Very quick update

I have to be at school at 7:15 today. (Our new contract time on Thursdays.) So I have to leave in a few minutes, but I had to post this:

While I'm sitting here on my own couch, in my own house, Adam is taking a shower in OUR OWN BATHROOM.

It's all plumbed and done!

Happy Dance - Happy Dance - Happy Dance!

Sorry, ladies - no photos to go along with this post...

I'm a huge NPR nerd

So much so that I listen to it every day on my way to and from work. Great for my job, not great for my trivia knowledge - my lack of pop radio knowledge really shows.

But I digress.

I'm watching the Democratic National Convention, waiting to see Hillary's speech. I'm on the NBC feed, listening to Brokaw and other NBC talking heads. Imagine my surprise to see that one of their analysts is Michele Norris, from "All Things Considered."

I hear her voice every day, but I've never seen her face. (Yes, I know, we have this wondrous thing called the innernets that allows us to find out just about anything we want about anyone we want, but I'm not going to come home and Google a radio personality. I mean, come on.) Yet, anytime I see someone from NPR on TV, I'm fascinated. I love to see what they look like.

Nine times out of 10, they look nothing like I pictured in my head. She's no exception.

•••

On our way home from dinner tonight, we listened to Kathleen Sebelius's speech. I like her so much. She makes me proud to be a Kansan - and that's not something I say a lot when we're in the national spotlight. Usually, it's our two-steps-backward thinking that we're being highlighted for, not our talented politicians.

•••

I'm off so I can watch the film and speech.

UPDATE: Watched the Hillary speech. I'm obviously a little biased, but I thought she did a great job. I can't imagine how hard it would be to stand up in front of the nation and give that speech, after working so hard to be elected herself.

I loved watching the reactions of the crowd as NBC cut between Hillary and the people. Some of them were genuinely worked up to the point of tears. I am so glad there are so many passionate people out there, who believe in the good that can be done, if only given a chance.

Certain segments of the population really take joy in criticizing Hillary Clinton, using incredibly degrading terms for "woman" when they talk about her. That was in the back of my mind last night while watching the speech. I'm pretty sure those people are completely and totally intimidated by a woman who is smarter than they are, and more powerful than they are.

It's a lot harder to keep a woman under your thumb when she can run circles around you in a mental marathon. That kind of stuff really makes me mad. Why, in 2008, do people still insist on judging her or any other woman in those terms? What does that matter?

She's just a senator, not a female senator. I hate that qualifying of the term all the time.

Leading up to the speech, all of the talking heads kept saying how worried the Obama camp was about her speech. They didn't know what was in it, what she was going to say. I think that's so funny - what did they think she was going to do?

Unity is the word of the day. I hope that sentiment lives through this election and on into the next president's term. (No, I didn't say Obama - not going to jinx it yet.)

The best show on TV

If you're not watching "The Closer" you should be.

Yes, I've written about the show before, but it was last season. I've been quietly watching it this season, since it premiered a few weeks ago. Even Adam has gotten into the show this season.

Tonight's episode "Sudden Death" was amazing. I was crying at the end.

Thank God for shows that premiere during the summer, so I've got something to tide me over until Fall TV starts. The episode is on the DVR, and I'm pretty sure I'll be watching it again later this week.

For those of you who aren't "Closer" fans, try it on TNT this week. They usually replay the episodes a few times throughout the week, so I'm sure you can probably catch it.

Two worlds collide

Today Trina and Bonnie stopped in to see me, since Bonnie had to bring Trina up to Lawrence. It was great timing, because they got to school during my supervision/editor's hour, when I only have two students in my room. We had lots of time to talk while I cut up contact forms for Back To School Night tonight.

Trina actually stopped by once before, so she has been to the new digs. She even did a bunch of lab aide work for me (made a bulletin board, made some drawer labels, stuff like that). Today, we just talked.

Hopefully next time they're in town, it'll be on a weekend, or during the evening, so we can go out to dinner or something, and have more time together. These two were two of the three editors from my final year at Derby, and two of the three who went to the Nashville convention with Amy and I. Bonnie, Trina and Sami are a huge part of my early advising days. If I can have kids like them every year, my job will be cake!

That, and, oh yeah, they were a part of the best practical joke I've ever been partly responsible for. When it's not the end of the fourth day of school, the end of Back To School night, I'll see if I can dig back through the blog and find the post about that joke. Or, maybe one of them would like to tell the story?

In another couple of days, we just might be building an OUTHOUSE

If things don't start moving a little more quickly in our bathroom, we very well could be doing our business like this:


Or, we'll be investing in a camp shower that we can hang from the clothesline!

The shower ceramic tile is done, the floor ceramic tile is done. Now, we wait on the beadboard. Once the beadboard is done, THEN we get the sink, toilet and shower completed. Hopefully, that will be sometime between now and the end of the first quarter grading period.

(I'm only half-joking...)

We went ahead and hung up the shower curtain, so it looks a little more done. Getting up at 5:45 to run over to Ma and Pa's to shower is starting to get a little old. Poor Jayne - she's probably pissed that we're waking her up every morning so early. Hopefully we're not waking Mom and Dad up too.

•••

I'm now two days into my fifth year of teaching. Hard to believe!

Things are going well. I'm not completely exhausted, my room is organized, yearbook and newspaper are running like a well-oiled machine. Check back with me on Friday, though - by then, after a full week of school, I just might be totally exhausted.

The Finer Things Club is back in bidness!

Well, well, well. I finally got to play trivia last night - for the SECOND time this whole summer, and we won! The win rockets us up to third place overall for this 10-week session. If all of us can play each week for the next three weeks, we just might take first, if we can oust stupid Carl Ramrod. (And their voice-recognition technology phones - bastards!)

Maybe we won because I was feeling some great "The Office" mojo after our first staff meeting of the year - one of the presenters showed us two clips from the show during her spiel. We all got good laughs out of that.

I had visions of playing trivia all summer long, every week, not a care in the world, since it would never be a school night. Then, I ended up being gone a LOT more than I realized I would be.

See The Bets Week Ever for info on our final wager question...Thank God I was such a fool for the Karate Kid II movie when I was a kid - that helped us get close on the year, and a little help from Trav's brother with a verification by phone.

Since the team had been beaten by a faster entry a few weeks ago, we moved over to be right next to the DJ for the final question. Little did we know, that move put us right between My Favorite Team (our biggest rivals) and the DJ. I'm kinda liking this new "physical intimidation" strategy...

You can also see on Betsy's blog that DJ Big Dog has been reading our blog posts about Xtreme Team Trivia - I guess that's what being Google-searchable will do for you.

By the way, O trivia fans in Wichita, you need to post on here if you'd be interested in playing down there - where would you play? Big Dog says he's actually trying to break into the Wichita market, if he can find some bars who are interested. Maybe you should let him know!

•••

We just got home a little bit ago. I was at school until about 6, then we had dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings - haven't been there in a while. My new obsession Michael Phelps (yes, a total bandwagoner, but who isn't) will be swimming in a few minutes, so I've got to close for now.

ChittumFiles HQ has moved again

It's official - we are now living in the new (old) house.

We still can't shower here, but mom and dad's is only about 6o seconds away by car. It's basically like camping, and going to the shower house each day to clean up. So far, it hasn't been too bad, and I THINK by Friday, we'll be ready to use our real, whole, honest to goodness bathroom.

I'll have to get up early tomorrow and go over to shower, because we're playing trivia tonight. It'll be the last blast before kids come back to school on Monday. I started back officially today, with meetings and luncheons and breakfasts and all that jazz.

I've got lots to do tomorrow once I get to my room.

Look for photos of the house probably this weekend. I want to wait till we get a few more boxes unpacked before I post any new photos.

And I didn't even have to re-register as a Republican!

I thought about changing my registration before yesterday's primary so I could cast a vote for Phill Kline's opponent in the race. I never got around to it, but it doesn't matter. The people of Johnson County made a big statement last night - we don't want someone using the DA's office to continue a personal crusade, we want someone who will prosecute criminals.

Kline was handily defeated last night.

Somehow, though, I'm thinking this won't be the last we see of him. Here's to a Kline-free couple of months.

The more things change

As I was sorting my scrapbooking supplies yesterday at the house, I ran across this:

The date at the top of the photo says 1957, so the house was three years old at that point. To me, the photo makes the house look like it's sitting in the middle of the desert or something. I guess it's the lack of trees. Looking at the top photo and the one directly below here, you can see how the garage was turned into the extra room at one point.


We started setting up the little bedroom today. I know, the photo isn't great, but you can at least get an idea of what it looks like. I'm going to hang that mirror on the wall above the bookshelves, and that other poster will go up on the wall too.

We still have to pull down the painter's tape used to trim the windows. Keep an eye on this blog for the next few days, where I will be posting a diatribe sent to the Scotch company about how much I hate their tape. (I'll even have photographic evidence.)


It's kind of hard to see in this photo, but the carpet has been installed in the craft area, and it's ready to rock. I'm working on getting it all sorted and set up right now.

Mom and Dad stopped by today, and like Mom said, "It actually looks like someone lives here again."

We could be moved in right now, except that the bathroom isn't done. We're waiting on ceramic tile, beadboard, and the tub to be completely installed. We're sort of debating - do we go ahead and move this weekend, even though that stuff won't be done? We'd have to shower at Mom and Dad's, but at least we'd be moved before I start back to work. I've done the whole "shower at the Y" thing in Wichita before, when hot water heaters went awry and that sort of thing, so showering at Mom's wouldn't be that bad.

We have the apartment until Aug. 31, so we're not at DefCon 1 yet, but moving before school started has been my goal all summer long. Plus, the house looks damn good. I'm ready to enjoy the fruits of all of our hard labor, dammit!

It's about that time

A week from tomorrow is my first official contract day of the school year.

Up until tonight, I have to admit, I wasn't feeling "up" for the start of school. Lots of workshops, lots of moving and home renovation, lots of travel has me drained, I think.

Eight awesome editors and one newspaper worknight later, I'm feeling more excited. We're putting out an issue on the first day of school this year - something I've never been a part of before. So, that means production starts a little early for the Tiger Print staff this year.

Though some of the editors are a little green, they all have great attitudes and great senses of humor. As they trickled in the door tonight, each one shouted "Chittum!" Our copy editor came straight from the airport, where she had just flown in from Arizona.

She leaves tomorrow for Colorado.

She still came to worknight.

Newspaper and yearbook kids are pretty great. At one point I left the room for a minute so I could go down the hall to the restroom. By this time, it was about 7:30 p.m. The building was deserted, except for us. I love looking in the window through my door and seeing the kids in there working as I came back down the hall. They're like their own little organic unit, each working on his or her own project, but chatting together, asking and answering questions, sharing summer vacation stories.

They didn't HAVE to be there tonight, but they were. I wish that newspaper hour during the school day felt like a worknight. Sure, the class period is quite different from your run-of-the-mill high school academic class, but nothing beats a worknight. The energy is completely different.