It's supposed to be a project progress shot, but it's more like a snapshot of me

or, at least my life and environment. I really just meant to post a quick photo to Twitter so the knitting followers could see what I've been up to.

But, when I stopped to look at it again, I realized that to a close observer, this photo says a lot about me.

You'll notice the ABC logo on the TV in the background. While we watched LOST, I worked on my knitting project. I have to multitask to get anything accomplished, and I think watching TV and knitting certainly counts. The only problem is, with a show like LOST, I have to give a little more mental energy to the show, so it's slow going on the knitting projects.

Kansas City-area readers will spot the remote that goes with our Time Warner digital cable box on the TV tray. The TV tray basically serves as my desk. I keep my laptop there, and it's where I eat breakfast each morning.

Adam and I aren't sit-down-to-the-table-and-eat-dinner types. We eat in front of the TV, hence the trays. I would like to think that if we ever have kids, we'll be the eat-around-the-table types, but since it's just the two of us at this point, we're usually just catching up on DVR'ed stuff.

Eagle-eyed observers will see the Rock Band equipment and the Wii. That reminds me, we haven't had a good Wii party in quite a while. Might be time to rustle one up over spring break.

The Snuggie and the clothes in the laundry basket next to my foot echoes the color on the TV screen. Weird.

We don't have a purple polka-dotted curtain. That's the back of a KSU quilt Mom made for me a long time ago. It's finally warm enough that we can take down our extra window insulation. Maybe Adam can do that on his day off tomorrow. With the sub-zero temps and snow for so long this winter, we needed a little help in the heating department.

In the bottom corner of the photo is our little tropical plant that we've managed to keep alive throughout the late summer and fall. We got some nice plants on sale at the De-Pot just before fall. They're all thriving at this point, despite the dark and cold wintry conditions in our house. When you've got all the windows covered with blankets, it's a little tough to get the required amount of sunlight for houseplants.

I'm sure most people who saw this photo noticed the sock and moved on. And that's fine. It is, after all, supposed to be a photo of a sock. But, like I said, I just thought it was interesting when I saw all of the other things in the photo.

Hope you've enjoyed this brief tour of a Thursday night at Casa de Chittum. I've got to sign off for a few days. One more day of school this week, and then I'll be working furiously to complete graduate school homework between Friday night and Tuesday night.

Wish me luck. I'll need it.

2010 - No hovercrafts or robot maids, but still all good

Happy New Year, friends!

I've done resolutions in the past, and it seems I never accomplish them (short attention span, I think). So, my "resolutions" this year will be more in the form of goals.

Blog more. I noticed that in 2007, when I started this blog, I posted 217 times. In 2008, 234 times. In 2009, after I discovered Twitter - 49 times. Sad, sad, sad.

All that tweeting and time wasted playing Bejewled on Facebook seriously handicapped my blogging. The whole point of starting this blog was to get me writing every day. I always tell my students, the more you write, the better you get at it, just like playing an instrument or a sport. Based on my blogging performance in the last year, I'd say I'm a bad influence.

I'd like to say that I'll post to Betsy's photo blog (I have to call it Betsy's because I haven't posted on it since, oh, last summer), but I know that I'm overextended in cyberspace. I cannot commit to two blogs, tweeting, Facebook, and e-mail. It's probably because I have that silly little thing called a real job...

Keep the e-mail inbox under control. I have a bad habit of not deleting e-mail as I read it, or not saving what I need from it and getting rid of the rest. Just in my g-mail inbox, there were 2,300 messages on Dec. 30. With a little bit of work yesterday (interrupted by sledding) and some work today, I've culled it down to fewer than 800. I will get it cleaned out today. I should do the same with the work inbox as well. It's overwhelming to have all that "junk" always there.

I need to read, decide, file attachments and info immediately, then delete the dang message.

Weekly Panera grading dates. You've probably read something about this over on Betsy's blog, but I need to commit to it as well. For some reason, it's so much easier for me to get school work done if I am not at home. Going to Panera with the girls makes it something I look forward to instead of dreading. We did this a lot at the beginning of the school year, and I was so much more caught up on grading and planning at that point.

Keep motivated and MAKE the time to run and exercise. When I get in the habit of running and working out, I really do like doing it. It's easy to do this during a two-week break from school, when I can go at any point during the day. I need to decide on a schedule and stick to it. Magazines and Web sites always say to schedule workouts on the calendar like you do every other appointment. Maybe I'll try that.

Kat, Mitzi and I have registered to run the Dallas Rock and Roll Half Marathon in March, so at least I have that date staring me down, and a training schedule to stick to. That helps on the motivation front.

Last year, I ran 375 miles. I would love to set a goal of running 500, or even 750, as I have tried to in the past, but I never make it that far. So, my goal is to best my total of 375 for this year. As long as I go farther than that, I'll be happy.

Keep knitting. And trying new and different patterns. Work through the yarn stash. Knit up what I already have, and then I can get new fun yarn. Maybe I'll start knitting things and randomly sending them to people I know...Who knows.

Reading. I would also like to continue my reading list. I've been trying to read more frequently than I had been in years, and I think I did a pretty good job last year. I'll keep up the list on the right side of my blog so you can see what I've been up to. If you have any suggestions for good reads, comment away. I'm always looking for new authors.

I suppose that's enough for now. I don't want to set a super-ambitious agenda simply because it's Jan. 1, and then disappoint myself later. Maybe I should make a goal to check in with myself every couple of months to see how it goes?

What are your New Year's resolutions? How will you do it?

I may not be blogging, but I have been tweeting...

And here's the proof. It's a word cloud of words I used most often in the last year.

Big day at Oak Park Mall - Making Over America with Clinton Kelly

So, anyone who knows Betsy and Mitzi and me knows that we're big fans of TLC's "What Not to Wear."

Imagine our excitement when we heard that Clinton Kelly would be coming to Overland Park for his new project "Making Over America." Weeks ago, when Adam and I were out shopping at Town Center Plaza, we passed at poster at Macy's promoting the event.

I made a mental note of the date, and made sure to tell the girls. Adam, of course, was nonplussed by the news.

Today was the day. I haven't seen that many people at the mall since the day I saw Jamie Walters ("How do you talk to an angel?") at the mall in 1995.

There were chairs set up on the first floor, and priority seating for family members of the 15 chosen makeovers. We decided to stay up on the second level, where we had a "front row" seat at least. It was a little hard to hear since the speakers were angled for those on the ground level, but it was still a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, I did not have a long lens with me, so my little kit lens did the best it could.

At the start of the show, before the big reveals, Clinton brought a couple of women up on stage and did a live version of the 360 mirror. How nerve-wracking that must have been. Bets and I made sure to wear "cute" outfits in case we were spotted by Mr. Kelly. Alas, our spots up top weren't the best for that!

I definitely think that after watching "What Not To Wear" for the last few years, I've discovered some tricks for dressing better. Now, if I could only afford to buy all the clothes I see on the show. Damn teacher salary.

One thing he said today that I thought was funny (and so true) is that all women watch WNTW hoping to see someone their exact size and proportions and style so they can find out how to dress for themselves.

We didn't stand in the book-signing line - at least 100 of our closest friends were in it by the time we walked by, and many more were on their way.

Probably the most exciting part of Betsy's and my day is that Clinton actually @replied to us both on Twitter. We both follow a few celebrities (Betsy more than me, I think), but none have ever replied to us on Twitter (not even when I was raising money for Team in Training).

I did learn something that I can tell my classes on Monday (and no, it wasn't about fashion). After the show, Clinton took questions for a few minutes. One young lady asked where he went to school and what he majored in. He told her he attended Boston College, majoring in environmental (something I couldn't hear) and communications, then I THINK he said he has a master's in journalism. (The speakers were poor for us up high, remember.)

He said he was working as a magazine editor when he went for the WNTW audition. Those communications and people skills you develop as a journalist can help you do a lot of things in life.

I thought that was pretty cool - a little connection we share!

Spreading the news

Most of you have probably already seen this because you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, but here's the link to the web version of the Shawnee Dispatch story about my work for Team in Training.

You can read the story (and see the photo of Mitzi and I running) here.

This last week, I made it over the $3,000 mark! Can't believe it. Garage sale this weekend at our place - donate items that you don't want anymore, or come and shop!

This and that

I'm home sick again today. Thankfully, it's not flu sick like all of my friends have been tweeting about lately. Just your garden variety run-of-the-mill head cold and cough. Sore throat, lack of voice, etc.

My mom's been couging for what seems like weeks now. Did I get this from her? I hope not, because I don't want to be coughing for weeks!!

I thought I would go to school today. I really planned on it. I even set my alarm for 5:15 like I do every week day.

At 5:16, I decided that wasn't happening. I've figured something out about my body - it will power through just about any stressful or busy time in my life, but as soon as that time is over, my body says: "Sweet! Now we can get sick, since we're done with all the important stuff."

This typically happens around yearbook deadline time, newspaper production nights, the end of a semester (which is GREAT because then I'm sick on my vacation time...). Please read the sarcasm into that last comment. We had a yearbook deadline last week, plus about a million pages of proofs that had to be sent back on Monday. I made it through that, then it hit.

Tomorrow is newspaper late night. If that wasn't the case, I might have TRIED to go to school today, but knowing it will be a 14-hour day tomorrow I erred on the side of not contaminating all of my students...

It's not easy to be away from school when you're a teacher. It's at least double the work. You have to make sure the sub has solid plans. It's not like other jobs where when you're gone, you're just gone, and maybe some shuffling has to happen, but really, everything will be okay.

Considering I slept until almost 11 this morning, I'm guessing my body was saying "Do not pass Go. Stop, and get some rest." Hopefully that means I'll feel better soon. I don't want to be sick in the middle of training for a marathon.

Last night, before bed, I finished "Drunk, Divorced and Covered in Cat Hair" by Laurie Perry. A great book, and super-fast read. I highly recommend you check it out sometime.

The most productive Sunday in a long time

Man, we did a lot today. Nothing huge (except lunch with Denise, Jaime, Lexi and Denise's sister Annie), but lots of little stuff.

I started the day making French toast for breakfast. It's sort of my weekend morning thing. If I'm not getting up early to go run, and I have some time, I'll make French toast if we have eggs. Today's bread wasn't stale yet, though, so it wasn't my greatest FT effort.

After breakfast, Adam and I speed-cleaned the house. I knew that Jaime and Denise would want to see the place and all the work we've done, so we picked up and vacuumed and all that good stuff. We're definitely keeping a little bit cleaner house these days, because I feel like it took less time to do the somebody's-coming-over-hurry-up-and-clean bit.

I love having the house clean, but I hate housework. So, we're not really great at it, unless we have to be. Especially during the school year. The last thing I want to do after school or on weekends is clean!

I mean, sheesh.

We had a great visit with the Wichita crew. It's been way too long since I've seen them.

After lunch, I headed over to Mom's, dropped off the rent, then went and paid the insurance bill, then went to the car wash. My car actually looks like a black car again, not some weird dusty, salty grey color any more! And, I didn't even have to wait in line.

We've been (and still are) watching the Super Bowl. While all of that has been going on, I got my snail mail letter written for Team in Training. The letter is written, the donor form ready, the envelopes addressed. I did have to make an Office Depot run for toner. Nice that my printer was free, but I paid almost $40 for toner cartridges today. Boo. Good news, though, is that I'm up to $295 in donations. If you look at my website you can't really tell that yet, since a couple of the donations were cash ones, but they'll be on there soon. Don't be left out - donate today! (A little public service announcement...)

Hopefully, I can stop tomorrow after school and get copies made, so that we can have the letters ready to send out by Tuesday or Wednesday. Last night, via Twitter, I asked Ashton Kutcher to donate to the cause. Wonder if he will. He and Demi are busy being celebs at the Super Bowl this weekend, so I might have to retweet that some other time...What's the worst that could happen? I don't get a donation from him. Figured it was worth a shot!

After the letter extravaganza, I went through six month worth of photos on my laptop, to pick out new ones I want for Crop A Ganza. I'll upload those tomorrow so I can pick them up Wednedsay on my way home from work. I love being able to upload digital photos to the photo center - so freakin' convenient.

I even knit a few rows on a pair of socks I'm working on for Adam. Can't work on the sweater while watching football. I'm working on the sleeves right now, and there's too much counting and keeping track of stuff involved.

Whoop - time out - Steelers just won.

I'm only at school four days this week. Taking a personal day Friday so I can get to Wichita early for Crop A Ganza. Looking forward to it!

After all this post-game junk is over, I'm watching "The Office" then I'm off to bed. It's a school night after all.

You will be traveling and coming into a fortune

Well, I will be, according to my Chinese food fortune tonight. Let's hope that speaks the truth for what will be happening in 2009 for me, and for you.

The year 2008 was a great one for us - a great "new" house, continuing to have good jobs in the sketchy economy, incredible friends, half marathon, lots of knitting, and family and friendily time.

Before bed tonight, I'll tack that fortune to my vision board, and see if "The Secret" can make it come true for me this year. Maybe I'll earn a fortune from Google Ads? Who knows.

Here's to another year of blogging, tweeting, living, knitting, crafting, laughing and loving.

Happy New Year to all - hope it's a wonderful one!

Hey Buuudddy! And other brushes with fame

A little while back I was tagged, and in my post, I wrote about the fact that Pauly Shore kissed me in an elevator once.

Here's the photo of us in the elevator:

I liked him a lot more in full-on Weaz mode, with the long hair and bandana, but by the time I met him (probably 2003?) he was over all that. The actual photo of this looks much better than this copy, but I shot it with my phone while it was hanging on my cabinet at school, right as I was running out the door.

Last year, one of my students asked me "Is that your husband?" when she saw the photo.

I've also had my photo taken with Lyle Lovett, Wayne Gretzky, Trace Adkins and Mike Gordon, the bassist from Phish. I got Russell Crowe's autograph and took a crap ton of photos of him, but I can't say as I've officially MET him. Being a photographer, along with attending a couple of South By Southwests really upped my celebrity quotient. Oh, and when I was a kid, I had my photo taken with Chi Chi Rodriguez, a professional golfer. In my family, we refer to him a "ChI ChI Rod rig wez" I think because Les Nessman on "WKRP" called him that once and it stuck.

Here's the pink truck I tweeted about last week while we were in Arkansas. When Paris and Nicole did their first season of "The Simple Life" they stayed in my grandma's home town, Altus. The family they stayed with is some sort of second or third cousin, twice removed or something. (Insert "everyone's cousins in Arkansas" joke here.)


Once we got back from Arkansas, I spent the rest of the holiday weekend on various tasks:

Putting up our sweet retro aluminum tree.


Researching, writing and organizing a 15-page paper on Social Cognitive Theory.


And knitting up a storm of Christmas gifts. I was sitting in the back of my parents' van, and I needed to see if I was getting close to done with the hat, so I tried it on, and shot my photo with my phone. Worked like a champ when there wasn't a mirror readily available.

Today was the first day back at school. We only have two full weeks until finals week, and on that week, we have two regular days, then three days of finals. The end of the semester will be here before I know it.

•••

If you haven't done so already, please visit the website for Dreams Work, and make a donation to celebrate their 7th birthday. Just tonight, as I was driving home from school, I heard on the radio that there is now a waiting list for Kansas Medicaid HCBS funds for disabled people between the ages of 16 and 65. Those are the funds that help pay for Dreams Work services for clients. Nice of the legislature to put a freeze on funds for people who can't help themselves, eh?

Still here

We got back from Arkansas about 8 p.m. yesterday. Adam and Joshua were out at a Grateful Dead tribute show (yuck - the only thing worse than listening to the Dead play one song for 50 minutes is listening to a fake band do it!), so I settled in and watched a few TV shows from the DVR.

Along the way, I worked some more on the knitted Christmas extravaganza. Three gifts are done, much more to go. Thank God for Wool-Ease thick and quick yarn. It might not be the most expensive or boutique yarn, but it knits up quickly, feels good and will keep the recipients warm on the coldest of days.

I decided to stay out of the Black Friday craziness this year. Since we've got no kids to shop for, there's no reason for us to get out for great deals on toys. Adam did go out early this morning for some thing we need. Home Depot and Kohl's got our money this morning. Mom went to a few places. She called to see if I wanted to go, but I wasn't up for it. I would have gone along for the ride, but I was worried about how long we'd be out, and I wanted to keep working on my term paper.

I rolled out of bed at about 8 and went to work. I'm up to nine pages now, and I'm confident that I'll get it done by deadline. Some people might say "Why don't you just sit down and finish it, so it's not hanging over your head?" Trust me, I would if I could. After a few hours of work on it, though, the words start to swim on the screen, and I'm afraid I'm repeating myself. I think it's better to break it up into small chunks.

That's pretty much where I've been the last week - if you've been looking for blog updates and haven't seen them. Much too busy to do much more that tweet about what I'm doing.

Amy and her family are in town, so we're going out to lunch and to do some knitting this afternoon. It'll be good to see her - it's been a long time. I think I'll take the rest of today off from the paper. We want to get out our Christmas decorations and put that stuff up. I feel like if we don't do it this weekend, we won't do it at all!

So much to do, so little time.

Twitterlicious

I've gone to the dark side. I'm now officially tweeting, along with the Wichita contingent, on Twitter.

I didn't blog from St. Louis since the Internet wasn't readily available, but I was tweeting pretty consistently. Twitter has been called "micro-blogging." That's what it's like for me. I have to figure out how to say what I want to say in less than 140 characters.

You'll notice that there is a feed from my Twitter site on the right side of my blog. So, if you feel like you've gone too long between fixes of Chittum blogs, chances are you can read the news down there. If I don't have the time or inclination to write a full-blown blog, I just might post a tweet.

Betsy says lots of Etsyians are using Twitter as a marketing tool, but I don't want to be a Twitter spammer. Would that be a Spitter?

I'm working on Christmas presents, getting caught up on grading, and keeping my head above water for the next week, until Thanksgiving break. Almost. There.

•••

Here's a funny from my J1 class today.

We are studying editorial cartoons, and the meaning and symbolism behind them. One of the students chose a cartoon about Obama's inaugural ball. In the cartoon, Obama staffers are saying they have everything they need for the soiree, but they need to know what to feed the "multitudes." The other guy answers back, "He said all he'd need is five loaves and two fish."

So, the kids starting discussing the Biblical allusion in the cartoon, and the fact that some people believe that Barack is the second coming. Some kids got it right away, some didn't. So, one girl explained it for everyone, and it was so cute - she said:

"You know, there's that one scene in the Bible where Barack Obama says he can..."

It was just a slip, but we all got a good laugh out of it. If there was a quote wall for J1 like there is for newspaper, that one'd be in the hall of fame.