Just For Fun

For the past few months, I've been rewatching our collection of Frasier. I loved the show while it was on the air and I still love it. It's great writing and a great cast. I think what really got me hooked, though, was David Hyde Pierce. Most of the laugh-out-loud moments I have with the show are courtesy of Niles. I really, really hope that one day, there will be a DVD of the original cast of Spamalot, since he was a part of it.

So please take five minutes and enjoy some of the more memorable Niles moments. Then, start collecting the seasons on DVD!

Because at 31, my metabolism is slowing down...

Al and I have finished day 9 of the P90X program. Wow! This workout is nuts! You'll need a chin-up bar and hand weights (I use 5, 8, 10, and 15. Al uses 10, 15, 20, and 25), as well as a yoga mat and a willingness to keep going in spite of wanting to die a little. I would just like to say, that I did a whole pull up on my own yesterday. It was just one, but it was start to finish and I haven't done that since somewhere around 4th grade.

I'm sore and I'm loving it. The program is a bit expensive, but it's worth it. You can find it used on Amazon.com, as well, which is cheaper. When put in perspective, though, Al and I spend $50 a month for a couple's membership to the gym. This 3-month program is cheaper than 3 months at the gym! And, we can use it beyond the 3 months!

You do need to keep in mind, though, that this is a strength-building program. Yes, there is cardio, but the purpose of the program is to build muscle, endurance, and strength. You will gain weight before losing. However, muscle uses more calories to maintain itself than fat does, so eventually, the metabolism will start helping you to see weight loss as long as you are consuming fewer calories than you are using each week.

If you're curious: www.beachbody.com/p90x

I'd also like to share with you one of my favorite workout aids. Lady Fitness uses Bender Balls, so that's how I found out about them. When I was at the Gateway recently, I wandered through the sporting goods store and saw them for sale. I love them, so for $20, I grabbed one and brought it home. That's when I noticed that it came with three DVDs. This is totally a great deal. If you're looking to build core strength or develop your abs, I highly recommend this little green goody. The ball itself is only about 7-8 inches in diameter, so it's easy to store. If it's a little flat, it makes the workouts harder. Check it out at www.benderball.com.

Snakes, Authors, Reading, and Books

Thank you all for your birthday wishes to Al yesterday! We are pleased to announce that in honor of his birthday, we are adding to our reptile collection. This is Aornis, a female black pastel ball python who was hatched in February. She will be shipped to us this coming Thursday from VPI, a breeder out of Texas.

We are both very excited to have this cute little girl join Acheron! If anyone is curious about the name, we named Acheron after Acheron Hades, a villian in the Thursday Next series of books. In the books, the evil Hades family is made up of siblings named after the rivers of the Underworld. Aornis isn't actually a river, Jasper Fforde made it up and pretended it was one, counting on the average person's knowledge of the underworld rivers being limited to Acheron and Styx...

So she's named after another Thursday Next villian. Dad has also said that he'd like to learn how to handle a snake! Stay tuned for pictures. We'll be sure to document the occasion. He should have an easy time with our snakes. Acheron is very laid back.

In other news, for the past three days, I have had the opportunity to learn under Will Hobbs, a young adult author of 17 novels and 2 picture books. I haven't read any of his books, but I do plan to. He primarily writes western adventure novels, but has expanded to historical and realistic fiction and sci/fi comedy. The cool thing about his writing is that he's a real outdoorsman. All of his settings are real places, so when he talks about a mountain, a dirt road, or a bend in a river, he's actually been there.

He was at our district in connection with the young writers conference. Remember that school-wide writing contest I was in charge of? That was a part of this conference. On Tuesday, he came to Northridge, where I teach, to do presentations for students. It was kind of a stroke of luck that he came to my school, and on a B-day, so I was able to take my creative writing class to his presentation. I was a bit surprised that I was the ONLY Northridge teacher to take students, though, seeing as though the presentation was on campus. The rest of the district sure took advantage; his morning session was 1,200 kids, and the afternoon session 500.

On Wednesday, he did a writing workshop for the winners of the school contests. I went down to be with our students. Then, Thursday, he spoke to teachers. Since he's a former teacher, he came at it from a writing teacher's perspective, which was nice. He also did some pretty hard sells of his books, but I guess that is to be expected. I bought a couple and got them signed. I was pretty impressed that after three days of being on display in the Davis District that he was still so friendly. Even on the last day, he was acting as if he'd just arrived! In truth, his personality reminded me a little of Dad. He was just very at-ease with people.

I do want to clarify that even though I've never read his books, it isn't because they aren't good. In fact, they've won many awards for young adult literature and span young readers from upper-elementary school to high school. Typically, my reading does not take me on Western adventures down the Colorado River, so I just haven't been exposed to him just yet. I am very excited to read Crossing the Wire, about a 15-year-old Mexican boy who immigrates illegally to the U.S. in order to support his family. Hobbs put a great deal of research into it and every review I've seen says that it is very even-handed, exposing the goods and evils of both sides of this issue, while putting a human face on something that usually only gets a label.

If you want to know more about his books, his website is website is: http://www.willhobbsauthor.com/ I've spent some time looking it over and it is a very cool site. Every book has tons of information about it, including an interview with him about the different events and places.

And speaking of reading, on Tuesday night, I had my last writing class, which was also my last class for my reading endorsement! Once my credit posts on the State Education Office database, I apply and pay an application fee, and then I am highly qualified to teach reading. This is technically different from teaching literature (but in a perfect world, they would be the same thing). In a reading class, we discuss reading strategies and help students who struggle with reading come to understand what good readers do, then purposefully and consciously use those same strategies when they're reading.

The extra credit hours of work will also go into a lane change application, which will result in a raise for me, too!

This is my level I endorsement. I could go for my level II, which is a few more classes and an internship. As a level II endorsed person, I could apply for district level jobs, like a literacy specialist or a teacher of the level I classes. The district started a group through that process this year. It will probably be another year or two before they offer the opportunity again. I'm really thinking seriously of doing it.

I'm glad to have this out of the way. I should have actually finished it last summer, but Al's vacation was the same week as the writing class was offered, so I wasn't able to enroll. It feels good to have this done, now, though. I've been working on it since September of 2006!

And finally, a couple of book recommendations from my recent reading experiences. The first is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. This is the first in a series of books. Written for young adults, the premise is that in the future, the U.S. has a big war, leaving behind a capital city and 13 districts. The capital city is oppressive, and when District 13 rebels, it is completely destroyed. Now to keep the rest of the districts in check, every year, each district has to hold a lottery in which one boy and one girl ages 12-18 is chosen to participate in the Hunger Games. They are sent off to the capital, thrown into an "arena," which is a large expanse of wilderness, and left to fight to the last man/woman standing, while cameras catch all the action and turn the event into reality TV. The book follows the experiences of a sixteen-year-old girl who ends up in the arena.

Yeah, it sounds horrifying. It's not about blood and guts, though. There are not elaborate descriptions of people's deaths. It's more about strategizing and issues of trust, humanity, and whether or not it's ok to sacrifice another to save yourself. It also asks how far we will go for entertainment. Once upon a time, it was considered great fun to tie up a bear so it couldn't defend itself and watch the dogs kill it. Then there is the coloseum in Rome...arena...fighting to the death...sound familiar? Reality TV is turning into the capitalization of suffering; audiences eat it up. How far away are we from this, really?

So I highly recommend The Hunger Games. It's an engaging and fast read that can really get a good discussion going. And yes, Jill, I think Kenzie would love it. The Pirates of the Carribean movies were far more violent than this book.

Then there's The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. I read this because it was the selection for high schools in our Davis Reads program. (For those of you who don't know, Davis is my school district.) I picked it up in September or so and flew through it. It really pulled a lot of writing out of me, as well. I was very excited when Jeffrey Zaslow visited our district (another author presentation that I took my creative writers to) and I got my copy signed!

If you haven't read this book, get it now. Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon, which has a tradition of asking retiring professors to give a last lecture in which they talk about what they've learned in life. Paush found out that he had advanced pancreatic cancer and only a few months of good health left. He saw the lecture as an opportunity for his young children to have fatherly advice after he had passed away. Zaslow, a columnist for Wall Street Journal attended the lecture and wrote a column about it. The lecture became a huge hit on YouTube (it's still there). The book idea wasn't appealing to Randy at first because he wanted to spend the last months with his family, not writing a book. But the revenue from book sales would be a way to provide for them. So he got a cell phone with a head set and every day he would bike for an hour around his house (to keep his health up) and dictate to Zaslow, who put the book together.

Seriously, this is one of the best books I've read in a while. I found myself saying "AMEN!" to a lot of what he had to say. It's just so common sense, but now someone who is actually being listened to is saying it! Plus, Randy is an amazing person. You'll find yourself truly inspired by what he managed to accomplish in his life, his positive attitude, and the way he really puts things in perspective. The book isn't terribly long, so you'll find that the actual reading is quick. You'll probably spend three times the amount of time thinking about what he has to say.

A couple of quotations to get you acquainted:

• Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted.
• Brick walls are there for a reason. They keep the other people out. (He's talking about perseverence.)

Well, I hope you enjoyed my random list of stuff today. To sum up the rest of life, I'm busy, the weather stinks, and I'm really excited for Spring Break next week!

Conspiracies

I'm pretty sure that someone somewhere is conspiring against me. I was in charge of our school-wide writing contest, which took me about 15 hours to organize entries, get them copied, get them to the judges, and then keep the judges organized. That was all going on about the same time that I needed to get the school's literary journal started, which is also a lot of work. My juniors were also finishing a big project that took me several hours to grade and I had already fallen behind on commenting to my creative writers.

I'm trying a new reading program with my READ 180 students, which requires a lot more preparation than the one we've been using, but overall, I think it is a superior program and I'm seeing a lot more enthusiasm from my students. I'm also trying out A Raisin in the Sun with my Juniors, something I haven't taught before and am starting from scratch.

Plus, I'm doing the writing class, participating in the district literacy committee, trying to make it to the bellydancing class I paid for, and ... well, you get the idea.

This is the last week of the term, so hopefully, I will be able to stay on top of things. Last week was especially hectic, but I met my goals and felt like I was able to breathe this weekend, which was especially nice because Al had Saturday off. We spent the morning cleaning up the house a bit, ran some errands, and went out to dinner. It was a pretty good day.

So sorry I haven't been blogging or commenting lately. When I am able to come up for air longer, I'll be sure to post something better!

More Stuff

At 4:30, I finished my PowerPoint for my presentation in my writing class tomorrow. Bellydancing class is at 6:00. I realized I might as well stay here, since bellydancing is right down the street and my house is 30 minutes away.

So I'm at school and I should be writing my memoir rough draft for tomorrow night, but I've been trying to get that done since last Wednesday and it's just not working out right now. So I guess I'll blog about all the fun we're having here.

The new semester has been an adventure. I have almost all new students in my reading and creative writing classes. The writing class I'm taking is proving to be very strenuous. I put about 15 hours of reading/writing per week, plus three hours of class time each week. But when I'm done, I have my reading endorsement. I've been working on it for two years, so it will be nice to have it over with.

I've been recruited to join the district's literacy committee, as well. I go to my first meeting on Wednesday after school. So there's another new thing I've added this year. When I get done with the writing class, I'll probably also be joining the group that reads and approves novels for the district.

Al has been doing well. We had quite a scare a couple of weeks ago. We got word that Al's Area Director had been laid off and Chili's was closing stores. Rumors and assumptions were flying everywhere from about 5:00 on a Tuesday night until about 10:00 Wednesday morning. I was trying to come to terms with the idea that I might be serving tables again to supplement income. In the end, they closed seven stores in the region, none of which were in Utah. Of course, that doesn't mean that there won't be more cuts, so we pretty much are keeping our fingers crossed and Al is trying to be an even better manager than he already is. That whole scare made us pretty appreciative of the money we've managed to save and for my job security. It made the whole "rainy day" scenario very real. I just feel horrible, though, for the managers and employees of the stores that were closed. The recession is hitting a little too close to home.

Even though my job is secure, we're looking at really cutting back on education budgets. One idea on the table is to make all high school teachers teach seven periods, whereas right now they teach six (3 on A-days, 3 on B-Days, with one prep period each day). I'm doing that schedule this year and am getting paid extra for productivity. Let me tell you, it's killer! I'm expecting a big fight with the union if this becomes a serious possibility. Even being paid extra, it's barely worth it. I'm stretched so thin and I know I'm not as effective of a teacher.

Being an aunt again is also a lot of fun. I haven't been able to spend much time with Blakelee, but the time I've had with her so far has been fabulous. Perhaps when she starts being more awake it'll be even better! Even Al has been trying to become more comfortable with her, since right now, he's really only comfortable with kids 8 and up. He's doing a good job!

Well, there's about a million things I should be doing now, so I'm going to go and get to them before I have to leave school for bellydancing class. If you'd like to see my brilliant PowerPoint on how I teach the voice writing trait, please let me know. I even downloaded a special theme for it...that's how fancy I'm getting!

This time next week, I'll be packing for Vegas!

The Country On My Mind

It's no secret that I'm a supporter of President Obama. Those who don't want to support him certainly have a right to their own opinions, but I'm amused by the people who think they can simply deny he is now our President. I grew out of the whole If-I-Don't-See-You-Then-You-Aren't-There mentality before Kindergarten.

I'm also tired of being told by the outspoken Nobamas that I should not voice my support, because by doing so I'm automatically naive and think he's omniscient (I'm not and I don't), and that by supporting the President, I'm unamerican and a socialist (again, I'm not and I'm not). I also find it ironic that most of these unamerican accusations come from people who think it's ok to deny homosexuals their "unalienable right to...the pursuit of happiness," but that's another issue for another day.

I'm not going to agree with everything Obama says or does. He was my choice for President because I agreed with him on more issues than McCain. Obama is a stout supporter of education issues and the need to reform a well-intentioned but poorly administrated program. McCain wanted to ignore a problem he didn't believe existed. Obama wants to change things that aren't working. McCain wanted to keep things pretty much the same. Obama wants to socialize medicine. I think that's something that should be explored in order to protect our "unalienable right to life...." And I don't see anything Obama is doing that will endanger our right to liberty. That being said, I didn't agree with him on 100% of the issues so naturally I'm not going to agree with everything he does. I don't think that makes me hypocritical or unsupportive. And for those of you who are going to jump on the "You said you're not a socialist but you support socialized medicine" argument, let me say that I am also in favor of public education...which could also be correctly labeled "socialist education." Yes, certain aspects of our society should be socialized, NOT society as a whole. "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"--health and education are critical elements of those rights that we hold dear.

So for the record, here is where I currently stand:

Things that we should not be arguing about:

• A $500,000 salary cap on executives of companies that are being bailed out by government money: Apparently, all this talent is going to go somewhere where it can be paid millions of dollars and get Las Vegas getaways and free cars. Then the companies left "talentless" are going to tank...period. Well, if these top execs were so talented, then they wouldn't need the government and the "little people" to bail out the companies that they couldn't manage to run profitably. Let them leave. (Assuming they can find a job--what flourishing company is going to hire someone who helped drive a company under and then bailed when they were asked to show a little personal sacrifice?) But if by some miracle, they move on to a new multi-million dollar company to ruin, and these failing companies that are left behind manage to find someone who's willing to do the same job for a paltry half-million a year, we might actually be dealing with a person who isn't obsessed with his/her own personal greed. Once the company is back on track and has paid back the government money, then it becomes a private industry and can pay whatever it wants in salaries, which may just help to motivate these poor new execs during this difficult time of $500,000-per-year budgeting.


• The tax issues of Cabinet nominees: people lie. Obama is not omniscient. The truth came out, they're gone, and now there's room for more honest people in their places. The fact that Obama didn't make excuses or try to keep them on is proof that he is committed to the high standards he has set for himself and his people.


• The need for improved child health care. These kids whose parents can't afford health care didn't choose to be born. They'll suffer enough for their parent's stupidity in other ways and in other places; they should at least be healthy in the mean time.
  

Things we should be questioning:

• Using tobacco money to support the child health care improvements: This is going to hit the poor the hardest. Poverty studies show that when individuals and families live below the poverty line, they tend to value entertainment above other things. This means that when you walk into a poor area, you're going to see nice cars with thousands of dollars of enhancements and a great alarm system, gaming systems and expensive televisions in the living room, iPhones and Blackberries, great stereo systems, etc. Meanwhile, the kids are eating ramen noodles and wearing too-small clothes that were bought for them last year at the Salvation Army. Poverty is usually caused by the failure to manage money well. The majority of smokers are beneath the poverty level. Raising taxes on cigarettes is not going to reduce smoking--this entire plan is counting on smokers continuing to shell out more money for the same product. Smoking budget goes up, Joe Smoker compensates by taking it out of the food/clothing fund, kids suffer. I think smoking is disgusting, and I think we need to do more to stop it, but I'm opposed to anything that wants to raise the tax on smoking. It won't prevent/reduce smoking, and innocent dependents are the ones who are going to get the brunt of it.


• Delaying Digital TV: This shouldn't even be an issue. Get your free converter box from your cable company. Now you're fine. You've had months and months to do this. The people who waited this long are the same people who are going to wait until after the next deadline as well. More time isn't going to solve any of the potential problems, so let's get it over with and just rip off the band-aid. I don't even know why this should be something the President is worrying about.
  

Something we should appreciate:

• A President who is willing to go on the record and say "I screwed up." No excuses, no justification or rationalization, just a simple statement of human fault. "I screwed up." He could have rationalized his ingorance of his cabinet nominees' tax history, but he just admitted he was wrong. Bush screwed up all the time. Did he say it? No. He wouldn't even pronounce "nuclear" correctly, which only solidified his ideas that his way was the right way because he was the President. After all, if he suddenly started saying it right, people would notice and then everyone would know that he was wrong about something, which would completely undermine his authority. (At least that's how I think he saw it.) Then there was Clinton--"I didn't inhale." "I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman." Why he couldn't have just admitted that he did it and he was wrong is beyond me. The fact that he was clearly lying was the only reason people even cared and still remember about it. Meanwhile, Obama answered the pot question with "I inhaled--frequently--that was the point." He also admits to being an ex-smoker who uses Nicorette and still sometimes gives in to cravings. On both of these issues, the American public seems to be saying, "Thanks for being honest. Let's move on to things that are actually important." We're not wasting our time obsessing about how the President lied to us. So no, Obama is not a deity flying in on some winged mythical creature to save the day, and he is able to stand in front of a camera and admit that he's an actual fallible human being. I have to say that I like that.

Special Olympics

I really do have a lot to blog about. So many things have happened...a new neice, a new president, new hatchlings! But I've also been dealing with a new semester and a hectic schedule. I'm finishing my reading endorsement with a writing course at night, I've taken up a 6-week belly dancing class, and I'm still trying to make it to the gym every now and then. When I finally am at home, I just want to crash...you know? So I'm sorry about being lazy with the blogging. I will play catch-up this weekend while I watch tv online, but for now, here is the latest fun time...Fullers Field playing the Special Olympics opening ceremonies dance!

Check out Mom and Dad's dance lesson moves! Also, off to the right, you can see Danny dancing with one of the athletes. She was in heaven!

Here's a friend we made:

99 Red Balloons:

Even more balloons:

And the end of the song...Danny is dancing with his little friend again!

I didn't get it on video, but I put some pictures on FaceBook of when the band let some athletes take the instruments to perform Jordan's Jingle. It was so cute. They just loved being the center of attention!

A little bit of "Keep Swingin'"

"Take On Me"

More "Take On Me"

And the end of the song...with a big finish:

Signing autographs:

But in the end, the band rocked so hard that Little Jeremy lost his head in a tragic falling incident. Superglue, anyone?

The guys from Wasatch Sound were kind enough to reset the mike to give this athlete a chance to shine: