Wine by mail, beer still by the case.

No, the title is not misleading.  It will make sense at the end.

Here is an excerpt from the recent Gene Yaw newsletter outlining how one can get a free photo ID which will be necessary for this fall's general election.

If you do not possess any of these forms of identification, you may obtain a free photo ID from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. It is a simple process. First, you must sign an affirmation that you do not possess any forms of identification listed above (Voter Affirmation), then you must complete an Application For Initial Photo Identification Card (DL-54A). Finally, take these documents to your nearest Photo Licensing Center along with your Social Security Card, accompanying proof of citizenship such as a birth certificate or passport, and two proofs of residency such as a utility bill, car registration or lease agreement.


I have three questions about this.

1)  If you have a passport, I'm pretty sure it satisfies the requirements stated in the first option of acceptable photo ID:  


Identification issued by the United States Government that includes your name, a photograph, and an expiration date that is not expired. 


Even if a passport doesn't meet those criteria, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, that passports are far from free and as a possible supporting document kind of negate the whole FREE photo ID thing.

2)  As a second option for proof of citizenship, birth certificates aren't exactly free either.

3)  Is there any conceivable situation in which someone has no proof of residency, but is a resident (perhaps an elderly parent living with a child who is not responsible for paying any bills and doesn't drive)?

I checked the website, you can bring someone to vouch for you.  However, that seems to undermine the whole point of this new legislation

OK, only one of those was actually a question, but you know what I meant.

Then there's Senate Bill 10:


Senate Bill 10 - is a proposal that seeks to amend Pennsylvania's Constitution by allowing individuals the freedom to purchase their own health care. The legislation would prohibit the enactment of any law requiring a person to obtain or maintain health insurance coverage, except as required by a court; prohibit a person from or penalizing a person for making direct payment to a health care provider; or instituting any penalty, tax, assessment, fee or fine for a person's failure to obtain or maintain health insurance coverage.
On March 28th, this bill passed the Senate by a vote of 29-19 and will now go before the House State Government Committee for their approval. Since this bill is seeking to amend the Pennsylvania Constitution, it must be voted in two consecutive legislative sessions and pass a statewide referendum before it can be approved.

Yeah!  They are guaranteeing freedom.  That means it has to be good.  I can only guess this is in reaction to healthcare reform.  Is a constitutional amendment a bit strong?  I admit; I'm a bit confused by this.

Finally, we have Senate Bill 790:

Senate Bill 790 - is a proposal which amends the Liquor Code to allow for the direct shipment of wine from out-of-state to Pennsylvania residents. The bill would permit a producer, with a direct shipper's license, to ship up to 18 liters per month to any Pennsylvania resident who is at least 21 years of age.

The state is going to allow mail order wine from out of state, but we still have to buy beer by the case?

This state is confusing and disappointing me.

Pensions cost us paper!

It's that time of year again.  The school year is over 3/4 finished and supplies are starting to run low.  Today we get the message that we are going to run out of paper; please conserve.  Within an hour later we get the message that the two cases of paper in the copy room have gone and will not be replaced.  Now I know that everyone wants paper to make copies with, but raiding the only paper left so you can make copies in a couple of weeks is just lame!  Now all copies have to go through administration first to get approval.  Many thanks to the vultures and jackals that have made this possible.

But as you can read in our illustrious paper, the real culprit is the exorbitant pensions teachers are getting these days.  Why are education funds being slashed?  I think it's summed up best here (Click here).  Yeah, the rhetoric is getting hot again and it's our greed that has led to this problem.

Spring Training

Following the winter high of have a great time doing cyclocross, finishing 3rd in my age group for the overall points series in the River Towns Race Series, and having a blast (as always) during the Humdinger, I felt it prudent to sign up for the River Towns Half Marathon (I did resist the full marathon, for now).  While fully under the influence of that continued rush, I was also contemplating doing the 45 Miles of Mon-Tour, which is just 2 weeks after the marathon.

I used the rest of my winnings from last year's series to register for the half and started thinking about how soon it actually is and how long my current long run has been (past tense, I ran about 5 times in March) and realized that I couldn't go much farther than 5 or 6 miles after school and be able to pick up the boy from daycare.  "That's ok," I thought.  "I can do long runs on the weekend."  Then I started thinking how much time it took to train with 20 mile bike rides and how much longer it would take to get me, and my rear, in shape for riding 45 miles.  Combined with the hectic nature of spring and school and my time constraints, I decided not to do the 45 Miles of Mon-Tour.  However, now that I'm writing about it and seeing that I would have 2 whole weeks after the half...

The training for the half is going great, though.  I was thinking that I would like to finish in under 2 hours, which equates to about 9-minute miles.  While I've gotten my 5k pace down to 8-minute miles, I'm just about redlining to finish and that's only 3 miles.  So, last week I head out to do 5 miles and I average 9:27.  I felt like I was pushing, but not too hard.  A few days later I do 8 miles and average 9:50.  This week I go for a hard 4 and average 8:48 miles and today, I did 10 with a pace of 9:24 min/mile.  The best part about today's run was that I wasn't killing myself to keep the pace.  I think my goal is within reach and I have 5 weeks to get my mileage and speed up.

Maybe I should do the 45...

Humdinger 2012

Today was the Humdinger.  This has really become my favorite race.  It's not my favorite while running and I don't do as well compared to the field as I do in other races.  This race is just fun.  It had to be moved from its old location due to new restrictions or something like that, but the race organizers outdid themselves making a new course and a race that was better than ever.  They cut and dug all new trails for most of the entire course and added some interesting obstacles at the end.  It contained the usual fallen logs, completely slanted trails that make you feel like you're running uphill even when headed down, and stream crossings (leaps).  The very last of these was my favorite.  It was after about 5 miles and the stream itself was only about a foot wide, but the sloping ditch on either side opened up at least 6 feet.  I saw a young guy (high school) in front of me negotiating it and I just went for it and leapt the whole span without much of a run up.  I must have made it look easy because from behind I heard, "Nice f-----n' jump!"  That felt good.  After that we got to the obstacles.  We finished with a choice of a rock wall climb, board climb, cargo net, and hay bales up into the 2nd floor of the Pig Barn and a slip-n-slide down to the finish.

Above is the route and elevation profile of the course as I ran it.  Great job to the River Town Race Series!  You did a great job.  There's a reason I try to do as many of your races as possible.

A new low in my teaching career

I about lost it today.  Things were going well.  I'd designed an activity (Jojo's Cheese and BBQ Emporium) and was ready for some nicely hidden drill and repeat practice.  First class went great.  Then the next class came in.  Now I'd already moved a test from Friday to Monday because the kids were working hard and I didn't want to rush through anything just to get a test in.  I figured an extra activity (see Jojo above) would be good.  I stayed up until almost 2:00 AM making it.  We got through exactly ONE new example in an 84 minute period.  ONE!

Even that, in itself, would not have been so bad if it weren't for the complete lack cognition on my students' part.  We were using two formulas:  one for Interest and one for Balance and both for simple interest (I don't know what I'll do with compound tomorrow).  I say we because this class is co-taught.  There are two certified teachers in the room.  I asked everyone to write down the formula they were using at the beginning of each problem.  One of the students asked me for help (that is to say he was staring blankly at his paper doing his best not to attract my attention in any way).  I asked him to write down the formula.  He asked which one.  I asked him which formula matched up with the given information and he proceeded to point to a formula that had nothing in it that was provided by the problem.

Meanwhile, my co-teacher was asking a similar question of another student, but she narrowed it down by saying, "If you are choosing between these two and it's not this one, which formula are you using?"  Her student still picked the wrong formula.  Actually, that's not true.  Her student picked up her calculator to try to figure out the answer.

Back to my student whom I had told which formula to use by this time (maybe he'll choose right next time) and I ask him to write the formula down.  He copies it wrong (the equal sign isn't that important, right?).  I remind him to write it down exactly how it looks on his sheet.  He proceeds to switch around the order of the variables.  I remind him again, a little sterner to get my point across, "Copy it down exactly how it looks on your sheet."  Still not right.  Eventually he gets it, so we start filling it out.  I ask him if we know the first value.  No, so keep the variable.  What comes next?  No, you have to include the equal sign still.  Do we know the next value?  Yes, good, write it down.  No, don't skip it, you have to write it down.

I don't know what happened after that.  I honestly cannot recall.  I think I may have a stress induced mini blackout.

At one point, I just sat in a chair that I have at the front of the room.  Defeated.  If the co-teacher weren't there, nobody would have been teaching for a while.  I have never wanted a drink so badly while working in my life and I can't actually think of a time when I really did want one.

Tomorrow's a new day, by which I mean they will have forgotten whatever they gained and it will be a fresh start.  Cthulu would have a hard time stealing my sanity from this class.

FedEx is useless

I ordered something online on the 3rd.  It shipped the next day.  It was scheduled for delivery on the 11th.  Today is the 12th and it's still not here.  I checked the tracking again and below is what I found:

Jan 12, 2012 5:04 AM  Arrived at FedEx location  LEWISBERRY, PA

Jan 10, 2012 11:40 PMArrived at FedEx location  FEDEX SMARTPOST ALLENTOWN, PA

Jan 10, 2012 8:38 AM                                                WINFIELD, PA

Jan 10, 2012 6:52 AM  Arrived at FedEx location  MUNCY, PA

Jan 9, 2012 8:49 PM  Arrived at FedEx location  LEWISBERRY, PA

Jan 6, 2012 7:47 PM  Arrived at FedEx location  FEDEX SMARTPOST ALLENTOWN, PA

Jan 4, 2012 8:58 AM  Arrived at FedEx location  FEDEX SMARTPOST GROVE CITY, OH

Jan 4, 2012 2:21 AM  Arrived at FedEx location  GROVE CITY, OH

Jan 3, 2012 3:31 PM  Picked up  COLUMBUS, OH

To make this clear it went from Columbus to Grove City to Allentown, to Lewisberry, to Muncy, to Winfield, back to Allentown, and back to Lewisberry again. 

Once it got to PA it went from point E to F to C to D and then back to E and then F.

I called FedEx to see what was going on.  Once I gave my tracking number the very sorry operator informed me it was a SmartPost package and is being handled by the post office.  She understood that it was confusing that all of the tracking information is through FedEx and all of the packages locations are FedEx locations, but she couldn't help me in any way because FedEx has nothing to do with this package.  To make it worse, to other packages were both in Allentown on January 6, but they made it here already.

It's schedule for Saturday and I need it for Saturday night (I guess I foolishly thought that ordering on the 3rd would be enough time to arrive by the 14th).  

Arg.

40's and rainy and nothing better

I went for a run today.  This in itself was nothing unusual.  I go for a lot of runs; at least I try to.  I haven't been running in a while.  I checked my log when I got home and there were three weeks with 0 miles, one week with 3 miles, and another week before that with 0 miles.  I had been all geared up after my first cyclocross race (which was amazing), but then my inability to bifurcate kept me from doing the next race in the series.  After a series of weird and depressing situations at school and less than perfect weather, a week without running turned into a month.

Yesterday I took a day off from school.  No particular reason, I just wanted a day.  That would have been a perfect day to run.  It was even sunny.  I didn't run.  Today I did.  I almost didn't, but I did.  Again, the weather was less than perfect and I was about two steps away from not getting changed and heading home, but enough had been enough.  There has been too much crap going on at school and I was on the cusp of a long running drought that would last through winter break into next year.

So, I went for a run.  It was about 40 degrees (F not C), drizzly, and awesome.  You get to a point where missing runs starts to mess with your head.  The obvious cure is to get out and do something, but your head is so messed up, that it seems like too much trouble and you get stuck in a vicious cycle.  But the moment you break that cycle, all hold it had on you is gone.  28 seconds into the run, it felt like everything that had been hanging over my head was washed away by the cold near sleet rain.  30 seconds or so later and all I was thinking of was how good it felt to be moving.

Don't let life get in the way of what you want to do.  Life is what happens when you're not paying attention.  Living is what you do.  I let life happen for a month and it got me in a funk.  Now I've got another cyclocross race coming up in January, a nice 5k the day before my birthday in February, and, hopefully, the Humdinger in March.