Jilli California

I've been in California for five days. In those five days, I've experienced two very "California" things that I haven't on all my trips here before.

For about 15 seconds on Tuesday morning, I watched chandeliers shake and icewater move while my chair rocked underneath me.

It felt exactly like rolling water under me. I'm so oblivious though, that it wasn't until someone said "Hey, that's an earthquake" that I actually realized what had happened. That thought never crossed my mind.

We were far enough away from the epicenter that we didn't feel the full force, I'm sure, but I'm so glad I have experienced that. The other teachers who were at the conference with me were up in a ninth floor room and they said they felt the building sway about three feet to the left and right. I was on the ground floor, so I didn't get that sensation.


We did get to go to the Padres game.


Seventh-inning stretch, of course.


I wore a K-State shirt to the ballgame. I like to do that when I'm far from home to see if anyone else around is a K-Stater. While we were waiting in the ticket line, this guy up in the office got our attention. It was intensely gratifying since I was only one of two KSU fans in a whole group of KU fans all week.


We did get to the beach at Coronado island.








We had to cram in the subway to get to Coronado, since we set out right at rush hour. It was so nice to be able to get around on trains all week.

P.S. The weather in San Diego is freakin' great.

More later.

Closer and Closer

Even though I haven't been home much the last few weeks, the house elves are continuing work
The hardwood floors are now done and we are able to walk on them.

The appliances are back in place in the kitchen.

The two big stumbling blocks right now are the bathroom (which is why you won't see it here), and the craft room. We're waiting on carpet to be installed on Monday, and then we'll be able to move our office from the apartment to the house.

The carpet was supposed to be installed last Wednesday, but the guys never showed up. That has happened to us a couple of times, with various other contractors. How can you conduct business that way?

Another view of the dining area - sans carpet.


I have started moving some of my yarn and scrap stuff to the built in cabinets. But, I have to wait until the other furniture is in the room to truly get it organized. That's the flooring that will be covered by carpet tomorrow (hopefully).

Let this be a lesson to you

We spent Saturday night on the Country Club Plaza last night.

Did we eat at the Melting Pot? Kona?

Have drinks at O'Crowds? Tomfooleries?

Nope.

We spent Saturday night at the Apple Store on the plaza, watching Genius Beau remove the hard drive from my laptop and replace it with a new one. It's amazing to me that something that would fit in the palm of my hand could cause me so much stress this weekend.

The first question he asked: "Was it backed up?"

The first question Amy asked when I texted her about my predicament: "WTF? Backed up?"

Um, SOME of it was. Certainly not all of it. Most of my school stuff is backed up, I believe, but I'm not sure what else was. I guess I'll find out as I start looking for things. Thankfully, I've been using my school laptop for most of my work the last few weeks, so any new documents for school are on my other machine.

And yes, I backed up everything on THAT laptop last night after we got home from the Apple Store.

Bad news is: I was planning to take my personal laptop to California this week. It's smaller, lighter, easier to travel with than the MacBookPro.

Good news is: I'm a procrastinator, so I hadn't yet built anything new and saved it only to the laptop yet. Didn't lose any stuff specifically for the workshop.

The other good news: We bought the laptop last summer. The warranty expires August 4, so the new hard drive was installed free of charge under warranty. That's about the only positive out of the whole deal. Well, that, and the fact that it made me go back up everything else.

So, ladies and gents: BACK UP EVERYTHING. I thought I'd get lucky, that they'd run recovery since it was under warranty. Nope. Especially those of you who have tons of photos of your little babies on your computers.

I'll probably regret this, but...

Does this guy look familiar?


I can do this because I no longer live in the same town, so I know he won't drive to my house to kick my ass for doing this.


And in the category of "It's A Small World After All" here is a photo of Betsy, a student in the Yearbook section of camp, circa 1998. If you look in the bottom right corner, you'll see that her instructor for the week was my high school journalism adviser, Becky Lucas.

Betsy looks EXACTLY THE SAME to me. Some people just age well, I guess. Maybe Betsy and I were destined to become friends eventually.

We're done with the Kedzie Krier, so it's off for a walk to Aggieville for some ice cream as their reward. It's not as hot today as it has been the last few days, so I don't think we lose any students to heat stroke on the walk down.

Welcome to Manhattan, where we sit at the bar and play and play Round Robin Mullets

Day three of Flint Hills.

We're in production on the Kedzie Krier and tonight is our late night. Hopefully we'll get a lot done today, so we won't be here too late into the night. Deadline is 3 p.m. tomorrow.

Last night, we made the annual pilgrimage to Last Chance. It was a small group, and the conversation turned to mullets. Not sure what precipitated it, could have been the 4X4 truck, covered in mud, with a four-wheeler in the back that cruised down Moro. There just might have been a mullet in the cab.

Cary, the New Yorker in the bunch, was by far the winner of the "list the mullets" contest.

The rest of us could simply describe the mullets, but he knew all the names.

Kentucky Waterfall.
Business in the front, party in the back.
Fe-Mullet.
Fam-Mullet.
Achy Breaky Bad Mistakey.

This list is a poor representation, I'm forgetting a bunch. Cary needs to jump on here and comment so he can fill in the blanks.

•••

We're doing a story about past camps - the workshop has been in existence in some form since 1959. I've been looking at old camp yearbooks, and they include portraits of each camper. In the 1971 edition, I ran across a GEM.

Bob D. Lutz, Derby High School, Panther's Tale Sport Editor.

Yes, yes, Eagle friends, I shot a copy of it. I'll be holding on to that one for a while.

Off to help with production.

Really, kids? You think you're so smart.

We got our green on last night. I had a check to deposit, so we rode our bikes to the bank. Once we got home, we decided to walk over to the Daily Dose "Coffee Shop and Bar." It's nice to be able to do some commuting on bike or foot, since we won't be able to commute to work by bike or bus. (Come on, KC, get a freakin' light rail! Or, just a more comprehensive bus schedule!)

I had some work I needed to get done for my last two camps, and Adam was reading a book, so we thought going to the coffee shop would be a nice change. Allegedly, the shop turns into a 21 and over establishment after 9:30. I don't believe that.

Decent atmosphere, but mixing a coffee shop and bar doesn't really work, at least not in this place. The bar is in the back, but you can have drinks anywhere in the establishment. It seemed like most of the drinkers were young kids, and by that, I mean 21, 22 (God, I'm getting old).

At the tables in the front, it was mostly people like Adam and I: a girl who was applying online to JCCC, and working on some paperwork, a guy with three (!) calculators and a giant scary math textbook. But, there was a sitting area near us filled with a drunk drama queen and two boys. As she spewed expletives about some horrible event in her life, the boys were feeding her more to drink.

You know, if you have to do that, I don't care, just do it quietly! It's not like we were in a bar and there was loud music. It was quiet in the area, so all of us could hear EV-Ree-Thing she was saying, whether we wanted to or not.

Thankfully, she got some kind of code red text message and had to leave RIGHT THEN. So they left. We all breathed a sigh of relief and shared knowing glances.

Unfortunately, we sighed too soon.

The next little couch group was boys who looked the same age as my students (read: not over 21). Boy, did they think they were cool. Here's an excerpt of their conversation, which seemed curiously spoken above private conversation level on purpose:

"Wow, I sure do love my friend Mary Jane."
"She's so cool."
"She makes me really hungry though. All the time, I want to eat, eat, eat."
"Yeah, me too. Mary Jane makes me want chips."

I counted. They said Mary Jane 17 times in about two minutes.

Really, boys? Did you get high in your mom's basement, but then decide you needed to go out in public so that you could make sure everybody knows you're cool enough to get high? There was a poor girl sitting by herself at the table next to us, on Facebook on her laptop. Pretty soon, one of the boys sits down and starts talking her up. Thirty seconds later, his posse joins her as well.

Imagine the scene: three teenage boys acting like Seth Green in the movie "Can't Hardly Wait", one woman, on laptop, drinking a beer, all seated at a tiny, two-person bistro table.

I'm sure she was thrilled.

Call Austin Powers, I think we've lost our mojo

The Finer Things Club didn't do so hot tonight at trivia. Oh yeah, we still came in third, but when you're as competitive as I am, third place doesn't cut it.

Must have been that fateful line from "Top Gun" oh so many years ago: "There's no points for second place."

We had a good mix of people - the usuals (sans Betsy), Amy and her friends from college, Amy's parents, and Mitzi's posse friend. Amy's dad came through with "Hogan's Heroes" as the answer to a Name the TV show sound clip.

Maybe deciding to give up "Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza" as our name was a rash decision. This was the first week I've been able to play during this 10-week session, and I'll miss the next two weeks (more journalism camps). I told the team I'll be available by text, if they need me...

For all the type nerds I've loved before...

Go check out this link.

It's "Behind the Typeface: Cooper Black."

Produced in the style of VH-1's "Behind the Music" it's a pretty funny look at a pretty cheesy typeface.

If you're unfamiliar with Cooper Black, picture late 70s, early 80s ringer t-shirts with iron-on letters. You'll recognize it the minute you see the clip.

Enjoy it - it's a couple minutes long. This post is dedicated to my darling husband, Adam, who graciously sat through "Helvetica: The Movie" last night.

Collaboration Nation

Whew. I just returned from a weekend of collaboration with fellow journalism teachers in Manhattan.

It was exhilarating and exhausting. The energy and excitement and organic ideas that spring up from the process really get me ready to go back to school and start working with this year's crop of J1 students.

The ride home is always the time I realize how tired I really am. When we're in the thick of planning, debate, setting up web tools, etc., I feel like I can power through. When it's all said and done, and I'm just a passenger in a car, the zzzz's start flying. It's like my brain needs a rest period or something.



We're trying to develop the first national PLC for journalism teachers. It's tough to be the only one in a building teaching a subject. You have no one to talk content with, no one to bounce ideas specifically related to a journalism class off of. We're going to see if we can make it work using the technology that's out there.

Our goal is to make sure students are actually learning what we want them to. Sometimes, teachers get caught up in thinking like this: "Well, I stood up there and 'taught' them, so of course they know the material."

That's not always the case.

I never thought I'd be excited about collecting data (because many times, the data we collect at school doesn't seem to inform my instruction enough, being the singleton teacher), but I think this is going to be really cool.

We've got a great group - a wealth of knowledge, experience and different teaching styles. It'll be interesting to see what develops.

•••

Of course, part of the exhausting part is that any time there's a meeting in Manhattan, we do tend to "collaborate" until late in the evening every once in a while.

Last night, we traded ideas on "low-light photography" techniques...

Photo by Mark.


Photo by Mark. (I thought this was pretty cool. Guy's got an eye!)



Photo by Jill. This would have been much cooler had she not been looking at me. This was shot from my hip, but with them damn autofocus pre-light on my digital Elph, she knew what I was up to. I was looking up the stairs at the time, away from her, but she figured it out, I guess. Oh well, I still like it.


Kind of funky experimental photo by Mark.


•••

And, I guess I must be doing something right because look what I found on the bathroom wall:


Ten bucks to the first reader who can comment and correctly identify in which establishment these photos were taken!

Okay, maybe not $10, but lots of blog love and fame...

Thank you, Phil Gramm

You have just proven to me that "some" people in government have NO IDEA what it's like for ordinary Americans in their daily lives.

I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine spending $50 last week to fill up my fuel-efficient Pontiac Vibe.

I'm pretty sure I haven't imagined the news stories about foreclosures being up by 50 percent.

I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine the layoff notices that some of my friends have just received.

Good luck digging out of this hole.

Plugged back in

if only for a few hours.

Adam picked me up from the airport and took me by the house to show me how much work he did while I was off molding young minds.

It. Looks. Awesome.

We're getting so close. Everything is painted. We just have to do window trim on a couple of places and a tiny bit of touch up work with the paint. All of the carpet has been removed, and the floor guy starts his magic on Monday.

The ol' place is starting to look inhabitable again.

I've been off at stop number two on the Summer 2008 Workshop World Tour - Dallas.

I leave in the morning to go to K-State for a three-day meeting. I've got to watch "My Boys" and hang out with Adam for at least a little bit of time this evening.

I do my fair share of workshops in the summer, but what I do is nothing compared to some on the circuit. I've grown out of the whole "wanting to be on the road constantly" phase of my life. I like to have some time at home.

Hence, not much blogging mojo tonight. Had I been able to write all week, I might have come up with some pretty good stories, but I'm too tired right now.

For that, I think I can thank the three-year-old who screamed the entire flight home from DFW today.

On this Independence Day, I DEMAND A RECOUNT!

Go see this slideshow to see the entries in the Dress A Dog contest. We didn't even get Honorable Mention!

I'll say it before you can - yes, I am a sore loser!

Some of them are pretty cute.

Think about these little darlings as you're chowing down later this afternoon.



Carmen says: Happy 4th!

Still chipping away

Today was another long working day at the casa. We're trying to get a bunch done since I'm leaving for yearbook camp on Sunday. If we can get the big jobs done while we're working together, then Adam can keep plugging away on the one-man jobs while I'm gone.

Just so you have an idea:

This is what we've demo-ed out of the house so far.

Here's another photo of the kitchen, without all the plastic, so you can get a better idea of what it will look like.


This will be our bedroom. The paint is definitely yellow, not green like it looks here. I guess I should have tried to tone this before I posted, but oh well. Ya wanna see the real thing, I suppose you'll have to visit.


Here's the little bedroom, so you can see what it looks like with the newly exposed hardwood floors.


Here's the green bedroom you've seen before, but now you can see the floor. We spent A LOT of time today prying tack strips up and pulling up the staples. In the photo, you can see what it looks like pre-staple removing.


Tomorrow we paint the living room. I'm hoping we can git 'er done early, because we'll be relaxing by the pool and grill in the late afternoon, before we head off to see fireworks.

I think the bathtub will be put in tomorrow, so I'll definitely have to put a photo of that up. That will make a big difference, I think. It will seem like everything is moving full steam ahead once we get the bathroom done and the floors done.

•••

Sidenote:
I'm thinking about going back to the black version of my blog. What do you think? I'm kind of over the white template.