Oh Christmas Tree!

Despite the fact that we always travel for the holidays, we still get ourselves a Tom and Kate Christmas tree to enjoy in the weeks before we leave. When we go to pick out the tree, we have only one criteria - how pine-smelly it is. Tom and I always spend a good 20 minutes with our noses buried in all of the reasonably-priced trees until we can agree on which one is best. Because "appearance" doesn't factor into our decision at all, we've ended up with some goofy looking trees in years past. But this year the stars aligned and we got a big, beautiful, smelly tree that had somehow found its way into the discount section. Oh happy day!

We got it home and filled it with lights. Being relatively newly-weds, we still don't have a ton of ornaments, but we love the ones we do have. My aunt Susan gave us a traditional "brides" ornament box for our wedding, which contains a variety of blown glass ornaments designed to represent the different aspects of marriage. These include a heart for love in the home, a house for family shelter, a flower basket for beauty in the home, a fruit basket for plenty, a teapot for hospitality, a bird for confidence, a pinecone for eternity, an animal for peace with nature, a fish for Christ and fertility, a rose for the Virgin Mary, an angel for God, and St. Nicholas for giving. There is also one "groom's" ornament - a blown glass pickle. My aunt claims not to know where the groom's tradition came from, but we have our suspicions...

We also have some ornaments that Tom's mom and I made out of remnants from Tom's grandfather Nichols' mobile-making hobby. Tom's grandfather made wonderful mobiles with glass, rhinestones, and mirrors - they are big, delicate, elegant pieces of art. We love hanging those on the tree and always think about Grandpa when we do.

Tom's Grandpa Hill has also contributed to our beautiful Christmas decorations by giving us a hand-made wooden Noah's Ark. Inside the lift-off lid is a whole boatload of jigsaw critters - camels, alligators, hippos, walruses, snakes, elephants, wildebeest, gorillas, buffalo, giraffes, rhinos, llamas, donkeys, kangaroos, moose, lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!

One thing that we are still missing is a tree-topper, so for the last two years we have made our own with stuff we find around the house. This year we made it into a contest with some friends one night after dinner. There were some creative entries, including some geometric snowflakes (Tom), the baby Jesus in a crib (Kate), a tin foil Angel (Miriam), a large silver question mark (Mikey), and a Nichols-family-topper including tin foil renditions of Kate, Tom, Banjo, and Tom's bike (Cara). They were all so good that we've been rotating which one is on top.

We've only been married a short time, but it definitely feels like our own Tom and Kate brand of holiday traditions is starting to emerge - a little bit old, a little bit new, and a lot borrowed from our families. We hope your holiday is feeling as festive as ours is so far!

Up for Air

Hi hi hi!

Friday was my last day subbing as a Physics teacher, so I've finally got time to get back to the blog and my "normal" life. It is unbelievable how fast the five weeks went, and also how busy and exhausted I was all the time!

I called my mom for her birthday last night and was apologizing for not getting a birthday card in the mail in time. Mom, a long-time teacher, just laughed and said she understood completely. She reminisced about how exhausted she always was when the Winter and Spring breaks finally rolled around each year, and how "necessary" every inservice and holiday day is to the sanity of a teacher. I can tell I'm going to be calling my mom a lot in my first few years of teaching...

Anyways, I had a great time teaching, with no horror stories or sour notes at all. The kids transitioned to having me as a teacher very easily - they were fun, and engaged, and interested and worked really hard. In fact, when my supervisor from SJSU stopped by to "observe me", his only comment was that he thought that maybe this gig wasn't challenging enough for me as a student teacher since the kids were treating me so well. I think that's a testament to the classroom management of the teacher I was taking over for and also to the overall culture at this school.

In case you're interested in the Physics side of things, the unit I taught was on Energy and Momentum. I really enjoyed pulling together a lot of demos and activities for this unit - I don't have photos of me doing them, but I am linking to some websites below that show the same activities / demos.

Energy:

Bowling Ball Pendulum
Sand Shakers
Entropy - this one is definitely my favorite, and worth watching!!
Friction of Shoes

Momentum:

Impulse and Egg Breaking
Strongman Apparatus

Power:

Human-Powered Lab

Machines:

Rube-Goldberg Machines
Honda Cog

And just for fun to fill in spare minutes at the end of class:

Matchstick Puzzles
Center of Mass


So I'm taking a couple of weeks off, and next semester I'll continue with my Phase II student teaching, so I'll have two classes of my own for the whole semester. Looking forward to it - there's lots of fun things to be done with Electricity and Magnetism!

Dec. 5 - Happy Repeal Day

Happy Repeal Day everyone! Be sure to celebrate that we no longer have a 21st ammendment today.

Currently on tap (in bottles, technically) at our house:

Recipe: Waggin' Tail Pale Ale
Malt Extracts:
6 lbs ultralight LME
Grains:
1 lb American Pale Malt
1 lb Crystal 40
.5 lb Crystal 20
.5 lb American Vienna
.5 lb American CaraPils
Hops:
.5 oz Centennial (60 min)
.5 oz Cascade (60 min)
.5 oz Cascade (40 min)
.5 + .25 oz Cascade/Amarillo (15 min)
.5 + .25 oz Cascade/Amarillo (3 min)
Yeast:
California Ale – WLP001, pitched into fermenter at 78 deg or so.
Brewing date: 10/25/08
Bottling date: 11/14/08
OG: 1.047
Fermentation temperature: 70-65
Fermentation time: 3 weeks
FG: 1.011
% alc: 4.7%

Public Safety Announcement 2

Every so often I do something that, in retrospect, is really idiotic. I post about these moments to a) prevent you from making the same mistakes and b) give you a chuckle.

Mistake #1) Last night I was prepping one of my physics demos when I found myself needing three pieces of duct tape and only having two hands. So I stuck one on my lip. Seemed like a good idea - lips are moist and flexible, so duct tape shouldn't stick there, right? WRONG!!!!!

Mistake #2) If you find yourself with a piece of duct tape fused to your lower lip, I would advise removing it slowly. Or finding some sort of solvent to dissolve it. Beer? Under no circumstances should you decide to "get it all over with at once" and yank it off.

I hope this post saves someone a half hour of sucking on ice cubes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

YTVotD

Not that anyone watches music videos anymore (or that MTV even shows them), but have you ever wished that the words to the song would describe what's going on in the video? This series of "Literal Videos" does just that, with pretty humorous results. They kind of even remind me of that Yatta video parody.

There are three song videos done in this "literal" style: Tears for Fears' "Head Over Heels," A-ha's "Take On Me," and my favorite, Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Under the Bridge."

Million Dollar (Indian) Arms

Many of you all may have already read about this (I'm sure Sky and Frank were on top of this ages ago) but it's a pretty cool story so I'll pass it along to our vast readership.

"The Million Dollar Arm" is an Indian reality TV show where 30,000 contestants competed to throw strikes at 85+ mph. The prizes were a $100K prize with a trip to the US to train and try out in front of MLB scouts for a shot at a major league contract. The show/contest was sponsored by a SoCal sports management company to try and find untapped baseball talent in a hugely populous country. The two guys that ended up winning, Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, both threw javelin in India and had never picked up a baseball prior to this contest.

Anyways, these guys were both just signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates to minor league deals! Whether it's more smart baseball management move or marketing ploy/ merchanidising opportunity I can't say, but good for them! And... they have a pretty hilarous blog that they've been maintaining during their trip to the US. Their humility, excitement, and unique cultural perspective makes for some real funny entries. Here are some of my favorite lines from their blog:

"Tonight we were celebrating the Halloween Holiday here in America. we are not sure what the holiday comes from, but kids dress up in all kinds of crazy outfits and then go to houses asking for sweets. if people in the house no give the sweets then the kids put toilet paper in their trees."

"The American Football players are so big and have such huge muscles you would not even believe it. Each time they hit each other we are told it is like being in a car accident. These men hit each other many times per match. praise Allah that we have won a baseball contest and a not a football one. i don’t think we could even take a hitting once."

"We went with JB sir to breakfast at a great American breakfast eatery called Dennys. Rinku ordered a breakfast aclled the Lumberjack. We now know that a Lumberjack is a person who works as a tree cutter in the forrest so they must eat a lot of food. this breakfast was quite huge. It had eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, potatos, breads, and pancakes. I had French Toast and both meals were very fulfilling."

"Monday our greatest dream is coming to us. We both get contract to play pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates. We are so happy and excited it is unreal. We are thanking the Pirates and will work very hard to make them proud of our results. We right away went to the internet to locate Pittsburgh on map. It is in north east part of USA and looks like very good city."

There's a lot more, so go read it for yourselves. Congrats Rinku and Dinesh, hope to see you on the field for the Pirates some day!

Birthday Scavenger Hunt

Last weekend, as part of a party abstractly billed as a birthday party for both myself and our friend Mikey (yes, both of us celebrate on Nov. 13th!), Kate organized a photo-scavenger hunt. It was quite a fun, free, creative activity. We had three teams of 3-4 people each, a list of 15 things to photograph, and a couple hours in which to do it. However, this wasn't exactly your standard scavenger hunt. If you've ever played the game "Apples to Apples" it was somewhat like that - each "item" on the list was a phrase or vague description of a scene highly open to interpretation. At the end of the hunt the three teams showed their photo-answers and we voted on the best submission for each item. Enough of the explanation - here are the 15 list items we had to photograph, along with the winning photo for each one:

1) Best use of a beer:


2) "I can't believe we all fit in here!"


3) Someone in handcuffs


4) Group member getting wet (that's Kate)


5) Best use of a political sign (video entry!)


6) Most creative pyramid


7) Friendliest stranger


8) Most artistic garbage


9) An unusual perspective


10) Entire group mid-air


11) Best graffiti


12) Can you find us?


13) A reflection


14) Spell something


15) Best re-creation of a famous work of art


As you can tell, there is a lot of room for unorthodox interpretation of some of these. For example, one group used the same photo for #13 and #15. If you'd like to see all the entries you can check out the photos here - the files are in order and the filenames indicate list number and group (a, b, or c). Feel free to submit your ballot in the comments. Good job everyone - Mikey, Dustin, Marc, Bailey, Kate, Rich, Kathy, Cara, and Alex! It's a great idea for a fun party event if you are looking for one for a group of people!

500 miles

I have now officially passed the 500-mile mark on my new bike! I've had it for about 10 weeks, so I'm averaging 50 miles/week. So, assuming all of that was travel that would have otherwise been done via car (it wasn't, but whatever), and a car that gets 25 mpg, I've saved about 20 gallons of gasoline. With gas at a (now liberally) estimated $3/gallon that gets me to an amazing $60 saved... so yeah, I've still got a ways to go to "pay off" my bike. Let's not mention how much I've spent on bike accessories (hint - probably more than $60).

Did I mention that I like riding just for the fun of it?

Egged on my First Day of School

Tom reminded me yesterday that it has been, like, forever since I posted about what I've been up to. And there have been big changes, certainly worth posting about. So, here's my news.

I finished up 3 of my classes about 3 weeks ago - they are front-loaded in the semester so that people can student-teach in the end of the semester. I think it is a good design, because I was quite ready to be done with them. I still have 2 classes that meet regularly, but they're not so bad.

This first semester, I am technically doing my "Phase I Student Teaching", which for most people means that you observe a teacher's classroom for two periods a day for 6ish weeks and then take over (1 period a day) for three weeks on your own. Usually your "master teacher" gives you lesson plans and materials. I was all set to do this, and had started my observing period at one high school in San Jose, when one of my SJSU professors asked me if I'd be interested in a long term sub position at a different San Jose High School.

So I volunteered. The Physics teacher I am temporarily replacing is having surgery and is going to miss ~4 weeks of the end of this semester. He teaches 2 sections of AP Physics (no calculus) and 3 sections of Junior-level Physics. The teacher and administrators seem very happy to have me - they were preparing lesson plans for a non-Physics substitute, which is an extremely daunting task. Especially when there are two sections of AP classes to consider.

Last week I started attending and assisting in classes full timeso that I would be up to speed by the time the teacher had to leave. I started teaching 1-2 classes a day (using his lesson plans) so that I could get the butterflies out and start getting to know the kids and get comfortable in front of a class.

So as of today, I was on my own. I wrote my own lesson plans for two different "preps" (or class titles) and taught 5 sections all by my lonesome. I'm exhausted, but happy - the day went as well as I could have possibly hoped for.

I didn't want to start a new unit today, so I decided that Fridays would be "fun Physics" day, where the classes do some sort of hands-on activity that reinforces the material from the previous week. We were just finishing up a unit on momentum, so today we calculated how much impulse (change in momentum) was required to break an egg.

We broke lots of eggs today. Nearly 4 dozen when all was said and done. We dropped them, crunched them in our hands, smushed them under weights, bounced them off of sheets, and even threw them at walls. I took an egg-bath at least three times over the course of the day, but I have a few students that got it even worse than I did. At least they were warned. And through it all, I managed to keep all the kids under control, interested (I think), and hopefully even learning some Physics.

So now I am home, showered off, and happy not to be smelling of egg. I am already smothered under a mountain of grading so I'm going to sign off for now. Later, gators.

Halloween Happenings

Did everyone else out there have an exciting Halloween? I heard of some pretty good costumes from some of you. Here's some of how we spent our frightful weekend!

Last weekend we heard there was a Halloween Pet Parade in our town of Sunnyvale, so we took Banjo over to check it out. Here's Kate and the 'Jo with the parade marching down Murphy St.

Even the music was dog-themed! (And from this highly festive community marching band - they even had a keg that they rolled around in a converted popcorn stand with them, you can see it at the end of the video.) Check it out for yourselves below:



Thursday we went to our annual Pumpkin Carving Party hosted by Rachel and Adam. Kate and I did Calvin and Hobbes this year for our pumpkins (last year was Bert & Ernie). Adam is a graphic designer by trade - can you tell which one is his?

You may remember Adam's Einstein pumpkin from last year, too - quite impressive. Here's our two in place to welcome trick-or-treaters at our house.


After handing out candy for a while we went to a costume party with some softball friends. Aside from our Jack & Jill (went up the hill...) costumes, there were some pretty good ones, including

• Hillbilly couple (complete with 8.5-mo. pregnancy, I [heart] Palin tatoos, fake cigarettes, and fake bad teeth)
• Hippie couple w/tie dye and afro
• Sorceress
• Wonder Woman
• Sarah Palin (of course)
• Cloudy with a chance of showers
• Mario (of Nintendo fame, complete with huge white gloves
• Joe the plumber
• Construction worker
• Surgeon
  

Here are the girls:
And the boys:
Hope your Halloween was as full of treats as ours was!

Proposition 8

Banjo can't vote, so he has to express his position on Prop 8 in other ways.

(Note - questionably humorous/disrespectful stunt orchestrated by Tom, not Kate. So don't think less of her for it.)

YTVotD

Last post may have been a little too heavy. Here's a YTVotD for you to lighten things up again. British comedians come through again.

"I'd Like To Have Been In That Meeting: Harry Potter"



And on a totally unrelated note, Go Rays!

Powell's Endorsement

If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to listen to/watch/read Colin Powell's explanation of his recent endorsement of Barack Obama. I know I'm not alone in my respect for and admiration of Powell for reasons beyond his political affiliation - his personal story, career accomplishments, and service to our country are all very impressive. Coming from someone with his degree of foreign policy experience, I believe Powell's backing of Obama - in particular over McCain - says volumes about his ability to lead on a world stage, despite the McCain campaign's efforts to propogate an image of inexperience and naivete. Hopefully Powell's message will reach some of the people out there that still think Obama is a Muslim (but as Powell says, "So what if he was?") who cavorts with terrorists. Then they would at least be making a more informed decision on Nov. 4.


Also, it's nice to hear Colin Powell speak without the shock collar of the Bush administration tight around his neck.

Mt. Price - Desolation Wilderness Trip

Spurred by friend Alex Price out here, a group of us - mostly from work and some of Alex's other friends - took a trip up to the Desolation Wilderness the other weekend to climb Alex's namesake peak, Mt. Price. At 9,975' it is the 2nd tallest of the peaks in Desolation, and while it doesn't have any real maintained trails up it, in general it's just a rocky scramble up from some alpine lakes in the area. We camped at Lover's Leap, a really nice walk-in campground near the big rock outcrop/cliff that makes the campground popular with climbers (and whose perpetual shadow makes Google maps think there is a cliff-side lake there, apparently). It snowed on us a little Friday night, making for a beautiful dusting (or up high a couple inches or more) of white along our hike. Pretty cold too. On to the pictures...


Here's our group heading up.


Abbey Road, Desolation-Style.


Lunchtime! We found a spot as much out of the wind as possible. The weather was pretty ominous at this point.


The cheese was no match for Mikey's new knife.


Time to climb.


Neat picture of frozen lakes above Island Lake, by Alex.


I think the caption for this one should be "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."


Getting higher up the slopes of Mt. Price, picking our way across the boulders.


Starting to get snowy.


Still higher... this is probably near where the final couloir starts. You can follow my tracks in the picture.


Looking up the final couloir to the summit ridge.


On the summit! Looking S towards Agassiz (the one that looks like a cresting wave) and Pyramid Peak (the tallest of the Desolation peaks at 9,983)...


And North, down towards Island Lake and the route up.


East over Lake Aloha towards Lake Tahoe, with more snow rolling in.


This is one Alex took from a different approach, where he ultimately got turned back by a cliffband along the ridge. You can see me standing on the top, as well as the path up. Mikey and I got to the summit ridge via the couloir just beyond the really steep snowy part at the far right of the frame. If you zoom in you can see footprints.


Mikey and me on the summit.


Mikey and I took a different route down, which unfortunately took us over this house-sized boulderfield. Phew! Exhausting. The cliffs at the top left are the ones that turned Alex around at the saddle.


The Yaktrax helped immensely in the snow higher up - thanks Steve! They also completely tore up the bottoms of my old old boots. RIP Dartmouth Raichles.


In addition to enormous boulders there was this particular tricky part. Picture is not mine, annotations are. Imagine it covered in more snow, just not enough to cushion your fall into pointy rocks.


We were a little slow getting down due, but that let us enjoy a beautiful sunset over Smith Lake! By the way, Smith Lake looks like a prime place to come back in the summer for cliff-jumping into the water.


With the help of a near-full moon (when not blocked by the blizzarding clouds) and a headlamp, we made out out after a full day of hiking! Desolation is always a beautiful place to go hiking, and this was no exception. Any more trips this year and we might need to bring the snowshoes, though.


Here's our approximate route.

See - all my cold-weather gear doesn't go entirely to waste out here in California! With luck we'll get back to Desolation for some snowshoeing this winter/spring. There are a bunch more pictures, including some of Alex's nice shots, on my Picasa page. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get any of the large bear that rumbled through our campsite early Saturday morning to sniff around at the bear locker a bit. (!)