Egrets - We've Seen a Few

A white egret relaxes at the pond. We recently saw as many as 9 of these at time in this location.

Middle School Update
M and K are playing soccer for their respective middle school teams. M is a goalkeeper and defensive specialist.  K has played both defense and forward for his team.

M is enjoying his sax and piano lessons, plus soccer and his friends at school. But his very favorite recent event was when his dad went to his math classroom and gave a talk about binary numbers and software development as a career. The math lesson went well - I showed how the decimal number system uses powers of 10 to express numbers, and binary does the same thing, but with powers of two. I think some of the 8th graders actually understood what I was saying, and I was as pleased as any teacher when I got questions from the class. I also showed them what REALLY happens when you browse the web (that is, what data is sent back and forth from your computer to the internet) and showed them some of the Python code that M and K's class wrote last summer.

M is the goalkeeper in this picture. His shirt is a different color than his teammates' so the referee and other players know who the goalkeeper is. 

M faces out of the goal and directly into the sun.  Occupational hazard.

K is about to start a new session of tennis where he'll practice and take lessons in U of M's indoor tennis facility. It should be fun, he's looking forward to it. In addition to attending his second year of Math Olympiad, he's also giving MATHCOUNTS a try. They meet after school to talk about all kinds of math topics.

Family News
We finally made it to Frita Batidos, an Ann Arbor restaurant whose specialties are fritas (sandwiches) and batidos (shakes). We had eaten some of their food at their booth at Top of the Park in recent years, but finally sat at a picnic table in their Washington Street location. Verdict: Going Back Soon.

 I have been using a lot of my spare time to work on my class. It's about functional programming, which is a different way of approaching writing programs than I (and most other developers) are used to. It has been much more demanding on my schedule than I expected. A friend of mine from work talked me into taking it, and we're both a little dazed by the complexity and amount of work. We're no dummies, but the class is certainly stretching our knowledge to the limits.

A Few Links
Tiny things.  Very tiny.

If you were thinking of buying this musical device for me, I'll just take the cash. When I'm a millionaire, I'll buy it then.

However, if you were thinking of buying this Batmobile for me, please don't hesitate. He who hesitates is lost and doesn't have a Batmobile.

A very interesting photo diary of airships.

We Still Have Cats

Mesko and her laser eyes hang out on a lazy afternoon.

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