Inside Tad's Mind

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a woman who recognized my name from some political work I did a couple of years ago. The issue concerned the process of drawing political boundaries around school districts, and this woman, a retired school teacher, disagreed with the way the legislature had set up the voting. When I told her that we'd have to agree to disagree, she slammed her hand onto the table and angrily stormed off, ending the conversation. I have no quarrel with her passion in standing up for something she believes is unfair; where I have a problem is that she had such a hardened viewpoint that she wasn't even willing to explore the reasoning behind the legislation. In this particular case there was a sound reason why the legislature had decided to limit who could vote in creating a new school district using a particular procedure. (There were two other procedures in the statues, one that required no vote at all and one that allowed everyone to vote.) In this particul...

Donor Power Blog posted this today. I thought it a bit ironic given the anonymous comment this morning. Although this is relevant to my work with OHPAA, and applies directly to the Empress, it probably belongs here rather than on the Empress blog.

An anonymous critic posted a comment on the Empress Theatre blog criticising me for turning the Empress Theatre blog into my "personal" blog. I always find this type of criticism to be amusing, but rarely of any real worth. I've found that people who hide behind the veil of anonymity in making such comments are generally afraid that, should their identity be revealed, they would be publicly embarrased as fools. At the same time, since I have no idea who wrote the comment, I am free to speak my mind in response. I don't even have to get into serious flaming. Writing for a blog is a personal experience. Yes, I could stick strictly to a formal style and to a limited range of content, but that defeats the purpose. In fact, I could write strictly about the Empress Theatre and promptly bore everyone to death with it. (How many of you really want to know about our licensing deal with ASCAP or the details of work we're doing with Salt Lake County to pseudo pave the parkin...

Amy didn't do as well as we'd exepcted on her exam yesterday. She scored 70% (70 out of 100 questions correct.) The standard for passing was "more than 70%," so she missed passing by one measly question. To make matters worse, it seems that her study materials had left out major areas on the test, so Amy was being presented with questions she'd never encountered before. A word to the test taker in the future: look at the test objectives instead of just relying on the packaged study materials. So it looks like I get to keep working for another month until she can take the test again.

What a Monday morning this is. Lessa left for boot camp in South Caroline at 4:00 AM this morning. we'd all said our good byes before she went to bed, but I heard Sgt Cranford's truck in the gravel out front and got up to say one final good bye, but she was already out the door. I got to watch her climb in the truck and saw the truck drive off. Can't quite place the emotion that caused. Not quite sure that I've really grokked that she's gone off to the Army. Sigh. Meanwhile, amy is taking her Series 66 exam this afternoon. If she passes it, we're all of a week or two away from her going to work and me becoming Mr. Mom. Amy has been writing practice tests in the 80's all week, and I'm confident she will pass the exam. On one level I've been ready to submit my resignation for months; on the other, its a bit scary to walk away from my job and take on the OHPAA cause full time. One final note on the "blind leading the blind goes high tech." Thi...

I've created this blog as a place to put some of the thougts I want to make public, but that don't pertain to the Empress Theatre. You're welcome to read 'em, and maybe even leave a comment or two if you want. Here you'll find movie and play reviews, thoughts on public, private and home education, and a host of other things that are of interest to me.