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homeschoolmom

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Posts posted by homeschoolmom

  1. VW based upon our experience with Golfs and Beetles.

     

    Pros:

    - The Golf is a great small family/haul stuff car. Nice boxy hatch that will fit A LOT - esp. if you take the privacy cover off.

    - Decent gas mileage (not great IMO considering it is a 4 cylinder and my 6 cylinder Maxima gets about the same).

    - If you get a decent year/model, fairly reliable.

     

    Cons:

    - Quality control is not great, at least on Golfs and Beetles in our experience. The little things go - the roof trim, glove box hinges and the big things - O2 sensors, window regulators. Save ALL your receipts including rental car receipts, there may be a recall at some point and you'll want to cash in.

    - Good luck working on it yourself. The engine is a knuckle buster. Even changing a light is a PITA.

    - VW is notorious in splitting model years. E.g, a car manufactured in the summer of 2005 has different specs than earlier 2005 but has the same as 2006. You'll run into issues getting service outside of the dealership. Plan on it so that you're not irritated/surprised. Providing the date of manufacture helps but as we learned from our windshield replacement last week is not fail proof. Service guy called VW "his nemesis."

     

    All and all as it has the best cargo space for a hatch we'd purchase again....until Nissan or Toyota produces something without corners to the hatch that kill the cargo space anyway.

  2. Very funny timing. I've just spent some time looking online for fingerless gloves for dd13, except she doesn't want the convertible type. She wants what looks like regular gloves with the fingertips cut off. She wants them solid black. It's not an easy search! I have to go to the mall soon and I'm going to check JC Penneys.

     

    I found the convertible ones everywhere! I saw them today at Target and Kohls.

     

    Fingerless gloves: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=black+fingerless+gloves&x=0&y=0

  3. be sure not to post any disparaging remarks about a cast member, resort or park...even if, say you were given a room that wasn't cleaned properly. Unless of course you like being lambasted. Great source of info but some folks there are in competition for appearing more grateful than the next to Disney for taking their money (a lot of it) and providing whatever they feel is best. Don't get me wrong, there are some awesome CMs and they should be praised but, conversley, nonperformance should not be tolerated.

     

    In short...no public vents about anything Disney. You will be skewered. You've been warned. ;)

  4. Planning is key. Use Fast Pass strategically. Study the park map and plan your attack. The longest we've ever waited was for the fairies when Pixie Hollow first opened. 1.5 hours. We did it because we're frequent visitors. Ordinarily we pass if the wait time is 30 min or more...and we still manage to ride our faves.

     

    I don't find Disney lines to be any longer than other amusement parks; in fact I find their lines shorter but that might be because I know Disney best.

  5. My opinion based upon our yearly (or more frequently) pilgrimage to Disney over the past 10 years:

     

     

    1. TH is good; Boma (at the Lodge) is better

    2. MK is closer to WC.

    3. The food at the Studios is yuck. If you must eat out, Hollywood and vine is OK. Personally I'd skip it but I'm not a fan of mediocre buffet.

    4.Le Cellier is the hardest reservation to get. It really all depends on where we were planning on being the day we had the reservation to 'spend' and if you've never done the castle and have a girl ages 3 -8 (the Princess years).

     

    We have two current faves - Jiko at AK Lodge and Kona Cafe at the Poly. Ohana (not Ohana's) was OK.Check out menus at allearsnetdotcom

  6. I firmly believe that one should not advocate for or against a particular bill without READING THE ACTUAL BILL. Only then will you know what parts of the bill you in particular may be against, and which you may be for. Only then will you be able to craft thoughtful, wise arguments for or against it; arguments that legislators will therefore take seriously. Only then will you see things that would affect you that might not have been noticed by someone who schools differently or who is in a different stage of schooling or who has different circumstances than you.

    It is not enough to read bits and pieces out of context.

     

    This bill does not sound good of course, but we can't judge how bad it may be without seeing the details.

     

    Did HSLDA provide a link to the bill, so that homeschoolers can read it for themselves?

     

    Yes, they do albeit in a round about way:

     

    Background

     

    HSLDA, Education Network of Christian Homeschoolers (ENOCH), and Catholic Homeschoolers of New Jersey (CHNJ) and others are united as a task force in opposing S3105.

    View the entire bill as currently drafted >>

    at the bottom you'll find the link to the bill here: https://www.hslda.org/legislation/state/NJ/2011/Draft_NJSB3105.pdf

  7. Prayer is great but get those emails and letters to Weinberg out stat.

     

    I got mine out this evening. I am soooo sick of lazy leadership that adds bureaucracy without benefit.

     

    Please do not introduce S3105. Don’t punish homeschoolers for the failures of DYFS. I will be watching very carefully this unnecessary over extension of government control and voting accordingly.

    Define the REAL issue you wish to fix, perform careful, data-driven root cause analysis and solution based upon that data. A broadbrush stroke solution is lazy leadership. Please demonstrate your leadership by emphatically driving home that message and refusing to introduce a bill that introduces new complexity without remedying the true problem. Homeschooling is not the issue; dig deeper.

  8. In the 1950's, the typical U.S. family had 1 car, a 983 sq. ft. house with 1 bath, and 4.5 children. Today, the typical U.S. family has 3 cars, a 2349 sq. ft. house with 2.5 baths, and only 2.1 kids. Is it just coincidental that consumerism has dramatically increased during the same time frame that family sizes have dramatically decreased? I personally doubt that based on my observations.

     

    One stat does not a study make. I disagree on summation without a broader study. Nuff said.

  9. I disagree with the over generalizing statement that smaller families are less green. I'd like to see the stats on that. I won't get into all the things we do I'll simply say I was raised by members of The Silent Generation who grew up during the depression and WWII rations and let that speak for itself. I believe it's all how you were raised. Waste burns my britches.

     

    I do agree that entitlement complexes and waste are far more destructive than pure volume.

  10. Good guess, but wrong :D

     

    It was in computer animation/video games

    All of us were either involved directly or indirectly in movie production or video game production. In both cases, lots of dollars are lost if your project is late. And deadlines are extremely tight. Pressure is high - you gotta have the next big seller in your hands. I got tired of the futility of it. I pulled in a week of extra hard work for a scene that lasted less than 2 seconds in the Lion King. Most of the scene ended up cut on the floor, not because it wasn't good, but because the movie was too long. I want that week of my life back. :001_huh:

     

    Wow - I would have never thought. Makes sense, you're committed to deliver a game by x date and have to deliver or lose business and the game needs to be tight and defect free. Makes me appreciate the games more...

  11. I'm going to take a guess: law or finance at a big firm. I know that one hundred hours is pretty normal for those jobs. When DH has been busy with a project a few times, we had a few months of one hundred hour weeks. Can't imagine doing that for years. Yowza!

     

    My first thought was 'finance.' Thank the stars I changed my major. Yikes.

     

    Even when I have a hot project I'm managing my hours aren't that high. That would be a deal breaker for me as money has a diminishing value at a point when you can't spend time with your family. When I'm old, I want to be able to look back and feel accomplished outside of simply my career. JMO.

  12. I've never done Atkins but I have been on various other high protein/low carb diets. Yes, they work, and give me great initial results but after three months I can't stand it. It's simply not realistic at least for me.

     

    I've tried them all and I'm enjoying using a meal delivery service with a nutritional breakdown of 50% protein/35% carb/20% fat. It's not cheap but my health is starting to suffer and losing this weight will be cheaper than long term medicating which will only lead to other issues that will need medicating and so on and so on...

     

    Good luck, it's not easy. The trick, at least for me, is to find something YOU can stick with and to have the mindset to make the commitment for yourself not because others nag you. Nagging only irritates me although I am a world class nagger myself. ;)

  13. I was a salaried employee (for a job that paid more than 65K). And most people were putting in 100 hours a week. At 80 hours a week (yes, on a regular basis) I got bad reviews. I wasn't as committed as the others. I had a house in the suburb, the others rented an apartment in the building in front of work. They even had impromptu meetings in the apartment building corridors! The company bought the apartment building after a while, but my house in the suburb, with corresponding commute time wasn't acceptable to them.

     

    This is very dependent on the field you're in. It was expected in my field. You do the overtime, or you're out kinda thing.

     

    Wow, what field is that?

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