Happily Family does really great webinars! I love that they are addressing mental health issues. 10/14-18...Free to stream for 24 hours during the webinar dates. https://conference.happilyfamily.com/?fbclid=IwAR21nqinlsSlb729CHlDnZ-mS5b5A32he4o9VQkDhTlWx0vevqXG0ZrT3Hw

We go to a large regional practice and can get in via the urgent care clinic onsite if another PCP isn't available. I've sometimes bypassed that if it is something so simple and easy to the CVS clinics to see a NP.

I had my kids make circles with there thumb and forefingers to make the letters b and d. They would join them together to form a "bed." That's how they keep b and d straight because b comes before d in the alphabet and in the word bed.

Mask Nerd has them at about 83% filtration effectiveness vs Enro ~70% vs KF80/94 at 93-99% vs double masking cloth w/ surgical ~91%

I'm trying to let people know because I have been recommending their masks on various threads on here. These are friends of mine who are experiencing this problem. It is widely discussed in the mom groups...I am advocating for these moms in my groups and giving other people a heads up that this is going on so that if they are experiencing problems, that it isn't an isolated incident.

Early on during the pandemic, I recommended this mask on WTM. It has since been adopted by many other boardies as their mask of choice. These masks are expensive to purchase and it is beyond frustrating if a company doesn't not stand behind their product. This is my current recommendation which I have posted on social media: I've been a fan of Happy Masks since early on. Unfortunately, there was an quality issue with the nose wires in the masks being shipped out in recent months. It's being widely reported in my moms groups that the nose wires are breaking after less than dozen uses. It is widely reported that the company is not resolving this in a satisfactory manner. I am no longer recommending this mask at this time. I will update this recommendation if things change regarding how this issue is being resolved. ******* There have been issues seeking replacement for broken masks and issues with the replacements that arrive have the same issues. I wrote this to Happy Masks via Facebook: My initial message: I moderate a really large moms group on FB that originally grew out of Berkeley Alum Moms. There's a lot of unhappiness with the faulty nose wire breakage on masks. We were all early adopters and shared widely about happy masks. There's a lot of disappointment that the company is not standing behind the 2 month manufacturing defect guarantee. Is this true? because I would love to assure our Mama Bears group this is not the case. I'm certain that use and care is not the issue as all the users have batches of the original design versus the newer nose wire design. Their response: Thank you for reaching out on behalf of your moms group. I am happy to put to rest the fear that we do not stand by our Satisfaction Guarantee. This is absolutely not the case. We know that moms rely on our masks to keep their families safe in these difficult times, and it is not a responsibility we take lightly. We take quality assurance very seriously to ensure that we are providing the safest, most breathable, comfortable masks. We are happy to work with customers to come up with a resolution when issues arise within 2 months of purchase, but the specific resolution may vary depending on the details of the individual situation. When an issue occurs resulting from use beyond regular wear and tear, we sometimes can not offer a resolution, but for reasonable inquiries supported by photos or videos, we are glad to offer a resolution for customers who reach out within this time frame. I hope this alleviates some of the worries of your group members. Please pass along our sincere appreciation of their word of mouth, business, and loyalty. Ashley My response: While I appreciate the sentiment being expressed above, this is not the actual customer experience of many moms in mulitple groups. Your company is well aware that there is a manufacturing defect in the nose wires. The process should not be difficult to address this, and the replacements should not have the same exact problem. Unfortunately, there have been a broad range of negative experiences across many mom groups. It has erroded loyalty to Happy Masks as moms are actively warning other moms about this problem. These are no inexpensive purchases. I am on the waiting list to purchase additional masks, but I will be holding off on doing so until I hear positive feedback about how this is being handled.

Pretty much we like everything there except any canned or boxed shelf stable soups. My bias here is showing because I make soup all the time from scratch and make my own stock...so it has to be pretty good if I'm going to buy it. I'm Asian so we pass on all things Asian that they make EXCEPT mochi rice nuggets which the chips are. Those are addictive. The brioche style sliced bread is the most amazing bread to use for French toast. If you dislike anything, they will take it back. Seriously...for any reason. My dd is lactose intolerant but loves cheese. The lactose free yogurt cheese is awesome. And weirdly, I like keeping the TJ lemon kitchen soap on hand because it really gets my hands smelling fresh after handling onions and garlic.

I so feel you on this. I'm looking and thinking I don't recognize what I am seeing at all.

There are a lot of movement where I am. It was happening during the 18 months. Really started picking up now that CA has vax mandate for students going into effect the school term after FDA approval is received. Locally, it was already happening because the big school districts in Southern California adopted vax mandate. I am also in the middle of starting a new homeschooling community hosted at my church. This is acually something a fair number of people I know are looking forward to because we will be decidedly apolitical, and I coined a phrase for our group to use for our group to use: mask welcoming. I don't know of any Christian homeschooling groups in my area that didn't make a decided shift towards being politically conservative.

I have two compartment mesh laundry ones like this for each kid. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002V919J4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=AFJIH2W4FC7LN&psc=1

We don't do Gatorade and use these instead that's at Costco. https://www.costco.com/liquid-i.v.-hydration-multiplier%2C-30-individual-serving-stick-packs-in-resealable-pouch.product.100301223.html

I have a older friend from my old church. She is really into fashion and dance so her grandkids call her Glammy!

I know...I still haven't got traction on this.

@Not_a_Numberthat's quite helpful.

I've been trying to get my DH to do a sleep study as well going on decades now.

yes...and maybe if I should bother with it if we plan to do the Awesome math courses.

He's quirky...but gets great reviews from families with non-NT learners.

I was thinking that maybe Crewton Ramone's House of Math which used the Mortenson method like MUS. Just ignore his politics... However it does mean watching instructional videos...do you have blue light glasses for your kiddo? This helps a lot with headaches from screens. However the rest of it is not screens.

Well, it's not free, but it is good. https://www.collectorz.com/book

Came back to add that he would like to do Awesome Math courses next summer...so I was wondering if the topics in the second half of Intermediate Algebra might be covered in their algebra series? Algebra 1.5 Develops essential skills such as factoring, grouping, recognizing roots, telescoping sums/products, and rationalizing. Solving (systems of) equations/inequalities (linear, absolute value, quadratic, rational, radical) is the main theme of the course. Discriminants, Viete’s relations, and symmetric polynomials also play a central role. This is the entry level algebra course. It covers all AMC levels and easy end of AIME and ARML. This course is a good fit for students with MathCounts state level experience, AMC10/12 scores approaching AIME qualifying cuts, or an AIME score between 1 and 3. Algebra 2.5 Studies special systems of equations, discriminants, Viete’s relations, symmetric polynomials, functional properties. Introduces (weighted) AM–GM–HM and Cauchy–Schwarz inequalities. This is the intermediate level algebra course. It covers the hard end of AMC12, and the medium to hard end of ARML and AIME. A student with an AIME score between 4 and 7 should be a good fit for this course.

because I only need 1/2 the book, and he wants a live class. I don't see the point of delaying pre-calc when the AOPS class for WTMA doesn't require that to be covered. It might be possible to pick this up in the spring...but the workload is heavy with the CVC Chem class that I'm not optimistic and the text based AOPS courses aren't going to be a good fit.

I know that there isn't an issue running Intermediate alongside of Intro to Geomtery. However, he has a serious workload for his studies now that we are about to start math circle, Science Olympiad and fall golf. We aren't finding enough time to fit in Intermediate Algebra for the second half of the textbook. Would there be an issue running this side by side with precalculus next year?

nm

Well, one thing to check is the settings in Alcumus to decide the difficulty setting. There are 4 settings: easy, normal, hard and insanely hard. A question can be rated for skill level for Intro Algebra and Intermediate Algebra. If you look at Report, you can see the color bars which tells you the progress on a specific concept to progress from red to orange to green to blue. Green is pass and blue is mastery. Apparently problems are assigned levels from 1-25. That's all I know about the levels. I am guessing that corresponds to the difficulty level. I only know that everyone starts off with level 1 questions. So I think this means that question would be level 23 difficulty for Algebra but level 8 (so much lower level of difficulty) for Intermediate Algebra.

I just checked Athena's still has open enrollment.