I agree. If one has a plan to use a CC before transferring to a 4-year, DVC is a really good one to live near or have transit to.

Yeah, I would drive her. Then you've met your part of the deal. It's only for a year. After that, if she refuses to get into the car with him, I don't see what he can do about it. I know it's a pain and expensive. Frankly, I wouldn't ride with him either if her description is accurate. And even if she does get into the car with him once she's there, at least you'll have minimized her time as his passenger.

I would not live in Brentwood and comment to San Ramon. The main artery, Vasco Road, is a nightmare. That area used to be mostly agricultural and the road is not designed for the heavy traffic. There have been many fatal accidents and people treat it like it's a freeway, driving 70 mph 10 feet from the next car's bumper. South of San Ramon, you can look in Dublin and Pleasanton. East, Castro Valley. North, Alamo and Danville are quite expensive but I don't know what your budget is. If you go further north, you can check out Walnut Creek. If you want less expensive, check Pleasant Hill and Concord. Avoid Antioch and Pittsburg.

Here's a good PDF to start with if you want to read up on bar diagrams.

:hurray: :hurray: :hurray:

I really don't know. I've spent a lot of time in other countries and the kids always eat what the parents eat, even spicy food. If it's really spicy, they might take the kids' portion out early, but it will still be spicy. There's absolutely no such thing as "kid food" there. I think it's a marketing construct to create a niche and make more money. We've all seen the commercials with kids who turn up their nose at broccoli or whatever. My kids have always eaten what we ate. Which is not to say I've never given my kids chicken nuggets or whatever, but when they ate them the whole family was eating them.

Speaking of Ezra Pound, as I mentioned earlier in this thread, he was instrumental in working with Joyce to get Ulysses published. From The Most Dangerous Book: And later, in regards to printers cutting portions of writings they deemed offensive or would possibly get them thrown in jail:

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug:

I'm not a fan of HSLDA in general, but... A similar thing happened to MathCounts in 2010. You can read the WTM thread here. You can also see an HSLDA press release from the following year here. I don't know how much their involvement actually helped, but it's something to keep in mind.

Yeah, just don't read any blog posts right now. It's better that way. I'm glad the girls got some pool time. Have you given any more thought to pulling back for a bit?

:grouphug: :grouphug: :grouphug: If DH dies, we have a large life insurance policy in place and things would continue as planned. If I die, the kids would probably be enrolled in the most suitable school. The truth is I don't have life insurance because between my monthly expenses (food, medical, etc) and that fact that out retirement would belong completely to DH, he would be set. DS is getting old enough to stay alone a bit and watch DD so we would not need childcare. DH works from home so he would be there when the kids got home. We live within walking distance to many things and have a good transportation system so there's not much chauffeuring either. It would be different if DH worked outside the home, or we had a lot of driving, or the kids were young enough to need childcare while DH was at work. If we both die, the kids plus our estate would go to my sibling. We already worked that out in our wills.

I always leave $5.00 on the pillow each morning when we leave the hotel, and a thank you note (just on the room's notepad or a scrap of paper, not a card) when we leave. I would leave more if we made it really messy, but that's never happened. We tend to be there just for sleep. I don't think most people in the U.S. tip for this.

I haven't heard of either, but I would choose the book about buildings based on what you described.

I'm also drawing a blank, although I have the feeling I have read a few at some point. Here's a list of popular 2nd person novels, according to Goodreads. I see a Lord Peter Whimsey story, which is strange as I think I've read most of them but don't remember any 2nd person ones.

Giving away my 1970s upbringing, I would say liquid smoke tastes more acrid and artificial and the smoked salt tastes more subtle and natural. Of course it adds salt to the dish, so you have to account for that.

shinyhappypeople, how are you feeling today? :grouphug:

My son is currently enrolled in a Socratic discussion class online but I'm thinking of moving to a new vendor. Are the WTM Academy discussion classes going to be the same or different across both semesters? We're looking for a year-long course and of course we don't want to repeat in the spring. Thanks for any info you can provide.

I know what you mean. I've been reading up about Imagism, Vorticism, BLAST magazine, and Pound's assistance to James Joyce in helping him overcome censorship. The Most Dangerous Book has one of Pound's poems in it as an example of something that took him months to write as he attempted to cut out all extraneous words, including verbs. At any rate, there are only so many I can tolerate as well.

Slipper, I'm glad your daughter was able to get as much as she did out of the thread.

I'm still wondering why the wealthier schools (those with less than 20% low income) opted out of the program. A lot of the benefits people have mentioned in this thread are not just about hunger, so I wonder what the concerns of those families were. Was it the missed instruction time? Sub-standard food? They must have perceived a downside.

We like Apollo 13 a lot. It does have a couple of minor curse words (a couple of "damns" and I think one "sh_t") but considering they're trapped in outer space, I'm surprised there's not more cursing. It's directed by Ron Howard, who used the mission transcript for the script. There's a scene in which on astronaut is told he's on the mission and when he gets the call he's in the shower with a woman but it's very brief and doesn't show much. We skip that scene. The rest of the movie is very exciting and a good history lesson. It's also patriotic and shows how people worked and persevered to bring these astronauts home. Ocean's 11 is quite good and not violent. Nobody seems to have time for sex because they're too busy planning a clever heist. The Great Escape and Escape from Alcatraz are two good movies from the past. All of the Miyazaki movies, like Spirited Away, are amazing. We use commonsensemedia.org a lot. Here are their lists of best movies; you can sort by age near the top of the list, or by category as well. Movies are rated by kids and parents as to appropriate age. Usually the kids state a lower age than the parents but sometimes, amusingly, the kids assign an older age than the parents. The also rate movies based on consumerism, violence, sex, etc.

I love those movies. The are completely ridiculous but because they are self-aware you can laugh along with the cast and crew. I saw a double feature of the first one and the seventh one on opening night and I'm not embarrassed to say it! The ticket taker did a double take, though. I was the oldest one there by 15 years, at least. I thought there might be a few other nostalgic Gen-Xers for the first showing but it too was full of kids who were too young to see it when it first came out. Yeah, the tickets are very expensive. My parents were not big theatre goers, but they did take me to two productions and both of them dazzled me. One was Baryshnikov with the Bolshoi about 15 years after his defection, and the other was Lauren Bacall in Woman of the Year. I'll remember both of them for the rest of my life. Sometimes it's worth shelling out for an amazing production at just the right time in a child's life; Phantom may not be it. ;) You can make your own but (I haven't) but based on the tutorials I've seen on the web, it seems most effective to use a smoker, a grill with a cover, or a wok, rather than an open fire. Basically get the heat going and trap the smoke with the salt in a container inside. The salt will turn brown. People also use hickory a lot. Example procedure.

I would be cautious. We had a big accident on our street when a driver who lives down the street fell asleep and hit 3 cars and a house. After falling asleep and running though a stop sign, she crossed to the wrong side of the street and sideswiped two parallel parked cars there, woke up, panicked, swerved across the street, hit another car, ran over someone's lawn, and hit their house, damaging the wall and taking out the water. Luckily it was dusk and the kids were eating dinner because they are are often on the sidewalk she drove over on her way to hit the house. She was coming home from her work downtown, 0.7 miles, but told the police she hadn't slept much the night before due to a shift change. This was while they were giving her a field sobriety test. The crazy thing is she fell asleep in a two block time frame, as she had to have made the sharp turn to get onto the street in the first place and hit cars in the second block after that.

:svengo: You must be a really fast reader like my DH. Phantom of the Opera is coming to SF.

I'm still plugging away at The Pilgrim's Progress and The Most Dangerous Book, plus my year long read of On Politics. I am behind on all of them and am hoping to at least finish The Most Dangerous Book while catching up on the other two by the end of the month. That will help clear the decks for Inferno and The Ocean at the End of the Lane, plus Chronicles of Narnia in May. I've been doing a lot more outdoor work than reading the past week or two. Nan, smoked salt is salt that has been set over a wood fire and tastes like wood smoke. Example. The one I use is from my former CSA. I switched CSAs about 5 years ago and I still have most of a jar. A little goes a long way.