Little Kat Math Woes

Little Kat received a "D" in his Math class last quarter. I thought he actually deserved an "F". Momoko worked with him in the last week of the quarter to bombard his Math teacher with a bunch of papers turned in at the last moment. That and a decent score on a late test pulled his grade up a bit.

So in addition to making sure Little Kat turns in his class work and homework for Math, I check him every now and then. This week I saw that he got a 30% on a Math test. That is crazy low. I figure he is still suffering from some of the Math work slacking from the first quarter.

I found the page in the Math text book where the teacher got the test questions. So I assigned some of the questions for a private quiz for Little Kat. I figured I worked with him on his homework a lot this week in Math. He had to be a bit better.

He only got a 45% on the quiz I gave him. We went over each of the problems together after he took my quiz. I taught him some new concepts, and showed him where he made his mistakes. Then I assigned him a new quiz.

Little Kat only got a 50% on the new quiz. He had some further confusion over some Math topics like fractions. That killed him. He also has trouble using a variable to represent an unknown in a word problem. I guess we will continues the quizzing tomorrow. Little Kat must learn this stuff.

Free Credit Score - Set It Off

Sometimes I really like these commercials. It seems they get some good singers to come in and do a short video. Macy's had one that I wrote about before. Now I like the one for Free Credit Score. The video is valled "Set It Off". Yeah it is a commercial. But I never get tired watching it. Here are the lyrics:

Free Credit Score dot com up in it
Haters best get to blogging
So hot right now that our designer sunglasses be foggin
This crowd is classic so we play em like Rachmaninoff
Just hooked em up with score alerts, now we're about to set it off...
Set it off like a score alert, beep beep, what!?
If you set your phone to vibrate then it might alert your butts and flies
All the girls and the guys, wanna keep that credit score high
Like a private jet Free Credit Score dotcom don't forget
*setitoff setitoff*

Getting Manual

Now that Kit Kat is a seasoned driver, I wanted to teach her how to drive a manual transmission. The hardest part about this training was scheduling a time to do it. Kit Kat and I are busy people. I figured we could do it on the weekend. But there are a lot of things going on every weekend.

Kit Kat is keeping in touch with her high school friends who went off to different colleges. She visits her friends on the weekend, sometimes spending the night at a college dorm. Or she is running around with her friends to the movies or out to eat. I watch movies with my bro every weekend. I also pay my bills and do massive yard work each weekend. Kit Kat and I were just not connecting.

I cancelled one of my commitments this weekend. Any I got Kit Kay when she was home. We headed out in my manual transmission pickup truck to learn. At first I drove and let Kit Kat switch the gears for me. We went to the local elementary school. There was nobody there. But the ground was not level. It is easiest to learn on flat ground. So we headed to the park. Too many people were there. We went back to the school.

At first Kit Kat pressed the gas too much when getting into first gear. The tires screeched and we were too fast and too furious. I had her press the gas a lot less. Then the car jerked around and wanted to stall. It is a delicate balance. Kit Kat tried about 6 to 8 times, stopping the car, starting back up again, and repeating. It was tedious because we would get to the bottom of the parking lot. Then we would switch seats, and I would drive us back up to the start of the straightaway.

It is going to take a lot of practice to teach Kit Kat the art of driving stick shift. Perhaps by next summer she will have it down. I told her she only needs to learn. After that, it is fine if she never drives manual transmission. Learning to drive it is like learning to ride a bike. Once you learn, you have the instinct and can pick it up again easily.

Close Inspection

Momoko and Little Kat had the day off for Election Day. Their school is used as a voting locaiton. I had scheduled for an electrician to come by the house. Little Kat has a funky outlet in his room. When you plug something in, the whole room loses power. We can't have that.

The electrician was scheduled to come in the afternoon. He called a few times in the morning because he was in the area. When I called him back, he said he would be over around noon. I had Little Kat man the door. Good thing I did. The guy came early.

The electrician fixed the plug, and we were good to go. Momoko wanted to take Little Kat with her to run some errands. I said that Little Kat had a lot of work to do. His room became as mess as we prepared for the electrician. We needed clear the area around the outlet.

Eventually Little Kat cleaned up the room. Then he and Momoko went errand shopping. Upon his return, I quizzed him about his homework. He said everything was done for the next couple days. I started with the stuff due tomorrow. The first paper I saw was incomplete. Fail. Then I looked at another paper. It was only 25 percent done. Double fail.

I told Little Kat that this semester was the time to get back on track at school. He definintely needs to complete all homework fully. If not, I know he will be missing the whole point of homework. Learning the material. Kit Kat and I set up a card table next to the desk in the basement where I work all day. As soon as Little Kat comes home, he needs to sit directly next to me and complete his homework.

Too Many Branches

Previously I had picked up all the leaves in the front yard. Many came down after the hurricane winds came through town. It was not too difficult of a job. I just ran the lawn mower over the leaves. That mulched them, and made it easier to bag them.

This weekend I turned to the back yard. That was not as easy. In addition to the large amount of leaves falling, many tree branches fell down as well. I ran around with my little metal grabber tool. It allows me to pick stuff off the ground without bending down. It is a life saveer.

The problem was that there were so many tree branches down. I moved the wheel barrel around the yard, filling it up as I grabbed sticks with the grabber. However when it was full, I needed to back up the branches. That slowed things down to a crawl.

In the end, I got all the branches and leaves picked up. But it took around 5 hours. I was working quickly too. Everything has been bagged. The yard actually looks quite good. I still need to take care of the leaves on the steep hills. That is a chore for next weekend.

50 Percent Times Two

Kit Kat was scheduled to go shopping with Momoko this weekend. However Little Kat needed some winter clothes. So all three of them went shopping. They went to Walmart instead of Target. There was not many items on our Target shoppig list.

Momoko found that Halloween candy was 50 percent off. She kind of thought that would be the case. She loaded up on our favorites. At the checkout register, the guy started ringing up some of the candy as full price. Good thing Momoko was keeping an eye on the prices. She informed the clerk that candy was supposed to be 50 percent off.

Momoko got the double bonus on some of the candy. The Walmart cashier just took 50 percent off all the candy prices. Turns out some of that candy was already ringing up as 50 percent off. Therefore Momoko got double the 50 percent off. If my math serves me correctly, that means she paid 25 percent off retail.

The sad part about the Walmart economics is that even when you pay 25 percent of the retail price, the store still makes a profit. Oh well. We are partying with the extra candy. By the way, Little Kat got some nice outfits. Many of them came with a shirt and cap combo.

Halloween Plans

Little Kat and Kit Kat had planned to visit the grandparents of their friend for Halloween. They have done this every year for a while. So Momoko and I made our own plans. We were going to go out to eat for Halloween. Turns out the friend's grandpa got sick. So the kids' plans got changed. They instead went out to dinner themselves.

Momoko turned out all the lights in the house. Did not want trick-or-treaters to come when nobody was home. Then I drove Momoko to the local Olive Garden. Momoko wanted to buy some special that was a "dinner for today and tomorrow". You get an entree for dinner. And you get one to go.

At first I thought it was not smart to buy some food for the next day. But Momoko pointed out that the double dinner is about the same price as regular dinner. I got the special as well. That served me fine, because I could not decide between ziti or fettucini alfredo. So I got both.

Later that night, I had to hit the books to study for my college class. The kids watched some horror movies and played with the gerbils. Momoko just seemed to nap all evening. Then when it was time for bed, Momoko could not go to bed. Too much sleep. I was tired from hours and hours of studying. So I hit the sack and was out cold.