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McDonald Observatory Field Trip: Day 2

 Here's what happened on the 2nd day of our annual trip. Cloudy skies. Not great for seeing the stars, but made our walks more pleasant The top of Mt. Locke We saw two of the big telescopes: The Harlan J. Smith and the Hobby Eberly. Fun fact: this telescope was shot by a mentally disturbed astronomer in the 70's. Students went to a grocery store to get lunch. It's fun to see what they get when they can get whatever. Some interesting options: A can of beans, a whole coconut, a ball of soft mozzarella eaten like an apple. After lunch, we did some hiking, resting, and more hiking. Students not pictured. They went too fast and left us adults behind. Aura farming? I don't know what these kids do. A couple of interesting coincidences today. One of our chaperones ran into a astronomer who we had seen at Little Caesars on Thursday. And at the Friday star party, we saw a Savio student on vacation with her family! The clouds prevented us from seeing any stars at the star party. T...
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McDonald Observatory 2026 Field Trip: Day 1

 Greetings from West Texas. I'm with most of the astronomy class on our annual (because we did it once already last year) field trip to the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis. It's quite a drive. And the observatory is still another 45 minutes. Summary so far: We've got 2 vans this year (just one last year). Mr. Flores was nice enough to let me have the better one. He says he's used to the older one. Despite leaving 15 minutes later than planned, an unscheduled stop at Starbucks (Mr. Flores needs his caffeine), snack stop, and lunch stop, we still got to the hotel around when I thought we would: 3:30. Getting in that early allowed time to climb Hancock Hill which overlooks Alpine. The famous desk Just living my best life. As you can see, there were clouds. It's supposed to be overcast on Day 2, so I was worried that we wouldn't see any stars this trip. However, when we went to the Marfa Lights viewing area, the clouds opened up just enough to get a glimpse at ...
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National Puzzle Day

Today is National Puzzle Day (apparently). Like most national days, it seems to be a relatively new celebration, most likely created to sell products. In honor of the celebration, I share with you my completion of Anatolian's 3000 piece Mystery Writers (#4918) Check out all its majesty! As I mentioned in my previous post, I got it from Goodwill so there was a chance of missing pieces. Look closely: two are not there. Since it is a 3000 piece puzzle, that means that 99.93% of the puzzle is present. However, I don't feel 99.93% satisfied with my completion. Don't get me wrong; I still feel massively successful (my last 3000 piece puzzle took me over a year (in part because I kept forgetting about it)). But I'd say I'm closer to a 98% feeling of success. My puzzle strategy: Edges first. I don't think I'm alone there. Major sub images. In this case, I did the clock, peacock, and ladder Sort remaining pieces by color. I have special puzzle sorting trays for this ...
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Board Games That I Got Over the Break

 As I believe that I have mentioned before, I collect board games. Christmas and my birthday (in early January) are good times to get these. Here's a rundown of what I added. I haven't play them all yet (and maybe won't every. I collect more than I can possibly play). Goodwill Acquisitions: Purchasing games from Goodwill is dicey due to possible missing pieces. However, they're usually about 10% of the new cost. It's worth the risk. Q-bitz An easy, pretty fun puzzle game. It says it's supposed to improve your brain power Threads of Fate A very highly rated mystery game. It's a risk to get these used because pieces might be missing. I took a chance anyway since it had an envelope of replacement items for the pieces that get used up. Unfortunately, the previous owner wrote all over a bunch of the rest of the stuff as well. I think I can print new ones. 7 Wonders A well made classic Plunder: A Pirates Life Mixed reviews on this one. It's not hard enough for...
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New Year's Reset

The New Year is an artificial construct. There's nothing special about it other than the meaning that we assign to it . It's not really even that close to the winter solstice (which would make sense). As such, I see no particular reason to celebrate it. In my house, we toasted New Year's Eve with sparkling cider at 9:00 and then went to bed. As arbitrary as the date is, it does provide a useful moment to pause, reflect, and reset. That means it's time to update and brush off my daily goals tracker. I'll follow it for about a month and then give up (probably). Mr. Goertz's Goal Tracker Here's what I like about this: I print it out weekly. That makes it physical. To me that's important to owning goals. I always tell students who are struggling with deadlines to get a physical planner. These aren't really SMART goals. Due to the number of things on the list, attaching times and completion dates would not be a good idea. There's no penalty for non-co...
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More Christmas Song Analysis

It is well known that I have issues with some Christmas song (see here and here ). Here's a few more: Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer The song is pretty bad ( The Good Place  is right). Further, Grandpa is an awful person. Not only does he not care that his wife is dead, but he also let her stagger home alone and drunk on Christmas Eve. I'll Be Home for Christmas A minor point granted, but how can you put presents on the tree? Did Christmas trees use to be stronger? Luckily, modern versions have changed it to "round the tree". Do They Know It's Christmas? There actually is snow in Africa. In South Africa, during June and July, but high altitude areas such as Kilimanjaro and the Atlas Mountains do get December snow. The Little Drummer Boy Sister Carita (who taught me at St. Mary's) loved this song. She said that it showed that we always needed to give our best to Jesus. The problem is it's an unaccompanied drum. That's not soothing or even good music...
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Thanksgiving Songs

As mentioned in a previous year , it is not time for Christmas music yet. Rather than to launch into a complaint about this, I will instead give a little longer list of songs that you can  listen to right now. You can switch to Christmas songs after your Thanksgiving meal. There's No Place Like Home for the Holidays - It doesn't mention Christmas at all. In fact, it highlights pumpkin pie: a traditional Thanksgiving  dessert Jingle Bells  - This was written as a Thanksgiving song Sleigh Ride - Some students tried to convince me yesterday that any song with a sleigh is a Christmas song since Santa has a sleigh. You know who else has a sleigh? Jadis, the White Witch from Narnia. It means nothing. That's how you travel in the snow.   I've Got Plenty to be Thankful For - From Holiday Inn , the same show that gave us White Christmas. I can't fully endorse the movie as it has some scenes that were considered appropriate by some people at the time (they were never approp...
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