Deliciously Saucy, Fastidious, and Precise

Longwood Gardens

2011-11-12T09:14:00.003-07:00

(After writing this whole thing, I thought I should let you know that as usual, I went off on a tangent in the beginning. So if you don't want to hear about me having a cold for a week, skip down to the part that says "Longwood Gardens" to read about why I actually wrote this post. That's right, my tangent was so long and off-topic I had to put another title in there.)

Kelly and I went to Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania a couple weeks ago. I meant to post last Saturday when I had time, but I ended up coming down with a sore throat and fever on Friday night and spending most of this week feeling sick and overall just completely worn out. Fortunately now I just have a dry cough and I'm starting to get my energy back. If I have what the doctor said I have (a nasty cold virus that's going around) and so far her symptom progression prediction has been correct, it should turn into a wet cough in a couple days and then go away. AFTER WRITING THIS I DECIDED TO ADD A WARNING FOR PEOPLE WHO GROSS OUT EASILY TO NOT READ THE REST OF THIS PARAGRAPH. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! I have to admit when snot-like substance was coming out of my eyes that was the worst. But I just stayed home all week and avoided contact with Kelly and every other human being and washed my hands and slept a lot, so I could say it wasn't the worst week ever. But it wasn't necessarily a good one, either. Wow! TMI. I bet you all liked the eye-snot part. Don't worry I went to the doctor and it was just the same virus attacking my eyes. That sounds so creepy. But I'm blind now, so nothing worse can happen, right? Just kidding Mom I can still see just as well as I always could. So still not very well. The worst thing is I have to wear glasses for a few weeks, which if you know me is even worse than eye-snot. I just keep going with this thing...sorry, I'm done.

I should add a warning up there for all persons squeamish. ... Okay, it's up there now. (I'm thinking of you Bryan. Remember that time at dinner when Dad said something like, "We bought the new toilet for our bathroom remodel." Or something like that completely non-gross with the word "toilet" it in and you freaked out and refused to eat anymore? That warning up there was for you. If you read it and can never eat again, it's your own fault that you'll be fed through an IV from now on.)

Now I'm thinking that if Longwood Gardens ever Googles themselves, they won't ever want to read about what I thought of their beautiful gardens and plants and exhibits and stuff. They just think I'm a nasty person who had a cold. It's a weird habit of mine to go off on tangents before getting to what I really want to write on this blog, isn't it? Okay, I'm starting with the real point of this post now. I suppose I should put the title down here:

Longwood Gardens

A few weeks ago Kelly and I decided to go on a day trip and we thought about all the places around us that we still wanted to visit. We narrowed it down to Mount Vernon and Longwood Gardens. Then we got on Longwood Gardens' website and read about it and decided it sounded really cool. We were also excited to head north, because we figured we could keep driving another 40 or so minutes and have dinner at Chifa in Philadelphia again because we loved it so much when we ate there over the summer. We planned it for one weekend, but something came up so we moved it back a week. Of course it ended up being the only time it ever snowed in October out here, but we went anyway. We got most of the way there before it started snowing and it didn't really start sticking to the ground until we were there, so no problem there. (Somehow we still passed 3 car wrecks in the 15 minutes we were on the road when it started snowing. I don't know what happens to people out here. I mean, they can drive in the rain. Why not snow when it melts into water as soon as it hits the road? I suppose that is a deep philosophical question for another time.)

Kelly and I were smart and brought our coats, hats, mittens, scarves, and umbrellas, so we were prepared for the weather. We also decided that since we each got $10 off the entrance price for being students, we could stick to the conservatory this time and come back in warmer, or at least drier, weather to see the rest, which, by the way, includes an Italian fountain garden, three giant tree houses, a topiary garden (I have to admit I called it a "bush-sculpture garden" for a placeholder until I could look up what it was actually called.), an idea garden for home gardeners, a garden railway, a flower garden walk, an open air theatre, a waterlily display, and even a cow lot! The conservatory is enormous, so we spent over two hours just exploring in there. Basically it was just a giant building with a lot of glass, completely full of plants. We also happened to go during the chrysanthemum festival, so that was all in there too. We watched a short intro video when we first got there and they have different a different focus or theme all year round, like orchids, a Christmas theme, spring blooms, and even a few months focus on the fountains. I think the best way to explain the coolness of the stuff we saw there is with pictures, so here we go:

As you can see, when you first walk into the conservatory it is beautiful! I think it is amazing that gardeners can create this! I just realized this is from the opposite point of view, though. You come in down at the far side.

This is one chrysanthemum plant! You heard me, ONE! There are over a thousand blossoms on this thing!

These are gigantic plant-spheres hanging from the ceiling. I don't know how they do this, but I would love to try this someday when I live somewhere with windows that will actually support plant life. Hey, me and my black thumb can dream, can't we?

So you thought that one chrysanthemum plant was amazing up there? This also is ONE PLANT. They grafted in a whole bunch of different types of chrysanthemum onto one plant and thus we have THIS:

Kelly was so excited when he saw this tree. He said they were all over in Uruguay.

Come, take a closer look.

Dun dun DUNNN!! Don't crash your bike into that thing. Neither you nor your bike will survive. Actually, I'm surprised Kelly never did trip into one of those when he was down there. He's pretty accident prone.

These are nectarine trees! They train them to grow flat against a trellis, cool, huh?

Like I said, there was a chrysanthemum festival. They were everywhere! Part of it was people could enter a contest with their own arrangements, so we took a look at that.

Here's a closer look at the ceiling-o-umbrellas. For some reason I love this.

Now for a bunch more pictures of flowers and stuff! I'll try to tell you what they are.

Spider Mum. Kelly thought these were the coolest flower ever.


Yet another room in the conservatory. There were so many I couldn't even tell you the number.


Kelly and I giant ball of flowering plant.

Birds of Paradise

Another room

It's as big as his head!

I'm trying to remember the name of these...Chinese something...I think hyacinth?

As you can see, we had a really fun time seeing all of this beautiful stuff. We kept thinking about how God must have the most amazing imagination to create so many different kinds of plants and flowers for us to enjoy.

When we left, the snow was sticking a lot, so we held off on the rest of the gardens, which were outside. We also decided to not risk driving the rest of the way to Philly for Chifa, which was very sad for both of us. Instead we got hot chocolate and headed home. It was a little nice to get the rest of our day at home when we hadn't been planning on it, though. Anyway, thanks for the fun afternoon Longwood Gardens!

Work Environment

2011-09-22T17:43:00.002-06:00

So I was looking back through my blog a bit...I don't really know why I do that, but I do, anyway, and I came across a couple pictures I posted of my classroom way back in my first year of teaching. Keep in mind, those are pics of my classroom that "made my students feel unloved" according to Mrs. Evil, my former vice principal and arch nemesis (current). Fortunately, she got fired. What a horrible statement, but seriously, she made my life hell that year. That's not really what I wanted to get into (especially now that things are much better with the new administration). What I really wanted to share are some pictures of my classroom that actually makes my students feel loved....or something. Some of them are actually from the end of last year, but it's basically the same this year. Except they painted the walls white instead of sickly blue, and we got new desks and my chairs all match this year. However, the chairs are all now sickly blue. But at least students aren't dragging their favorite chair to their favorite desk at the beginning of class anymore!


The front door of my classroom. Welcome!

The other corner of the front of my classroom, and no, my map does not roll up. It is permanently stuck in that place unless I climb up on the radiator to switch it to the US map, which I very occasionally will do if I REALLY need it.

All my students keep their work in their folders which they keep in these bins under the chalkboard.

If you turn around from the front door, you will see the back of my classroom. There's my class bulletin boards, my Great Work board, a place for students to check their grades, my World History Word Wall, and the Mastery Wall.

Here's a closer look at the Mastery Wall. (Yes, I very discreetly blanked out my students' names. I'm not sure if you noticed) On each assessment, I see what state learning goals students scored at least 80% on. So let's say questions 5, 6, 13, 21, and 23 are about Westward Expansion, and you missed number 23, but got the other four. You would have gotten 80% Mastery on 5.1.4.a or whatever the state number is. Then you would get a sticker in the corresponding box! Believe it or not, my high school students LIVE for those stickers.

This is the other corner of my classroom I haven't shown yet. Tucked back there is another door that is missing a knob, so I made that my teacher's desk corner. The red bulletin board is full of students' goals for my class. Above that is my US History World Wall. There's also the Student of the Week Board, No Name paper board (since doing folders, that hadn't been too much of an issue), my cupboard of art supplies, and a bunch of binders I give away. This shot is from last year (as you can tell by the mismatched chairs). I have the same projector, but this year I have a cart with wheels and a laptop to go with it! How fancy, right?

Here's a closer shot of my US History Word Wall. Awesome. I think it's a little useless, but supposedly it makes my students feel loved.

And here's a close up of one of my student's goals. Woohoo!

The last thing I haven't shown yet is my Wall of Fame. It's on the closet next to the door of my classroom (the one with a knob) My students love it and drag their friends/babies/parents/parole officers/pets/perfect strangers into my classroom to point out their name on the Wall of Fame. So far it's a bit empty this year because we haven't taken any tests yet. You get your name on here if you score over 90% on a unit assessment. This pic is from right after the first test in the third trimester last year, so there are a few names on there (which I have blurred out) but it's because I only had about 13 students coming total.

I hope you enjoyed the tour of Mrs. A's classroom! Come back anytime, but remember, you have to come IN the back door (the one behind the filing cabinet) because it's the only one that will unlock from the outside, and go OUT through the front door, because the doorknob is broken off on the inside on the back door, so you can't turn it. Also, it might be a good idea to come in October-November-ish after the humidity goes away, but before it gets too cold in Baltimore, since one of my windows is still broken from hurricane Irene.

I Can't Believe I Had a Whole Summer Off and Never Posted a Single Thing on This Blog...

2011-09-11T21:44:00.004-06:00

I feel like I start every blog post with an apology for taking so long between posts...that's kind of dumb because probably none of you except my mom even really notices or cares...so... sorry I took so long between posts, Mom. I know I had all summer off, but it felt like my summer no-school laziness begat more laziness. Oh blerg, I talk to you on the phone all the time, Mom! What are you complaining about? I retract any apology anyone may have gotten from the above statement. It's my ~~life~~ blog and I post when I want!

Earlier today I posted my 9/11 thoughts, so if you're reading this one first, please don't think I'm heartless and unfeeling. I had some time today to write on here, so I got on to post about my summer, but started with 9/11 thoughts...it just felt wrong to switch gears and add all this stuff on the end of that post. So if you want to hear some September 11 heartfelt memories and those kinds of things, check out the post from earlier today. I promise I left my usual snark out of it.

Moving on to the summer that just ended (*sob* (meaning sad crying, not an acronym for something more in the expletive category which may or may not be fitting if shouted here)), and a couple stories that happened right before it started:

I guess I'll start with the first thing I promised WAY back in June (still not apologizing for the three month delay): The Shelf That Tried to Kill Me!!! Dun Dun DUUUUUN (if you didn't get that, it was musical...figure it out. Also, I need to stop with the parentheses. IT'S MY BLOG AND I'LL INSERT RANDOM COMMENTS LIKE THEY'RE SECRETS IN PARENTHESIS IF I WANT! And type-shout, too, apparently.) Ok, the shelf-star of the story that took place last May, or June maybe, looks great now

Shelf...it has some different stuff on it now, like the Bluebird Cafe Syracuse teacup and saucer Kelly's mom gave us for our 2nd anniversary while we were home (our wedding luncheon took place at the Bluebird) and I moved one of those empty yellow flowerpots because it looks lame with them both stacked there...anyway this shelf wants me dead.

But it was evil to get up there. You see, we were running out of shelf space on our massive wall of bookshelves...yeah, we need to get rid of some books (you'll notice I didn't put that in parentheses like I was tempted to..Aah!.I just can't stop!). So being the awesome genius that I am, I thought, "Hey! Let's get a floating shelf for one of the vast empty walls in our dining room, and keep our cookbooks on it!" So we went to Ikea and got one. Also we got a box of screws with sturdy-looking anchors there. Foreshadowing alert: big mistake. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT buy anchors at Ikea. This sounds like common sense now, but I guess we were stupid back then...three months ago. They were not sturdy. More like, um....slippery? That might be the word I want. So the shelf instructions said "Just make sure one of the three screws is in a stud and I should hold up to 30 lbs!"

"Woohoo!" thought I, "I'll just put anchors in all of them and make sure two screws, if not all three, are in a stud just to be safe."

Irony, you b----...ad, mean, nasty thing.

So Kelly and I skipped happily to a hardware store and bought a stud finder and I think this may have been when we decided to purchase a level that would have been helpful when I hung up our headboard way back when. (Parentheses sidenote: Every single time I use or even think about a level, I think of a sketch from MadTV that isn't even that funny, but the link is here because it wouldn't let me embed the video. I think Kevin and/or Bryan were there when I saw this. If you either of you remember it you're cool.)

So I used the stud finder to locate three studs and used 2-inch screws and anchors and got it all on and it felt sturdy. So trusting Ikea I put a couple books on there, maybe like 15 lbs. And it all came crashing down! I jumped back, but if I hadn't I might not have feet anymore. I ended up getting super-heavy-duty anchors from a real hardware store and put in not three, but seven screws, four of them in studs and the rest anchored. Before I put anything on it I tried to wiggle it...I was much more observant this time and noticed that it still didn't feel as sturdy as it probably should. So we went back to Ikea and got three L brackets, I don't really know the real name of them, to brace it from underneath (The Magic School Bus taught me that triangles are the strongest shape) and used 2-inch screws there, too, just to super-stabilize things. Finally, it worked! It now holds more than 30 pounds of books and Kel's Food Network magazines and some other stuff. It even lived through the earthquake last month with no problems at all. I got it to work with my extreme stubbornness, and it looks pretty good, I say! The only problem is it took us awhile to get used to it, so we ran into it a couple times after it was first up on the wall. But along with looking cute, it freed up a whole shelf on our wall o' books for my ever expanding misc/Dick Francis collection. Also, keep in mind the adorable green teapot on the shelf in the picture up there. It is important later. Kinda. I guess.

Next story. The Evil Nail That Really Did Take My Foot Off--(Or At Least Caused a Nasty "Contusion" as the Witch Doctor Put It.
We were having some people over on a Sunday evening and I was putting a few last things away before they got here. As I walked from the linoleumed kitchen to the carpeted living room, I scuffed my heel on a cheapo thresholdy-thing. It's basically just a little gold metal thingy nailed down to the floor to hide the edge of the carpet, but whoever put the nails in took hammer lessons at idiot school so they were all kind of crooked and therefore the heads were sticking up a bit. One of these caught me square in the center of my heel and took a huge chunk of skin out. So when our guests got here, I was sitting on edge of the tub crying while my blood ran down the drain and Kelly was trying to clean the massive gouge and patch it up. (I put this in parenthesis and italics because it's kinda gross and if you're really squeamish don't read it. I've given fair warning. Fortunately it left a flap of skin still hooked on one side, so we got it the right way around and we were able to stick it back over the wound after we cleaned it out with peroxide and Neosporin and band-aid it up.) Gross part over! It wasn't really too nasty, right? So I was limping a bit, but a few days later it was feeling a lot better and I could walk normally. Story over, right? Wrong. About four days later I was feeling pretty good and then Evil Kelly and Evil Parents ganged up on me and told me since I hadn't gotten a tetanus shot since kindergarten I had to go get one. I dug my heels in (ha ha...punny) but Kelly brought up all sorts of nasty pictures and information about tetanus online (Wikipedia, you are my new enemy), and he saw my resolve slipping because I wasn't sure that was the death for me and he took the opportunity to literally heave me into the car and take me to the doctor. Once we got there he had the nerve to ask if he could go to the comic book store next door while I was back in the office. He took one look at my face and decided he would stay in the waiting room. Well, one tetanus shot and three x-rays later, a crazy witch doctor from somewhere in Africa told me "I haf to cut tis open! Tis will not heal!" I said "Liar! It is almost healed already you crazy fake doctor!" But I didn't really, because no matter what Kelly says, I actually am a pretty nice person. She said there was something black in the cut on the x-ray and she had to get it out or my foot would shrivel up and fall off. She numbed it up, which was painful. Who sticks a huge needle into someone's foot and then wiggles it around just for spite!? I think maybe she was a mind-reading witch doctor, so she knew what I was calling her in my head. Then she cut the flap off and dug around for awhile and I was crying and she told me to buck up. Then she said, "Oh! Nevermind, there was nothing in there. That was remarkably clean! It was just the scab I saw on the x-ray." Then I strangled her. In my mind. In real life I limped out to the waiting room with my "Contusion on foot" paperwork and shot Kelly a look of death for taking me to the crap-doctor from The Simpsons...only African style (Why oh why couldn't I have gone to Dr. Hibbert?). He is so lucky he wasn't at the comic book store because he would have had to walk home after I roared off in the car without him, and he would have been locked out of the house for a few days. He is also lucky he didn't spontaneously combust from that look I sent his way. I had taken that day off work (a Friday) because we were supposed to go to Philadelphia that weekend, but I was in no shape for walking so we stayed home. When the numbing wore off my foot hurt, but my arm hurt worse. Tetanus shots are so freaking horrible! My mom actually told me a story that illustrates in nicely if any of you have forgotten the pain (I certainly hadn't even though my last tetanus shot had been nearly 20 years previous when I was 5, which is why I was so reluctant to get another one in the first place. On to my mom's story:): when she was 10 she fell through a window and cut up her left arm really bad and had to get a whole bunch of stitches. She also got a tetanus shot in her right arm. She said that she was doing everything left-handed for the next couple days because the arm with 20 stitches hurt less than the one she got the tetanus jab in. Yeah...it's that bad. (Update: she actually wrote about that experience on her own blog here.) So I was really whiney and made sure Kelly and my parents knew how extremely miserable I was and Kelly took me shopping. He got me that green teapot I pointed out on the shelf-that-wants-me-dead, some blue nail polish while waiting for my horse pills at the pharmacy (yeah, those on top of everything else. I hate you Dr. African Nick---and no, that is not her real name. Dr. Nick is the aforementioned shady doctor from The Simpsons for those of you who don't watch enough TV) and at TJ Maxx he got me a cool beaded throw pillow for our bed. I also neglected to mention the amazing bench he got me for our anniversary. Thank you Kelly! He also took very good care of me, and only rolled his eyes when he thought I wasn't looking in response to my constant complaints.

There's the pillow (the white one) and the bench I got for our 2nd anniversary and my artwork and headboard in all their crooked glory. I think I need to "whole. 'nother. level" it out. Well, the pictures used to be straight until the earthquake hit. I still need to straighten everything hanging on our walls after that...except for the shelf that wants to kill me. That thing is SOLID.

But really, I think my house is trying to kill me.

Enough milking that story, I healed eventually. And school ended for the year! So this brings us to yet another story: Kevin and Lindsey Get Hitched...and We Flew to Utah To Be There When It Happened:

Aw, I think they're in love!

Kel and I jumped on a plane and headed to Utah. My brother Kevin got married this summer, so we made it a good excuse to go home for two weeks. It was so nice to be with our families, and to be out of Baltimore humidity and into the wonderful dry heat of Utah! We had so much fun. Kevin and Lindsey got married in the Logan Temple and had their wedding luncheon one day.

Kelly and me at the Logan Temple waiting for pictures

Cami and Kelly, both looking cute.

The next day they had an open house in Pleasant View that my parents threw. It was supposed to be in our backyard, but it was really windy and rainy, so it got moved to the church cultural hall. I thought it turned out really nice. Good thing, too, since we worked all day on it hanging lights and lanterns and everything.

Kelly was smart and actually took a few pictures of the open house we put on. However, he didn't check to see if they were blurry or not...but there was an ice cream bar!

It was so much fun to see everyone from the 2nd Ward and from Bountiful. I got told that the movie Freedom Writers reminds them of me...that made me feel bad because teaching here is nothing like that. At all. But it was sweet of everyone to think of me.

Then we got a day off, and the day after that we went up to Declo, Idaho for the reception at Lindsey's grandparents' house. It was nice not to have to do anything hahaha, but we didn't know anyone so Kelly, Cami, Bryan, and I chilled at a table and talked. On the way home we missed the freeway entrance and didn't get home until 2AM or something, but it was a fun drive.

The rest of the trip we had a fun fourth of July at Kelly's parents' house and went canoeing on Pineview Reservoir and saw a great blue heron rookery, which was really cool. And we just generally hung out with the people we love.

Crouch Family!

Ahern Family!

It was hard to come home. Especially when we stepped out of the airport and felt the damp air. Humidity, I want to kill you as much as my house wants to kill me.

Okay, last story: When We Finally Took Our Trip to Philadelphia That Had Previously Been Held Up by a Witch Doctor and a Tetanus Shot

Yes, in August we finally rescheduled our previously-canceled-due-to-foot-and-arm-pain Philly trip that was supposed to happen in early June. We were able to get a hotel right in the city-center for cheap on Priceline and we just parked our car and walked everywhere. We went to the Franklin Fountain for old-timey ice cream and sodas.

Franklin Fountain Mint Something-or-Other that we fortunately decided to share since it was so huge.

Then we walked around Independence Park, and went to the Franklin Institute and saw the huge mummy exhibit (no pictures allowed there). Then we checked into the Marriott.


I can't remember what this was, but it's in Independence Park...same with the next two pics

Independence Hall on the outside...yeah, it's under construction.

The next day we got up early and got breakfast in Reading Market, which is huge and full of cool stuff and good food. Then we went to get tickets to Independence Hall, but they were all gone. They said we could go after 5PM without one, so we went back to Independence Park to see the Liberty Bell, but the line was so long I said "absolutely not" I mean, I like history, but apparently my impatience overrides it. Instead we went to a really old movie theater and saw Midnight in Paris. Then we went back and saw some other things at Independence Park. The line at Independence Hall was outrageous and I put my foot down and said we could go in it next time when we were smart and got tickets early early early in the day. However, the line at the Liberty Bell went way down so we went in there instead.

Liberty Bell with Kelly and Kelly's pudgy-lookin' wife

Then we got back to the hotel and rested up a bit and walked in the rain to a Barnes and Noble and browsed around and got some books to cuddle up with later that night. As we meandered back to our hotel, we stopped at the famous LOVE sculpture

LOVE in Philly

and found this really weird place with a bunch of things like giant dominoes and chess pieces and monopoly things, so we snapped some pictures there and also got some of the local architecture.

City Hall

Masonic Temple

Marriott Hotel

Then we went back to our room and cleaned up and went to an AMAZING restaurant called Chifa. Chef Jose Garces made a super interesting menu there, mixing South/Central American and Asian flavors to make delicious and original masterpieces. It's kind of cool, because the entrees are quite small, so you get 3-4 and share them family style. All of it was really good, but our favorite dish was duck tacos with kimchi on top. It sounds weird, but I think it may be one of the best things I have ever tasted.

The next day was Sunday so we had bought some things for breakfast and the 1 1/2 hour drive home the day before at Reading Market. We got up, ate that, watched some TV, checked out, and headed home. It was such a fun trip! It was really nice just to have a getaway with Kelly. It was also nice to be close enough to walk everywhere and not have to drive. I had always had a nasty opinion of Philly since I had Teach For America institute there, and lived there without Kelly for over a month, only two weeks after we had gotten married, but this trip was so fun Philly holds much better memories for me now. I would love to go back and see some more things.

Did anyone really make it this far in this post? I know it's super-long, but I had a lot to cover. That's most of the big things. Summer was mostly relaxing at home for me. Kelly worked, so I had a lot of alone time to exercise (a tiny bit), read, sleep, clean, watch Nate Berkus, and make stuff, like repainting this recipe box I found at Goodwill for Kelly!

Before: Fresh from the shelves of Goodwill

Before: The Inside Edition

After cleaning, sanding, and many many coats of paint and some hand-painted lettering by moi

After: The Inside Edition--I seriously love the shiny red paint in there.

One more gratuitous picture of my work.

I should have worked on my Hopkins portfolio and those stupid online classes I need to finish up my masters degree, but I didn't do a single thing on any of them this summer. I went back to school on my birthday, although the first week is teachers only. That night Kelly gave me some presents, like the new Jane Eyre movie and a basket for storage in our living room that I love, and took me to a Korean BBQ place for dinner. My mom sent me a Lowe's giftcard so I got the cordless drill I've been wanting.

24-year-old me, my movie, and my basket

My new basket in use holding magazines and our fluffy nap blanket. Oh, and Libby, whose first reaction to my new basket was to bite it.

My new cordless drill! Thanks, Mom!!! I put up a new curtain rod with it yesterday. Kelly was getting frustrated because he had to take this picture about 50 times because apparently the way I actually hold drills makes it look like I'm flipping off the camera...also my face looked weird in a bunch of them. Kinda like how it looks weird in this one.

I was at school in a teacher meeting when the earthquake hit. It was actually a little hilarious to see all my Easterner colleagues freak out when they realized what was happening. The first two days of school for students were cancelled because of power outages from Hurricane Irene, so that was kind of nice, although our house was without power for five days and a lot of stuff in our fridge went bad, despite my 4 hour quest for ice. Cold showers were getting a little old, so we celebrated a lot when it came back on. But school's going okay so far. I'm teaching U.S. History to one class, Advisory to one class, and World History to three classes, so it's a lot of work to prepare for three different subjects, and my classes are all really big this year. I don't have enough desks for everyone who comes in a few of my classes, and there are still a ton of people absent. My rosters are all around 50 students, which is kind of insanity. But I'm loving my students so far this year. I was dreading school starting, but I think it will be a good school year. Okay, I really am done now. I make no promises, but I am going to try to stay up to date better on here so posts are of a more reasonable length in the future. Okay, Dani out (for real this time).

Ten Years Ago

2011-09-11T18:09:00.003-06:00

I got on here today to update the world about my summer adventures and all those things I promised to write about in my last post way back in June, but it seemed fitting to start with a 9/11 tribute. After I wrote it, I didn't think I could really switch gears and put my normal sarcasm and annoying "pretend-I'm-awesome,-okay?-snarkiness, and all the fun things I did this summer into the same post...it just didn't seem right, so I'll post that stuff later tonight, but for now I'll just leave you with my thoughts and memories from 10 years ago today

I noticed on Facebook earlier that a lot of people posted a little something, so I wanted to participate. I remember I came home from marching band at the high school up the street so I could catch my carpool from my house to the jr. high, because I was in 9th grade, so not yet in the high school building. I was upstairs talking to my brother Kevin who was about to head to school too, when we heard my dad downstairs shout "Good Heavens!!!" but we immediately knew there was nothing good about it; it was more a super shocked and horrified exclamation. Kevin and I ran downstairs and saw one of the World Trade Towers smoking on TV and the news person saying that a plane had crashed into it. I remember we were all thinking it was a terrible mistake. Did the pilot fall asleep? Did he lose control of the plane? How did this happen? Then I saw a little silver glint flying the the air. At the last second I realized it was another airplane; then it crashed into the other tower. I will never forget that feeling sinking in deep that this was no accident. It was an attack. I remember watching and watching replays of that and listening to the newscasters talking. It was probably only 15 minutes or so before my carpool picked me up to go to school. I don't remember the ride, but I remember when I got to school listening to the students who knew about it tell the students who hadn't heard yet, and hearing about the other airplanes crashing into the Pentagon and in Pennsylvania. Our principal got on the intercom and told teachers to turn their TVs off and get back to teaching and this had nothing to do with us, but only one of my 7 classes didn't have the TV on that day. I remember Mr. Toponce, my Geography teacher, telling us that our principal was an idiot and this has everything to do with us, that this was our country, our people, and our history in the making. I watched the South tower collapse in Mr. Nelson's Science class.

That evening the youth at my church were putting on a dinner for the elderly people in our ward. We had been planning it for awhile and most of the food was already made, so we couldn't really cancel it. It was actually a wonderful (though sorrowful) experience for me, and I'm sure for many other teenagers there that day. We were able to listen to people who lived through Pearl Harbor talk about that experience, and how the country and their lives were changed by that, and how it would probably be similar for my generation and 9/11. Later in the evening some youth were starting to act dumb, thinking back on it, it was probably their way of coping with catastrophe, but Kevin and I couldn't take it anymore, so we went outside and just walked laps around the church quietly talking to each other about what had happened. I remember my family was a little financially tight at the time, and as we were walking Kevin brought up that he was working as a janitor at the high school, and he knew I needed a graphing calculator for my math class and he wanted to buy it with his money instead of having my parents buy it. We went out and got it that night. It's weird how vividly you remember small details of days like that. I don't know if I've ever written all of this down. I used to be an avid journal writer, but I don't think I started until my sophomore year of high school. I stopped when I started teaching because I was so busy with other things, which is sad, but honestly, my first year of teaching was so horrible I don't think I want to remember it. Though it was also my first year of marriage, and I do want to remember that part. Anyway, my writing has wandered all over today. Sorry. This turned out much much longer than I anticipated. I guess the point of all this is I just want to say that my prayers are with the families of victims and rescuers lost that day, and also the soldiers subsequently lost because of the events of September 11, 2001.

Artsy Fartsy

2011-06-16T10:45:00.009-06:00

Kelly and I have decided that we're going to stay in our apartment for at least another year. We have been looking at other places to move, especially places closer to my job, but alas, we have decided to renew our lease for year three in B'more. Since we're staying here, and since I've had more free time since the school year is wrapping up (seriously, I haven't seen a student at school for the last two and a half weeks. Tomorrow is the last day, though!) I have had some free time for making our apartment feel even more like our home, especially in the case of remedying some huge white blank walls. I am pretty proud of some artwork I was able to DIY so I thought I'd brag on my blog. Woohoo!

First, I saw this picture on Sherry Petersik's Pinterest Page (heh heh, alliteration):
For those of you who are not my husband or mom you probably have not heard me say "On that blog I love..." but I say it all the time, because I love the blog younghouselove.com which is written by John and Sherry Petersik. Anyway, so I saw this and Sherry's suggestion to run pages through a printer. So I did. AND ENDED UP WITH THIS! (Unfortunately I am not a professional photographer like whoever took my inspiration picture. It looks better in person, I promise.)

Cool, right? I just used pages from an old old book from the Baltimore Book Thing (where you go on Saturday and Sunday and get any books you want for FREE!) that we had lying around waiting to go back, and Googled for pictures I liked or that represented us in some way. Then I used my amazing computer skills to combine some together, erase parts I didn't want, make things darker/lighter, and so on. So I ended up with a butterfly because Kelly likes bugs, a teapot because I collect them (ok, I want to collect them), a calla lily because that's what my bridal bouquet was made of, the Delicate Arch as a representation of our Utah roots, and the hot air balloon one has the Baltimore skyline below it because, well, we live here. As for the birds on the telephone wire, I don't know what possessed me to use it (it's a cool picture) but I definitely wasn't thinking of it as an artistic representation of my morbid fear of birds. Well, I guess that's what it is now. Also, it's all printed on pages from a history book, so that's appropriate for history major/teacher people like Kelly and me. Anyway, if you are thinking of doing something similar this website has a lot of basic pen-and-ink-drawn-looking clip art on it. Also Google images is amazing because you can narrow you search by color, size, etc. Also, can I just say that since I had that frame lying around from my college days, this project was $0. Sah-ah-weet!

But hold on, that's not all. I also fell in love with these from Crate and Barrel (also introduced to me by my Young House Love BFFs--I mean, by the fine authors of Young House Love who I have never actually met).

But what sucks is they cost $70. EACH. Um...no way is a cheapo like me spending $210 for half of them. I want three for above our bed because our picture frame that lived there was cute, but way too small for the space. So I had an idea.

First, I got three 12x12" frames then I got a bunch of 12x12 paper in red, black, grey, and white (all from Michael's, where Kelly works so we got a discount).

My plan was to trace a design based on one of the C&B pieces onto one piece and then use an Exact-O knife to make it into a stencil. Then I was going to sponge on white paint on red, black, or grey paper to make it look like the C&B version, but better matched to our bedroom's color scheme. However, once I got them all Exact-O'ed they looked awesome by themselves, so instead of using them as stencils, I just laid them over the top of different colored paper and popped 'em in the frames. I thought a stencil would be easier, because then if I messed up, since they are all repeating patterns, I could just just move the stencil around and get 'er done. But I got my Exact-O on and I rocked at it! See?

Anyway, thanks for letting me blog brag. I was just so proud. I'm actually a little sad the Crate & Barrel-inspired ones are in our bedroom because no one gets to see them except me and Kelly...and now all you guys. I feel better now.

P.S. I will post a wide-shot of the bedroom later--the bed wasn't made and it was also covered in stuff like the level, hammer, measuring tape, etc, and I was standing on it when I took this picture. I must say it looks pretty cool, but now it's obvious that we hung the headboard before we bought a level, so that will have to be fixed someday. Also, I will regale you with adventure stories of attempting to hang a shelf which then nearly killed me when I was putting books on it, a vicious attack from a nail in our apartment and subsequent trip to the doctor for a tetanus shot, followed by Kelly guilt-purchases for me for making me go to said doctor. Be excited.

P.P.S. Since this is about art, I thought I'd share some watercolors Kelly and I did of each other awhile back. I can tell Kelly really thinks I'm beautiful.

I also did one of Libby, and when I hung it up she kept looking at it. Coincidence? I think probably.

End of the Line

2011-05-26T21:25:00.004-06:00

Today I had my EOY conversation with my PD (see my point about acronyms!? If you aren't in TFA that didn't even make sense to you!) Translation: I had my End of Year conversation with my Program Director today. That's right, my two year commitment with Teach For America is coming to a close. I was reading back through some of my posts and it looks like I have a very negative view of teaching (mostly because every time I write on here I am on some sort of break and thanking my lucky stars that I don't have to go to work). I just want to rectify this. Teaching is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. Correction: my FIRST year of teaching is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Actually it was that combined with Kelly coming home from his 2 year mission in Uruguay, us getting married two months later, then hopping in our overloaded Ford Escort two days after that and driving across the country to a place where we had no home, no jobs, and no family. I'm not saying being married to Kelly is hard (it's the best!) just all of that smooshed together was uber stressful. I'm not even going to get into my evil assistant principal. I am trying to forgive and forget, so you can ask my mom and Kelly about those horror stories.

Anyway, what I was really trying to get into in this post is that I don't hate teaching. I just needed some breathers during that school year, and definitely appreciated every chance I got to not teach, cower in fear of my ass. principal (yes, that particular abbreviation was intentional), and take 2 seconds away from lesson planning to spend time with my wonderful, adorable, loving husband who saved my life and sanity last year. I hated my job last year, but it's not because of my students, or what my job was. I was actually quite successful with my students, and I love every single one of them, even A the corn chips kid. (He and many other students from last year still come and eat lunch with me.) I was horrified by the terrible organization (rather complete lack thereof) of my school and administration. I was literally terrorized by one school leader, and saw many chances for awesome students to do great things crushed by the inexperience, ignorance, or simple spite of the administration. It was heart breaking to go to work every day and work my hardest to help my students graduate, only to find that due to poor organization they had already passed my class at another school, or were not allowed into that chemistry class they needed to graduate, or kicked out of school for standing up for a classmate to ...I'm sure you can guess who.

Fortunately, our whole administration from last year has been sacked. Our new administration is leaps and bounds better, more supportive, and (imagine this) they actually care about the students at our school. We are having our first graduation this year!

I keep getting off topic, but what I am really saying is this: teaching is so rewarding. I love my students. I love the insights they have and all the things they teach me. I love Baltimore, I love Baltimore Liberation HS, I love History, I love TFA (never thought I'd be saying that 2 years ago). I just want the world to know that the achievement gap is real. My students do not get the same opportunities as other, wealthier students in our nation, simply because of the zip code in their home address. I have never had textbooks in my class. Most of my students never used Microsoft Word before this year, and we had very few opportunities to use our tiny computer lab to practice. These students have good parents who love them, care about their children's educations and futures, and even read to them since they were knee-high to an ant. Parental involvement is NOT the problem causing the achievement gap. Bad schools are. Even worse administrations are. Uncaring teachers are. Social promotion is. Chronic absenteeism with no consequences is. If you live in Utah and go to Weber High like I did, don't listen when people tell you Utah has horrible schools. You are lucky to go to a school with SMART boards, computer labs, projectors, enough paper, textbooks, markers, colored pencils, lots of electives like art class, band, choir, shop, sports teams, student government, a school store, a decent cafeteria, an attendance monitor, counselors, and sex ed. Take advantage of the opportunities given to you. My students don't have these things. My job is to give them a good education anyway. I am not the best one for the job, and I always feel like I am letting them down. They deserve so much more than what life has given them. I am overwhelmed by my job. I love my job. I am saddened by my job. I am angry at so much of what I see at my job--that the system has chronically failed my students. Teach For America is trying to fix these problems all over the nation, and while it is a big step in the right direction, it alone will never fix the problems plaguing our nation's educational system. But I do believe that its alumni who go on to start non-profits and schools, and move into school leadership, public policy, and politics are passionate people who have seen the problem first hand. It is time educators have a say in educational law. Teach For America (especially my PD Kate) supported me at school, helped me become a better teacher, and taught me that this enormous problem can be fixed one day.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this: thank you TFA, thank you Kate, thank you Baltimore City students for helping me become a better person. Thank you for stretching me to my limits and then some. Thank you for making me grateful for my education and opportunities that I didn't do anything to earn. It's time I pay up. Even though this is the end of my two year TFA commitment, I will be in the classroom next year. BCPSS, you have not heard the end of Mrs. A!

Corn Chips

2011-04-01T22:14:00.003-06:00

I was thinking about this experience the other day and it made me laugh inside. I thought I'd share:
Last year I had a student in class, A, who was yelling at another student to leave, even though it was his class too. Then A started yelling at me to kick the student out. His big complaint was that he "smelled like corn chips." I was getting very exasperated at this point, because I wanted the student to stay, didn't smell anything (let alone corn chips), was frustrated at how insulting A was being, and embarrassed for the second student. I asked A to stop and to apologize and he refused, so I just leaned in real close and whispered, "Somebody should tell you what you smell like." I really didn't mean anything by it; I mostly wanted him to shut up and maybe think about how embarrassed he'd be if the roles were reversed. A, however, literally freaked and started asking all his neighbors "What do I smell like!? What do I smell like!?

I win.

Oh dear...tagged by my own mother

2011-03-01T18:23:00.003-07:00

I was tagged, and while I usually don't go for that kind of stuff, I was tagged by my mom, so I can't really ignore that, right? Just kidding!

Okay apparently it's called a 4x4, though not the vehicle type. Here goes:

1st Four places I go:
-The gradually-getting-cuter apartment that Kelly and I lovingly call home.
-School: Baltimore Liberation & Hopkins
-Delicious restaurants in/around Baltimore, including Kathmandu Kitchen with their delicious Chicken Tika Masala, Kabob Hut for amazing Beef Souvlaki, Bens Chili Bowl for gut-busting chili dogs set in a civil rights movement historical site, and Dill Weeds for the only sandwich I actually enjoy eating.
-Safeway. I think we grocery shop more than normal because Kelly keeps finding things he want to cook.
2nd Four favorite smells:
-Kelly--seriously, he just smells good.
-Kelly's shaving cream. Maybe that contributes to his overall good smell mentioned above, but I love it.
-Pretty much anything Kelly or my Mom bakes.
-Nostalgic smells. I don't know how to explain it, but when I smell something that reminds me of when I was little, or Juniper Hall, or some vacation, or a loved one. I just like that.
3rd Four favorite TV shows and/or movies
-The Brothers Bloom
-Pride and Prejudice
-The IT Crowd
-Avatar: The Last Airbender. (I know it's a cartoon for kids, but it's pretty awesome.)
4th Four recommendations
-Don't give up
-If you live in a one bedroom apartment, don't buy an annoying cat. Take my advice on this one.
-Turn off the TV. Open a book.
-Come to Baltimore and visit me and Kelly!!

Okay! Now I'm supposed to tag 4 more people and spread this thing like a disease. Go my friends Becky, Lindsey, Amy, and I've run out of friends I feel like I can pick on...catch the fever and make sure to spread this stuff like the plague to your friends. I won't be offended if you don't though. No pressure. I only did it because my mom told me to, and I was always an obedient child. Just kidding Mom!

Just Livin'

2011-02-26T00:11:00.005-07:00

We were talking about World War I in my World History class the other day and I asked my students to think about if WWI was actually inevitable like everyone claimed at the time. One of my students (please keep in mind, this is the same girl who shouted down the hall "Don' no one got no chargers nowhere!" a few weeks ago) said something I wasn't expecting.

"You know, Ms. A, people always trying to get the things they want, never caring 'bout anyone else while people out there are dying just trying to get by. We don't need war. We don't need stuff. People just greedy. There's more to life than just livin'."

You know what, J, there is more to life than just livin'.

I Need Another Project.

2011-01-26T15:02:00.011-07:00

Since I haven't posted in awhile, I just need to say this: Christmas was so fun! Kelly and I flew home and spent the whole time with our families. We need to live close to them! My little sister is all grown up, and we hardly know our adorable nephew, Liam. Since coming back to our one-bedroom apartment in Baltimore, I've been a little melancholy. As Kelly knows, one way to brighten me up is a project or five.

First off, we have been using the IKEA pans from my college days since we got married and Kelly has been yearning for a new set of pans to supplement his "cooker-man skills". After Christmas everything was on sale so I got Kel an extremely early birthday present of an awesome new set of pots and pans (he did help me pick them out, though). The problem is, although we have a pretty good-sized kitchen for apartment dwellers, there isn't much cupboard space. We decided that since we got rid of our IKEA pans we could get some IKEA storage for our new ones. It doesn't look that tough, but considering I pretty much did all this by myself, it counts as a project. I mean it did require a trip to Lowes for a stud finder, screws, anchors, and a level AND I got to get out the drill.

We also got an extra hangy-hook thing, to help us clear out our utensil drawer enough to close it easily and to hold some of our spices because we were beginning to despise our old spice rack, an under-the-cupboard paper towel holder, and a red pitcher for other stuffs (including our crab smashers, a staple for Baltimoreans.)

Kelly's Darth Vader spatula is in there too. Ha ha ha

When we took down our Christmas tree our dining room looked very forlorn, so I decided curtains were my next project. Except I couldn't find any I liked that fit. So I thought I'd make some! Except I don't own a sewing machine. But with the magic of today's technology plus an iron, I was able to iron-sticky-stuff-hem them. I thought it might look tacky, but it turned out pretty well, and it probably actually looks better than if I had stitched them since I can never sew anything straight.

Our dining room pre-curtains and with Kelly decorating our Christmas tree (which we named Wallace this year.)

New Curtains! I need to get some new place mats and napkins now, though. I'm going for avocado green and goldeny-yellow. Just to move away from our thoroughly red theme. I think it will still compliment the dishes.

Still not done, though. Kelly and I went to Ross and saw a picture we really liked and thought would look nice in our dining room, but we decided to wait on it so we could really think about whether we wanted it or not. The following Monday was MLKJr day, so we both had it off and we went to Fort McHenry and saw everything and ate Baltimore's best burger at Abby Burger, where they give you a checklist of 50 or so things and you just mark what you want. I'm telling you now, their bison burger on an english muffin with avacado, onion rings, ranch dressing, and bacon is probably going to give you a heart attack, both because of the fat content and the extreme deliciousness. We finished our MLK outing earlier than planned though, so we decided to go back to Ross and get the picture. Of course it was gone. Of course we found something(s) better! So we finally found something to take up the horrible huge blank wall in our bedroom and a really cool frame and picture for our dining room.

Curtains and a new picture! ...And the ugly light and table.

I think it looks better in person, but here's a picture of all three
Two pictures and our bed with our Level 6 Warmth blanket for cold nights

Before on that wall in the dining room I had some old lithographs that Mimi (my grandma, for those who don't know) gave me. Okay, I took them because they were stacked on the floor in her basement, but I asked first. They are cool pictures of colonial Williamsburg, but the frames were kind of super hideous. Painted brown with a teal stripe all the way around. So I took them out of the frames, sanded them down, painted them black (I didn't even have to buy anything because I still had everything I needed from my mirror project), and rehung them in yet another blank space in our home, over the TV. Hooray!

Ug-a-ly old frames. 3 sanded, 1 to go.

Ug-a-ly old frames finished with a new coat of paint and hanging in their new spot over the TV.
Side story: see the roses? Kelly knew I was having a bad day last week and while I was still at work he walked to the store and bought me a dozen roses and surprised me with them and an after school snack when I got home!Pretty, huh?

I need another project...curtains in the living room would be nice.

Halloween....way too late.

2010-11-24T16:28:00.011-07:00

Happy Halloween! I know I'm really late, but I just thought I'd share a few pictures from Kelly and my fun Halloween. I didn't have a chance to post earlier because it was the end of the trimester and winding up a class and final grades and all that stuff keeps a teacher busy. And exhausted. Today was the last day and the grades are in and students, if you're failing it's your own fault because you probably didn't bother to take the final. Looking forward to going through it all again with you starting Monday. And you wore me out. I went to bed at 9:30 last night! Anyway, for all you non-students (I don't think I have any student followers anyway) I'll show you how cute Dani and Kelly Pirates are and how talented at pumpkin carving I was last month. Then we can start the real holidays that actually mean something tomorrow.

The blank canvas. ...and Libby.

Somehow Libby thought she was helping.

The finished product! It's a Jolly Roger and I didn't even use a pattern! Just thought I'd brag a little.

I put this one on here too because it shows the swords better. You have to admit I'm awesome.

Kelly and I entered it in the Primary Trunk-or-Treat pumpkin carving contest and as you can see, we won the most Aaar-tistic. Woohoo!

Since Kel and I are Sunbeam teachers, we ran the ring toss at the Trunk-or-Treat for all the cute little primary kids. Of course we had to wear costumes! Since we are lazy and cheap, and I had to make them, we went for the old Dani and Kelly standby...pirates!

Kelly Finally Joined the Blogosphere!

2010-11-22T19:26:00.002-07:00

Hey readers, if you want to follow something that truly is delicious, check out my husband Kelly's brand new blog "Kelly's Belly"! He is an excellent cook and decided to share his delicious recipes with more than just me. Check out his stuff at whatscookinatkellys.blogspot.com.

Meet Libby!

2010-10-22T18:22:00.006-06:00

(hee hee, I blabberized our new cat! Blabberize.com)
http://blabberize.com/view/id/308039

Kelly and I got a cat! (Almost two weeks ago now.) She is the cutest, silliest, craziest thing I've ever encountered in my life. Poor Libby was 9 months old and a stray when the volunteer group who have a tiny room in our local Petsmart saved her. Since April, she's been living in a little kennel and only let out occasionally, but only in the tiny tiny room. She was sick a long time ago and got an ulcer in her left eye that left her a lavender spot and partially blind in that eye.

Kelly and I saw her through the glass and immediately thought she was adorable. She's a muted torti, which means she is striped gray and tan. She's about a year old now, but quite petite and a little bow-legged in the back. (It's cute.)

When we brought her home she explored EVERYTHING, including jumping in and out of the bathtub about 50 times. Now she's figured out that the longest stretch in our apartment is from the corner of the dining room to the bathroom. Everyday she runs laps from corner to corner a couple times. It makes us sad she hasn't had room to run for a long time. She is playful and enjoys batting at Starburst wrappers and carrying them around in her mouth. Sometimes she sits on our couch like a chubby couch potato, right on her kitty-bum with her back legs in front.

She likes our windows and sits behind the blinds of our sliding door to get a her spot in the sun, and every time we come home she comes up to the door and then goes after her scratching post that is right there. I guess it means she's happy we're home? We got a new vacuum and she LOVED the box and cardboard stuffs it came in...but didn't like the vacuum itself once it turned on and moved! Hahaha...she freaked out. It didn't help she kept trying to hide in the next place I was going to vacuum.

We don't let her in our bedroom. We call it our kitty-free zone when she's getting hyper. She is quiet all night, but when she hears our alarm go off in the morning, she starts sticking her paws under the door like she knows we're awake and she needs some attention. Everywhere we go, she follows us. When I am on the computer, she curls up in my lap or on the chair next to me to keep me company.

Sometimes when she is being especially cute, I call her Nermal. I don't really know why. I think it's something about how the back of her head looks?

It's fun having our little Libby as part of our family now.

Best Day Ever!

2010-09-13T12:38:00.002-06:00

School was canceled today at about 9:30 because there was a gas leak in the building (it was bad! Just being in there for a couple minutes gave me a headache) and there's no school tomorrow because it's Primary election day! Sweet! Unexpected four day weekend!! So when I got home Kelly and I went out to breakfast before I dropped him off at school. I think this is going to be a good week.

Calling all Saucy Readers: I Need Your Help!

2010-09-05T18:04:00.009-06:00

Hello my faithful followers! The time has come for me to start a new blog...don't worry. You don't have to follow it. Here's what's going on: I am in a class at Hopkins called Paperless Classroom, the purpose of which is obvious, and I'm super into it for many reasons:

Reason #1: I'm all for going green. I threw out so much paper last year and hauled home even more to recycle, but I'd just rather not use so much.

Reason #2: They are severely limiting how much copy paper each teacher is allowed at my school. Basically I have 1,000 sheets to last me a month. I have 120 students every day in 2 different subjects, so even if I make class sets I still have to make 60 copies. Also, I already spend too much money on my classroom. I don't want to spend more buying paper.

Reason #3: I HATE HATE HATE waiting in line at the copier in the morning. I have much better things to do.

Anyway, so for my class, I need to start a new blog that is for the class, and potentially can be my teacher-y tech blog, but despite all my skills, I am having a hard time coming up with a name for my new blog. I want it to be something that works for a teacher, but still sounds kinda quirky and, you know, like me. So, now is the time dear readers to contribute! Your mission:

Give me names, or give me "F"!
(for not starting a blog)

(Heh, heh, get it? It sorta phonetically matches.)

Or to ask more nicely, please leave lots of comments on this post with lots of ideas for names for my new blog. The winner will get a fabulous prize! Which may or may not actually be fabulous...or even a prize...but um...I will dedicate my new blog to you! (it's okay, you still don't have to read it.) So, let the ideas pour in!

Many thanks,

Teacher Dani

Hey Look! I DIY-ed Again!

2010-08-20T17:17:00.007-06:00

I know my titled kind of looks like I died again spelled in lolcat or something, but in actuality, this is not what I meant. I was, in fact, referring to the acronym* DIY--as in Do It Yourself, which I'm sure most of you know, since, as far as I know, my readers are intelligent people. However, there is always the possibility that a dummy looking for a new religion could happen upon my blog, and although disastrous events most likely would not ensue, no matter how dramatic that sounds, I'm sure that at least the explaining process to said dummy could be annoying. Just kidding. There are no dummies. I'm a teacher, so I truly believe that.

*Side note on acronyms: why do we use them so much? I really don't know. I especially hate it when the acronym is harder than just saying all of the actual words, for example, SYTYCD (standing for an excellent TV show So You Think You Can Dance) I mean, that just takes longer to think about than to just write out the whole thing, and saying it is even more ridiculous since it has the same number of syllables. Even worse is when people say the the letter 'W' instead of the one-syllable word it is standing for. This just goes to show that my teacher philosophy of "there are no dummies" is wrong. One further thought on acronyms and me: as a member of both TFA and the LDS religion, I cannot escape acronyms, no matter how stupid they are. Thank you for reading my rant. Read on.

Believe it or not, the point of the post was not to get into the finer points of dummies, teacher philosophies, or the nuisance of acronyms. The real point of this post is so I can show off my mad skills: I created/upholstered/tufted a headboard for our bed! I got into the other stuff because I am feeling particularly silly and hyperactive at the moment. So sorry.

Back to the masterpiece: It all started with a piece of plywood, lovingly picked out at Home Depot and cut to 3x5' by some teenage jerk who doesn't deserve the job. Nah, just kidding. He just bugged me by telling me Home Depot doesn't cut things for you just because he was feeling lazy and chillin' with his friends. Good thing I knew they did from a previous online check--and the fact he was standing right by the saw.

After I got the foundation for my headboard, I spent a long time at JoAnn's picking out the perfect fabric (black) and buttons (after asking four people, finally someone knew where I could find the ones you cover with your own material. Success!) And I found a 10 yard roll of batting for $9. Sweet! Oh yeah, and at Home Depot, I also bought a staple gun (and staples so I could actually do some damage with it, of course) so I could develop upholstering skills. Something no one taught me, I just DIM (Did It Myself--acronyms: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em/make up your own to add to the growing ocean called alphabet soup.)

So I brought my loot home, drilled six carefully-measured holes into the wood, cut as many layers of batting as I could (8), and got it and the material situated under the board and started stapling like crazy. I mean, I started professionally upholstering a headboard to go in the blank space at the head of our bed to add to our reading-in-bed comfort and overall feng shui.

Then I used the buttons that I covered in the aforementioned material and carefully sewed them onto the spots where I had drilled the holes, using another button on the back of the wood to keep it from ripping through the batting and fabric. So now my upholstered headboard is tufted (which is a fun word to say).

Now, marvel at my beautiful tufted headboard:

Tufts!

Sorry for the spots on the lens. Anyway, my headboard! But I think our bed still needs some accessories, like some throw pillows...

...or Kelly. He accessorized our bed nicely, and enjoys reading while leaning against our new headboard.

Kelly is very nice and keeps telling me it's wonderful and looks professionally-made. So now I'm going pro. Just kidding. Kelly just lies to make me happy sometimes.

Thank you for reading my ridiculously silly post and letting me brag about my menial accomplishments. Hopefully the next post will be comprised of better stuff--like my birthday.

But to a more serious matter: I am awesome.

My staplegun madness!

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

2010-07-31T08:39:00.004-06:00

My parents bought Kelly and me a giftcard to Ikea for our anniversary because they knew we really wanted a dresser from there. We set it up and it looks so good! But the wall above it looked blank. Like the rest of the walls in our room. I decided that a mirror above the dresser would be a good thing, so I set off on a quest to find a suitable mirror. The result was a $10 mirror from Craigslist. Awesome. I drove down to DC and picked it up from an ornery guy who had a hard time with English, but I had my mirror. The only problem is...it looked like this:

While it is kind of a quirky-cute sea green color, it was scraped up like crazy and didn't match anything in our apartment, especially our white-walled bedroom with black furniture and red bedspread and curtains, which was to become its home. A quick trip to home depot and that part of me that definitely comes from my mom remedied it, though. Two days of sanding, taping, and 3 coats of black paint fixed it. Mostly.

The only problem was when I took the tape and paper off the glass, the mirror reflected the unpainted back edge. Poop. So I got to work prying off the back which was stapled down by a crazy-strong giant, no doubt. Ask Kelly; it was quite a job. But I got it done, with some help from my trusty assistant, Kelly, painted the back, and cleaned off the mirror with a razor to get off the paint that Houdini'd through my tape the first time around. Fortunately, while the back had been haphazardly stapled on, there were these two metal bars that probably had been used to hold it to another (green, I hope,) dresser at some point and they were attached with screws. So I kept those, got out the handy drill that Kelly won in a raffle at our high school graduation party (I won a chair. It's still in Utah.) and fixed the back on way better than it had been! Hooray! I love that drill that Kelly won. He's never used it, but I sure do a lot. At least he didn't win a pedicure kit like his friend Aaron did. Ha ha ha. Anyway, back to my mirror. I hooked on some hang-it-to-the-wall-loopy-things (that's the official name for them, you know) and got it on the wall! Check out our awesome dresser with a formerly-scratched-up-green-mirror-that-is-now-new-looking-and-black!

I'm so awesome.

Oh yeah, by the way see those pictures on the dresser? Kelly and I also fixed some old ugly brown frames by painting the black, letting them dry, then painting a thick coat of red over the top, and then sponging it while it was still wet to make it look all cool and marble-y.

Then we stuck some of our baby pictures in them. Aren't we cute?

Happy Birthday Kelly!

2010-05-17T15:33:00.009-06:00

Kelly turned 23 last week (I'm kind of late writing this; it was on the 6th) and we had such a fun afternoon together! I did an excellent job at keeping his presents secret, if I may say so myself. I gave him Star Wars episodes I, II, and III (and I even watched all three with him in the following week.) He thought that was all he was getting. Then I carried out a bigger box and said, "I know you think clothes don't count as birthday presents, but I don't know if shoes count..." And he believed me!

Yeah, it was a Wii.

He made his AWESOME! I'M SO SURPRISED face, and jumped up and kissed me. Well, tried to kiss me--he more like bashed his face into mine and I ended up with both lips bleeding, but I don't care. He totally loved his present!

When I was in the bathroom checking out my bleeding lips in the mirror, he came to tell me that it only came with one controller but I could play first, but there was another present--Wii remote number 2! Woohoo! I know this is bragging, but I'm pretty awesome.

We played Wii Sports for awhile and I kicked his butt in bowling and boxing, and he kicked my trash at tennis and baseball, and we tied at golf. Then we had dinner at TGIFridays. So tasty. On Saturday we celebrated a little more and had a little cake with 23 candles! And he blew them all out on the first try.

But anyway, Happy Birthday Kelly! I love you!

Baltimore, D.C., New York, and two trips to Gettysburg.

2010-04-06T16:48:00.011-06:00

Since it's been awhile since I've updated this (sorry/your welcome, depending on how you feel about my writing) I have a few things to write about.

About three weeks ago, Kelly and I went to Gettysburg in the pouring rain. It was so much fun! We stayed overnight in a cool hotel just to get away for a couple days and then the next day was packed full of Civil War stuff. Our first stop, tragically, was a crappy tourist trap "museum". I can't remember the name of it, but if you ever go to Gettysburg, skip the little museums and stuff on the main drag. We soon found out, 10 stupid minutes and 14 wasted dollars later that the place to go was the museum run by the National Park Service. SO COOL!

The museum was huge and awesome (and, unlike the other one, relevant to Gettysburg and the Civil War). The Cylorama, a huge 360 degree painting depicting the battle, is housed in the same building as the museum and is amazing! After filling our heads to the brim with all sorts of museum stuff for hours, we realized our stomachs were quite empty, so we left and had lunch at Dobbin's Tavern, which was built in the 1700s and was really cool and had delicious food.

After lunch, we walked around the Cemetery, also known as the place where Lincoln gave his famous Gettysburg Address. We were soaked from the pouring rain by the time we got back to the car, but we decided to do the auto tour anyway. We just followed the road and signs and drove all over the battlefield. Since we were wet and cold, we didn't get out of the car, but it was cool anyway.

Pennsylvania Memorial in the rain.

Overall, our trip to Gettysburg was a lot of fun!

Last week was Spring Break. On Friday March 26th, right after school ended, we picked up my parents, younger sister, Cami, and Jimmy the stowaway puppet at the airport. It was so fun to see them! I miss my family so much; I just wish Kevin and Bryan could have come too. Over the 4 days they were here we showed them around Baltimore, went to DC, went up to Gettysburg with them, and spent a rainy day in NYC.

They found bad Jimmy stowed away in Dad's carry on!
He always came on trips with us when we were kids,
but don't let him drive! Jimmy is a scary driver.

On Saturday Washington D.C. was beautiful. The cherry trees were blossoming, the weather was beautiful, and people were flying kites all over the mall! We hoofed it all over the place and Kelly and I actually got some pictures taken together! It's hard to be in the same picture when it's just the two of you. Moms with cameras are nice to have around.

Kelly, Me, Cami, Jimmy, and Dad in one of the Smithsonian Museums

Capitol Building Cami and the Washington Monument (Jimmy's in her pocket)

Kites!Chillin' in front of Obama's house...seriously, I was cold.

Cami enjoyed Baltimore's Inner Harbor a lot. We spent Sunday evening down there, and I think she got over her fear of scary Baltimore while we were there. We got there just before sundown and stayed until after dark and it was gorgeous.

Cami, me, Dad, Jimmy, and Kelly

Monday morning we got up early and headed up to Gettysburg. It was so fun to see my dad excited to see everything. He knows so much about the Civil War and he was sharing cool anecdotes with us all over the museum and battlefield. I know I'm a History teacher, but I studied modern European History. I teach U.S. History, but my class picks up at Reconstruction, so I don't cover the Civil War. I really don't know much about it, so it was really cool learning so much from my dad. We basically did the same things on this trip that Kelly and I did previously, except no crappy museums and no Dobbin's Tavern, but I enjoyed it so much more being there with my dad! We also spent a lot longer on the auto tour and got out of the car a lot. It also was not raining, which was nice. We spent a lot of time around Little Round Top and at the high water mark.

Walking into the museum with Jimmy stowing away again!

That night, Cami and I had a sleepover at my apartment. She chose a movie to watch (fittingly, Hairspray, in honor of being in B'more) and we stayed up kind of late. She fell asleep on the couch and I broke sleepover rules and went and climbed into bed with my husband.

After about four hours of sleep, Kelly woke us up and forced us to get ready for New York. Cami was so excited to go! We drove about 3 hours up to Newark, NJ and then caught the train into the city. We were hoping to catch a show on Broadway, but had no luck. Instead we nonchalantly wandered around Times Square in the rain. We soon got kind of ornery because we were wet and cold. Except Kelly. He's never crabby, and it was his first trip to Manhattan so he was excited to be there come rain, snow, sleet, or hail. Or hurricane, monsoon, transit strike, or blackout. Fortunately our Crouch luck didn't cause a catastrophe this time. The last two times the Crouches hit NY coincided with the blackout and then a transit strike. Rain wasn't so bad, looking back on it, though it was my least favorite trip there. We ate at our favorite Little Italy restaurant, De Nico, and rode the subway all over and did some 5th Avenue shopping. One of our last subway stops was in Battery Park, and we all waited by the stairs down to the subway (there was cover from the rain there) while Kelly jogged to see the Statue of Liberty through the thick fog. He was happy he managed to get a glimpse of it. We'll have to go back a warmer day so he can have a real New-York-touristy kind of trip.

It was hard saying bye to my family that night, since they were flying out early early the next morning. Hopefully we'll make it back to Utah for Christmas to see them and talk on the phone with Bryan who is on his mission in Hungary. (Well, he's still in the MTC right now, but he'll have been in Hungary for months by then.)

The last few days of Spring Break I tried hard to get things done...and failed miserably. I read a sweet book called The Guernsy Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Sounds weird; it's not. It was wonderful! My mom bought it for me, and it was perfect! I enjoyed reading and napping and generally just relaxing for a few days. I don't really do that much at all anymore. Teaching and Hopkins classes keep me way too busy. Today was the first day back after Spring Break, and I have to admit, I was dreading it, but it wasn't so bad.

Now I just have to make it through Friday.

Snowday and the Smithsonian (one of many)

2010-02-09T11:22:00.006-07:00

I know I haven't written yet this year, and I've been meaning to for about a month, but it is only February. There was no work yesterday and today because of snow! How cool is that? That never happened in Utah. I cleaned our home yesterday, so I will use part of my free time today to update my blog!

At the beginning of January, Kelly and I decided to go to one of the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C. I didn't know this before moving to Baltimore, but there is not "The Smithsonian Institution" there are actually a whole bunch of museums about different things! (I guess I probably would have learned that eventually from Night at the Museum 2.) We went to the National Museum of American History and saw a lot of cool stuff!

Kelly was excited from the start, because right in first room there stood C-3P0. It was the actual costume worn by Anthony Daniels in Return of the Jedi. American History at its finest!

Mostly we saw a bunch of oddsy-endsy kind of things:
A Stradivarius Quartet

Apolo Anton Ohno's skates that he wore in the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City

Kermit the Frog

Dorothy's Ruby Slippers
We also went to a cool exhibit about Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln's famous stovepipe hat. Last time worn: when he went to see a show at Ford's Theatre April 14, 1865.

A blurry picture of one of his suits

I can't remember if this was a lifemask made of Lincoln shortly before his death, or if it's his deathmask.

We saw some other exhibits too, that I don't have pictures of. We saw Julia Child's kitchen, but there were so many people, I couldn't get a decent picture. It probably got really popular after Julie & Julia came out. We also saw the gunboat they pulled out of the Chesapeake Bay that was sunk during the Revolutionary War. It was called The Philadelphia, and was sunk in 1776. It was found in 1935 upright with the top of its mast just 10 inches below the surface of the water. They raised the whole thing and now it's sitting in the Smithsonian.

There was a presidents exhibit we went to, as well as the Bradford Dollhouse. That was hard to get close enough just to look at it properly. All I wanted to do was stand on the step and stare at the miniature rooms. It was really cool.

My favorite part was the America at War exhibit. It had an part for every war from the Revolution to the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, I spent the most time in WW2.
Some cool things we saw:
Some of George Washington's clothes

Cornwallis' sword that he turned over to George Washington

George Washington's sword

Some nifty stuff from Okinawa

All in all, we had a really fun time, and I should have taken a lot more pictures than I did. We didn't even get to all of the exhibits in that museum because it was so big. Next time we go, we're going to see the original Star Spangled Banner-- the flag Francis Scott Key was actually seeing when he wrote the national anthem.

If the snow would ever let up, we might actually get back to D.C. before March. I don't mind driving in the snow, and it's really not that much, but it's like everyone's IQ significantly drops when they see snow around here! Oh well, I'm enjoying blogging in my pajamas at 3PM. It's supposed to snow another 10-20 inches today and into tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully we'll have another snow day tomorrow!

Snow Day

2010-02-09T09:22:00.003-07:00

I waited for you
As snowflakes slid down the window
Colliding,
Joining,
Like diamond earrings falling slowly to the floor.

Christmastime in Baltimore

2009-12-21T08:36:00.009-07:00

Today is my first snow day! We got about a foot of snow two days ago, it hasn't snowed since, and still no school! I like this place.

Kelly and I have been trying to get into the Christmas spirit, but it's been a little hard without snow and all the dead, brown Halloween-looking trees all over the place. Our apartment is looking good, though!

Our first Christmas tree, Dmitri. (a.k.a. DmiTREE, though maybe we should have named it Charlie Brown, because it looks kinda like his little tree.)

We built a gingerbread house together!
Of course the snow outside makes it feel much more like home and like Christmastime. When it snowed on Saturday, the power went out at our apartment for about 5 hours. It was kind of fun. We had candles and read and I took 3 naps and we did all the dishes and Kelly made us soup, and we had our wonderful "Level 6 warmth" down blanket from Ikea to keep us warm! It was a relief when the power came back on, though.

Church was canceled yesterday because of the snow, so we spent two days inside, and now today is a snow day! What a great weekend! Kelly did have work, so I drove him over and his boss was late so got to we sit together in the car for awhile this morning. And I'm meeting him for lunch!

I doubt tomorrow will be a snow day, but I also doubt that many students will show up. I'm planning a fun activity for the few that do come, and I have Wednesday off to fly home! (Looks like my World History kids get out of that test until 2010.) Kel and I are so excited to come home the day after tomorrow!!! HOORAY!!!!!!!

Thanksgiving and Nariman

2009-12-21T07:03:00.011-07:00

The view from our balcony on Thanksgiving morning

Thanksgiving was a wonderful break off of school. We woke up to a foggy day and we spent it doing laundry and cleaning our home. (Our little apartment hasn't been that clean since we moved in!) Then Kelly made us a fine Thanksgiving feast of rotisserie chicken, mashed potatoes from a box, dressing from a box, and cranberries from a can. It was tasty and more than enough for the two of us! Unfortunately, we gobbled it up before I remembered to take a picture of it.

The next day, Nariman flew in! We met him at the airport and then we wandered around the Inner Harbor and took him to dinner at a swanky seafood restaurant right on the water. We had so much fun just hanging out with him!

The next day we headed out early and went to the Edgar Allen Poe house here in Baltimore. (Nariman is a big fan of E.A. Poe.) Then we hit the road for Philly. We went to another Poe house up there and that was pretty cool. We made it just in time to see everything before it closed. After that we wandered around downtown Philadelphia and got hot chocolate (coffee in Nariman's case) and had a great time. We didn't get to see the Liberty Bell or anything like that because it was late. We were just killing time before our concert started.

I can't remember what this building is called! It's in Philadelphia, though.

Me, Kelly, and Nariman chillin' in Philly.

We got pizza for dinner (not as good as the pizza place by Temple University that kept me alive during TFA summer institute, but still good) and we went to the Mountain Goats concert! We only had about 4 or 5 layers of people between us and the stage and the Mountain Goats were great! I even mostly enjoyed the opening band, Final Fantasy. It was a guy with a violin hooked up to a synthesizer, then he'd play a little bit and then the synthesizer would loop it so it played over and over, so he'd keep layering the pieces. It was really interesting, but literally a little too repetitive. But really, the concert was so awesome! (Despite the annoying girl who wedged herself in front of me who smelled like cat litter.) It was so crazy, the lead singer looked and acted so much like my Uncle Kevin, and what didn't look like Uncle Kevin looked like my dad. I'm kind of wondering if they have a lost brother. It was a good show, especially since they sang my theme song of the year, "This Year" which contains the all-too-fitting line "I am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me." Yep, sounds about like my life at Baltimore Liberation High School.

We drove home late that night and were stuck in traffic at 2AM because of the stupid toll road. We got home past 3 and immediately went to bed. The next day we hung out around the apartment and went to Edgar Allen Poe's grave site. It was in the churchyard of an old church. That was the coolest cemetery I've ever seen. It was so old (you can't get old like that in Utah) and there were above-ground tombs and mausoleums and sepulchers. It was really interesting.

Kelly and me at E.A.P.'s grave

It must have been a good refrigerator to deserve such a fine burial

This marble slab in the cemetery has bent! Apparently it is quite a phenomenon and was on Ripply's Believe it or Not.

On Monday, Nariman was flying out in the afternoon, so Kelly and I both took work off and we spent the morning in D.C. We went to the National Archives and saw the Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States. We saw the Washington Monument, the Lincoln memorial from afar, and the White House. Then we went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Since it was free, we didn't have a problem just seeing a few exhibits. Mainly, stuffed animals---not like F.A.O. Schwartz, but like taxidermy. We also saw a whole bunch of animal skeletons and went into a live butterfly room. One landed on my leg and wouldn't get off. We were told not to touch them because it could damage their wings or antennae or legs, so it just sat there and sat there and a bunch of people took pictures of it. Kelly tried, but it was blurry, but Nariman got a good one. Finally a lady with a brush got it off and I was able to walk normally again.

The National Archives

Kelly and Nariman looking at the Constitution (it was really dark, so sorry for the quality of the picture)

The Declaration of Independence. I had to take it in two pictures. In the bottom one you can barely make out John Hancock's big signature.

The Washington Monument
Kelly and Nariman looking at the Lincoln Memorial from the Washington Monument
It looks just like a penny!
I don't think Obama was home.
Giant Squid!!!
Nariman and some fishes
Kelly and the Walrus (it sounds like the title of a children's book)

Me and a seal
Kelly and Nariman and a GIANT TURTLE!
Flying Squirrels!
For cute! Too bad they're dead.
Fish skeleton
Dead butterflies.
Live butterflies!
Live butterfly who I started wishing was dead so I could get it off of my leg and walk normally again.

After that we hurried and got some lunch and ran Nariman to the airport where we said bye until Christmas break. It was so fun having him here! We're so glad he came and invite him back anytime!

Thanks for such a fun Thanksgiving break, Nariman!

Yoda

2009-12-21T06:57:00.004-07:00

I'm trying to catch up! Finally!

A few weeks ago we catsat our friends' from church kitten, Yoda (named for how he sets his ears when he sleeps). He was adorable and quite a handful. Kelly had been wanting to get a cat for awhile, and I wasn't really willing to get one in this tiny apartment. Besides, I was raised knowing that cats are outside animals. Well, this little guy was so crazy sometimes, Kelly decided that our apartment is too small for a kitty. I win. We had fun while Yoda was here, though.

I tried so hard to take a picture of him sleeping with his ears down on the sides of his head, but this is the best I got.

The Aquarium

2009-11-15T14:36:00.011-07:00

Last Saturday (I know, more than a week ago, now) Kelly and I went to the National Aquarium here in Baltimore. Kelly and I had such a fun time! It was awesome! There was an Australian exhibit, but I didn't like it because there were birds flying around, but you couldn't go back out the door, you had to go all the way through it to get out. It was so freaking scary! Kelly laughed at me and kept stopping to look at stuff. I didn't get many pictures except for the frilled neck lizard that was outside of the bird part.

Kel and I also went to the special exhibit Jellyfish Invasion! Turns out jellyfish can live in polluted water without a problem, so their predators die but they just keep breeding. There really is a jellyfish invasion!

We also went to a dolphin show which was fun. They were so cute!

There was also a special rain forest exhibit, and there were birds flying around in there too, but I actually got a couple pictures. Still scary, though.

The rest of the aquarium was fun. There were these dumb puffins that were swimming and swimming and swimming, but their beaks were against the glass so they weren't getting anywhere. It was pretty funny. We saw electric eels, poisonous frogs, sharks, stingrays, whale bones, and of course A LOT OF FISH!!! Including Nemo in his sea anemone and his pal Dorie, Dorey..Dori? I don't know how to spell her name but you know who I mean--the forgetful blue one who sounds a lot like Ellen DeGeneres. :)

Nemo!

Nemo's friend Ellen Bluefish!

This poor guy just kept looking at me
Ugly fish
Stupid puffin.
Cute swimmy-turtle
Stingray
Sharkbait ooh-ha-ha

The aquarium is not only full of awesome things, it's also an awesome building right on the Inner Harbor. The view was beautiful! After the aquarium, Kel and I ate at a Spanish restaurant called La Tasca that was situated right on the waterfront. The view was awesome from there too, but we didn't get any good pictures of it. All in all, we had such a fun weekend!

I loaded a whole bunch of pictures onto facebook, so to see more aquarium pictures, just click HERE.

Halloween with Kelly!

2009-11-01T11:02:00.003-07:00

Kelly and I had such a fun Saturday! We were going to go up to Lancaster, PA for a reportedly amazing farmers market and for lunch, but we didn't get up as early as we wanted and decided we should plan more to do there if we were going to drive all that way anyway.

So then we decided to go to the aquarium. Baltimore's aquarium is also reportedly amazing! So we got all ready to go, and ran some errands, and by the time we were finally ready to head down to the Inner Harbor it was about 1:30. We decided that if we were going to spend all that money, we had better make sure we can spend as much time as we'd like, and since it closed at 5 and it would take us another 1/2 hour to get there, we'd do it next week. (Look for my post!) Since we were already driving around, we decided to check out some cool-looking stores that we've seen around and wanted to check out. We found a really cool hobby shop and a couple other random places. It was fun just to drive around with Kelly and talk about stuff and spend all day with him!

We came home before dark because my students warned me that being out after dark on Halloween in Baltimore is not safe. We tried watching a Frankenstein movie on Netflix because Kelly read the book, but the movie was so sucky, we couldn't even enjoy it by making fun of it. I didn't know that kind of sucky even existed. So we lit our Jack-o-Lantern that I carved earlier in the week and watched Penelope. It sounds like a boring day, but we both had so much fun just being together and talking. I love Kelly!

Here's my Jack-o-Lantern. Not as cool as last year's, but Batman is awesome.

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-10-17T18:10:00.002-06:00

Today my husband and I went to a movie that was derived from a lovable children's book, Where the Wild Things Are. In fact, I grew up with it in my home and my brother even had a cute little Max in his wolf suit that went along with it. Kel and I have been looking forward to seeing this movie since we saw the previews, because it brought back childhood memories and it actually looked kinda cute. Today we got out a little late and barely missed the beginning of the 12:15 show, so we bought tickets for the 2:50 show and hung out up in White Marsh until then. One of our pass-the-time spots was a Barnes and Noble where we picked up the book and reread it for fun. While we were reading, I kind of wondered how they were going to make a full-length movie about a 30-ish word book. I had faith, though. It was in vain.

The movie started out kinda...crappy. The kid who played Max was cute, though. But Max was portrayed not as a young boy who was naughty one day, but a wild child who probably should have been sent to juvi. He trashed his sister's room, stood on the counter, yelled "FEED ME WOMAN!" at his mother, and then bit her. He wasn't sent to his room like in the book. He ran away, had an exhaustingly long sea voyage, and then found the island. There, he found the wild things. One was trashing the others' homes. He was pissed about something that was happening that was never quite clarified in the movie. Once Max arrived on the island, I kind of started thinking, "okay, now what?"

What happened was this: Max lied and told them he was magic and would explode their heads if they tried to eat him. (In the book he does a magic trick of staring into their yellow eyes without blinking then they make him king) the wild things were all terribly depressed, angry, and rude. They made Max their king and then they all whined about crap. Then stupid repetitive things happened like them running around, jumping, throwing dirt clods at each other and sleeping in a pile. They were all really ornery. As Kelly put it: "All it was was repetitive bickering." It wasn't exactly a feel-good cute children's movie. At all.

They build a fort and everyone was mad and monster-Carol loved monster-KW and KW hid Max inside her stomach (GROSS!) and Carol pulled off monster-Douglas' arm, which was then replaced with a stick. It was not funny. I think the movie can be summed up by the comments I heard in the theatre during the movie: "This is the dumbest movie I've ever seen." "Well, that sucked." "I've had enough of this." "What time is it!?" "Is this thing almost over?" (Okay, I said the last one.) A few futile claps came at the end, but I think it was in relief that we survived the movie. They died down fast. Quite frankly, I hope they put those reviews on the advertisements.

So really, it was a bad influence on children (hey kids, act horrible, bite your parents, run away, and lie a lot. In the end, you'll get cake! Seriously, in the end he was eating not only hot supper, but a huge slice of chocolate cake! You're REWARDING the kid for that?!) it was annoying and repetitive and depressing. I don't go to movies to listen to big stupid things whine and crazy-monster children terrorize their families. So if you want to see a movie based on a cute children's book that you love, Where the Wild Things Are is probably not your best option.

Despite the crappy movie, Kelly and I had a great time waiting for the 2:50 show. We went to Barnes and Noble, a place called Game Workshop that we weren't sure what was in there. It ended up being one of those one places that was full of those miniature game pieces (like Dungeons & Dragons-type-games) and people playing it and stuff. It was absolutely full of pasty guys who really need to see the sun. I think I was the only female they'd seen for quite sometime. Then we went to IKEA and got a garlic press! Woohoo!

Weekend Trip to Fredrick, Maryland

2009-10-16T19:12:00.009-06:00

Last weekend, I picked Kelly up from work, we stopped by home for our stuff and the store for some Pepsi and we hit the road! We just went about 70 minutes west of Baltimore to Fredrick, MD. We stayed at a Best Western and ate delicious Indian food and just had a fun night walking around Fredrick. It is a cute town! It was nice to get away and not think of students or lesson planning or the vice-principal one single time!

Western Maryland is so pretty!

The next day we headed back to downtown Fredrick and went to a Civil War Medicine museum. (No photography allowed there, so no pictures yet.) Unfortunately, we got there a little too early, so the museum wasn't open yet. We walked up and down the main drag and enjoyed the window displays. Then we went to the museum. It was actually really interesting. I learned a lot, but the coolest thing is this: In history, Civil War doctors are always portrayed as butchers who just hacked off limbs no matter what. Well, there were a lot of amputations going on, but that really was the best thing they could do to save the soldiers' lives because the lead balls that they were shot with would penetrate deep and then smash against the bone, mangling the bone and flattening the minnie ball. Gangrene was almost sure to get you, too, so really, there was no saving the limb. So really, amputating is tough, but it ended up saving a lot of lives. I kind of knew all that stuff before, but I didn't know that amputation was the best thing to do. I just thought it was the quickest and easiest.

After the museum we went to Antietam. It was pretty cool. I'm not very good at my Civil War history, so I don't know much about it other than it was the bloodiest battle in the Civil War, so I didn't get much from all the signs saying this is where such-and-such happened. But we checked out all the memorials and read all the signs and I kind of liked just looking out on the hills and trying to imagine all those soldiers fighting and dying there. It was hard to imagine such a bloody thing happening at such a beautiful place.

(Random-Cool fact #1: I wear my hair curly now pretty much all the time. My straight hair probably won't make many reappearances until I'm back in Utah. :( I miss it....Utah and straight, shiny hair.)

We also checked out a cemetery, which was really beautiful and peaceful.
(Random-cool fact #2: I took this picture to show my Utah friends & family what Maryland "mountains" look like. They're HUGE!)

The real thing we went to Western Maryland for was to hike part of the Appalachian Trail. I think we ended up going about a week too early to see all the trees changing. Things were still pretty green, but there was some beautiful orange and yellow too. The drive up there was gorgeous. It was nice to hike, though. (It was kind of more of a walk without pavement, but that's okay. As you saw in the picture, the mountains here are kind of....lacking.) The day was beautiful and Kelly and I just talked the whole 6 or 7 miles. It was so fun to spend the whole day with him!
(Random-Cool face #3: I took a picture a lot like this one of my dad on top of Angel's Landing in Zion National Park around this time last year. Click to see it! If it's too big to see right, try right-clicking and going down to "view image" It worked for me, anyway.)

At the overlook that we made our turning back point

When we got back to the car, we ate some sandwiches and then headed back to Baltimore and lesson planning and students and Michael's and Mrs. Cooper, but we had such a wonderful weekend, we were okay with going back to work.

The sunset was so beautiful on our way home, I thought it was a very fitting end to our wonderful weekend trip.

Being Married to Kelly is the Best!

2009-10-02T17:02:00.006-06:00

Hey all, I just thought I'd write a little bit about some of the fun things we've been up to lately. Mostly we take a lot of naps in the afternoons after exhausting days on our feet. Last week I came back from work found this at the door:

And this on the bed:

So we ate the M&Ms and took a nap.

Then we woke up with bedhead.

But we do really fun stuff too! Last Thursday (the 24th), I got out of school, drove home and got Kelly and we drove all the way to Philadelphia and went to a Regina Spektor concert! But first we went to a really nice Italian restaurant and ate out on the sidewalk. It was so much fun!! Regina Spektor is so awesome and Kelly and I had such a fun time. We were standing all night, and I am up all day when I teach (whenever movies show teachers sitting at their desks, they LIE! Teachers never sit down.) and my feet and legs haven't hurt that bad since our wedding day, but just like that day, SO WORTH IT! Of course we both forgot our cameras, but it's okay. It was awesome. She even messed up our favorite song "That Time". The whole thing is "Hey remember that time I...[insert crazy-random thing in here, like "tried to save a pigeon with a broken wing? A street cat got him by morning and I had to bury pieces of his body in our building's playground."] She was like "Hey remember that time I...what'd I do?" It was cute. We got back kind of late, but we both made it to work on time in the morning.

Last Saturday, Kelly and I went to a movie called Whip It. It's Drew Barrymore's debut as a director and stars Ellen Page, the actress from Juno. Whip It is about roller derby. It was actually a really fun movie and it was a special early showing, so Kelly and I got free T-shirts! Woohoo! Don't we look adorable?

In the Classroom

2009-09-05T16:15:00.005-06:00

Things in Baltimore have certainly picked up for us. Kelly's been promoted at work and just finished a huge project at the store that required him to go in at 5AM for two weeks straight. It made me ornery just because I had to drive him there that early, even though I got to come back home and sleep for an hour longer. But Kelly is always cheerful, even when waking up at 4:30 in the morning. (No human being should be awake between 4 and 5 AM unless they are mobsters planning to whack the chief of police. Seriously.)

When I'm actually conscious, things have certainly gotten busier, but also more enjoyable. I went from sitting in classes hearing "scaffolded learning," "differentiation," "classroom management," and "let's capture [fill in the blank here] on paper while we're thinking about it" over and over again (Capture. Everyone says it here. I don't know why.) to setting up my classroom and then finally filling it with students.

Teaching is so stressful! When I was in high school I never realized how hard teachers work. Lesson planning, setting up a classroom, dealing with that student who writes "F--- this class" on your classroom sign in, writing worksheets, and looking up that stuff you don't remember is a lot to do. (Thank you to all my teachers!) I always thought teachers had it pretty good: holidays and summers off, off work at 3. The only part that sounded not-so-fun was being to work at 7AM. But really, I've stayed at school late, and then I come home and work on teaching stuff here, too. But despite the stress of trying to give my students the education they deserve, at the end of the day I feel good. I'm doing something useful, and hopefully will be able to help a few of my students. I know I'm not exactly meeting the "excellent teacher" bar yet, but at least I'm passionate, and my students already know I care about them.

My classes are 100% African American and I've heard a lot about being white. One student told me I am the only white person he's ever liked. They like to laugh at me when I don't understand their slang, or even just the way they say things, and get frustrated when they don't understand my white/Utah accent. But we get along pretty well. They just love teasing me about my baby face, but I refuse to tell anyone how old I really am (especially because I have a few 21-year-old students.) One guy said "You guys! A real lady never tells her age, and this a real lady here."

The school I teach at is brand new this year, so a lot of things are not yet organized, including the scheduling. For the first week, they just grouped kids together and put them in some classes, so I have juniors and seniors in my 9th grade US History class, and they were not happy at all. I had a mini riot on Tuesday in 2nd period, because they were all frustrated with the lack of order and some classes they need to graduate are not yet offered at the school. We haven't hired a gym teacher or any foreign language teachers yet, although both classes are required for graduation. I was able to talk to them and they realized that I'm there to help them graduate, and even though the school is still disorganized, they just need to remember it's brand new, and I'm trying to make my classroom as functional as possible and we're all in this together. We ended up having a discussion and getting the principal and guidance counselor to come in and talk about the classes they need and getting everyone the right schedule hopefully by next week. The school tried a new temporary schedule partway through the week and as I was walking down the hall right before school started I passed a group of girls from one of my classes and they said "Hey! Mrs. A!" and then grabbed their new schedules and said "I hope we still have her!" I don't think they meant me to hear that last part, but it made me feel so good!

I started teaching content on Wednesday, because I already went over my syllabus and rules and procedures. It went so well! After I taught the material they got in groups and worked on posters about Reconstruction. I gave them National Geographics to cut up and markers and glue and they turned out so great. So anyway, I made it through my first week, and so did all of my students and now for some PICTURES!

The back of my classroom! (the front is just a blackboard and my desk full of paperclips and a latest-in-Soviet-Technology computer on top.)

My favorite poster--I had to edit out the names, though.

Well, there's a little update from the Aherns! We're still living happily and we're very much in love. Oh yeah, and we are nursery leaders in church now. Sometimes I think my 2-3 year olds are better behaved than my high school students, though. :) Love you all!

It doesn't rain like this in Utah

2009-08-20T13:51:00.003-06:00

The rain just pours here. I like it. At least when I don't have to go out in it. Last week it was raining like this and I had to run down to my car and grab something and came back soaked. I was only in it for like 30 seconds! Luckily for this storm on Tuesday, Kelly and I just waited it out in our apartment while it rumbled from the thunder. I wished it was dark so we could have seen the lightning better.

This is the view from our balcony. Most of it's tree, but we don't mind that at all. It keeps our apartment shady and in the mornings we wake up to birds singing and cicadas doing whatever they do. Those are the weirdest sounding things. It's like there's a rattlesnake sitting in the tree just outside your third story window. Anyway, things here are great, though nothing exciting, as I'm sure you can tell by what I'm writing about on here. I just figured it had been awhile. I start teaching on Aug. 31. I still don't know if I'm teaching American Government (hope not!) or U.S. History. Or there's a slim chance I could be teaching World History, which I would love, but it probably won't happen this year, but I'll likely be teaching it next year. Yeah...so....I just wanted to let you all know we're still alive and doing great.

Our New Apartment!

2009-06-25T21:59:00.008-06:00

Here's some pictures of our new apartment in Towson, Maryland.

The view from our entryway. On your right is the kitchen:
We LOVE our red appliances and dishes!

Go through the kitchen to the dining room...it was empty for a long time:

Move on from the kitchen to the living room (with a balcony!) That room with the window on the right is our dining room again.

Our lovely computer set up on the floor

Since we didn't have a dining room table for a long time we ate at our "dinner boxes"

Moving on through the hallway with AMPLE closet space :)

Keep going straight and you hit our very white bathroom (it looks so much better now with our red shower curtain!)

Or turn right and: the bedroom! (Also with wonderful closet space.)

And we just got some new bookshelves and lamps for our bedroom! Now we actually have light in there at night.

And now some new furniture! We went to Ikea and got us a desk and a couple chairs so we didn't have to sit on the ground ALL the time.

As we were carrying our stuff up from Ikea, our neighbor was moving out and gave us a dining table and four chairs! Mostly matching...well, the price was right, anyway: FREE!Then my mom's cousin Lieu, who lives in Crofton got a new couch, so they gave us their old one, which we went and picked up last weekend with a Home Depot truck. We were almost home, and it started to rain :( but it turned out okay.

There's the Ahern's (very) humble abode!

Starting Our Life Together

2009-06-25T20:44:00.012-06:00

Kelly and I are finally married! It was a beautiful day. And also a bit of a blur. We were married in the Logan, Utah LDS Temple and took lots of pictures afterward. It was SO windy. In every one of the pictures taken outside of the temple doors, my Uncle Kevin is crouched behind me holding my veil down.

We got to the luncheon at the Bluebird as most of our guests were finishing up. We got a round of applause when we walked into our banquet room. I have to say, even after being in all those recitals at SUU, it still is really weird when you walk into a room and everyone claps for you.

The reception was wonderful. Our cakes fell apart the night before, but I didn’t care. Someone (I’m assuming my mom or grandma or aunts) managed to put them on display at the reception and they looked really good. We cut the cake and tossed the bouquet and garter and I danced with my dad (one of my favorite parts of the day) and with my new husband. Mostly, though, we just talked and talked and talked with so many wonderful people who came to see us.

I was so excited to see so many friends, Lindsey & Steve, Becky, Kate, and Derek from SUU, Sarah and Tiffany, some childhood friends, and so many loving ward members from Bountiful and both wards in Pleasant View, as well as lots of family friends, and most especially family members. Every one of my aunts and uncles and cousins came from California, Tennessee, Springville, Colorado, and Japan. And my grandmas from Arizona and Springville. Of course it was also wonderful to see Kelly’s whole family, and meet many of his friends. And I was so glad Nariman, Kelly’s oldest and best friend, and one of my best friends too, was there as Kel’s best man. Nariman looks great in a tux. I LOVE Kelly!

We spent a couple nights in the Ogden Marriott and drove around in our highly decorated Mercedes, courtesy of Nariman and Kelly’s brothers. Then we opened gifts and packed up Darcy, our little Ford Escort, and hit I-80 on Monday morning. Our first stop was Cheyenne, Wyoming. On the way we stopped at Fort Bridger. We felt really lucky we didn’t have to cross the country this way!

Then we headed to Omaha, Nebraska. We stopped at a highly-advertised Pony Express station and felt severely let down, but we did happen upon a Military Vehicles Museum, and that was really cool.

Overall, Nebraska is unending. It’s pretty, but there’s only one scene. I felt the sign on this gas station summed up Nebraska nicely.

The next day was our drive to Chicago. That was a REALLY fun day! We stopped at a Danish windmill museum in Elkhorn, Iowa. It turns out that it’s a whole Danish community. I bought my friend Becky a postcard, because I was thinking of her the whole time because she’s Danish. We also went to a Danish Immigrant museum, which had a whole floor dedicated to Victor Borge. We ended up our stay in Elkhorn by eating at a Danish restaurant. I honestly didn’t know what to expect, but it was TASTY!

(Victor Borge's first piano)

We spent longer than we meant to in Elkhorn, but I’m glad we did. I think it was my favorite stop. After that we stopped at the sight of the first train robbery (also had that pony-express-let-down feeling.) and Trainland USA. That was actually pretty sweet. It was a ginormous train exhibit. There were little people and buildings and a little working drive-in movie and lights and trains, trains, trains! Imagine taking an entire home, filling it with train tracks and miniature cities, and there you go: Trainland, USA. And we also crossed the Mississippi River.

(I told Kelly to get on the tracks and make his robber face. This is what I got.)

We got to Chicago that night. I hated driving there and finally made Kelly drive after we’d gone around the same block a couple of times because of the one-way streets. He was such a trooper and got us to the parking garage and drove all the next day. We stayed in a really nice hotel, but were a little uncomfortable, because we looked terrible after being in the car all day, and we couldn’t get our suitcases down off the roof of our car because of the parking garage, so we just had to use what we could out of Kelly’s backpack and what the hotel had. Kelly had a change of clothes for the next day. I didn’t :(.

We spent most of the next day at the Chicago Art Institute seeing priceless works of art all day. It was so cool to see actual paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Georgia O’Keefe, Toulousse Lautrec, and Salvador Dali. My family has this game called Masterpiece where you bid on paintings and hope you do get the million dollar painting and don’t get any forgeries, but anyway, it was really fun to go through and see a bunch of the paintings from the game. It was also the museum from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, so some of the paintings made me think of that, like Cameron looking at the little girl’s face in Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. We stayed for hours and had a really fun time. After that we went to Millennium Park and looked at all the weird stuff there and got soaked by the rain.

(This is our reflection in the following)

That day we drove to Cleveland and stayed in a cheap little motel with very nice employees (and soap that made my exhausted self giggle. That Sleepy Bear is so seductive!)

(Cleveland!)

The next day we headed to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, but when we found out admission was $22 apiece and we knew we didn’t have that much time to spend there, we decided to save our money and maybe go back someday when we had more time (and jobs.) We were also anxious to finish the last leg of our trip and get to Baltimore. We drove through the rest of Ohio, Pennsylvania, a corner of West Virginia, and all the way across Maryland. Maryland is a beautiful state. It is so green! There are huge trees everywhere and it’s very hilly. I am missing my mountains in Utah, and I’m REALLY missing the dry air and my well-behaved hair, but Maryland is home for now, and my hair will just have to be Medusa-like for a while.

We spent the first two nights in Maryland at my mom’s cousin’s house. She and her husband were so kind to give us a nice place to stay. Their house and neighborhood are lovely. We got there late Friday night and spent all day Saturday apartment hunting. We actually found a very nice place for a great price right where we need it. On Sunday we went to Sacrament meeting in the ward where we’d be if we got that apartment, and then went over and leased it and moved in! It’s so good to have a place of our own! Of course, we slept on the floor that night, but I couldn’t take it, so Kelly went the next day and bought us a bed! It was delivered the next day, so only two nights on the floor. I lived.

That week was my Baltimore Teach For America Induction. I spent all day meeting other corps members, who are all awesome people, and learning about Baltimore and teaching. On Thursday I was hired to teach Social Studies at a new high school that is opening this year. I am so excited!

So there we have it: life since marriage. Kelly and I are SO happy to be together and having such awesome adventures together. I’ll update later with pictures of my apartment!

I love my husband!

(P.S. I don't know what's up with my font in this post. I tried to fix it, but it just won't! So you'll just have to deal with it please.)

Family

2009-06-25T11:10:00.004-06:00

All of my family came from various parts of the world for my wedding. It was so good to see them all, and also amazing to see how much all my cousins have grown up. Mark and Nana came with their three adorable boys all the way from Japan. When they got to my house they were jet-lagged and exhausted. Bryan had been playing Pokemon with the two older boys, but then he came up and told us that they were all asleep and to go look at Ethan.

The poor kid was so tired he fell asleep with his hand still in his bag of Cheetos.

Trying to Catch Up

2009-06-25T10:54:00.005-06:00

A lot has happened since I last blogged, including my wedding, moving across the country, and finding a new job. I promise a post is coming that covers all that, but first, I wanted to just post a couple things while I'm perfecting that one.

A few days before our wedding, Kelly and I met Lindsey and Steve Corry at the Salt Lake Temple. Kelly said that in Uruguay, many members save and dream their whole lives just to go once to the Salt Lake Temple, and it just wouldn't be right for us to live in Utah our whole lives and not go once before we moved to Baltimore. I had a wonderful experience, and it was so good to be there with Lindsey and Steve.

When we came out, it was just beginning to rain. Kel and I had parked quite a ways down the road, so we had some walking to do, whereas the Corrys parked at the Conference Center across the street, so we bid our farewells and set off. A few steps out of Temple Square, the rain just started pouring. By the time we got to our car we looked like we had been swimming in our clothes. It was so much fun! And we got some great pictures out of it, too.

Engagement Pictures

2009-04-30T11:39:00.004-06:00

I just read Hermana Amy Loveless' weekly email from Chile. She said she cheats and sometimes reads blogs, and for some reason, that made me really happy. So she knows Kelly's home and we're engaged. Thanks for the congrats Amy, if you read this when you're cheating! And of course we'll send you an announcement. So for her and everyone else who hasn't already seen them on Facebook, I thought I'd share a few engagement pictures.

Big news!

2009-04-18T16:33:00.003-06:00

Last night Kelly wanted to go to "our bridge," which is just a tiny little footbridge over a tiny stream out in some trees that hardly anyone knows about. Before his mission we used to go there all the time when we wanted to talk or whatever, so I didn't find his request to go there weird. So we went and he pulled out a letter and said, "Here's the last letter I wrote to you on my mission" so I was excited and read it and he had just written about how grateful he was that I was brave enough to date him and share the gospel with him and then wait for him on his mission and he wrote about all the ways he has grown and the blessings he's received for serving. Then there was a little paragraph about how much he loves me and I've made him so happy and then it said, "So Dani, I have to ask you a question..." and that was the very end of the letter! So I looked up at him just as he was pulling a ring out of his pocket and he said, "Dani Marie Crouch, will you marry me?" And of course I said yes! We're engaged!!! And I love Kelly! And we're finally getting married! And the ring is perfect! And I love Kelly!

I smiled so huge the whole rest of the evening. Kelly kept saying he'd never seen me so happy before. Of course! He just freaking proposed!!!

Kelly's Home!!!

2009-04-15T22:41:00.004-06:00

Today we spent a perfect day
Together.
Cuddling on the couch
Watching Caspian save Narnia
While rain turned to snow outside.

Your cat scratched me again,
But I don't care.
You know, two years
Feels a lot shorter
On this side of things.

Laughing is my favorite.
Your eyes look like
Blue crescent moons
When you smile that big.

You made dinner
And I helped with the dishes.
Don't you think Rosemary is a nice name
For a seasoning?

Driving home I thought the canyon walls
Looked like they had been lightly dusted
With powdered sugar,
Like the way I eat French toast.

Sugared canyon walls.
Delicious.

So beautiful it made me cry
And wish I was a poet.

Today

2009-04-10T09:37:00.001-06:00

My head a-splode.

Job?

2009-04-08T21:56:00.004-06:00

Today I interviewed for a job I REALLY want! (Not to mention need!) When I got there I found out there were A LOT of applicants interviewing today. The interview went quite well, I felt, and the interviewer told me they would narrow it down to four people who would have a practical interview tomorrow actually doing some of the stuff the position will require. So I left my name and email, hoping against hope to be one of the few chosen. I checked my email around 5:30 to find that there was no word from the Ogden City School District in my inbox, so I felt kind of let down. I've been trying and trying and praying and praying for something to come through for me. As many of you are aware, I haven't had a job since August, except UIA where I work on an as needed basis, but with the economy as it is, they haven't needed me much at all. I think I've worked there about six hours total in the last three months. I did a bit of substitute teaching down in Cedar City, but that wasn't providing many hours either. (My spirits lifted a bit when I discovered two Kelly emails forwarded by his parents in my inbox!) But I decided to check again just now and I'M ONE OF THE FOUR! So I'm interviewing tomorrow at 3PM. Pray for me please!

So I was thinking...

2009-04-05T20:44:00.002-06:00

So I was thinking that my life is getting to the point of "morbidly boring" so I have nothing to write about to my dear readers. I mean, just to give you some idea I started the Harry Potter series again 3 days ago and now I'm halfway through The Order of the Phoenix (that's book 5 in case you're out of it enough to not know that). I kept thinking that when Kelly gets home then I'll actually have something to write about.

I can post pictures of meeting him at the airport and write about his crappy grasp of the English language, and then move on to the fun things we will do. Believe me, before he left we did a lot of fun stuff. The first summer we dated we ate at nice restaurants probably about 5 times a week. Of course that was back when he had money to burn, but the next summer when we were both dirt poor we had even better adventures. We hiked all over and had run-ins with rattlesnakes; we walked his dog Chester around and around the church next to his house; we stargazed and had bonfires and canoed and drove all over in that Mercedes of his. Our lunch breaks were at the same time, so I'd always pack a lunch for two and go over and eat it with him. He'd come get me early in the morning and take me to the valley to watch the sunrise and then cook me breakfast. We'd talk for hours and laugh and tease one another. We had Super Smash Brother tournaments and were very competitive when it came to fuse ball. We'd walk miles around the pond at Beus Park and get Jake's Over the Top grasshopper shakes. He'd tease me about how I'm scared of birds and one time he threw me right into the middle of a gaggle of geese. I screamed like a banshee and took off running and he was laughing until the geese started chasing us. He runs faster than I can, so I launched myself onto his back shrieking my head off. He learned his lesson quickly and never did that again. We'd get tacos on 25th street and watch movies and play tag. Life felt so sunny and full of laughter and smiles all the time. So I'm sure I'll have plenty more to write about come Friday, but the other day I realized something: when Kelly is home, I probably won't make time to update this for a long time. I'll just have better things to do. Sorry guys.

ONE WEEK!

2009-04-03T14:16:00.002-06:00

ONE WEEK! ONE WEEK ONE WEEK ONE WEEK!!!
I'm so excited to see Kelly!

That is all.

Teach For America!

2009-03-11T16:23:00.003-06:00

Hey everybody who reads this! I made it into Teach For America! I've been assigned to Baltimore! I'll be teaching elementary school there, and I'll be able to get my teaching certification and a Masters of Arts in teaching through John Hopkins University! I am almost completely positive I'm accepting, but I'm waiting to hear back from Kelly before I do anything irreversible.

It's close enough to Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City to make weekend trips out of it. There are a couple universities that Kelly could go to, and both I've looked into so far sound like they have amazing History and Literature programs, which are the two things Kel wants to double major in. I've been looking into some apartments and cost of living and it looks like everything is going to work out great!

So, when Kelly gets back we'll figure out exactly when we're getting married--probably either June or August. I have a five week training in Philadelphia from June 28-August 1, so we'll tie the knot before or after that, most likely. If not, perhaps we'll wait for Christmas. Then we'll move to Baltimore and begin our adventure!!! Wish us luck!

Spokane, Washington

2009-03-11T13:19:00.037-06:00

Last Thursday I met with Becky, Monica, McKenzie, Brenna, Shannon, Qrystal, and our fearless leader "Captain" Nickerson in the Library parking lot at 9AM. From here we piled into a suburban and headed down the freeway for Las Vegas. This was the start of our all-expenses-paid trip to Washington to present at the Western Regional Honors Conference.Kenzie, me and Becky in the suburban headed for Sin City

We went straight to the Las Vegas Airport where we waited and waited for our flight to Portland, Oregon.

Waiting...

When we were boarding Professor Nickerson said something about our plane being tiny, but unbeknownst to him the pilot was right behind him, and he got VERY defensive of his plane telling us how much it weighed and how fast it could go and stating, "your car couldn't do that!" and ending up with "it doesn't matter how big it is, it's how you fly it," (hahaha!) and on the plane he got on the intercom and told everyone about the wingspan and how it was classified by the something-or-other-association as a large plane. I still think it's kinda small.

The plane did stop first in Santa Rosa, located in northern California. It was so beautiful flying over the vast green expanse covered in the straight lines of the vineyards, and ending only with a thin strip of the ocean visible from our plane. We didn't even have to get off, though. We just waited for awhile there before taking off again and heading to Portland.

Chillin' on the plane in Santa Rosa and Santa Rosa from the air

In the Portland airport, while we were waiting and eating very overpriced sandwiches, we were greeted with a very welcome sight for 7 girls supervised only by El Capitano...you see, sometimes it feels a little more like we're supervising him. But anyway, there, pouring from the gate was the entire Oregon Ducks baseball team. Okay, quite honestly, I wasn't that impressed, (you know, I have Kelly!) but the rest of the girls were oogling and oohing and ahhing, and it was just a little fun to join in. And I couldn't help but notice when small groups of them in their matching maroon athletic suits would nod toward me in their conversations. Anyway, from Portland, we flew to Spokane, were picked up by the Davenport Hotel Shuttle driven by a nice guy in a suit who took our bags for us, and then on our merry way to our hotel.

Qrystal and Monica on the shuttle

And the hotel!!! Holy cow! Not exactly what I said upon driving up, but I'll edit. It was positively...swanky! We were awestruck through the lobby, crammed in the elevator, tired in the hallway, and positively jubilant upon opening our door. I can honestly say I've never ever stayed in a nicer place. The beds were gigantic--they had steps to get into them! And the bathroom was all marble and there was a shower so big it didn't need a door because the water still couldn't get out of it. And the shower head was literally about a foot in diameter. (Best two showers I've ever taken.) There were bathrobes and turn down service and it was awesome.

Our beds, the bathroom, and feeling fancy in our bathrobes

The Davenport Hotel lobby and mezzanine and Captain by the fireplace

Oh! And when we were still waiting at the front desk, who should appear but Jason Loveless! From North Ogden, Utah. He's the brother of my freshmen year roommate, Amy Loveless. Apparently he's in the Weber State University Honors Program.
Jason Loveless, Monica Stamm, McKenzie Romero, Me, Becky Nielsen, and Michael-from-WSU

The next we day registered. You'd think they could spell better at an Honors Conference--especially the shortest state name in the country. It's four freaking letters! How hard is that?

We had breakfast in a ballroom. With a Beauty-and-the-Beast-like chandelier. Then we started going to classes. I went to some really fascinating ones (and a few not-so-good ones). One girl had recorded hundreds of girls' conversations and transcribed them and studied the "rules" of female conversation. It was so cool. A group did a study on "Caring Because It's Cool" and how wearing clothes and having accessories that fund charities is now a fashion statement, like the (Red) campaign for AIDS, livestrong bracelets, or Save Darfur T-shirts. It was pretty interesting. Another presentation was on 42E and the rise of Viral Marketing. She showed us a lot of cool marketing campaigns, but never really gave us an answer to "so what?".
Where breakfast was served and where we ate it. Don't crush Becky!!!

Nickerson presented on Parners in the Parks, a national Honors program that SUU is partnered with, that has classes in national parks--a classroom without walls. Brenna presented on "Through the Looking Glass: From Homeschool to College", Qrystal and Shannon did a presentation on the comparative study they did on restaurant water in Cedar City, Utah and Guaymas, Mexico, and Monica, Kenzie, Becky, and I did an hour-long panel presentation called "Remixing Interdisciplinary Education Through Cooperative Learning" on an innovative class we took last year, speaking on the merits of Interdisciplinary courses, library economy, learning through seminar, and of course our PAM talks, focusing on Passion Academics and Media. It went very well, but not a whole lot of people showed up to it.

PAM!

After our presentation--Kenzie, Monica, Me, and Becky

In the middle of the conference we had a break for lunch, so we walked a couple of blocks to the mall. It was so cool looking! And we ate delicious hamburgers and deep-fried onions from a place called D. Licious. Mmmm.

The Isabella room where Nickerson presented and escalators at the Spokane mall

That evening Captain treated us all to dinner at PF Changs. It was really good, but he gave the waitress a hard time about one of our dishes that was really hot (I didn't mind, I liked it) and wouldn't leave until someone who worked at the restaurant tried it. He wasn't even being mean, just...I don't know, Nickerson. It could be considered flirting more than it could be considered mean, the way he did it. It was actually kind of funny. I told you he takes supervision. Then we walked through the park to find the IMAX theatre, not to watch a movie, but to find the one souvenir penny stretching machine located in Spokane. (You guessed it, Nickerson needed a smashed penny.) But it was fun. Kenzie and I found the Batmobile, but when we went outside to find the rest after taking our pictures, Becky and Monica were just standing there, and Nickerson was nowhere to be seen. It was like losing a 5-year-old. We both said, "You let him out of your sight!?!?" But he was just behind an empty ice rink looking into the river. It was a such a lovely walk. Then we stopped into a cute little gift shop before we went back to the hotel.

Becky and me at PF Changs; me in the Batmobile; and Captain and his souvenir penny

McKenzie leads a VERY busy life working for the SUU Journal, a part-time job a Quiznos, and of course as a full-time student, so she was the very last one to get her part of the presentation together (as in, she finished it in one of the presentations before ours.) We knew she could pull it off, because she's Kenzie, but she still treated us to room service that night in return for our patience and confidence in her. Food will taste like that in Heaven.

Chocolate Raspberry Cake with a syrupy center and Apple Crumble

We had to wake up Monica to eat it. She told us she was a light sleeper, and that morning Kenzie barely jostled her and she woke up so we believed it. We called "Monica," but no reply. So we shook her leg and then started shoving her back trying to wake her up and she wasn't! I started wondering if she was even alive, when suddenly she rolled over and went "rawr!" I jumped. So we all dug into our desserts, and Monica grabbed one of the two piroutte cookies and bit off half of it in one bite, so we all protested and said that we had to share, and then sweet little quiet Monica roughly shoved the rest of it into her mouth like she hadn't eaten in days! We laughed so hard! Well, the next morning Monica asked if we actually got room service or if she had dreamt it, and she was nearly positive it had all been a dream! She hadn't been awake the night before! We were wondering where all the aggression came from in our sweet little Monica!

The next day we had breakfast in yet, another ballroom, and then went to a few more classes, (some of which I've already mentioned above, including Qrystal and Shannon's.) After that we packed up, checked out, and stashed our bags in an empty presentation room and went to the final luncheon with a keynote speaker. Delicious delicious delicious. I'll be like my Aunt Nanae and post pictures of beautiful food on my blog! (Of course, her's always looks better, but oh well.)

The Marie Antoinette Hall where the luncheon was held and our salad, salmon, and dessert

We had to cut out of the keynote speaker's presentation a little early, which I was a little sad about, first because his presentation was on sustainable energy and I was very interested, and second because his British accent was awesome to listen to. But we caught our shuttle back to the Spokane airport, were delayed by a random snowstorm, but were assigned a different flight into Seattle.

Waiting at the airport in Spokane--Nickerson's sleeping, Kenzie's got a paper,
Becky's on the phone, and I'm reading The Kite Runner

Our plane was touching down in Seattle as we were supposed to be boarding our flight to Las Vegas, so we ran from one side of the airport to the other and barely made it! Poor Becky had to limp really fast because she busted her toe last week and it's been bothering her a lot. (I kind of gave her a hard time about being a gimp all weekend, which wasn't very nice of me.) But we made our flight and the view from the plane over Seattle was amazing! It was so green, and we could see the harbor and oh, it was perfect. The sunset from the plane was equally stunning. I'm glad Becky was smart enough to get a picture of it. Becky, Kenzie, and Monica were all a lot better at taking pictures than I was. I'm glad we have Facebook to swap them!

When we flew into Las Vegas it was dark and it was another one of the most amazing sights I've ever seen. Becky put it as "it looks like we're about to land on a giant circut board!" When we got off the plane we managed to find our vehicle again and after a couple of wrong turns got to the right street to head home, but first we grabbed some Wendy's because we were "hungrier than a gromit dog" as Nickerson so eloquently put it.

And now we're back in Cedar City! Mission accomplished!

All of us from SUU: Qrystal, Shannon, Captain, Brenna, Becky, Monica, me, and Kenzie

Patchwork Bath

2009-03-01T01:06:00.007-07:00

Sleeping well's a gift
I normally possess
Public transportation--
Ah, but I digress.

Sleeping well is nice
But when the night is strange
I find the art of sleep
The thing just out of range.

So I gather every pillow,
Afghan, blanket, quilt
And sling them in the bathtub
My remedy now built.

I burrow myself in,
My tension lost its wrath,
And curl up for some dreaming
In my cozy patchwork bath.

Random Thoughts...Something I Haven't Done For Awhile

2009-02-28T13:28:00.003-07:00

Recently I've just posting random crap I find amusing on here like it's facebook or something. I haven't really felt like writing lately, which is weird, because I generally enjoy writing. But today I'm just going to write. It won't be anything fantastic or ground-breaking, and very possibly not even thought-provoking or entertaining, but at least it's from the heart, not from somewhere else on the Internet.

I think I haven't really felt like writing because I'm stressed. I may not have classes right now, but this whole jobless state is very wearing on my soul. Fortunately I have substitute taught a little bit to get some money in my pocket and to take a break from job searching and the unending and fruitless applications process I find myself completing over and over and over again. At least Teach For America is looking hopeful! And that is what I really want to do, but I wish I had something now. I do like being at the schools when I'm subbing, though. I like being with the students, and don't even mind the jokes I get about how young I look. Last week one kid joked "are you lost? This is the high school. The middle school is across the street." I'm told all the time that I look 17, though, so slightly older than middle school. I just blend in with the high schoolers. Except I don't dress like them when I'm there. I wear teacher clothes, and it sounds weird, but one of my eyebrows is suffering from baldness or something, so the mornings I sub, as I fill my eyebrow in I joke to myself that I'm drawing on my "grown up eyebrows." But really I don't do them any different than usual. But I don't exactly enjoy the subbing itself, because it's like babysitting. I just pass out a worksheet and then sit at the teacher's desk and do nothing. I did break up a fight last week! I think when I got after them I surprised them that I could actually be stern because I look so little and nice.

I'm excited for someday when I'm actually the teacher. Then I can do more than keep students quiet in their seats. In fact, I think sometimes I'll do exactly the opposite! In my classroom I want my students excited about what we're learning and participating and discussing. To really learn, you can't just be spoon fed facts and then know them for good. You have to discover for yourself. It's like when I was a kid and I wanted my parents to buy me something (what comes to mind is that Jasmine Barbie I wanted so bad when I was around 9) but my parents said, "If you want it, then save your money and buy it yourself." I remember my mom saying many times that when you work and buy something with your own hard-earned money then it mean more to you and you'll take better care of it. So I put my Barbie on layaway at Shopko and saved my meager chore money and had a lemonade stand for days until I had enough money to take her home, and she meant more to me than the Barbies I got for my birthday from some neighborhood girl. I think knowledge is the same way. When you have to work to get it, it's more valuable to you, and therefore more memorable.

Enough about teaching and comparing knowledge to Barbie dolls. I've been thinking about Kelly a lot lately. Of course, this isn't very unusual, but lately I've found my thoughts flickering in his direction even more often then usual. He's coming home in less than six weeks, now. It is strange how these weeks feel stretched before me looking as long as the two years I've already waited through. Six weeks is nothing to two years! Why does it feel longer than any six weeks I've ever experienced before? I keep thinking it will be here before I know it, but...six weeks might as well be eternity for me right now. I think part of it is I've never really worried about when he gets home before. I suppose I just subconsciously thought we'd spend a day adjusting and then jump right back in where we left off. But I don't know that. I kind of suspect it, because the 4 times we've spoken on the phone while he's been gone, after a few minutes it was like we just talked earlier that day. He is so familiar to me, no matter how long we are apart. I miss our perfect spring break before he left. I think that week holds some of my favorite memories of all time. It's just filled with sunshine and riding in his old tan Mercedes over the pass with the windows down, and stargazing in the valley and coming home late at night when we don't need to talk anymore; we were just content with sitting in the car holding hands. The feeling of being together enough for the moment. I heard a song by Death Cab for Cutie that is exactly like those nights.

Passenger Seat

I roll the window down
And then begin to breathe in
The darkest country road
And the strong scent of evergreen
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home

Then looking upwards
I strain my eyes and try
To tell the difference between
Shooting stars and satellites
From the passenger seat as you are driving me home

"Do they collide?"
I ask and you smile.
With my feet on the dash
The world doesn't matter.

When you feel embarrassed then I'll be your pride
When you need directions then I'll be the guide
For all time
For all time

Six more weeks...I just want to know what it feels like, what it looks and sounds like, to finally be able to look for his face in the crowd and know it will actually be there.

I'm on top of the world
Excited and nervous
To finally be there.
Focused past the uniforms
And metal detectors.
The onslaught of passengers
Pour down the escalator.
I'm searching for the one face meant for me.
Standing on my toes
On top of the world
On the floor of the airport.

Start a Band; Make an Album!

2009-02-23T17:25:00.009-07:00

I was stumbling on firefox and found this. It is raining outside, I'm bored, and I think I am getting sick. Having nothing better to do at the moment I tried it.

1 - Go to "wikipedia." Hit “random”
or click here
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to "Random quotations"
or click here
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
or click here
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to put it all together. (I just used the basic paint program.)

If you make one, send it to me and I'll post it on here!

Here's mine:

And here's my second album...with my other band...seriously, this took me like 30 seconds.

Advice for America

2009-02-18T10:15:00.001-07:00

This is it. Seriously, it's what people need to know.

The following is also very useful, but start with the first one.

Yoga

2009-02-17T21:20:00.003-07:00

Yesterday I was waiting for my laundry to be done. I have been at my parents house for the past week-and-a-half for various reasons, including a doctor appointment in Clearfield, a Teach For America ALL-DAY interview in Provo, and also for the pursuit of some type of employment. I was scheduled to make the five hour drive home after my laundry was done, but not really having anything at my apartment to get back to (except THREE letters from Kelly, which came only hours after my departure :( ) until Thursday. I was packing my stuff when I was persuaded by my little sister to come to yoga with her. I enjoy exercise. I love hiking and biking (although I always scuff up my leg with the pedal. I'm skilled that way.) and I am known to ice skate or run, can do more than my fair share of push ups (a little memento of my old marching band days) and I exercise every morning with my ball and weights first thing when I wake up. Despite all this, I have never tried yoga. I've never exactly looked down on it--I mean, it looks serene and all, but it's never really been something that I saw and thought "I want to be a yogi!!!" either. Well, I put my trip off a day and tried it last night. It was wonderful! I absolutely love yoga! It was hard, and I could feel myself working and stretching, but it was relaxing at the same time. I loved the feeling of working my muscles but also meditating simultaneously. It was absolute serenity. I wish I had money because I would sign up for a yoga class 6 times a week! There was a part where my leg was folded under me in a way I didn't think was humanly possible, and I could feel my hamstring stretching, but we just held it for 10 minutes on each leg and just kinda lay there. It was nice. At the end we just sat there and concentrated on who am I for a few minutes. You know, I'm not much of anyone, but I'm not so bad either. It was nice to think of who I am to other people: a daughter, a sister, niece, cousin, granddaughter, friend, student, neighbor, confidant, roommate, stranger, just some girl, or that special girl. And I thought of who I am to me. That's harder, you know? Try to think about who you try to portray yourself to be, and who you really truly are inside. I don't think I'm too different from the Dani everyone else knows, but I know all my weaknesses that I try so hard to hide. I know who I want to be and realize that I'm not quite there. It was nice to have some time in a quiet dark room to just exist and think. I didn't have to think about what to do next, what I have to do on my honors presentation, what I promised to who, finding a job, or what my hair looked like. I don't even give myself that luxury before I go to bed or when I get up in the morning. I'm always going here or eating this or reading that or writing to someone or at least thinking of what I'm going to do next. I think I enjoy my life. I really do. I see beauty all around me and thank God for this wonderful earth and the people who have come in my life and the trivial things like dry socks, a comment on my blog, or a friendly smile, but it's for a moment or two and then I'm on to the next thing. I really do need to take more time to meditate. I'm a meditation/yoga convert! Thanks Cami!

P.S. I have delayed my trip back longer due to the 2 feet of snow we got today. Oh well, I exercise through shoveling our driveway and our elderly neighbor's driveway, not as fun as yoga, but probably more practical for today.

Creative Commons

2009-02-05T13:00:00.007-07:00

One time in my Honors class we had a discussion about Copyright and how it sometimes limited amateurs from creating Remixes and stuff and posting them on YouTube. It was pointed out that remix has been part of music for CENTURIES.

The Death chant from the Middle Ages, Dies Irea, is in SO MANY things. It's in Berlioz' "Symphony Fantasitique"; it's in the modern piece based off of the first written story "The Epic of Gilgamesh" by Robert W. Rumbelow; it can be heard in the soundtrack of the horror movie "The Ring." This is merely scratching the surface of ONE piece.

Vanilla Ice was, well, iced for using David Bowie & Queen's bass riff from "Under Pressure". I agree this was proper punishment. What he did was wrong. This is why copyright is important, but what about the amateurs? Amateur literally means "for the love." I'm talking about people who take other people's works and mix them up and create something new, but give credit where credit is due, and don't make money off of it. They do it simply because they love it.

Videos are taken off YouTube everyday for using other people's copyrighted works. They didn't SELL the song, they aren't making a profit, they aren't making free copies for people's iPods, they aren't taking the credit for writing it. Honestly, it's free advertisement for song writers. I can't even tell you how many times I've been on YouTube and heard a remix and bought one of the original songs, or saw some homemade trailer for a movie I was never interested in, but then saw the movie because of it. I'm not saying I'm anti-copyright. It's important for artists to receive credit and the money from their creations. As a musician I am fully supportive of this. I just think that Creative Commons has a good idea. Check out this talk by Larry Lessig. He explains it better than I do.

Pretty much what I'm trying to say is there are only 12 notes total. That's it. That's all we have to work with from the dawn of time to today. There are only so many ways to mix it up. Do the math you math people. So I found this video that illustrates how the same four chords in the same order and rhythm can be traced through popular music history. Eat that copyright people! Get Creative Commons!!!

Wingsuit Jumping!

2009-02-03T11:03:00.004-07:00

Hey all,

I know it's been awhile, but things here are...boring. I am still in Cedar City even though I graduated from SUU in December, and I'm still looking for a job. I have substitute taught at the high school a couple times. Since I look about 16 years old, everyone was incredulous that I was actually the substitute. Fortunately, high school boys think I'm cute or something, and in every class it's the males that help me out and even scold their classmates for being disruptive. Ha ha ha. Other than that, I have the best friends in the world, so I do a lot with my roommate Janalee and I'm at Becky's house about every other day for The Office or Sunday Supper and whatnot. We even played Mafia a couple weeks ago! In high school that game was all the rage. I remember at one girls camp we played it for 3 days straight with Old Maid cards because face cards weren't allowed.

Last Thursday I was able to go to the play "The Seagull". My good friend Bryan was in it as Semion Medvedenko the school teacher. I had a really good time, although through the whole play I had that song from the Wedding Singer stuck in my head ("You love her, but she loves him, and he loves somebody else! You just can't win. And so it goes till the day you die. This thing they call love it's gonna make you cry. I've had the blues, the reds and the pinks. One thing for sure: LOVE STINKS! Yeah-yeah!") Tragically that's pretty much how the play goes. It's like the biggest love...polygon ever. But I know quite a few of the people involved in it, and I have to say, you just can't top a guy in a three-piece suit. I was going to go again on Saturday with all of my friends, but I got sick and they ended up having an amazing-fun adventure without me afterward, involving a spur-of-the-moment trip to St. George, In-N-Out, and an appearance of Bryan's previously unknown alternate personality, Willy the Walrus.

So really why I decided to write on here today is because I found an amazing video. I want to do this! Maybe I won't honeymoon to an Irish cottage, but do this instead. But Kelly is horrifically scared of heights, so we'll probably be sticking to the rocky beaches of Ireland. (Or, more likely, no honeymoon at all, what with the jobless state we're in, and the fact that we could be spending our honeymoon moving across the country for Teach For America. Well anyway, enjoy this! It's freaking incredible!

wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

President Barack Obama

2009-01-20T17:50:00.003-07:00

I just watched President Obama's Inaugural Address again online. I don't even know what to say; I just wanted to remark about this momentous occasion somehow, but words fail me. I'm so excited to see what the next four years will bring, and I'm so glad to be a part of this piece of history, even if it was only casting a ballot for him, and watching him on TV. I wish I had gone to his rally in Las Vegas. I didn't have the money to get there, but the people I was going to go with were just a couple yards away from him.

I know this isn't much, but I'm so happy. His address made me cry. Thanks for all the hope you've given America and good luck President Obama!!!

Kelly

2009-01-15T23:37:00.009-07:00

I can barely type because I'm kind of almost jumping up and down at the moment.

Kelly's flight plans were just emailed to me by his mom. He will land in Salt Lake City at 1:35 on April 10th.

85 days!!! That's right, I've finally decided it's okay to count down. Despite what most of my geriatric ward members believe, (and even some of my best friends *cough*BECKY*cough*), I have not counted down prior to this. I did know that he had 100 days left from January 1, but that's because KELLY told me that on the phone on Christmas Eve. I actually scolded him about that and said, "Get back to your mission, Elder." I don't want him coming home with any regrets about wasted time or efforts or anything. When he comes home I want him to be completely satisfied about putting his whole self into the Montevideo Uruguay Mission for the entire two years. Good thing I already know he's done this and will continue to; he's such a good person and I admire him so much. When Kelly does something, he gives it all he's got, and he does it right. I'm so proud of him and how much he's grown since his baptism in 2005. I wish I could shout to the whole world how amazing Kelly is, how blessed and grateful I am that he is in my life and I've been able to share so many awesome experiences with him, and how much I love him.

Kelly's mission has blessed him so much. His testimony has grown, as has his love for the gospel, the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith. It's almost hard to believe the young man writing these letters is the same guy who was Bible bashing with me at Country Boy Dairy in June 2005--the same guy I cried with on the hill at Beus Park because neither of us could see how our relationship could work out, but we couldn't see it ever ending either. Kelly is more outgoing and confident. I think he's even more patient and understanding, and even humble--I didn't even know humans had the capacity to become more patient, understanding, or humble than Kelly already was! He is absolutely awe-inspiring.

Almost more amazing is that although I've been left behind, I have grown so much. I am more independent and well-rounded. I have developed interests and pushed myself out of my little comfort zone. I've come to realize I have talents and that I am an interesting person. I'm not so scared about what others might think of me, so I am more outgoing and confident, too. Some people have told me how suprised they are that I'm funny--thanks to those of you with a refined sense of sarcasm, because you actually get my so-called wit. No one can say I am just Daniandkelly (affectionately dubbed "Danelly" by some friends our sophomore year when some people honestly didn't know if it were "Dani and Kelly" or "Danny and Kelli".) A lot of my friends have never even met Kelly! (But believe me, they know about him.) Kelly is forever my other half, me in male form, and my best friend, but I am somebody and no one can take that away from me.

That being said, I AM SO EXCITED TO SEE KELLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Teach For America

2009-01-13T13:39:00.002-07:00

I'm interested in education. I mean, I want to be a teacher someday. I am in the process of applying for Teach For America. It's a non-profit organization that sends college graduates to underprivileged areas of the United States to teach in effort to narrow the achievement gap. It's hard to get into, the training is "rigorous" (according to my sources), and I just moved up the latter a little!

I sent in my application a while ago and today is the day the third deadline applicants find out if we qualify for a phone interview, and guess what! I get to SKIP the phone interview, because I have been invited directly to the final interview! SWEET-FREAKING-NUGGETS! (I just had to share the news with someone, since my mom isn't answering her phone, Kelly is 6,000 miles away, and I don't know how excited he'd be about it anyway since he doesn't exactly want to come home and then move right away again. But he'll follow me anywhere. He said so. And even if he's not happy for himself, he'll be happy for me.)

Dani's Fabulous Call From Kelly/Christmas/Hanukkah/Graduation Party/New Years/Trip to Logan/Break in General!

2009-01-05T19:49:00.011-07:00

I finished school on December 11, 2008 and headed home the next morning. It was so great being home with my family! They are all so cool!

I spent the next week working for my dad's office. I spent days in a storage unit going through boxes of medical files. I had to pick out all the ultrasound film and separate it from the normal paper so it can all be shredded. I have 52 paper cuts to prove it. Oh, and these pictures:

A bunch of boxes that I had to go through and a little baby ultrasound. Aww...

On Christmas Eve I got to go to Kelly's parents' house and talk to Kelly on the phone! I was able to talk to him alone for about 30 minutes. It was awesome. He has a release date: April 10!!! Three months! He has really loved his time in Uruguay, but I think he's getting a little excited to come home and see/marry me. (But seriously, who wouldn't be?) I told him to get back to his mission and he can think about me sometime around the afternoon of the tenth of April, and on P-days when he writes to me, but not in the same kind of way. But it was so wonderful to talk to him! I love him! I love him! I love him!

The next day was Christmas...obviously. We all slept in quite a bit and had my mom's cinnamon rolls for breakfast, and to keep from breaking tradition, we all had our orange juice too. My grandparents always used to spend the night before Christmas at our house and one of the rules is everyone has to eat breakfast before we can start opening presents. To my grandpa (Pop) this included orange juice, no matter what you were eating and it didn't matter if you had just brushed your teeth or not. Then a Mythbusters marathon was on TV, so we ended up chilling and watching a few episodes of that. Then we has biscuits and gravy for brunch, and finally got around to opening our presents around 1PM. I drew Kevin's name this year, so I got him a couple movies: Ironman and Leatherheads. I got a really cool exercise ball and some little weights so I can be super-hot when Kelly gets home. I also got another teapot to add to my collection! It's SO CUTE! See?

And I got some new clothes and some money and candy. Kevin gave me a Stephen Colbert I Am America (And So Can You!) desk calendar and The Tales of Beedle the Bard. Kelly's parents gave me a scarf and the movie Little Women, and his brother and sister-in-law gave me a fragrance diffuser and a little mirror for my purse. And my friend Becky gave me season 3 of "The Office". I love that show.

We gave my 84 year old grandma (Mimi) a new TV because her old one sucks and also for the change in February. She opened the box and sat there looking at it like, "What?" and then we told her to look at the picture on the box. Well, there was a picture of the TV, but on the TV was some people white water rafting. She didn't notice the TV part. It was pretty much hilarious. She thought we were sending her down the river. She got pretty excited when we pointed out what it really was.

When we were all done opening presents, Cami carried her hoard to her room and the rest of us went back to the family room and there was a giant new TV for us! We spent the rest of the day setting that up and taking the old one down to Bryan's nest where he hooked up all his stuff to it. Cami came out a couple hours later and was pretty suprised to see us all watching more Mythbusters on a brand new flatscreen.

Christmas was great! Mythbusters, jammies, cinnamon rolls, turkey, a nap, and seriously freaking out my grandma. What better day could you ask for?

We also celebrate Hanukkah at my house. Really all we did this year was light the Menorah, but it was still pretty fun. We don't have Christmas lights on our house, while the rest of our neighborhood goes all out on the holiday grandeur. People probably go down our street thinking Ooh! Ahh! Grinch. Oo-wait! The Grinches are Jewish.

The day after Christmas, our good friends the Marsdens decided to throw me a graduation party. It was pretty fun. We just ate and talked and played Loaded Questions. I also got a book called You Can Do It! and 20 bucks. Sweet.

Over the next week I pretty much vegged at home a lot. It was blissful. Kevin and I did go hang out with our good friend Kory and he bought us dinner at Lee's Mongolian Barbeque, and then we went back to his house and watched the end of the Jazz game and all of "Muppets From Space".

On New Years Eve my best friend from high school, Katie, and I went to a party in Salt Lake called First Night. It was pretty fun. We heard some awesome groups and watched some jitterbuggers and firedancers. We also heard a horrible group called "Acabella" singing so-called showtunes. These guys were terrible! They sang to canned music, had absolutely no sense of groove, and I'm pretty sure that quite a few of them were tone deaf. Fortunately we left that one early and followed it right up with the most amazing big band! AWESOME! They were in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and all the senior missionary couples were dancing with each other. It was pretty cute. And the band was great!

On New Years Day my Mom and sister and I decided to have a girl's day and go to a movie. Well...we saw Twilight. I have to tell you I wasn't too excited to see this one and was actually pretty embarrassed to be seen walking into the theatre. I had a great time though! The movie was terrible!!! But it was so much fun to make fun of. I thought I was going to be attacked by a bunch of angry preteen girls and their mothers at the end of the movie for all the snotty comments I made to my sister. I think Cami had the best zinger, though. When Edward is having a flashback about becoming a vampire and he's laying on the bed "dying" and then Carlisle attacks his neck to bite him, but it really really just looks like he's giving him a hicky and Edward really really likes it. And Cami perfectly placed the "Emporer's New Groove" line: "We all coulda been spared your little 'kiss of life'!"

But seriously, want to see what Twilight is like? This is spot on:
(I would like to take this moment to say that the following video has some swearing and one pretty inappropriate comment. Those of you who only watch PG movies should probably skip this one.)

The day after that my whole family went up to Logan to spend one more day with Kevin before school started and I headed back to Cedar City. I got back about 1 this afternoon, and drove through a snowstorm to get here. *sniff* ...I miss my family.

I JUST FINISHED MY LAST FINAL EVER

2008-12-11T18:14:00.003-07:00

And I also paid my last cent to SUU for my cap & gown. Apparently you have to die or be about to give birth any second to get out of walking here at SUU. I guess I spent the last cent here for myself anyway, I may end up donating a lot more money to the SUU fund to get Kelly through if we end up staying in Cedar.

I am done. I was going to say officially done, but I suppose that comes with commencement and the diploma. But I have done all I can do. Woohoo! College-graduate Dani!!! I should throw a party.

My College Career is Coming to its Close.

2008-12-10T22:10:00.004-07:00

That's right, I am one in-class essay away from my bachelor's degree. I think it's funny I paid so much for something known as my "B.S. Degree."

But really, college has NOT been B.S.--except for maybe Sight Singing. I know this is an important class, but I was already very good at rhythm, so I didn't learn that in that class. I did learn to identify the intervals and chords played on a piano, but when it comes down to the singing part, I am an utter failure. I was told, "Sing a Perfect Fifth." So in my mind I hear a perfect P5 and then told my voice to do it and out came--ugh, something between a Major Third and a Perfect Fourth. I really cannot sing. I think the instructor finally figured out that it wasn't that I didn't know it, but that I really am just incapable of singing. He B.S.ed my grade accordingly. My first B, soon to be followed by three more semesters of Bs in Sight Singing. And I was grateful for them all. Seriously, to me that class was "Hey, what do you weigh? ...Oh, 100 pounds? Ok, in three weeks you must bench 700 pounds or you fail. Excellent! See you in a few weeks!" A good friend from high school used to say "If you can talk, you can sing." That may be the case, but it doesn't mean you can sing well.

Fortunately for you, surviving Sight Singing I-IV isn't what I'm here to write about today. I'm here to write about my overall college experience. I've taken some really crappy classes, like History 2700 and Arts Retrospective, and I've taken some really amazing classes like Hitler and Nazi Germany, World Military History, Ancient Greece--(okay, everything taught by Dr. Ping), Music Theory, Ballroom Dance, and Band, but sometimes even better than the classes I knew were going to be amazing were the classes I took that I thought would fit into the "just okay" category and ended up being incredible: Nutrition, Dance 1010, Popular Music in America, and Honors 4010.

I have been pushed and stretched in ways I couldn't have imagined back in high school. I have done things that scared me to death, and I have even done them well. I played Mozart's Concerto for Clarinet. I wrote and did a presentation on Synesthesia to a class of the smartest people on campus, and was brave enough to do it on camera, too. I worked a very nice camera that I never thought I would dare touch and edited a video of a classmate's presentation. I wrote my massive senior thesis on the brave individuals in Germany who risked their careers, educations, reputations, families, and lives to commit treason to stand against Hitler. And now it's being published. I have witnessed nearly every friend meet someone, start dating, become engaged, get married, and many of them have babies in a shorter amount of time that I have been dating Kelly. I have lived with impossible roommates and resisted every temptation to wail on them with a bar-of-soap-in-a-sock, tear the labels off their canned food, throw away the dishes I always washed for them, say those horrible biting remarks that so often pop into my head, or color on their faces with a Sharpee while they were sleeping on the couch with various frat boys. I witnessed my best friend give up everything he owned, every plan he made, even the love and respect of his family because he believed a few words I said about Jesus. I have postponed my wedding to send him 6,000 miles away to help others experience the change in their lives that he was able to experience only a year before. I have turned down numerous marriage proposals. I learned I have Synesthesia (that's right, normal people don't think words have colors). I learned the merits of indexes, prayers, and the occasional break with a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and an episode of "The Office," and the worthlessness of excuses, always following the crowd, and complaining. I discovered I am a better writer than I thought. I learned the value of other's thoughts. I have made friends, dealt with loss, and learned the insignificance of myself. I have become more confident. I have grown.

I have become somebody.

Scary Stuff in Cedar City

2008-12-07T12:02:00.002-07:00

On Friday night, Janalee, Emily, and I all watched My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Afterward, Emily fell asleep and then stumbled into her room and went to bed, and Janalee and I kept talking. Around 1:30 AM, Janalee and I heard something by the door and then the doorknob rattled. At first we thought it was our other roommate, Shannel, coming home. (She's not around much, ever since we caught her stealing our stuff. I wish she'd come back, though, because I think she has one of my skirts, my 4 GB flash drive, and a bunch of my makeup--but that's another story.) Then whoever was moving the doorknob stopped, and Shannel never called us or rang the doorbell or anything like she normally would. So Janalee and I got a little scared. Who could be trying to get in our front door? I thought it sounded like something one or more of our friends might try just to scare us (*cough* DerekBryanKateBeckyRandyMikeJonEtc. *cough*) But still, who knows? Then we unfortunately remembered Shannel's window was unlocked and also situated right next to the front door, so we grabbed a phone and a frying pan (just in case! Better safe than sorry! I would personally have preferred a baseball bat, but we don't have one, and a frying pan worked fine in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Arc.) We managed to lock the window and tried to see the front step, but the angle was wrong. We were just a little too creeped out to go to bed at this point, so we talked longer and then Janalee dragged her mattress into my room and slept on the floor. The next morning we ate breakfast and wondered who could have been on our porch last night, so since it was hours later and daylight, we opened the door and GUESS WHAT!

There was a baby on our porch.

Just kidding. What really happened was a paper fell to the ground. And on that paper was a reminder that our ward was going to the temple and meeting at 3:15 at the church. Yeah. The Relief Society president and a guy from the Elder's Quorum were out on their razor scooters late last night delivering flyers and when they stuffed it between the door and the frame, they must have grabbed the doorknob and jiggled it. Yep. Pretty much Janalee and I fell over each other in laughter at this point. Then we got dressed and went to the temple.

NINJA!!!!

2008-12-05T17:52:00.003-07:00

NINJA!!! In honor of today: The Day of the Ninja

P.S. This is awesome

P.P.S. Paul Simon used to look like what my dad used to look like:

Paul Simon

My Dad, Kevin, and Me-the-baby.

Tedward

2008-11-20T23:25:00.003-07:00

Hello readers. I know Twilight is getting a lot of hype lately, (despite the fact that from the crappy previews I've seen the actors suck and it looks really really low budget, and it's meant for a bunch of scream-y preteen girls..."It's like a stupid dumb-dumb movie for kids and stuff.") well, I stumbled across this little gem. Enjoy Dimlight !!!

Letter + Letter = Doubly Good Day

2008-11-18T18:35:00.003-07:00

That's right! The postal strike in Uruguay is apparently over! I received not one, but TWO letters from Kelly today!!! If my readers could please be praying for him, he's with a difficult companion this transfer. Apparently the guy was in the Brazilian special forces and killed terrorists before the mission. (Oh gosh, I just said the mission. Kelly is always rubbing off on me, even though I haven't seen him in nearly 20 months.) Also, there are a lot of investigators that need some prayers on their behalf.

Even more urgent, Kelly has sent a referral to the missionaries in Utah's own Ogden Valley. That's right, he sent missionaries to his parent's house. If you could please just be praying for Kelly's family, and also probably for the missionaries' safety (just kidding about that last bit) it would be very helpful and very much appreciated.

Sorry for not updating this recently, it's been a week full of crazy. And it's kind of hard to type since my thumb is back in a brace. I'm off to print some pictures of Kelly's mission so I can take them to his parents over Thanksgiving Break. Oh bye!

An Ode to Uncle Billy

2008-11-07T11:32:00.006-07:00

A ol' man and a ol' woman was settin' on th' porch, don't you know.
Th' ol' woman said, "You know what I'd like t' have?"
Ol' man said, "What's 'at?"
She says, " A big ol' bowl of vaniller ice cream with choc'late sauce an' nuts on top!"
He says "By jing, I'll jus' go down t' th' store an' git us some." She says, "You better write that down or you'll fergit it!"
Went to th' store, come back a good bit later with a paper sack. Hands it over, she looks in there, sees two ham san'wiches.
She lifted th' top off one of them sand'wiches, says, "Dadgummit, I told you you'd fergit! I wanted mustard on mine!"

A farmer was haulin' manure, don't you know, an' 'is truck broke down in front of a mental institution. One of th' patients, he leaned over th' fence an' said, "What're you goin' t' do with that manure?"
Farmer said, "I'm goin' t' put it on my strawberries."
Feller said, "We may be crazy, but we put whipped cream on ours!"

"No rest for th' wicked, an' the righteous don't need none."

PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA!!!!!

2008-11-05T11:14:00.004-07:00

I am so excited.

That is all.

SUU Wind Symphony, a Returned Car, my Parents, Improv at the Grind, and a Fun Halloween

2008-11-03T16:50:00.009-07:00

As a clarinetist in SUU's Wind Symphony, I was required to participate in the annual Halloween concert where everyone dresses in costumes. It was on Wednesday the 29th, and I was a sailor girl and we made my roommate, Janalee, into an awesome pirate wench.

My parents drove five hours to come to it (they didn't wear costumes. They're not that into Halloween.) but it was a fun concert, even though the Acting I students acting out Eric Whitacre's "Godzilla Eats Las Vegas" was ...interesting. That's not really the story though.

After the concert my parents took me and Janalee to Chili's for dinner. When we walked in the place was pretty full, and Janalee and I were still dressed as a pirate and a navy girl, and this guy sitting at a booth put his hand over his mouth and very obviously tried to be discreet at pointing us out to his friend, who didn't even try to be sneaky in getting his eyeful. Janalee and I then became a little more obvious when we burst into a fit of giggles. Well, we sat down and had a nice dinner with my parents, who are awesome. I had such a fun time! We were so busy laughing and talking we didn't realize we were the last people in the restaurant, (which I kinda felt bad about, because I hated that when I was a waitress and had to close.) I was sad when dinner was over because we said goodbye in the parking lot and Janalee and I drove home in my car (which my parents kindly brought down to me since it has been stranded in Springville where it broke down, was fixed, and was left at my grandma's house for a few weeks) and my parents went to a hotel to spend the night before they headed off early the next morning. It was so good to see them though and I had such a good time!

On Thursday Jana and I went to the Trunk-or-Treat in the Institute Parking lot, but by the time we got there all the candy was gone. I did get some scalding hot chocolate, though, which I managed to not only burn my tongue with, but also spill on my foot.

On Halloween Bryan Bullock came over and we worked on his amazing fish costume.

It had previously been a pillow at DI, but he has a good imagination, I guess. It was very original, as you can see from the picture. The thing on his head is the fish head pointing straight up. It also had a tail on the butt.

Then Janalee, Bry, and I all carved jack-o-lanterns!
They turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself! We went to Walmart to get candles for them, and Bryan spilled the melted wax from one of them on my pumpkin, but it was very Halloween-y, since it looked like my pumpkin got shot in the head. Creepy!

After that we persuaded his roommate, Dallas, to go to Off the Cuff with us at the Grind. It's an improv group that does hilarious shows every Friday night at 10. They did a Halloween show, and one of the on-going jokes was about how none of us went to the Howl, which started at the same time on SUU's campus. It was a really fun day! That night Janalee and I had a sleepover in our living room.

Then next day we slept in and worked on homework and then rented the movie "Penelope" and liked it so much when it ended we started it over and watched it all the way through again. And on Sunday after church Janalee and I were very bored so we got out her playdough. She told me her mom used to make her and her sisters little fingernails out of playdough when she was little, so I tried it. Then I went a little further and made claws. Not very easy to put on, I might add.
This is the scariest face I could manage, although inside I felt a little like Maleficent....bwahahaha!!!

Stop Vandalizing!

2008-10-27T18:35:00.006-06:00

So Janalee, my partner in crime, is also my accomplice in vandalism! Saturday night we were bored and trying to figure out what to do with our evening. We were going to watch a movie, but seriously, we always do that. So Janalee lighted upon a brilliant idea! She had the mother of all sidewalk chalk collections under her bed! But it was dark, so we had to stay within the glow of our own porch light, but we decorated our step for Halloween!

But while we were out I heard someone say "Stop vandalizing!" and I turned and saw a guy riding toward us on a bike. I thought it was probably one of the guys that lives in the apartment below ours just joking with us, but then he rode right up to us and guess what! He was a cop! I wasn't entirely sure what to say and Janalee seemed utterly speechless, although her dad is a cop and should have more experience than I do, right? So I said "we really do live in this apartment," and I was about to point out that it was just sidewalk chalk, but before I could he had me in facedown on the ground and wearing handcuffs!

Ok, just kidding.

Really, he was just chuckled after I said it was our apartment and said "Nah, just kidding. I'm just out to disuade the bad guys and startle the innocent." (Or something to that effect.) It was pretty funny, though.

Me and our Halloween art

And Janalee

After Janalee and I had finished our artistic masterpiece, we came inside and I stuffed thirteen pieces of bubblegum into my mouth at once. It was great until I started gagging. Actually, it wasn't great at all. I don't even like bubblegum. So why did I do this, you ask? Well, quite frankly, I don't know... but I got a great picture out of it!

Wonder of Wonder "Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)"

2008-10-19T13:31:00.009-06:00

I was just thinking about how boring my life really is. I mean, things happen, of course, but nothing of interest to anyone but myself. Like getting hit by a truck, or my car breaking down in Provo last week, leaving me stranded at my grandma's house. Believe me I have all sorts of interesting things going on in my head, but I just don't know how to put them in words. That said, here's the old college try anyhow:

Last night I went to a musical entitled "Musical of Musicals (The Musical!)." It was a highly enjoyable performance, filled with parody, excellent facial expressions, wit, and lots of laughter. The production took place in SUU's blackbox theater, a small area with a small audience; for instance: I sat on the back row, a.k.a. the fourth row. Because of the setting, everyone is able to see the actors (all six of them) very well and feel involved with the production, rather than just be a spectator. The show comprised of five short sections, all telling the same story of a girl who can't pay her rent, her boyfriend who pays it at the end, a conniving landlord, an advice-giving woman, and two chorus members who play various parts in each section. The music is from a lone pianist, who also serves as a narrator, with parts such as "Abby makes her forty-second grand entrance! The audience applauds out of habit," to which we, the audience, respond with habitual-like clapping.

Each of the sections was based on the different styles of popular musical composers. The first act, simply entitled "Corn!," was based on the musicals of Rodgers & Hammerstein. Of course it starts out with Big Willy riding in on his horse singing "Oh what beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful (*Inhale!*) beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful (*BREATHE!*) beautiful beautiful beautiful (*GASP!*) beautiful beautiful CORN!" He runs into June, his love, and they sing "I Don't Love You" until interrupted by Jidder, the landlord with a lease that says if June doesn't pay her rent she had to marry him. After Jidder and Big Willy leave, June gets some advice from Mother Abby in the form of a song that sounds suspiciously like a spoof-medley from The Sound of Music (something about "ford every stream"). Exit Abby, and June falls asleep and has a "highly-symbolic dream-ballet" until Jidder wakes her up and carries her off to be wed. Big Willy debates, in song of course, whether to save her and settle down with his beloved corn (oh, and his girl) or to go off and see the world. Unfortunately, when he finally decides to save his girl and pay the rent for her, she is already married to the villain. Fortunately, Mother Abby realizes that the marriage certificate says 5 o'clock, but Kansas has just adopted Daylight Savings Time, so at 4:10, they are not yet married. Big Willy is to marry June afterall, but Jidder comes out with knife! But he trips and falls on his own blade and the story ends happily with "D-A-Y-L-I-G-H-T-S-A-V-I-N-G-S-T-I-M-E Day! OK!"

The other four parts are respectively based on the musicals of Stephen Sondheim (five scary tenants of an apartment complex called "the Woods" with an unappreciated artist/serial killer landlord, and
"Roses are red
Violets are blue
Some lyrics rhyme
Some don't"),
Jerry Herman (Abigail von Schtarr: "I can't sing or dance, but I'm the star of the show!" with numerous costume changes, and a background semi-plot of Mr. Jitters: "you must pay the rent" Junie Faye: "but I can't pay the rent" boyish William in short pants:"I will pay the rent" and a cross-dressing villain in red heels),
Andrew Lloyd Webber (a through-sung rock opera about a washed-up diva who feels that she is above rent-paying, a phantom landlord who is actually a cat-of-many-colors, and some harsh digs about over-the-top, stealing from Puccini, and a recurring piece "I've heard this song before!"),
and Kander & Ebb (set in a 1930s Cabernet-- scarily gay, prostitution, jail, lots of foreign languages, and Fosse-like slinking).

It was awesome. I know some people didn't get it, (like the old couple sitting next to me who laughed only during the "Corn!" part, or 95% of the theatre who didn't laugh at all during the Sondheim section, which, in my opinion, was probably the funniest), but truly magnificent writing: both lyrics and the almost-but-not-quite-the-same music.

Yay I Have a New Follower!

2008-10-09T19:00:00.003-06:00

As stated in the title I have a new follower! That brings the grand total up to...drumroll, please...two! Thank you, Amy. (But Lindsey also says she reads it, so...awesome! 3-ish!)

That is all.

Oh wait! P.S. My week is feeling better now. I don't know why, but I'm happy again! I hate being unhappy or angry or downright depressed, which I really was earlier this week, but not so anymore!

Oh, and Matt Nickerson beat me over the head today--with a paper, but still, he's my professor ;) Good times.

Oh, and The Office is on tonight. Good.