Shattered Sun

That’s the number of artists who are expected to be creating, performing, and/or selling art this weekend at the Tempe Festival of the Arts. I first experienced this festival when Sam was a few months old thanks to Damon. I fell in love with the atmosphere and fun that’s all around you when you’re there. I particularly enjoyed this woodwind sort of group (heck if I remember their name now) and the wheat weaving artist. Wheat weaving is absolutely amazing! I’m hoping that I can find the artist here this year and maybe even buy some more of them. This festival happens twice a year, so it can’t hurt to plan a weekend trip here if you love that kind of thing.

By the way, I know that none of the links on that site work. It’s because the person who made it didn’t remove the forward slashes from the URLs before making it live. It’s a rookie error and I’m surprised that no one has noticed so far. I only went there today for the first time but if I hadn’t known how to remove the “bad parts”, I wouldn’t have found the information I wanted and I probably wouldn’t be going. :/ People should take better care of sites that are a reflection of something so wonderful.

We’d like to buy a house but man, it’s through the roof in cost! You can’t live anywhere reasonable without paying a ton for the privilege. And I guess that’s the way it should be but dang it if I can afford to buy into a house payment of close to $2k per month. I am definitely not that rich. And the renting market isn’t a whole lot better. It’s minimum $1.2k and up for a nice setting with three bedrooms. I just don’t see the point in moving into another 2 bedroom place when it would be wonderful to have more room. So the questions come up: 1) how does someone afford a house these days and 2) should you really bother buying one anyhow? I don’t know. I guess I’m on the fence. I want to buy. Really. But it’s a big jump and I’d hate to lose it all because I miscalculated all the associated costs with owning a home. Any advice? This stuff is boggling my mind and I usually consider myself fairly quick on the uptake.

I can honestly say that I’m not a big fan of the guest workers bill that is currently being floated through Congress. It isn’t so much the issue of not liking immigrants, because my sister-in-law is one. And I’ve many friends who’ve paid the dues and legally become citizens. And my family is only third generation American. I guess my biggest worry is that the bill is either too broad or too narrow but not really just right. I don’t think we should make it criminal offense for being an illegal immigrant but on the other hand, I don’t think we should be handing over citizenship to those that won’t take the time to become one legally.

And worse, there are so many massive student walk outs and protests downtown. I know it’s not as massive as say, California, but it’s still disruptive and a waste of tax payers dollars. If you’re an adult and you want to miss work to protest, more power to you. But if you’re a child, you should have your butt in school because the education is going to have a longer lasting effect on your life than the protest. Especially when you can protest after school hours and have an identical effect.

I’ve got so much more I’d like to say on this whole subject but find myself at a lack of words to express myself properly.

I was reading this article today at lunch that highlighted the lack of sleep in children and teenagers. Obviously as parents we have a lack of understanding on what’s required for kids, too. The article was saying that most parents felt that their child was getting enough sleep at night but the child felt like he wasn’t getting enough sleep. I can tell you that my oldest sleeps for about 9 hours and my youngest sleeps for about 10 hours. (Sam really thinks he might need to head to bed earlier since he’s recently hit a growth spurt and seems more tired than normal.) Anyway, most kids their ages are sleeping 7-8 hours. That’s just crazy! And worse, starting in middle school (about 11/12 years old) kids are sleeping less and less til they’re only sleeping 5-7 hours per night by the time they’re 16. I just can’t imagine. I mean, I know I did it my junior/senior years because I was working on items for school and I had Sam to take care of, but for the average teenager, maybe sleep should be a higher priority. All these teenagers out there drinking coffee to stay awake just kills me. Of course, I guess it would help if I was a coffee drinker. Maybe I’d have more sympathy. Instead, I sleep and try limit my usual soda intake to 2 cans a day. I wonder if there’s some studies online that could tell me what adults’ sleeping habits are. That would be pretty interesting to read.

After reading numerous articles, including this one, I think he’s just deviating from his original story because he’s ready to die. In his shoes, I’d probably do the same thing. Why live your life in prison when that’s not really living. And when you get the bonus of becoming a martyr, what’s not to look forward to?

I hope the jurors have their thinking caps on and realize that he’s probably baiting them into giving him the death penalty. It just doesn’t jive for him to suddenly change his story like this.