COFFEE BREAK #74

Love how on top of things they are! Good luck Victor!

Thanks.

Been teasing my wife about driving to meet someone while I was at work - and just two months before becoming pregnant with our first!! ;)

Them there are fighting words!! LOL

I plan to grow garlic this spring. Any recommendations for varieties??

Wow, Victor. I'm sure they'll get it straightened out. Can't believe they messed up that badly.

Karen

Never grew garlic...always wanted to...sorry can't help.

Just a quick note of news. My DD who is studying biology got her first college acceptance, and it's a Presidential scholarship to University of New Hampshire in biology! We don't know much else about it, but I for one was ready for good news after the other DD got rejected at her first choice. She has until May first to put down her deposit and hold the offer. I told her to apply there because UNH is part of a group of state schools with an accelerated MD program, and she can still study Latin. Others are UVM and Umass Amherst.

Great! Congrats.

congrats! good luck to the other two.

Yeay!!

Victor - garlic should be planted in the Fall. You can plant it in the spring but you won't get much in the way of bulbs when you harvest in June or July.

No, there are varieties that should be planted in the spring. Just got an email from Scheepers offering them.

great card, Victor.

Congratulations to your daughter, Rosemary. Tell your other DD, if they don't want her, she doesn't want them!

Not kidding when I say she needs to really think long and hard about becoming an MD.

This is scary.

http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/2245-virus-infection-brain-disease.html

Interesting. I'm going to drink more coffee! And eat more of the other brain-healthy foods!

RE MD stuff, DD doesn't much listen to me on career choices. She'd be a natural engineer, and she's made to do math, too. We're only committed to helping her in the undergrad years. We looked up the UNH tuition, and it's $38,000 per year. So a $10,000 scholarship makes college still more expensive than an instate school. Still, it's the first offer and the biggest scholarship anyone got so far in our family. I bet she'd have gotten the $25,000 scholarhip to WPI, but she wouldn't apply there.

$10K is the presidential?? Thought it was full.

Usually they are. But in this case it turned out it's not. We needed an emotional boost, but the joy was fleeting after we looked it up. Some of the presidential scholarships in private schools yield a half price tuition, which we'd still like to have a kid or two get.

The other sobering thought is the statistics for how long kids take to get their degrees from public schools. The tuition scholarhips are only for four years, also. Some figures for the state schools show a high number taking 6 years, especially in engineering. What they don't print is how many of those kids have full time jobs. U mass Amherst actually is proud that they have a five year BS in engineering. Their claim that their grads get a leg up for jobs seems to be true, however. Still, I'm starting to think DS ought to think carefully about a private engineering school if possible, because they may be more committed to supporting their undergrads to acheive graduation. I've heard of too many kids failing their junior year in the state schools, which may be motivational, or lack of finances, but who knows what's behind the statistics?

Well junior year is where you specialize and get the real meaty classes in your discipline. First two is mostly the same for all engineers - math and science foundation classes with just a taste of each discipline. At least that's how it was in the 80's.

Rosemary UNH is a great school I have many friends with kids there - one moved to NH just so they could get the in-state lower tuition for each of thier three kids.

Victor - you should ask your wife about dna testing for the first born just to be sure...........:)

Rosemary!! Just follow the money.DD #2 here has a masters in Cellular Bio from Duluth.She went there becuse they paid for a assistant scolarship.She now works for Johnson and Johnson and is doing very well. Its not the prestige of the school so much as it is the brains and drive of the individual.
Good luck to your daughter.

My DH got his master's from UNH, & one summer we took courses there....I loved it...great campus & surroundings...of course, this was 35 years ago, things change! Victor, lots of scams out there...hope your plates weren't involved, but looks like maybe they were.....

Upcoming NYBG orchid show theme will be vertical gardens. Looks interesting.

Any one interested in a meet-up at the NYBG for the orchid show?

Personally, I think it's ridiculous that NJ will fly flags at half staff for Whitney Houston. That is an honor not to be taken lightly. She is a perfect example of a lifetime of bad choices and bad examples.

Have to agree, Victor.....flags should be lowered for those who lost their life in service to this country....what are the dates of the orchid show?

Or at least made major contributions to better our lives. Music just doesn't make the cut. The only possible exceptions are the once in a lifetime, bigger than life, music people like Sinatra and Elvis.

Orchid show is March 3 - April 22.

I was so sick for the past 2 days and didn't hear about it, what a bunch of crap!

Horrible school bus accident town south of me, of triplets, 1 died, and the 2 others in critical http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2012/02/burlington_county_school_bus_c.html

How awful.

Friend of my friend said she was never so glad that her daughter was home sick with a cold, she would have been on that bus

Congrats, Rosemary! Great news if you can swing the tuition. That's tough to do.

I agree on the lowering of the flag thing. Although it's a terrible tragedy about WH, she has not earned that honor.

Jen, your friend's friend's daughter is lucky she was home sick and missed that accident. How awful.

A friend whose special needs daughter I work with told me today that her niece in FL, only 20, was shot in the head through a freak accident on Sunday. She's in the hospital in critical condition right now. No brain swelling so far, and I will be praying that there won't be. This happened at a church and has been on the news. Her father was the pastor there and kept a gun. I could be wrong, but I think the gun went off accidentally somehow. I'll have to look up the story to get more details.

Karen

Okay, I had some of the details of that story wrong. Here's an article on it. There are quite a few articles to be found online.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/pinellas-church-holds-vigil-to-pray-for-woman-accidentally-shot-in-the-head/1215701

Karen

Oh my gosh, how terrible....guess that guy will be changing his mind about buying a gun.

I absolutly agree about flags in NJ. What is with that gov. anyway.

don't know.. but he just ticked off a ton of people .. a guy at one of my stops at work was going on and on how he was so insulted .. was not a smart move that's for sure

Didnt he just make a good choice about not allowing Jersey Shore movie?
That image of the state is really unfair.
Back to Whitney.When anyone really looks at her career it wasnt very long.She did make tons of money for herself and hangers on.

Lots of news on this thread! I can imagine the grief of the triplets' family.

Thanks for the warm wishes about colleges. WE still have no ideas where the offers will be. I think it's not too late for my DDs to make and mail a good resume other than the one on the Common App, but we're really really tired. I don't know if I have the oomph to keep working on it. I emailed language teachers looking for feedback or test results to include in a resume, but they preferred to only talk to DD. I could call the depart. head next if so inclined, especially if I can't coral DD to be more proactive about highlighting her strengths to the remaining colleges. 1099s just came, so finally we can send in the 2011 tax report. If we'd had it a few days ago, we'd have saved a ton of mailing to meet the Feb. 15 postmark dates.

I've had my own share of thinking about government. I attended a very good talk about research on crime recidivism and how the parole board makes its decisions. It is an important area to get beyond politics and emotions, but that would depend upon the public and the politicians working with academia to develop effective protocols to assist judgement. If a person goes too far in reform, the Governor's council could vote them out at the end of their term. Apparently New Jersey has about the only expert software system, but I don't know how good it is.