Mt. Pleasant Classical Academy

What a fun day we had today, well, right after I checked on MilitaryKid to confirm that I had been dreaming that he was being beaten up, and that he was OK. Ever have a dream like that? I hate those kind, where you aren’t sure if what just happened was in your mind or in reality. Every-once in a great while I have one where I think there’s a mouse or a rat running over my bed, or in my bed. Now, I don’t need to have these dreams analyzed but just so weird, and so real. Except there was a time when I did have a mouse run over my bed, but I was in a sleeping bag, in a cave, sleeping. Probable that’s where my fear of having a mouse in my bed comes from. Of course, I have no idea where my fear that MK is being beaten up comes from. But he was fine. I could not fall back to sleep so I got up and was downstairs rearranging books at 4:30 AM. By 7AM I had listed about 100 books For Sale on a couple of my loops and tonight all but 12 of the books are sold. Ahh, I love the net for bringing buyers and sellers together.

Brutus and I went for a short walk at 7am. Only the birds were out, lots and lots of Robins. We are keeping his walks quite short these days since the Lyme Disease seems to have adversly affected his joints. If we walk him too much, say a mile which really isn’t that far, he starts limping. We did just that on Tuesday at my Dad’s so that he would be worn out and not misbehave. He limped all Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday. Yesterday he finally was walking with just a little limp so I took him for just a little walk this morning. He heeled quite nicely, wagged his tail allot, but begged to cut through the backyards to get back to our home quickly. I took him back the way we had come, and only walked about 3/4 mile. I’d rather walk 3-4 miles with him but that doesn’t look to be in his future. Such a shame to have a lame puppy at age 5m.

One of the trial events at NSO will be Geo-Caching and MK will be doing this event. The Delaware AeroSpace Education Foundation had a family day today with Delaware’s Geo-Caching Club running a booth. We headed off to the event with high hopes that someone there could teach MK all about Geo-caching. The place looked geared for little kids with the fire trucks and fire men, the book-worm book mobile, and the paint booths. I started getting worried that this was going to be geared for little kids and not help MK. Why do I worry so much? Finally we found the Geo-caching club’s booth and chatted with a couple members. They quickly oriented MK to putting latitude and longitude into his GPS, and how to use the FIND-IT button. We went outside and followed MK as he walked off to the first cache site.

The one Geo-Cacher mentioned to me; “gee, maybe we can get him to smile soon.”

“Yes, That will be a miracle. He rarely smiles but when he does you know he is really enjoying himself.”

MK found the cache, opened it, and retrieved a piece of chocolate candy from the box. As he ate the candy, the smile came across his face, and he asked; “is there another one we can find?”

He was hooked! The club had 7 stations set-up and MK traveled from one spot to the next, smiling the entire time. They weren’t all easy to find but MK really enjoyed himself. He wants us to go out and do some geo-caching soon.

While we were away ScienceKid and his SO partners for Mission Possible were at home working away on their box. Their procedure is to run the apparatus and see where one of the simple machines fail, analyze why it failed, and then rebuild that section of the MP. Today they also worked on measuring the sand timer device. At NSO the judge will tell them the total operating run time for the device, which will fall between 90 sec and 150 sec. The closer their run time is to the required run time the more points they receive. The only device they are permitted to adjust is the sand flow rate in the sand timer. WHEW, to figure that out takes quite a bit of engineering. The boys are having lots of fun, but quite frustrating to them at times. And of course, we adults have to stay out of the way since it is their project, so it is best when I just stay away so it isn’t frustrating to me too.

With being away all day we went out to dinner at our local Chinese Buffet. At the end of the meal ScienceKid opened the first of our fortune cookies:

A Family Reunion in the coming months will be a tremendous success.

Interesting. There is an upcoming family reunion however, ScienceKid and DH will not be coming since SK will need that weekend to prepare for NSO. Next, MilitaryKid opened the next fortune cookie:

In the coming month you will have tremendous success.
OK, this was getting spooky, and there was a bit from one boy wishing he had opened that cookie—as if a fortune cookie makes a difference. But then SK opened the next fortune cookie:

Believe it can happen.

He took this one and and as he stuck it in his pocket he said “I’m going to look at this often. Yep, as I’m studying for Heredity….” Starring at it he shook his head, YES. He so wants to medal in Heredity at Nationals, so wants to prove that his result at State’s did not represent his knowledge set, that he is able to be in the top 6…..

DH took the last fortune cookie and opened it:

A friend asks only for your time and not money.

That’s a keeper too. MK got my time today, all day, and it was quite enjoyable.