This also means that we will have to make budget cuts (now if only we could get the god damned government to do the same!). One of our largest expenses is Montessori school for our oldest son. We have loved having him there but we think that we will like having him at home even more. Yes, we are going to homeschool our kids. Seems crazy to many I am sure  but we really feel that this is the right answer for our family. Public school sucks and private school, besides being hideously expensive, is really just a better version of public schooling. The attitude that it is all about preparing for college, preparing to become a cog in the machine, is not what we are after. I want my kids to learn to learn, love to learn, and not feel that their path forward is riding the rails of cookie-cutter American success. So look for more home schooling (unschooling?) blogging.

My last bit is about food. I love food. I love cooking it, reading about it, watching it being made/eaten, and eating it myself. I have spent the last 12 years exploring food primarily through the wealth of great restaurants that we have here in the Northern Virginia area (only secondarily via my whim driven dabbling in cooking). Eating out is expensive. A tighter budget means less eating out. Which also means more eating at home. More cooking, more exploration, more getting my hands in it and my head around it. I am really loving this aspect of being “Mr. Mom”. I have been baking (cookies, bread, pizza), curing meat, creating my own “recipes”, mixing, matching, and melding flavors, all while providing a meal for my family. My freezers are full of stock, bones, chunks, cubes, sausage, etc… (all examples of meat thrift a concept seemingly lost in this age of cheap meat). I definitely want to blog more about this. Maybe when the kids are a bit older I can even start a new career in food.

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Tomorrow I leave with my family (2 kids, one 4 years one 6 months, wish me luck!) for vacation. We are heading off to southwest Florida to visit my parents. Checking the weather I see that we are possibly in for some “fun” early next week. Hopefully our foolishness, going to Florida in August, will not be repaid with a visit from Fay, or any other of her named relatives.

After a week in Florida, my wife and the kids are spending a week in Georgia visiting her parents as well as some other relatives of mine. I, on the other hand, will be heading back to the ranch here in Northern Virginia for some down home mancation time! You know, drugs, alcohol, general debauchery. Well actually I have to work…

All of this as Fair Warning to my vast readership that this blog will likely lie fallow for a week. Unless of course we get hit by a hurricane, in that case I will be live blogging with one hand while trying to keep my family safe with the other.

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Thoughts of learning a new language (not a programming language!) have been part of my fiber for a long time. I ran across this very interesting blog post today about how Norwegian is the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Hmmm… this and my recent fascination with Black Metal might be just the catalyst that I need to take action on my thoughts.

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frustrations by tina p.

I have managed to stay on top of my email and the rest of my digital life, save for one thing, my bookmarks. There are lots of techniques and tools for managing your inbox, your files, your music, etc… There are also tools that purport to help you manage your bookmarks. Delicious née del.icio.us has not helped me with my bookmarks. The new, and much improved, bookmark management system in Firefox 3 has also not helped me. Thus I think that I am going to declare bookmark bankruptcy. Just like a financial or email bankruptcy, I think that I am going to cast off the many hundreds of bookmarks that I have and start over.

Have any of you dear readers tackled this problem?

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