Check him out here:  http://www.nextdraft.com/index.shtml

I don't know what happened to Dave's emails; I used to look forward to them every day.  Somewhere along the line we drifted apart -- I was spending more time on blogging and well, he stopped sending me his daily missive.

But look!  He's back!  Missed that smartass atttitude!

We certainly can't have enough of that these days...

10:32:29 PM    comment []

Catnmus expressed concern in yesterday’s comments that my daughter has been relegated to a secretarial role for the FIRST LEGO League team.

Not so, although she did take notes during the meeting.

I’d been quite concerned that she’d be steamrolled by the boys in the group, being the only girl and being a bit reticent when meeting people and participating in anything new.  She’s always been shy – the kind of person who likes to hang back and observe the lay of the land before jumping in.  No problem for me; I was like that as a child, as was my spouse.  We’re much less like that as adults, now that we’ve earned our own confidence in our skills and abilities.

The real concern was one boy who was excessively chatty during our first meeting.  Yesterday’s meeting provided so many opportunities to do hands-on work that he didn’t really say much at all.  It became clear as he worked away that this kid is head-and-shoulders above most of the rest of the team.  His yakkiness may just be his way of getting out in front as a leader, since compared to the rest of the kids he’s the smallest in build.  He could be a great engineering manager some day if he can learn to fully engage other team members.

While I was trying to channel these high-energy boys into tasks, my daughter hung back a bit as is her wont.  The boys are very demanding, some literally jumping in front of others to butt in and be heard.  If I hadn’t jumped back at one point, I would have been stepped on.  I felt like I spent my time refereeing and packeting several competing conversations at the same time for the duration of the meeting.  Once we got assembly directions off the printer and doled out with LEGOs, the boys hyper-focused and settled down to their tasks, naturally forming three small assembly teams.  In the mean time, my daughter had been quietly hovering around, poking through the boxes of LEGOs, looking over all the plans.  She pointed out that we were missing a number of supplies that we would need going forward and put them on a list.  As the boys got half-way into their assemblies, they would stop and shout that they were missing a piece – which my daughter immediately found and doled out to each of the sub-teams before they could even begin to dig through the twenty-nine bags of assorted LEGO parts.

It was as if she already knew where the needed parts were in each of twenty-nine bags containing hundreds of assorted pieces.  She knew the inventory of these thoroughly mixed-up parts in equally mixed-up bags far better than the boys did, and she’d only had fifteen minutes to look them over and look over all of the plans while I compiled, printed and doled out the work assignments to the boys.

Damn.

Each of these assembly teams settled back into work once she’d pulled the missing pieces from the inventory and doled them out; she joined the formerly-chatty boy as a team mate and helped him with his assembly.  She would break away periodically, whenever one of the other two teams mumbled about something missing or not fitting, and jump in to find the piece, help get them back on track, then go back and help the first boy.  It was almost as if she kept track of every single piece in her head as each of the three teams built the assemblies.

Amazing.  She took to it like a duck to water, literally.  Not a single ripple anywhere on the surface as she moved from team to team, produced pieces like magic.

I wonder whether any of the boys will realize at all what she was contributing, as seamless and unruffled as she was.  She didn’t make a big show of producing for them; they won’t see the shopping list that she made for me to prepare for the next meeting.  She could almost run this team herself, if she had enough personal authority with them; she might even be the team leader next year, when the chatty-future-engineering-manager moves on to middle school.

The challenge for her will be moving from a position of facilitator to leader; my challenge will be identifying the skills she needs to make that shift and encouraging her to acquire them.

I might have to take a couple lessons myself along the way.

11:22:30 AM    comment []

Agh!!!  The full moon is nearly upon us. 

Two mornings in a row I’m lying in bed, tossing and turning in the wee hours, unable to return to sleep.  A soft blue light emanating from the hallway tells me my son is also awake, watching Cartoon Network.

By the time the alarm goes off, I’m exhausted from the lack of sleep or from disrupted sleep.  My son passed out cold at 7:30 pm last night from his exhaustion; he’ll be lucky to make 6:30 pm this evening without conking out again.

I should have guessed this without peaking out the window: the moon is nearly full.

Sure enough, as I took my daily 5:30am walk, the moon was richly luminous, hanging low in the western sky.  I’ll make a point of having breakfast outdoors tomorrow morning, to catch what should be a spectacular moonset.  Why don’t you, too?

Check your chart at Sky & Telescope to find out when the moon will appear in the sky in your part of the world.  Hope the skies will be clear for you!

Next month:  Full Beaver Moon on 08-NOV-03 – add this date to your calendar! (Yeah, yeah, I know, I didn’t make up the name…)

8:51:18 AM    comment []