I have had a horrific week. My six month old iMac wouldn't shut down properly. After two trips to the Apple Genius Geeks, they gave me a new hard drive. I spent a day trying to pull seven years of pictures off some server in Bangladesh. I'm using SugarSync. I had trouble with that. Some tech geek on the other side of planet couldn't help me. And then the computer still wouldn't shut down. So, I lugged the computer back to the Apple Store tonight and they gave me a new computer. I still have to deal with the data transfer tomorrow.
Through all this drama, I had Ian home with me, because he had another half day. He is perfectly content to play video games all day, but that isn't a good thing. So, we went out for pancakes for lunch and then to the Y for swimming.
When we were at the Y, I got a hysterical phone call from Jonah. He's in DC on a three day school trip. He realized that he left his dress shirt and pants at home on his bed and he had to go to a dinner/dance cruise in five minutes. Being that he's in seventh grade and looking the same as all the other kids is extremely important, this was a full scale meltdown. And, of course, it was my fault.
And with all this rain and humidity, my hair looks like this.
Apt. 11d 
It has to get better, right? I hate those days, though.
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I hope it gets better. No, it *will* get better. 🙂
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I always thought Brooks looked pretty good and not just in a looks good considering she’s evil/a journalist/British way.
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I’m sorry your computer was such a headache. I’m also sorry that Jonah forgot his dress clothes but this will be a valuable lesson for him in life, even if it will take a few year before he’ll stop blaming you (voice of motherly experience on that part).
On that note, why the heck are all of these school trips to capitals complete with a dinner/dance cruise? Even Autistic Youngest will get in on the act this year with a trip to Ottawa in conjunction with her ASD class and a boatload of teachers/EAs.
I also wonder what happens for those poor middle-class kids who live in countries where the centre of government doesn’t include a convenient river, lake or nearby ocean. What do they do on trips? Sit in drydock?
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“I also wonder what happens for those poor middle-class kids who live in countries where the centre of government doesn’t include a convenient river, lake or nearby ocean.”
There’s pretty much always water near a capital city. It’s the rule. (There must be exceptions, but I can’t think of any at the moment.)
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There’s pretty much always water near a capital city. It’s the rule.
Bismark? There’s a river in Boise, but not that you could cruise on. What about Sacramento? Carson City? When I was a kid the idea that a 7th grade class (or any school class) would go to Washington DC (or even the equivalent distance from Boise- like Salt Lake) would have been thought crazy. I think this must be a N.E. thing still. But, I suspect that he’ll forget it by the summer. If not, it’s a bad sign.
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I just checked in with him. He recovered. But these middle school trips are insane. Next year, he will go to Montreal with his French class. The Latin class has a trip to Rome. This DC trip cost $350. A woman from a nearby town said that her eighth grade daughter just went to Boston with her class. Each family had to pay $950.
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They hire a private security firm to make sure the kids stay in their rooms all night.
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Mine is going to Vancouver in two weeks, staying in a hotel, 43 5th graders & 9 teachers. Girl drama is in particular full force right now. My personal idea of sheer hell.
On the other hand, I think hair that looks like that is fabulous.
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PS: Ours aren’t allowed to take cell phones, I suspect precisely so that they can’t call us to complain about something that we can’t do anything about.
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This DC trip cost $350. A woman from a nearby town said that her eighth grade daughter just went to Boston with her class. Each family had to pay $950.
What do they do for kids whose family can’t or won’t pay? Or is it just assumed that everyone can and will? I have to admit that it seems to me unlikely to be worth the cost and trouble.
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“Girl drama is in particular full force right now. My personal idea of sheer hell.”
Oh man, me too.
I don’t get all these school trips. What a nightmare for school teachers. I could barely handle it when my AS son went on the overnight to the science museum.
Btw, when we were in Paris last summer, we were in line at the Eiffel Tower behind a group of German middle-school-aged kids, and I photobombed them. Heh. Had to keep myself amused.
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I was in high school before we traveled at all and we maybe went 100 miles. We were staying in a college dorm and one guy packed tools. We were able to remove the screen and go wandering at night. It turns out that a couple dozen 16 year old boys in a small town after midnight attract attention quickly but it also turns out that cops can’t run very far and two cops can only run in two directions.
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I’m not sure what the poor students do about these fees. It’s crazy. Maybe the PTA helps them out. I know that 2 of Jonah’s friends didn’t go, but not because they could’t afford it. They just wanted to play video games at home for three days.
It’s a dumb trip. Pretty much every parent I talk to rolls their eyes about these trips. The teachers don’t like having to go to chaperone these trips, because they have to leave their families for three days. I think that the public schools started this to compete with the private schools in the area.
This is all part of the growing privatization of public schools.
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“Bismark? There’s a river in Boise, but not that you could cruise on. What about Sacramento? Carson City?”
I was thinking national capitals–Paris, London, DC, Ottawa, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Budapest, Kiev, Warsaw, Krakow, Berlin, etc. (some of those countries have had more than one capital). It was awfully handy to have waterways for transport before modern roads.
“They hire a private security firm to make sure the kids stay in their rooms all night.”
!!!
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2 things:
We’ve also started saying no to school trips. I’ve always felt that as a family we did pretty well in terms of exposing our kids to culture, museums, concerts, travel. I don’t think they also need to go to a museum, play, concert, DC, with their class. I need that money for my kid’s music lessons and other expenses — so we just routinely say no. I wish more people would. And yes, most schools do have some sort of a fund for people whose finances won’t stretch to cover these things. I remember when our son was in kindergarten in Northern Virginia and they planned on taking everyone to the aquarium in Baltimore. They wanted 56 dollars a kid and we all thought seriously about ALL applying for financial aid in protest — There was a family in our school that had quadruplets and I can’t even begin to imagine how they came up with that dough.
On your computer issues, have you thought about keeping your stuff on a service like dropbox.com and just forgoing keeping stuff on your hard drive? I know I sound like an ad, but dropbox is free and it’s great if you don’t always work on the same computer or in the same place. We recently had to replace a computer and it didn’t matter — because all my stuff was on dropbox anyway. Most stress-free migration to new equipment I have ever experienced!
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Yeah, SugarSync is like Dropbox. i can see the data on their server, but I’m having trouble getting on my computer for some reason. I am waiting around the house for their “live chat” system to open up, so I can get some help.
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Also, I was once told by a school administrator that the reason these trips are so expensive is because of new regulations that state that anytime you travel more than X miles, on a highway, or out of state you have to rent a commercial bus with seatbelts, etc. Personally I think the rule should be that if you can’t get there by school bus, you don’t need to go. (Of course, many of our district’s school buses are in use all day long for a variety of routes — drop of high school students, double back through same neighborhoods to pic up elementary students, take morning kindergarteners home, pick up elementary students, pick up hs students, pick up sports teams — all on the same bus. When that’s the case, all field trips have to be by commercial bus because there aren’t actually any school buses available for full day or even half day excursions. Just another example of the districts cutting back on expenses and passing the expenses on to parents. I remember at one point thinking it would be interesting to write an article on “pay as you go public schools” where you actually interviewed moms in different districts as to what the minimum costs were to have a child attend that school every year. In Northern Virginia, we were routinely asked for:
1. school supplies (30 bucks per child times 3 = 90)
2. LOTS of money for gift cards for teachers for teacher appreciation etc. (25/child at Christmas and again at teacher appreciation week, plus an occasional baby shower, retirement, etc. comes out to about 200 dollars a year with three kids)
3. Items to contribute to bake sales, wrapping paper fundraiser, sports team fees, Silent Auction madness is probably another hundred bucks or two
4. field trip fees — somewhere between 200 and 1000 dollars
In addition you can spend on:
1. tutoring for classes that are taught badly in the local public school — probably around 500 dollars a year, more if you prep for GT, etc.
2. Clothes you don’t want to buy your child but feel compelled to due to peer pressure
3. expectation that your family will have a computer, working printer, magazine subscriptions, etc.
I could easily see a poor family being priced out of certain school districts, even if no formal tuition is charged
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“I’ve always felt that as a family we did pretty well in terms of exposing our kids to culture, museums, concerts, travel. I don’t think they also need to go to a museum, play, concert, DC, with their class.”
Yes! We’ve already been to DC with the kids. The only reason to send them on a school trip would be the social benefits, and fortunately, I’ve raised a misanthropic geek in my 7th grader (13 next month, Amy). So far, though, the only trips are day trips, but unfortunately I might be corralled into chaperoning one of them. This is my idea of hell, but since I have the next month free, I have very little choice, according to S.
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“This is my idea of hell, but since I have the next month free, I have very little choice, according to S.”
It’s nice she wants you around, I guess.
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Btw, has the HD crashed? If not, transfer is very easy from computer to computer. When I got my new MacBook, it took about an hour using a Firewire to transfer basically everything from laptop to laptop. I opened up my new laptop, and it was exactly the same as the old one, except with Lion. It was awesome.
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For computer issues, have you tried using Time Machine to back up to an external hard drive? One Terabyte of memory’s now less than $130. http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Essential-Portable/dp/B0049AS38I/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1337261291&sr=8-11
The kids try the “all your fault” line, but not so much recently, after suffering the consequences of poor planning. When their peers are proud of packing for themselves, teens start to think for themselves. It does happen.
Now, to get there, I had to give up silly rules such as, “you can’t wear shorts when it’s freezing/sweaters when there’s a heat wave.” If they’re uncomfortable, they’ll make better decisions next time.
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Yup, time machine = good thing. We started time-machining our main computers (the kids’ computers are still spotty on backup) after spouse had a hard crash on his un-backed up desktop computer and spend days recovering the data. He could do it, ’cause though crash was hard, but heat related, so cooling the computer down made it function for 15 minutes. He had to keep re-booting after letting the computer “settle”.
I have lots of photo and a fair amount of video so I just keep buying hard drives to keep the backups. As cranberry says, drives don’t cost that much any more.
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We like the school trips, ’cause we think it’s good for the class. Our kids travel a lot with us, but traveling with their class and teachers is something they enjoy.
I think at least some of the teachers like it, though it’s hard to tell, since it is a requirement of their job. At least one teacher (the super star science teacher) must do the 4th grade trip of her own volition (since she’s a super star, no one can make her do anything), so presumably she values the trip.
We are, though, a private school, and I do think that the good publics are competing against the perks offered at the privates, and this is one of them.
One of our privates takes all the kids to Thailand in the 8th grade.
The trip to DC, though, was a rite of passage going long back in the midwest when I grew up (though I think it was for high school, not middle, but it might have been late middle school).
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“you can’t wear shorts when it’s freezing/sweaters when there’s a heat wave.”
I suspect normal rules about temperatures and comfort do not apply to persons between 13 and 25.
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Amy:
On water near capital cities there is no large body of water near Bishkek. Lake Issyk Kul is over in the next oblast and a couple hours drive away.
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Matt:
Sacramento has two large rivers very close to it. The first is the Sacramento River and the other is the American River. Boats can cruise on both of them.
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“There’s pretty much always water near a capital city. It’s the rule. (There must be exceptions, but I can’t think of any at the moment.)”
Ulaan Baatar. Astana.
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