mikavore's dilemma
Posted: June 23, 2007 Filed under: Book of Sand 2 Commentswhat a delight to have access to the library again! my list of books to read has grown in the past week, from about 120 to 145. I just finished neverending story and the saturdays; I’ve been reading k-pax to jarom, and we started freakonomics on the side. still plowing through crime and punishment, but I also got into omnivore’s dilemma and ender’s shadow.
it looks like it will be a great summer.
it's about prevention
Posted: June 19, 2007 Filed under: Of Mice and Men Leave a commentlast night we stopped by wal-mart to pick up a few things, and as jarom went to grab a bottle of ibuprofen I happened to see an interesting product near the pharmacy window. it said “12 drug test,” and indeed, on further reading, that is exactly what it does.
when you suspect your son or daughter (it says “loved one” on the package, so I suppose spouse or parent is fair as well) is abusing drugs, simply collect a urine sample in the provided cup. secure the lid and wait 5-10 minutes, after which you can see preliminary negative or positive results for 7 illegal and 5 prescription drugs: including marijuana, cocaine, opiates (including Heroin), methamphetamines, ecstasy, amphetamines, phencyclidine, benzodiazepine, barbiturates, methadone, tricyclic antidepressants, and oxycodone.
if results come back positive you are requested to send the sample to their lab for further analysis, though they guarantee 100% confidentiality.
I have this sneaking suspicion that it might be easier to just build a good relationship with your kids from the start, and not worry about trying to collect a urine sample for drug testing…
(I found this amusing: first check’s website states that they also make a drink check product, so you can test whether someone has slipped illicit drugs into your drink. awkward enough to do that check in the first place, but what if it comes back positive?)
psat
Posted: June 15, 2007 Filed under: All's Well That Ends Well Leave a commentthis week we started tutoring the 2 kids of jarom’s korean professor. he works with the son, sihyun, who is 10 and about to start 5th grade. I tutor the daughter, daye, who will be a junior this fall. she took the psat a few months ago and is studying to retake it in october, plus the sat next spring.
I had no idea it would be so hard to prepare someone for a test. part of it is probably due to the fact that I myself never took the psat and didn’t study at all for the sat, but a large part is because the vocabulary isn’t used in everyday speech. daye is really smart, but with english as her second language, she’s having to memorize hundreds of words just to answer the multiple choice sentence completion questions. it’s hard to make a good guess when all 5 choices are words you’ve never seen before.
the other problem is that I’m terrible at explaining what words mean. some of the words from the other day are ferocity, obsequious, and distort. when daye doesn’t know any of the synonyms for those words…it gets really complicated. luckily she’s good at memorizing and if she reads a definition enough times she’ll figure out what the word means.
I sure am glad I don’t have to take any more big standardized tests.
