Tag Archives: plans

04/10/12

{365.101} I Throw My Money at the Screen

I love how I can never actually sleep when I have something to wake up early for the next day. This is an alarming trend that continues to prevail despite all the little things I try to change! Last night I was in bed by around 9:30pm and turned the lights off at 10:45pm. I thought, oh, I will totally be able to get up tomorrow with no problems. Au contraire — I ended up tossing, turning, and eventually turning my light back on around  midnight when I gave up on falling asleep. I read a book for a while and then tried again. Even then, I didn’t get to sleep until 2am. AWFUL. Just the thought of that horrible groggy feeling in the morning from not getting enough sleep was keeping me up in terror. LOL. I know, super fail.

I was still awake at midnight when ArenaNet opened the pre-order page for Guild Wars 2 and spent a bit of time watching my Twitter feed explode with “OMG WHY AM I GETTING A 502 ERROR” and “I’M THROWING MY MONEY AT THE SCREEN BUT IT WON’T WORK ARGH.” (Apparently the people at ArenaNet have a sense of humor and enjoyed retweeting all the messages of utter frustration… hahaha) There were just so many people trying to pre-order this game at the same time that the servers were crashing from overload. I expected it to happen so I wasn’t thinking of ordering right then anyway, even though I was awake (UGH). David ordered his early in the morning before heading to class and I ordered mine while eating my breakfast. (Rather, drinking my cup of milk, because I had run out of breakfast-y foods.) I’ve talked about it before, but the pre-order included unlimited access for all their remaining beta weekends prior to release, so that was why we wanted in. Also people who pre-order get a three day head start when the game does release. We’ve been waiting sooooo long for this game, we didn’t care about throwing down our money to purchase now rather than later. (Our bank account looked like a crime scene from Law & Order after this and David’s car payment today, but we’ll be okay. I think. Haha.)

I’d been craving pizza for days (daaaaays) so I caved and ordered some for dinner. Super delicious. Also watched a delightfully nerdy documentary on Netflix called Decoding Dogs which was very interesting. Super envious of the border collie they featured from Austria that could understand vocabulary words and go find those objects in a giant pile of stuff. Um, seriously?! That is amazing. I texted David about it and he was like, “Nice, now teach our dog to do it.” I tried one of the documentary’s experiments on Bubba, which involved proving that dogs understand what pointing means whereas other animals can’t. Conclusion: my dog can/will look in the direction I point in. Hahahahahaha. As for recognizing vocabulary words and fetching items… well, yeah. He thinks “fetch” means “Go get it and then keep it.”

Things I learned from the documentary: (this is a really teacher-ish thing to be doing, but whatever)

  • Dogs evaluate human facial expressions and moods in the same way humans evaluate those of other humans.
  • When humans/dogs read facial expressions, they naturally look at the right side of the face first.
  • Based on mitochondria, all dogs are essentially descended from tamed gray wolves.
  • My terrier has like 0 similarities to a gray wolf. LOL.
  • Boxers are highly susceptible to a heart condition called cardiomyopathy. My dad was diagnosed with this in 2010 and it is hereditary so I will eventually need to get tested for it. Apparently research has been done to learn more about the disease in dogs and use that info to help humans with the condition.
  • Most pet owners can understand different kinds of dog barks and interpret their meanings.
  • Bonding between dogs and their owners is similar to bonding between new mothers and their infants.

… Also they featured a taming experiment with wild foxes in Siberia and the foxes were adorable. That is all.

I’m off until Thursday when I have that monstrously long shift again. I need to grab a few groceries and such tomorrow and then I may also try to go to Dollar Tree and pick up some stuff for the classroom. Also need to pump gas, and I have express permission from my husband to treat myself to a lovely, amazing, delicious, large Coke at Sonic because I pitched headlong into depression this evening when I really wanted a Coke with my pizza and discovered that my parents had actually polished off my last few Coke cans while they were here. (Did I even notice until then? No. But then again, I have an unwritten rule that I’m not allowed to drink sodas except on weekends, so I don’t monitor the Coke cans much.) The pizza craving has been replaced by a Coke craving. Very bad. Hahaha. I predict that the next craving will be for Starbucks.

Anyone else impressed that I haven’t gone to Target yet this whole week so far?!

Leaving you with this fun picture I took of the sky this evening while walking Bubba around the apartment complex. It was so windy that literally about 5 minutes after I snapped this, the cloud had already been blown apart and couldn’t be seen anymore! The picture is larger than I normally post, so it’s under the jump.

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01/19/12

{Project 365.19} I Need Willpower Training

Our dining room table is currently Editing Hell HQ around here, so not only is it stacked up with books and magazines on one side, but it also has my editing notebook and print-outs of my chapters perched on top of the pile. I have all my of my work in digital format, of course, since I use a word processor to write, but when it comes to editing I still feel more comfortable doing so with paper and highlighters. I’ve actually tried editing before using equivalent tools on a word processor, and I’m so much less productive with my editing that way. I think a lot of it has to do with closing up my laptop and not being able to distract myself with random Internet excursions during the process…. LOL. But anyway, yes, I have been editing and it’s really not fun for me. I mean, it’s very beneficial and I do catch my own mistakes, but beating myself up over these edits is sooooo not my idea of an enjoyable time. I’ve mentioned before that I’m really pretty hard on myself when it comes to my writing, and while I’m not much of a perfectionist in other areas, I am definitely a perfectionist about my work. I don’t want to deliver anything less than the best I can give. I want a story that makes you pay attention, a story with characters you come to care about, and I can’t have this if I don’t buckle down and edit my brains out.

Editing makes me feel very inadequate sometimes — I wonder how I didn’t see that, or why I didn’t add this to so and so chapter to make it better. But I do remind myself as frequently as I have to that this is the entire point of editing. I can’t expect myself to write a finished product that is also a clean manuscript the first time around. So, to make myself feel better when I’m slumped over this table wanting to gouge my eyes out with pink highlighter, I try to remember that the time I’m investing in doing this is going to make the story so much higher quality. The good things about it will get better. The bad things about it will, hopefully, be fixed. While there are few things I like about the editing process, I do love that I discover new perspectives and angles about my own story when I’m reading analytically as opposed to writing creatively. There are just things you don’t see when you’re pushing to move a story forward.

My biggest problem, though, is that I get distracted so easily when I’m sitting here at home trying to get work done. I’m considering relocating myself to the library or someplace else that doesn’t have things like cozy beds that make you want to take a nap. In fact, the other reason why I edit on paper is that it gives me no excuse to have my laptop turned on. Then, I can’t fall into the Twitter/Facebook/Blogroll Trap. T-T As David so correctly pointed out, if I’m going to do this, I have to turn it into my job. This is doable right now since I don’t have a full time job, and it’s something I’ve read on a lot of other authors’ blogs when they talk about their experiences. I’ve been reading this on every single article containing advice for writers. I’ve read it in books about writing. So I need to set schedules and goals for myself that I stick with, because productivity is such a challenge when you could wander off to the other room, pick up your Nook, and lose yourself in reading for 2 hours when you should’ve been editing. Ugh, I’ll let you know how successful I am. LOL.

01/17/12

{Project 365.17} I Fervently Wish For a Time Machine

Yeah, okay, so hindsight is 20/20 and time machines are not available at Target. WHATEVER. I still wish, after attending a presentation on teaching at the Airman & Family Readiness Center on base today, that I could warp myself back to 2006 and switch my concentration to grades 4-8 instead of elementary. And you know what, I might even be brave enough to make that 4-8 Math.

— I am pausing here to allow the people who know & love me to recover from the initial shock. —

Back in December 2009, when I got my student teaching assignment for the coming final semester of college, you really should’ve seen my face when I saw “Fourth Grade Mathematics” in the second half of my schedule. I mean, WHAT?? Are you kidding?? ME, teach MATH??? This is the child who had to stay in from recess every day for like two weeks in 1st grade when we were supposed to be learning about “borrowing” in subtraction. (“I don’t want to borrow numbers! I don’t want any numbers at all!!” *rage-crying*”) My first ever D in a school subject was in freshman year when the only thing I could process about geometry was proofs because it involved writing WORDS. So, I was seriously dreading getting assigned to this 4th grade math class for 2.5 months.

The first half of my student teaching, btw, was in 1st grade and I spent 5 days a week working from 7:15am until nearly 7:15pm getting materials and lessons ready for 6 subjects a day. (For free!) I thought this was still preferable to 4th grade math because teaching how to count by fives for roughly half an hour a day is not anything like teaching fractions to multiple classes over and over again. (Also, OMG EEW FRACTIONS.) Really, on my last day in 1st grade, I wanted to cling to all twenty-four of my adorable 7 year olds and just weep for dear life. It was certainly a highly hysterical cosmic joke to place someone as math-phobic as I am in a situation where I would be tasked with subjecting myself and many children to math all day long. HILARIOUS. TERRIFYING. Same thing.

But! What happened was a total surprise to me. After my first week teaching fourth grade, and my first week teaching a content area subject to a grade level that would have to go through standardized testing during my time with them, I realized that I was okay. I WAS OKAY! I really have always wanted to share this story with my 7th grade math teacher, Mr. Lanehart (who is actually my Facebook friend, hahaha), because when I was in his classroom glaring skeptically at his “MATH LOVES YOU!” banner and listening to him tell me that, even though I detested math, math would always love me unconditionally… I would never have imagined myself actually enjoying myself being a math teacher. In fact, if time machines went on sale at Target right now and you warped yourself over to 7th grade me just to declare that I would someday consider teaching math, I would’ve laughed hard enough to rupture the space-time continuum. I’m fighting the urge to crack up at myself right now, even. Life takes such unpredictable paths. I firmly believe that the universe conspired to put me in that 4th grade classroom just to prove to me what I was capable of.

No, I still don’t *like* math in the slightest. That may be too much to hope for. *cough directed at Jason cough* LOL.

However, I had fun teaching math. I LOVED fourth grade. If I could choose a grade to teach, I would go for 4th in a heartbeat. I taught four periods of math every day, plus I did after school tutorials for the upcoming standardized tests, and it was math math math all the time. I was fortunate to have a mentor teacher who was amazing, but what really made this experience unforgettable was the discovery that I, the opposite of a mathematical genius, was able to help kids who felt the same way about the subject. Kids who had been introduced to math in all the wrong ways, leading to a bad first impression that perpetuated itself over time. Math was the equivalent to a monster under the bed. Like me, they had nursed the theory that if they just stayed under the covers and didn’t go LOOKING for math, it would leave them well enough alone. (If only!) I met children who were like me in that they interpreted a math problem in roundabout, not necessarily standard ways. And I found out that, while I was able to reach the majority with the lesson plans given in the book and the strategies recommended by my mentor teacher, I was also able to reach kids who were afraid of math simply because I was also afraid of math. We shared a language. I’m sure any teacher will tell you that connecting with a student is a moment of glory. I had many of those moments, while I was teaching math.

How did I get on this subject today? Well, when I went to that presentation earlier, the main recommendation to me was that I work on adding endorsements to my existing credentials. And you know, I thought about math. Maybe. Which is a definite improvement over my default answer of NEVER/OVER MY DEAD BODY. (I am a fan of small victories.) I’m not saying that I see myself acing Calculus or transforming into a math genius EVER, but I am interested in the possibility of teaching math to kids during that window of time when they will either decide that they can do math, or that they can’t. I know about this, because it happened to me. Somewhere in elementary school, primarily in 4th grade, I made up my mind that I was horrible at math and couldn’t do it. This, after a stellar career as not only the 3rd grade Around the World champion, but also the 3rd grade multiplication-table-memorization Queen. I never hated math until I got to 4th grade. True, I did NOT have a good teacher that year. She basically taught from her desk and never gave us anything but worksheets. My attitude towards math took such a downturn that year that my mom actually scheduled a parent-teacher conference. (In the world of Asian moms: an intervention. Hahaha) When I asked her about it years later, she told me it was because she had a theory that if I’d never had such an awful math teacher in 4th grade, I would’ve felt very different about math as a result. Seriously, she still talks smack about that lady!

So really, I guess what I learned about myself while student teaching in math was that I could be a math-phobic person who could convince math-phobic children that math loves them. And that, even if they never love math back, they can at least look math in the eye and say, “Math, you’re okay.” And because of this revelation, I am looking at my future in teaching from a different perspective.

01/12/12

{Project 365.12} I Have No Idea Where My Day Went

I’m pretty sure I totally lost track of time today. I woke up at 9am, walked the dog, did some dishes, and baked a cinnamon streusel coffee cake (yum) before sitting down and playing Sims 3 for a while… manipulating the lives of others always gives me a deep sense of enjoyment. LOL. Read a book for while, spent some time rejoicing over the ahhhhmazing $20 promo coupon that Shutterfly e-mailed me, and then before I knew it David had sent a text message that he was driving home from work. Since we didn’t have anywhere we had to go today, or any chores to really accomplish, we just spent the evening doing whatever. Now it’s almost midnight and I can’t believe the high degree of “absolutely nothing” that I did today. Wow. But, I do have a really eventful week coming up, so I guess I won’t begrudge myself some overly luxurious I-have-no-obligations time.

I may actually get to send my certification stuff in next week since the last of my transcripts finally arrived in the mail today. I’m pretty sure that’s all I was missing, but I’ll need to send my paperwork in by certified mail and then wait for however long it takes them to process it. I already feel like they’re just going to send a letter saying I need to take the Praxis exams, since I doubt they accept the Texas-specific certification tests I took and already passed. Of course not, that would be too easy! Blahhhh. Oh, wait, now that I’ve been thinking on the subject, I do still need to get fingerprint forms before I can send this in. DAMNIT LOL. I’m not entirely sure how that’s done here, the website just said the blue fingerprint forms are available at local police stations but not if the fingerprinting needs to also be done there. In Texas, I got my fingerprinting done at a participating agency, which happened to be at a chiropractor’s office. Soooo another mystery to solve/hurdle to cross/annoying thing to deal with. I have my fingers crossed that they cover the fingerprinting part at that seminar I’m going to on Tuesday.

David used one of his free days off (his reward for working 2pm-9pm at the simulator’s check-in desk the week leading up to Christmas) for tomorrow so he’ll have a ridiculous 4-day weekend. We’re going to have a Studio Ghibli marathon in our living room~~ And spaghetti for dinner tomorrow. We really aren’t the kind of couple who likes to go out on dates all the time, nor do we have a designated “date night” or anything. We mostly like to be at home, something that a lot of my friends think is hilarious. One of them asked me yesterday why I pretend to be so antisocial when I seem like such an outgoing person, to which I replied that it’s true; I’m outgoing and I don’t mind meeting new people or spending time with friends, but only if I really have to. Mostly I just like to be left alone. Hahahaha. Sort of paradoxical, but whatever. Home is where we’re happiest, and I see nothing wrong with that, honestly.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to the kitchen to have a slice of that cinnamon streusel coffee cake I so graciously baked for us earlier~~