Sunday, August 31, 2008

Team Effort

It was a team effort last night with all members of the Team Hermitage united under a single goal. The tally for the 2008 season, Team Hermitage: 2 Visitors: 0

It began with me kicking things off, a firing of the starting gun if you will, or to put it in non-metaphoric terms, throwing the quilt over my head and shrieking, "Bat!!!" to my slumbering spouse. Having completed my only role to play in the events of the night, I scurried off the playing field and allowed the other members of Team Hermitage to step up to the plate and do what was expected of them.

As you may recall, the MVP of the last game was the Hermitage Hall of Famer Joe. Last night the MVP must be awarded jointly to IdaMae and Benjamin although Joe did have a stellar night himself. The first real blow to the opposition came as IdaMae, the gentle kindhearted canine that she is, sized up the visitor and snatched it mid-flight. Having captured the opposition, both pleased and proud of herself, she spit him out for closer inspection. This action, while sounding foolhardy to some, and could have, and in fact did, cause Team Hermitage to lose some yardage, could have been understandably be expected. Ida has never tasted nor experienced the flavor and texture of bat before.

Now, on the defense the visitor as able to regrouped during this rookie mistake of IdaMae's and flew to the sidelines to access the damage of being caught. Being a shrewd adversary the little bugger flew under the bed. It was a wise defensive play. The under regions of the bed are quiet the out-of-bounds, no-mans land. Our bed is a platform bed with a single cave-like area that runs the length of the bed. A small approximately 2'x2'x7' cave that no man, nor dog, can breach. It is an area used for storage, nothing more, nothing less, and within that storage area a fake x-mas tree is stuffed. Said stuffed x-mas tree granting the visiting player near perfect cover, thwarting any advancing attack from Team Hermitage.

Team Hermitage, now on the defense, made a vital, game winning substitution. Team Captain Joe subbed out IdaMae and replaced her with Ben. Benjamin, or "Killer", as he is affectionately known to us here, is a strong proud feline that has proven his prowess in bringing down birds and mice, and if you remember his lackluster performance in the last game, had a little something to prove to his team.

It was a hard fought battle of stealth and cunning, in which Joe and Ben, working in tandem, brought down the opposition once and for all.

Wanna see???? Scroll quickly pass the next 3 pix if you don't!




The remains of the day....ur...night.



Ya know, even though in this pic he looks sort of kitten-ish cute, and I'm kinda of wonderin' what a bat fur coat might be like (I loves my fur).....if any more of his kin show up they'll meet a similar fate. He's about the size as a large field mouse, not counting wingspan of course, 'round about 4 inches in length and a little chubbier than a mouse, a monster in my book nonetheless.

In knitting news, I've been feverishly working to complete Mr. Greenjeans for the July KAL in the Sleeves Off Buttons On group in Ravelry. The end date was yesterday, but the mods gave me a reprieve and I have until Sept 1. I'm really surprised at how long it is taking to do these sleeves. Even Joe questioned how many hours I put in on these sleeves over the last couple of days. I don't get it, but I'm nearly there now.



The sleeve length is OK (I think) so all I have to do today are the cuffs. I am beginning to wonder though if I'm going to have enough yarn left to do the front/neck band as written in the pattern. The two balls I'm using to work the sleeves are beginning to look a bit skimpy and when it's gone it's gone. The yarn here is 100% cotton reclaimed from a thrift store sweater. It was originally a solid, dark almost black, navy. After reclaiming the yarn I randomly splashed the single huge skein with bleach. Like I said, when this is gone it is gone....sigh.

Math problem update:
First off I just wanna say I love you guys and you all crack me up. As you are well aware I need no encouragement to fall head first into lunatic ramblings, but it's nice to know that at least on occasion there are people out there that appreciate the strangeness with me, or at least ponder the same weird things :o)

My niece has gotten credit for her answer to the problem. The problem was in fact an estimation/approximation word problem (duh it said "About how many...") wedged in between a slew of word problems requesting precise calculations of 3 digit numbers (addition or subtraction). The teacher's note said that she was expecting an answer of 150 (that's reasonable and what most of us thought) but would accept the answer of 151. No other explanation.

Well, it's not my battle to fight, it never was, and I'm not going to fight it now, but I'm not overly thrilled with the outcome of all this. To merely give the kid the grade just cuz her folks questioned it isn't a solution. I was hoping for something more I guess. I better standard maybe? Hoping that this teacher will proofread her work pages better in the future? Hoping that the teacher herself realized how strange the problem was? I don't know. All I know is that having been a Math and Science teacher I feel like she (the teacher) let us (other teachers) down, not to mention the students.

BTW for those of you who still need help figuring this problem out:

5 x 30 = 150

(except there was no other multiplication problems on the page)

so maybe she was looking for

30+30+30+30+30=150

(not quiet the same as all other problems that were only two 3 digits number added or subtracted from each other, but addition nevertheless)

I'm done. Crawling off my soapbox now, sorry.