I subscribe to the AnnArbor.com Family events newsletter to stay posted on fun things in the area that B and I could possibly make part of our schedule .. today’s newsletter included a link to a contributor post by Tammy Mayrend: Teach a child to fish for free this weekend at Washtenaw County parks. I was hooked! (Ha, ha. All these bad puns, I tell ya.) As a commenter pointed out on her post, kids under 17 can fish for free year-round .. but the best part of this weekend is that at select parks, the DNR is actually providing all the fishing equipment for free, too! Adult licensing fees are also waived for June 12-13, so it truly could be free for the family.
I tried fishing when I was seven. Visited a local metropark with the fam, caught my first fish! A whole three-incher! and was promptly told I had to throw it back in. Talk about a bummer. I’ve honestly never been fishing again, but more by chance than choice .. but B’s gone with his dad and had a blast. Maybe I can talk him into taking the B again this weekend!
Check out the other good stuff Tammy’s posted on her own blog, AnnArborMom.com. I snuck over there to take a peek, and already learned about several nearby bowling alleys that B can bowl for free at this summer!
My boss has two kids, both around B’s age, and so we share a lot of similar experiences on a daily basis. Her son actually learned of Animusic in his school’s music class. Sometimes, it’s a bit difficult to keep kids’ focus on the task at hand, let alone try and teach the basics of music theory: enter Animusic. It’s computer animated music that keeps the kids’ attention and helps them visually understand the components of music. B has a robot obsession, so he was all about watching the Starship Groove video to begin with, and then got suckered into loving the music as well. The best part, in my opinion, is that once Animusic learned how useful this was for teachers, they embraced it. They even have a section just for educators.
I’m currently taking a class on Environmental Geography from the University of Toledo to fulfill my science requirement .. and it’s turned out to be quite interesting so far! Science usually isn’t my thing, so I was rather surprised to find myself enjoying it. I found this interesting tidbit in my chapter text this weekend:
The United Nations estimated that with food growing and processing technologies of the 1990s, Earth can satisfactorily nourish about 5.5 billion healthy people if they all lived on a vegetarian diet. However, if 15% of the world diet relied on animal products, Earth’s sustainable carrying capacity for a healthy human population would be about 3.7 billion. If people derived 25% of their calories from animals, Earth could support only 2.8 billion people at a healthy level. (p.69-70, Environmental Geography)
That’s amazing! I must admit, I adore my red meat (much to my cholesterol level’s grumpiness), but this makes me think I need to forget about the delicious steaks of my past and start concentrating more on salad. All this worry about overcrowding on the planet, and how to create a more sustainable environment, and we could improve things just by eating more plants and fewer animals .. Definitely food for thought. (Ok, I couldn’t resist the pun. Sorry.)
[It seemed rather tragic to delete a post titled with the most beloved phrase in digital history, so I chose instead to edit.]
Hello, nice to meet you. My name’s Renee, and my son is B. Together, he and I rock around the clock in southeastern Michigan. We’re cool like that. He’s five, soon to be six, and I’m feeling awful old most days. It happens, they tell me. Regardless, we’re happy with our lot in life and hope to continue to be so for as long as humanly possible.
Between work, school (I _will_ get that degree! Eventually!), family and raising my son, I’ve found that it’s often a precarious balance to maintain my sanity. I don’t always get that formula right on the nose, but I like to think that our activities are at least somewhat balanced. Over time, I’ve found ways to keep myself organized, and found new ways of doing things to make everything go a bit smoother in our family, and it’s finally dawned on me that perhaps, someone, somewhere might have the same issues I do. Perhaps they’ll like my ideas. Or, perhaps I’ll be completely ignored, in which case the Interweb will just gobble up everything I say and throw it into the black hole that is the World Wide Web. Hard to say!
So. Here begins this path. Happy trails to all of us.