Wednesday, September 17, 2008

He's very sweet

Tank loves to share every bit of his homework with me after school. This is a new thing for me, as the older 2 have to be forced to show any of their classwork. It's pretty fun, and he loves to show me every single part of his work.

Today, he also shared a fun song they learned. I wanted to post it, but then he became shy. So I had to bribe him with his new favorite treat, a Klondike bar. (thanks Jill!) He'll do anything for a Klondike bar.

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Monday, September 15, 2008

Inconsistencies

Tank has been doing really well on his spelling tests lately. Well, not the challenge words.

Here's a sampling of some of the standard words from his spelling tests lately:
pen
men
ten
get
it
you
ox
box
got

pretty standard first grade material. Here's a sampling of some of the challenge words from the same tests:

sentence
enthusiastic
friend
approximately
oxygen
forgotten

Huh?? Does that make sense to you? I thought challenge words for first grade would be something with four letters like "jump" or "home". This is how he spelled them on the Monday pre-test.

sentintis
enfyoselastick
frend
appromtae
ochgyin
forgotin (pretty close!)

At least they only count as extra credit.

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What's in a name

I've decided to start using the boy's nicknames when I refer to them here in blogland. The 11yo will now be called "C-dog". The 9yo is called "Mouth". And we call the 6yo "Tank".

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Friday, September 12, 2008

122 to 49: AZ wins!

The horrible summer temperatures are starting to ease here in AZ, and going outside is no longer feels like you're a Big Mac under a heat lamp. Before I moved here, I imagined AZ as a year round death valley, with withering temperatures and never any rain.

Well, it turns out that it does rain, and hard. And it turns out that the temperatures here are wonderful most of the time. Let me prove it to you.

We moved here from a cooler climate, where there really isn't the baking heat in the summer. There is, however, a long horrible freezing winter. Which climate is "better", you ask? Lets look at that question.

How do you measure "goodness" of climate? There are a lot of factors: wind, storms, snow, rain, temperature, humidity, and so forth.

Because AZ gets such a bad rap for the heat, let me focus purely on temperature. My ideal temperature range is 65-85 degrees Fahrenheit. Colder or hotter than that is less than ideal. I like it warm during the day and cool at night. (This corresponds well to UT in July and August, and AZ in May and October. It also corresponds to Maui pretty much all year.) You may have a different "ideal" range, but let's use my range for the purposes of this discussion. For me, anything over 100 degrees, or under 32 degrees is unacceptable and very uncomfortable. This is the "horrible" range. These ranges will form boundaries for grading the temperatures in UT and AZ.

Using the magic of the internet, I was able to find the average high and low temperatures for both where I live in AZ and where I used to live in UT. These numbers are the average highs and lows for the last 20 or so years, so any individual year will vary from these numbers.

In Chart 1, you can see that the blue colored lines are the average monthly high and low temperatures for UT. The red colored lines are the average monthly high and low temperatures for AZ. The ideal temperature range is shown in green, and the horrible temperature range are shown in red. An interesting observation about the two: The difference between the average high temperatures is about 30 degrees in the winter and about 10 degrees in the summer. In other words, UT is much colder than AZ in the winter, and almost as hot in the summer months. Interesting.

Now, to measure the "goodness' of the temperatures. I decided that any time the average temperature range for a state moves into the ideal range, it will earn points for how much of the range is covered. The parts of the monthly temps that are outside the ideal range get no points. When the monthly temps enter the horrible range they get negative points. The points received equal the area of the temperature range within the ideal or horrible ranges. The most points that a month can earn is 20, as the ideal range covers 20 degrees. This means that the best possible yearly score that could be given to an area is 240.

Some examples, if the average monthly temperature range is 65-85 degrees, it matches exactly to the ideal range, and will receive a full 20 points for that month. If the temp range was 45-75, it covers 10 degrees of the ideal range, and would only receive 10 of the possible 20 points. If the range was 90-100, it would receive 0 points for that month. If the range was 100-110, it covers 10 degrees of the horrible range and would be given a score of -10. Note that a monthly temp range could include part of the ideal range and part of the horrible range.

Chart 2 shows the temperature goodness points earned by the two states for each month. Note that AZ gets pushed down hard for high temps in the summer, but UT gets creamed in the winter. This is because even in the heat of summer, the average lows in AZ still touch the ideal range. In the winter in UT, the entire average temp range is below the ideal range, and often enters the horrible range.

So, what's the final score? AZ gets 122 weather goodness points, and UT gets a meager 49. This just means that most of the time the temperatures in AZ are closer to my ideal than UT.

For comparison's sake I added Maui and Washington. (Is is really that cold in WA? I had no idea.) Maui scored an amazing 204, and WA a pathetic 30. "That's not really fair to WA", you say. "It's cooler there and people like it cool." OK, let's check that. Let's suppose that our ideal temps are cooler say 55-75 degrees. You'd need to be a polar bear to like it colder than that. I'll even lower the high "horrible" range to 95 to hurt Arizona's score (although 95 in AZ feels pretty nice).

Chart 4 shows those results. The results? Even with those preferred temperature ranges, AZ wins with 107, HI is second with 103, WA achieves an 89, and UT falls to last with 74. One sign that this "ideal" temperature range is wrong? Any test that says that Maui doesn't have the best weather is messed up. Maui is perfect.

All I'm trying to say with this post is that AZ has really wonderful weather most of the year. Don't be hatin' just cuz you don't understand.

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Thursday, September 11, 2008

It's all Jill's fault

A while back we discovered that our 11yo is left-eyed. What is "left-eyed", you ask?

It turns out that, as with hands, we tend to favor the use of one eye. Almost everyone is right-eyed. Which are you? Pretend that you are a pirate, and your lookout in the crow's nest has just sounded the alert of a heavily loaded merchant vessel. Make a pretend telescope with your hand by curling your fingers and touching your thumb. Put your (pretend) telescope up to your eye to look at the other ship for yourself. Which eye are you using? That is likely your dominant eye. It only seems to matter if you are left-eyed when it comes to rifle shooting. It can be awkward to sight down the barrel with your left eye.

The 11yo, has overcome this disability by aiming with his right eve. At one point on our Labor Day outing, hit 5 soda cans in a row at 30 feet. I think he'll be OK even with his left-eyed disability. If not, maybe he can get government assistance. At least he's not left handed, or heaven forbid, color-blind!!!

Anyway, on our Labor day trip, I discovered that Jill is left-eyed! So the 11yo must have inherited it from her!

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Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Really not a redneck

I sat down to write up a post about our labor day outing, but I noticed that Jill beat me to it. She did a much better job than I could have done, so I'll just let you read hers.

I will say that she makes me sound like Jethro from the hills, which I am not.


I do enjoy an occasional jaunt into the hills, and I do enjoy the gentlemanly art of marksmanship. I do not, however, say "get-er-done", nor do I line dance, and I am quite certain that I've never tasted road kill. I'm really not a redneck (although my neck is currently a bright shade of red from a sunburn from the trip). And even if you believe Jill's post and think that I am such a creature, look at this picture- see, she's one too! Look how much the boys have grown up in the last year!


On a related topic- I really like my Wrangler. It's so much fun. I made Jill get out and take some pictures, and even a video. Sorry, Jill! One interesting thing about pictures and video, is that hills never look as big as they actually are in real life.



Here's another good picture from the trip. Parker has been learning about erosion at school, an look! A perfect example.





Here's a video of the valley we were exploring. Isn't it beautiful? It's such a foreign beauty to what I am accustomed.

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