Reading Time: < 1 minute Yesterday (11-24-2023) was Black Friday, and I think I haven’t done shopping on BF for a while. Until this year. We did a bit BF shopping, mainly for our 13 year old as she was interested. She seems know some of the deals including the Bose bluetooth headset (Costco has $120 off deal). I didn’t
Reading Time: 3 minutes 上面这张照片(taken at CCRC)没有小孩，this is done on purpose. 这个是从楼上的bar/restaurant 拍过去的。我的两个小孩开始打网球🎾有一年左右, 她俩都有进步：从一开始完全是新手到现在可以和同级别的小朋友打几个回合了。想到我自己真正开始打网球还是来美国以后，读研究生时跟同学打了一下。97,98,99年美国打网球的地方跟国内相比简直是天壤之别。我当时在罗拉的沃尔玛买了个威尔森Wilson 铝合金的网球拍。后来工作后在圣路易斯的Sports Authority （S A）买了个同牌的碳素纤维的拍子。SA 好像在2008年的金融危机中倒闭了。我自己大概有十几年没有打网球。记得06年在Woodsmill 的tennis club 周五晚上跟朋友打过球：庆祝过cardinals 那年拿到world series 的冠军。再之后就是去年开始跟家人，孩子打了。我估计我会很快打不过她们了：因为她们在进步，我在原地踏步再加上年龄在那里。我也是在过去一年中意识到小孩们打球不容易。有一次在CCRC看到两个高中男生打得虎虎有生气：我估计他俩可能在本州高中生里面是高手了。今天是星期天下午，我看老大打球，教练我估计是大学生（年轻人），他玩一个轻吊，一个高中男生（我女儿的搭档）跑过去，失去平衡，摔倒在地，眼镜掉地，肩膀也好像也摔痛。我的太太最近跟拉肚高中校队的小姑娘学网球。据她说，校队不好进。后来我想想其实做好每一件事都不容易。但是反过来说，进不了校队，爬不上常青藤（或相当的学校）也没啥。因为我自己就没有做到这些：and I don’t think my life is less meaningful due to that [捂脸][呲牙] This reminds me of a related topic: Micro Managers And Micro Management. If you have Netflix sub, you may want to check
Reading Time: 3 minutes And eat some moon cakes. I just realized I wrote something about mid autumn festival way back in year 2007. I believe I was in Shanghai when I wrote this, and it was after we had honey moon in San’ya, Hainan, China. Time flies. Now we have 2 kids, and I don’t see any special
Reading Time: 5 minutes I put the double quotes around because looking back I don’t think I would die. Probably “scared to death” is more appropriate. But at the time I was really scared. It was probably in my 1st grade or 2nd grade, I cannot remember exactly. Maybe my parents or siblings or the aunt who helped me
Reading Time: 6 minutes (Picture above Hilary Hahn, who plays the violin for Suzuki book 1; the piano was played by Natalie Chen) (Update 12-14-2023) I realized my daughter’s violin teacher also knows how best to keep the kids engaged and interested. Couple things: 1) The practice sheet, he has a worksheet which looks like a printed out Excel
Reading Time: 3 minutes (Update 10-28-2023) Senior moment of yesterday: I was trying to find my Sienna minivan key, via the Tile app. I left it in the minivan after I filling the air for the tires. The reason I left key there was earlier I needed the accessories ON to power the portal air pump. So I was
Reading Time: 3 minutes Something random came to my mind the other day. I think overall our middle schools, high schools and some colleges *may* have emphasized too much on sports, especially team sports. I can see that from the NCAA Division I sports, basketball and football, etc. The reason I am saying that is twofold. We have limited
Reading Time: 4 minutes No I don’t drive the Rivian but I drive the Toyota Sienna next to it: owned it for 9 years now (since summer 2013). It was the main car (minivan) I drove in last 9 years, with the exception of sometimes I drove my wife’s Camry for the purpose of saving gasoline, or taking care
Reading Time: 4 minutes (Update 11-16-2023) I created a MFS FAQ blog post today: I used some of the content below, plus some of the common questions being asked in last year or so. In the future, I will try to maintain/update that one. (Update 11-02-2023) A few parents asked about the “1st test” PDF file. It’s the first
A run group for LMS 7th grader kids (or 6th, 8th grade kids, or kids, siblings in similar age range)
Reading Time: 4 minutes Any questions please let me know || Mobile: 314 540 2721 || Email: minjie.xu@gmail.com (Update 11-18-2022) We ended the daylight saving time for the year. The sunset is usually at about 5 pm, thus 4:30 pm starting time will give about 30 minutes time. More importantly, the weather is becoming a bit cold as the
Recent Comments