ConAg Expo 2011

Bill's work sent him to the annual ConAg Expo in Vegas.  He didn't have to go, but he decided to take Will with him and make it a guy's weekend.  I didn't want to go (ugh.  Boring expo!).  Besides, someone needed to be home for Helena and her Prom.  They were gone for three days, but I think they only spent the first day at the expo.  They sure brought home lots of loot from it, though.  Will ended up with several shirts, about 13 lanyards, a hat, and who knows what else.

On the second day, they went out and 'toured' Hoover dam and the new bridge!  Isn't it beautiful?  They actually walked across it!  I was surprised to see video that Bill took of Will actually leaning over the railing and even joking about jumping off of it.

You see, when Will was little, he was afraid of heights.  Even open risers or metal stairs would freak him out back in the day.

I will also admit, I am glad I wasn't there because it would have freaked me out seeing him goof around on something so high.  I have an overactive imagination when it comes to horrible ways my kids could be hurt or killed.

Which reminds me.  On their last day out, they stopped and watched a dune buggy (?) race.  They were standing maybe 20 feet away (with no guard rail) from these dune buggies that would go barreling by at high speed.  Bill shot some video of that, too.  In one of the videos, a dune buggy sprayed him with gravel and you can hear him react ("Ouch!").

Yeah.  Definitely sounds like a guy's weekend.

Prom 2011

We ordered a dress about a week before anyone asked her.  We ordered it too late.

Prom was last Saturday and the dress still hasn't arrived.

That's okay, though.  She still looked beautiful in the dress she wore to Preference and I am certain that she will have an opportunity to wear the new dress next year.  Maybe for Homecoming or Preference.

She was asked to Prom by a boy in her math class named Seve Trevino.  That is actually a nickname, short for Sevestian and it is pronounced "Sevie".

Their 'day date' was breakfast at Kneaders and the Holi Festival of Colors at the Hare Krishna temple in Spanish Fork.  It is a celebration of Spring where participants throw colorful chalk (replacing the ground flower petals of 5,000 years ago) at each other.  This is a big deal locally, and more than 30,000 people attended this year.  Helena came home from it VERY colorful and seemed to have a good time.

I met Seve when he picked Helena up for the day date.  He seemed very stiff and didn't smile even once (I never did see him smile).  I felt like he was extremely nervous and wondered if it was his first time meeting his date's parent(s).  When he came back to pick Helena up for the evening, I did the standard mom taking pictures routine.  No smile again.

 
They were in a Prom group with Seve's friends, whom Helena did not really know.  They went to dinner at Olive Garden.  The prom this year was held at the Sleepy Ridge Golf Course club house.

It's beautiful, isn't it?  I always felt bad for the school gym sort of prom.  It sort of makes dressing up in a fancy ball gown pointless if you are just going to be dancing on the 3 point line under a bunch of crepe paper streamers and the home team scoreboard.  A building like the golf clubhouse looks like just the sort of place to wear a fancy dress!

Helena said she had a nice time, though apparently Seve talked a bit too much about video games and not enough about things that interest Helena.  This was their first date, and according to Helena, their last.  She still thinks he is a nice kid, if a bit weird.  Today she told me that he asked her if she would be his 'girlfriend'.  She tells me she let him down gently (my words, not hers) by telling him she didn't have time for that sort of thing since she really needs to focus on school right now.  His response was to ask her if they were still friends, though?

Ahh!  High school!  Does it ever really change?

In the meantime, if you are reading this and you have young boys to raise...

Will you make sure, when the time is right, that you teach them how to meet and greet the parents and how to hold lively conversations with their Prom date?!?

Financial Setback

The district has built two new schools out near mine.  The closest of the two will be filled only with students taken from my school.  We are at a student population of 1,200 this year; as we have been for the past 5 years.  Next year, our student population will be 700.  Our faculty is being cut in half.  No one is being 'fired', they just have to be relocated to another faculty.  Probably one of the two new schools.

There has never been any worry that I would lose my position.  So, even though I felt for the other teachers who have to find a position at another school, I felt kind of smug that I was secure.

However, I learned yesterday that the district has cut our Principal's budget on 'specialists' contract hours.  So, while I still have a job, my hours are being reduced.  I have always been on a .75 contract.  Next year I am being cut to a .6 contract.

I have been in a funk about it since I found out.  I ran the figures and between a cut in pay and an increase in insurance premiums I will be making $500 less next year...PER MONTH!  Overall, it is a $6,600 cut in salary for me.

So, what to do?  It feels like a slap in the face.

I could look for another position elsewhere in the district, however...

1. I was one  of the few elementary level art teachers in the district NOT already cut to the .6 contract, so there aren't any other elementary art positions out there to go to.
2. I can't just switch to a grade level classroom at my school because anyone with a full contract has priority over me, even though I have seniority.
3. While I could transfer to a grade level classroom elsewhere in the district, do I really want to?  I have been happy teaching art... much happier than when I taught sixth grade!  Also, who wants to be low man on the totem pole?  Not me!

I have thought about maybe looking for a 7th-8th grade art position.  I think that would be a blast!  Those are quite rare, though, and I will need to be patient for that opportunity.

In the meantime, I am trying to see the positive in this.  Most likely, a .6 contract will mean only working Tuesday-Friday... no Mondays.  I could definitely live with a four day work week!  I will just be even more broke than I am already.

Sigh.

Japan

It seems absolutely heartless of me that I can write about my own small doings and frustrations without even once mentioning the tragedy happening in Japan.  I have watched, with the rest of the world, in grief over the catastrophic death toll.  There is no recrimination about lack of preparedness, because really, how could you possibly prepare for such a force of nature?  All there can be is shock, horror, and prayers... for the living and the dead.

I hope to someday print this blog in a bound book, since it has become my journal.  For that reason, I will elaborate that I am referring to the 8.9 magnitude earthquake followed by more than 4 tsunamis that cut a merciless path of destruction and death through northwestern Japan on March 11th.  Though literally thousands have lost their lives (4,126 is the current death toll... with more than 12,000 still unaccounted for!), and millions are now homeless, there are amazing stories of survival...

Like the 4 month old baby ripped out of her mother's arms in the torrent of black, deadly water found alive and well in a pile of debris; reunited with her parents who both, miraculously, also survived!

Then there is the 70 year old woman found alive and determined to survive after also being swept away.

How about the 65 year old man found and rescued off the tattered remains of the roof of his home, drifting 10 miles out to sea?

Then, there is the fact that all LDS missionaries in the district most heavily hit were all conveniently at a zone conference that morning, 35 miles inland and out of harm's way.  I hate to say that God's hand was in that, after all, where was God's hand for the thousands who perished?  Still, it was an un-looked for blessing.

And now, to add insult to injury, the tsunami knocked out the power to a nuclear power plant shutting down the cooling tanks and leading to an imminent core melt down with radiation spilling out over the decimated landscape.

Things are grim in Japan.  It makes me feel guilty for my safety and security even as it makes me grateful for all that I have, especially my family!

The Downside to Clay

I have been spending the past two weeks on fourth grade clay projects in the art room.  Usually, each grade level from third to sixth gets to do one clay project per year.  This year, however, the fourth grade lucked out and got two projects.  This is thanks to Mr. Larson.

Mr. Larson is new to our school this year, but not new to the district.  He was the fourth grade science teacher at my children's elementary school.  Helena and Will both had him back in the day.  He got enticed out to our school this year since (I think) it is closer to his home.  I think there was another reason he told me about, but I can't remember and it really doesn't matter anyways.  Kind of a bummer that he'll be forced to relocate at the end of this year, along with half of the staff since we'll be losing more than half our student population.  That is a topic for another day, though.

Well, Mr. Larson happens to be an excellent teacher.  I have know that for years, so when he came to me with a request, I was happy to grant it.  He wondered if I would be willing to make Fremont figurines with his class as a follow up on some of their social studies.

Great!  I did it with the whole fourth grade and we had a ton of fun!

Then, of course, I still wanted to do my traditional coil construction pottery with the kids, so I decided to wrap that lesson up in Anasazi pottery to keep with the social studies theme and they LOVED it!

Here is the perpetual problem with clay projects...

What do you do with the student who was absent for the making of the project?  Whether due to illness, or a family trip to Disneyland (that one happens a LOT), how do you handle that?  Everyone else has one to glaze, but not him/her.

Or how about the kid who started one, but was absent when the rest of the class finished?

What about the kid who breaks their clay project before it can be fired?  Or broke it on their way home and now mommy is on the phone with you wanting you to help her precious child make a new one so he/she will stop crying about it?

These are all frustrating problems that I deal with on every art project, but it is magnified by the clay projects because the kids care about the clay project about a thousand times more than any other project, and it is next to impossible to get them 'caught up'.  I refuse to run the full (high electric bill) kiln for ONE little clay piece!  I also don't like giving up my lunches day after day to children who just spent the past week in Disneyland instead of class!  Or for students who wrecked the first one, and are just going to wreck the second one because that is their nature or talent.

Alright.  Enough grumping.

Good night.

Ragnar Relay - Wasatch Back 2011

So, I am in the middle of training for the Thanksgiving Point Half Marathon on April 30th.  I am still planning to enter the Utah Valley Half Marathon on June 11th.

And now I am the 12th and final member of a Ragnar Relay team running the Wasatch Back Ragnar on June 17-18th!  It is a crazy day and night 188 mile relay race from Logan to Park City with each member of the team doing 3 legs of the relay.

I am still me.  I am still me.  I am still me.

If I keep saying that over and over again I can get through this training.

I have never attempted anything like this before in my life.  I have been a successful couch potato for many, many years.  This feels like a whole new way of living...  One sore legs day to the next!

Bill's niece, Liz, started building this team months ago when she registered for the now sold out event.  She recruited Bill for her team and he told her I was in training for the half marathons and that I'd probably be willing to be the final team member that she was trying to find.  She has us all scheduled to go to a running clinic down at the BYU track and field building in a couple of weeks to have our gait analyzed and who knows what else.

In the meantime, I have discovered a new training tool!  It is called Map My Run.  It is a free website (there are paid prescriptions, but the free version works great) that allows you to map out your running routes and it will calculate the distances for you.  It will also calculate your rate/speed if you tell it how long it took you to run your route.  You can also search for other routes that other people have made in your area.  For instance, the rec. center has built two 7 mi. routes that start and end right at the rec. center a block from my house.

This is exactly what I was looking for!  I have been jogging my longer mileage workouts on the track, because I wanted to make sure I got the full distance in, but the track is FLAT.  I need to train on ups and downs.  Now I have found out that my two standard runs outside are 3.9 miles and 5.25 miles.  I have created an 8.5 mile, a 10 mile, and a 13.1 mile route that I can follow easily!  Woot, woot!

All does, indeed, seem lost.

Aurgh.  My iPod is still on the blink.  For just a short little window while I was writing my last blog post, it seemed to have recovered just fine and I was reinstalling apps and rearranging them.

Then, it froze again.

And it hasn't recovered since.  It is still spinning its proverbial wheels as I type this.

I CAN'T JOG WITHOUT MUSIC!  Phooey.

I asked Helena if I could borrow her iPod yesterday and she was happy to loan it.  While I am grateful to her for the loaner, her music threw me off.  Let's just say it is not to my tastes.  This is less a generational thing than the fact that Helena has quirky tastes in music.  Her exercise playlist has a Quidditch song and a bunch of French rap mixed in with more familiar tunes.

So, today I will borrow Will's iPod.  I looked over his music list (which is surprisingly small, btw) and found that I knew most, if not all the songs on it.  He is also happy to loan it to me.

Still, I have to find a solution to my frozen iPod.  I think I am going to have to break down and buy AppleCare and take it in to be looked at.

Harumph.

iPod Trauma

You don't realize just how much you rely on technology until that technology crashes!

My iPod froze up this afternoon!  GRRRR!!!!

It had my whole life on it!  For instance, I lost...

• My calendar
• My contacts
• My passwords (fortunately, I have redundancies on these.  I just have to dig out the old fashioned paper file of them and re-enter them)
• My bookmarked websites
• My list of books to read (over 100 book titles lost)
• My list of movies to buy (to replace all the videos that got thrown away)
• The kid's 'accounts' (I keep track of monies they earn and pay out periodically)
• Direct links to places I shop online
• My gift giving lists (that I have given and ideas for future gifts)
• My workout music play list (that one hurt a lot!  I can't run without my music, so I skipped my run tonight so I could re-populate the list.)
• And a bunch of other apps that make my life more fun!

Obviously, I was a slacker when it came to syncing my iPod to the computer, because if I had only done so, I would not have lost a thing.

RATS!!!

All is not completely lost, however.  I restored it to factory settings, then spent the rest of the evening recreating my digital life.  And I will definitely sync OFTEN from now on!

Fire Alarms and Hair Dryers

While I was in the middle of writing that last post, the fire alarms in the basement went off!  I went downstairs to find out what was going on (I didn't smell any smoke) and started silencing them one by one.  Will got into the breaker box and tripped the switch for them before I could finish.  He got chewed out for that one.

We couldn't find any source other than the fact that Helena was in the process of drying her hair.  We were worried for a moment that it was a carbon monoxide issue, but then we remembered that the co warning is accompanied by a female voice saying "Danger!  Carbon Monoxide!" over and over.  So, we just reset them and I came back upstairs to finish my post.

Yeah, no.  The alarms went off again.  All of them.  So, back downstairs we went.  We discovered that if one goes off, they all trigger.  It must have been Helena's hair dryer.  She stopped using it and switched to mine...  No more alarms.

Problem solved.

8 Miles

I registered for the Thanksgiving Point half marathon (April 30) yesterday.  It is official now.  I have 9 weeks to train.

I will be registering for the Utah Valley half marathon (June 11th) in a couple of weeks.  That one will be an easier race because the entire thing is downhill!  The Thanksgiving Point race is down, then up on a gentle grade.  Even gentle, it seems brutal to start going down and end going up.  However, I look forward to jogging through the beautiful gardens at the height of tulip season.

Erik and Deanna gave me a beginner's 10 week training schedule that they also plan to follow when the 10 week pre-UV half marathon hits.  When I first got the schedule, I thought I was behind in my training for the Thanksgiving Point race, so I moved ahead to week 4 on the schedule, which called for Mon. 3 mi., Wed. 5 mi., Thurs. 3 mi., and Saturday... 8 miles!

Before starting this, I had been averaging 5 miles on my treadmill workouts, so I figured this would be an acceptable place to start.  I have to say that the training is going very well!  Before this week I would never have imagined myself jogging such great distances!

I am still mostly running in the gym.  It is often too cold or too wet outside.  I know I could tough that out (I do have cold weather gear), but I don't have a reliable method of clocking the mileage, yet, so I prefer indoor running.  I am no longer using the treadmills, however.  I see a number of problems with the treadmills. 

1. Most of them have a maximum time limit of 60 minutes.
2. They are very cushioned and shock absorbed, so the training would not be as effective or 'real world'.
3. They are often either broken down or all in use.
4. And finally, I lose motivation on a treadmill.  It is hard to get a good rhythm going.  Each time a song ends, I tend to step off the tread and rest while waiting for the new song to start.  I don't do that in 'real world' jogging.

I jog on the indoor track.  There are four lanes.  The inside lanes are meant to be for walking, and the outside lanes are for jogging and are ramped on the corners.  There's always room for me on the track, even though I get frustrated sometimes with the lack of parental supervision going on at times.

Saturday is a good day for using the gym, though.  Not many people are there.  I maintain a steady pace that helps me count the laps and chew up the miles.  The lane I jog in measures 13 laps/mi., so here is my routine;

• 5 laps at 5 mi./hr
• 1 lap walk/recover
• 3 laps at 5 mi./hr.
• 1 lap walk/recover
• 2 laps at 5 mi./hr.
• 1 lap walk/recover
• Take a drink and start over on the next mile

So, you can see, 10 out of 13 laps are jogging.  It works REALLY WELL!

My pace is slow and steady.  I watch people come and go.  Most people arrive, blast around the track for a lap or three, then go their way again.  I wonder if they feel pity for the plump, middle aged lady just chugging along in a slow jog?  Guaranteed they wouldn't feel that way if they knew I had been at it for over an hour and was on the downward side of my sixth MILE, not lap!

I completed 8 miles in 1 hour and 43 minutes.  Mile 7 was the hardest.  Surprisingly, mile 8 felt great and it took me a moment to realize that I was done after the final lap (that I jogged rather than walking)!  I felt like I could keep going!

That's pretty incredible!  I didn't, though.  I knew better than to push it too far.  I'm not even all that sore today, the day after.

I did discover that I was way off in calculating which week in the training I should be on.  Last week should have been week 1, not week 4.  Oops. 

No worries, though.  I just plan to repeat week 4 this week, then do 2 weeks at the week 5 level, and 2 weeks on week 6.  That should get me back on track and much stronger than if I stepped back my workout.

Now what I really need is a decent pair of running shoes!  That is scheduled for next weekend.

"Each Person's Mind is a World Unto Itself"

My principal told me that this morning after I told him my children's reaction to the snow.

It snowed last night.  It is still snowing heavily.

When Helena went out to scrape her car and start it up this morning, she came back in wanting to know if there would be school closures.  She was disgruntled at the amount of snow.  We had a foot of snow overnight with much more coming down.

When Will woke and realized it had snowed, he was jubilant!  He can't wait to hit the slopes with all this new powder.  It is very light and powdery snow.  He wants to go to Canyons Resort with his friend, Cody, but I think he'll have to be content with Sundance since Canyons costs $90 for a day pass and he already has a season pass to Sundance.  I understand the attraction, though.  Canyons is the largest ski resort around.

As for Helena wishing school would close down for the snow... that is a pipe dream.  I only remember school being closed ONCE in all the time I have lived here.  Blizzards rarely even shut things down here.  We all just blaze ahead in all the slick mess.  Most people have four wheel drive and there is at least one guy living on every block who has a snowplow attachment for his truck or four wheeler.  Bill's 'snowplow attachment' is his backhoe.

I have four wheel drive... on the Expedition...  that Helena drives.  I am stuck with the little Alero that slips and slides all over the place.  This morning's commute was particularly slippery.

Ah well.  At least it is Friday!

Work Frustrations!

I am about to vent.  It is going to be a LONG rant.  If you don't want to 'hear' (read) me ranting and raving, you are very welcome to just skip this post.  I am sure I will be back to my happy, happy, all the time self tomorrow...  At least, I HOPE SO!

Okay.  So, this rant needs a little background information.  Or maybe a lot.

Back in mid-January, my principal put into my box (in the teacher workroom) a packet of information just released from the district outlining the procedure for applying for a summer collaboration grant being offered by the district.  If I wanted, I could pull together a team of art specialists who were willing to meet together for four days during the summer to collaborate and plan curriculum while focusing on one of the 'four essential questions'.

Not that it is important, or that you probably even care, but the 'four essential questions' are...

1. What do I want my students to learn?
2. How will I know if they have learned it?
3. What will I do if students haven't learned it?
4. What will I do for students who already know it?

 After finding other like minded teachers, we were expected to go to an orientation meeting about the grants where we signed a roll so they would know we had attended.  Attendance in the orientation plays a factor in which grant proposals would be selected and awarded.  We then needed to select one of the four questions above, and write up a S.M.A.R.T. goal (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely) grant proposal and submit it to the district with all the pertinent signatures and the backing of a building administrator.  If we do all that, and if the stars align just right so that the heavens smile down upon us, we will be one of the lucky teams to be awarded $1000 per team member to accomplish our goal.

Great.  So, I did all that.  I found another art specialist who was willing to not only join me, but also to go along with the goal I had in mind.  We told the District Arts Coordinator (DAC), who sent out a blanket e-mail to all the rest of the elementary art specialists telling them to contact us if they wanted in on the grant proposal.  We heard back from two others.

We met up at the orientation meeting and got all our John Hancocks onto the application.  Then I went home and did all the work of writing up the proposal, e-mailed it to the team members to get their 'ok', got my principal on board with it... you get the idea.  I jumped through ALL the hoops over the past month in the middle of training a student teacher and hiking the Himalayas backwards.  Okay, maybe scratch that last one.  I am being over dramatic.

I submitted the final proposal THIS MORNING.  One day early, just to play it safe.



I got a call at 2:30 this afternoon from the art specialist at Sage Hills Elementary.  She was wondering if I had gotten all 6 of the people I needed for the summer grant and is it possible that she could join my collaboration team?

GRRR!!!

First of all, you don't need 6 people on the team.  Second, WHERE WAS SHE ALL THIS PAST MONTH?!?  Procrastinating, that's what!  She said she heard about it from her principal 6 weeks ago, but never got the papers about it.  When I questioned her she admitted that, no, she hadn't made it to any of the orientation meetings.  She wanted to know if I had sent out an e-mail to the whole district about the grant and I told her that the DAC had sent one out for me, but the deadline is TOMORROW and I had already submitted it anyways.

This is just like that annoying person who was assigned to be in your team for the school project.  You know the one.  Never shows up, never contributes, but wants their name on the end product so they can get the grade.  She doesn't even know what our goal is, she just wants a chance at $1000.00.

Well, SO DO I!  That's why I worked on this all month!

Maybe I wasn't as nice as I should have been.  At least I was professional as I told her she was too late.

But then, you know me.  I couldn't help feeling guilty about telling her to 'take a hike', even if I said it politely.

I called my co-conspirator (the other teacher who came on board with me in the beginning) and got her two cents and her 'okay' to include little miss procrastination IF possible.  Then I called the district to find out if it was even possible to add another name to my already submitted proposal (and would it hurt our chances if she hadn't been to the meeting?).

To make a painfully long story shorter, I will wrap up by saying that the Procrastination Gods must be looking out for this woman, because it is all green lights for her, so long as she is willing to drive down to the district offices before 4:00 tomorrow and add her signature to my grant proposal.

Harumph.  I hope she is worth the added effort and stress.