Kasia Lyrics

The title will probably frustrate googlers looking for that Polish singer, but I wanted to jot down about Kasia's singing to me last night before I forget... I find that my blog misses too many of the big events in our lives because we are too busy going through said events, and then I miss the trivial stuff because I feel I ought to write up the big stuff first, which I never get around to, so everything gets missed.....

Anyway, while putting Kasia, our 2.5 year old, to bed last night, she started singing to me -- largely to forestall my signing to her, I suspect, but that is another story -- I was vastly entertained to hear her rendition of that old classic:

Bad sheep,
Bad sheep,
Bad sheep,
Bad sheep,
Have you any fluff?

This was followed by a rousing rendition of

Twinkle twinkle little star
How I know I know I know

which either indicates that she is a child with a high degree of certainty, or an odd attraction to existentialism.

Later in the evening, when I was trying to get her to lie down and actually go to sleep, as opposed to merely being in bed, I told her, "Kasia, you can't go to sleep if you keep talking to yourself like that!" to which she replied, "I'm sorry Daddy," and then proceeded to continue her self dialog in a whisper so as not to disturb herself by talking too loudly....

Which all goes to show that we say and what our kids hear may not have a lot of overlap.

But Kasia's speech has exploded since she had her tonsils out July 20th. Kasia spoke very little before that, to the point that I was becoming a bit concerned, especially in comparison to Tigana who was taking legal briefs at the same age. But we had a lot of trouble understanding Kasia, and it now appears that after saying the same thing four or five times without our getting it, she simply gave up and went back to pointing and speaking in monosyllabic grunts. Turns out there was nothing wrong with her speech, just that her adnoids etc were making her too nasal to understand, and once removed, her speech is suddenly significantly clearer, so that she now considers it worth her while to speak in 600 word monologue. It's like a switch has been thrown and all that speech that was trapped insider her is now able to flow out. Almost worth the operation alone, even if it doesn't completely cure the apnia...

Tigana learns about Meteghan

has shown up in Google already, but ranked quite low -- page 11 for "Meteghan" and page 13 for "Meteghan Nova Scotia" and page 8 for "Acadians". I'm not sure teachers will persevere through pages of houses for sale listings or classified ad pages to find my curriculum resource.

It does a little better on Yahoo --Page 5 (#41) for "Meteghan"; but then only #70 for "Acadians".

Hopefully, the site will rise as social studies sites start to list it and teachers click on it enough to increase traffic so Google and Yahoo promote it, so that more teachers find it, and so allowing the site to slowly spiral up. But feel free to link to it in your blogs etc to strt driving it up now....

Mary's article in Human Relations

And in other news, Mary's article "Cold War, chilly climate: Exploring the roots of gendered discourse in organization and management theory" in volume 59 #5 of Human Relations, pages 695-720 is available on the web from Sage. It is essentially one chapter from her dissertation, so gives one a good feel for what she has been doing with her life these last couple of years. (I mean, besides raising a family and holding down a full time teaching position here at the UofL.)

How I spent my summer vacation

As mentioned earlier, Mary's graduation from St. Mary's took us to Halifax in May, which meant taking Tigana out of school. So Mary came up with the brilliant idea that as long as we were in Nova Scotia, we could visit the town of Meteghan, which is one focus of the Grade 2 Social Studies Curriculum, thus enriching Tigana's school experience and at least partially compensating for the fact that she was missing a week of school. Being the Runte Family, we sometimes get carried away, and the following website was the curriculum resource that resulted from our visit. (Meteghan was just added to the provincial curriculum last year and a lot of Grade 2 teachers were left scrambling trying to find resources. Well, hope this helps!)

Tigana learns about the Acadians

I'd be keen to hear your feedback and or suggestions for improvement. Feel free to link to it in your own blogs so that I can drive it up in the Google listings under "Meteghan" or "Acadians".

Quote of the day

"People tell you what you want to hear, long before you hear what they want to say." (Keith Fenske, May 2005)

Ten Commandments

Here is a great little video clip exposing hypocrisy of American religious right.....
http://youtube.com/watch?v=veIU0Jwu54w

Speaking of Airports

I'm writing a trip report on our journeys to Montreal, Halifax, Meteghan, Calgary and Banff over the past month or so, but it has to wait until I can get my Garageband files to work. In the meantime, however, I would like to relate one minor incident that pretty well sums up life with a 2 and a half year old:

We are in Halifax airport. Mary and Tigana have gone off in search of Star Bucks; Kasia and I have settled into one of the three play areas thoughtfully provided by the airport authority in the departure lounge. Kasia climbs to the top of the Fisher-Price treehouse, looks out at the vast crowd awaiting for their various flights to be announced, and cries out at the top of her lungs, "F***, Dad! F***, F*** F***."

Somewhat taken aback to discover Kasia has added the F*** word to her vocabulary, I sweep her into my arms and ask what is the matter.

"F***, Dad, F***!

"Yes, well, um, can you use another word and tell Daddy what is wrong?"

"F***, Dad! Put me down!"

Um, Kasia, I can't see that there is anything wrong, and you keep using that word--"

"F***! Put me down! I want Mommy! F***! Mommy, help! F***!"

It begins to occur to me, that to the crowd of onlookers now starring in our direction, it looks very much like some white-haired guy (clearly too old to be this child's parent) is attempting to carry off a toddler who is swearing and calling for its Mommy, and that this could easily be misconstrued; at a minimum, I am a bad parent who has taught his kid how to swear colourfully and very loudly. I put Kasia down.

She immediately treks back to the Fisher-Price Treehouse and points at its plastic roots. "F***, Daddy, F***!"

I bend over, and detect, molded into the giant plastic roots of the giant plastic tree, a plastic frog.

"Oh, FROG!" You're trying to say, FROG!" I explain to Kasia -- and every passanger within a hundred foot radius --"the word is FROG!"

"That's right Daddy, F***!"


Next time I hit my thumb with the hammer, or otherwise require an expletive, I think I'll yell out "Frooooggggy!"

Drunk Pilots

Okay, this is very funny....in a completely scary kind of way.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/115499/drunk_airline_pilots/

V for Vendetta Satire

I have to admit that I found this movie trailer pretty funny...

Photoblog

Since getting a camera phone in February, I've taken a few more spontaneous shots than one would have in the old days of having to lug a camera around. One always has one's cell, so one ends up getting more of those Kodak moments... though, admittedly, the quality is closer to the old box cameras than to a typical digital camera....

Anyway, here are a few of better shots I finally got around to downloading....

Tigana in local playground.

Tigana Studying

Kasia and Mom

Numerological Note

From Sara J. Gottlieb on the Wocka-wocka joke list comes word that "tomorrow morning, Wednesday, at two minutes and three seconds after1:00 In the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. That won't ever happen again !"

I wonder how one should celebrate this historic moment?

Portia

One of our two dogs, Portia, age 15, died Friday of pancreatic cancer. She can be seen here earlier in the day saying goodbye to Kasia.

About three or four weeks earlier Portia had suddenly started yelping in pain one evening, and I had taken her into the vet after hours. The vet diagnosed a pancreatic attack, gave her painkillers, and sent us home, but had me bring Portia back the next morning for tests. By that afternoon they had found a very large cancer in her pancreas and as tactfully as possible told us that the prognosis was not good. She explained that dogs will routinely conceal health problems from the rest of the pack as long as they are able, so there was really nothing to be done by that point. Nevertheless, we had held out some hope that with pain medication and a controlled diet she might enjoy some quality of life for at least a few months, but it was not to be. It quickly became obvious, particularly at night, that Portia was suffering terribly. With pain medication she would rally for an hour or two each day to bounce around in public something like her old self, but then would tire, curl up in a ball, and spend the rest of the day whimpering. I made the decision to have her put down sooner rather than later, and Mary reluctantly went along.

Telling Tigana was difficult, but at 8 years old this is already a kid who does not want things sugar coated. So Mary explained that we were going to have to help end Portia’s life because she was suffering, and resisted the temptation of saying that things like she was being “put to sleep “or as one of our friends did with a younger child, say that we had sent her to ‘live on the farm’. Tigana was tearful, but brave, and accepted that it was for the best.

Telling Kasia was a different matter, since we were not sure how much a two year old could understand. We were still debating the best approach when Tigana took the matter out of our hands. As Tigana and I picked Kasia up from Daycare, the following dialog was exchanged in the back seat:
Tigana: “You know Portia was sick?”
Kasia: “Portia sick?”
Tigana: “Very sick.”
Kasia: “Portia very sick?”
Tigana: “So they decided to kill her”
Kasia: “They killed Portia?”
Tigana: “She was sick, so they had to kill her.”
Kasia: “They killed Portia?!”
Tigana: “She was sick, so they killed her.”

Did I mention that Kasia currently has a bad cold and that she has just learned to say “sick” when she feels unwell and wants medicine? That she had in fact been saying “I sick” all that day because she wanted to stay home rather than go to daycare, but that we had taken her in anyway in order to deal with Portia?

Naturally, when I arrived home with Kasia, the first thing Mary asks her (in a depressed about Portia tone, at that) is, “How are you, Kasia? Are you still feeling sick?”

Kasia: “No.” *Cough* *Cough* “Not sick!”

Black humour notwithstanding, losing Portia has been hard, particularly on Mary. I find that many of our ingrained daily routines remind us of Portia’s absence. For example, Portia had the distinctly odd habit of eating anything metal (no vet was ever able to explain or address this obsession) so we had gotten into the habit of removing anything with metal from doggie reach. How often in a day we would bend down to retrieve a paper clip or pin or baby clothes with snaps or etc only became obvious to us now that we catch ourselves in mid motion and suddenly realize it is no longer necessary….

Since Pooka (our other canine) is a year older than Portia, and getting slower and grumpier every day, we are also having to face that he too has been hiding his decline from the rest of us. He is nearly completely blind, and increasingly deaf. But neither Mary nor I can deal with the thought of anything happening to him. Portia was our dog -- but Pooka is an old soul and, well, a pooka and no mere dog. Pooka has this profound wisdom about him, in contrast to Portia who as clearly just a dog, and not a particularly bright one. (During our Wake for Portia, Tigana remembered her by imitating a dog walking repeatedly into walls, which is a sadly accurate portrayal.) Pooka clearly understood that Portia was dying, and took to bringing her treats in her last days, though she had never been a good companion for him. He must be relieved not to have her constantly attempting to assert dominance over him in every action, but he is also equally clearly missing her.

Hoax Web Page Reaches 121

My hoax web page has moved up in the international (American) ratings to 121 out of over 300,000 entries for "Grammar check"; it is holding steady in fourth place for pages from Canada.

Hoax Web Page Update

Well, the hoax web page experiments proceeds apace! As of today, the hoax page is the 5th web site out of 9300 listed under "grammar check" if one clicks on the "pages from Canada button"; it comes in at about 160 out of 313,000 sites if one includes the whole Google www. Not bad for a one-page piece of nonsense.

Hoax Web Page

Well, after letting it sit for awhile (Reading Week, specifically, since the class this is for did not meet) I have checked today to see how my hoax web page is fairing in Google. I was pleased to see that it was listed by Google (Google seems to find any page I post within about 10 days, which is fairly impressive!) and that it has started on the charts at 219 out of 988 pages for "Grammar Check" with the "pages in Canada" button checked (It did not make it into the top 900 of the 310000 web pages without the "pages from Canada" button.) I assume that its relatively high opening is based at least partly on (a) my using meta tags to correctly identify the content to the search engine; and (b) the fact that it is a current page. Now, the class exercise will be to see if we can get it to climb in the ratings by creating multiple links to it. I will have all my students start a blog (or use their current blog if they have one) to comment on the page and link to it, thus convincing Google that my page is getting references. Of course the point is to demonstrate to the class (a) how easy it is to post a page and have it show up, no matter how rubbishy the contents; (b) how search engine optimization strategies can help improve one's rankings; and (c) illustrate some of the lesser black hat tricks to move it up.

So, anyone reading this, if you could be so good as to add a link in your blog to http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/research/surveyresults.htm and either email me or comment using the comment function to tell me that you have done so, I will track how many links lead to how big a rise in the hoax page ranking.

(The hoax page also shows up in Alltheweb, KillerInfo, Answers.com, Kartoo, but none of the others so far... And perhaps significantly, it doesn't show up in Google Scholar.)