This is what I was going to recommend as well: pate style food, watered down to make it easier to lap up, and warm slightly in the microwave. Try different flavors/brands. Sometimes it just takes novelty to gain their interest.

DD has an evening class this semester to take advantage of a top-notch instructor. DD is a morning person and really prefers to cluster her classes as early as possible. However, she had her first evening class last night and came home excited and chattering about the instructor and the class. Do your students give preference to class times or instructors? DD was grumbling about having an evening class but seems to be realizing that it will be worth it.

DD just started back at her CC yesterday. This is the first semester that she will be driving herself. She headed out 25 minutes before her class for what is normally a 7 minute drive. With extra first day traffic, hunting for a parking spot, and trekking across campus to her class, she arrived 10 minutes late. Oops. Now she knows to allow even more time than she thinks she'll need since she isn't getting dropped off at the door! Today would be her second day but campus was closed due to snow.

Yeah, unfortunately, phobias can develop at any age. I suspect the stress of dealing with the mice invasion may have set off this reaction. No worries unless it starts impacting your daily life. If you get the willies but can still do what you need to do, I wouldn't let it worry me. The only thing that affects me this way is cockroaches. I can still stomp on them but I have to close my eyes and grit my teeth. ha!

I'm not qualified to give medical advice. In my personal N=1 experience, I started eating low carb for other reasons and my blood pressure came way down. From anecdotal internet posts, this seems to be a common occurrence.

Thanks, everyone. Good ideas.

Yeah, changing all my passwords is a good idea. I do use a different, and complex, password for each financial type of account but have a couple "regulars" that I use for general internet browsing. Probably time to change all those as well. I don't know much about things like LastPass - time to do some research! The hotel situation is just really weird. Why would someone want to stay at the same hotel that I've stayed at in the past? How would using my name be an advantage (other than getting my employer rate)? All charges at the time I stayed were to a employer credit card and not my own (so not in my name), which is why I notified my employer. They were going to see if the hotel would tell them what sort of credit card hold the caller had used. I'd hate to think it is someone I know or work with. That would be very disappointing.

I've received several emails, purportedly from Apple ID, stating that my password was incorrectly entered 3 times. I do not have any Apple products and do not have any sort of Apple ID account (iTunes, etc.) I forwarded the latest email to the official Apple phishing address asking that they delete any accounts using my personal email address because they aren't mine. Is there anything else that I could/should do? I'm thinking it is unrelated, but I recently received an email to my WORK email address confirming a hotel reservation that I did not make. I have stayed at this hotel in the past. Upon contacting them, the hotel said that a female called and made a reservation with my name and used the contract rate that my employer has with this hotel. I notified my employer who is supposed to be following up with the hotel on this issue. Still, I'm a bit on edge as it seems really weird. I'm also keeping an eagle eye on all my financial accounts. Nothing unusual there so far.

This is what I would do, but not at all saying that this is what you should do. "Oh, I'm so sorry but all the fees collected have already been spent on supplies. Although I did remind everyone at the parents' meetings that there would be no refunds, your friendship is much more important to me than money. If you would like, I will cheerfully pay your fees back to you out of my own pocket." If she declines, I would know that she understands with no hard feelings and not feel awkward at seeing her around. If she accepts, I would know that she is not actually as nice as she tries to appear. I'd pay her, but I would make no efforts to socialize with her afterwards.

Nothing too exciting. DD19 has heard different terms used and wondered aloud about whether the differences were regional. We tried doing a Google search but didn't come up with much conclusive information. So, I offered to ask the Hive! I called them eyes when I was very young (Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama) but was later mocked by classmates when I used this terminology (South Dakota) and learned to call them burners. DH claims that burners only refers to gas stovetops and that elements is the term to use for electric stovetops. I loved hearing some of the terms used in England and Australia. Those are new to me.

I would make this a poll but I'd also like to know where you grew up. DD and I have been discussing the various terms we've heard and speculating on the regional differences. Also, do you call them different terms if it is an electric versus gas? Thanks!

DH and I ended up hitting 3 different grocery stores today. Best prices included: Bananas - $0.29/pound Eggs - $1.59/dozen Potatoes - $1.99 for 5 pound bag Fresh salmon - $4.99/pound How did you do? Oh, and not groceries but gasoline, $1.64/gallon.

We used the original Math U See so didn't use Zeta and can't respond specifically to whether the teacher's guide lines up with the lesson problems. I did find a sample of Zeta teacher's guide for lesson 8 online so I've taken a look at that. It looks simple enough but I'm not understanding your description of the place value in the problem set. Can you maybe share a specific problem that is causing issues? IMHO, your DD does need this. Metric is used extensively in scientific and engineering fields, at the very least. Besides, this lesson isn't JUST about metric conversion. It is teaching basic conversion techniques, such that the units cancel out.

Discover has a pretty decent student card. If he doesn't have his own income, he'll still need a co-signer. This is what we did for DD. I wanted her to have her own card, thinking it would help her build up a credit rating of her own. I wasn't sure if having her on my card would do that; I was reading conflicting information on this issue. Edited to add: DD especially likes the extra $20 cash back for good students that this card gives.

Sounds like he needs much more practice in writing using a program that breaks the process down into small steps. Writing well requires more than simply understanding vocabulary, English mechanics, grammar, etc.

Check with the school. Usually the application isn't open until late summer after junior year (so, around August 2016 for a fall 2017 admission).

IMHO, Wordsmith Craftsman used to be one of the best homeschool writing programs for high school. . .and then other programs came along that are even better. I used parts of it for one DD but will skip it altogether for the second one. I'm not familiar with Power In Your Hands so no advice there. We found Jensen's Format Writing to be very good for students/parents that need everything spelled out. Edited to add: I just reviewed Power In Your Hands on Amazon's "look inside" feature and I must say that it looks great. I wouldn't hesitate to use it over Wordsmith Craftsman.

Ok, I found a relevant article that includes the following: Although colleges will no longer have access to the information, the department plans to continue to provide state grant agencies with access to students’ college preferences on the FAFSA. Full article is here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/08/14/education-department-will-stop-giving-colleges-information-about-students%E2%80%99-choices

Wanted to let you know that I loved the lead in for the thread; definitely made me laugh when I opened it. I will admit to finally bringing in a couple Halloween decorations from the porch just before Christmas. They weren't perishable though so nothing was rotting.

Don't wait! The schools used to be able to see what order you put the list of schools in and people speculated that it may affect admissions (huge assumption that the most desired schools would be listed first). Starting this year, the list will not be visible to the schools (per information being discussed on College Confidential).

You are not alone! The ability to impress with knowledge/connections is always eventually stymied by questions/statements of glaring ignorance. You can only laugh and move on.

This is an excellent discussion and Margaret in CO brings up some very good considerations. The student's specific goals are critical to planning their high school courses and sequence. I appreciate learning a bit more about the experiences and observations for the more selective schools and programs. I encourage all potential engineers to research the specific college programs that they are interested in. It is important to keep in mind, however, that failure to be admitted to the most selective engineering programs is not a roadblock to becoming a successful engineer. I went to a run-of-the-mill state university, graduated with my two engineering degrees, and was hired by a large engineering/construction company where I worked side-by-side with folks who graduated from much more prestigious programs/schools. We earned the same salary at first and had the same benefits. When it came to promotions, raises, and layoffs, our alma mater mattered not at all.

as part of the final for their U.S. Government course? I've often thought that someone who is well prepared for these questions to become a naturalized citizen is better informed than the vast majority of citizens born in the U.S. We can and should do better!

DD19 wrote up the following to explain some of the episode references for anyone who hasn't read them: The Abominable Bride references The final scene, with Sherlock and Moriarty on the waterfall ledge, is a direct reference to “The Final Problemâ€, a Sherlock Holmes story first published in 1893. Near the end, after the long chase for Moriarty, Sherlock finally catches up to him near the Reichenbach falls, located in Switzerland, and after a brief tussle they both go over the cliff. This story was written as an attempt to end the continuing stories of Sherlock Holmes, for Arthur Conan Doyle was by this point getting sick of writing the stories and wanted to end it. Since this tale is only the twenty fourth short story out of fifty six, it is clear that he failed. Watchers of Sherlock might remember that during the second season Moriarty episode, The Reichenbach Fall, one of the puzzles involved a painting of those self-same falls, a small nod to the original story. The newspaper man at the beginning of the episode is selling an edition covering “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.†Naturally, this is the title of one of the original stories. If anyone’s wondering, a carbuncle is either a pus-filled boil or a deep-red cabochon cut gemstone usually garnet, specifically almandine. No prizes for guessing which one is referred to here. In the original stories Sherlock was indeed a bad drug addict. While in the modern setting of the show they changed it to smoking patches, both smoking and injecting of drugs most certainly featured in the original, and I was pleasantly surprised that it was included. The orange seeds received as an early threat are directly from the story “The Five Orange Pips.†The seeds were used as a message that you are marked for death by a very particular group (see next comment). Interestingly, this was also referenced in the first season Moriarty episode. When Moriarty signs off with five beeps at the end of the first phone call, Sherlock describes it as “five pips†instead of a more common name for a high tone. The sequence of cloaked figures chanting in a secret underground complex could be referring to the climax of the 1985 movie, “Young Sherlock Holmes,†but it could equally have been coincidence. Every secret society with cloaked members meeting underground can hardly be related to every previous one. Far more relevent is the shape of the hoods. If you thought that the high-pointed hoods looked suspiciously like those made notorious by the KKK, then you’re already onto it. In “The Five Orange Pips†the eventual answer is that the man who received the threat is now being hunted by the KKK as revenge for something he did in the past. While the ending was dramatically changed, the show makers still kept this little nod to the original story. Not sure that I like a women’s revolution being compared to the KKK though, even if it is a nice easter egg. And finally, for anyone wondering, yes. Sherlock DID beat corpses with a riding crop to check for bruising in one of the original stories. Yes, he also came home covered in blood from shoving a harpoon into a pig carcass. Yes, the show hardly has to make up any of their funny single scene moments.

The current theory in my house is that the reason Moriarty was willing to kill himself is that he was already dying (direct ties to the killer cabbie episode and last night's special). He is definitely dead but had already set up mechanisms to continue long after he was gone.