Mother's Day 2009

For all those moms in my life.

6 Months of Unwritten Stories

So it's been six months. It' s time for a new post.
Big changes have rumbled through the summer. Shortly after the school year ended, I was offered a job at the school at which I most wanted to work. I picked up a summer job shortly thereafter. It was my first job in fast-food. The job was good because when the shift was over, I could forget all about work. In June, the baby arrived and I took a couple weeks to be with the new family. My life changed. It took a little while to adjustment my own behavior to be more of a family man, but it eventually began and continues to develop. The summer job ended, the school year started, and I am now a professional teacher. I still have a ton to learn about teaching, and I am attempting to get through the year. I have to balance building curriculum with completing meetings and paperwork and with spending time with my new love: my child.
Six months of living creates a full biography of stories. Many of those will go untold. Hopefully, the stories won't go unremembered.

OMG, What's Going On?!

Bad Day x2

I thought I was having a bad day. Got a bad review from my university supervisor and felt like crap because I agreed with him. I was an ineffective teacher today. But no matter how crappy my days are, I realized how bad Amanda's days can be. Mine are nothing in comparison.

On a daily basis, she is dealing with keeping new borns alive. But there are occasionally those that will not make it. She has to deal with death. It forces her to grieve but also help families grieve. Then when it's all done with, she has the duty of wrapping up the body in plastic and uncerimoniously carrying the child down to the morgue, leaving something she spent time caring for and nurturing lying on a hard, cold table.

Makes me feel bad thinking about that, but puts things into perspective how my bad days aren't so bad.

Bicycle Ingenuity

Long story, short... working on linear magnetically induced electrical circuit for powering whatever by attaching magnets to bike wheels. Sqeaky and I had some creative ideas and are working on the calculations. I need to test the lifting capacity of a variety of magnets at 2mm.

Has this been created before? Probably. Might we improve upon another patent? Possibly. Even if it is a catastrophic failure, due to complete miscalculations, flaws in design, or excessive cost, the project sounds fun.

So, I'm awfully tired today... all day.

Made the effort to get my fingerprints done to submit with the state teaching certification. It was really simple and clean to boot! Fingerprinting is typically all digital now (except at campus security).

Confidence continues to climb in the classroom. I'm beginning to take the initiative to get things done for students and learning how to do it. I'm ready to teach. It'll take a while to be great, but I'm ready to continue that process.

New Traditions

Getting ready for baby is a wonderful nerve-inducing time of thinking of new traditions. I was flipping through a book of ideas for families and got really warm hearted about the ideas we could do:

• photo with "family" tree at important times
• picking the wall for a growth chart
• picking books for nightly story time

Yeah, I'm getting a little excited.

The baby room is mostly empty, as the photo shows, and the only things that will go into the room will be for the little one. We will likely get the crib from family in the next month (yay, hand-me-downs) but we are still on the look-out for a changing table and I have a feeling that our tax rebate will be used to buy a glider. The rocking chair in the picture is being saved for Stephanie.

So Much For Spring

After the wonderful weather yesterday, the windy-snowy-rain rolled in today. This dreary weather afforded me the opportunity to do rainy day stuff. While watching 3+ movies (The Break-Up; Firehouse Dog; and Harry Potter and the blah somthing), I took some time today to visit forgotten websites, update bookmarks, and seek out new things to read online. I expanded my Twitter account to include more of my favorite internet personalities, partly due to none of my friends having accounts.
I hit up Nick's Flickr account to see what he's been up to. I really should start an account there and drop him some comments. I value his friendship eventhough I see him maybe once monthly. The additional contact would really help. It's free, might as well.
As far as teaching goes: I have found that I have trouble thinking up lesson or discussion topic ideas on the fly but creating lists really helped. By doing the same thing with blog post ideas, it should help me be more consistent in writing entries (perhaps I can even pre-write some).

You can see in the picture (taken 1 day after the previous picture was taken) how much the snow melted yesterday. Here it comes again!

Spring Springing

I have started my Spring cleaning! Last night we cleaned the house thouroughly (in a few rooms) and it feels so much better. I'm cleaning those hard-to-reach areas, scrubbing the often-missed spots, and organizing the misplaced stuff. Why? Well, it really needs to be done, first and foremost. The secondary reason the arriving baby. I guess nesting isn't just a mother-to-be routine. Tertiary reason: grandparents potentionally coming to town next weekend. The last reason is what's pushing me to get it all done sooner than later, but it isn't what motivated me to start... and I'm okay with that.
The rest of today will keep me busy. Two of my gaming friends are moving out of their respective apartments and moving in together. They, and other people will likely be here in the next 30min to an hour, so I need to start getting dressed. So glad today's weather is going to be so nice. 9:40AM in Nebraska on the first of March and it's already 39°F. The high is 59°. Woo! Spring is around the corner.

Twitter

Life grinds on, student teaching continues (in my second semester), money gets tight, I seek cheap ways to entertain myself. Hence: Twitter. The new widget attached to the blog will update a few times a day "ideally". Realizing I wanted to blog daily, Twitter-ing 3-4 times daily seems unrealistic. However, if I convince myself to do even more, maybe a 1x daily update will become possible.

Lawn Mower Ingenuity & Keggers

Changed the oil on a lawnmower for the first time. The instruction manual was less-than-helpful in describing how to accomplish the feat. It did give a picture of where the drain hole is located, but not what tool to use to remove the plug. It was a large square hole which was too big for any standard flat head screwdriver to span the hole. I eventually used the ratchet extender head which would have fit perfectly if it weren't for the spring-loaded ball which lock on the sockets. Never the less, it worked wonderfully.
Last night, Rich's party was indeed a kegger that reminded me of house parties from college, just with far fewer in attendance. I felt that I had nothing in common with many of the people and realized that there were a few underage drinkers there. Keeping in mind that I am going to be a teacher, I made sure that Sqeaky and I left before the city's noise ordinance went into effect. I was not going to put myself in the position for the cops to show up, issue me a contribution ticket, and cause me to be removed from the education program.

Friends Grow on You

Today I realized how close I am to my friends. We don't often talk or call each other, unless it is reference to our regular Saturday night get-together, but I am willing to do so much for them.
Rich called to say his birthday party is going to be a kegger on a Friday... not grilling at the lake on a Saturday like I originally expected. It didn't cause me to hesitate one bit even though I don't really like those types of parties. I immediately took it upon myself to call our mutual friends and inform them of the change. I want him to have a great party and did whatever I could to make it happen, even if it isn't my ideal party.
I'm really glad that work on Fridays (and Saturday afternoon) is done now so I can kick back and enjoy my time with him. I kinda like this "regular" office-hour job. It might be easy to get used to.

Favorite Podcasts

A previous post showed some of my favorite websites. Today, I'm going to list my favorite Podcasts to which I listen while working on the yard, projects, while driving, or preparing to sleep.
I just downloaded iTunes onto my laptop (now a month and a half old) for ease of downloading the associated MP3s. iTunes wreaked havoc on the PC which is why I haven't been using it before now. It really slowed everything down.
Pictured is the MP3 player that I currently use. Next to it is the cell phone that I bought; one of the first generation cell phones to include MP3 player capabilities. What you can't see is the broken-off antenna, damaged simply by carrying it in my pocket and sitting down oddly. It was just not a convenient MP3 player, hence the newer device.
The Bitterest Pill: fatherhood and rants about society
Extra Life Radio: Scott Johnson's "Geek tested, nerd approved" show. Bad movies, video games, sci-fi, humor
Infendo Radio: Scott Johnson's Nintendo fan-boy show. Got into this in anticipation to Wii release.
Jawbone Radio: Len & Nora's family and geeky passions (Len's, not Nora's)
Manic Mommies: "Doing it all and doing it well" My interest is based on gaining the female perspective on parenthood.
Nobodies: "Taking their late night garage talk to the net." My only explicit show, vulgar, but not exceedingly so.
This Week in Tech: Leo Laporte and his crew talk computers and technology. He is also associated with several other netcasts, particularly The Tech Guy which is his California radio show, ported to the net.
Lastly, shock jocks Todd n Tyler have a radio show brought to the net via MP3.

Less Student, More Teaching

The school year is really starting to get swinging. More and more I'm thinking about what I need to do to succeed this semester, planning ahead and asking lots of questions. I feel more professional than I ever have because of dress, meetings, and realization of how much I already know.
Today cirricula guides were handed out for all the appropriate classes. While I didn't receive one personally, I reviewed one and feel much better about what I will need to teach for a whole year of classes. Previously, my biggest concerns were knowing what I needed/should teach. I really like that this school district has cirricular guides. I hope whatever district I head to in the future have similar plans to help beginning teachers.
Amanda is visiting an out-of-town friend overnight, so I think I'm going to take the chance today to change the oil in the lawnmower and knock down some of the greenery.
Speaking of which, July was so dry and I chose not to water it much, so the growth was stunted for pretty much the whole month. When I finally got around to mowing it last week, I did a rush job. This week I noticed some weeds a bit more. I was surprised to find the pictured tomato plant growing out of the rocks... bearing a red fruit! The tomato isn't visible because I pulled it off yesterday and ate it right off the vine. It was tasty! Not too shabby for a weed, huh?

Student Teaching

Made a major step towards my career in the last couple days. Wednesday I attended a meeting at the high school where teachers new to the district received orientation. Though I am not a "new" teacher, just a "student" teacher, I attended so I could meet my teacher, Terry, and get a hand on the school.
Today, I attended my first required meeting. We had a free breakfast at the school and received our info packets and name tags, etc. At the meeting, I ran into a classmate from college with whom I had talked a bit with. He could be a great guy to get to know as he is near my age, married, just had a baby, and has an RN for a wife. Very similar to me (other than the baby, of course). He's a theater guy which could be a nice addition to my friends as an alternative to game-geeks. We'll see how it goes but we seemed to hit it off.
After the meeting where I got to know my classmate, we basically went to work organizing classrooms, preparing for student arrival next week (already!). I was overdressed and worked my butt off hauling boxes, cabinets, and supplies & assisting other teachers hang decor, etc. Afterwards I was exhausted... yet I still had work tonight.
I ran home, relaxed for a half hour, called my client about my arrival, and headed off to work. It's been a long day, but I feel good about everything I've done. 12 hour day... it will be very similar to my future teaching first-year, I fear.
Bed time.