HSB9, continued

As promised, I have some additional videos and pictures from this year's Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in SF. Enjoy! Who wants to come out for it next year?

Workers Comp

It turns out being a Physics teacher is not safe.

Today I dropped a 2 kg mass on my middle finger from about 3 feet up trying to demonstrate potential energy. It worked - my jumping and hollering definitely convinced my students that the mass had gained some energy. I also accidentally hit a kid in the face with a (flat) basketball and got a rubberband lodged in the ceiling.

So, although this isn't quite as painful as the time I ripped my lips off with duct tape last year, and it didn't leave as much of a mark as stabbing myself with a fork earlier this year, it is going to be a challenge learning how to type with nine fingers.

Tomorrow is the famous "bowling ball pendulum" day, so keep your fingers crossed that I don't have any major mishaps...

Teaching Milestone

A big moment in my life as a teacher today - I have been teaching for an entire year (counting my student teaching). This is a BIG DEAL because I am now getting to teach lessons for the second time around. I'm proud that I have managed to force myself to keep digital lesson plans this whole time - often the last thing I wanted to do was type up the material I taught after a long day. But now I'm getting to reap the rewards - I just opened up a file and had Monday's lesson basically all planned out for me, which was a great feeling!

So now, it is mostly a matter of making changes and edits to improve myself and my lessons, but that should be a lot less time consuming than generating the first drafts has been. Yay!

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass 2009

I'll have some more photos and a recap up soon, but here's two videos I took of Natalie MacMaster and husband Donnell Leahy fiddling up a storm on the Porch Stage Saturday. Her performance was my highlight of the weekend, although there were lots of other great acts too.

This was their opening number:


And this was their closer, a rousing fiddle and dance extravaganza.


This song really captured the relaxed and fun-filled atmosphere of their performance. You could really tell that they were genuinely having a grand old time up there on stage. The crowd really enjoyed the girl (just an anonymous concert-goer) that was invited to dance a bit on stage (2:10) after doing her thing in front of the stage. Neat moment among many at HSB 9. Can't wait for next year!

More to come when I have a little more time...

YTVotD

It's been a while since we had one, and I thought this was pretty cool. If you thought the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies were well-choreographed, check this out:



Sure beats the "Wave," homer hankies, or the Tomahawk Chop, huh? I still like the SJ Sharks chompchomp move though.

There's another less professional video here that shows some of the same cool moves.

Also, Happy Birthday Mom, and cousin Margaret! (And Bailey and Jones!)

Phun Physics

Thought I'd share some highlights from my new life as a teacher. I'm still amazingly busy but really enjoying myself and my kids!

My top 10 best stories / anecdotes so far

• Using Physics as an excuse to watch roadrunner cartoons and the Simpsons in class.
• Surprising and startling them with demos like "pound your hand with a hammer". I couldn't find a good video of this but the idea is that you put a large mass on your hand/arm (I used an 18 lb block of aluminum) and hit it with a hammer as hard as you can. It won't hurt... I promise!
• A student showing up for class wearing these. (Make sure you scroll down far enough to see the picture. Creepy, eh?)
• Physics aerobics! Try to stand with your heels against the wall and touch your toes without bending your knees. One of my students can... but it turns out he's a hyper-flexible waterpolo player. Can you?
• Outtakes from our water rocket launching project. Most launches went fine, but 3 rockets did explode on the launch pad and one took off sideways across the campus quad... right at the principal. No injuries, though!
• Stabbing myself with a fork attempting to do this demo.
• Walking around the room while they're problem solving and feeling like almost everyone is getting it!
• Playing with super-sensitive motion sensors. The kids really got a kick out of seeing a graph of their movements on a computer screen. We also talked about how motion sensors worked and I showed an incredible video about a blind boy from Sacramento who can actually echolocate! He's good enough at it to be able to skateboard, ride a bike, and walk without a cane... and he literally has no eyes. If you want to check out the video it is in six parts on youtube here. It's worth watching if you've got an hour (or even 10-20 minutes for the first parts).
• Students giving me links to weird websites/videos, like this one. I'm not sure why they thought I needed to see that, but it looks a lot like Banjo getting a belly rub...
• Lots of kids telling me that they like / love Physics!

Biking to the Beach

Over Labor Day weekend we didn't have any big travel-related plans, but we did head over to a beach near Santa Cruz for an afternoon of fun in the sun and hanging out on the beach. Alex and I decided to take advantage of the free ride home and bike one-way out to meet our friends on the beach. I've been wanting to bike from home to the coast for a while and this was a great day for it! Here's the route we took, which took us up on Route 9 above Saratoga and down the other side through beautiful and redwood-filled Big Basin State Park as well as the lush canyon of Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park before we got to Santa Cruz.


Here's a couple pictures from our ride that Alex took. Our favorite part was the windy downhill into Big Basin where the road alternated between open views of the forest-covered hills and nice banked turns snaking through giant redwood groves before bottom out at the park headquarters, where we had a nice snack break.


Fortunately there were friends with a car, grill, burgers, and frosty beverages waiting for us there! Hope you all were able to celebrate the "end" of summer in good fashion as well, although it still feels like summer out here in CA.

P.S. - If you're not easily nauseated and don't mind intense biker-style rock music soundtracks, there are some YouTube videos of motorcyclists riding some of this route. This one is going uphill from Saratoga to the high point at Skyline Blvd (passing lots of tired bikers), this one is cruising through the woods on the western side of Skyline, and this one is good if you like Journey and bad video quality. Maybe I need some speakers on my bike so I can rock some Journey too while pedaling through the hills...

August Update

What have we been up to the past few weeks, you ask? Well, let's take a look!

We got to go to a preseason football game in San Francisco - Niners vs. Kate's Broncos - thanks to our friend Karen. It turned out to be quite an exciting game, with the Broncos scoring a touchdown down by 7 with a minute left, then failing on the 2-pt conversion to lose the game. It was entertaining to watch Kate go through the full spectrum of sports emotions within a 30 second timeframe.

Here's a shot of the action. I kinda like the blurry-ness, you can see how fast the wideouts are moving relative to the linemen.

And here we are (Cara, Dustin, Kate, with Karen hidden behind Kate) bundled up against the chilly SF August evening.

And as you know, Kate is now teaching kids that Physics is fun. Most recently/currently she's doing a project involving bottle-rockets:

3... 2... 1...

Just this weekend went to one of our favorite summer activities - Shady Shakespeare in Sanborn park near Saratoga. This year our friend Mikey was in it, playing Touchstone in "As You Like It." Here's a few shots from our picnic cookout beforehand and the performance.

Kate happily stocking up on the ever-important pickles.

The Adams manning the grill

Other friends - Dustin, Kate, Ashley, (another) Adam, Cara, Katie (hidden)

Blurry Mikey in one of several compromising positions his role required.

Touchstone and Celia peeking through the curtain.

Bravo!

And of course Banjo is being cute as always. Somehow he always manages to turn would-be distinguished poses into something silly just in time for the shutter, but the results are usually pretty amusing. Not quite the surprise squirrel picture, but still pretty good.

If teaching doesn't work out for me...

I think I might have a promising career as a lunchlady.

One of my goals for the end of summer was to stock our freezer with healthy breakfasts and lunches that I can grab on the go on days I'm too busy to make something. Breakfasts are particularly challenging because my new teacher schedule has me waking up at 5:30 or 6:00 am (class starts at 7:27) and I just can't force myself to eat that early in the morning.

So, in the last couple of weeks I have made the following:

~12 Gorgonzola Burgers (top left)
~80 muffins (top right), both apple-walnut and pumpkin-cherry. I did make them healthier, substituting some apple sauce for oil, halving the sugar, and using whole-wheat flour.
~27 burritos (middle / left), both beef and chicken
~20 baked potatoes (bottom left), with vegetarian chili, broccoli, onions, mushrooms, and cheese
~5 batches of pesto (bottom right)

Tom has contributed, too, with double batches of pecan bars and lemon bars, SOME of which found their way into the freezer. Suspiciously, I couldn't find them to photograph when I was making this post, though. Do you have anything to tell me, Tom?

So, the freezer is packed and I am getting ready for my first day of school (tomorrow!). Hopefully this will last us a couple months, at least, and it will be nice not to have to eat the dreaded school sloppy joes on mornings that we couldn't quite stretch the leftovers.

Banjo and Rufus say: "We can has cheezburger?"

2nd Floor Mid-Mass Reunion

This weekend we got another visit from our good ol' Dartmouth friend Frank, who was in the Bay Area on a buisness trip again but this time stayed an extra day to socialize! Also in the area for a few weeks on a med school rotation is our friend Matt with whom Frank and I (and some of our other readers, I think) shared a corner of Mid-Mass (dorm) during our sophomore year. Friday was Matt's birthday, so we celebrated by going to a local comedy club, which gave us all some good chuckles. Saturday we decided to head over to Santa Cruz to see the sights, beat the heat, and visit our favorite Greek restaurant ever. Here are some of the highlights.

From the nice walk along the cliffs near Lighthouse Field Beach, where we watched the surfers catch the waves for a while.

Getting up close and personal with the piles of sea lions that are always hanging out on the boat landing at the wharf. Frank seemed strangely compelled to try to communicate with the sea lions in their native "language," but I'm not sure if he ever got through to them...

While Kate and Matt got carmel apples on the boardwalk, they decided to treat Frank to a surprise snack and have him guess what it was. Can you guess? It was chocolate covered bacon. Frank got close by guessing "pretzel." Sure puts the fried twinkie stand a few booths away to shame.

Here's Kate at our favorite carnival booth - the tennis ball bazooka. You shoot tennis balls out of this pneumatic cannon at 186 mph at various targets. The only prize you get is the satisfying "whoooompfh" of each ball getting blasted out the barrel, but trust me it's worth it.

Good times, gentlemen! Come back soon, Frank.