So I guess it wasn't really a weekend, it was just an overnight. Consequently we didn't get to see everyone on our NH list, but it was alumni weekend for the soccer folks at SNHU so of course hubby and I went up. Basically, any soccer alums are invited back to campus for a game with all the old alumni, followed by a little dinner, and then they watch the real soccer team play. Since it was raining, not too many of the boys played in the rain but they all showed up for the real game and the mayhem to ensue. It's funny how when the old teammates get together they resort to being the boys (not men) that they were in college. It was silly. There was lots of reminiscing, lots of drinking, some spilled booze, and good times. Yeah!
I also learned first hand that our knives are very sharp last night. I'm ok, no stitches or anything. Sooo I'm a bit clutzy (that's the understatement of the year). I trip over my feet several times a day, spill food on me practically ever time I eat, and somehow manage to walk into every pointy object within a 10 foot radius of my body (but I can still do a back flip...go figure). Last night I was cutting some ciabatta bread (yum) with my brand new bread knife. I did good...no catastrophies there. I put the bread on the table, holding the VERY sharp knife the whole time....still good. I put the knife down on the counter and proceeded to sweep all the little crumbs off of the counter and literally tapped my finger on one of the knife points. Instant blood geiser! I barely even touched the bugger and it sliced the tip of my ring finger pretty good (luckily the one redeeming quality about my red countertops is that they hide blood...hmmm). Now everytime I type the letters "o" "l" or "." my finger hurts (that for example wasn't fun). On that note, I'm out....my finger hurts :)
Monday, October 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Writer's Workshop
One of the fabulous blogs that I read regularly called Mama Kat’s Losin It posts writers workshops. They’re prompts that give you something to think/write about. Usually they related to mommyhood/mommies and I’m never too sure what I would write about. However, I think I might give this a shot this week (and it even related to mommyhood…though not my own).
The prompt: Describe what makes you want to live a life with passion.
The response:
I’m not really sure if this will answer the question, but it got me thinking about my passions. One of them is teaching (I’m not currently in the classroom, but hopefully I’ll be back there sometime soon). Prior to my current job in education, I was a high school science teacher. Unlike most, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I knew I wanted to teach. It just kind of happened. I had been teaching for a few years and felt like I was doing a good job at educating my students, but wasn’t sure if I was really “reaching” them (like all teachers hope they are). I related to them, we had fun, they learned…but would they remembering something that they had learned from me sometime down the road. One day at the end of the day, a secretary poked her head into my room about 5 minutes before the end of the school day. She said there was a young mom downstairs who wanted to talk to me and had been waiting downstairs for over a half hour for my class to be over. Could she come up? Of course!( I said).
At this point, I had already had several young moms come through my classroom and had seen many leave and not come back. I was trying to figure out who this could be, when she walked into my room with the most adorable little boy I had ever seen….and I couldn’t remember her name. Wow. Bad teacher. I did, however, remember the girl just nothing too specific. We visited and chatted about how life was, etc. and then she got to the point. She wanted to tell me personally that she had earned her GED and was starting nursing classes at a local college…all as a single mom. I was impressed, but had to ask her why she wanted to tell me…after all I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She said, “Don’t you remember Miss B.? You told me that I had a good head on my shoulders and that I couldn’t let it go to waste.” In retrospect, that is verbatim what I probably said to her one day when she hadn’t done her homework. Not in relation to her current situation.
It was at that point that I realized that my work really does have an impact on other people. I realized that the little encouragements and praise that people give to each other really stick with someone. I also realized that you never know what people need to hear. Now, I’m not perfect, but after that I tried really hard to take time for each of my students personally. Sure, there are times where I wanted to whack them upside the head (but I would have gotten fired for that) and there were times when I had to say things that the kids didn’t want to hear, but I’d like to think that I helped out at least one other person along the way.
My passion is people, not just teaching. Don’t forget that what you say really can make a difference.
Whew….long winded and deep….I’ll try to find something funny to post tomorrow.
The prompt: Describe what makes you want to live a life with passion.
The response:
I’m not really sure if this will answer the question, but it got me thinking about my passions. One of them is teaching (I’m not currently in the classroom, but hopefully I’ll be back there sometime soon). Prior to my current job in education, I was a high school science teacher. Unlike most, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment that I knew I wanted to teach. It just kind of happened. I had been teaching for a few years and felt like I was doing a good job at educating my students, but wasn’t sure if I was really “reaching” them (like all teachers hope they are). I related to them, we had fun, they learned…but would they remembering something that they had learned from me sometime down the road. One day at the end of the day, a secretary poked her head into my room about 5 minutes before the end of the school day. She said there was a young mom downstairs who wanted to talk to me and had been waiting downstairs for over a half hour for my class to be over. Could she come up? Of course!( I said).
At this point, I had already had several young moms come through my classroom and had seen many leave and not come back. I was trying to figure out who this could be, when she walked into my room with the most adorable little boy I had ever seen….and I couldn’t remember her name. Wow. Bad teacher. I did, however, remember the girl just nothing too specific. We visited and chatted about how life was, etc. and then she got to the point. She wanted to tell me personally that she had earned her GED and was starting nursing classes at a local college…all as a single mom. I was impressed, but had to ask her why she wanted to tell me…after all I hadn’t seen her in a few years. She said, “Don’t you remember Miss B.? You told me that I had a good head on my shoulders and that I couldn’t let it go to waste.” In retrospect, that is verbatim what I probably said to her one day when she hadn’t done her homework. Not in relation to her current situation.
It was at that point that I realized that my work really does have an impact on other people. I realized that the little encouragements and praise that people give to each other really stick with someone. I also realized that you never know what people need to hear. Now, I’m not perfect, but after that I tried really hard to take time for each of my students personally. Sure, there are times where I wanted to whack them upside the head (but I would have gotten fired for that) and there were times when I had to say things that the kids didn’t want to hear, but I’d like to think that I helped out at least one other person along the way.
My passion is people, not just teaching. Don’t forget that what you say really can make a difference.
Whew….long winded and deep….I’ll try to find something funny to post tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Some thoughts on my (our) first house
I realize that I have been neglecting the blog world over the past week or so, but in my defense we have been moving. We have officially slept in our new house for a few nights so considering that I have a few thoughts to share...
- Our house is DARK! There are no streetlights on the road so when we go to bed and there are no lights in it is dark to the point where you can't see your hand. I've stubbed my toe twice already and woke up in a state of panic because I had no idea where I was. At the age of 27 I may have to invest in my first nightlight.
- Waking up on Sunday morning to MY sunday paper in MY mailbox and drinking coffee from MY new dishes in MY new living room was really cool (notice a theme there?). I was happy...
- I LOVE the color in my kitchen. I am very proud of myself. Check it out...
- I am mostly proud of myself because I am horribly indecisive when it comes to these things. I don't really have a style (I don't think) so I'm usually not really sure where the end result is headed. To illustrate this point this is our entryway. Each of those white spots was a test sample that I tried, then primered over. I tried a few more before I finally picked a color for out there.
- Again, going with the not sure of my style....I bought some curtains for the living room, though I don't think they go with the kind of traditional theme I was going with. But they're young and fun and I think I like them.
- And finally...my husband is amazing (I already kind of knew that, but this just proves it). We were getting a weak, unsecured internet signal from a neighbor's house but it wasn't strong enough to stay on. Hubby rigged up this satellite dish out of tin foil and set our reciever in the middle. It worked!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The first ever Trivia Tuesday
I have recently been inspired by other blogs and by my love for useless knowledge to start a Trivia Tuesday. Yeah! Each Tuesday I’ll post a random factoid that will amuse you and will hopefully help me get better at that Trivia game they have at Slider’s and Black Bear Saloon…here goes…
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning
Not sure about you, but that makes me a little bit depressed. I looooove my coffee/tea in the morning and I think it’s way more soothing than eating an apple. On the other hand, an apple in the morning would probably be much healthier. I think that I’m going to try an experiment over the next week (I’ll report back to you on Tuesday next week). I’m going to try to go a whole week without a morning cup of coffee and I’ll eat an apple instead. This could be interesting….
In other news, we close on our first house tomorrow! I’m super excited (though a little bit nervous too…guess I won’t be totally comfortable until I have that key in my hand). I’ll be posting the before pictures up here tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Stay tuned!
Apples, not caffeine, are more efficient at waking you up in the morning
Not sure about you, but that makes me a little bit depressed. I looooove my coffee/tea in the morning and I think it’s way more soothing than eating an apple. On the other hand, an apple in the morning would probably be much healthier. I think that I’m going to try an experiment over the next week (I’ll report back to you on Tuesday next week). I’m going to try to go a whole week without a morning cup of coffee and I’ll eat an apple instead. This could be interesting….
In other news, we close on our first house tomorrow! I’m super excited (though a little bit nervous too…guess I won’t be totally comfortable until I have that key in my hand). I’ll be posting the before pictures up here tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Stay tuned!
Sunday, September 27, 2009
The wedding
Here's the slideshow from the wedding (it's pretty long). If you'd like to see the slideshow that our photographer did just click on the link below!
http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=3118794&alb=130083
http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=3118794&alb=130083
Saturday, September 26, 2009
The Pre-Wedding Events
I'm going to do these wedding posts in three seperate sections (so I don't overwhelm anyone). We have literally over 1,000 pictures of the whole wedding process so its taking me a while to sift through them. This slide show is the lead-up stuff. It starts with my shower which I've already posted about (scroll down!). That was such a blast! Then you have a few from our pre-wedding party. Keith and I wanted to just have a little barbecue cookout for our wedding party to thank them for all the time they put into planning our special day. Last is the rehersal and our nail appt. No one thought to take pics at the rehearsal dinner so I don't have any of those, but that was at Smokin' with Chris' in Southington. It's a great barbecue joint that smokes all their food (delicious!) Totally recommend it if you're in the area. Anyways, here's the slideshow.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Science Friday #1!!!
I do plan on doing an update on this blog (about the wedding and the honeymoon) at some point this weekend when I can go through my pictures and pick out some of my favorites to show you have everything went. In the meantime, in my effort to become better at regularly posting things I have decided to have a few theme days! Playing off of NPR’s Science Fridays, I’ll be posting my own Science Fridays.
Those of you who know me know that I am a complete science nerd. I love all kinds of science (particularly life sciences) and try to get everybody around me to like science, too. I’m also missing being a teacher and sharing all of my neat current events with my students, sooo…you guys get to be my students (you lucky ducks!) Here’s the first article…
Brain Scans Reveal What You've Seen
I saw this on CNN and on ScienceDaily so it must be good. Basically (if you don’t feel like reading) scientists are able to use a technology called fMRIs which measure the blood flow through different parts of your brain and can use that data to determine what types of pictures you were looking at. Obviously they can’t get too detailed and it’s still in its multiple choice phase, but I find this kind of creepy. Fascinating, but creepy. Given that science knowledge increases on an exponential scale (meaning that the more we know the faster we learn more) I wonder what this technology would be able to do in 5, 10, or 20 years? Is this the kind of thing that one day would make our lie detector tests obsolete because we could just plug someone in to an fMRI machine and know their thoughts? What would happen to our privacy? Our copyright laws? Creative licensure? What do you think?
Those of you who know me know that I am a complete science nerd. I love all kinds of science (particularly life sciences) and try to get everybody around me to like science, too. I’m also missing being a teacher and sharing all of my neat current events with my students, sooo…you guys get to be my students (you lucky ducks!) Here’s the first article…
Brain Scans Reveal What You've Seen
I saw this on CNN and on ScienceDaily so it must be good. Basically (if you don’t feel like reading) scientists are able to use a technology called fMRIs which measure the blood flow through different parts of your brain and can use that data to determine what types of pictures you were looking at. Obviously they can’t get too detailed and it’s still in its multiple choice phase, but I find this kind of creepy. Fascinating, but creepy. Given that science knowledge increases on an exponential scale (meaning that the more we know the faster we learn more) I wonder what this technology would be able to do in 5, 10, or 20 years? Is this the kind of thing that one day would make our lie detector tests obsolete because we could just plug someone in to an fMRI machine and know their thoughts? What would happen to our privacy? Our copyright laws? Creative licensure? What do you think?
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