Mr. Polehn writes

  I was recently subjected to some kind of a sick experiment, in which all my free time was completely taken away, my rights to privacy relinquished.  I survived at the mercy of an oligarchical panel of tiny despots.  Yes, I was a stay at home parent.   It isn't as easy as I thought. I don’t know about other homeschooling parents but I have a very picturesque view of how things should go.  Children gathered around listening intently to unabridged classic literature. My six year old asking thoughtful questions about historical figures and the times and places in which they lived. With the utmost patience and joy my kids sounding out words of poetry, naturally learning phonetic rules in beautiful rhythm.  We'd have nature walks every afternoon with plenty of time for music and art.   By now you can probably tell, I don’t do most of the schooling in my house.  Turns out my fantastic idea of how homeschooling should be was jus...

  Now that it's possible to step outside without fear of slipping, falling and cracking my head open on some ice it's time to put back on the running shoes and go enjoy the sun (or rain as the case may be) again.   Distance   There was a time last summer when I could run 30k in a week.  It felt great to be able to run 10k every other day without feeling 100% miserable the entire time.  After a break lasting several months I am nowhere near having that kind of a base.  My plan is to start things off with a goal of 15k per week moving up 10% every week until I get to 40k a week.  I can't really see myself being able to run more than that.  A t some point this summer I'll be adding regular biking and swimming into the mix.   I should probably leave time for family, work and sleep somewhere in my schedule... Pace   I'm pretty slow.  I've never really gotten much better.  Even when I was in decent running shape I was h...

 The last thing this planet needs is more rebar and concrete poured out to support our automobile centered world.  Yet the City of The Dalles has concluded the need for a mutli-level parking structure in downtown The Dalles i s inevitabe .  The task force outlined several options to increase parking availability downtown especially for employees of downtown businesses.  Most of these ideas repurpose existing infrastructure in order to increase availability of automobile parking downtown.  The task force concluded that ultimately none of the existing infrastructure will support the needs of downtown long term; a parking garage would eventually be necessary.  Let me assert there is a longterm solution to the downtown parking problem that does not require investing further into the fading automobile age.  As the task force stated we do need employee only parking and time limits for general parking.  The problem I have is the task force sugges...