Monthly Archives: November 2008

Do you have a particular way you eat? Most people do. Some people eat each item completely before moving on to the next. Some people like to stir up every thing on their whole plate and make it into a big casserole and then eat it. Some people don’t like their juices to touch. Here are the two principles I ALWAYS cling to while eating, thus qualifying this trait for the second in the series of my slightly OCD tendencies.

1. Save the best for last.

I hate it when your last bite is yucky. That last bite of chicken sandwich with the gristle in it. The last piece of friend okra which happens to be a tough end piece. It kinda leaves you unhappy about what you ate if that last bite was yucky. So I do my best to make sure that the last bite of what is on my plate is going to be the most scrumptious. For example, if green peas are anywhere on my plate, I eat them all first because I don’t really like them. If it is the aforementioned chicken sandwich, I peek under the bun to try to guess where that slightly fat/gristle piece might be and eat that part first, so the last bite is yummy. I know this is silly and seems like I put way too much though to plan out my eating, but hey, it works for me.

2. Equal meat and potato!

Most meals for me consist of meat and potato or some kind of starch, maybe rice or pasta instead. And I really like the combination of meat and potatoes. So I try to eat a little of each. For example, if I am eating beef stew. Eat a bite of beef, bite of potato. Repeat. i like the combination in my mouth. And so once it gets down to like 1/4 of the meal left, I kinda like to look ahead and make sure it is going to balance out in the end. (See point #1 of having a last good bite.) So if there is too much potato to balance out correctly, I have to fix the balance early.

There you have it, now you will watch me carefully the next time I eat with you to see if I do this. But we all have funny quirks. So what kind of eater are you?

Need another gift idea other than the photo book?

You can go to the photo printing website Snapfish www.snapfish.com and make a photo calendar and use this coupon code freecal08 at check out to get a second one for free!

In fact, I have found out that sometimes, when you order stuff online, if you google the name of the place you are buying it from plus the words “coupon code”, sometimes you find one that you can enter to save some money!

One night at a friends house, we all started talking about our wierd habits that are slightly OCD. One friend likes even numbers. So much so that she can only put the radio volume knob on an even number. The hubby likes things to be even too, specifically in fours. Well I have a few OCD habits myself. And since I say “few” that means I can milk more than one blog post about them.

I was reminded of one of those habits this morning as I was folding shirts and putting socks together to put away. I cannot stand for my socks to be put away with one right side out and one inside out rolled up together! I just cannot bring myself to roll them together like that! And there is logical reason why I don’t like this. It is because when you unroll them to put them on, you have to turn the one right side out at that time so you can put it on your foot, thereby stretching it out some when you turn it. So then it is stretched out more than the other sock. They don’t feel right on your foot, and if the sock is a tight fit in the shoe, it is bunchy and that shoe feels tighter! So therefore, when I am matching socks up, if I have a bunch of identical socks, I will have a pile of right side out ones, and a pile of inside out ones, and I only match from those piles.

So…what is your OCD tendency?

It’s that time again!

1. What what mathematical terms do GCF and LCM stand for?

2. Find the GCF and LCM of 8 and 12.

Happy calculating!

Well here is how you can!

A great blog that I read is Simple Mom. She has a post telling about a cool idea. There are websites out there where you can make your own book! Her post tells you how to get a free photo book on Inkubook. She is also doing a giveaway for Free Book of any style and size. Go read her post and leave a comment to enter the giveaway.

Another website I have heard is good is Blurb. Both of these sites allow you to upload pictures to create a photo book or even text to create any kind of book you want. You can even take your blog and turn into abook to print (an especially neat idea, if say, your blog is your baby book…ahem, Desi) The prices are actually pretty reasonable. So if you need a good gift idea, you should check it out. I am in the process of trying to make a photo book on Inkubook, so I will let you know how it turns out. So far the process is pretty easy. It is uploading my photos so I can arrange them, as I type. And it saves it so you can work on it any time. Pretty cool eh?

I love hearing rain. It was so nice to hear the rain over the past few days. I don’t think I realized just how much it rained until I headed to work today. There is a big reservoir near my house, owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, and it is built to catch runoff rain water, so that it doesn’t stay in the neighborhoods and flood the homes. Well…it works! It has a park in it with a big field for soccer. That field fills up with water whenever it rains a lot and this morning not only was it full, but it overflowed the road by it that I ususally drive by. It is not a big deal really, I just had to go down a different road. But it is always kinda impressive to see that much water some place. It makes me really grateful that it is there, so that our house isn’t flooded!

We went up to our state Baptist convention on Sunday-Tuesday. We got to stay with our great friends Jon and Lydia and Caleb (who is set to enter the world outside the womb in 9 days!). It is so fun to laugh and hang out with them. We also got to see our college minister/hubby’s boss (who also was the one to perform our wedding.) It was great to catch up with him. We also rode up there with hubby’s current boss and it was great to chat with him on the way too. I was glad to go to the convention and see what went on. I had a great sub this time, unlike a while back when I was sick. She was very organized and the kids got everything pretty much done. Now however, I have lots to grade. I graded tests for several hours tonight. That is one thing about teaching. You teach all day so you don’t have time to grade during the school day, so you always end up doing it at home. So you really work many hours a day! You don’t just get to leave it at work! That is a positive thing about working retail or as a secretary, you just leave it there when you go home!

Lately we have been busy with normal things, school and church stuff. My parents came down last Friday to hang out which was fun. We had a sunday school picnic to go to. We have had a few lazy times to hang out but mostly this is a pretty busy period in our lives. People say that it speeds up when you have kids, but sometimes I can’t even imagine how it can get faster. I think part of why life feels fast sometimes is that I feel like I spend a lot of time in the car! Going to and from work and then if there is something going on after school, which there is on most nights, we have to go there in the car whether it is to church or someone’s house. But all the things we are involved in are fun, and we enjoy them. So I try to remind myself to enjoy this time of freedom to do all these things.

I am loving everyone’s responses to the “are you smarter than a sixth grader?” questions. I will try to think of some more and keep them coming. Anyone remember any topics from middle school that were particularly hard?

I love this!

Ok so PEMDAS stands for
Please : Parentheses
Excuse : Exponents
My : Multiplication
Dear : Division
Aunt : Addition
Sally : Subtraction

and Lydia, I think I may have learned Pretty Please too and the second P just stands for Powers instead of E for Exponents.
Another thing is that I have my kids circle the MD and AS because really those two go together and you do all the M and D from left to right and you do all the A and S from left to right. Its not that you do all the multiplying and then all the dividing.
LA: its interesting because you did the dividing all at once 12/2 and 4/8 and go 1/2 which worked out in the end anyway even though that is not the way I would have done it.

Here is my work:

7² – 4 + 12 ÷ 2 x 4 ÷ (5 + 3)

7² – 4 + 12 ÷ 2 x 4 ÷ 8

49 – 4 + 12 ÷ 2 x 4 ÷ 8

49 – 4 + 6 x 4 ÷ 8

49 – 4 +24 ÷ 8

49 – 4 + 3

45 + 3

48

We draw an upside down triangle around ours when we are done for those visual folks and we circle each step when we are going to do it.
So yeah, unfortunately Papa Steve might lose some points in my class.

So if you want to try again..here is another one:

23 + 10 ÷ 5 x (3² – 3) + 7 – 8

*Hint: follow PEMDAS inside the parentheses.