Heels 101 - Dookies 87

Although I was a little worried at the end of the first half, I'm happy to report that this last night in Durham:

Resulted in this last night in Chapel Hill:

Ty Lawson really took control of the game in the 2nd half - I don't get why he doesn't just drive and get either a layup or a foul every possession. Four in a row now at Cameron! I think Coach K summed it up best by saying "We're not as good as they are."

My insincere condolences to certain spouses, fathers, brothers in law, and brainwashed nephews who may have hoped for a different outcome. But don't worry, there's always the rematch at the Dean Dome on March 8th (4pm EST). I'll be cheering with my fellow (honorary) Tar Heel Sarah in Salt Lake City!

Tales from Teaching

Hi folks,

As my mom commented the other day "you must be busy - you haven't updated the blog in a loooong time". Too true.

My second semester is in full swing - I've been taking 3 classes at SJSU and am teaching 2 classes full time (Physics and Conceptual Physics). Needless to say, "prepping" for two classes while trying to plow through inordinate amounts of dry edu-speak readings has been keeping me busy. But I'm still enjoying myself!

Anyway, I'm going to try and pop on here every so often to give you a taste of what my new career teaching is like.

When I was in high school, the only school-wide organized drills we had were quarterly fire drills. Times have changed - there are now 4-5 drills and protocols that we have to be prepared to lead our students through at all times. A couple of weeks ago, we had a "CODE RED" drill at school. Code red stands for "armed shooter on campus" - it is scary that this is now a common enough occurrence that all students in California schools have to practice it. When the code red is called, we have to lock the doors, turn off the lights, and build barricades in front of the doors and windows. Then we build another barricade in the back of the classroom and everyone has to hide behind it in the dark, perfectly silent, until the police come and clear the classroom. You have to give a special code to the police or they will come in with the SWAT team. Once you're cleared, you have to evacuate the building in single file lines with your hands above your head. Everyone took the drill very seriously, although I had a hard time not laughing at the student evacuating in front of me who had to waddle to keep his pants from falling down (with his hands on his head).

De-pantsing aside, it was a sobering day for me as I think about my new responsibilities as an educator.

Ugghhhhhh-Rod

Remember this from 2007?



Well now there is this.



Sad day for baseball fans. What a mess.

First Annual Sunnyvale Puzzlehunt

Yikes! It's been forever since a post. A miserable 2 in January. Well, it hasn't been for lack of excitement, fortunately. We had a nice holiday trip to both Denver and NC (maybe we'll post on that someday...). It was great to see not only our families, but we had a good visit with Erin and some of Kate's local friends in Denver, and a great reunion of my youth-group friends and leaders at Charity's house in Durham. Good times.

Some of you (Greenmen and immediate family) served as the guinea-pigs for some of our puzzles we were working on over the holidays - thanks for your help. Well, with the help of your comments and suggestions, along with a few new puzzles, we hosted the First Annual Sunnyvale Puzzlehunt last month for about 17 friends (4 teams). Each puzzle led you to another location around our town here, and we ended back at our house for a festive recap and party. It was a lot of fun and we look forward to doing it again sometime, after we let our brains recharge from spending the many weeks beforehand creating and fine-tuning the puzzles!

Here are the four teams that we tricked into particip enthusiastically participated. Happily, all teams finished all 6 puzzles! Thanks again to all our friends and family who helped.

Group 1 (the winners!): Mikey, Pat, Adam L, Rachel doing Puzzle #1

Group 2: Erin, Bailey, Mike, Ashley, Adam R with "Art Through the Ages"

Group 3: Cara, Dustin, Marc, Alex, also with the "Art" puzzle

Group 4: Chris, Ann, James doing the Candy Bowl (not shown: Jessie the Golden Retriever)

Post-hunt festivities, including a raucous game of liars dice

If you're interested in trying out some of the puzzles for yourself, they are not all really possible to recreate electronically, but I'll try to post the ones that work up here shortly. Stay tuned.

Puzzle #1: A Picture is Worth... (12 MB)

1.20.09

Do you ever notice how sometimes you spend so long thinking about an upcoming milestone, important event, or other date as being in the future that when it finally arrives it kinda takes you by surprise? For me, these times have included turning 21, graduation from college, my wedding day, and tomorrow - January 20, 2009. Now I am happy to state that I'm happily looking forward to tomorrow's inauguration primarily because of my excitement and anticipation about the future (despite the status of my 401k) as opposed to bitterness and anger about the past. That being said, I think a lot of people out there will be celebrating the departure of the Bush administration as much as the beginning of the Obama era. I base this claim on the widespread prevalence of the "1.20.09"-themed political merchandise that I'm sure all of you have seen in the form of bumper stickers, t-shirts, hats, mugs, or even hot-sauce. Maybe it's that I spent the previous 8 years living in two areas practically bursting at the seams with proselytizing liberals (Vermont and San Francisco), but I feel like I've been staring at the date "1.20.09" (often accompanied by "BLD" or "Bush's Last Day") so long it's going to be kind of strange to actually write it out, not to mention have it pass by. Interestingly enough, the guy behind all the 1.20.09 swag is from Manchester, VT (wonder if Gordie or Amanda knows him?), and according to the NYTimes sold more than $1 million worth of the stuff in 2007 alone (who knows how much more in 2008), and there's even a song/video about it (the date, not the swag), which I chose not to embed due to its bland predictability.

Also, there is this newsy bit from a Burlington TV station that aired this December about the business, complete with shots of Obama speaking at Dartmouth and hippies making 1.20.09 mugs (click on the image to get to the real video, I couldn't get it to embed without automatically starting, which is annoying). And if you are interested in buying any discounted merchandise, check back in a few days. The "Hilllary - 11.04.08 ... make history" t-shirts have been marked down from $24 to $4, so there might be some deals on all this junk come 1.21.09.

Politically-themed entrepreneurs aside, I hope you all out there find something to look forward too, be inspired by, or be thankful for on 1.20.09.

Most Unusual Pet Names of 2008

It's been a while since we dusted off the old blog, so here is a very important post bringing you the most unusual (according to MSNBC.com) dog and cat names of 2008. Vote for your favorites (or add your own submissions) in the comments.

Dogs:
1. Rush Limbark
2. Sirius Lee Handsome
3. Rafikikadiki
4. Low Jack
5. Meatwad
6. Peanut Wigglebutt
7. Scuddles Unterfuss
8. Sophie Touch & Pee
9. Admiral Toot
10. Spatula

Cats:
1. Edward Scissorpaws
2. Sir Lix-a-lot
3. Optimus Prrrime
4. Buddah Pest
5. Snoop Kitty Kitty
6. Miss Fuzzbutt
7. 80 Bucks
8. Sparklemonkey
9. Rosie Posie Prozac
10. Toot Uncommon

I kind of like #6 for the dogs since it is remarkably close to things we call Banjo, but there are several strong entries for the cats, in particular #2 and #5 for the rapper theme, and #10 for the historo-scatological take.

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.