Monthly Archives: May 2008

Timing Is Everything

I am having one of THOSE weekends – you know, the ones that make you appreciate root canals or colonoscopies! My eldest is graduating tonight, we have company coming and things scheduled all through the rest of the weekend. My kids are out of school but the school I work at has another week and I have not even begun to get the lab ready for summer. Last night Dale got up about 11:00 to take something for a headache and found that the washing machine had overflowed. He turned it off until the water drained down and then turned it back on. I shouldn’t really say the washing machine overflowed – the drain pipe behind it did – and it first backed up into the kitchen sink! It did it again. About that time I came up to the kitchen because he had been gone awhile and there were noises.

I mopped and mopped, and put the drain cleaner in the pipe behind the washer. When I went to get warm water to flush it with I realized that the sinks were full of water as well. I turned on the garbage disposal which instead of helping the water drain which it has when this happened in the past, the water backed up in the pipe some more – more mopping!!

I checked the outside cleanouts and they were empty which tells us that the problem is inside so I voted to let it all just sit til morning. It was slowly draining. This morning I have already put the drain cleaner in the pipe and let it sit and flushed it with hot water and it is going through that process a second time and hopefully that will do the trick. I do NOT like plumbing problems any time but especially not THIS weekend!

Sondra is coming tomorrow night and we will go with her to Dallas for her six month checkup to make sure she is doing ok with her one kidney. It will be good to see her. I’m going to drive one vehicle and let Dale ride with her so they can have a couple of hours to visit.

Through all of this I feel like the world is spinning just a bit too fast. I know it is graduation that is getting to me under everything. I can hear this quiet ticking in the background – the tiny, less than 4 pound baby that I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to care for as well as he needed. The little guy in diaper and pajama shirt with a Happy Meal box on his head singing with beauty and the beast. Tick tick. Now he is almost four, wearing shorts and cowboy boots and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Near Christmas time in kindergarten he asked our pastor if he could read something from his bible in church. His kindergarten teacher and principle actually came and he stood in front of everyone and read The Magnificat and sang The Foolish Man song. Now we fast forward and the ticking is so fast I can hardly discern the spaces between. Jr. High band (bassoon) and basketball. Band at the beginning of High School until he discovered that debate was his passion and he stuck with that throughout high school.

Next year my daughter will walk across the stage and a chapter in our lives will have ended and a new chapter will have begun. Tick Tick

The plumbing problem is fixed – it took one of those devices you attach to a hose and put in the drain and it lets pressure build up to break up a clog. I’m probably not describing it well but I do not want to understand plumbing just like I don’t want to think about this clock that keeps ticking!

Happy Almost 6 Month Old Kidney

Dale went for an extra check up today because his blood work came back wonky last time. His creatinine was up from 1.1 to 1.4 and his white blood cell count was up. Those things could indicate an infection, a need for meds to be adjusted, a need to drink more water. They were about the same this time – no worse. They want him to come back in 2 weeks and do another glofil test and they adjusted the meds and both were medicines that could create this effect. Soooo…he’s fine though not happy about doing the glofil again.
We got back just after lunch and I went to work though I wondered for a while if we were going to have to pull over in Commerce and wait out the storm – it was raining so hard we couldn’t see and it lasted almost to Paris.

The school year is almost over. We went to a cookout for the debate team last night and the kids got to burn their files. There are six seniors moving on this year and they have spent a lot of time together and they have spent a lot of time with Kristy so it was kind of emotional. We left before about 8:30 and left the kids to spend time with each other and Kristy. I can’t express how grateful I am for all the time Kristy put in with these kids and especially mine.

Tonight we go back out there for a cookout for the AP US History class that my daughter has been in with Dennis as her teacher. They have both obviously had a lot to do with my kids education and growing up.

Comp Day May 2008

Here is my handout. Some of it is covered in other places in this blog. It was created on a Mac using Pages. I am trying to get more comfortable using the iWork software and I think that while it is not as much of a workhorse as Word it was fun and easy to export as a PDF.
Jumpdrive

Create a folder

PowerPoint Backgrounds and creating content in Word

Adding Sound to PowerPoint and making the music play across multiple slides

Creating Screenshots

Creating a group in Outlook Express

Locking your computer

Word Tips

FireFox

End of year grade export

mayStaffDevTips.pdf

Saturday Night Live On a Tuesday

Gilda Radner died 19 years ago today.  Rosanne Rosannadanna, Baba Wawa, Emily Litella (never mind) – and all the other characters she created as part of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players are all gone with her.  I miss her and the old Saturday night live.  I miss Jon Lovitz as the pathological liar (ya ya that’s the ticket) and Dana Carvey as the church lady – I remember the skit where the church lady interviewed a parody of Tammy Faye Baker (that was redundant) – classic.

My Big Bang Theory favorite quote for Monday night was

– I’m glad you are learning Mandarin

– Why?

– Because when you are fluent you will have a billion other people to annoy besides me

We had company for a few minutes and I missed the end of the show – aaar!

A Few Online Things To Play With

A couple of things I played with tonight – Google maps has added Wikipedia and evidently had already added photos. The photos are hosted by Panoramio and you can get to them or Wikipedia articles when in Google maps by clicking more and checking the appropriate box. I spent some time moving around just looking at pictures around the country and clicking to read Wikipedia articles – Google is opening up it’s geo search application and allowing other websites to use geographically linked information.

Another “toy” I played with tonight is Powerset which is a start-up that is trying to come up with a better way to search.  You type in your criteria using “natural language” and so far it is only searching Wikipedia but I typed in several searches in the form of questions and it seemed to respond in a pretty accurate range for what I was searching for.

Monday Night Nerdery

I love Big Bang Theory!

Random customer in computer store: “Excuse me – which do I need – firewire or usb?”

Sheldon (Who does NOT work there): “it depends on which bus you have.”

Customer: “uh … I … drive a chevy cavalier?”

Sheldon: “Oh dear Lord! What kind of computer do you have and please don’t say a white one?”

hehe

Just a General Update

What is it about the spring – I always fall under it’s spell. I brought most of my plants home from school so they could live on the back and front porches which are their true homes. I started digging up the rose bed today. Dale is tired of fighting with it – Roses are just so high maintenance. We are planning to fill in the area with stone so it will mean a lot more work and quite a few more trips to Home Depot for stone. I’m getting the itch to paint too. We have squash, asparagus, and walking onions growing in the garden. I have herbs and spinach in big pots on the back porch. I’ve already picked spinach three times and it is ready again. There was plenty of rain this year and it has made a difference. Even my peonies have been beautiful.

I managed to get a “start” on cleaning off my desk. I was starting to feel like I would be smothered under piles of paper! Another teacher and I got our presentation submitted for next year at TCEA and I only have one more week of staying late for open lab. The year is winding down. Dale is doing well and Kinsey will graduate. Jessica will get her license and will look for a job.
I bought myself an Mp3 player on ebay and it came today. I wanted something small for carrying when I walk and so far I really like it. The end comes off and you plug the whole thing into a usb port. I spent about an hour this evening dragging songs over to it and then went for my walk and I think I walked twice as far as usual.
Now I am watching Numbers and putting up the laptop and curling up with my book. No alarm clock in the morning and tomorrow is our 28th anniversary. I hope the rain holds off – I plan to work in the yard tomorrow but I’m not cooking. Supper will probably be Magels – mmmm. I’ve got to make the PowerPoint for Sunday evening but with google docs it will go together quickly. BJ is teaching on Romans and I have an idea for a skit for the kids to do on 1st Kings (maybe next month). It will take some time to get it together but I’m starting to put an outline together.

Monday is a weather day so I have extra time to play in the yard. Goodnight world and have a peaceful weekend!

TeachersFirst Question of the Week

TeachersFirst.com had this for the question of the week recently. Below it is my response.

Some teachers create their own MySpace and FaceBook accounts. Some have personal blogs. A recent article in the Washington Post details indescretions by teachers in such public spaces. If a teacher wants to have a personal web presence, what guidelines or advice would you give to him or her about what should/should not be shared online for the world to see, and why?

Having a presence on the web is like having a picture window into your life. Anyone driving by will form an opinion of you by what they glimpse through that window. If you are dancing around with your lampshade on your head – they are going to make a snap judgment. Every picture, every post, every song playing on your website creates a picture of you for someone who visits. If you are a teacher and have not learned what is and is not appropriate in public then you have bigger problems than the internet.

It doesn’t matter if it is correct, the opportunity to make an impression has passed and if it is a bad one it will be very difficult to change even if you get the chance which in most cases you won’t.

If you are the type of person that sweeps the floor, dusts and straightens up for company then do that on your website as well because company will be coming and going most times without you even knowing it.

In education this is even more crucial. Whatever is on your website may as well be on the principals’ desk, the school board meeting, the local newspaper, or a students iPod. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it. We should just use it for what it is – a tool to communicate. It is not and never has been your private diary with pictures and sound.

Our students are now creating content on the internet. We have a wonderful teaching opportunity if we choose to utilize that capability. That means we have to get on the bus with them – not stand on the sides wringing our hands. We just need to have a destination in mind and plan accordingly.

Amen?