Gretchen's first byline

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In September 2010, Gretchen was babysitting for the editor of the neighborhood newsletter.  So she wrote...

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Snacks

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We have a foster dog with us this week - Dakota.  He's a mostly well adjusted dog with a predilection for random barking.  We're using little fingernail sized doggie treats to persuade him to be good rather than barker.  For convenience, we're keeping a stash in a small metal cup.  My children know my penchant for small dishes.  I love small serving dishes with unique colors and uses.  We have dozens and I use them frequently for entertaining.   Julianne and Collin were here last night.  They went out for dinner together and joined us as we were finishing our Friday fun nacho dinner.  As they came in, we quickly set up a couple little dessert cups of chocolate this and chocolate that.  Tasty. My mistake was to miss an immediate  opportunity to clear the kitchen island of every day stuff.  Like Dog treats. Julianne noshed on chocolate this and tried a little bit of chocolate that.  She did not count on dog treats being...
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Teaching Day 2 - post arctic blast

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A teacher's institute day and a cold weather day with no classes and three weeks have passed.  It's probably a bit too much to expect kids to remember anything. So we started again. Boys are still squirrels and girls are quiet rule followers.  This is an after school activity; kids are a little wound up.  They still have to take turns, mind their business and be good classroom citizens.  Clearly, that's difficult.  Our class is 2nd graders to 6th graders.  We split into two groups.  I've got the little ones - 2nd and 3rd graders. They have trouble clicking in small spaces and finding letters on the keyboard. Today, the curriculum tried to introduce a looping construct (repeat a set of instructions over and over) and more debugging (here's a program; there's something wrong with it - fix it).  Tall order.  I can see some deficiencies with the program for little hands.  If they move some of the blocks too far out of the way, it behave...
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September 11, 2001

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I wrote this ~12 months after September 11, 2001. I wanted to remember what I was doing on that day when we heard about the planes. The first I knew that something was awry on September 11, 2001 was mid morning. I arrived at the office - same time as always - 7:15. Some time in the 9:00 hour I happened to glance at my.yahoo.com - my frequent home for news. There was a one liner about a plane striking the World Trade Center. I've read about a B-17 striking the Empire State Building some time around WWII. I recall thinking that it wasn't that big of a deal. I think I tried a couple other sources to see if anyone else had more information - no one did. Within 30 minutes my boss asked if I had read anything, "No, not really" I responded. Site inquiries now just timed out. Everyone was connecting to see what they could see. I think I got one through on chicagotribune.com, but the information was about the same. No one knew much. Someone (my boss Mark I thin...
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