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Sandra in NC

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Everything posted by Sandra in NC

  1. I don't know if we subscribe to AARP magazine or not, but we get it! My son says it's like Consumer Reports for old people. Time used to be my favorite until they reformatted the magazine about 2 years ago. Now I like Newsweek better. The Economist is good - but it's more than I can read each week. We get Consumer Reports for my husband. He enjoys that magazine.
  2. Usually the shipping is only a couple of dollars by media mail.... I'd contact the seller, explain the situation, and ask for a refund. Then I'd mail the book back to him and get the $5+ refund - it's still worth it, if for nothing else but to avoid having extra, unwanted books around the house.
  3. I'm spending a lot more now! When the kids were little, I spent $100/yr. Now, it's more like $3000/yr.
  4. In today's Charlotte Observer newspaper: PEOPLE'S PHARMACY | JOE GRAEDON AND TERESA GRAEDON Milk of magnesia may alleviate acne Have you heard of using milk of magnesia on severe acne? My son has cystic nodular acne. He is 16 and has been under a dermatologist's care for many years. We have spent thousands of dollars, to no avail. He has recently tried a home remedy: applying milk of magnesia to his face at night before bed. He looks the best he has in four years. Why is this working? We don't know why it might combat acne, but we have heard that this laxative can help clear up seborrheic dermatitis. In this condition, yeast on the skin causes redness and flakes, rather like dandruff, but on the forehead and chin as well as scalp and eyebrows. Here is one reader's report: "I have been using milk of magnesia on my face for the past two months, and my face flakes are gone! I pour it in my hand and massage it on my face (forehead, eyebrows, around the eyes, nose, cheeks and chin) while showering, and rinse it off at the end of the shower. End of problem. It's a great, cost-effective alternative to expensive Nizoral, and it works better, too."
  5. but I think the Driver's Edge program has been around for a while. I would definitely advise signing up for the emails from Driver's Edge because their classes fill up quickly. They don't send superfluous emails...just ones letting you know when they are going to be in the area. I signed up last year for notification and received one email from them in March about a class nearby. The ToyotaDrivingExpectations has the deep pockets of Toyota behind the program, so it was nice. They had luxury port-a-potties (I never knew such things existed!)....they gave out freebies like post-it notes, air fresheners, and pens. They had snacks, bottled water, and soft drinks available for teens/adults to access as needed. In the end, we got a nifty keychain as a souvenir. Adults got to drive a "distraction course" in a Prius. It was fun. The kids had 3 different courses to drive.
  6. If you have a membership to Costco, this is a great service. They don't charge to mail you the prints! Or, of course, you can pick them up in the store if you'd rather do that. I like this service because you can see how much of your photo will actually print. There are crop lines you can move if you don't like the part of the picture their program automatically picks. For some of my son's artwork, I ended up ordering 8x12 prints so I could get more of the artwork in the print.
  7. We have a Camry and a Rav4. I've been tracking our fuel expenses for a year and it varies from $160 to $270 per month. The average is $220.
  8. Christmas is a great time to visit Disney World! My boys loved the interactive fountains at Epcot (I thought it would be too cold for them, but they didn't think so!) We rented a house with my husband's family-- so there were 10 of us together for Christmas. We bought several inexpensive gifts for the kids to open on Christmas morning and they didn't seem to realize, at that age, that the gifts were dollar-store variety. It was a memorable and enjoyable time for us!
  9. We participated in this program today. It was great! http://www.toyotadrivingexpectations.com The kids get to drive 3 different courses...learn to use ABS brakes...learn to avoid accidents...learn how difficult it is to drive while distracted. They drive Toyota Scion and Matrix vehicles. Here's another program I've heard good things about. It's also free. The difference is that the teen drives your car. http://www.driversedge.org/
  10. The passport website recommends renewing 9 months prior to expiration! (My son always used his passport for id before getting his Driver's permit. Now, it's fast-approaching time to renew the passport!)
  11. I'd recommend anything by Barbara Kingsolver (The Bean Tree is good as is High Tide in Tuscon...the latter is a collection of short stories). Books by Amy Tan like The Hundred Secret Senses and Saving Fish from Drowning, are good.. For a funny, thoughtful, nonfiction book, I recommend PJ O'Rourke's "All the Trouble in the World"
  12. That is so funny! I have a fear of mustard stains....I'll have to adopt your motto.
  13. Household expenses add up. It's not only toilet paper and soap....it's batteries and ink cartridges and stamps etc.
  14. I sell books on half.com and I've been very pleased with my experience! Last summer, I listed about 50 books. They stay listed forever (I think!) and there is no commission fee until the book sells. I think the fees are reasonable. Just last night I got a "You've made a sale" message. It had been so long since I listed the book, that I didn't recognize it. I was sure there was some mistake, but after looking for it in my attic, I found it! Voila! $10 found. Another thing I like about half.com is that you can print out Media Mail postage from paypal. No more trips to the PO to mail a book.
  15. I saw that show! It WAS scary. When I think about that show and a book I recently read called "The Cheating Culture" about how widespread and matter-of-fact cheating is, it makes me worry about the future.
  16. Has he determined how many foreign teachers are in the econ dept of the state university? I went to a state univ. where the econ dept. was full of foreign teachers with thick, thick, accents. It makes learning difficult.
  17. We have one and it's very comfortable. You can adjust the angle of the back and raise the leg rest to make it more bed-like than chair-like.
  18. Interesting reading: http://www.educationrevolution.org/richestman.html Here's an excerpt of John Taylor Gatto's article re: Bill Gates' saying HS should focus 100% on college prep because everyone needs to go to college: "China has mastered the techniques of the West and has gone far beyond them. It employs the ruthless logic of financial capitalism with a discipline it would be impossible to achieve in the soft-hearted management systems of the United States and Canada. They don't make things better than we do, but they do make them just as good and cheaper, by a factor of from six to thirty. It is fanciful to say, as Mr. Gates did, that if we just have more schooling, we'll be okay. In the next 10 years, China and India, et al., will release ten million well-trained engineers in excess of domestic needs on the world's skilled labor markets. These men and women will bid for work against your own techie sons and daughters. At sixteen cents or so on the dollar, the effect on wages will be a catastrophe for this important segment of middle-class life. Mr. Gates didn't bother to tell his audience that Microsoft has already opened large colleges in China and India to train young people in those nations to its own specifications. That puts a new spin on his appeal for universal college training doesn't it? Perhaps you believe the corporate policy of Microsoft will prefer to continue to pay high wages when a stream of its own foreign graduates becomes available. Unless you do believe that, it becomes a duty for all of us to wake up and warn our children because one thing is certain: Schools won't."
  19. I took the Goldilocks approach. U of Rochester, NY was too hard. I've never met such smart people in all my life. I kept thinking, "How do they know all this?" about my felllow students. When I was accepted, my test scores showed I'd be in the bottom 18% of the U of R population. I was. U of Hawaii (I was born and raised in Hawaii so it was my state school) was too easy. Kids would listen to the surf report during class and they had their surf boards propped up against the back wall of the lecture hall for ready access. One girl asked me what "sensible" meant and I laughed because I thought she was joking. She wasn't joking. There were many foreign, unintelligible profs (some quite lecherous) at U of H and I HATED it there. High Point College in NC was next. It was a comfortable, "just right" school. I went there because my gradparents offered to pay for a year there. When I graduated, our economy was in the midst of a recession ('81), so I went to graduate school at UNC- Greensboro. My favorite school was the last. It might just be because graduate school is so much more interesting than undergrad.....
  20. That's a quote from my husband's Aunt Evelyn. She is in her 80's and the only time I can remember her going to the doctor is when she broke her arm. She takes no meds and is doing fine.
  21. I was very sick and had to go to the ER for fluids. Guess what I ate? Pork cooked in a crock pot. Never again. Isn't there something about pork having to be cooked at a high temperature?
  22. In NC, you cannot change the name of your homeschool. I was advised 10 years ago to pick a generic name. At the time, we lived near West Bend Vineyards, and I thought, hmmmm, "West Bend" sounds good. We've moved since then, and I'm glad I chose a generic name that works anywhere.
  23. My science/math son finished MUS Alg I in 7th grade and MUS Geometry in 8th grade. For 9th grade, he attended a small tutorial using Paul Foerster's Alg/Trig. The graphing calculator was foreign to him, but his tutor had only 6 students in the class and could spend some time with him to bring him up to speed. Also, there was a 13 yo math genius in the class who gave him a lot of calculator tips. Now, in 10th grade, he's doing Stanford EPGY's Geometry program which is extremely (completely) proof-based. He's also doing SAT II prep (5 to 10 problems a night) to keep his Alg II/Trig skills up. Next year, he'll be eligible for concurrent enrollment at our local CC, and I hope he'll place in the Pre-Calc class.
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