About a year and a half ago, I managed to get a US Bank account overdrawn to the tune of about $1000. Yeah, I was impressed too. It was my business account for Argh WebWorks. I went in to the branch where I had opened it in order to talk to someone about how to close it and pay it off. I didn’t get the “small business specialist’s” name but his advice was simple. “Ignore it,” he said, “and it will go through internal collections, they’ll knock a bunch of fees and then send you a bill for the remainder. I asked him how much I could expect to wind up paying; he said he didn’t know. I asked him why not just hook me up as if it were a $1000 loan, and I’d make monthly payments. He said he was trying to save me money and that they had no mechanism for that sort of thing. He couldn’t give me a number for “internal collections.” Nothing.

It wouldn’t stand up anywhere- “I went into the branch and they told me to let it go through collections. No, your honor, I don’t remember the guy’s name. No, I don’t have a record of our conversation. No, he didn’t promise anything.” Yeah, that’d go really well. And I can’t deny that I owed them the money, obviously I wrote some bad checks and then fees compounded on fees and one nasty situation rolled into another one. I just wanted to shine the light of the sun on it so the mold couldn’t grow any further. The mold stopped growing on it when I told them to close the account.

So, now it’s a year and a half later, and I’ve finally made the last payment on it. It was still about $1000. Nothing was taken off, not that I believed that would happen. “Internal US Bank Collections” didn’t even bother sending me a bill, they just sold it to a collection agency. The collection agency promises that they’ll have the CheckPoint systems block taken off my records so I can open up a new account (at the credit union, thank you for asking). I’ll be checking later this week.

So yeah, don’t hire lawyers that are barred from courtrooms and don’t listen to Small Business Consultants who can’t help you.

Why yes, I am a little bitter. But not enough to claim it’s not my fault.

Living in an older house, I worry about lead. And now to learn that 85% of those kids’ drinks and snacks had lead in them — just terrific. Everything from BeechNut to TreeTop and even Trader Joes had lead in it.

I’m going to have to buy a juicer. How do you make cran-grape out of cranberries and grapes? That’s a lot of juicing.

( She’s gotten a lot better. )

Now that we’ve decided to transfer Miss B to a school without a band program and to let her stop taking band, I’ve been looking at what Ms Plank does- she’s there from an hour before school to work with a group of Jazz students. She takes them to competitions (and they place HIGHLY). She goes to the elementary “feeder” schools (where Miss B met her) and teaches kids there. She organizes concerts.

There was a guest conductor at the last concert and he reminded us that Miss B’s schools is an oasis of music here in PPS. And with PPS’s changes, budget shortfalls and redesign, I’m kind of worried about music as taught to our kids in schools.

But Miss B is going to a new school where she won’t be taught music. And after looking over all the benefits of teaching kids music (everything from improved scores in general, to improved math scores, to team-building, to humility and devotion), I’m wondering if, if I want to keep this learning going (or have Miss K learn the same things), if I should consider finding a music tutor or if I should just trust church choir to teach them these things?

and of course, if I even should worry about it. I mean, music classes?

Hard to convince myself his pain wasn’t my fault. I could have taken better care of him.

But I’m trying to remember that we had a great 10, 12 years with him. He came from the humane society, and if we had taken him back it would have been his third strike. We always said he knew this, because all he wanted to do was please us.

Sorry, can’t type; eyeballs are all sweaty.

She’s not totally convinced yet. We’ve had about five practices and two actual games. She’s playing T-ball. Both games. someone has run into her. She didn’t like having a collision. And she’s not happy about having to wrestle the other kids for the ball. I mean, one kid hits the ball, it goes wobbling and bouncing through the infield and seven of nine kids on the team run for the ball and dogpile on it.

Not big on playing their zones. That’s ok, I wasn’t either One of my biggest team-sports failings.

She gets a turn to hit the ball off the tee every inning of three innings. And then she gets to run around the bases, but she has a hard time remembering to pay attention and run around the bases when the other kids hit their ball.

The whole team, though, is funny. Like friday night, when the ball went into the outfield, and five kids all “fell over” and put their legs straight up while they were chasing it. And today, when one of the at-plate team members kept leaving his base and instead of running to the next base he tried to catch the ball (in the pack of little leaguers).

I don’t know if K is having fun, but I sure am.

Ms B’s response was “Wow. Miss B didn’t do that…” Uh, yes, honey, she did. Kindergarten for both the girls was a horrible “get out of bed” time. And isn’t really a whole lot better when Miss B’s in 7th grade. It’s why I started the rule of “If you want to be on the computer before school, you need to be dressed, washed, and ready to go.” I don’t know what I’ve done to make it so bad, but I hate getting them out of bed.

What I have done is offer to take them to school in their pyjamas. (“offer” isn’t a strong enough word… threaten.. is more like it.) I got as far as getting B buckled into the car one morning before she finally decided that I was serious.

I know that at least part of my problem is that I wake them up suddenly, then they get thrown into clothes and rushed out of the house without so much as a good morning. So that’s my goal at least this week; to give miss K some “wake up” time. Ms B sometimes wonders why I like it so much when they go to bed “early.” — I think that they don’t get enough sleep, which leads to this too.

On the plus side, I only have a few more years of dragging them kicking and screaming out of bed. We should make the most of it.

But you know something? They don’t eat the eggs, the eggs just sit, lonely, in the fridge waiting for some delicious egg salad to be made. I eat the egg salad. And the eggs. And I’ll eat the chocolate. They don’t need me to buy more chocolate, there’s almost always more in the house. Every year, we’re appreciative of the grandparents who send/deliver easter baskets. And I try to live up to what I think I “should” be doing. Well, let me tell ya, I’m not doing that any more.

I don’t know what would fill the place in our hearts where the stone rolled away from the cave where Jesus lay. Maybe Shaun of the Dead? OR some other fun zombie movie (can’t be too scary, Miss K would throw a fit). And next week I’ll make sure to pick up some Easter Candy. I hear Ms B likes the malted milk eggs.

Have a great Sunday, and try to stay at least partly dry. And watch for the risen dead.

Doesn’t she?

And don’t worry; I’ll be uploading photos as soon as I get some. Some great photos of her hitting a ball and running around in the mud.

Trying something new this year. Miss K has been signed up for t-ball, You might remember that Miss B tried baseball too and hated it. Miss K is different; she’s a different kid. She’s taking to that teeball like, um, a cat takes to tunafish. Run around? Hit a ball? She’s delighted.

I’ll have to post some pictures.

On the other hand, Miss B is thrilled that I’ve purchased tickets to Kumoricon. She thinks she’s going to sew a costume and cosplay. But if she’s going to sew a costume it’s going to be straight construction of a t-tunic and trews. Maybe some pretty trim. Cosplay; faugh.

In a semi-related thing, the girls got cheap foam swords from Michaels’ craft store and beat the snot out of each other with them. I had to take them away and show them the wrist snap and how to lunge. Now we have a broken sword and I think replacing it with boffers would be a good idea. Anyone remember the particular width of the inner pipe in a boffer construction?

“Honey, the only reason I had kids was for science fair projects. I go to Michaels’ (arts and craft supply store) and just pick up and hold the solar system model packages, and then put them back on the shelf. And I do it again with the dioramas. I just want to make science fun; and I can’t.”

Hopefully I put enough pathos into my delivery (These are real tears!!) that it sank in. I’m the guy who took three AP science courses his senior year in High School. I’ve had some fan-fricking-tastic science teachers and I loved the stuff; chemistry, biology, physics, even the geology we did for the “Natural History of Oregon” class. Ms Dexter, Mr Carlsen, Mr Sauer, I’m lookin at you. On the other hand, Mr Keupker (AP Calculus) can go jump in the Willamette.

I told her we could split up water in to H2 and O2. She thought that meant just boiling it (no). And I described how we could do it and then demonstrate that these were those specific gasses. We talked about some other science projects she could do in the two weeks she has remaining before this project is due. We talked about how to find out what her teacher is expecting, and that I wanted his rubrick to come home with her tonight.

Do you know any good science fair projects? Have any good science stories?

My favorite might be telling Peter Gunn to “hay feel this little white pellet… feel that slipperyness? (it was Sodium Hydroxide) … That’s your skin dissolving. You might want to wash that off…” … No, wait, that’s not my favorite.