We hosted an exchange student from France earlier this year for 10 days and it was HORRIBLE. He must have had some issues before he came over because none of the other exchange students that he came with liked him at all. They would barely even speak to him. He latched onto my daughter in a way that went well beyond the "shadowing your student host" thing: he would touch her hair while she was studying or press up against her really close if they were standing in line. He kept tickling her until I finally had to tell him to stop because he would not listen to her. My daughter is about 5' 11", and he was about 5' 4" so he was basically eye level to her chest, and would take advantage of that situation quite often. As far as interacting with us, he was very VERY opinionated and any time I tried to recommend American music or T.V. shows he would go off on a rant about society and how bad it all was, how all shows were trash, etc etc. He was unpleasant to be around but I got the feeling that he had really no idea how off-putting he was to people. Finally after about 2 weeks my daughter texted me from school saying that he was crying in class because one of the other French exchange students told him, in French, that he was freaking my daughter out and to stop being such a creep. I immediately called the school and said that enough was enough and that this was way too much for her to handle and that someone needed to step in and take this boy off her hands. I think he was way too immature to be traveling with this group, and I also believed he really had some other issues that are beyond my ability to diagnose. It was unfortunate because all the other kids were great, and some of the kids from our high school made some great relationships that they still keep to this day. After they returned to France he would call our house about once a week wanting to know when my daughter was coming to France to visit him. If we didn't pick up he would call back 6 or 7 times in a row. She finally sent him a facebook message to stop calling and then unfriended him. We haven't heard from him since.

It is written by the woman who was a child actor in "The Goodbye Girl". She was nominated for an Oscar. Not really relevant, but just a trivia fact.

Brigid in NC's ds: North Carolina State University, class of 2016 Creekland's ds - U of Rochester - class of 2016, U of Alabama, Baylor, Furman, U of Pittsburgh (all acceptances) Dirty Ethel Rackham's ds - Hope College, attending fall 2012, Class of 2016, also accepted at Beloit College, Bradley University and Illinois Wesleyan University. Floridalisa's dd: University of Florida, Class of 2016; also accepted Florida State University, Covenant College Grace is Sufficient's ds - University of Akron, Class of 2015; also accepted: Baldwin Wallace College, Geneva College, Eastern Michigan University, Northern Kentucky University Grace is Sufficient's dd - Geneva College, Class of 2016; also accepted: Waynesburg University Gwen in VA's ds2 -- Webb Institute class of 2016 (ED so no other colleges!) hsmamainva's dd -- Radford University, class of 2014. Also accepted at James Madison University, University of Mary Washington, Coastal Carolina University and Flagler College Home'scool -- UMass Amherst class of 2016, Tulane, Worcester Polytechnical Institute, University of Vermont, Northeastern, UMass Lowell, Penn State JennW in SoCal's ds - College of Wooster, class of 2016; also accepted Willamette University lisabees' ds -- Oberlin College. Also accepted: Haverford, Macalester, Kenyon, College of Wooster, Denison, Dickinson, Juniata, Goucher. Margaret in CO's middle dd--University of WY, AROTC, Honors, also accepted: Western State College of Colorado, DIV II swim scholarship, Honors, Westminster (UT), AROTC, Honors, CO School of Mines, Hillsdale CO (MI), Association of WP Grads civil prep for Appointment at West Point Class of 2017 Margaret in CO's oldest dd--University of CO, Boulder for second MM in violin performance, she left her doctoral program at JMU. Maryalice ds - Grove City College, probably class of 2015 with dual enroll credits, Early Decision Memphispeg dd- California State Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo class of 2016. Also Accepted: University of Memphis (Honors), University of North Carolina at Wilmington (Honors), College of Charleston, University of Miami, New College of Florida, and University of San Diego. Moira in MA's dd2 -- McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada -- Class of 2016. Also Accepted: Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada. Myra -- ds ---Siena College Class of 2016. Also accepted: Clark, SUNY (Geneseo & Oneona & Binghamton), Unniv. of Vermont, Union, and Fordham. Piano&ViolinMom - ds - Class of 2016 at one of following colleges he was admitted to : MIT, Williams, Duke, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Northwestern, JHU and more. ssbmem - dd - class of 2016, Duke University True Blue's ds - University of Washington, Washington State University Honors College, and Gonzaga - these are the only ones he applied to. He wanted to stay in WA.

They should get the Death Penalty to their football program for 4 years. That would allow a whole "generation" of a class (freshman year to graduation) to pass thru the campus and force Penn State to realign itself and it's campus to one that is free of the Paterno football legacy. They need a whole class of students free from the cult that has become the football program. That cult-like adoration of the football program, and the "protect it at all costs" attitude, is STILL prevalent on campus, even with all the key players in the scandal gone. The monsters are gone, but the environment that created them is still there. And that leaves too much chance that new ones will be born. The alumni and trustees need to get back to focusing on academics. The boosters need to find some other reason to support the school other than football.

:grouphug::grouphug:

Gaaahh! This falls under "No good deed goes unpunished"

My daughter has her junior operating license, which means she is not supposed to be driving between the hours of 12:30 and 5:00 a.m. A few weeks ago she was coming home from a friends house around midnight and noticed someone that she knew from high school wandering in the middle of the road, highly intoxicated. She asked him what he was doing and he said his friends were supposed to have picked him up but he didn't know where they were. He was completely out of it and unaware that he was even in the middle of the street. She offered to give him a ride home. Turns out he lives completely across town, and was very confusing while giving directions. By the time she dropped him off and headed home it was close to 1:00 a.m. She was pulled over by the police, and cited for a time restriction violation, which means she loses her license for 60 days. She went to the RMV to appeal it today and they told her that they would schedule a hearing for her. For some reason they did not have the authority to reinstate her license, although they did tell her they were sympathetic towards her situation. Does anyone know if she can drive while this is being appealed? She didn't think to clarify this with the RMV before she left.

If you don't believe that Penn State should get the Death Penalty, then when is that punishment acceptable? In the past, the Death Penalty to a football program has been given out for much, much less serious issues. I can live with giving someone money to a player or paying for tatoos a lot better than allowing a pedophile to continue to harm children. Football players, marching band players, coaches, fans, alumni, surrounding towns --- they all had to adapt. If not now, then WHEN? What situation could be more serious than this?? Sanctions are there for a reason. Use them. Otherwise for everyone that gets caught we should take into consideration how the punishment will affect those around them. Perhaps Bernie Madoff should not have gone to prison because there were so many innocent people who worked at his company who didn't know and had nothing to do with the Ponzi scheme. Maybe we shouldn't have prosecuted those ENRON guys so that their businesses could have continued to employ people. Ted Bundy worked on a rape crisis hot line. I didn't hear anyone saying that he was a guy that should be judged on all his achievements and not just his mistakes. Don't give me "Penn State now knows what to do." That is bull. The football program is only sorry it got caught.

I am shocked at some of the things people are posting on other message boards. One person actually wrote "I will always love JoePa and Penn State, scandal or no scandal" Really? So even when the scandal showed he aided and abetted a pedophile? You still love the guy? I can NOT believe the pass people are willing to give Joe Paterno and the administration all in the name of "We are Penn State"

This was the best quote on what should be the bottom line for this situation (emphasis mine): "Shuttering Beaver Stadium for two years would take Penn State football down a peg. It would also punish loads of hard-working athletes who have done nothing wrong, as well as all the fans who live and die with the Nittany Lions. But that will be a far better result than the alternative—allowing a pedophile-sheltering athletic department that was bent on self-preservation to succeed in having itself preserved. If Penn State football carries on this fall with a new coach and those old white-and-blue uniforms, then the worldviews of Curley and Schultz and Spanier and Paterno will prevail. Though all four men lost their jobs, their mission to protect Penn State football at all costs will win out in the end." THIS is why the football program should be shut down. Period.

Remember a while back when I posted "My Cautionary Tale" about the cost of sending my daughter to school? The school she really, really wanted to go to was Penn State. The campus was absolutely gorgeous, the academics are stellar, and the environment was very welcoming. After being accepted there we had to tell her we could not afford the tuition. I guess Penn State is known for not giving out a lot in aid or scholarships, and we were no exception. She was devestated. She cried for days. I felt so guilty. It was a very bad time for us. Now I am so relieved things worked out the way they did. I would be very, very nervous if she was going there in the fall. I do not know what the fallout of the Freeh report just released this morning will be, but I would be so worried right now about it affecting tuition, the environment on campus, and the future of funding for Penn State. They are now open to millions of dollars in civil suits due to the findings in the report. They may even have their football program shut down for some number of seasons, which will basically render the campus a ghost town. We still will be scraping up tuition every year, but it is at a school that she now cannot wait to start at, for a much more reasonable price, and without all the uncertainty that would come if she was going to Penn State. Sometimes it is funny how things work themselves out.

Sigh. This is why I should be more organized! When my older daughter was doing practice SAT tests, she had a conversion chart for the SAT that let her know her score for one section at a time. For example, if she did 25 questions in section #4 for critical reading and got 2 wrong, it would tell her what her score would be if she had done all the sections for critical reading (a total of 67 questions.) Now my younger daughter is doing SAT prep, but I cannot for the life of me find that conversion chart online again. She gets frustrated because she will do one section but not know what her score is. Does anyone know where I can find this?

And I know this thread is about dogs, but I have a similiar story about my cat. I keep my cat's food bowl up on a small table so the dogs won't get to it. They can't even reach the table because we have it blocked off with a cooler in front of it. It has been like that for about 2 years. A few weeks ago I noticed that it was knocked over to the ground and cat food was everywhere. I cleaned it all up and put it back the way it was. For the next 5 days in a row I would find it knocked over. I don't know what was making her mad, but she kept knocking her food bowl over. Finally I just stopped picking it up and left the bowl and food like that for about 3 days. After that, I cleaned everything up and put it all back correctly. She has not knocked it over since. Guess I won that battle of wills hahaha!

We used to have a dog that was perfectly healthy and quite agile, except at night when it was time to tell him that he had to go into the spare room where we required him to sleep. If we didn't put him in this room he would get into all sorts of mischief during the night. He would make a HUGE deal about getting up, like he was so stiff from arthritis that he could hardly move, and then literally hobble over into the room. It was quite funny to see the dramatics. One of my current dogs, a corgi, decides every now and then that his back leg hurts. He will hobble around on 3 legs. If we ignore the fact that he is hopping around and holding his paw up he miraculously is cured within a day. If we make a big deal about it and examine his paw and make baby noises over it he will literally go on for two weeks like this.

Good for you! When my kids were younger I had to do this a few times. You get results REAL fast! :001_smile:

:grouphug::grouphug:

:grouphug::grouphug:

Mich elle ~ My daughter was assigned the same book! Well, that's because she is going to the same school as your son haha. I read that book about a year ago and really enjoyed it. I am hoping my daughter will want to tackle the essay and try for a chance at meeting the author! Regardless, I think it is pretty cool that he is coming to the campus to discuss the book.

(disclaimer: I don't know ANY of the technical terms for this so please excuse my not-so-adept way of describing things!) I had a maintenance guy over this morning to charge our centrail air conditioning unit. We just replaced the main unit (the big boxy thing that sits outside) about 5 years ago, but the rest of the system is probably about 10 years old. The guy told me that the freon that my system uses is being phased out in favor of more ecologically friendly stuff, and that in about 2 years I will not be able to get my system charged. I will have to change out everything, including all the duct work in the attic, to accommodate this new stuff because it works differently and the pressure is different, etc. Has anyone heard of this? I will be very bummed if I have to pay to change out everything. He said conversion kits would probably not work because of the new way it will run (again, my ineptitude at a.c. units made me quite lame at holding up my end of the conversation!)

This sounds similiar to my dog. I have a Pembroke Welsch Corgi. I think the herding breeds have a tendency to nip or snap at kids when things get loud and chaotic. Our dog is fine around adults, and I never have to watch him for that, but I have learned to keep a very close eye on him when there are young children around. If I have him out in public and a young child wants to pet him I always say "Oh, he is pretty shy and is afraid to be pet." This helps avoid any problems. We don't have problems with him snapping or growling at us, so I don't read it as an aggression issue. I just see it as part of his breed and do not leave him unattended around young kids.

Exactly! My micro-managing, busy-body ways were working just fine for me! She did just send me a quick text saying "Did you know the food here is so good that people pay to get into the dining halls and eat?" So that must mean THAT part of college is going well haha

Thank you! I do know the longer she goes without texting the more fun she is having. If she was bored or not connecting with people I would have heard about it right away haha. This is good training for when she is actually in college and I go days without hearing from her!

It is sooooo part of my nature to be part micro-manager and part busy-body that today is torture for me! My oldest is at her New Student Orientation at her college for two days. I just want to text her every hour and say "How is it going? Are you making friends? Did you find a roommate? Do you like the campus?" I want her to love the campus, love the people, think it is awesome, and I want her to tell me all of that NOW haha. But, she has asked for more space. The girl who used to text me all the time when she was out texts a bit less now. She is still happy to share, but more on her terms. She is growing and changing. And I have to grow and change too. Humph. :tongue_smilie:

They looked like this (only minus the knife haha)

Really? The word **** gets edited out of posts? The **** is the same word as DAM only with an N on the end. Probably the most non-swear swear word out there haha. It reminds me of the movie "Vacation" with Chevy Chase when they go to see the Hoover Dam. The guide proceeds to say "Welcome to the Dam. I am your Dam guide. You will be seeing a lot of interesting Dam things today. I am willing to answer any Dam questions you have. Don't forget to buy your Dam souviners on your way out." :lol: