"Groundhog Day" or "Liittle House On The Prairie" -- March 29, 2020

This may or may not help explain some of the new designations we're seeing in the Bakken.

Gas Buddy, Oklahoma City: still 99 cents/bbl. Oh, oh -- 99 cents/gallon. But that may have been more than a Freudian slip. LOL.

North Texas: sunny and a little cooler. Will barely break 70°F.

Barber shops, beauty salons are closed. In large urban areas, like the one we live in, I see "mobile pet grooming" out and about every day. Hint.

Amazing, the three "A's":

• Amazon
• the Apple Pencil
• Alexa 

Fail:

I would say there cannot be many things worse than sending out an e-mail to all your customers with an important link ... and the link fails to load. That's exactly what Alerus Financial is experiencing today. Whatever. 

********************************************

I'm Lovin' It

I'm not sure if we're re-living "Groundhog Day" or "Little House on the Prairie."

I have never had such fun being with Sophia. We are getting into a real routine and, wow, talk about productive days.

Weekends are slightly different but typical weekdays:

• 0900: I pick her up at her house, with her bike on my bicycle rack, and to the park we go; one hour of bicycle riding and exercising;
• 1000 - 1300: at the apartment
• breakfast
• math (arithmetic)
• reading
• learning to tell time
• piano lesson
• arts and crafts
• lunch
• 1300 - 1700: over at her friend's house; playtime; but a very involved mother there, also
• 1700 - 2000: back to the apartment
• light supper
• talk to her friend Jack on IMO (universal FaceTime)
• piano lesson
• learning to tell time 
• 2000: home

As noted earlier, it was my goal to have Sophia riding her bike on her own by the end of the week. Goal accomplished. I think that is the fastest among the three granddaughters. Very similar to drilling a well. Lots of preliminary work. Then one day of concentrated practice. Then second day of concentrated practice. And voila; mission complete.

Drilling a Bakken well: lots of preliminary work, including the initial spud. Then drill the vertical. Land the curve. Drill the horizontal. And voila: mission complete.

Back to Sophia:

• arithmetic: I/O tables -- more on those in a future note; link here for example;
• piano: has had two "professional" piano lessons, "Flowkey."
• telling time: she now knows how to tell time "on the hour" and "on the half hour"; I'm not sure we will get much beyond that for awhile; time is really, really a difficult concept; I think Einstein was even working on it to the end of his life.

I know our younger daughter plans to home school her twins (who are now five weeks old). I'm beginning to re-think the benefits of home-schooling. I would do exactly what I'm doing, but I would also hire "experts" in certain areas to augment what we do on our own, for example:

• voice lessons (singing)
• music lessons (instrument in addition to piano)
• why can't home-schoolers be part of public school bands, orchestras? (Or sports for that matter?)
• piano lessons
• arithmetic (math)
• literature (Shakespeare, etc)
• much of that -- arithmetic, literature -- could be done online
• science

I assume this is already being done by many, but I've never had so much fun doing this and thinking about this.

I'm a bit miffed that the US Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has not yet used the current crisis to advance her cause. Perhaps she has, but if so, she's not been as visible as she needs to be. [Later: it turns out she has. I'm wrong. See this link.] I would love Trump to start leading off his daily briefings with one member of his cabinet telling the press what he/she is doing during the crisis. Not all cabinet members each day, but one cabinet member per day. Sort of like a rock concert: the cabinet member is the "opening act" to be followed by the man with orange hair.