Early Morning Random Musings

1. RE: Asian Carp as an Invasive Species
The article linked below is the announcement of a winner in the competition called "Carp Tank". Apparently, there is a species of fish known as Asian Carp that... "are now only about 50 miles away from the Great Lake. Scientists are concerned that the voracious fish would out-compete native and desired Great Lakes fish species, causing an ecological and economic calamity."
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/03/27/invasive-asian-carp-innovators-carp-tank-prize/463650002/
I just found this "funny" because if you remove the word "carp" from the article, it sounds a lot like the conversations from a couple of decades ago around my old neighborhood.
Are scientists racists?

2. Makkat Bechorot
It's somewhat of an exception that the male form of a Hebrew word takes on the female suffix when converted to plural (OT instead of IM). And it always bothered me when it came to the 10th Plague in Egypt - The Plague of the First Born.
Until this year.
Because now I have a first-born 12-year old daughter.
And that's probably what the plague really was.

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Leaving Las Vegas

The title for this post is an analogy that says it all... Much like Vegas, JDSs present their illusion as a reality, enticing people to risk their hard earned money on the promise that their bet will pay dividends. In reality, the house always wins and what happens at a JDS stays at the JDS. It is for this final reason that I’ve decided to share this post. Too often, when I share with people that I am leaving the JDS world they talk about how important my work is to the Jewish people and attempt to dissuade me from my decision. Unfortunately, many of these people have no idea what it means to be a day school educator. In this post, I will focus only on the financial aspect of being a JDS teacher… Last year I made $60K teaching six classes at a local JDS. Two of my children attended the school so, while I received the maximum financial aid allowed by the school’s bylaws (40%), about $25k went straight back to the school. In opting for the “subsidized” benefits offered by the schoo

More than me

It's the end of the week and I'm glad it's over. Being a teacher, parent and homeowner is stressful at times, so it's nice to not have to worry about one of those responsibilities for a little while. I haven't really written about my family at all since I've started this blog. I guess it's only fair to mention them every once in a while... My wife started working about a month ago. We realized that the single-income family thing wasn't exactly working for us so she applied and got a full-time job that started right after we got back from Israel. This changed a lot about our daily routine. For my wife, it meant rolling out of bed before 9 am and not having most of the day to take care of things around the house. As for me, I now pick up my daughter from the babysitter and watch her (alone!) for about an hour or so unitl mom gets home. I, of course, am supposed to be helping out more around the house to make things easier, but I've been a lazy ass thes

Passport, Schlonger and Sandbox

Enticing title, for once, eh? Those subjects pretty much sum up the day, though. Of course, the day started with me taking the 2 and 5/12 year-old to camp. And, of course, she was really excited all morning and in the car ride over. And, of course, she ran ahead of me to get to the front door quickly. And, of course, she cried when it was time for me to go. At least we have a routine. The next move was home to prepare for our trip to the post office to get the baby's passport. The last time we had gone through this process was in Palo Alto, when we had a less-than-memorable experience... Although we remember it quite clearly: The long line, even longer wait and the bureaucratic organized chaos that seemed imported from somewhere in Asia. So I wasn't looking too forward to this date. And I guess that sometimes you fear your fear into happening, because we went to the Post Office with what I thought were all of the documents necessary and, Lo and behold, the birth certificate wa

Life of Spud

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