Learning is Not an Option

Here's a screen capture from a letter sent home with my nephew last October:

Here's a screen capture from a letter sent home with my niece, last week:

And here is an open letter to the principal of Camerado Springs Middle School:

Dear Ms. Enns,


Though I do not currently live within your school district, I am a concerned parent. Not just concerned for my own children, but for all children receiving public education.

It came to my attention some time ago that you have a “Solutions” program which is geared towards ensuring students are getting their homework done. This is a fine plan.

The problem is that I was shown a copy of the Solutions letter that students bring home to their parents. A letter that states, “At Camerado Springs Middle School we believe that learning is not an option.”

Excuse me as I pause to restate: “Learning is not an option.”

When it’s said that something is “not an option” what is implied is that there are other options, but such-and-such is not one of them. Here are some examples:

• Failure is not an option.
• Skipping your bath is not an option.
• Texting while driving is not an option.

Nobody I know who speaks English as a native language would ever confuse any of the above statements as meaning:

• Failure is a must.
• Skipping your bath is a must.
• Texting while driving is a must.

And yet, the faculty of your school would have parents believe that “learning is not an option” means “learning is a must,” in defiance to conventional English as shown above. Should parents not expect a school - entrusted with providing a solid education to their children - to be capable of making the subtle, yet powerful, distinction between “not an option” and “not optional?”

It is a simple enough mistake, and therefore easily overlooked, and easily allowed to slide. Fortunately it is also easy to correct. I would not be writing this email, if not for the fact that this particular problem was brought to my attention by a parent of a child at your school about a year ago. This parent contacted the school at that time and discussed the nuance at length with someone I had assumed to have been the principal, and who gave a shoddy explanation defending the wording.

Now that a year has passed, another of this parent’s children has brought home a Solutions letter with the identical wording.

Perhaps the faculty of Camerado Springs Middle School does not believe that correcting their mistakes is an option.

I hope I am wrong.

An Observation

I have an observation about restrooms in general, and the one at work specifically: Men’s room air fresheners should absolutely not smell flowery or fruity. In fact I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they shouldn’t smell anything like food.

When I walk into the bathroom, the last thing I want to associate food with is number 2. I know it is just processed food, but I don’t care. When the two smells intermix it’s disgusting, truly and horribly. In fact, I think men’s rooms should smell like wood chips. There’s nothing quite like squatting in the woods, and men - more than women, I think - are comfortable with it.

In fact, I think a lot of guys would be comfortable with a restroom that had no toilets at all. Just a pile of wood chips along one wall to pee on, urinal style. And in each stall a pile of chips for covering nastier business. Of course, you’d probably have to pay the janitor a whole lot more money to sweep it out, but how much would you save in building design, plumbing, water costs, etc. It might be worth it. If not for the rampant spread of disease you could expect.

Well that’s my rant for today.

Work has the citrus kind, by the way. Ew.

Pose Face Contest - Who Looks Like They Are In More Pain?

To be fair, this is the worst of Tammy's pose-face.  Usually it's just unnatural, not actually painful-looking.






But her natural smile is, as always, perfect:

Now, to prepare my funeral arrangements for when Tammy sees this blog post.

"Cordelia" ... No, really... It says Cordelia!

Two days ago, I was spending some much-needed quality time with my princess.  She had placed a couple of magnetic letters on her easel (gift from Uncle Chad and Aunt Patti last Christmas), and wanted me to help her write them on the marker board.

Because the easel is sized for a child, because I'm not a child,  because my knees don't make the best feet, and because the spoiled little angel also received a Crayola writing desk (complete with a marker-board top) from her daddy for Christmas last year, I was able to convince her to come practice on the table.

After a few attempts at the two letters she brought over with her (S and T), Tammy and I were able to convince her to try some other letters, and even to write her name.

With just a little coaching: "C looks like this..." and "D looks like a long up-and-down line with an O touching it." and "an L is just a long line that goes up and down." etc.

In short order we had this:

Oh... one more thing.  The last blog, about the parade, I forgot to mention:  We were on TV.  Apparently we were either perfectly placed, or the cameras thought Cordy was cute enough that nobody would notice the bald fat guy towing her along the parade route, because we got center stage. Yep.  We're famous.

Days of '47 Youth Parade

The West Jordan East Stake was asked to participate in the Day's of '47 Youth Parade this year.  Our ward happens to be in the WJES, so we had a float in the parade:

The theme was "Bee a Helping Hand in Service" (I think...).  On the front of the float, invisible to all but the most superhuman of eyes is a Pennies By the Inch collection jar.

Anyway, I had nothing to do with this float, so don't start commenting on what a great job I did.  It was a whole bunch of other people with more talent and skill (and patience) than I could possibly lay claim to.

The reason why I mention this particular parade is because one very special little girl has a mommy who is way good at finding ways to give said little girl wonderful, memorable experiences.  The daddy in this tale wants the little girl to have fun experiences, but is often too lazy, unmotivated, or just plain grumpy to actually seek them out or jump at the chance.

Therefore, the wonderful mommy went out of her way to make sure the special little girl was prepared, dressed and present the morning of the parade.

The daddy who, at the time, has never really found any point to parades, and who would have been extremely pleased to be able to sleep in on a Saturday morning in July, was also prepared, dressed and present the morning of the parade.

The mommy and daddy each had a health concern regarding walking a mile in 97º weather.  Mommy's asthma had been acting up, and daddy's foot was still extremely tender from recent surgery.  It was determined that daddy would be the parade walker, while mommy watched with her family from the sidelines.

As you can see, the special little girl was lucky enough to get to ride in a wagon for the mile-long walk along 500 south.  And she was pretty happy to be there.  Mostly... but we won't focus on the less happy moments waiting for the parade to finally begin. 

I know I've mentioned my daughter's awful pose-face before.  But honestly, I just can't mention it enough...  I think that maybe subconsciously I might hope that if I talk about it enough, she'll become so self-conscious that she'll spend hours staring in the mirror practicing her smile so that it doesn't look SO INCREDIBLY FORCED AND UNNATURAL.

Yes, I'm a terrible, horrible father.  No need to point that out to me.

It's one of the reasons you will often see Cordelia sticking her tongue out in pictures.  If I can't get her to smile somewhat naturally long enough to snatch a photo of it, I make her stick out her tongue.  It's acceptable among children, so I encourage it.  Generally, I try to catch her in candid photos, as that's the best way to view any person, in my opinion.

However, sometimes there is nothing for it, but to have a completely unnatural, forced photo-op.  Like when you get to be in a parade and you want to have memories of it.  And when somebody decides that it's time for a group pic:

Back: J. Herman, B. Glazier, C. Sorensen, J. Sorensen
Center: S. Herman, A. Glazier, O. Sorensen, T. Dahl
Front: Cordelia "Pose-Face" Casper

Updated Blog *NEW*

You'd think that a guy who was basically unemployed for 2 months with nothing better to do than sit at the computer all day applying for jobs online would have been able to find 15 minutes every few days to update his blog.

You'd be wrong.  Or actually, you'd be right, he would have been able to.  But he didn't.

Anyway, my foot is well on the mend.  The last of the scab fell off two days ago.  It's on the floor here somewhere... unless the dog ate it.  Never mind.

So moving past that, I have a hoard of pictures to post and some stories to go along with them.  But since I don't really want to associate them directly with my foot-scab story, I'll add them separately.

Not For the Faint Hearted

Due to popular demand... Ok, so I just really wanted to do it. But I really did get one request... from a girl, no less. And she's pregnant, at that.

So here they are. Some really gross pictures of my slowly recovering foot.

Please note: These pics were taken just minutes before this post. As of today, it's been 2 weeks since the surgery. Ignore the gross orange toe nails... the orange is left-over iodine or whatever it is they use to sterilize the area. I haven't really been able to wash the immediate area very thoroughly due to... um... pain and stuff.

And also ignore how ugly my feet are. Very few people have pretty feet. I'm not one of them.

Oh yeah... don't forget to "Click to Enlarge."  It's important if you want to get the full gruesome detail.