And yet I really want to know

I'm bipolar so sometimes I can't sleep and my mind races for an hour or so while I lay in bed. And while I was trying to fall asleep last night my mind was racing through all of the things I need to buy before school starts this year and one of them was tennis shoes for Ryan. She had 2 pairs but one got thrown away after a particularly muddy cave-exploration field trip and she's detasseling in the other so it's coated with mud, too. But then I remembered buying her another pair last fall, and therein lies my dilemma. I want to ask her, "Hey, whatever happened to the purple shoes we bought before school last year?" And I really really want the answer to be, "Oh my god, I forgot all about those! They're in the bottom of my closet; I'll just wear them again this year!"  But the answer would more likely be something I don't want to know like, "I loaned them to my irresponsible friend and she went swimming in them," or, "I stepped in gum so I threw them in the dumpster behind the school."  So the dilemma is, do I even ask her where they are? Is there any good reason for asking?

Pelican hickeys

 

Awesome band name, Pelican Hickeys. That is all.

Black Friday

It is Black Friday today, and I had an awesome time shopping with my daughter.  I did have a sad wake-up call when I thought I saw her (short blond with a bun and a brown jacket) and then Ryan walked past the lady and was about 3 inches taller.  My baby is supposed to be little!

fun with teens, part two

Ryan is 13, which is that magical age where she no longer calls me her best friend, and is simulaneously humiliated to know me. I try to temper the heartache of the first part by totally taking advantage of the second, which is why Ioften embarrass her in public on purpose. Or at least, I don't try to avoid it like I probably should.  Case in point: we were walking through Walmart and she was walking much faster than I, about ten feet ahead, desperately hoping no one would know I was with her. I assume the alternative was that some fat gray-haired lady just randomly decided to stalk this uber-cool and independant 13 year old who happened to be at Walmart by herself with no cart.  Anyway, there she was, power-walking while I practically ran to catch up, so I just had to talk to her. Loudly. About stupid stuff.

Me: Hey, let's get you a Lady Gaga poster!
Ryan: No! I don't like Lady Gaga!
Me: But honey, she was born that way! As a motorcycle handlebar. And she's overcome it! She's a role model!
Ryan: Mo-om!

8th grade

It's the first day of school.  She's in 8th grade.  I remember 8th grade.  I remember what I was doing in 8th grade.  It makes me want to home school her, remove her from society completely.  But then I remember that she is not me, she is smarter than me, and she has far less of that desperate need for approval no matter the cost that I had, and I feel better.  But still, I remember 8th grade and it scares me as a parent.

Same old Same old

This week is the local county agricultural fair.  Cow judging, carnival games and rides, fried and/or sugar coated foods, you know the drill.  Ryan has a season (5 day) pass for admission courtesy of my mother and new this year is a carnival Megapass which allows you, for the low price of $45, to ride all of the rides as much as you want. She got that by babysitting her brothers.  She's been at the fair pretty much every day, drinking lemonades, eating cheese fries, and meeting the President of The United States.  Standard small-town kid things.

The Secret Service wouldn't let me in, because there were already too many people in line to be scanned before Obama was leaving anyway.  Probably a good thing, too, since I had forgotten that my seam ripper was in my bra (that's where I keep it, okay?) and having the Secret Service bust me trying to get in to see the president with a tiny jabby pokey thin crammed in my bra probably would get me put on a list somewhere.  So I lived vicariously through Ryan, who got an autograph and photos, but no photo of her with POTUS himself.  But still, awfully cool day around here.

An exercise in futility

It is once again time for me to make up Ryan's summer reading list.  This is a list of books that I feel kids should read, which I am ensuring she will never read simply by recommending them. Because I am an idiot and I never learn.

1. For the third year in a row, The Picture Of Dorian Gray
2. For the third year in a row, 1984
3. Jennifer Government (I think she actually wanted to read this book until I recommended it)
4. Pardon Me, You're Stepping On My Eyeball
5. Slaughterhouse 5

And this year I've decided to add movies to the list too, since maybe she'll sit down and watch a film for 2 hours to get me off her back since she obviously won't read a book to accomplish it.

1. Milk
2. The Breakfast Club
3. Ferris Bueller's Day Off
4. Better Off Dead
5. The Secret Of My Success

Because it's as pointless and entertaining as this blog is

My daughter has a blog. She rarely writes anything on it because she thinks no one reads it, which may be true. But she is a gifted writer and has a way with words: the same way people say I have. She can make ordinary things seem funny. So I would like, if I may, to ask all of my readers to shoot over to her blog and read a few posts, and then comment on one or two so she knows people who never gave birth to her have read it. And a super bonus is that it's actually funny once in a while. So here's the link: http://totally-random-url.blogspot.com/

Trust me, a nozzle is worse than a bag

I really really try to get along with those people in life that I am forced to associate with. I make more concessions than I might like, and I bite my tongue a lot, stuff like that. But my daughter's principal is one that I am actually willing to have a confrontation with. To protect his identity, I will henceforth refer to him as Principal Douchenozzle, Douchenozzle, or just DN. Let me start by just painting a picture here, so you know who I'm talking about. Remember Lumbergh from Office Space? This guy doesn't look like him, but he talks just like him. "Yeah, well, um, I think we just need to work together on this and then, you know, we can decide what would be best for Ryan, okay?" And he does that thing where he says "we" when he means "I", as though whatever he is saying is so obviously right that of course you would agree with it. "Well, I mean, we want for Ryan to of course excel at the curriculum and do what it takes to make that happen." What if I don't? What if I am actually calling to tell you that I think "what it takes" is extreme and I would rather she not do it? If I agreed with everything you do, I would not have called you in the first place, would I?

It started last year when Ryan didn't do an English assignment. It was a presentation thing and she put it off until she ran out of time and didn't get it done. I had seen it coming but you know what, the kid does this shit all the time and I decided it was about time I let her fall on her face and get the zero rather than nag her for the whole last weekend to do it all. Then I got a call from her, with her teacher standing close enough that I could hear her feeding the kid lines, telling me that she hadn't done it (which I knew) and that for every day she continued to not turn it in, she would receive a detention. I called the principal to argue this because hey, the assignment wasn't done on the day it was due so give the kid the grade she earned (a zero) and maybe she'll learn that actions, or the lack of them, earn consequences. What I got was a big spiel about how second chances are important (so is learning consequences, Douchenozzle) and how about I just have her do the thing late for some credit (because she had her chance and blew it) and do I actually want my daughter to get a zero (what I want is for her to get the grades she earns, which in this case is a zero). I ended up having her whip something up quick the next day but it soured me on the principal (and that English teacher), that they would rather give a kid a detention every single day than give her the grade she earned, even when the parent called to request the grade. (Remind me someday to do a post on why I get to sick of second chances.)

So then fast forward to a couple weeks ago. It was cold. Really cold, and it wasn't getting any warmer. The projected high for the day was five, with a low of -10. The bottom of the local TV channels was a ticker tape of school closings and delays, but not our town, never our town. I kept checking the school website, too, right up until I went to bed, and no closing or delay. While browsing around on the site, I found the district policy on adverse weather conditions and it said that even if school is open, if a parent feels the weather is too bad they can choose to keep their child home and the absence will be excused and homework will be accepted late. I told Tom that if I didn't get a text alert on my phone of a delay I was going to call her off. The next morning, I called her off. I left a voice mail at 6:00 a.m. saying it was too cold and I was keeping Ryan home. I got a call at 9:00 from good old Principal DN telling me that Ryan's absence was going to be unexcused since she wasn't sick. I told him the district website said it was okay to keep a kid home for weather and he asked where. Of course, I couldn't remember where I'd found it, and it wasn't in the 'absences' part of the handbook so he didn't believe me. Furthermore, he said that if that was the policy, he was going to have to see about changing it. When I got off the phone, nothing was resolved and I still couldn't find the paragraph I knew I'd read just the night before. So I called the district superintendent, explained my problem to her, and she found the passage for me and promised to call DN and tell him about it. I thanked her and emailed him the link myself, just for good measure. But a few hours later, after cooling down a little, I realized that was had really bothered me was that he didn't even know the policy, and he was the one charged with enforcing it. I had to go over his head to his boss to mount my own defense and find evidence. And on top of that, the asshole had just assumed he had the authority to make up rules as he went along. He didn't think a parent should be able to supersede the district's decision to stay open, so he was deeming it an unexcused absence. I really hadn't occurred to him that there could possibly be any rule out there stopping him form doing that. His power was, in his mind, absolute. So I fired off an email to the superintendent, and I CCed DN, thanking her for her help and reiterating who awful it was to have to go to such lengths to prove my case just to give my kid a chance to get credit for her homework, both what was due and what was assigned that day. And I also slipped in there how disappointed I was that even after being proved wrong, he still hadn't called to apologize, and I suggested he might benefit from some more training in school policies and in dealing with parents. When he called to apologize, I let it go to voicemail, so as not to dig myself a hole.

So, my most recent beef with DN is over the school dress code. I have read the thing 3 times just today and I know what it says and what the rules are, and nowhere does it mention pajama pants, lounge pants, or elastic waist cotton, flannel, or fleece pants. And yet, my daughter tells me that she can't wear several pairs of her pants to school because the principal says they violate the dress code. So I sent an email asking him to explain to me why she thinks this, since I have read the dress code and they don't violate anything. I can't wait to see what the answer is, or to hear how he justifies trying to outrank the district rules with his own personal and arbitrary preferences. And don't think I'm above using the phrase "what you personally think 12 year old girls look good in". For the record, Ryan has worn paint stained sweat pants to school and had no problem. The pants he objected to were Grandma Pants with pictures of dogs on them. Straight-leg fleece pants with an elastic waist and drawstring, just like the Hanes sweats she's been wearing since Christmas, but in a patterned double-sided fleece instead of black one-sided fleece.

Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope

I've said this here before but I have (apparently) some new readers so I'll explain again. When Ryan gets in trouble, real trouble rather than just little trouble (lying vs getting home late for instance), she gets assigned papers. This happens roughly once a year but I anticipate it happening more often as the rebellious teen years show up. I try to make the paper topic match the crime, but sometimes it's hard. Lying to a teacher in 3rd grade got her a paper on Watergate, for instance. But for not getting her homework done, I drew a blank. So here is, in its entirety, her paper on a giant telescope. For what it's worth, I don't understand a word of it.

Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope

By Ryan Tillman

The Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope is a space observatory being used to perform gamma ray astronomy observations from low Earth orbit. This report will cover the objectives, stages, discoveries, equipment, and general information of this research mission.

The main objective of this mission is to study the black hole jets aimed directly at Earth to find out whether they are composed of a combination of electrons and positrons or only protons. More objectives are: study gamma ray bursts with an energy range several times stronger than ever before so scientists can understand them better; study younger, more energetic pulsars, or highly magnetized, rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation, in the Milky Way than ever before so as to broaden our understanding of stars; study the pulsed emissions of magnetospheres, or the magnetic fields around celestial bodies, so as to possibly solve how they are produced; study how pulsars generate winds of interstellar particles; provide new data to help improve upon existing theoretical models of our own galaxy; study whether ordinary galaxies are responsible for gamma ray background radiation. The potential for a huge discovery awaits if ordinary sources are determined to be irresponsible, in which case the cause may be anything from self-annihilating dark matter to entirely new chain reactions among interstellar particles that have yet to be conceived.

On March 4, 2008, the spacecraft arrived at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida. On June 4, 2008, after many previous delays, it was determined that Fermi would launch around June 11, as the last delays resulted from the need to replace the Flight Termination System batteries. Fermi launched successfully on June 11, 2008, departing from pad B at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Space Launch Complex 17, and the spacecraft separated from its carrier rocket about 75 minutes afterward. Fermi currently resides in a low-Earth orbit at an altitude of 340 miles at an inclination of about 29 degrees.

The first major discovery came when the telescope discovered a pulsar in the CTA 1 supernova remnant that appeared to emit radiation in the gamma ray bands only, an unusual trait for its kind. This new pulsar sweeps the earth every 317 milliseconds at a distance of around 4,600 light years. Another important discovery came in September 2008, when the gamma ray burst GRB 080916C in the constellation Carina was recorded by the Fermi telescope. This burst is noted as having “The largest apparent energy release yet measured.” The explosion had the power of about 9,000 ordinary supernovae, and the relativistic jet of material ejected in the blast must have moved at a minimum of 99.9999% the speed of light. Overall, GRB 080916C had “the greatest total energy, the fastest motions, and the highest-energy initial emissions” ever seen.

Another round of discoveries came in 2010. In February 2010, it was announced that Fermi had determined that supernova remnants act as enormous accelerators for cosmic particles. This determination fulfills one of the stated objectives for this project. In March 2010, it was announced that active galactic nuclei are not responsible for most gamma ray background radiation. Though active galactic nuclei do produce some of the gamma ray radiation detected here on Earth, less than 30% originates from these sources. The search now is to locate the sources of the remaining 70% or so of all gamma rays detected. Possibilities include star forming galaxies, galactic mergers, and yet-to-be explained dark matter interactions. In November 2010, it was announced that two gamma ray and x-ray bubbles were detected around the Milky Way galaxy. The bubbles extend about 25,000 light years above and below the center of the galaxy. The galaxy's diffuse gamma ray fog hampered prior observations, but the discovery team worked around this problem.

Two important pieces of equipment are the Gamma ray Burst Monitor and the scintillators. The Gamma ray Burst Monitor detects sudden flares of gamma rays produced by gamma ray bursts and solar flares. The Gamma ray Burst Monitor results show that gamma rays and antimatter particles, or positrons, can be generated in powerful thunderstorms. The spacecraft's scintillators, or photon energy detectors, are on the sides of the spacecraft to view all of the sky which is not blocked by the earth. The design is optimal for good resolution in time and photon energy.

Another important piece of equipment is the Large Area Telescope, or LAT, which detects individual gamma rays using technology similar to that used in terrestrial particle accelerators. In the LAT, photons hit thin metal sheets, convert to electron-positron pairs, and pass through interleaved layers of silicon microstrip detectors, causing ionization, which produces tiny pulses of electric charge. Researchers can combine information from several layers of this tracker to determine the path of the particles. After passing through the tracker, particles enter the calorimeter, which consists of a stack of caesium iodide scintillator crystals, to measure the total energy of the particles. The LAT's field of view is large, consisting of about 20% of the sky. The resolution of its images is modest by astronomical standards, a few arc minutes for the highest-energy photons and about 3 degrees at 100 MeV. The LAT is a bigger, better successor to the EGRET instrument on NASA's Compton Gamma Ray Observatory satellite in the 1990s. Several countries produced the components of the LAT, sending the parts for assembly at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The participating institutions were:

U.S. Team institutions

1. Stanford University, Physics Department, Fermi group & Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory
2. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Particle Astrophysics group
3. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Astrophysics Science Division
4. U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, High Energy Space Environment (HESE) branch
5. Ohio State University, Physics Department
6. University of California, Santa Cruz, Physics Department and Institute for Particle Physics
7. Sonoma State University, Department of Physics and Astronomy
8. University of Washington
9. Texas A&M University-Kingsville

German team institution (in German, of course)

1. Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Theoretische Physik IV: Theoretische Weltraum- und Astrophysik

Japanese team institutions

1. Japan Fermi Collaboration
2. University of Tokyo
3. Tokyo Institute of Technology
4. Institute for Cosmic Ray Research
5. Institute for Space and Astronautical Science
6. Hiroshima University

Italian team institutions

1. Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN)
2. Italian Space Agency
3. Istituto di Fisica Cosmica, Milano, CNR
4. INFN and the Universities of: Bari, Padova, Perugia, Pisa, Rome Tor Vergata, Trieste, and Udine

French team institutions

1. Service d'Astrophysique, CEA DAPNIA, CEA Saclay
2. Centre National d'Études Spatiales
3. Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules, IN2P3
4. Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet de l'École Polytechnique
5. Centre d'Études nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan
6. Laboratoire de Physique Théorique et Astroparticules, Montpellier

Swedish team institutions

1. Royal Institute of Technology
2. Stockholm University

Everything here, and a little bit more that won't fit on 3 pages, went into the building, maintaining, and fame of this marvelous spacecraft. I had to type a whole lot of French that I don't understand for that last part. Well, since I guess I'm doing the conclusion, I should do conclusiony stuff. This report listed the objectives, stages, discoveries, and equipment of this research mission. Bye!!!!!!!