Hot Surface Ignition

This summer when I on my big journey, my colleague and housesitter, Warren called me and asked me how to turn on my oven. After going through it step by step, we concluded that Warren was not an idiot and was actually doing everything correctly. My oven was not working and there was something the matter with it.

This morning I had PG&E come out and see if they could fix it. As Randy the serviceman entered, I told him what was going on and he immediately knew that there was a part that had gone kaput. Apparently what happened to my oven is a common. The "HOT SURFACE IGNITION" had died. That part is the element that heats up and glows and heats the oven to the temperature you set it to.

After taking out a couple pieces of the inside of the oven as well as the racks, we located the hot surface ignition and with loosened it with a few screws. However, we still have to disconnect that element from the power source and that took a bit more work. This entailed us moving the appliance away from the wall and unplugging it from the socket. After looking at the back, we determined that the disconnect of the ignition was not on the back, so we had to remove the bottom drawer and go way back underneath the range and unscrew a protective shield and there it was. We unclipped the ignition from the power source and this is what I need to replace.

The kitchen is an obstacle course at the moment.

The hot surface ignition element is found beneath the two pieces on the bottom of the oven and sticks out from the rear of the oven.

The hot surface ignition.

Randy was kind enough to stay by me as I disassembled each part of the range and told me exactly what to do when I install the new ignition and put everything back together. He told me that there was an appliance part store near my home, but I went and it was closed. Seeing is that I won't be able to get to an appliance store during the school day, I have had to resort to purchasing the replacement part from Sears online. The element will be delivered next Friday. That part, if you were wondering, costs $65.06 with taxes and shipping.

A blog posting will be in order when I actually successfully complete this task!

Come and check out Ernie's new glasses

I spent this evening dining with my friend Mary, her husband and their nearly one-year old daughter, Katie. As you can see below, Katie is just starting to walk (with help from Mom and Dad) and in a surprise, I found out that Mary is pregnant again, due in March.

Mary, Katie and Peter D. on a walk to dinner

We were celebrating a special birthday for Mary. Happy Birthday, Mary!!

So here's what you've all been waiting for. Here's me with Kate and my new glasses.

So, I went with a more modern look.

So, let me know what you think. I decided it was time to take a chance and go with something a bit more "on the edge". Hopefully, this choice doesn't have me going over the cliff!

Fallout 2004

A great Head-Royce School tradition is to send each class out on a trip at the beginning of the year. Each class, from 7th grade to 12th grade, goes out for two days to do things like kayaking, ropes course or if you're a 12th grader, whitewater rafting. It is a costly, and potentially high liability proposition to send out upwards of 500 students on these trips and I commend the school to it's continued committment to these trips.

This year the seniors, as well as their fellow faculty rafters, boarded the buses at school at 6AM. By 10AM, we arrived at the put-in point on the Middle Fork of the American River. I must note that for the last 8 miles of the drive I got what I term "Chapmaned". Let me explain. Our Head of School is named Paul Chapman, and he is a great, if not one of the best heads in all of America. He has been at Head-Royce for 20 years. He, like me, is an adviser to seniors, and he drove up to the river in his own car, but rode the last 8 miles on the buses with the rest of us. Lucky for me, he rode those last miles next to me. Paul likes to chat with his faculty. He remembered that I was a Geology major and kept asking me questions about the topography we were driving past. I did my best to tell him what I knew, but my petrology was always weak and I could never tell him what kind of rock we were looking at. In addition, Paul told me that he had heard from various parties that this particular trip along the Middle Fork of the American River was perhaps TOO wild for our students, and he was therefore doing some personal fact-finding. Lucky for me, the drive ended before he could begin to ask me things about curriculum or other school issues.

The Head-Royce seniors and faculty were divided into thirteen rafts. The trip was a total of 18 miles. In the first five miles there were class III and IV rapids one right after the other. The most stunning of them all was one of the first, called Tunnel Chute. Here is a visual...

A view of a raft entering the rapid from the rear (top)

The rapid itself is no wider than the width of a raft necessitating that we all get down and make sure we hold our paddles up so nothing sticks out. The rapid is about 200 feet long.

The raft bounces hard at the bottom. Make sure to be centered low in the boat.

Right after the rapid, you go into a tunnel to recover and celebrate. Here is a raft coming out successfully on the other side.

You get the idea that the day is full of great excitement. Along the way, there were opportunities to swim and enjoy the sun and river. I will say that before lunch, I dove into the water voluntarily once, was pushed in by one of my boatmates (still unknown who that was to me) and then when our boat was doing a cool trick, I fell in unexpectedly.

After lunch there were more rapids, the most dramatic being RUCK-A-CHUCKY, a class VI. Yes, you read that right, class 6. We are not allowed to run that rapid, so much walk around. It is a rapid with a 35 foot drop. Unbelievable.

That night, we camped along the South Fork. Here is a view of the river from our campsite.

South Fork American River at twilight

After dinner, we had a slide show and then a great senior class talent show. It is amazing how talented these students are. We had singing and music. WOW. Afterwards, senior class president Nick Dantzker (my advisee!!) asked the students to recognize and thank people and classmates that they would never publically thank as a way to appreciate the class and to start of their senior year with a positive note. It was awesome, and there were tears. Some students said some pretty amazing things.

One thing that came out was the great bond that the lifers of the school have. These are the students who started way back in the fall of 1992 as kindergarteners. At that time, there were 36 and 25 are still classmates. Here's a picture of them.

Class of 2005 lifers

Congratulations to the lifers and all the class of 2005. Have a great senior year. It was a great fallout and do yourselves proud this year.

The first day of school

It's the first day of September, 2004 and it is also the first official day of classes for the 2004-05 academic school year. Because the 9th grade class trip left at 1PM, the entire Upper School's class day was shortened with each period meeting for 30 minutes instead of the usual 45. This year I teach three sections of Geometry, one section of Honors Geometry and one section of a new Math elective that will focus on Statistics in the Fall and Economics in the Spring. All the Geometry classes are for the ninth grade, so if you do the math, most of my days are spent with ninth graders, whom I love. The Stat/Econ class is for seniors and currently has an enrollment of five. I'm ok with the small number as it gives me much more freedom to experiment with how I will teach this class.

But one of the highlights of the day was advising, where the ninth graders I met back in the fall of 2001 have now become seniors and are looking out onto their futures. Here they are...

(Back row) Charlie L., Ryan P., Marshall M., Jeff D., Meghan B., Max S.

(Front row) Gretchen S., Becca F., Joanna L., Danny W., Nick D., Chen

(Not pictured) Matt P.

Tomorrow, the senior class embarks on the senior class trip, which will be raft the Middle Fork of the American River. This is the granddaddy of rafting trips in Northern California and I have been waiting to take this trip for seven years. You see, back in the fall of 2000, when my first group of advisees were seniors they were scheduled to raft the Middle Fork, but that year the hydrologists did not release enough water so we were not able to raft. I have heard no grumblings of a potential canceling of this years trip. I am so excited!!

On a totally different subject, because I had an afternoon free from teaching, I hauled the pieces of my chair to the upholsterer that came recommended to me and Linda (of Cortland Upholstery on Mission Street) came up with a plan to attach certain pieces to the chair and footrest themselves and others will be pillows. I have to admit, thought, that instead of going with leather, I decided to go with vinyl. I hope I don't regret that decision. The big surprise came, again, when she quoted me a price. $168. I was floored, as I was bracing myself to pay over $400. OOOPS, there was a mistake, Linda forgot to include something in the price and it came back the second time at $225. Still, far below what I was planning on and willing to pay. I should have my complete chair in a week and a half!!

A momentous day

This last day of August is not yet over, but it has already been a day of great discovery. Since I didn't have to be at school until noon (as a senior advisor, my advisees register after lunch) I played a quick nine holes with my friend Dave H. (Mom, Dave is the guy who had the 4th of July BBQ you and I went to last year, he has the really nice backyard.) Anyway, after our round, Dave tells me to pull into this sketchy looking grocery store called Pacific Super for dim sum. The store backs up directly onto I-280 and looked really run down. We walked in and immediately I was hit with that one-of-a-kind Chinese grocery store smell. If you've experienced it, you know what I mean. We pulled right up the glass cases with all the BBQ pork buns and such. I wandered around the display case and there it was, what I have been looking for here in SF for the past couple of years......THE VIETNAMESE SANDWICH. I have been looking for an equivalent to these sandwichs which I devoured in Seattle. As I sit here and I type, I am eating the one that I purchased. It is good since it was made perhaps less than twenty minutes ago. To pile good upon good, Pacific Super offers the buy four for $5 and get one free. How can my day get any better?

The REI Labor Day Sale

I spent this afternoon finally dragging myself to Costco to buy those bulk things that I need every six months. 36 rolls of toilet paper, the quantity one must buy of Costco's Kirkland brand, will last me an entire year. The most important purchase I make at Costco are the 10 pound bags of frozen fruit that I use for my smoothies. Along the way, I did pick up cantaloupe, honeydew, lemons, and grapes, all of which are of surprisingly high quality.

I bought most everything I wanted at Costco, but there are two items at Trader Joe's that I must buy at TJ's and no where else. I really like TJ's Rice Dream Soy Milk. It isn't flavored vanilla, which is what Costco only sells, unless I didn't see the plain soy milk at Costco. The second Trader Joe's only item is their low fat cottage cheese. Last year, after eating this particular cottage cheese, I then bought a Safeway brand and I simply couldn't eat it. I was and still am completely familiar with the taste of Trader Joe's low fat cottage cheese.

Costco and Trader Joe's are a hop, skip and jump from San Francisco's own REI store. I had received a flyer in the mail, perhaps one of the few times an advertising piece actually worked on me, about REI's Labor Day Clearance Sale. So I went over to see if there was something I might want.

I found not one, but TWO.

The first was something that I had been needing and didn't buy earlier because of its steep price.

My new REI Ultra Lite Waterproof (not water resistant mind you) Jacket

The original price was $125 and the sale price was $89.99. But for all of you who know that I am the KING of the fleece vest, an actual rainjacket is a breakthrough fashion move for me.

I then went to the shoe section and saw what I thought to be really cool looking running shoes, and they were on the clearance rack, AND they had my small foot size.

My new Vasque Lightweight Running Shoe

You'll note that I am on an orange kick.

So I went to the cashier to make my purchase. The rainjacket rings up as $89.99, just as I thought it would. Then the cashier scans the shoes. The tag on the shoe showed that the original full price of the shoes was $85 and the sale price was $49.83. But the price screen flashed $24.91. I told the cashier I thought that the $24.91 was a mistake. He then said that every price that ends in .83 is given an additional 50% off the lowest price. BONUS. I was so happy that I almost did the Snoopy dance.