicker stems. All this fussing (while staring at melting snow after also stocking the wood boiler) made me cranky, and I yelled at them, "Grow better!" using my best Crowley voice. (Good Omens) My plants will probably hurt themselves now. Such is the way between me and green things. I have tried so hard though! The broccoli, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and peas look great. Everyone is in a much bigger cardboard pot than the pots they come in from the nursery so I don't think they will need to be re-potted before going outside. But the peas are putting out tendrils! I had to give them each a chopstick to grow on! ๐Ÿ˜ฑ They better be okay. They all need to be okay. I leave Thursday for a wedding out of state, and then the eclipse. I won't be back until April 9. My dear dil will be taking care of them, but she has ZERO experience with plants. Those peas are going into the raised bed April 10 even if I am exhausted from a 15 hour drive on the 9th. Hopefully, since lettuce is a cool weather thing, they will be big enough to go out as well. I have row covers if needed. Stupid lettuce!
  9. We gravitate towards wood pieces, or wrought iron, and if we use cushions, we do not leave them out. Regardless of claimed quality, we have found that cushions do not hold up. We have something similar to this, and Mark puts a new coat of sealer on it as needed to make sure it remains in good shape. https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/c/outdoor-dining-furniture/outdoor-dining-sets?t=7924&featuredproduct=18087769&featuredoption=30166141&ci_sku=24247023-000-000&cnc=US&cid=323904&type=pla&targetid=&track=pspla&utm_source=google&utm_medium=pspla&gad_source=1&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIn__k7KeNhQMVtZHCCB1DggVoEAQYAiABEgIpQ_D_BwE
  10. I get it. It is frustrating, even heart breaking. I don't think so long as this version of capitalism and worship of money are the only focus our culture is willing to have, it will change. I hate it. And I am pro every single job should be a living wage that can provide all the basics of life. To that end, I want universal healthcare. But as Mr Holland said in Mr. Holland's Opus, "Well, I guess you can cut the arts as much as you want, Gene. Sooner or later, these kids won't have anything to read or write about!" Also, "The day the football budget in this state, that will be the end of Western Civilization as we know it!" So ya. As a musician, I have a lot of feelings on the subject, and get why parents don't want their kids to major or minor in humanities, or even attend college at all due to debt. But it sure hurts to be so incredibly undervalued that this is where we are now as a society.
  11. I love Easter when it is so close to the start of true spring here in Michigan. We normally do ham packets. Mark starts a fire in the fire ring, gets a good bed of coals going, and we let everyone make up their own veggie and ham or chicken packets. We provide: Ham slices Chicken breast cut into thin strips Cubed potatoes Thin sliced carrots Thin sliced sweet onions Asparagus spears (the thinner the better) Fresh green beans Pea pods We wash/rinse the veggies, shake off excess water, but do not dry them. Double layer of aluminum foil, large enough to roll like a burrito for each person. Everyone places their protein of choice in the center of the aluminum foil, piles on all of the veggies they like, generously sprinkles steak seasoning all over it, adds two pats of butter (which along with the residual water on the veggies helps them steam), and rolls the first layer up like a burrito good and tight. Then we use a large permanent marker to put initials on that layer and blow on it hoping to set enough the ink that at least part will remain.) Turn the packet 180ยฐ and roll burrito style with the second layer of aluminium foil. Mark tosses those into the coals, using leather gloves and long tongs to turn regularly, and cooks for about 30-45 minutes. We also, if we can get sweet corn, roast sweet corn in the fire (doesn't take that long so don't start it until 15-20 minutes before the packets are going to come out.) We make lemonade, and eat up! This year we have a wedding the day before out of state so we will be traveling and not with our kids or our mothers that day. The moms are going to cook for our sons and dil while we are gone. This has been our Easter Sunday meal for about 10-12 years.
  12. I tell ya, Saraha, she is quite the handful! I commend you for being willing to see her on her birthday, but boy oh boy, you need a 1 year break now.
  13. We really enjoyed Free Guy on disney, the new Cruella with Emma Stone, and the new Cinderella musical. Also, if you haven't seen Saving Mr. Banks, I highly recommend it. The 1st and 2nd Night at the Museum/Smithsonian were great and genuinely funny. I think those are on Disney. Leap Year was a kind of cute, comedy romance. Pg. I think it is on Amazon prime.
  14. As someone who has two degrees in music, and who would have literally wilted had I not pursued it in college, I can honestly say that it is so important for students to study their passions. Contrary to the popular notion that you can pursue music as a hobby and learn it without college, I can say that is erroneous information. If the student is really talented, there is only so far that they can go with the average neighborhood teacher. I get where parents are coming from on this. And yes, music ed jobs are difficult to find and don't pay well, are the first thing cut when school boards feel a pinch. That is 100% true. The key is to have the student double major in math or science because schools simply cannot find those teachers for secondary ed. Anyone with a math or science degree can make a heck of a lot more money in the private sector with far less stress than in teaching. This is always what I advise along with not going to a tippy top, expensive LAC or university to get this degree. Just pick a lower priced one that has a decent music department and go with that. I get it. The current price and debt related to higher ed makes many parents see college as a means to an earning end without any other considerations which is just sad. But Americans are very "bang for the buck" oriented. I am not sure though what kind of society these Americans want to live in because one without the arts, without humanities, is going to be dystopian. I guess they figure they will "import" it like they do everything else. Our eldest son has a degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing and is getting his MFA. He is a published author in academia already, niche field, and will never make significant money at that, but he is immensely happy. His wife, also with the same degree, has a job working remote in editing, and she likes that. Between the two of them, they manage to pay the bills, and dil has poetry published. I would not want them to do anything else unless they wanted to make a change. But they are frugal and practical. There will not be any children in their future unless one of them publishes something that is a real money maker. The key with our kids who want to go into humanities is to help them see the challenges, and make a reasonable plan. Some may never work in the exact field related to their major, but that doesn't mean what they have learned will not greatly enrich their lives, and be applicable in other areas. Our middle son is in grad school for Anthropology. He is never going to do more than keep his head above water in that field. He loves his museum job, very fulfilling. But museums are rarely heavily public funded, and rely too much on donations from corporations and the wealthy. Whenever the stock market has a bad day, those donations dry up, and that puts everyone at the museum except maybe the curator at risk. It takes decades to be the person who lands the curator job. So his plan is live simple, save money, and no family. He doesn't date because most of the women he has met indicate that eventually they will want children. He does not see that as practical from his perspective of adequately supporting them. He shares an apartment with his bachelor, electrical engineer who started out solidly middle class salary, and less than two years post college graduation has had two bonuses and two pay raises because that is what this country and companies value. He loves his brother, loves what P does for a living, and has more than once said he has no problem with them being roommates for life and paying a larger portion of their expenses than P. I think that is really awesome. Dd does not currently use her chemistry degree. She loved the subject matter, but hated the industry. She doesn't regret getting it, and we do not regret helping to pay for it either. But she sure does enjoy being a prenatal and birth educator. So that is great. This career came about because she was so badly injured on the job as a paramedic (a career she really loved), she can no longer work in patient care. The route she took from EMT in high school to chemistry degree to paramedic to obstetrics educator has shaped her in many profound ways. No regrets. As for college debt, this entirely the fault of the banking industry being allowed to lobby state and federal government to eliminate funding for public universities because so much money was to be made off enslaving American students and parents to college loans. Follow the money trail.
  15. That sounds about right! Susan, you will always be our favorite, most esteemed celebrity.
  16. Does reading the article on growing morel mushrooms in this month's "Mother Earth News" while staring at a 6" dump of snow on my raised garden beds and cursing the weather count? ๐Ÿ˜†
  17. They do this because there is ZERO respect for humanities, and in particular, teachers. What is the first budget cut to any school district bottomline? Music. Yet, it is an academic subject that is a branch of applied mathematics, and every study done on the neuroscience of music has overwhelmingly found that children who learn to read music and play an instrument perform better across the board, and form more connections in the corpus collosum allowing the two hemispheres of their brains to work better together than any other pursuit we can give them in school, and out performing sports in all areas by leaps and bounds. But who gets the money? Sports. Who gets the cuts? Music. And we desperately need music teachers. I am one sitting on the sidelines with years of experience, my music ed degree in tow, who is not teaching because there are no jobs available in my state that are full time. Not kidding. The only openings the past few years have been part time, no benefits, basically substitute teacher status except for a few wealthy districts in city suburbs way too far away for me to commute. Oh, and the local district needs a high school choir accompanist and wants to pay, wait for it, $12 an hour. I can get $15 at Taco Bell. They are insulted that I won't take it. Apparently, my other BA which is in Piano Performance is not worth more than that to them. I disagree with the parents of these young collegians so very much about discouraging them from pursuing their gifts, and yet, I also get it. In some areas of this country, one really cannot get a job teaching music in schools that will prevent the young adult from either living forever with parents until marrying someone with more income or worse, not being able to find a job in their field at all. Whole swaths of this country do not give two figs about music education. It sucks eggs to be the young person in those areas who has a passion for it!
  18. I am not a celebrity by any stretch. I am known within the classical and sacred music realm of the Great Lakes region, but I don't give identifying info on an open forum like this. For a decade after I left college, the video of my master class with Ian Hobson was used as a teaching tool in a lot of piano departments as the right way to approach interpreting Rachmaninoff. But then VHS went out of vogue, and I don't think it was concerted to CD/DvD. I had a few other exploits like stepping in to conduct an orchestra at the very last second for a big fundraiser for children's music education when the conductor(not nationally famous, but regionally quite well known) suffered a medical crisis five minutes before performance time. There were youth players in the orchestra, and it was being televised, and the concertmaster wanted someone to step in who knew some of the youth so they would feel more at ease. I was very hesitant, though I did know a significant number of the youth players. That was a real fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants moment because I was going to conduct while sight reading the scores! I have never been so nervous in all my life. However, everyone was obviously so well rehearsed that they didn't need me really other than to get them going, cut offs, tempo changes, just a few spots to keep the kids from getting off. Not a lot else. They knew what they were doing! My eldest son is very well known on a specific subject of academic writing and has 21 papers published in peer reviewed journals. However, writing about ancient history doesn't really earn notoriety with the general public. Celebrity status is definitely not coming his way. I keep telling him to lay off the "nerd writing" in order to pull a "Christopher Paolini" so the whole family can retire by sponging off him. He just rolls his eyes at me! ๐Ÿ˜‰ ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚ So that all adds up to NOT celebrity! Oh, here. Maybe our daughter is a celebrity. When she was 2 years old, we were invited to a huge Agricultural event/banquet and we didn't have a babysitter, so we took her along since it was advertised for families. She was chosen from among all the kids in attendance to have her picture taken with Orville Redenbacher. He was so frail at that point in his life that Mark insisted on being in the photo in order to support Mr. Redenbacher's arms because he was afraid she would be dropped!
  19. Gently, many a great guy has turned into a wicked opponent when faced with divorce and division of assets. I have seen this so very often, and same for women too. It isn't just a guy thing. So my first piece of advice is that you need to plan on not being in this house. Chances are, if he has been working two jobs to make ends meet, he is going to fight for it or he is going to want 50% of the equity which your sister will have to cobble together by cashing out savings or getting a mortgage in her name. If that isn't an option, it is going to end up sold with the two of them splitting the proceeds. 2nd. If your sister has children, then by moral responsibility and by law, those kids need to be considered first not you, when it cokes to making up wills and distributing estates. I would caution you not to ask her to bypass her children in favor of leaving money to you so you can be independent. It would be better for each of you to work toward financial independence without each other, but then if you still want to live together and enjoy each other's companionship, it is on the basis of mutual affection and not financial need. Make a budget, decide how much each of you will contribute, and then work towards that. Probably that budget should be for a home that is not the current one for the reasons named above.
  20. My daughter is a very recent reminder for me of the trenches now that I am empty nested and generally only Mark's brain. She has three littles, 8, 4, and 1, homeschools, is generally her husband's brain (and he is a very good guy, don't get me wrong, she does not have a misogynistic prick type husband at all), and is trying to teach 3 classes at a homeschool co-op. I.do.not.miss.it. There are days though when I get really exhausted from dealing with the constant short term memory issues of my mother and mother in law. They cannot remember anything for what seems like ten seconds. I try not to get frustrated. I will be old some day too. But with two at once, and them VERY emotionally dependent on me, it is rough.
  21. Great Homeschool Convention, a certain conservative speaker engaging in bad, bad behavior, and a whole bunch of us got banned blocked from his email/blog comments because we supported Susan and Dr. Enns. I am pretty certain that except for the Covid information thread, it may have been the longest thread ever, certainly it was at that time with thousands of posts if memory serves, and Audrey offering all of us "witches" that go blocked, a starter kit with goat. It was absolutely epic, and turned into a lot of fun though it did start out a little heated.
  22. ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚ Awesome! It is so nice when an adult kid acknowledges their mother's unmistakable genius!
  23. I hadn't thought about it before this thread, but yes over 20 years now. Wow! I remember waiting for the board to flip. It was so much fun to see who got in first and posted! My kids are 32 almost 33, 27, 25, and 23 nearly 24 now. 3 grandsons as well, and six honorary adult kids added to the mix. Back then I used to hold my youngest on my lap while posting to WTM. Where did the tike go???? ๐Ÿ˜œ I also want to say that during the Great Kerfuffle, some of us joined Audrey, who isn't here anymore, in the witch's brew and never got our introductory witch's kit and beginner goat. I am still disappointed about that! ๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜๐Ÿ˜‰ Good grief! How long ago was the Great Kerfuffle! That was an epic time to be alive on the WTM boards. Don't get confused. The Great Kerfuffle was not the Cupcake Kerfuffle. ๐Ÿ˜‚
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