Phoenix trip--day 1

Monday, March 18, 2019

                5:00 a.m. leaving  for PIA airport.

                5:49 a.m. My vegan porridge is confiscated at security, fresh berries, Tupperware, and all.  She let me keep the spoon, not that I need it anymore.  Waiting to board is 2-year-old Grayson and his family.  He is cute and curious, and they are all excited.

                6:30 a.m.  Grayson is 2 rows ahead of us on the plane.  His grandma is in the row ahead of us. Someone is spraying the plane with de-icer.  Grandma  tells Grayson that they are cleaning the plane.  Why doesn’t she just tell him the truth?  Logically enough, the kid asks why they’re cleaning the plane, and Grandma says, “Because it’s dirty.” 

                7:00 a.m. Taking off into a beautiful sunrise.  Once we get above the clouds, the river looks like a snake slithering into a cotton field.  The sun lights up the bald guy’s head in the row behind me, and I make shadow puppets on it.  Grayson’s dad looks a little like our neighbor Chris, and sounds exactly like him.  The lady across the aisle looks like Mike’s mom. My bag of pretzels has a cactus on it.  Looking forward to seeing real cacti.

                8:00 a.m. walking through O’Hare, stopped to pet some dogs.  They were very excited. 

                Arrived in PHX sometime around noon, Ubered to the hotel (Hyatt Regency), and the room wasn’t ready yet, so we walked across the street to the visitor’s bureau, talked to a helpful old lady, and picked up some maps and brochures.  Walked around town, went in St. Mary’s Basilica (they have a big dispenser of holy water...?)

 Pope John Paul II blessed Mike:

The pope was the only fully clothed statue we saw.  There's a ridiculous amount of naked ones.

Mike just tries to keep his eyes averted.

This guy found a good use for this one.

 Came back to the hotel to our room (1405).  Great view from our bed.

Went to happy hour at Networks (restaurant in the lobby). Went to bed ridiculously early.

A rare fun math class

I taught my kids how to make change several years ago, but it came up again today in Noah's consumer math book, so I thought it would be a good time for a refresher.  It was a very boring, dry lesson, and the work consisted of questions like, "A customer owes $7.36 and pay you with a ten dollar bill. Write down which coins and bills you would use to make change."  Who would want to write that out? 

So I set up a store with priced items and a cash register with various bills and coins.  When Noah woke up, I gave him a $20 bill and invited him to shop.  He bought his own shirt (that I had just removed from the dryer) for $8.72, and I demonstrated how to make change.  I gave a little speech about how it's still an important skill to have, even in this era of computerized cash registers and credit cards.  I gave some personal examples of when I've needed to make change (when the cash register broke at the thrift store where I work, and when someone bought something from me at a garage sale). 

Then I shopped, and he made perfect change.  One time I owed him $18.37, and I gave him a $20.  He started to make change, but I pretended to be a cranky old person and said, "Hold on now.   I don't want all those coins. I've got the change here somewhere...." and proceeded to fumble around until I found 37 cents.  He looked paralyzed.  He said, "You gave me too much money.?"  I said, "That's how a lot of old people like to do it.  So now you have to subtract what I owe from what I gave you, and give me the difference." One of the things I priced was his Epipen (it was out because he has allergy shots today, so I just stuck a price tag on it and put it in the store).  So I came into his store, pretending to be in anaphylactic shock.  I grabbed the Epipen, tossed him a $20 bill, and collapsed on the floor.  He said, "Out of $20...and 50 cents makes 19, and a dollar makes 20.  Have a good day!"  I said, "Fail.  I'm dead. You were supposed to administer the Epipen, not make perfect change!  If someone comes into your store near death, making change is not your top priority." 

All of this took about 15 minutes.  I closed the math book and put it away.  He said, "We're not going to do math?"  I said, "We just did."  He smiled and said, "Thanks...that was fun!"

Civics

Sadly, I had to teach my children the requirements for becoming President of the United States:

1. 35 years old
2. legal resident for 14 years
3. born in the United States

They have no aspirations of becoming the President, but I'm sure it makes them feel even more like outsiders when they find out they're not qualified because they weren't born here.  They became legal U.S. citizens when they were babies, so they should have every right to run for President if they want to.  That's why Noah made a sad face on his test.

In Civics class, I taught him that any citizen can propose change, so to demonstrate that, I wrote to our State Representative, asking him to do what he can to change this outdated requirement.  He wrote back and thanked me for my feedback. 

Since I'm about the have the Constitution amended, it should be much easier to accomplish my next project: getting the speed limit raised on Idlewood Street.  We take this street from end to end, all the way across town, almost every day.  It's a long, straight road with sidewalks on the both sides and only one stop sign.  The average person would drive at least 40 miles per hour just naturally, but the speed limit is 30.  Mike and I have both gotten tickets on this road, and we have to set our cruise control to crawl along at 30.  Here's Mike's latest warning: