Funnel and Sieve

A couple of weeks ago two other students, our supervisor Dave, and I traveled to Kansas City to visit Missouri's version of our orientation center. It's called Alphapointe. It is much different than ours. It's different physically and philosophically.

The building itself is only seven years old, and still smells new, where ours is ... well, a hell of a lot older. Alphapointe is all on one floor, where our orientation center has six floors, seven if you count the basement and we do use the basement. Alphapointe is located out in what seemed to me to be an office park-like area. Away from the city. In Des Moines we're located smack dab in the middle of the city.

In my opinion the most important difference is between the philosophies of each orientation center. While Alphapointe has an environment of a sheltered workshop where workers assemble writing pens for the federal government and manufacture plastic bottles for VA hospitals, it seems like they funnel their clients in that direction. It seems to me that they teach their clients specific skills to reach their goal of employing them.

The goal at the Iowa center, in contrast to Alphapointe, is to give the students tools they need to be competitive and independent in their daily living. Don't get me wrong, we work hard at the center and we earn the tools we have when we leave the school. Since we have the tools to cope in the day to day activities it takes to secure a job and hold onto any career that we choose, I believe we have a stronger center than other states do.

As I've noted in this writing the Kansas City center tries to funnel their students toward a certain type of employment. The Iowa center is like a sieve, students venturing out to do whatever career they are interested in. Now, everyone isn't successful, but everyone has the green light to try out what they are interested in. I think we are pretty capable of doing anything, except drive a cab, or fly a plane, although with the computers on board, piloting a plane may be more realistic than driving a car.

In short, we are given the tools to achieve whatever we want to achieve. It's like teaching a person to fish, not just feeding him the fish.

Pound cake

I'm at home for the next week and a half and wanted to try out my culinary skills. I've been cooking with shades on at the orientation center for the last three months and wanted to see what it was like to cook AND see. It was pretty easy, but not as easy as I thought cooking without shades would be.

We got a new mixer so I looked at the recipes that came with the manual to see if any of the recipes tripped my trigger. I really wanted to try out the new mixer. Well, the double chocolate pound cake looked pretty damn delectable.

The recipe called for a lot of the good stuff that bakers use. Flour. Now that's taking my cooking to new heights. Sugar. I didn't mix up the flour and sugar, nor did I toss the flour into the garbage can. Baking powder, milk, REAL butter and few other ingredients that raised the carb count for each slice of cake.

I cooked the cake on Wednesday and added a drizzle of chocolate glaze Thursday morning. The verdict: well, I'd give it a B. I thought it would be a bit more moist. The flavor is excellent though and I won't have much trouble getting rid of the cake to friends and family. A scoop of ice cream would be a fine addition to the cake.

The mixer worked great and I would be negligent if I didn't mention that my wife helped me most of the way. Comments like, "You don't have throw the ingredients into the bowl, just let them drip." Or, "How did cocoa powder get into the utensil drawer?" Really, Chris was a big help and I don't think the cake would have turned out as good as it did without her help. More later.