So Long January

Well, it's been 31 days, and I had a few goals for the month of January that I wanted to get done. Since there are only about two and a half hours of January left, I figure it's pretty safe to review and discuss my goals.

Goal number one was to paint the "water closet" in our master bath. It was pretty gross in there, and really could have used a new paint job. We got this goal complete when we repainted the entire bathroom. It looks very nice now, so SUCCESS!

Goal number two was to paint the coat and game closet. Also finished this one when we painted the upstairs closet. Since I had the paint out, it just made sense to paint it at the same time. So again, SUCCESS!

Goal number three was to catch up on my back issues of Time and Newsweek. I was SUPER behind in reading these, so I had a lot to get done. I was able to catch up on Newsweek, but I'm already behind by two issues again. As for Time, I was not able to catch up. So, this goal was only partly finished. Perhaps I needed to have a more specific goal for how much I was planning to read each day.

Goal four was to file my piles of files. I had a lot of back mail that needed to be filed just sitting on my desk. I was able to get all my files organized with nice new folders for each month, etc. So, I'll have to say SUCCESS! Though, I then pulled out all my teaching documents, which need to be sorted and filed. But, that wasn't part of the original goal, so I'm still calling this success.

Goal five was to spend at least 30 minutes a day on my treadmill. This was really going to be a tough one because I'm usually really busy. By the end of the day I can't really seem to talk myself into getting on the treadmill. Well, apparently the solution to this is to do it first thing in the morning. So, some days this meant that I had to get up at 5:00 am to be sure to get the 30 minutes in. With the goal of 30 minutes a day, I should have run about 930 minutes over the month (which is 15 and a half hours). As of today (with 35 minutes) I spent 1,600 minutes on the treadmill (which is over 26 hours!). HOLY CRAP! So, we're going to say SUPER SUCCESS!!! Though, I think my treadmill is not long for this world, it's having some serious troubles. *SUPER SAD FACE*

Goals six was to upload my next video project. However, as I posted earlier, this goal had to be abandoned due to the loss of my connector between the VCR and the computer. Until I get a new converter I'm not able to do anything.

Finally, goal seven was to start a new book. This one was a complete fail. I did not get to reading a new book, but I spent all my reading time catching up with my magazines, which I did make a decent dent in. I'll make a more specific goal for next month.

There you have it! January is over and I had four finished goals, one goal on hold, one goal half finished, and one goal I did not meet. We'll have to make some good goals for February.

So long January 2011! You were a busy month, but now we look ahead to February!

An Idiot Abroad

Last night I discovered a fantastic new show, An Idiot Abroad. I had seen the commercials on TV for the past few weeks and thought, "I need to watch that", but didn't realized it had started. Well last night I was watching the Science Channel and it happened to come on. Since I had wanted to see it, I thought I'd give it a go. I have to say that I LOVE it! The premise of the show is that Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant send their friend Karl Pilkington to some of the wonders of the world (not to be confused with the 7 ancient wonders of the world). The problem is that Karl isn't too keen on travel. Stephen feels that travel will help expand Karl's mind and widen his view of the world. Ricky on the other hand is certain that Karl is going to hate every minute of it, and it will be hilarious to watch. In the end, I think Karl may open up a bit, but that Ricky will be right in that Karl will hate a lot of it.

I missed the first episode, which was Karl visiting China to see the Great Wall, or as he says, "The alright wall, we'll see how great it is." But, even though I missed it, they have it free OnDemand, so you just have to go into TV shows and go to An Idiot Abroad. They even have some nice extra features. So far they just have the China episode up, but I imagine the second episode, where Karl goes to India, will be up soon. The show airs on The Science Channel Saturday's at 10:00 pm. Below there are a few videos to give you an idea of what the show is like.

In this first video this is a delete scene from the trip to China.

Below are a few scenes from the China episode. I'm not sure if I would call them the best bits, but they are pretty good. I highly recommend this show, it is really funny.

In other news, spent an hour on the treadmill today. 30 down, ONE TO GO!!!

ONE

Today was the district MIFA festival for theatre. Our students go ever year, and this year was no different. The show has been in rehearsing for a few months now. It was a pretty difficult piece, Moliere's A Doctor in Spite of Himself. The acting had a very specific style, as did the comedy. I was a bit worried going into it because I wasn't sure if the judges would get it, or just think we were morons. We always do decently at MIFA, but often times we don't do super well. We've also had some really terrible judges who say things that are totally not helpful, constructive, or in some terrible situations just plain mean.

This year it turns out the judges really liked the show! They generally had great things to say about it, had a few suggestions, and probably was the best critique we've ever had at a MIFA competition. After that, I was cautiously optimistic that we'd end up with a good score at the end of the day. Well, we got to the awards ceremony and we got an "excellence" award for our lobby display. Then we got "superior" awards for acting for Caleb, Alexa and Eric, and then the entire ensemble, as well as for our costumes! Pretty much it seemed like we got awards for anything we could possible get awards for (there were a few things, but all the BIG things we got awards for). Again, it seemed like things were looking good.

So, the final results.... A ONE! That's right, they got a one. Not only did they get a one, they also had the top score for our district! YEP! A score of a one, and in first place! WOOO!

In other news, despite the fact that I had to get up at 5:00 am to get on a bus and drive to MIFA, when I got home at 7:15 tonight, I spent an hour on the treadmill. That is now 29 down, two to go! I can't believe I've got almost the entire month done!

It's MIFA Time

Today was the final rehearsal for the MIFA show. Tomorrow is going to be the district competition in West Bloomfield. I have to say I'm very impressed with a few things. The costumes are really well made, and done by a student. In addition the actors have built some really decent characters. But, it's hard to say how it is going to turn out because it is never clear what the judges want. In fact sometimes they come in with decisions made before they even see a show. Part of me things it is a waste of money because out of all the years that we never move forward past regionals and the scores are not always what they should be. Anyhow, tomorrow should be interesting, and hopefully they will do well. They work hard and deserve it.

In other news, today only did 30 minutes again. But that's 28 down, 3 to go.

Teaching Again

I got to sub again today for my former cooperating teacher. It was great to actually have a chance to teach again. All this subbing really is no good. It's really only babysitting but worse. You get thrown into a class, with some sort of lesson plan, or perhaps nothing at all depending on the teacher you're subbing for. The kids don't respect you at all because you're a sub. They then try to get out of doing anything by telling you, "This is normally what we do..." Then they get all pissy because I tell them No. But today was different because I had a lesson to teach, notes to take, stories to tell, and questions to answer. I also got to tell the story about Oliver Cromwell's head (which is a fun story, look it up).

The problem with today was that I only got to teach a half day. So, the afternoon was great, but the morning was terrible! I had to teach in Belleville, and I felt like I was in a prison! I'm not sure why, possibly because of the building itself, the lighting, the fact that there were security guards at every hall intersection. I was so happy to be done and get to leave. Anyhow, not much today. Half good half bad.

In other news, on the treadmill for 30 minutes. 27 down, 4 to go.

Nothing To See Here

No real news today. Just ran for 30 minutes. 26 down, 5 to go! ONLY A FEW DAYS!!!

Now In A Fun Technology Shape!

Today for breakfast I decided to have a bowl of Trix. Actually, I decided to have a bowl of Mini Wheats, and I was still hungry because I had been running, so I decided to have second breakfast, and that was a bowl of Trix. As I was walking to my computer with my bowl of Trix, I noticed that now rather than just solid colored spheres of fruity YUM, the cereals now has swirls. It seems like every few months cereal companies are doing some new thing to their cereal. A while back they decided that making Trix into fruit shapes, or some other strange shapes, was the best idea.

As I walked looking down at my Trix, I thought to myself, "What is the point in that?" Does it really matter what the cereal looks like. Do swirls really make that big of a difference? Are spheres so boring that the kids won't eat this explosion of color and SUGAR? Does it really have any impact on the cereal what-so-ever??? I mean, someone somewhere must think the answer to these questions is "YES!" otherwise we'd still have little spheres of yellow, green, purple and red, rather than the tie-dye hippy version of Trix that is now available. This led me on to think about how the same thing is around in a variety of different products. You can get your special Cars version of Spaghettios, or your Spiderman shaped macaroni and cheese.

Generally I think this is really kind of a stupid thing to do. Overall, it's still the same product, only in a different delivery system. Why make such a big deal about it? And sure, I do have my own unique tastes in the matter. For example, I only buy spiral mac and cheese because I prefer that noodle to the others. I never buy the shaped items because I think they taste terrible. And I stopped buying Trix when they went to the weird shapes because there was more outside than inside making for an overly "crunch" (for lack of a better word) consistency that I didn't care for. So in some terms the packaging mattered, but only because the content had changed. But, that's not what this is all about.

Last night I went to the local school board meeting. I've been attending as many of these as I possibly can, as of late, because I like to be involved in the community and know what the heck is going on. This is especially important because last year we voted to extend a bond (keeping my taxes higher for the next few years) so that the school can make some drastically needed improvements. These improvements include a fantastic new theatre that I got to see some drawings of last night. Given my heavy involvement in the theatre program, it is a good idea for me to go. On the other hand, being a teacher (who has yet to find a job) I also like to see what the district is doing.

Another bond funded project was discussed that really caught my attention. The school is terribly behind the times in terms of technology in the classroom. We're still talking chalk boards and those dinosaur overhead machines that you have to use transparencies or write on in dry erase marker. The school doesn't have overhead projectors, decent internet access, no Wifi, and overall just behind the times. Well the bond is changing all that in a big way. In fact the school is running a pilot program where classrooms are being provided with iPods and iPads.

This is where we go back to the idea of Trix with swirls. A very enthusiastic staff member gave a presentation discussing how everyone is just so excited to have this new technology. It was interesting to watch, and nice to hear what teachers and students had to say about the new technology. However, there was no real discussion about how this was really going to be used to change things. The ONE example that was provided was to create an electronic worksheet rather than a paper one. So, really we're talking the same new content with a new presentation. How is this better? It's still the same old Trix, it just has a fancy color swirl on it.

One of the board members seemed to spot this problem and asked how we were planning to measure improvements, or what data we were going to collect to show that the technology was helpful. The answer was that students would be given surveys before and after. That's like asking kids which Trix they like better, the original or the one with swirls. Is that really a good indicator to whether or not improvements are being made? There was a follow up to say that test scores would also be available to see if improvements were present due to the technology. But, I have to say, going with the Trix analogy, checking the different boxes to see if the nutritional values would go up with a different shaped noodle!

Here's the bottom line. I've been in a lot of classrooms at this school, and the problem is the ingredients. I've seen teachers give up on technology saying "This thing never works right" because they don't know how to use it. I've seen them sit back and assign worksheets at the entire lesson plan. I've seen them literally sit behind a desk and read off of a sheet of notes for the students to copy down. I see the students forced to use a classroom set of books, and then fail standardized tests, then the school wonders why when they don't have appropriate access to resources.

Do I advocate sacking a load of teachers. No, not necessarily. I think training could help some. I think a focus on higher expectations would be helpful from the top down. I think that many things can change to make this improvement. At the same time I think there are some who are not up to such a challenge, and for those who can't then a change must be made. I'm not generally one to be against the teachers, because I am a teacher. However, when I look at these things, and I see what is happening all I can think to myself is, "And I can't even get an interview!" Teachers practically brag that they don't read. Teachers have no idea how to relate to students and spend the entire class fighting about a student wearing a hat or some stupid detail that could be settled individually at a later time. Teachers who seem to have the only expectation of "getting through the day" rather than teaching the students. Mere survival is NOT enough. We need to be more than just alive. We need to do more than just survive.

If that's all our society needs then we'd still be living in trees and eating off the land. We are a civilization. We need culture, we need art, we need music, we need an understanding of how the world works, we need an understanding of who we are as a species and where we came from, we need poetry, we need literature, we need Shakespeare. And we need to, as President Kennedy said, "...go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept..."

In other news: 60 minutes today. 25 down, 6 to go.

Evil Doesn't Die

As I mentioned earlier, Norber was not doing so well the last night. In fact, for a while we questioned if we should take her into a 24 hour vet because she seemed to be doing pretty bad. In the end we decided to wait until morning and if she wasn't fine, take her to our normal vet. I'm happy to say that when I got up this morning Norbert seemed to be returning to normal. In fact she cam over to yell at me about her displeasure at the lack of food, her displeasure that I wasn't giving her enough attention, and her displeasure that she wasn't the queen of the universe. As the day went on, she seemed to get better and better. I also haven't found any of the evidence of her sickness around the house today, which is another improvement. Hopefully the worse is behind us.

In other news, had extra time today on the treadmill. 90 minutes! WOO! 24 down, 7 to go!

A Mixed Bag

Today has been a mixed kind of day. Got to sleep in a bit, which was good. Got to take a longer run, that was also good. Had to go shoe shopping, that was not so fun. Had to go grocery shopping, also not so fun. Got to go out to dinner, that was good. Came home and Norbert didn't seem to be doing to well. That was not so good.

So, as I mentioned yesterday, Norbert is sick. Well she seemed to be doing ok. They put her on a meaty cat food, which she seemed to enjoy, but they said not to expect her to be feeling too much better for a few days. But she was still walking around, enjoying the sun, even tolerating the Coda (Scott's dog. We are watching her for the weekend.). However, when we got home and went upstairs to grab some laundry, I heard a muffled meow. Well, Norbert was under the dresser not feeling too well. I got her out, checked to see if she needed any water or food. She seems uninterested. She is alert an stuff, but she just doesn't seem to feel good at all. I'm going to keep an eye on her, and if she doesn't improve by morning I'll take her into the vet. Blerg.

In other news, got in 65 minutes today. That's 23 down, 8 to go.

Sick Kitty

Well, today I went down for my run when we realized that we have a sick kitty. I went running while Becky called the vet to check the hours. Since they had short hours I only got in 30 minutes, but there was lots to do. Now, at the time we didn't know which of the three was the sick one, but we pretty much were able to rule out Chubbs McGee as he wasn't acting weird and didn't have a history. That left Norbert and Fluffy. Fluffy was sick over the summer, so it was possible that she had a relapse. On the other hand, Norbert has been more vocal lately, but other than that we hadn't noticed anything weird. Only answer was to take both of them in and try to figure out which one was having the trouble.

So, we packed them both into the cat carrier and headed off to our vet. They for the most part were fine, but then the wait to get in was about 45 minutes, and Norbert started to get tired of being locked up with Fluffy and got quite cranky. We finally got to an exam room, and they took them out to get their weight and all that other business. The lady said Norbert was "Spicy" and "Like a little gremlin", both excellent descriptions. Though, she had no special commentary on Fluffy. So we waited a bit longer before the doctor came in, with Fluffy exploring, and Norbert looking angry. Finally the doctor came and started to inspect the cats. She started with Norbert and didn't have to go any further because Norbert decided to let her bladder loose making a pond of pink on the table. So, away they took her for X-rays etc. Turns out she has bladder stones, just like Fluffy did. She's on a special diet to see if we can dissolve the stones rather than surgery. Hopefully that'll work.\

In other news, as I mentioned only 30 minutes today. 22 down, 9 to go.

Delicious

Quite a few years back (I don't remember exactly how many anymore possibly 2007?), I stopped eating beef. On thing that I really missed was the stew I used to make. It was delicious! Well, today I finally decided to try and make it but this time substitute the beef for chicken. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, in fact I was pretty sure it was going to be terrible. Well, to my surprise, it was delicious! Unlike the beef the chicken decided that the best thing to do was to completely fall apart. So it was like a thick shredded chicken vegetable stew! I was shocked, but I'm happy that I now have another meal that I can make for dinner! WOO!

In other news, only 30 minutes today. It has been hard this week because there have been half days for school, and my play rehearsal is at 11. Guess I just need to get up earlier. But, back to normal schedule next week. Anyhow, that's 21 down, 10 to go.

Cranky Pants

Becky often accuses me of wearing my "cranky pants" when I'm in a bad mood. I can't help it, I'm often just really cranky, many times for no real reason. Little things make me cranky. Today I couldn't find something at the store, and that made me really cranky. Part of that could have been because I forgot to pick up some Tylenol Cold when I was grocery shopping. Instead of going back to Kroger, I decided to stop at CVS. I couldn't find it there. In addition, most of it was behind the counter because apparently you can't just buy it anymore because they need to keep it safe behind the counter. But then there was a really long line, so I got sick of waiting and went back to Kroger. Same problem there, and at both it seems they don't even carry Tylenol Cold anymore! WTF. So, I was really cranky after all that. Then there was some pregnant lady rubbing her stomach in that pregnant lady way. That really made me irritated for some reason too. No real reason, but that made me extra cranky. Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean you need to walk around holding and rubbing on yourself. I'm also not a fan of people who post pictures of their stomach on Facebook. Amazing, you have a large belly... it's almost like you're pregnant... oh, wait... I"m sorry, I'd be amazed but it's not like you're doing something magical... any moron can get knocked up... Just ask the population of Alabama... or Sarah Palin...

Cranky.

In other news, only got to do 30 minutes today because I woke up too late and had to head rehearsal. But, that's 20 down, 11 to go!

A Slow Week

It's exam week at most schools. I haven't had any sub jobs yet this week. On the upside, I got a text today asking if I wanted to sub for my former cooperating teacher. So, I've got a good 6 days lined up over the next few weeks! Other than that it's been a slow week/day. I made a chicken for dinner, it was ok. I went to rehearse one of my plays. Be sure to come see it on February 11. There will be a total of 6 one act plays performed. Two I am doing, three are student directed, and the last one will be our group's competition piece. It'll be a nice evening of entertainment.

In other news, 70 minutes today. 19 down, 12 to go.

Life Is But A Dream

dream |drēm|
noun
1 : a series of thoughts, images, or emotions occurring during sleep


I tend to have kind of strange dreams. By strange I mean really normal and uninteresting. People talk about having dreams where they're flying, where they're doing some sort of impossible thing, even where they are some form of themselves that they aren't in the real world (like rich, important, famous, etc.). I don't have dreams like that. I have boring dreams. Dreams where I go to the grocery store and buy food. "Oh look, milk is on sale 2 for $5!" "Hmm, these strawberries don't look fresh enough, I think i'll skip them and get bananas instead." "Oh, better pick up some cereal, I'm out of Cherrios." Wow. Amazing stuff. And it's not even like I get to fly to the store, drive there in some fancy car, take my shopping home to my amazing mansion. Nope. Just grocery shopping.

Well, the last two nights I've had weird dreams by my standards. Two nights ago I had a dream that I was walking around this festival that the town I grew up in had every year. It wasn't anything fancy, the standard street fair type thing. Much like Art Fair in Ann Arbor or Heritage Festival in Ypsilanti. So overall, that's not so weird, except for the fact that I haven't been to it since like 1993. To make it even weirder I was walking around with some friend I had in elementary school, who I also haven't seen since 1993. Though in full boring dream fashion, we walked around town and looked at the various street vendors. In a weirder fashion, there was some fancy hotel that never existed in this town that someone in dream world had just remodeled, so I had to go see that too. Why in the world would my brain want to have me walking around in my sleep with people and at places I haven't been in nearly 20 years. It's all kind of bizarre.

So i went about my business yesterday thinking it was a weird dream but then forgetting about it. That is until I woke up today and had an even weirder dream. This time I woke up in Virginia (waking up in a dream... weird) and I was with some person I barely knew from school. We were walking down a road near my house and some weird guy was following me around. So, to get away from him we went into the house of some other person I barely knew that rode our bus. WHAT? Again, nothing all that interesting, but why in the world did I have a dream about people I barely know and have not seen in nearly 15 years???

Dreams are stupid.

In other news, 70 minutes today. That's 18 down, 13 to go!

Not Much Here

Nothing much to post today. Did a lot of cleaning! After removing all the crap in our closet out so I could paint it, there was still a lot around the bedroom that needed to go back. I also discovered that we had a lot of stuff that had never been unpacked, or was just useless. I've got a nice box of old coats to donate, recycled a bunch of stuff that I'm not sure why we even had it, and now we have a nicely reorganized closet.

I also did a ton of laundry. By that, I mean that it was already clean but was sitting around in baskets. While I'm sure Norbert appreciated it since she likes to sleep in the baskets, I really needed to get that laundry hung up... and in some cases rewashed and de-fured (Thanks a lot, Norbert!) But, I'm happy to say that everything is cleaned, all rougey (just like Sarah Paliney! MAVERICK!) socks that ran for it and hid behind the dryer are now recovered. I've got a few more socks to match and then all the mismatches are going to that big laundry heap in the sky... by that I mean the trash... which I'm sure is much like the end of Toy Story 3 *tear*.

In other news, only did 30 minutes on the treadmill today. Lots of work, man! But 17 down, 14 to go!

Day 16 - Goal update

Yesterday night we got to spend an enjoyable evening with those Trixie Robertseses. It was a good time because it had been a while since we had a "game night'. It's funny that we call it "game night" since we NEVER get around to playing any games and really just sit around gabbing. Well, this time we ACTUALLY got around to playing the new game my cousin Karen got us for Christmas called infunitum. It's a really fun game. If you've ever played Scattergories, it is exactly like that only without the requirement that all your answers start with the same letter. If you've never played Scattergories, go BUY IT! I would also recommend you buy infunitum too. The only problem with this new game is that you get something like, "Things you cut" and so my answers might say "Carrots, Lettuces, Potatoes, etc." and someone else may put "Vegetables". So, that leads to a discussion on if that one answer cancels out ALL individual items listed. We actually played this once before with another group of people once before. That time we had a heated discussion becase the question was "Things you can ride" and Scott said a Unicorn, and Jeff wanted to veto it, because they aren't real. I offer the picture on this blog exhibit A against the veto. Overall, it's a really fun game!

As for today, I got up for my normal morning run, and decided to finally give in on my resistance to painting our bathroom and bedroom. Becky has wanted to paint it for a while, but we painted just about every single wall in the ENTIRE house. It has only been a year, and I'm still a bit sick of the whole painting thing. So, while I was running she ran out to Lowes and bought some new paint for our bedroom and bathroom. The upside she got me some hot chocolate and munchkins from Dunkin Donuts! Yum. Though, defeating the purpose of my morning run.

It took some convincing because I didn't really want to paint more, it's such a hassle. I also wasn't sure how much I didn't like the blue and brown that we had up already. Though once I got to looking at it, the brown had this weird pink tint to it, which I didn't care for too much. The blue was also super dark. Really, it wasn't that great and Becky was right, it had to go. It made the bathroom really dark, there was no real theme to the room, which is something I like about our guest bath (it has a beach theme). In the end we decided to go with a nice green, and a dark set of blinds. The green turned out to be a bit more minty than I really wanted, but I think it'll work out fine once we finish up the process. We'll be adding more decoration later to theme it up, or whatever. But here are some finished product pictures.





In other news, 65 minutes on the treadmill today. And with that we are now closer to the end of the month than we are to the beginning. Due to this, I thought an update on the status of my goals would be a good idea.

Goal 1: Paint the master "water closet".
Status: COMPLETE! That's right, we painted it yesterday when we did the rest of the bathroom. We used the same green, and it looks so much better. It looked really dirty and gross before.

Secret Goal 1b: Paint the master closet. This wasn't a goal on my list, but when I went in there the other day, I realized we never painted it after fixing it up. So, I threw some white paint on the walls... then I used a roller so it didn't look bad. Secret Goal 1b is also COMPLETE!

Goal 2: Paint the coat and game closet.
Status: COMPLETE! Did that last night while I had the white paint out!

Goal 3: Catch up on my Time/Newsweek magazines.
Status: 50% complete. Finished all my back Newsweek issues, working on Time.

Goal 4: File my piles of files.
Status: 75% complete. Filed all mail, working on my teaching papers.

Goal 5: Run at least 30 minutes a day.
Status: So far 100%. 15 days to go!

Goal 6: Upload my next video project.
Status: On Hold! My connection from my video to my computer is broken, can't do anything until I purchase a replacement.

Goal 7: Start a new book.
Status: 0%. Need to finish my back issues of Time first. So much reading to do!!!

So there we have it. A goal update! I think I'm doing well on my goals. I've got 2 completely done, one half done, one nearly complete, one stuck, one not started, and the running is going quite well! I'm not sure if I'll get the video project uploaded due to some cost considerations, but that one is kind of out of my control right now. The rest are moving right along.

Where Exactly Are You From?

For those of you who don't have a blog with Blogger, when you're entering a new blog there's a lot of little tabs you can click on. Many of these tabs have your normal type of information. You've got one to deal with your postings, one to deal with comments, one for settings, on for design. You also have a tab that has stats on it for you blog. Every once in a while I like to click on the stats tab just to see what's what. I can see what people have been reading lately, how they happened upon my blog, how may people have been visiting. You know, the normal type of things. But, one thing that they also give you is what time of OS the person is using. I'm not sure why I care if the people reading my blog have a Windows, Mac, or iPhone to read my blog. They also tell me what type of web browser people are using. Incidentally, most people use Internet Explorer, followed by Safari. That information tells me that at least I know that my stat's aren't just Becky reading my blog, as she uses Safari, and we can't use IE. The last thing that I find interesting is that there is a stat to tell me what country my readers come from. Generally you would expect that all my readers would be from the U.S. as I don't know anyone anywhere else. Well, this week I had a UK reader and a reader from LATVIA!!!! What the what!? Then I clicked on the "All Time" tab and I get to add China, Panama, Russia, Georgia and The Netherlands. So, WELCOME REST OF WORLD, please don't judge my country based on my terribly boring blogs. Though, I have to assume that many people just kind of stumbled in by accident and left without reading. But, who knows. So WELCOME to any international visitors!

In other news, spent 80 minutes on the treadmill today. That's 15 down, 16 to go. After today I'm past the halfway mark, which is fantastic! Also, I've now officially noticed a change on the scale! I tend to never know if it's doing any good because depending on when I weigh myself, how long since I ate, what I was doing, etc. my weight will fluctuate greatly during the course of a day. However, I have noticed that If I weigh myself in the morning when I first get up, and at night right before I go to bed, that I get some consistent weights. Well, as of today the morning and evening are both trending down! So, it's nice to see some results!

The Fighter

Tonight we had a fun evening with the Scottwich. We decided to go see The Fighter, which is about a boxer. Now, normally I'm not a big fan of boxing but I thought it was a pretty good movie. It was also kind of interesting to see the interaction between the character and his very large, and really pretty destructive family. So, while this isn't really a "review", I'd say it was pretty good. Perhaps get it on a matinee or catch it when it comes out on netflix.

In other news, on the treadmill for 90 minutes today. 14 down, 17 to go.

Middle School Part II

After my experience Monday, I discovered middle school students SUCK. One, they are whiny and wouldn't even do their task of "play on a computer". Two, they seem to have no problem smelling like BO. Seriously, shower. Three, they also seem to have no problem being a giant mass of poo gas releasing bioweapons. Overall, it was probably the worst teaching experience I had, and I decided that I would never teach middle school students because they ware evil.

Today, I had to sub for another middle school class. This time, instead of computer class, I was a science teacher. I though this might be even worse because they wouldn't have the assignment of "play on a computer." I got in and found that the assignment was to read articles from a science magazine and then answer questions regarding the articles from a worksheet. In addition, some of these answers weren't just printed on the page, instead you had to think about it and figure it out.

Despite this recipe for disaster, the classes went VERY well. They all did the work, none of them complained about having to do it, they just got to work. It was amazing! In fact, the only resistance wasn't that they didn't want to do it, but they wanted to use a "more fun" method of doing it, which I didn't let them do only because the time didn't allow for it. They also didn't smell like BO, but were still poo gas bioweapons. Oh well, two out of three isn't bad.

In other news, only did 30 minutes today. Doing this in the evenings just isn't working. But, we are 13 down, 18 to go.

What Do You Expect?

Subbing is a funny thing. First, it pretty much sucks because much of how well it goes is based on how well it has been planned. If the plans you get when you walk in the room is unclear, or if anything is missing, then you're in for it. There's a certain sort of dread when you get in and realize something is missing, or the plan is unclear and you need to decipher it.

In contrast, it also allows you a little window into how other schools and teachers operate. I have to say some of this has left me shocked. Now, going through the COE I felt that a lot of people had no business being teachers. You had your unorganized disasters, the ones that think that teaching is all glitter and construction paper, the ones that have no people skills, and even the ones that you wonder how in the world they feed themselves, much less made it into a college program. I always assumed that these people would get weeded out through the program, not even make it to student teaching, and if by some miraculous event they managed to make it that far, then at the very least surely no one would hire them. Much to my surprise... SOMEONE DID HIRE THEM. And not just one, A LOT OF THEM GOT JOBS!

Being in a lot of different rooms, I did start to notice a few similar traits. Unfortunately, those traits are DISORGANIZATION and LOW EXPECTATIONS. In room after room I kept seeing the same thing every time, a space that looked like some sort of bomb had gone off. Papers everywhere, strewn about every single surface. A blanket of handouts on counters, desks, falling on the floor. Books stacked in piles everywhere, and what even looked like trash. There also seemed to be no respect or pride for their space.

Also, from the plans, and watching the interactions there seemed to be little to not expectations. In general it seemed that the focus was on "making sure they don't burn the place down". But the work is also smacks of low expectations that makes me wonder what exactly the problem here? Now, I know that test scores are low, but I wonder if it is because it doesn't seem that anyone expects any work. Should High School juniors and seniors not understand what plagiarism is, or not how to do minor research? They really should know that there is something more than Wikipedia. But what can you expect from a school with only 25% being able to pass the writing portions of the state tests.

It seems to me that if you only expect to "make it through the day" then that's all you'll get. If you want more than just survival then you need to set the expectations higher. Perhaps it'll be hard at first, but it doesn't seem like it is doing anyone any good. In addition, clean your damn room. If your place of learning looks like a shit hole, that is going to have some side effects. I mean, I personally get stressed out in disorganized room, but I also think the person who controls the room must be a real incompetent ass who doesn't care because they can't even keep their space clean. You've got a few hundred square feet, get some organizers, pick up the trash (or better yet, don't let the trash accumulate to begin with), and ya know what, don't look so dumpy. If you want to be treated by a professional, TEACHERS, then look like one.

In other news, only spent 30 minutes on the treadmill today. Yesterday I over did it, and my feet were a bit tired today, but I did the minimum. However, I've also been on a different schedule today, so everything was thrown off. But, that's 12 down 19 to go.

What The What?

Well NBC, you have blown my mind. Yes, it is true, I was totally surprised by what I saw. We were watching last week's episode of Parenthood since we missed it. In the show a bird ran into a window and died and the parents of a young girl were worrying about telling her about the bird being dead. That doesn't really surprise me, I mean the show is called Parenthood, so you're going to see these types of situations. In fact, many shows do the "dealing with death" episode. The difference, and what surprised me, was the fact that the issue wasn't the usual dealing with death. No, the parents were worried because they didn't know what to say to their kid about death because they "didn't want to lie to her about the whole heaven thing." I wasn't expecting that, and I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything like that, you know, maybe some hints, but this was just like *BAM!* No dancing around it, they just came right out with it. Anyhow, I was surprised.

On the treadmill today for 76 minutes. Also broke my best time on a mile. It's nothing great, but it is much better than what i've been doing. That's 11 down, 20 to go.

The Middle School Experience

Three words. Shoot. Me. Now.

Until today I had never had the "pleasure" of teaching in a middle school classroom. My student teaching was at the high school level, as was my long-term sub position, and any one day subbing I did last school year. Well, today that has ended as I had the great "opportunity" to teach at the middle school level for the first time.

Well, to make things bad to start with, the classes were in block format, so that left me with the little beasts for 90 minutes. I didn't think it would really be that bad. I was subbing for a computer class, and all they had to do was first use some of the pretty cool typing programs (when I learned to type we had to type out letters from a work book, and it was terrible boring). After they were done typing they got to use pretty much any program that was on the computer, or visit a number of sites from the class webpage. Apparently that was not pleasing to them, because I would hate to have a sub who told me, "Do what you want". They also kept asking to do things that they weren't allowed to do. Luckily, from my heavy training with Becky's attempts to get a puppy, I was able to easily tell them no, unfazed by their pleas and pouting. Overall, I don't think I could ever teach middle school. I've been scared for life.

In other news, knowing that I was subbing, and had a lot of evening work to do, I GOT UP AT 5:00AM TO GO RUNNING! WTF! I ran for 35 minutes, after a wonderful 3 hours sleep. I COULD NOT SLEEP last night. It was awful. THEN, when I FINALLY get to sleep, FAT CHOPS COMES IN AND ASSHOLES IT UP! I was SO mad. Anyhow. 10 days down, 21 to go.

For The British Empire!

This evening we got a chance to use up some of our Christmas gift cards and went to the movies! Now, there are quite a few out right now that we are interested in seeing, however we decided to go with The King's Speech. Mostly this was because Jeff and Chrissy were like, "Hey, wanna go see this?" and we were all "Yeah."

For those of you who haven't seen anything about this movie, it follows the story of King George VI and his struggles with his speech abilities. George VI being the younger son of the King is not expected to take the throne, however when his brother abdicates he becomes King. The story, however, revolves around George VI and his stutter which makes it very difficult for him to speak publicly. After attempting to make progress using a number of different doctors, his wife eventually finds a speech therapist named Lionel Logue, who helps him to overcome his speech difficulties. Finally, King George VI is able to successfully present a speech to the British people following the declaration of war with Germany in 1939.

I really enjoyed this movie! The film is driven most by the characters and the relationship that develops as the King attempts to overcome his stuttering. While being more on the dramatic end of things, the film also had many light moments. One of my favorite light points comes as Lionel's wife learns of her husband's high profile client. In addition, there are some fine moments between the Queen and a number of characters.

I also have to say that I was quite impressed by Colin Firth's performance. It seems to me that it would be quite difficult to play a character who stutters, however he was able to make it believable. In addition, I felt that he also was able to play that there were many deep problems that were underlying his problems with only some minor explanation, or more general insinuations. I also enjoyed the moments when he was with his family, especially the interaction with his children.

In addition, I have to say that prior to the film I was not sure how I would enjoy Helena Bonham Carter's performance. I've not generally been a fan of her, and it seems that she usually gets the character who is very off balance, crazy, or just plain evil. But, I thought she did quite well, and I loved many of her interactions, especially upon her visit to Scotland. Overall, I thought it was a good film and would recommend it.

In update news, I didn't post it yesterday because I felt it inappropriate to do so. So, yesterday I did 30 minutes on the treadmill, and today I did 60 minutes. I am now 9 down, 22 to go.

Untitled

As I'm sure you have read, seen, or heard U.S. Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot today in Tucson Arizona.

The gunman is in custody, but has refused to talk, so it's not yet clear why he did this.

Regardless of the reason, it is impossible to overlook a few things that have happened in recent months. When you have Sarah Palin tweeting that they don't reverse, but "reload" and direct people to a map with Representative Giffords district in gun sights, or candidates for the United States Senate saying that if people don't get their way they'll start "using their second amendment remedies" you have to think about what this type of speech does.

At the time of those quotes, these things put me in a rage because that is unacceptable type of behaviors from someone who ran as the candidate for VICE PRESIDENT, or a candidate for the U.S. SENATE! Our candidates for leadership should not be inciting violence. Our candidates and leaders should be better than that and provide an example of how people from different points of view can still work together. Instead we have people yelling about socialism, death panels, "taking back their country", and all the other hate speech over the past few years.

Regardless of what the motive turn out to be, the fact is we need to think about what we say. Our politicians need to be careful and not use cheap tricks, or stir anger, violence, and hate just to win some political points. We have no room in a civilized democracy for speech like that, but rather need to rise above these types of behaviors and learn to communicate with each other without resorting to violence.

Apparently we can't do that and the price is a congressional staffer, a judge, a nine year old girl, and three others. Unacceptable. We must better than that.

It's A Trap!

I was watching or reading something once, and whatever it was that I was watching was talking about writing. Well, the advice that was giving was that if you want to become a writer, then you should write something every day. Just to get into the practice, or to help come up with ideas. Just write a story. It doesn't have to go anywhere, or be anything, but rather allows your brain to be creative. The reason this comes to mind is that sometimes I look at the blank screen and think, "What in the world do I have to say that's so interesting?" Would you like to know the answer? NOTHING. It's true, I don't have too much interesting to say, but I feel I should at least be able to come up with a paragraph a day.

Subject change.

So, I noticed that today is the 7th, which means the first week of 2011 is over. It then occurred to me that the word "week" is interesting. It sounds like "weak". Do you suppose there was ever an argument over the name. Perhaps it should be called a "Strong". Damn hippies... ruining everything.

Subject Change II: The Revenge of the Subject

Words are fun. Tonight we played a word game and we were all asked to write down "Things people ride". Scott said a unicorn. Jeff objected saying unicorns were fictional. Though, fictional people have ridden unicorns. I say it counts, as the question doesn't specify "Things that REAL people ride". Another question was to write down "A famous movie quote". Hmm, that's a bit ambiguous. Does the movie have to be famous, or just the quote? Though, I guess the movie would probably be famous if the quote was. I don't recall the name of the game, but my awesome cousin Karen got it for us, and it was a lot of fun.

Subject Change: The Trilogy

I watched a "documentary" last night where a woman, in all seriousness, said that the moon was actually hollow, and that inside it was a secret alien base where they have been watching it for years. In fact, the moon was towed here, specifically for that purpose. She compared our moon, to the Death Star. In related news, apparently god is real because of the tides, and stupid atheists can't prove why the tides happens, so it must be god, so says Bill O'rilley. Can he be serious? No, seriously, can he REALLY not know that the moon causes the tides to come in and go out? I think this is evidence that we need more science classes. OR, perhaps it's some power from our DEATH STAR MOON! Hmm, if aliens are living in our moon, we should probably try and keep it quiet. If news gets out, John McCain will want to build a wall to keep them out of America. Plus, they'll probably start coming here to have anchor babies and take our jobs. Stupid Death Star moon aliens.... What in the world could they be doing up there in the Death Star Moon? Just watching us??? I think not...We all know what Admiral Ackbar would say about that...

In update news: Spent 45 minutes on the treadmill today. One week down (Or shall I say, One STRONG down). So we've got 7 down, 24 to go.

Whinebook

Ahhh, Facebook. Last year Facebook became the most visited website in the intertubes. No wait, the world net tubes. No, I think it's the Inter-wide-net. Ah, who cares it's still all A SERIES OF TUBES!!!!!! Prior to that Google, and Yahoo mail was totally ahead of Facebook. But I suppose all those virtual farmers constantly logging on to water their crops before they die may have helped. Hang on, apparently someone found a lost sheep on their farm...

What was I saying. Blah blah blah, lost sheep, stupid Facebook games... AH YES! Meet me at paragraph three.

Ok, look here Facebook community... I have a few words for you FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS! What are first world problems? Well, those are the things you hear people complain about on Facebook. Things only people in rich developed countries can be worried about. Examples: OMG! SOME ASSHOLE DENTED MY NEW CAR!! *POUT!*, UGGGGH! I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY SCREWED UP MY ORDER!!! I SAID NO PICKLE!!!! *OUTRAGE!*, WHY DIDN'T TIMMY CALL ME! WE WERE SUPPOSED TO GO SEE THE NEW TWILIGHT MOVIE!!!!!!*MELTDOWN* In contrast, a third world problem: Heavy drought, no food, AGAIN! My house made of dirt was washed away by a giant FLOOD (don't worry, it wasn't the fault of climate change, you keep on keepin' on USA). Or, Those white devil missionaries keep coming around to take pictures of my kids with flies in their eyes, and then ask for money back in their countries to feed us, but also to teach us about Jesus. I'd believe in the flying spaghetti monster if they just would bring me an Egg McMuffin.

Now, I know you may be sick, or perhaps your furnace broke, or some appliance stopped working. Maybe you hate your job, or you accidentally deleted all your pictures from your photo bucket account by accident, or maybe your dog died... no wait, that last one is acceptable. But could we all do the world a favor and STOP BEING WHINY BITCHES?!?!

Now, I haven't been 100% positive, 100% of the time, but I also try to keep as upbeat as possible. Looking at my posts over the last month or so, the closest I've gotten to cranky is "Today is boring" which I feel is neither positive or negative, as it's the same as saying "Today is Thursday", and "So, Friday is my last day at Domino's. Thanks for the notice." Now that last one is bordering on bothersome, but it's not whiny like a lot of the statuses I see.

For example, say you get sick, and your oven breaks. All in the same week/day/moment. Lamenting that this happened and "WHY DOES THE UNIVERSE HATE ME" is stupid. First, why do you think the universe even knows you? Were you at a party together? Have you properly been introduced? HAVE YOU BEEN INVITED TO THE UNIVERSE'S BIRTHDAY PARTY????? (BTW, it's on April 1st and going to be AMMMMMMAZING!!!!!!!)

Example number two. Say you get in a fight with your friend, that's unfortunate for you, but then you post how you "TRY TO MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY, BUT I GUESS I CAN'T SO I WOULD BE BETTER OFF DEAD!!!!!1!1111!!!" Ok, again, it was a fight, and they happen. Two, stop being an over dramatic drama queen. I get it, you had a fight, that's sad. But perhaps you should look for a solution rather than being a cry baby on Facebook. Plus, when you always post crap like that, it tends to make me want to send you a large bottle of pills, a nice sharp knife, of a strong piece of rope attached to a clothes hanger... though this would result in the overly dramatic friends who post on their deceased friends Facebook as if it's some point on the side of the road where there was a car accident that people insist on keeping rotting stuffed animals and deflated balloons like some sort of shrine to people who can't drive and ended up "moving on up" a little fast than they normally would. Just sayin', put the cell phone away or you deserve your Darwin award. Plus, I'm just pointing out there's a place for "shrines" to departed people, it's called a cemetery. Not to discount your loss, but seriously...

Example three the overly dramatic AND over sharer. Yes, you know these people. The ones that not only post dramatic posts, but then give you every detail about some fight they had, or some "drama" in their life (usually cased by themselves or brought on by their own over dramatic nature). There's also the Pseudo-fight over statuses. The passive aggressive, "I'm not going to name names, but you all know who I'm talking about.... ROGER!" Seriously, Ya'll are adults, stop acting like a freshman in high school!

Overall, here's the thing. Whiners are annoying and over dramatic. Yes, sometimes things happen that suck, but being a whiny d-bag on Facebook isn't going to solve your problems, and judging by your posts, the reason you keep having these problems is because you don't do anything to solve your problems to begin with. Nobody likes an attention whore, and that's what you're doing when you post all over Facebook, asking people to be all, "OMG, WUT IS WRNG? UR THE BEST! F THOSE H8TRS!!!!"

Also, learn to spell.

***DISCLAIMER***
The events depicted in this blog are fictitious. Any similarity to any person living or dead is merely coincidental.

UPDATE!
Today, on the treadmill for 90 minutes 6 down, 25 to go. 75% done with the filing project, and only two issues left of Newsweek. Still a stack from Time. BUT, progress! Still have some painting, and some additional reading.

A Rant

So, this started as a comment on Becky's blog, but got long enough that I felt I should just make it my own post. We will return tomorrow with our regularly boring and non-soapboxy posts. Side note, 61 minutes on the treadmill. 5 down 26 to go.

I'm sick of watching the news and listening to idiots talk. And I'm not just talking about the hosts and their guests, but the people they interview on TV too, especially the tea baggers that bitch about how the unions are bankrupting America. Anyone who bitches about unions is stupid. Rich people didn't get rich by being generous and paying workers reasonable wages. Companies will pay employees the least possible wage they can get away with. If that were not true we wouldn't need a minimum wage, or wages guaranteed by unions. If companies are so eager to pay average wages then why do they pay CHILDREN $0.10 a day to work in factories in other countries? If they really cared and were willing to VOLUNTARILY pay a reasonable wage, they would do it. But instead they sent jobs to China, India, and Southeast Asia where they ARE allowed to pay pennies a day, with unsafe work environments, and employ CHILDREN. So, yeah, if companies are so kind and generous, why do we need unions to protect workers when they obviously treat so well already?

In addition, I'm SO sick of hearing about how PUBLIC SERVICE UNIONS ARE THE CAUSE OF THE TROUBLE. Example one: TEXAS. No unions there for those employees, and yet they are just as broke as every other state. What's the excuse for them? Can't blame the teacher's union there because there isn't one. The fact is that we've been cutting taxes for 50 years and expecting that everything will still get paid for. But, instead of bitching at the companies that make tons of profit and then send jobs over seas and not hire anyone, and then give all their money to the top and a week later lay off half the staff, we blame garbage men, firemen, and teachers for asking for a decent wage and benefits.

Plus, I love that everyone thinks they’re an expert on who to teach a class. Every asshole with a kid thinks they can just talk about how lazy teachers are, and how they don’t do anything and get summers off. How about this for some math. Pay a babysitter minimum wage for a child. $7.75 an hour. Now multiply that by 30 kids (YEAH, AS IF MOST TEACHERS ARE LUCKY ENOUGH TO ONLY HAVE 30 KIDS). That’s $232.50 an hour. Now, let’s only multiply that by say, 4 periods a day, which is what I taught. That’s 4 hours and 40 minutes, so that’s $1,085 a day. Now multiply that by the average 180 days that a teacher teaches. That’s $195,000. And you want to bitch that you get babysitting for your kid at a cost of $28,000-$50,000 a year? At a school that gets maybe $8,000 a year for funding for you kid. And that’s for BABYSITTING! Making sure your little bastard isn’t dead at the end of the day. But then you want to have them taught and then bitch that they aren’t doing enough despite the fact that YOU as a parent never come to conferences, don’t check their grades online, and have 0% interaction with your child’s education? I have more student loans than I my salary will be when/if I ever become a teacher.

It's selfish jealously that the private sector has been allowed to say FUCK YOU WORKERS, gut health care plans, push the cost onto workers, get rid of pensions and say, "here gamble on the stock market with a 401K plan, it's not my problem". The only person who should be against unions is rich people who benefit from not having them. Working in Executive Compensation I have seen bonuses go out to people making more money in a month, or even a week, than I make in an entire year. Then, a month later hundreds of employees fired, and many of those jobs could be saved if a rich ass hole had said, "No, it's not right to take a bonus." Corporations will pay as little as they can for labor.

In the end this is the same old bullshit. The peasants get to fight over the table scraps among themselves, instead of realizing that the reason they are starving is because the fat ass ate everything before they got there, and only left them left over hot dogs and a half eaten sandwich. Unions created the middle class, and as you have seen them decline, you have also seen the middle class decline.

Do you really think that a company would pay what they pay now if they didn’t have to? NO. That guy in the manufacturing plant, or the deliver truck driver, of the shelf stocker would all be making minimum wage if they could get away with it. The only reason they’re not is because people got together and said, “That’s not fair, honest pay for honest work”, and stood up to VIOLENCE to ensure that people got paid, got health care, and had some security that when they devoted their life to a company, that they would be taken care of. We’ve seen those things stripped away in the private sector, and it’s not the “greedy unions” that did it, it’s the “greedy corporate fat cats” who wanted more, and more, and more. In 1988 the average CEO wage was $759,000; In 2002 it was $2.2 MILLION. That’s almost 3 times higher. In contrast, the minimum wage was $3.35. In 2003, it was $5.15. An increase of 53% Yeah, thank goodness those companies take care of us so that unions are no longer necessary, and really, they’re what’s causing the trouble in this country, and bankrupting America.

At Borders I went years with out raises, yet I watched our CEO, incidentally while bringing the company to the brink of bankruptcy, get raises and then get millions of dollars TO QUIT, when they couldn’t get the job done. BUT GOD DAMN THOSE UNION WORKERS WHO BANKRUPTED THE COMPANY… oh right, no unions are Borders either.

Perhaps we should take a better look at what’s really going on, America. Stop listening to rich people who send their kids to expensive private schools, and then tell us they’re not paying more taxes and want a tax decrease, and that the country can’t afford to pay teachers or school districts that OUR children go to, and we all just need to sacrifice because we have too big of a deficit and debt. But hey, at least we can count on big businesses to take care of us.

New Rule:

TLC must change their name from "The Learning Channel" to something else.

Now, mostly this was because they had the Sarah Palin show, but that's just about over. However, if you look at their programs, I'm not sure what learning is actually going on. Say yes to the dress? What not to wear? It seems like all their shows have some crazy person doing something nutty. A crazy bride, someone who has some crazy wardrobe consisting of sweater vests and kilts. The strange addiction show???? THE LADY IS EATING COMET!

Today we watched a show called Extreme Couponing. Now, my mom was big on coupons, but these people are CRAZY! They are combining coupons with store sales, and all of them have a "stockpile". Seriously, it looks like they're starting their own general store. They also buy like 40 boxes of pasta and 40 jars of sauce at a time. Really, it is impressive what they're doing. One lady had a bill over $1,170, but after coupons the total was $53. Another lady had to re-ring her entire purchase because the computer couldn't handle the number of items and the number of coupons. Seriously, the computer was like, "Peace out, bitches." One guy had enough deodorant that it would last the average person over 100 years! WHAT???? First, he's never going to USE all that. It seems to me this is just organized hoarding. DUDE SPECIAL ORDERED 1,100 BOXES OF CEREAL!!!! Again, it is VERY impressive that these people are doing this. The 100 year deodorant guy had a to have 4 or 5 employees push his carts around the store for him because he had so much. He ended up with a total bill of $5,743, his cost $241. HOLY SHIPOOPIE!!!! On the upside, he ended up donating ALL the cereal to the food bank, so that was nice of him, but they did end up being free. Crazy.

In other news, spent 90 minutes on the treadmill today. That's 4 days down 27 to go.

Follow The Highlighted Route

The great thing about having a GPS is that when you're riding along on your way somewhere, you get some directions. Even better is that if for some reason you get stuck there's a handy little button you can push that will give you another route. For example, we were headed down to Georgia and some jerk decided that a truck that is two lanes wide should go 20 mph down the highway in the middle of Kentucky. Lucky for us we had our handy little GPS, and pushed that great button and it was like, "F THIS S IN THE A, get off at the next exit and go this way!"

Now, if only life had that detour button so that you could know how to get around the traffic jam and back on track. A few weeks ago my temp job ended. I didn't feel too bad because I hated it, but at the same time, I do need a pay check. I'm interested in a long-term sub job in March, but I have to get to March. I can temp, or I could sub, or I could give up on the long-term sub job and get a steady job. I mean, really my destination is teaching, so the best choice career wise would be to go for the sub job, as it would get me good experience. Stability-wise the best choice would be to say screw it and just get something steady. I hate being unstable, but I also hate a lot of the work I've done in the past. However, I've made it through those jobs because the goal was to finish school so I could be a teacher. Really, this is all I've been thinking about for weeks. I really wish I had that detour button so I could figure out the best way to get where I'm going. The problem is that I'm also worried that I'll get there and realize there's a closed for business sign on the door. I'm not sure I'll ever find a teaching job. I've applied a ton, and having even got a sucky interview in a room with 100 other people interviewing for the same position. I am just starting to think I have very low odds of teaching in Michigan, but also I won't move. So is it best to just take something else and forget about it? I need a GPS for life.

In other news, started reading some back issues of magazines, and also ran for 40 minutes today. 3 down, 28 to go.

That's News To Me

As I run I watch the news from the night before thanks to getting my Tivo hooked up. I had a few days worth of broadcasts built up as I hadn't been running regularly. One small segment caught my attention which revolved around a Social Studies text book from Virginia. You can read about the story from the Washington Post here. The short story is that this publisher of text books is having some trouble with getting facts about social studies straight. Now, text books often have mistakes, so this isn't all that new. Some of the fun mistakes were being off a year on the date that the U.S. entered World War I, having the incorrect number of states that were in the confederacy, and claiming that there were a lot of black soldiers for the South. Apparently in another text book by the publisher there was a claim that during early colonial days, men often wore suits of armor, which cracked me up.

This really isn't what caught my attention, as I said, there are often mistakes in textbooks. What caught my attention was Brian Williams saying that, "The publisher plans to hire a professional historian." Wait... did I hear you correctly Brian Williams? They PLAN to hire a professional historian??? Now, call me crazy, but perhaps that was something that should have been done FIRST! Seriously, you can't expect that a typo, or minor mistake won't show up, but perhaps some of that can be solved by getting someone who knows about history, to write your history books.

I will say this is at least less absurd than some of the other BS tricks going on in the field of History. For example, a lot of southern states like to talk about "Triangle Trade" rather that what everyone else knows it as, SLAVE TRADE. Or, how the Texas school board is rewriting history standards to play to their conservative view points. For example, removing Thomas Jefferson from the Enlightenment due to his sin of believing in a separation of church and state. Or, reminding us that Germans and Italians were interned during World War II as well as the Japanese... despite the fact that really, it was mostly just the Japanese. Or just the defense of McCarthyism. If you're interested, you can read this article.

In January goal updates, I have not done any painting yet. I also haven't done any reading. I did run for an hour today, so that's two days down, 29 to go. I also hit a major roadblock in my video upload project. The camera I use as the bridge between my VCR and my computer has broken and I can't get it to turn on. Without it, I'm dead in the water. A replacement would be a bit too expensive for me right now. I have done a TON of filing. All my mail is in the cabinet, filed in nice new files. The only thing left is all the stuff from teaching World and U,S. History. I'm working on that now, and I hope to say that by tomorrow that goal will be off my task list!

Welcome to 2011!

So long, 2010! It's a new year, and I hope it is better than last year! Not that last year was particularly terrible or anything, but better is always... better. I mean, many good things happened. Graduated, had a nice sub job, did some fun drama stuff, went to visit people. So, not too bad, but I still would like 2011 to be better.

So, what do I have to say for the first day of 2011? Not much. We went to the traditional Robertseseseseseses party, and I realized that this was our 8th time we've welcomed the new year together. It was a good time, though seemed quieter than in past years, with less people dancing. Though, dancing guy (the guy who shows up ever year and dances all night, quite well, might I add) was there this year, which was nice because last year he was sick or something and did not dance. I'd put pictures up, but despite taking my camera, I didn't take any pictures.

That leads us to the part on RESOLUTIONS! I don't do them. HA! However, I will say that I have some general goals I'd like to accomplish, one of which is to take more photos. I don't really take to many any more, and I really should. But, this is not a resolution. Those are stupid. I prefer general goals because if you make these strict life plans, you'll just freak yourself out and turn a general well intentioned goal into some ridiculously pressure driven monster that doesn't help anyone and makes you look like a total spaz. I don't like people like that, because I don't like unnecessary drama, especially when all the sudden they don't meet some arbitrary life goal or fit into that "picture" of what life is "supposed to be like". Life isn't supposed to be like anything other than what it is. If you don't like something, then determine what you want, and how best to get there. However, you do need to be honest with yourself and face the fact that sometimes it isn't easy, sometimes you may have to do something you don't want to, and no matter what happens you're not just going to have it fall in your lap.

Well, that was a bit of a tangent, but it leads me to my few goals I'd like to do. Really, none of you care, but I want to write them down so I can follow up on it. I tried this last year, but did not succeed, but I'm willing to give it another go. So, general yearly goals:

1. Take more photos. I don't take many, and I used to take a lot. I like taking photos, and I miss having them around of all the fun times I've had. Perhaps I don't have enough fun? Hm. Interesting though... will explore later.

2. Express my opinions more. I usually don't tell people what I think, mostly because I don't think people want to hear what I have to say since it often is opposite of what they want to hear. However, I also don't like hearing people bitch about things that are their own fault. So, if I have to hear it, then they have to hear me. Communication is a two way street, and if people don't want to hear what i have to say, then they shouldn't talk to me. I can provide good advice, and I'm not really mean, so I plan to be more vocal on what I think when I'm engaged in conversation.

3. Buy a new tux. Mine is old, I want a new one, but I want to meet certain conditions before I buy one.

4. In related goals, be more active. No explanation needed

5. Leave the country and visit somewhere else. I have a ticket, I just need to pick a place, and have the time and money to visit. I'm thinking maybe April? Summer is more expensive, and busier. But who knows when.

6. I'd like to go somewhere out west as well. The furthest I've been is Kansas City, MO. I'm not going to set a specific place, there are many I'd like to visit so we'll just say "out west".

7. And to make it an even seven, I'd like to see people more often. Generally I'm pretty busy, but that's no excuse to see and talk to people more often. Again, noting specific, but just generally keep up and see people more.

In addition to some general goals for the year, I decided to do some more specific monthly goals. Kind of like a "Task List" of things I'd like to complete by the end of the month. LET'S GET SPECIFIC!

- Paint the master "water closet". It is the last "room" in the house we haven't painted, and it's could use some new paint.

- Paint the coat and game closet. These aren't rooms, so my first point is still true, but they need paint as they still smell like the house did when we bought it. It skeezes me out, and I want it painted

- Catch up on my Time/Newsweek magazines. I got a subscription, but didn't realize Time wasn't monthly, so they have been stacking up. I'm almost up to date on Newsweek, but Time is dreadfully behind. I'm also behind on my National Geographic and Mother Jones magazines, but they are only monthly, it's not as bad.

- File my piles of files. Ha! Rhymes. This will require some purging of old files. But, some stuff in the cabinet are from the first apartment, which we moved out of in 2004. TIME TO GO!

- Run at least 30 minutes a day. Really, that's not a lot, but I've got to start somewhere. I used to do far more, but I haven't in ages. So, we'll track that and see how it goes. Incidentally, I did it today already.

- Upload my next video project.

- Finally, start a new book. I haven't read anything in book form in probably a year. Mostly I've just read news and magazines. So, I'd like to start a book this month.

So, there you go, general goals for the year, and specific goals for the month. We'll see how this goes, but I think it'll work out fine.