There comes a time in nearly everyone’s life where they need to prepare to move on to a different vocation of choice in this world. This blog serves its purpose in giving my point of view into this world. In time though all good things come to an end, but today is not the day for this blog.

When you do make the jump into a new vocation in life, you invariable have to do so by getting the proper education. Of course there is on the job training but if you do not have the prerequisite skill sets you are left to flipping burgers, cleaning toilets or stocking shelves at a place decorated with a happy face.

If you are looking into a vocation that you can train swiftly into as our bills often require, then what is normally called a 2 year degree is the category for you. Learning what you need to know to have the skill sets needed is often far more desirable then slogging through endless prerequisites that are money draining time hogs.

Then you need to decide the selection criteria you use to select the right source of education. You can try and collect all of the information on your own or take a short cut by using a matching algorithm to connect your background and desires with the correct colleges from an Online University List.

Along the way, educating yourself about your own education is a smart option so the articles are presented for your information gain. If you remember all of the guidance counselors from high school giving you directions, using this source this time around is much better. This time you have a clue what the world is like and what you may want to do in it as opposed to just chasing the opposite gender or having fun.

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There are times in your life as a father and a husband where it becomes your duty to make certain your daughter is wrapped up in the best cloth you can find. Later on as life progresses, your children get to wrap you up to help keep you warm and in good spirits.

Is this all about diapers? Nah, I am talking about nap time. You or your child(ren) lay down on the couch or on top of the bed to take a time out and sleep for 30 minutes or an hour or two. You pull out the pillow but try not to disturb the rest of the neatly made bed then cover up with a blanket.

Going for a bit more sentimental approach could mean the use of photo blankets. If your daughter is wrapped up in a blanket with a collage of family photos, it makes for yet another photo opportunity to perpetuate the cycle.

If your wife is off visiting a distant relative, it helps to have some photo blankets so you can still cuddle up to her by extension. If not that, having the image of your wife sleeping imprinted on a pillow might make it a tad bit easier when you are groggy in bed.

Naturally, what is good for you is something you need to provide for your wife if the job demands you should be away for a business trip. In that case, the photo blankets will be of your uplifting mugshot to carry her on through the lonely night.

Nice to know there are ways of addressing even the lonely nights that come up every now and then.

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I had attended a college that is strong in the engineering field. When you go through the Physics classes, the calculus classes and more you realize very quickly just how bound the hard sciences are to math. In engineering, either you do the calculations correctly or someone could get killed either during the construction or afterwards.

So when you are talking about steel buildings, you need to not only get the calculations correct but you must factor in the construction codes of the state and regional areas you are doing the work in. Because if you fail to do so, all of the work on the steel buildings is for naught as the building inspector will not approve your work for sale or use.

So whether it is for a warehouse, a church, or a dairy barn, you need to make certain you receive the best quality steel buildings as they need to stand up to the various forces of nature. Up here, they have to withstand the ranges of 50 mph winds and hot summer heat to the bitter cold of January and blizzards. Should you be in California, you are graced with the building codes to factor in earthquakes. So it goes on for whichever state you may be in.

May certain you get a company that values performance of their product which is only done by following real science and math especially if you are in the areas of hurricanes.

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Outside of dogs and sometimes cats taking advantage of the continually fresh water, toilets are all for humans right?

That would be correct but that isn’t the primary point in this article. It is a bit more along the lines of how a human is like a toilet in a way. A toilet receives a lot of liquid waste and solid stuff that if it cannot remove it correctly will clog up the pipes causing a backup. Most of us have had the luxury of grabbing the plunger and start the pumping motion in hopes of getting the crap flowing again. Using the power of water and bubbles, eventually the clog is released and the toilet can complete the draining it was designed to do.

For the human body, I’ve experienced that sometimes you need to pull the level and flush out certain parts as well. In addition to my various skeletal maladies, I deal with the annual spring-time allergies. This leads to snoring which prevents me and my wife from getting a solid night’s sleep.

I’ve tried the medication route and that doesn’t do much. Those nose things meant to hold the nose open did nothing. What worked was the one thing I liked the least, flushing my nose out with a sodium chloride and sodium bicarbonate sinus rinse once a night or every other night solved the problem. Trust me, it isn’t a fun experience but if it works, it works. A rested wife is a happy wife. Happy wife, happy life is the saying.

It does make sense that a colon cleansing could very well be a good thing. Purging out the poop production with an effective mega-plunger might be what is needed to optimize the human waste pipes for a better flushing experience.

Just what part is the lever is debatable.

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How do those three topics merge together? Well, they merge together more often than one might think.

One of the greatest needs of standard businesses is employees who have the capabilities to follow extensive requirements accurately to produce a high quality product. What is not needed are employees incapable of solid science skills, poor mathematic abilities and independent minds that do what they want and not what is required of them.

In the public schools, we’re teaching ‘fuzzy’ math where answers on story problems can be “close enough.” Science education is often full of contradictions leading to a less than concrete understanding of how science really works. And a tendency of many students to choose to do what they want to do despite the rules and regulations.

Speaking as a person with bad ankles that may put me in a wheelchair, the last thing I would want is to be squished in a collapsing parking structure because an employee couldn’t do the math right and messed up the structural support requirements. I also wouldn’t care for the ADA laws and building codes to be ignored just because a person didn’t feel like following them.

So I do strongly prefer parking consultants like Desman that know what they are doing and have proven it. Whether it be planning, consulting, restoration, design, studies or transportation planning needs, the company that knows “close enough” is not good enough and brings their comprehensive and time tested skills to the table is the best one for the job.

But for Desman Associates to meet this goal, I must tip my hat to their HR department for continuing to hire the right kind of employee that knows how to do their thing. May they continue to do great so my future wheelchair doesn’t get caught in an unforeseen and poorly designed rut.

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One of the fields the public school system is derelict on is fiscal responsibility education. True, the public schools are bogged down with meeting test requirements but that isn’t an excuse. Another quandary is who in the school would teach it as many teachers weren’t taught or did not practice individual fiscal responsibility themselves. It definitely isn’t a required course for any education degree I’ve heard of.

The only option remaining is to educate yourself on how life and the world really works or have your parents teach you (if they know fiscal responsibility). One of the main causes of the creation of out of control debt levels is the improper selection and use of a credit card.

For the proper selection of a credit card with preference to those with perks, a person would need to find neutral information sources. Combine the information source with the current fuel issues, researching gas rewards credit cards would be a good start. When you can balance all of the various choices of credit cards, then you can take action on applying for the one that best fits your needs.

As for disciplined fiscally responsible decisions, credit card use has to be kept to a few basic guidelines. First being one need to make certain they have the funds available for the purchase in their savings or checking account. Next, pay off any balance at the end of the month. Lastly, restrict the usage of the card for online purchases or spending within your budget while on a vacation.

Going on these rules while using a useful educational website can help anyone tackle the debt demon before it gets control.

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When a person steps back and takes a look at the current world in the timeline of history, the major focus on drugs and the pharmaceuticals of today is just a speck of time.

Obviously, various forms of medical care existed long before the chemical drugs did so it makes sense to try to understand and incorporate the medical knowledge of the past. This is a role of science if it can remain unfettered by the restrictions of a pharmaceutical industry.

Much of the prior medical care focused on the use of plant life for its nutritional and medicinal purposes. As we are discovering, a variety of fruits and vegetables offer important nutritional aspects to our lives. There are a number of them which most of us are aware of like carrots, broccoli, bananas and the commonly known ones.

It is the less commonly known such as goji berries that require investigation and providing proper information to the public. So what can the goji berry do for us? I’ll let the website do all the talking for me.

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This one is for all those guys out there to introduce or surprise their wives who are in the medical field or just want to dress like they are.

But first, almost all of us guys dread that set of questions we get from our wives. “How do I look in this?” “Which one do you think I should get?” The forever ultra loaded questions which we can hardly ever get right. Considering that my stay-at-home Dad wardrobe consists of shorts and t-shirts (with some of them being a decade old), I am completely out of my element in answering questions of fashion.

However, I have a secret weapon up my sleeve. When the time comes for a fashion question, I turn to my resident expert on making selections for my wife. That expert is my 7 yr old daughter. So the question posed to her was do we get Mommy one of the dickies scrubs or one of the Cherokee medical scrubs?

Personally, I have no idea which to pick. The answer my daughter gave me was a pink with butterfly print scrub. The Cherokee medical scrubs won the day with her. This just begs one major question that I have to ponder for the future. When homeschooling is done and she’s out on her own, who do I turn to fashion advice in 15 years?

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This is the time of year when a number of events come together guiding the direction of the activities of our sons and daughters in the Elementary grade levels.

The end of the school year approaches as does Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. It only makes sense that art projects in school also focus on those days. But what project is best for a child to tackle? The intentions of our daughter are to help us in an area of need. She may try dusting and sweeping just to help out with her cleaning kit and that is always welcome.

Perhaps we should try our hand at a leather working kit? At the age of 7, she loves to explore and try new things all the time. The most likely option will be a leather purse as leather wallets like those in the link might be a bit beyond her 1^st grade skills.

We might decide it would be a better option to choose one from the Women leather wallets selection for Mommy. Mommy is not a fan of purses but she does need an upgrade on how to carry her driver’s license and other cards around. With free shipping on that website, that may be an option if we can convince Mommy to use it.

If we cannot, there is always Father’s Day. My wallet is falling apart and I am certain one of the Men leather wallets can serve my purposes just nicely and maybe find its way as a special wallet for special times.

Somehow though I get a feeling my daughter and I will not be able to gain access to exotic leathers except by going through that site. Well, practice makes perfect and they might be hiring someday.

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When you choose to homeschool, every action and choice you make ends up becoming an educational experience. In our household, there is no such thing as a ‘school year’ or ‘vacation’. You work hard and keep learning all the time.

This is a great big world with immense amounts of experiences and wisdom to gain and knowledge to learn. So we pursue everything as another learning experience no matter what we do.

Obviously living in Wisconsin limits the range of animal, plant and ecosystems you can directly interact with. So the counter to those limitations is going to other places to see the animal life, plants and ecosystems. Fortunately, the USA is a big place that covers a wide range of environments as well as other select global destinations.

So as a research project coming up in the future, we will need a base of operations to study island life. The Philippines is a bit far so we will have to use Maui Vacation Rentals or Big Island Vacation Rentals to operate out of as we identify the plants, study the wildlife and go scuba diving. Education is hard work but you do what you have to do.

Hawaii vacation info is not just for vacation information. We consider it a source of information to greatly enrich an educational experience on ecosystems.

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On my blog I am rough on those who make the decisions on what the teachers have to use and teach. Those who wield the power over many do need to be held accountable for the impact their decisions have. It is the responsibility of the rest of us to spread the word on the lack of logic behind some of those decisions.

The individuals or group of individuals you will find that I’m not rough on are the teachers themselves. Sure there are always a few who ruin the good name of most teachers, but by far and large most teachers are solid citizens who are doing a tough job for comparatively low pay and little thanks.

So hey, I think teachers need to get a high quality personal ‘thank you’ every now and then. Obviously, it wouldn’t be in the form of a Christmas card in the public schools but everyone has a birthday. If you make it pro-green in the form of recycled paper, then it will fit in even better.

A very professional looking card normally reserved for business birthday cards. Granted standard restrictions imposed by union rules make dictate what you can or cannot include with the cards but a one week free lunch in the cafeteria makes for a decent gift. would make for a good morale booster a Superintendent or Principal could use.

Well, that may depend on the skill of the cafeteria cooks and the menu for the week but the intention is good.

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Yes, I know Bugosaurus is not a real name of an insect or a dinosaur but it does represent two current areas of interest of my 7 year old daughter.

Courtesy of reading a book about a certain spider that doubles as a champion at a spelling bee and those insects attracted to our flower garden, she is asking more and more questions about the different kinds of bugs out there. It does help that I’m a nature buff when it comes to the animal kingdom too. It rubs off.

She started getting interested in dinosaurs because of my long term interest in them. What kid or grown up kid is not fascinated with them? We have collected so much yet know so very little about them the mystery is always a fun one to play with.

Part of the goal of all this is to slowly transform my daughter’s fear and disgust of insects and dinosaurs into a curiosity in learning about them. Soon, she will be ready for me to introduce them as science toys but I will have to stick to the non-living science kits to pass the Mommy test. The insects will still have to stay outside of the house.

I am just about as much of a kid as my daughter is which is why my pen name is “Maturekid.” So I’m certain I’ll have just about as much fun with the chemistry, physics and earth science kits as she will. Somehow though, I think the slime kits will get the Mommy veto.

The website though does have many areas of gift giving and education enhancing categories that should get the Mommy approved seal. Daddy would play with any of them.

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My family dynamic is a little different from the stereotypical one. Yes, we are your standard husband, wife, and daughter 3-person family but that is about where it ends.

We have additional factors that impact our desires and goals as we build up our balance sheet for the eventual acquiring of a home. Like many others, we shop around looking at many different styles of homes but none of them really strike us as the one that meets our dynamics.

See we like the concept of having an attached greenhouse so we can tend to tropical plants from the Philippines so my wife can have a taste of home in her home. That just is not a standard in homes for sale. So we know we need to work at developing our house plans.

Not only do our home plans include a Filipino retreat of sorts but we also need to factor in additional children, office space, space for servers, and space for any of her immediate family that may visit us and / or a place for my surviving parent when one of them passes.

It may be a cool idea to look at log home plans but that is something I need to go over with my wife. I go for functionality and handicap friendly options. The interior design has to meet my wife’s tastes and a touch of the Philippines.

It is cool that there are websites that house numerous home plans to review and decide on. Maybe, just maybe we’ll find one to our liking that way.

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Lesson plans are available in many forms and on many topics. This post is not really about lesson plans though but a part of the two subjects in the title.

Now you may be asking yourself, how can a guy who admits to not being able to sing and has two bad ankles and tender elbows teach the Physical Education and Music classes for his daughter? That would be a very good question. The answer is also very straight forward. I can’t. My wife is the one that won the singing competitions and is trained to sing. Not me. She’s also the one doing workouts with our daughter, hiking, biking and all the rest.

So what part of this do I get to play? Music class isn’t much good without the music. Music also helps you keep the rhythm on those workouts and dance routines.

Also my wife and daughter are not set on any one region as we get around a fair amount. So if we want the music of our choice for the road, then we can do iTunes tagging for music class in the car. (Or until our daughter falls asleep.)

We aren’t stuck on any one kind of music and new country music stations will get us tuning in quickly. My daughter likes Carrie Underwood so why not? Free, crystal clear sound coming through on High Def sounds like a plan to me.

When we are feeling extra cold up here in Wisconsin and tire of hearing the weatherman tell us more of the same is coming we can switch to the Florida High Definition Radio stations. What a bonus!

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One of the benefits of being a family that homeschools is when one parent is weak in a topic; the other can take over if it is their strength. As you can read from my topics, there are certain areas I will not touch into much.

I know how to read my music and play a couple instruments. Don’t ask me to sing though as puberty took that option off the table. Give me hard facts to deal with. That doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the artistic side but it isn’t a strong suit of mine. That realm belongs to my wife.

With Mother’s Day approaching and the flowers starting to grow, our household will be focusing on how to fill those vases with beautiful floral displays. I’ll happily do all I can to learn and help our flowers grow and pass that information on to my wife and daughter.

When it comes to how to properly do a floral arrangement, I’m out of my element. Thankfully, our family can turn to some video guides provided by Proflowers to learn how to make those roses last for a long time. In the educational short video, my two ladies can learn the fine art of floral arrangement and beautify our home.

So soon we will have the many colors of flowers gracing our tables and the sweet smell of the blossoms wafting through our abode. Joyous!! (Did I mention I’m allergic to pollen? Oh well, Happy Wife, Happy Life)

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Of the many things a person covers in 1^st grade math is how to tell time. It is a lesson that some take some time to learn while others pick it up quickly. My daughter doesn’t have an issue with it but most of our clocks are digital.

But if you have the cash and the space, you can take the lessons of telling time up to a whole new level of coolness by using a grandfather clock. Not just any grandfather clock but you have to make certain to get the ones with roman numerals so the lessons can keep on going. Now you have the lead in to lessons on roman numbers, their origins, the Roman Empire and much more. You can even dive into how a grandfather clock is made from the wood, to how the metals are forged and all of the parts are assembled for a curious mind.

Looking over the variety clocks, my daughter is fond of the one pictured here. This lovely gem is one of the Howard Miller clocks that would have a home in our living room. Catching the eye in the center of the far wall would make such a statement when you walk in the front door.

For lesson plan reasons, these accentuating pieces in interior design come with a strong start on the history of the company, the inventor, and makings of the clock itself. Never thought they could be so useful did you?

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Since I am going with a theme of people engaging in criminal activity and how it relates to education, I’m going to continue with that theme.

I went to a college where there wasn’t much to do during your free time. So as per the norm, the alcohol parties were the popular choice if you weren’t old enough to make it to the street with all of the bars. For myself, I didn’t care for that scene due to other personal experiences.

What I did enjoy was expanding my knowledge and always applying it in creative ways. I did hypothesize how to make a remote controlled mashed potato catapult to launch the spuds into a tuba but I didn’t want to be expelled. Let’s just say my Music Appreciation class wasn’t that interesting to me.

But when one of my roommates was part of the Campus Cops, I learned some valuable information regarding spotlights, criminal activity and too much alcohol.

Yes, you can use spotlights and in particular a magnalight combined with a motion sensor to protect your property. As the website shows though, there are many more useful selections of spotlights to use.

Now a creative use for a magnalight is a hobby for late Friday and Saturday nights. It is called drunk shining. When a person is drunk, they have a tendency to not react too well to a sensory overload. So when drunk college students are trying to head back to the dorms, you only need to get into the proper ambush position and turn on the spotlight to trigger the information overload. Basically, you make them puke where they stand.

This tip may also be helpful to those with spouses that stay out at the bar too late at night. There definitely are enough varieties of magnalights to suit your specific needs.

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When you have the eye of a teacher especially when homeschooling, just about anything you see is fair game to turn into an educational lesson. Whether it stem from trying to identify all of the bugs you turned up while gardening with your child or studying something that catches your eye in daily life, you can make a lesson out of anything.

For example, a Bulova watch is a high end watch that has a history stretching to before my grandfather was born. Some of the highlights of reading the history of this company are names, dates and numbers that help bring up new topics of inquiry.

Here are a few examples to ponder. In 1927, Bulova honored Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic solo flight from New York to Paris. Not only did they sell out of the commemorative watch but it makes for an easy lead in question of ‘Who is Charles Lindbergh?” Anyone with a 6-8 year old knows just how curious they get with the questions.

As an exercise in math, we can take a marketing effort in 1932 called “Name the Watch” which gave out a top prize of $1000. As the article says, that is the equivalent to about $12,500 in the year 2000. What a lovely demonstration of how to mathematically figure out the average rate of inflation with such handy fixed data points.

And the final example is from the accomplishments in the year 1960 when NASA requested Bulova to bring its expertise to bear in the space program. This by itself can set off a whole new line of study surrounding the history of NASA and the space program.

There are many more lesson ideas to be found in the history of a single company. Give it a try and see what you come up with.

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When the going gets tough in the academic arena, there are a few options. You can spend more and more time trying to figure out the topic on your own. There is the option of hoping your friends know what they are doing, have the time and the skill in teaching you. Or if a topic is really over your head due to a communication gap with the teacher, challenges with how the textbook was written or any other reason, then it is time to call in the pros.

Having been a tutor in the past and still doing private tutoring off and on today, I know it is useful to parents and kids to have resources to lean back on. So if you can arrange for a private tutor to help your child at school who has a teaching degree that would be the most ideal especially if you could access the pool of tutors from online.

Club Z! does exactly that involving degreed teachers and professionals that desire to help children with the curriculum they have in front of them. One on one tutoring in a subject of need at a time of the parents’ choosing is a valuable tool to be utilized.

So if anyone who is taking a class needs that little extra help to translate something tough into an easier way of understanding, this is a website to check out.

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In another method of demonstrating how mathematics, particularly fractions, and music coexist, we can turn to a legendary performer who is coming out of retirement to perform at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Cher is coming out of retirement to perform once again but instead of going out on tour, people can go to see her. I would imagine that takes a little bit of the toll off of the body. But where does this factor into math lessons and fractions?

In a math and social studies combined with music research project, you can lead a 4-6^th grade class in discovering a load of interesting details on Cher and Caesars Palace. Start it off by dividing the class up into groups equal to the number of computers you have at your disposal for research.

One group or set of groups will be assigned the task of finding the total number of songs Cher has recorded. Then they need to follow it up how many of the individual songs became hits. From there, the group is to report to the class what fraction of her songs per album and what fraction of her songs in Cher’s entire body of work became hits. As a future lesson, you can take this data learned by the class to see if it holds true for other performers.

In another group or set of groups, they are assigned to figure out just how many seats are in Caesars Palace divided up amongst the three levels and 26 sections. They are to report to the class on the fractions of what seats are available at which level, side, center, or any of the additional parameters involved.

In the last group, they are assigned to find out how much revenue per show the production of Cher’s show can generate. Then that revenue total is to be broken down and represented as both a dollar amount and a fraction based on the variety of expenses. Then these groups are to submit their report to the class.

Finally, then comes the reward for this major research project that will incorporate Least Common Multiples, Greatest Common Factors and several other aspects of working with fractions. The reward, if your school lives close enough or is wealthy enough, would be Cher tickets at Caesars Palace. However, the more likely result would be getting a letter and fan package sent to the class from Cher’s PR group and copies of her music.

No one ever said math was boring. One just needs to spice it up to show how important it is.

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