Backyard Badminton
the girl
Start of the Final Season
We're not the powerhouse we were a couple of years ago when the girls took the state title. But the girls love the game nonetheless.
Saturday
I spent much of the morning working on school-related issues. My honors kids have turned in their first assignment (the famed/infamous 500-word introductory letter I assign the first day of school -- "I didn't know we'd have homework our first day," some write), but it's not for a grade (they don't know that yet -- I will apply it to extra credit later), so I read it as I would anything else: for information.
After lunch, which included (for me) a finely-sliced fresh habanero from a colleague at work, I started working to fix the pressure reduction valve that I had to take out a few weeks ago due to its leaking. I thought, "This should be a quick job. Just some Teflon tape to prevent leaks from the joint between the Shark Bite fitting and the valve itself..." but I knew it wouldn't be that simple. It never is. Because the valve has 3/4 inch openings and our plumbing is 1/2 inch, I had to add a couple of couplings as well. And two of the four of the connections leaked when I put it all back together and turned on the water again. I turned off the water, pulled everything apart, and did it again, with more Teflon tape. The same thing. I tried a third time, putting an ungodly amount of tape. Finally, I got both of the leaks stopped and a third one started.
In the evening, when K and E went to mass to fulfill their Sunday obligation, I threw the bike on the rack and headed out for a quick loop at our favorite spot. It rained last night, but I didn't quite realize how much.
Part of the boardwalk -- K's favorite part of the ride -- washed out.
While I was gone, though, the Girl decided to bake. And my goodness, did she ever bake. Cupcakes topped with raspberry choclate ganache.
First Day 2024
Last year's first day -- exactly one year ago -- was a little strange. In here, I wrote it was a good day, but that was not entirely true. My two on-level classes were, in a word, hyper. Several students were immediately chatty, immediately disruptive, and there were several more students who fed into that. There was a bit of attitude at times, and while I tamped it all down quicky, it didn't seem to bode well for the rest of the year.
I was right.
Last year's eighth grade was tough. We'd heard they'd be tough from sixth-grade teachers; we'd heard they'd drive us to insanity from seventh-grade teachers; and we saw the difference immediately.
Most eighth-grade classes are pretty calm at first. Most eighth-grade students are reasonably relaxed those first days, trying not to push boundaries, trying to make a decent first impression. Those kids (rather, many of them) did not do this. And it was a harbinger of things to come.
"This year's kids are better," everyone said. We met them all today, and I would have to agree: a night-and-day difference.
One less stress.
Our kids started school with the usual excitement: the Girl is starting her senior year (how in the world is that possible?) while the Boy is starting seventh grade (how in the world is that possible?).
"Enjoy your last first day of school," I said to her, though that's not quite accurate. She's planning on going into bio-engineering, and she's already accepting/planning on getting a doctorate, so she has plenty more first days of school.
As for the Boy? A snippet of a conversation from a couple of weeks ago says it all: "You have to pay for college?! You have to pay to sit in school?!"
Nationals
Today, the Girl competed in AAU Nationals in high jump for the first time in her life, but it's the fourth or fifth time she's competed in AAU Nationals in general. It's just that before today, it had always been in volleyball.
Unlike volleyball, though, these nationals did not take place a day's drive away. Instead, they were a mere three hours away.
It was also by far the biggest track meet she's ever participated in: three high jump mats with over 50 girls participating.
How did she do? She'd say "Meh" if you asked her that question.
But she placed twelfth out of fifty-one girls.
And of course, no matter how it ended, we're all proud of her and her accomplishments this year.
Dinner
The Girl has decided she needs to be cooking more, to learn how to cook more than mac and cheese and quesadillas. She’s done chicken alfredo a couple of times, but when K asked L to cook dinner tonight and suggested she just make the tried-and-true chicken alfredo, the Girl demurred. She wanted to try something new. Something different.
Something Asian.
Long, long ago, when K and I were dating, she wanted to do the same thing — try something new, something different. She decided on something decidedly non-Polish, something from southern Europe. She chose lasagna.
Mother and daughter both chose pasta. They both had similar issues with the pasta. And in both cases, those they cooked for ate the dish with enthusiasm.
Saturday
K spoils us -- she really does. We all get up to freshly made racuchy topped with homemade blueberry preserves. Why? Because we asked for it? No -- because K just wanted to do something nice for us.
In return, L trimmed some of the hedges at the side of the house. To be honest, it wasn't really in return: K asked her, and L obliged. I'm not even sure she had any of the racuchy because got up late and ended up going out for lunch with her friend.
"But I'll gobble them up later," she assured me.
They're still in the fridge.
Still, the Girl did the trimming, and even put aside her teenager I-know-everything-why-in-the-world-are-you-explaining-this-ness and let K walk her through what she wanted.
In the afteroon, Ciocia M came for a visit (her girls -- L's and E's cousins for all intents and purposes -- are still in Polska) and we went for a walk in our favorite park.
A lovely day, in other words.
In the evening, we watch some replays of Olympic events -- beach volleyball, swimming, gymnastics, the individual time trial, and some tennis.
Friday Insanity
I've had the matchingtracksuits.com domain registered through the same company for as long as the website has existed, which is around 19 years or so. I've had the actual website hosted at a few different providers, but for the last few years, I've used Host Gator because their cloud VPS hosting is a good value for all I do online. I also have my school site hosted here (ourenglishclass.net) as well as a Moodle installation for class content (no URL provided because only students have access). I decided it's about time to move the domains to the same company that provides the hosting (it made sense to keep everything consolidated), so a week ago, I began the process of changing domain registrars for two of the three domains we have (kingary.net being the third). It finally went through today, and much to my surprise, it broke the two websites. Completely. And totally.
So I spent most of the day going through using phpMyAdmin to move all the necessary records from one MySQL database to another. One of the tables has 519,000 rows. Another table has a more modest 49,736. But the catch is this: I had to do massive search-and-replace operations on every table to make sure it would continue working when moved everything to the new database that now runs this site.
The upshot is this: while the site might not look all that different than it did 24 hours ago, what's going on under the hood is completely different. It still uses WordPress, to be sure, but it's a totally different installation in a totally different directory with a totally different database.
That was the day portion of Friday.
The evening was so much better. We took K out for her birthday dinner: she chose pho, which we all love. When we came back home, we played a family game, something we've never played before: a Polish game called Pytaki.It's likely made with younger children in mind, but the premise is as simple as can be: there's a bag of questions from which you choose a random question and then talk about it. They're questions that show you how well you know the other people (one for K was, "What is the best way to make the person on your right happy?" she answered immediately: "Cigar and whiskey.") or give you a chance to share a little about yourself ("What's your favorite movie.") Some where about family history, like "How did your parents meet?" A lovely game that we played for an hour and led to a lot of much-needed laughs.
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