This is a rambling mess of things. It
was originally three posts - now consolidated into one, because I'm
trying to avoid drive-by blogging every time a thought floats through
my brain.
****
What a great weekend!
On Friday, Hubby and I took a trip to
Philadelphia to see the Reading Terminal Market, Yards Brewery and my
school.
School, as in, after 20 years I finally
stopped procrastinating.
See...back in the mid-eighties, I went
to college. At 17.
Not because I skipped a grade, but
because I started kindergarten early. This probably isn't the optimum
scenario unless your child is a super genius, because mostly it
resulted in me being slightly bewildered. Math in particular. It was odd,
because I was in the advanced classes for reading and English, but
math was just lost on me.
I chalked it up to maturity. It wasn't
until I was an adult working in the real world that it all suddenly
made sense. Especially algebra. When I began programming, it was
truly an epiphany.
It went something like this: “I'm
writing a program to add stuff. It might be cows and chickens, or it
might be assholes and elbows. We'll leave it up to the user. So I'll
just call these fields A and B. Holy shit! That's a variable!” Then
my brain melted.
It wasn't a difficult concept, really,
but no teacher was able to properly convey this to me.
“I don't get it. Why are why adding
letters again?” I'd ask.
“They're variables. A and B. They
represent something.” said Mr. (name redacted), The Meanest Math
Teacher Ever.
“But what do they represent?” I'd
plead, hoping I'd get a tidbit of information that would finally make
it all click with my 11 year old brain.
“Anything. In this case, it
represents A and B.” Gee, thanks. Unhelpful, as always. I was
beginning to think Mr. Nastypants didn't know either.
Apparently I just needed a real world
example.
Anyway, this was also back when schools
didn't have tutors on hand, or a “sense of community” or whatever
shizz the guidance counselors use these days to help the hopelessly
clueless.
My guidance counselors performed three
functions:
- Met with you (once!) during Junior year to see if we wanted to go to college. If you did, they forwarded the high school transcripts. Then they kicked you out of their office.
- They identified the troubled kids. Keep in mind, we didn't have “special education” like these days. They took all the mentally handicapped kids, physically handicapped kids, kids that had emotional issues, and the ones that just didn't feel like learning and would rather smoke weed in the bathrooms, and lumped them into one class.
- Smoke in the teacher's lounge and complain about the rat-bastard kids.
I had no idea what I wanted to do with
my life, career-wise. I went off to a local college not known for
anything special except having a weird name and being affordable.
After treading water for a couple years, I left and got a job. Which
lead to another job, then a different position. Several promotions
later, I had an unintentional career in IT.
Which brings me to my current story.
I had concerns. My college credits were
really old and crusty, and not especially special. It was a long
shot. I applied to a fairly prestigious school, and miraculously they
accepted me. I'm into my third online class, and pulling a 4.0.
Since I was hoping to hit one of the
Saturday on-campus classes this Spring, we made a trip to Philly to
see it.
I always heard the it resided in a
suck-ass section of town, so I was surprised to see how nice it was,
and that I felt (relatively) safe. And old. Most of the time I don't
think of myself as middle-aged, but damn. I felt like Methuselah.
Still, that didn't stop me from picking
up the requisite swag from the school bookstore. Then we headed off
to check out the Reading Terminal Market.
I've been there before, but it was a
few years ago and it was more of a stopping point between the Liberty Bell and
The Franklin Institute.
It is SO worth it. I would totally
weight 1000 pounds if I worked in Philly and was able to hit this
every day for lunch. There is every kind of food here. I'm getting
hungry just thinking about it.
Hubby and I were dying by the time we
got to the market, so the first thing we did was get us some Philly
cheese steak. It was heaven on a bun, with hot peppers.
Along with restaurant vendor food,
there's produce vendors, fresh meat and fish vendors – I could
actually do my grocery shopping here. Really, the prices weren't that
bad either.
After an hour or so at the Terminal
Market, we headed off to Penn's Landing to visit Yard's Brewery.
We're able to get their traditional beers at our local Wegman's, but
they have special recipes that are only served at their tasting room.
They're called Ale's of the American
Revolution, and include the personal recipes of Thomas Jefferson,
George Washington and Ben Franklin. All were delicious, but the best
was Jefferson's. Hubby bought a case to bring home, I bought the
commemorative t-shirts.
We payed for it with Philly rush hour
traffic – getting home took two hours instead of one, but it was
worth it.
On Saturday, Hubby took The Teenager
and me to the local rod and gun club for what he calls our quarterly
re-qualification. That means target shooting, y'all.
Darling daughter fired an M16 (AR-15, I
believe) for the first time. She popped two balloons at 100 yards out
with her first two shots. She's an awfully good shot with a 9mm too.
We spent a couple of hours just
enjoying the outdoors, watching all the geese fly South. Friday in
Philly was 80 degrees and no humidity, but a cold front came in that
night so it was only 50-something on Saturday. So time for the geese
to leave. But the leaves were turning and it was a beautiful day.
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