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A Sink full of dirty dishes

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 12 March 2009

Hits: 2425

The sink is full of dirty dishes. I've put it on a list of things I have to do. I can't procrastinate any longer, there's no clean dishes left for me to eat off of. 

Now typically when I have things on a list I try to break the list up into managable sized chunks. In the instance of the dishes I made a little sublist that looks like this:

• Do Dishes
  
  
  •   Clean sink
  •   Run Water
    
  •   Brush teeth
  •   Go to the office and Cross off above items from list
  •   Add dishsoap
  •   Turn on Radio and listen for contest on CBC 2  
  •   Check Email
  •   Turn off water
  •   Arrange dishes beside counter
  •   Go back and add things to list that I probably forgot
  •   Cross off above items from list
    
  •   Check Email
  •   Wipe off counter
    
  •   Wash dishes

But that probably wasn't very efficient because the dishes are still there and it's been 3 days.

So I'm going to try a different technique that has served me well in the past. I'm going to make a mental map of things I need to do to get the dishes done. Now to share this with you I've done it in PhotoSoftware, which isn't nearly as glamourous as when I do it on a big piece of cardboard. When it's on cardboard it's much more colorful and I draw pictures and use things like crayons, gilded macaroni and toothpaste to illustrate my ideas. But I can't post a piece of cardboard with toothpaste and cardboard on the internet so I'm just gonna post a simplified rough outline of what my mental map to get the dishes done looks like.

Now I can see that I don't really have to do the dishes. I thought I had to do them but I have choices. I could buy a lottery ticket and go to Yemen. Or maybe I could have a banana. After I won the lottery, of course. Maybe it's all an illusion and there aren't really any dishes there after all. And the mice - always the damned mice, what would they eat if I did the dishes?

This of course proves that mental mapping is much superior to lists. I was never a very good linear thinker anyways.

Lagostina Cookware

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 11 March 2009

Hits: 2906

Safeway's called. They have my Lagostina Cookware Set.

Terrific!

I've been there before, I know the drill. This time I'm going prepared.

I pack my digital camera to document the occasion. Last time I won they weren't nearly excited enough. If I'd had more time I'd have bought some posterboard and made myself a giant novelty cheque. But I'll settle for some snapshots.

It's a bit busy so I wait at the customer service desk until they can see me and explain in excited terms how I've won the Lagostina Cookware set. The clerk congratulates me and gets me to sign off on the necessary paperwork, then goes to fetch the cookware set. My cookware set. He's not that excited but he's gonna be. When he returns I seize the opportunity to get some photos. Another clerk, rejoicing in his discomfort, volunteers to take the pictures.

I'm helping him hold it because it's kinda heavy. If you look close you can see that there's an envelope. It's a letter from Canada Safeway congratulating me for having won their cookware set. I'm saving it for a rainy day. He's sorta excited but not really. He's probably disappointed that I came to claim my prize, he was hoping that I wouldn't and he could take it home for himself. Probably he would have tried to win one for himself but the rules of the contest state that it's not open to Canada Safeway Employees or their families so he couldn't enter.

Here I am shaking his hand. He's reenacting handing me the winners envelope. He's happy I've made him so famous. Probably he thinks we're going to be on the news. I wanted to get a picture of me hugging and kissing him, but I didn't want him to think I was gay. After I get it unpacked maybe I'll invite him round for a vegetable stir fry.

Here I am jumping for joy instead of hugging him. He's holding the cookware set while I jump. It's heavy. The reason I'm sorta crouched down is that I've just landed after my big jump, but the girl didn't take the picture fast enough. We tried a few times and this was as good as it got. He was very pleasant, but it woulda been better if they'd had some cheerleaders in the background. Probably I should have brought my own.

I asked if they had any giant novelty cheques they could give me, but they didn't. Next time.

As you can tell by the pictures I'm a very enthusiastic and photogenic contest winner. 

There are no stupid children

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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Miscellany

Published: 11 March 2009

Hits: 2265

I do this volunteer thing every couple of weeks at my daughter's school. You sit and read with children, help them to practice their sight words, reading from books, it's Grade 1 through 3, half an hour spent with students from each class. It's a good way to get an interior view of how the school system is working, and gives me some idea of where my child is in relation to her peers.

You get to recognize certain regulars. Children who are behind, way behind, the rest of their class. The teachers don't send you the children that are reading at or above grade level. They send you those who are behind. And you can find reasons why.

Now there are the dry, physiological reasons some children learn to read more slowly than others. Things to do with developmental psychology, the myelan sheathing of the neurons in different areas of the brain, the development of the Angular Gyrus which is crucial for a child to process and interpret the information. But these are not the reasons that you're seeing for the most part. Now while I'm not a developmental psychologist, you don't need to be a psychologist to recognize the reasons that many of these children are behind. Just as you don't need to be a dietitian to diagnose the reasons behind obesity in a patient that eats every other meal at McDonalds.

One regular, "Sarah", a little girl, perpetually attempts to distract from the matters at hand. She wants to know what I've been up to, what's new, to talk about her family and the weather. She's developed the "Charm" dodge, deflecting the focus from reading, which she doesn't want to do, by talking about things that only a grinch or very rude person would ignore. So after parrying some deflections, and a light exchange of pleasantries, we get down to business. She's not incompetent, but her parents don't read with her at home.

This is a very common thread. Parents that don't read with their children invariably have children that can't read as well as their peers.

Then there's another, "Jason", who simply sits and refuses to read. He doesn't make eye contact, resents being sent out here to read, won't speak, gets up at several intervals to go to class and fetch "tools" to help him read, a ruler that highlights the words on the page, then refuses to read. No real dodges here, simply an out-and-out refusal to do the work. And you can imagine a home environment in which Jason calls the shots, and impotent parents accepting these behaviours. I'm a volunteer, I can only do so much, but then the teacher is as handicapped by his upbringing as I am. 

There's "Corey", who simply glances at the page and then loudly says "I don't know!", amusing, friendly, very charming. Another dodge. No effort made to sound out the words, merely a quick glance and "I don't know". It's funny, in a way, so charming and I can imagine the parents patting him on the head and letting him move on to play, the "I don't know" an acceptable, humorous excuse. Later on they will come to accept him as "Not so bright", never equating the fact that he's "Not so bright" because they never created the expectation that he would try or be bright. Charming was enough.

And there are the children that come out and try to read, grimace and do their best on the pages, some doing better than others, here there are the possibilities of developmental delays or, more often than not, parents that expect that reading is taught at schools and best left to the teachers and volunteers. It underscores a belief of mine, that there are no stupid children. But there sure are an awful lot of stupid parents.