Category Archives: Personal

One Of THOSE Days

It has been one of those days. Dale’s appointment at the Transplant Institute was today so we were leaving the house a little before six a.m.  As we went to get into the car a man stood up from between two of our vehicles where he had been crouched.  He was holding a drawstring bag and said he was looking for his cat.  He described the cat as white calico?  We told him it might have gone to the field behind the houses and he could get there by walking to the end of the street.  As he walked off I called the police department and they said they would check on it.  We received two phone calls from them in the next hour and a half as we were on our way to Dallas.  The first to confirm his description as they were talking to someone in the area we had described to them.  The second call was to thank us.  He had been going along stealing from cars in the driveways!

We rarely lock our cars (not that we have anything in them that anyone would want) but even so, we will now.

The traffic was light for a change so we were early which turned out to be a good thing.  DTI has been at a temporary location and we went to the office we had been going to, went up to the second floor, down the hall, opened the door and….darkness.  No sign or anything. We knew where they were moving to and luckily it was nearby so we still made it on time but a little notice would have been nice.

We took my MacBook with us as it has been having issues and had been repaired once only to be having the same problem when I got it home.  Unforunately I had not been paying attention to the news about the new iPhone which came out TODAY!  I never imagined what a big deal it ws until we drove past the little Apple store with the line going out the door, past the security guard, around the corner, and TWO BLOCKS down the street!  Uh yes, we drove on by.

Dale’s creatinine was up just a bit and after the last visit the doc had him do a 24 hour urine collection and get blood drawn here in Paris.  The lab work was done at PRMC and the results were given to the Nephrologist here.  The orders specifically said to fact the results to the doc at DTI and had the fax number one them.  They did not have the results today (The tests were done over two weeks ago!) and the Nephrologist office here is closed after noon on Friday.  They had called them this morning while we were there – the phone number had been written in pencil on his lab results from today from where the doc called right before we got today’s results.  When I called at 2:30 P.M.  They still did not have them.  I called the hospital and got them to fax the results which were not conclusive.  He has to repeat the test but this time we are skipping the local and taking it directly to DTI.  I am not griping about the lab here as much as I am about the Nephrologist who should know that in a post-transplant patient 2 weeks is just a tad long to wait for results on a crucial test.

Now, I’m pretty sure the refrigerator is dying.

Addendum – the refrigerator IS dying. We went and bought a new one – got it cheap – it has a dent, don’t care.  It has a bottom freezer and that was my one requirement.  We finished the evening off with the Paris Municipal Band concert and then came home and transferred food to the freezer in the garage til the new one comes.

I’m going to bed before something else happens!

Arepas!

Yesterday I was watching Bobby Flay’s Throwdown. “Bobby challenges Maribel and Aristides Barrios, NYC restaurateurs who hail from Venezuela, to a throwdown featuring their house specialty, arepas, which are delicious grilled cornmeal patties filled with sweet and savory treats.”

I watched carefully to see how the arepas were made because they looked and sounded wonderful. When I went to the Food Network website, however, the only recipe was for bobby Flay’s and I preferred to make the original Venezuelan ones. I did some searching around and found a blog article that described them very closely to the ones on the show and had pictures. I tried to find the masa arepa (pre-cooked cornmeal) and of course I couldn’t. I got the closest thing I could which was corn flour and I think that mine are not as good as they would be with the correct ingredients. I will keep looking and if nothing else when we go for Dale’s next appointment in Dallas I will pick some up there and try some more.

They look similar to English muffins but they don’t taste the same and are different texture. They were pretty good right out of the oven with butter. The dough is very simple to make and you pick up a ball of it and basically toss it hand to hand til it makes a dense ball and then kind of rotate as you toss smoothing it into a disk about a third of an inch thick. You cook it over medium heat on a cast iron griddle or non-stick skillet. Cook about 7 minutes on each side being careful not to burn it. Place in oven for about 15 minutes to finish cooking (350 degrees).

Here is my finished result:

myfirstarepa

The recipe and other pictures can be found here.

I hope you will give it a try and let me know how it turns out for you!

Addendum:  I found the Masa Arepa and it makes a big difference in the texture and the taste.  I still need practice but my second batch was much better.  They taste just a little bit like grits.

Stress and Cars and Stress!

It is 5:00 P.M. I say this because I just got home and we left the house this morning at 8:00 A.M, We went to look at a used car which we ended up buying but I never dreamed we would have been gone ALL day.

We saw the ad in a sale paper last night. It’s a pretty 2005 blue Impala. We had been looking at cars knowing that when school starts we were going to need another vehicle. We were looking at something that would get good gas mileage for obvious reasons. I was leaning towards a Toyota Corolla or Nisson Sentra but Dale has always liked the Impala so he is happy.

I just can’t believe how disorganized the whole experience was. The car was not even at Bonham Chrysler which is where the ad was from. They looked all over the lot and then started calling around and it ended up being in Greenville. The salesman got a car (a 2008 Dodge Magnum which is very nice, by the way) and drove us over to Greenville It was lunchtime by the time we got there. The car was there but the key was NOT! They hunted and couldn’t find it and decided to go up to the Pontiac place and get them to cut a new one. Keeping in mind this is only a little ways down the road, an hour later we finally have the keys. We drove the car and liked it and then had to drive back to Bonham. Next we had to do the whole paperwork thing which didn’t take too long but by the time it was all complete it was about 2:30 and we have still not had lunch. They were cleaning the inside and washing the car and by the time we left it was 4:00.

We headed for the nearest restaurant because we were starving and then got to sit in traffic because a long stretch of 82 was being resurfaced. We are tired, cranky, and the proud owners of a “newer” car. If you know me you will know how much I hate to part with money for a car but now I just hope it turns out to be a good car and that it lasts half and long as my little blazer but with better gas mileage!
impala.jpg

Just a Family Update

My son called last night. He and the rest of the NL Debate team and their coaches are in Las Vegas for Nationals. There are seven debate students, two coaches, and their son in a van pulling a u-haul trailer full of luggage, a huge ice chest, cases of evidence and dollies for hauling the evidence cases around.
They have been to The Painted Desert, Hoover Dam, The Petrified Forest, and the Grand Canyon and are still speaking to each other. Last night they made it to Vegas and the hotel they had reserved had a few guests that decided at the last minute to extend their stay so the hotel just gave their reservations away. On top of that, instead of calling the coaches cell number which she gave them as the designated contact number, they called yesterday to her home number in Paris to tell her. This meant they had no idea until they showed up at the hotel that they had no rooms. They were supposed to stay at Homewood Suites Henderson Nevada Hotel. They ended up at Circus Circus on the strip. THAT should be interesting!

My daughter got her drivers license (finally) this week so I haven’t been able to run a single errand myself all week. She is going to try to find a summer job and I am hoping that with her skills with Microsoft Excel and Access that she will find something besides slinging burgers.  She has decided to try to do municipal band this year as they can use a base clarinet player so at least I won’t have to drive her to practice everyday!

Dale and I are having a pretty peaceful summer so far – aside from the kids stuff that is!  I am all for keeping it that way!

Father’s Day

My sidebar contains a list of historical events of the current day and today in 1954 President Eisenhower signed an order adding words ‘under God’ to the Pledge. It was the year that Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio, IBM announced vacuum tube “electronic” brain that could perform 10 million operations an hour, Bob Dylan was Bar Mitzvahed, the Moonies were established, Ellis Island closed, Davy Crockett played by Fess Parker appeared on Walt Disney (oh man – I remember Disney nights when we could eat potato chips and drink red pop in the living room!).  The first atomic power station opened near Moscow, Russia and Joseph Welch asked Senator Joseph McCarthy “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” during Senate-Army hearings.  Armistice divided Vietnam into two countries, Charles C Diggs Jr. was elected Michigan’s first black congressman (my home state!), and Senator John Kennedy appeared on “Meet the Press” which brings us around to this weekend.  Tim Russert, only four years older than I am is gone.

So many events of my birth year were foreshadowing the things that would shape my opinions and relationships and politics. How many folks were educated, informed, entertained, and shaped by watching this gentleman.

To a wonderful father, who wrote a book about his father, that spoke to sons of fathers everywhere – you are now with the Father.  Happy Father’s Day.

Timing Is Everything

I am having one of THOSE weekends – you know, the ones that make you appreciate root canals or colonoscopies! My eldest is graduating tonight, we have company coming and things scheduled all through the rest of the weekend. My kids are out of school but the school I work at has another week and I have not even begun to get the lab ready for summer. Last night Dale got up about 11:00 to take something for a headache and found that the washing machine had overflowed. He turned it off until the water drained down and then turned it back on. I shouldn’t really say the washing machine overflowed – the drain pipe behind it did – and it first backed up into the kitchen sink! It did it again. About that time I came up to the kitchen because he had been gone awhile and there were noises.

I mopped and mopped, and put the drain cleaner in the pipe behind the washer. When I went to get warm water to flush it with I realized that the sinks were full of water as well. I turned on the garbage disposal which instead of helping the water drain which it has when this happened in the past, the water backed up in the pipe some more – more mopping!!

I checked the outside cleanouts and they were empty which tells us that the problem is inside so I voted to let it all just sit til morning. It was slowly draining. This morning I have already put the drain cleaner in the pipe and let it sit and flushed it with hot water and it is going through that process a second time and hopefully that will do the trick. I do NOT like plumbing problems any time but especially not THIS weekend!

Sondra is coming tomorrow night and we will go with her to Dallas for her six month checkup to make sure she is doing ok with her one kidney. It will be good to see her. I’m going to drive one vehicle and let Dale ride with her so they can have a couple of hours to visit.

Through all of this I feel like the world is spinning just a bit too fast. I know it is graduation that is getting to me under everything. I can hear this quiet ticking in the background – the tiny, less than 4 pound baby that I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to care for as well as he needed. The little guy in diaper and pajama shirt with a Happy Meal box on his head singing with beauty and the beast. Tick tick. Now he is almost four, wearing shorts and cowboy boots and reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Near Christmas time in kindergarten he asked our pastor if he could read something from his bible in church. His kindergarten teacher and principle actually came and he stood in front of everyone and read The Magnificat and sang The Foolish Man song. Now we fast forward and the ticking is so fast I can hardly discern the spaces between. Jr. High band (bassoon) and basketball. Band at the beginning of High School until he discovered that debate was his passion and he stuck with that throughout high school.

Next year my daughter will walk across the stage and a chapter in our lives will have ended and a new chapter will have begun. Tick Tick

The plumbing problem is fixed – it took one of those devices you attach to a hose and put in the drain and it lets pressure build up to break up a clog. I’m probably not describing it well but I do not want to understand plumbing just like I don’t want to think about this clock that keeps ticking!

Happy Almost 6 Month Old Kidney

Dale went for an extra check up today because his blood work came back wonky last time. His creatinine was up from 1.1 to 1.4 and his white blood cell count was up. Those things could indicate an infection, a need for meds to be adjusted, a need to drink more water. They were about the same this time – no worse. They want him to come back in 2 weeks and do another glofil test and they adjusted the meds and both were medicines that could create this effect. Soooo…he’s fine though not happy about doing the glofil again.
We got back just after lunch and I went to work though I wondered for a while if we were going to have to pull over in Commerce and wait out the storm – it was raining so hard we couldn’t see and it lasted almost to Paris.

The school year is almost over. We went to a cookout for the debate team last night and the kids got to burn their files. There are six seniors moving on this year and they have spent a lot of time together and they have spent a lot of time with Kristy so it was kind of emotional. We left before about 8:30 and left the kids to spend time with each other and Kristy. I can’t express how grateful I am for all the time Kristy put in with these kids and especially mine.

Tonight we go back out there for a cookout for the AP US History class that my daughter has been in with Dennis as her teacher. They have both obviously had a lot to do with my kids education and growing up.

Comp Day May 2008

Here is my handout. Some of it is covered in other places in this blog. It was created on a Mac using Pages. I am trying to get more comfortable using the iWork software and I think that while it is not as much of a workhorse as Word it was fun and easy to export as a PDF.
Jumpdrive

Create a folder

PowerPoint Backgrounds and creating content in Word

Adding Sound to PowerPoint and making the music play across multiple slides

Creating Screenshots

Creating a group in Outlook Express

Locking your computer

Word Tips

FireFox

End of year grade export

mayStaffDevTips.pdf

Saturday Night Live On a Tuesday

Gilda Radner died 19 years ago today.  Rosanne Rosannadanna, Baba Wawa, Emily Litella (never mind) – and all the other characters she created as part of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players are all gone with her.  I miss her and the old Saturday night live.  I miss Jon Lovitz as the pathological liar (ya ya that’s the ticket) and Dana Carvey as the church lady – I remember the skit where the church lady interviewed a parody of Tammy Faye Baker (that was redundant) – classic.

My Big Bang Theory favorite quote for Monday night was

– I’m glad you are learning Mandarin

– Why?

– Because when you are fluent you will have a billion other people to annoy besides me

We had company for a few minutes and I missed the end of the show – aaar!

Just a General Update

What is it about the spring – I always fall under it’s spell. I brought most of my plants home from school so they could live on the back and front porches which are their true homes. I started digging up the rose bed today. Dale is tired of fighting with it – Roses are just so high maintenance. We are planning to fill in the area with stone so it will mean a lot more work and quite a few more trips to Home Depot for stone. I’m getting the itch to paint too. We have squash, asparagus, and walking onions growing in the garden. I have herbs and spinach in big pots on the back porch. I’ve already picked spinach three times and it is ready again. There was plenty of rain this year and it has made a difference. Even my peonies have been beautiful.

I managed to get a “start” on cleaning off my desk. I was starting to feel like I would be smothered under piles of paper! Another teacher and I got our presentation submitted for next year at TCEA and I only have one more week of staying late for open lab. The year is winding down. Dale is doing well and Kinsey will graduate. Jessica will get her license and will look for a job.
I bought myself an Mp3 player on ebay and it came today. I wanted something small for carrying when I walk and so far I really like it. The end comes off and you plug the whole thing into a usb port. I spent about an hour this evening dragging songs over to it and then went for my walk and I think I walked twice as far as usual.
Now I am watching Numbers and putting up the laptop and curling up with my book. No alarm clock in the morning and tomorrow is our 28th anniversary. I hope the rain holds off – I plan to work in the yard tomorrow but I’m not cooking. Supper will probably be Magels – mmmm. I’ve got to make the PowerPoint for Sunday evening but with google docs it will go together quickly. BJ is teaching on Romans and I have an idea for a skit for the kids to do on 1st Kings (maybe next month). It will take some time to get it together but I’m starting to put an outline together.

Monday is a weather day so I have extra time to play in the yard. Goodnight world and have a peaceful weekend!

TeachersFirst Question of the Week

TeachersFirst.com had this for the question of the week recently. Below it is my response.

Some teachers create their own MySpace and FaceBook accounts. Some have personal blogs. A recent article in the Washington Post details indescretions by teachers in such public spaces. If a teacher wants to have a personal web presence, what guidelines or advice would you give to him or her about what should/should not be shared online for the world to see, and why?

Having a presence on the web is like having a picture window into your life. Anyone driving by will form an opinion of you by what they glimpse through that window. If you are dancing around with your lampshade on your head – they are going to make a snap judgment. Every picture, every post, every song playing on your website creates a picture of you for someone who visits. If you are a teacher and have not learned what is and is not appropriate in public then you have bigger problems than the internet.

It doesn’t matter if it is correct, the opportunity to make an impression has passed and if it is a bad one it will be very difficult to change even if you get the chance which in most cases you won’t.

If you are the type of person that sweeps the floor, dusts and straightens up for company then do that on your website as well because company will be coming and going most times without you even knowing it.

In education this is even more crucial. Whatever is on your website may as well be on the principals’ desk, the school board meeting, the local newspaper, or a students iPod. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use it. We should just use it for what it is – a tool to communicate. It is not and never has been your private diary with pictures and sound.

Our students are now creating content on the internet. We have a wonderful teaching opportunity if we choose to utilize that capability. That means we have to get on the bus with them – not stand on the sides wringing our hands. We just need to have a destination in mind and plan accordingly.

Amen?

Yay UIL!

Tonight I got to attend my second UIL banquet of the week.   While the two were for different school districts it still is such a blessing to realize what a great group of kids live in this community.  It also blesses me to know such awesome teachers who are so willing to go above and beyond to give to the kids.

Google Does It Again

Hurray! I haven’t checked the new features in Google Docs in awhile, but tonight I was uploading some documents and decided to peak at the presentation piece.  When I last tried to use it I got frustrated because you couldn’t download the presentations into PowerPoint.  They have fixed that and now your presentations can swing either way!  I was sure it was just a matter of time and now it’s here!

You still can’t have all the functionality as far as animations and themes but you can create your basic slides and get all your text set up.  You can also share with a team and track changes.

If you have a student who doesn’t have Microsoft Office on their home computer this is a way for them to get a bit ahead as long as they have access to the internet.

The Last Six Weeks Of School

This is a crazy time any year but more so this year because my son is a senior and my daughter a junior and they attend a different school than the one I work at.  This means two UIL banquets, and speaking of UIL my daughter is going to State for computer apps!  I eased into that gracefully didn’t I?

I’m proud of and for her.  She left the competition before the actual scores were final so she didn’t even know at that point.  A friend of ours picked her up so she could join a youth group attending a Third Day concert and the Rangers game.  She called me on her cell and held it up so I could hear them singing “God Of Wonders”.  She didn’t stay for the whole game – it was not one of their better games but she still didn’t get home til midnight but had an awesome time.  The praise team was tired and hoarse!

We have something nearly every night for the next few weeks – probably longer but I am not looking ahead any farther than that!

Dale Update April 2008

Dale had his regular appointment today as well as his 6 month glofil test.  His lab work was fine except his white count was low.  They are going to have us go to a local lab and have that checked next week as a cold could do that.  Another culprit could be one of his medications and if that turns out to be the problem they will lower the dosage.

We don’t have the results on the glofil test but it basically entails drinking some iodine in diet coke and then they have you drink a couple of liters of water (or at least it seems like it).  They inject a little radioactive isotope under the skin and then you can only use the facilities when they tell you. You have to drink three times and they draw blood three times.

The good news is they have switched his visits from every two to every three weeks!  Yay! For his sake and the sake of our bank account with current gas prices!

It all seemed to go fine but we didn’t get out of there til 3:00 so it was after 5:00 when we finally got home.  We are now in recliners in front of the tv. Both kids are at regionals and my plan for the night is to do a little laundry, watch tv and surf the internet.  I’d like to stay awake to see Numbers but we’ve been up since 5:00 this morning so I make no promises!

TV Tonight

Big Bang Theory Quotes of the Week

1. there wouldn’t have been any ass-kickings if that death ray had worked!

2. Question – what happened?
Answer – I’m not sure but I think it involves a part of the human experience that has always eluded me!
Comment – Well that narrows it down!