Curriculum Night

Last night I went to Grace's 7th grade curriculum night at the middle school.

Sarah has already gone through all of these grades at this building and Grace is in her second year at Walnut Springs, so there was no completely new information to be learned there. But it was good to see the teachers--not all of whom are familiar--and to learn what their plans are for the year.

One of the first things that I enjoy is the simple act of walking to the school from our house. It is on the next street over and you can cut between people's yards to get to the athletic fields on the back end of the school. I will miss having such convenient access to the school when Hannah is finally done. But the (good?) news is that this won't happen for another six . . . what, really? . . . years.Ugh. I'll be almost 50 before Hannah makes it to high school.

And then when I got to the school and started following Grace's classes, I just enjoyed the fantasy of being back in school and learning stuff again.

It's probably not fair to think that way since I am adult now and I can look back on the effort of middle school learning with casualness and a lack of stress. I can see it for the opportunity of learning and thought that it is. I didn't view it so casually and with fun back when I was actually experiencing it. Still, I am glad that I can look at the opportunity of learning with a positive twinge.

And the other thing I enjoyed was hearing teachers talk about the electronic materials that they are using--especially (obviously) in the social studies class. And, yes, they are using an Ohio version of our U.S. history program--a custom creation by the looks of it, but based on the title made by my friends and colleagues just a few cubicle rows over. I am pleased that they are adopting and using the materials that we make here at MHE--and I am hopeful that it is more than simply using the electronic version of the text. I hope they are trying the digital assets and exploring the depth of stuff that we have created in the last several years.

(I wanted to speak up to the teacher and the class and let them know that I work for the company. I wanted to say that if they experience online problems, to send me an email. But I didn't. And that is probably best. The company DOES have tech support professionals--as the teacher mentioned--who can aid when needed. It is their job to clear up those sorts of problems, so I guess I should let them do it better than I could.)

Credit: me

And beyond that, the best thing about the evening was seeing the impressive reimagining of the old library space into a slick new Media Center/hangout/collaborative area/whatever. I posted some pictures of it on my Facebook page if you are over there some.

I mean, look at this space. Wouldn't you want to hang out in there? And yes, there are still plenty of books to check out--which I admit was my initial concern when Grace was describing the place to me. But the design makes the whole place more appealing and encouraging to students. So, I'm a fan.

Thoughts from Work (Aug. 25, 2015)

Credit: me

1.  Today is the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. I should have anticipated that and made a btw story focused on it.
2. Yesterday I used "Suck it, haters." in a Facebook comment. And now I want to work that phrase into each conversation that I have.
3. I am enjoying my standing desk. (Thanks, John!) I hope that it is helping me stay marginally healthy--or at least offset the occasional consumption of office doughnuts.
4.  I made beef stew last night for dinner. If I'd had more time, I would have made it slower and maybe been able to develop the flavors more. But it was a pretty good success overall--especially for a Monday evening.
5. I'm giving blood this morning. Do you give blood? If you can, you should. It does a lot of good for lots of people. And your body will make more, so why not offer up some to someone else? But don't say thank you to me just yet. The truth is . . . I almost only ever give here when the Red Cross holds a drive at my office building. It just makes it so convenient for me. (And as usual, I am making this act of giving about me. Sorry.)
6. I need to write one of these thoughts without the use of ellipses . . . or parentheses. (Like THAT is going to happen.)
7. Speaking of standing while working--I am trying to do it all day and avoid sitting, except for when I eat. To sit down while I have this desk would seem to invalidate the whining and complaining that I childishly did when I couldn't get one. And now that I do have one--thanks to the generosity of a colleague who chose not to continue using his, I am now obligated to use it as much as possible. So, if you don't like to see me stand--suck it, haters!
8. Do you feel that I haven't utilized the Official Hat of Summer enough this season, as we enter into summer's final weeks? Full disclosure--I have had that worry a few times this summer. But I have tried to wear it when out and about on weekends. And I've tried to take relevant pictures documenting this whenever possible. So, I am keeping it mindful as I make wardrobe choices. As of yet, no one in a crowd has reacted with excitement when I walk up, whispering "Hey . . . everybody, look over there! It's The Official Hat of Summer!" But I remain hopeful that it will happen someday if I just keep trying.
9. Still not sitting down. (My thighs are gonna be SO strong, you guys.)
10. Do you ever find yourself inundated with podcasts that you just aren't catching up on? And they keep piling up every day because the work that you are doing isn't really conducive to listening to podcasts while being effective, so things just keep piling and piling? And then, somehow, you catch up again and everything is fine? Has that ever happened to you?
11. What podcasts am I listening to? Well, they are: Dear Hank & John, PTI: Pardon the Interruption, Fresh Air w/ Terri Gross, Judge John Hodgman, some of the episodes of the Nerdist; (and Serial . . . whenever a new season begins). I miss listening to (some of the episodes of) the BS Report--but since Bill Simmons got fired by ESPN, that has been gone. But he tweeted yesterday that once his new HBO gig begins, his rebranded podcast will start again.
12. Standing update--I'm constantly wanting to cross my legs and lean. But I don't think that is the correct posture. I should stay distributed evenly on both feet and just wiggle back and forth to keep from getting too tired, right?
13. Probably my dad would be pretty upset that I am willingly choosing to stand while working, as he worked in cornfields for years, standing and sweating. He'd think it is dumb to stand when you have the opportunity to sit. Some white-collar worker I am.
14. (Next  time I do this, I should put time stamps for when I thought of and typed down each thought.)
15. Should I be regretful that I didn't watch that talked about show "Mr. Robot" this summer? (I did watch "Humans" and enjoyed it quite a lot, so maybe I can get a pass?) But what I REALLY want to be watching is more of "Better Call Saul".
16. Just went to fill up my coffee cup and the vending machine was being restocked. There is a cart full of chips, candy bars, and other snacks. The vendor technician was occupied with something on the machine and had his back turned as I slipped past in and out to the coffee pot. In neither instance, did I dart out my hand to grab a free candy bar. Would it have been successful had I tried? Or would I have miscalculated, gone for the boxes of empties and therefore drawn attention to myself? And . . . as you were reading this, did you consider--even briefly . . . that I was going to tell you that I stole something?
17. Someone is daily using my filing cabinet magnetic letters to spell out LOPEZ.
18. In a world with free oatmeal raisin, sugar, and double chocolate cookies--which is the correct choice?
19. Afternoon updates--I chose to sit down after lunch (and after my blood donation). I thought it might be unwise to stand for the next several hours while I am "recovering" from being down a pint of blood. And I will definitely use this opportunity to eat a cookie while finishing out the afternoon. These are the justifications that we must all face.
20. The college football season is fast approaching. Are you interested in my continuing to write Football Counter-Programming posts that go live each Saturday game day? If you are interested, what sorts of topics would you want me to muse upon? (I would really like your help in topic suggestions. Please leave any thoughts you have in the comments.)
21. Should I be bothered by the effort to create a playground from shipping containers? Or is it a good, temporary solution to a problem? And why does this use of shipping containers (and according to the artist drawing . . . shipping pallets) disturb me . . . but the idea of living in a modest home made from shipping containers feels like a grand solution.

Alright . . . leaving now to pick up the kids from school. Think about what you've learned and don't forget to leave me Counter-Programming topics in comments.

Perspective and Patterns and Time

This is a picture of the tiles in the bathroom flooring of my office building. The reason that I took this picture was because I caught myself about a week ago trying to find a pattern to the seemingly random mosaic of colored tiles. Where, I wondered, was the border between one square of randomness and the next. How was it laid down by contractors? Was one square of small tiles set and then the next, identical one, rotated 90 degrees to mix the pattern and confuse the sequence even further

I tried breaking the tiles into imaginary blocks of 9 (like a Rubic's cube) to see if that made it any easier to decipher. But eventually I had to admit that I didn't see the pattern--though I am still sure that there is one.

But that is how the brain works. It looks for patterns. It collects facial details and stores them away. The brain can't accept randomness and wants to figure things out and make sense of it all.

***

I am trying to tie this photo idea from a week ago into this 12th anniversary post for the start of WWYG?! Because, I think as much as for any other reason, when I started writing this blog 12 years ago today, I was trying somehow to find my own pattern. I was trying to sort out my young life--with a career just getting established, two young children, and lots of unknowns still a part in my life. I was settling down into my adulthood, leaving behind my college years and the original concept for what I first thought those adult years would be. I would not become a professor. And Lynda and I were very much committed to raising a family--but we didn't really know what that meant . . . yet.

Sarah was only 4 and Grace was still a very young toddler. Lynda and I had good jobs at MHE, but I was still a project worker and there were no guarantees in anything. We had families in Georgia and our friends and church family in Hilliard and at St. Nicholas. So, by no means were things bad or even uncertain. But there was still much unknown and--as yet--unexperienced.

Twelve years later, much of that experience has passed.

(Here is where I drop in the plug for you to peruse back through this blog archive and see what some of them were. Most of it is dumb and pointless. But, hey. . . a lot of life back then was--at least for me sometimes. All of my experiences with my work friends was a chance to reignite a bit of fun in life at a time when I was walking away from a particular set of goals and dreams and years of study and "seriousness". I was glad to embrace frivolity and fun.)

And that makes it sound like all of that fun has gone away in recent years and that's not true or fair to the friends I still have at work and the fun I still have a lot of the time. But no one can pretend that a lot of changes haven't happened around there in the last ten years. And . . . I'm over 40 and getting more boring every day.

BUT--I ain't dead yet.

There is still lots to do and I hope I can still find time now and again to carve out space to describe some of it on the blog going forward. There are always TV previews to write. And while I may not think Tom Cruise is as crazy as I once said he was, you never quite know what those Thetans are going to ask him to do for the next Mission: Impossible movie stunt. And, certainly, my family and my kids aren't going away--and that was what I wrote about the most over the years anyhow.

So, there is still stuff to see and do. And you'll keep hearing about it here. Here's to more years of not yet figuring out how to grow.

Acknowledging Esther Day

I'm not having the best day of my life today (and who is, I guess . . . really). But I think I want to try and snap my brain out of that cycle for a few minutes and put aside work and thoughts and bad glasses and uncomfortableness so that I can honor the terms of Esther Day.

Source: http://thehpalliance.tumblr.com/post/87736998828/esther-day-is-not-about-metaphors-it-is-not-about

What is Esther Day, you may ask?

Well, follow the link to learn what it is.

So, in the spirit of that, I want to say to my own family and friends that I love them. And I'm not going to do it in a video because I'm at work and there is no place to do that and I shouldn't be spending MORE time with something like that. But I will take a few computer moments to type this together quickly with little editing and not as much thought and craft as it deserves.

I am lucky and I'm privileged to have a good life. And that life is built off of the generosity and kindness of many people--family and friends and colleagues. People who support me and work with me and love me back and know me well and those that don't. I'm a part of a modern world that chops us up into little buckets and segments of personality and skill. And I try to plug in my talents where needed and as best I can every day. But I can't operate alone. None of us can operate alone . . . and I don't think we want to. We want to work with others--even when it creates new challenges. We reach out to others and hope they accept that connection.

So, I guess I'm stopping to acknowledge that need that I have, every day, to be with others and to cooperate with them--privately, personally, professionally. Thanks for putting up with me. Thanks for helping me do better than I do on my own.

Election Central: Follow the Links

 Have you been keeping up with Election Central?
As the political season heats up, this site is heating up as well.

Credit: McGraw-Hill Education

Everywhere you click on this site, you can find something interesting and useful. And here's a recent example:

From the home page, choose the "Tracking the 2016 Election Candidates" post.
That will take you to the timeline that is (trying its best to stay) up-to-date on who has entered the presidential race so far.

But . . . if you follow the links from there, you'll be able to land in the other candidate biography pages. Those two posts are subdivided by political party and give each official candidate a brief biography of who they are, what their experience level is, and things like that. And if you click on the last tab of those biographies, you can discover the various social media platforms used by each and every candidate.

Building all of these links has really taught me a few things. For instance--

• Google+ is not a platform used by almost anyone. (But there are a few out there.)
• The Marco Rubio campaign never met a social platform it didn't like . . . even Pintrest.
• The Bobby Jindal YouTube page is depressing in its lack of content.

Come on. Go explore. You'll see some fun stuff.
(But if you are epileptic . . . watch out for Rick Perry's Web page--especially if your computer's speakers are turned off.)