New Season of "The Tutors" Begin

We started tutoring with the Kindergarten students last Thursday. We tutor on Tuesdays and Thursdays with different groups on alternate days. One of my students absolutely, positively did not want to stay for tutoring last Thursday. Yesterday the same student was begging to stay. It seems that he has decided that it is fun to stay. I like the way the kids think it is great to stay for tutoring because to them they get to stay longer and play more games. They also get to spend extra time with the teacher when there are fewer students to demand attention. The students still don't realize that they have to stay because they are having difficulty acquiring reading skills. It also helps that the students get snacks each day that they stay.

The students were selected for inclusion in the tutoring program based on Middle of the Year (MOY) results on the Texas Primary Reading Inventory (TPRI) and the Universal Literacy Voyager program. Based on the results for my class I selected 9 students to divide across the two days of tutoring. With 4 or 5 students each afternoon it is much easier to focus on needs of the individual than it is when there are 19 at once. These tutoring sessions will help to prepare the students for a successful 1st grade experience.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
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Hey Brother, Can you Spare a Gallon, or Two?

I've been watching the price of gasoline go up again. Last Wednesday I went to work and noticed that unleaded regular was selling at $3.129 per gallon at the nearby truck stop. A mere 10 hours later I drove by and the price jumped 17 cents to $3.299. I was shocked! I had checked the futures earlier in the day and had not seen anything peculiar. I went ahead and went the the Shell station across the interstate. They were selling for $3.159, a bargain considering. I asked the clerk if he knew what happened. I expected him to say that a pipeline had ruptured or someone had slipped and fallen in the largest US refinery prompting a shutdown for months to allow for an extensive safety investigation. He didn't know about anything. All he knew was that his station was cheaper than the others in the area and felt like that would be rectified by the next morning.

It was, to the tune of $3.299 a gallon. The truck stop lowered their price to $3.199 a gallon.

Since then prices have dropped a little and have now stabilized. There is a little bad news though. I noticed yesterday that gasoline futures closed at $2.79 a gallon. By the time you add on taxes and profit we're going to be back at the $3.30+ area. Not good.

If gas continues to go up like this I will have to start cutting back. Lets see, I think the first thing to go is the lawn mower. I'll just let the oppressive Texas heat take care of it. I used to use gasoline to kill fire ants. That will have to stop too. Probably for the best though. That will give my hair a chance to grow back. (Not really! Just sounded good.)

My Brother-in-law borrowed the truck yesterday. When he brought it back he told me that he "...put a couple of gallons of gold in it." I said, "Just two? You could have filled it up!" Didn't work. He didn't offer to add any more.Oh well, I guess I shouldn't complain. By this time next week $3.309 for gas may be cheap.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

Picture Monday, April 7, 2008

I noticed last week that the Bluebonnets were beginning to bloom here again. In honor of this eagerly anticipated occurrence I found a picture I took several years ago. This is a picture of Julie sitting among some Bluebonnets and Indian Paintbrush. It is probably around 1993.

While looking for the Bluebonnet picture I came across several pictures of some of our cats and dogs. The first picture is a picture of Boomer, our dog that was a bundle of energy, and Tigger. It is from around 1984. The next picture is a picture of Aslan and Tigger from 1988. This is a different Tigger from the other picture. Aslan is the bigger of the cats.

Here is another picture of little Tigger from 1989. It looks like this is how we kept her little. The next picture is of Aslan pressing my pants the old fashioned way in 1990.

Finally, we have a picture of Tigger in 1990. She's not so little anymore. I guess she is doing the wash so Aslan can do the pressing later.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
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Retro Saturday, April 5, 2008

Wow, how time flies. It's already Saturday again. Why it seems as if yesterday was Friday. Did you ever stop to think what time did before the advent of the airplane? I'll bet that it moseyed.

I was watching the news last night. It seems that most of what I heard about was Hillary has released her tax information and that John McCain doesn't have Secret Service protection.

(Now get ready! You are about to witness a phenomenal leap.)

With all this election stuff in the news I got to thinking about a show I used to watch when I was but a young lad. The name of the show was Slam Bang Theatre, hosted by Icky Twerp. It aired on Channel 11, KTVT, a then independent station in Fort Worth, TX. So I looked it up and found what I wanted. The perfect Icky Twerp skit about politics. I swear that it could have just happened yesterday, or last week or sometime.

I told you that it was going to be a phenomenal leap.

I don't know what this has to do with anything, but another show I watched when I was but a wee thing was Deputy Dawg. Here is an example of what I watched.

If I grew up in Europe, say The Netherlands or Holland or Germany or some other place in the near vicinity, I might have watched Deputy Dawg and he would have sounded like this.

And you wonder why I am like I am. Remember, this is the sort of stuff I grew up on.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.

How Many Are There of You???

I found an interesting web-site yesterday It's called How Many of Me. What it does is use statistical and demographic data from the US Census Bureau.

I did some "research" at the site and found some interesting information. There are 5 of me in the US. I have either 14 or 8 wives, depending upon which name you use; the long or the short respectively. No here is the killer; I have 33 children if you search my son's name and my daughter's name. Wow!

More fun info: There is only 1 Hillary Clinton. Thank goodness for small favors. I searched for Barack Obama. Apparently there isn't one. Well then, who's that guy that seems to be the darling of the media and is planning the decor for the White House? And how about John McCain you ask. There are 449. If you don't like the one running for president you've got 448 others to pick from. There might be a good one in there somewhere.Give it a try. I'll bet you have fun with it just like I did. Oh, while I'm thinking about it, there are some pretty cool tools at the Census Bureau site; such as, Frequently Occurring Surnames, full information from the last census, and information about the next census. Go there sometime and give it a look see.

© 2008 Barry T Horst

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#151B8D or #000099 - They're Both the Same To Me

In an earlier post I ranted (?) about the connection that the color green has with now current idea of concern for the environment. I remember when I was in high school in the early 70's the big thing was "ecology". Now there is a word I haven't heard in a while. Anyway, it seems that everyone and everything wants to jump on the "green"bandwagon. Why even Mr. Obama is now saying that he wants Mr. Green; OOPS! that should be Mr. Gore, to advise him on solving the vexing environmental issues that face us and will surely lead us to a quick demise if not addressed in a timely fashion. As you may remember, I chose to switch the font color to green as a small show of support. Extremely small show of support actually. In fact, I don't really support it at all. I just simply thought it would be kind of fun to do. But I digress!

In the above referenced post I also mentioned that I really like the color blue. My brother then wrote me and said he liked blue also and would post on it soon. He did and here it is on HORST ONLINE. His post got me thinking about something. Now that is an accomplishment. I have been asked before, "What were you thinking?" Now I can honestly say that I was thinking about what in the world does blue mean. How do you define a color? And no, I don't mean some silly hexadecimal code or some other such nonsense.

So I did a little research. Very little in fact. Well to be perfectly honest I googled "blue" and just started looking for things that looked like they might tell me something interesting. Here is what I found. On Emily Gems I learned that blue is the preferred color of conservatives. At Color Wheel Pro I found out that blue is associated with males and is considered masculine. So far, so good! In the Bible, blue is seen as a heavenly color. At three-musketeers.net I read that blue is associated with femininity and girls with pure qualities. Wait a minute. Isn't that different than the other thing I read? The same site said that it blue can symbolize depression.

Hey, I don't like where this is going now. I think I'll wind this up and just leave this whole meaning thing alone. I still like blue and the reason is simply because I like it. So there! I don't care about the meaning. It's pretty and I like pretty. Yeah, it's also cool and calming and relaxing, and reminds me of the sky, and water, and pretty blue eyes, and bluebonnets, and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

© 2008 Barry T Horst This work is licensed under a
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Please visit the Giveaway of the Day at the bottom of the page for free software downloads daily.