This blog post brought to you by this song, on repeat forever:
Meghan Trainor - All About the Bass

I just got back from babysitting Sola, Harrison and Rocket in Colorado. The trip was the perfect shot in the arm; I feel eleventy-billion times more energized and focused than before I left.

The second day there (Thursday) I had to help Harrison with his math homework, which he seems to dread. He's in seventh grade and his class is learning how to add and subtract fractions expressed in various forms (mixed numbers, fractions, and decimals). He was panicked for the first hour or so, thinking that we wouldn't finish before bedtime and he'd get no time to go play outside. It took a lot of patience and ordering him to focus and try again, but once he picked up how to convert fractions to decimals by long division, he was so excited he seemed to forget about playing outside. There were many high-fives involved.

Like so.

After we finished and he was putting his papers away, he stopped, threw his arms in the air and yelled "Fractions!"
     It was gratifying to make so much progress with him, but in addition to that, even when he was having a hard time I enjoyed teaching him. The more I tutor math, the more I love it; I feel totally in my own element. Each person offers a new puzzle of finding the right way to communicate, and I'm good at it. So gratifying. I think I'm going to post some more flyers on campus offering math tutoring.

So that was Thursday; skipping ahead to Saturday, I went to the dog park with Julie and Denny -

I left off the blog post here but I'm not gonna finish it now. Too long ago. The dog park was awesome. The end.

     So I guess this is going to be a once-a-month sort of deal. Except it's November now. You may assume this means absolutely nothing happened to me in October. Except I quit the lab I was working in, I flew to San Francisco for fleet week and probably ran a couple of miles up and down the stairs at Dad's place, Ellen came down to UCSD and applied for their med program, one of my roommates suffered a severe tragedy, and I went to a spoken-word concert that kicked ass! But besides that, absolutely nothing happened in October.

So right, November! I started practicing piano again in the past week and I can't believe I've taken this long. The third floor of UCSD's music center is made entirely of piano practice rooms! The only caveat is they're pretty packed with actual music majors most of the time, but I get in when I can. Just practicing scales, chords and posture so far, but even that's gratifying.
     I was in a pretty good mood coming back from campus today until I got to my car and saw that I'd been left a ticket for "no registration showing." It's for $37.50 which, after living in San Francisco, seem pretty light. Normally I'd only be a little aggravated except:
A) I have updated registration stickers on my rear license plate
B) They wrote me the same ticket two months ago and I came back to the police station and got them to sign a correction waiver which reduced the fee to $10, and I paid it.
C) The ticket has a comment that says the "NO TEMPORARY/CHECKED ALL WINDOWS" which means it's definitely bullshit.

     See, I don't have stickers on my front plate. I don't know if there's a law that you have to have them showing on front and back, but I might have thought that's what the ticket was for. But the fact that he remarks that he checked for a temporary registration means he supposedly looked for any evidence at all that I had a registration. As if, had I shown that I had a temporary, I would not have received a ticket. But the sticker on my REAR LICENSE PLATE wasn't sufficient proof that my registration is up to date?
    So now I'm pissed, cause I think this cop (or these cops, I don't remember who wrote me the ticket in September) is just fabricating tickets cause he knows it's my word against his. I'm going into the station tomorrow to talk to them about this. Fingers crossed they'll just void it and give that officer shit about his bullshit ticket writing. I don't want to go to court to challenge it, but I will.