Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Lucinda has her first loose tooth. She noticed it today, and she’s quite excited by it.

Also, she has been taking an art class on Thursdays after school. Here is a sample of something she made there today:

We took Lucinda to the Altadena Library this evening for a chemistry and magic show. He showed various chemical reactions that change color or make gas. The climax of the show was when he made ice cream with a jug of liquid nitrogen. Lucinda enjoyed watching the show and at the end she got some of the ice cream.

Also, Lucinda found another praying mantis in the back yard, so today I got another bug cage and some crickets to feed both of them. Here’s one of them chowing down.

We went to Back-to-School night at Don Benito this evening. This is our first time being parents of a school-age child, so it’s all new to us. We didn’t realize that public school is a lot like public TV. A good bit of the evening was devoted to begging us to donate money. Apparently, the school doesn’t pay for classroom supplies, so the teachers end up spending their own money to get the classrooms outfitted. This is pathetic.

On the plus side, Lucinda’s teachers seem very capable and nice. So we will likely pony up some cash to help out with the supplies.

We went to the latest opening party at The Underground Arts Society in Altadena this evening. The featured artist this month is Susanna Eggli, and she works with bones, shells, and other such odd items. She had pieces with crab claws and fish heads, and a whole series with what looked like rat skulls. It was interesting and amusing.

I found another praying mantis in the back yard, so I caught it so that Lucinda can watch it. We caught some spiders out in the garage and fed it. It’s pretty interesting to watch. We also went out in the garden and found the egg case that was laid by the mantis we caught last year. The eggs had all hatched, so maybe this mantis is one of the descendents of last year’s.

Lucinda came home today with her first ‘homework packet’. Now maybe I’m just getting old, but I remember only getting homework one time in kindergarten. I suppose that’s just how things are done now, but still seems a bit odd to me.

Also, today Lucinda experienced another ‘rite of passage’. She missed the school bus for the first time.

Today was Lucinda’s first day of school. Don Benito has buses for the kids, so she decided she wanted to ride the bus. So we walked down to the corner with her and waited with her until the bus came. Then she got on and she was gone.

Lucinda’s first day of school is Thursday. This evening we went to her Back-to-School picnic at Don Benito to see her classroom and meet her teachers. We got her a school shirt and met some of the other incoming kindergartners. There are pictures in her photo album.

Today we went to the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. In the American history hall, they had a small exhibit about transportation, including a license badge for cars produced under the Selden automobile patent. This patent was taken out in 1895 by George Selden, and it covered the automobile. He never built a working model, and he had no intention of going into the automobile manufacturing business, but he knew other people would be in years to come. So he got this patent and then proceeded to shake down the car makers for license fees. For some years, they paid, until Henry Ford challenged it in court. In the end, the patent was ruled invalid, since it was basically just a form of legal extortion. But it’s a lot like the current SCO case against Linux.

Later on, we were in a different part of the museum, and I saw a display of a stuffed hawk that, sadly, didn’t look very lifelike. The cobwebs sort of gave it away.




Still, it was a fun day, and Lucinda had fun. Pictures in her photo album.

We tried a new brownie recipe this evening. It was quite good.