Well today I’m not sure if I’m suffering just allergy symptoms or I have caught a summer cold.  It has been a year since my last allergy symptoms, but you would think that after years of having them, I could remember exactly what they were.

But today I have a slight fever and sore throat.  Yes, the sore throught could be the result of the allergies, but I don’t ever remember the fever.  This could be the result of lack of sleep last night, even when I was ‘sleeping’, my rest was not very restfull.  Full blown Sinus headache this morning…  Oh well, such is Sept in Ohio for me.

I have been drinking a lot of Orange Juice and had an orange today.  Both seemed to feel really good going down.  I’m not sure if the vitamin C is helping, but the taste of orange hit the spot today.

While eating my orange at lunch, I remembered that there is no English word that rhymes with orange.  Then I got to thinking if there were any other such words.  I recall that purple has very few rhymes, and they are words from the British Ilses.   So Purple has no American English rhyming word.  Then there are the words Silver and Month.  I found those in an internet search.  If you can find or think of more words or find a word that rhymes with any of the above, my curious nature would be sated.

Three colors in this post, but the post color is still orange….  3 more to go for the box of eight.

We all know what that date represents.  Well, most of us do.  As I mentioned a couple of posts ago I worked will ELL students today.  One student actually didn’t know about what happened seven years ago as he just came to this country less than a year ago.  I suspect there were others as well.  Needless to say, he had a little trouble answering the journal question, “What happened on September 11, 2001?”

Believe it or not, I have been subbing for a few years but this is the first year that the school I was at had a big thing going for September 11.  The morning started with the entire school crowding around the flagpole.  No, it wasn’t a “see you at the pole” event, though I would wish it would get these kinds of crowds.  If more kids were followers of Jesus there would be so much less trouble at our schools.  Back to the topic, the principal called out everyone to observe the all-too-recent holiday remembering what happened those seven years ago.  There was the flag raising of course, a speech by the principal, and some students read poems they wrote.  The principal made himself heard, but they really needed some amplification for the kids- I wasn’t able to understand, or in some cases even hear a single poem.

After that, everyone went in and first period started (late).  The 9/11 theme continued with the aforementioned journal question, and then we saw an interactive CDROM.  Apparently the Chicago Tribune gave away these CDs back in 2002 commemorating the one-year anniversary.  It provided archival footage of ten days of the Tribune headlines following the destruction with some commentary and a Flash intro to start.  I was hoping to provide a download link for this, but I guess after six years it’s either off the map or I didn’t look hard enough.  Actually, I did find a torrent (peer-to-peer download) with the title (When Evil Struck America) but there didn’t appear to be any seeds, meaning it couldn’t be downloaded.  I’ll check Usenet in a bit, but I’m not holding my breath.  To the students’ credit, they really were engaged and asking questions.  A few periods later I was helping in the 7th grade social studies classroom, and the teacher did his own presentation on 9/11.  He chose some really thought-provoking pictures, including one building closeup where people could be seen to the side falling because they had jumped from the towers, perhaps hoping for a better outcome than death by fire or smoke inhalation.

These were the only periods I had dealing with this topic, but it seemed like half the day.  The rest of the day had typical lessons.  I either taught, helped out, or led a review.  I could say more on that, but I think I will leave this post focusing more on 9/11.  Until tomorrow.

EDIT:  I may not be able to give you the Tribune CD, but the History Channel has it’s own interactive media: 102 Minutes that Changed America

(Not my picture.  For more pictures like this, CLICK HERE)

I’ll admit I got these super-cute animal pictures from an email foward…  they are just too cute…  The skeptic in me says, are they real?  I looked on snopes.com and didn’t see anything, but in this age of photoshop, you never know.  If they are photoshopped, the creator did an excellent job…  Let’s pretend they’re real and that these animal buddies have such a wonderful friendship that it spanned at least 2 seasons as the pictures suggest – they’re too cute not to believe it!

This is pretty cool.  Watch the video and figure out which way the lady is spinning.  According to the video, if you see the lady spinning to the right, your right brain dominates and your thinking is black and white and fact-based.  If you see her spinning to the left, you are more creative and open to seeing “gray” areas.  Even if the personality assessment part is a bit off, the illusion is still cool to see.  Check it out:

Sounds simple, but for some people she keeps changing direction.  I saw her spinning counter-clockwise; I guess that would be considered left, but I could force myself to see her spinning in the other direction if I tried – weird!  Once you’ve established which direction you see her spinning, try to get your brain and eyes to switch it on you if you can!

For the month of August, I thought I was going to get away with an easy allergy season. Usually my allergies start around mid-August. Right on time, I had the itchy eyes, but no other signs of my fall allergies. Yeah!!

All was good until the 10th of Sept. I woke up with the runny nose and heavy sneezing in the morning. That kept up all day to end with full sinus congestion. Ouch…. My current medications don’t seem to be doing any good. I realize that we just got some rain in the past few days, so I guess that is what really set the pollen and spores going.

Sinus headache is keeping me awake right now. I was sleeping, but someone sent me a text message and my phone kept beeping. Now with the sinus headache, I may be up for awhile..
I’m going to have to have the phone people turn off my text messaging, since I don’t use it anyway, and I hate to pay for messages, I will never reply to.

On another note, only 4 more colors to go, and I have a box of Kindergarten crayons… I’ll have to dig out the big box to see what colors there are now.

Last night, I received an email to meet a bunch of friends at the county fair this afternoon. Since I got off work at 4, I just made it to the fairgrounds by the 4.30 meeting time. None of the other people who were invited were able to attend (or just were “too good” for the rest of us…KIDDING). It has been a few years since I have been to the fair. I believe the last time I went was about 4-5 years ago when I was asked to go on the bus for the county high school band show. We never made it. By the time the bus arrived, it was pouring rain and the show was canceled.

I am pleased to say that this evening was great fun with great friends. With rides and attractions provided by Poor Jack Attractions. We came to the conclusion that it is called Poor Jack not because the proprietor is a poor man named Jack, but because Jack is laughing at all the poor folks spending their money.

I am constantly amazed at the daredevil Sammie. She will go on ANYTHING… or at least try. There was one ride that she could not get on because she was not tall enough. But she and her two sisters were just a ball. Even when they had their moments. But with three siblings of my own I well remember having moments of our own.

After depleting our supply of tickets riding the “ocrapus” (is that it?), bumper cars, Goose rode her favorite (Tilt-A-Whirl), among other rides, we spent an absurd amount of money on carny food that was deep-fried, fattening, and delicious. We then played one game. However, I REFUSE to play a game in which you could not understand what the barker is saying. I did treat myself to a chocolate milkshake at the dairystand (a must at the fair). Hopefully, a precursor to the fun I will be having on a trip next month. I did take exception to one thing: Why was it that the bumper car operator told the other riders to gang up ON ME?!

With a new school year comes not just employment but things going on at my church as well.  Okay, I haven’t been that busy, but compared to just a week ago it seems like it.  Also, I have been catching up on my internet reading since I was down for much of last week.  It still goes down daily, but they tell me I have a perfect connection and it must be the work they’re doing in the area.  I can only hope it goes away after awhile proving them right, otherwise I’ll be stuck since they’ll never find anything with my “perfect” connection.

Monday I took a half-day job, but when I got there I found out the secretary put a teacher’s request in for the wrong day.  They then proceeded to remove the assignment from my job list so I can only hope I’ll get some sort of compensation for it, but if not I least I can have the satisfaction of working only four periods today and getting a full day’s pay for it (the norm for middle school is six periods).  The teacher came in to work and decided he was too ill to work so I picked up the late assignment.  I did not work first period as a result.  Then I found out the teacher only has five periods, helping out in the office a 6th period.  That is not normal and they didn’t have me do it, though I did ask about it.  To top it off, the teacher has a student teacher so he did most of the work.  Cool.

Yesterday was an easy day too, though when I got there I was a little concerned as the teacher didn’t leave any lesson plans.  Fortunately I only had to teach one class.  The rest were either co-teach classes (you know what that means- the other teacher does the teaching an I help as an assistant) or resource/study hall.  As it turned out the one class they were just working out of a packet, so I just taught the next page of the packet and had them start their homework in class.  Of course when I got home I found an email outlining the plans- apparently the system allows for a teacher to upload the plans to the sub-system and have them emailed to the sub.  Having never had this happen before, I never realized it could do this so I never bothered to check my email before heading to work.  Fortunately for me I had pretty much followed the plans without realizing it! Whew…

Besides work I had my usual small group Monday night and tonight I had rehearsals for both children’s drama, which starts up again this weekend, and choir.  Since they overlapped, I had to miss a little bit of each.  I just wish it hadn’t been the first rehearsal as that is one that people shouldn’t miss, even in part.  Well, that’s how it goes I guess.  I have two more choir rehearsals next week and will have to miss small group as a result but they understand about that- it only happens a few times a year.  I’ll just have to make sure they are set on song lyrics as that’s kind of my job- I usually set up a couple of powerpoints and bring my computer in.  That’s one of the nice things about this new computer.  I guess I will just have to print something up and drop them off- I’ll be in the same building after all.  Someone else provides the music by the way in case you’re wondering.  My small group starts off each week with a couple of worship songs.

Well, that’s it for now.  Time to get ready for some sleep.  It’s going to be another early day tomorrow.

Anybody else see a theme forming… And this topics color is black..

Has anyone seen some of the headlines about the new Super Collider? Bunch of doom and gloom coming from somewhere.

Things like “Fear Looms”, “Doomsday machine to start”, “Collider triggers end-of-world fears”, “Black Holes may devour the Earth”, “Will Collider destroy the Earth”, “Giant wild goat kills thousands”.. Ok, I made that last one up. I understand that this is cutting edge science that very few people understand, but does the media have to make the stories so out there. The chance of something like this happening is very small, almost non-existent. The only reason it isn’t non-existent is that nobody really “knows” what will happen when they finally get a collision. There are some very good ideas, but nobody “knows” yet. They haven’t done the experiment yet.

Tomorrow there is a chance that the collider will create mini-black holes that will swallow the Earth. Tomorrow the Sun could explode and fry the Earth. Tomorrow a big rock could hit the Earth and send us flying out of orbit. Tomorrow a space ship (that’s no moon, it’s a space station) could blow us to bits. Tomorrow the Sun could rise, and then set and the day will be normal. I have an idea of which of these things will happen, but I don’t “KNOW” which one will happen. I’ll check tomorrow just to be sure.

May the Force be with you when that space station decides to blow the Earth to bits. We aren’t even part of the Imperial Senate….

I’ve been working on Windows machines since the existence of Windows, and I always hated the dreaded blue screen error. It has been quite a long time since I’ve had one of those, but today I had one. This machine has been fairly stable, the only additions were an extra gig of memory and my cell modem. No programs added or new hardware, except a Windows update yesterday.

The problem with this blue screen was that it flashed and went directly to reboot. Not a chance to read the screen at all. Not that it would have helped, but maybe it would have given a clue. I actually had to cancel a reboot to start from my last known good start. Grumble….

Now back to that blue screen. Back in the day when you could actually tell what happened (early dos for you folks that don’t know) it wasn’t the terrible trouble it seems to be now. When Windows 3.1 finally rolled in and you could actually do some multi-tasking, the blue screens ominous tone. Since you were multi-tasking, you weren’t always sure what task caused the error. Most of the time it was running the multiple tasks that caused the error in the first place. Windows became known for its blue screen of death. For a long time this prevented windows from being used for important functions (think payroll). It took Windows 2000 to finally start getting Windows machines that were fairly stable. I sometimes wonder where computer networking would be today if the early windows machines would have failed with more precise error messages. Would the world of Linux and Unix file servers have taken off as they did. Would Apple have any opening in the corporate world? I really think the downfall of the early Windows machines was that blue screen of death. Even the color made the machine seem ‘toy’ like. And the messages, well lets just say it took a lot to be able to get anything out of them. If a stable Windows environment existed from the beginning, would we even have the Virus writers/hackers of today?

I guess we will never know, until the next computer revolution.

By the way, I really think my latest blue screen was caused by the update Microsoft/Windows decided to make yesterday evening.

 With Alaskan Sarah Palin’s eye on the White House and all the northern exposure in the media lately, we decided to pull out one of our old favorites the other night and watched the 1999 movie Mystery Alaska.  It’s a pretty good movie and obviously has lots of replay value, at least for us, because we’ve seen it lots of times.  It was interesting watching it this time since I think this is the first time we’ve seen it since we’ve moved into a small town, and the movie is all about small town living.  The main difference between Mystery Alaska and my small town is the climate, of course.

In Mystery, residents’ lives seem to revolve around hockey (and sleeping around, but don’t let that give you the wrong idea about the movie.  Every small town has its sordid secrets).  Boys in Mystery grow up with the “goal” (pun intended) of getting to play in the famed Saturday Game.  Hank Azaria plays a former Mysterian who left town because he was never good enough to play in the game.  He becomes a writer for Sports Illustrated instead, although his success in the real world does not make him feel any more acceptance in Mystery, even if he does arrive in a helicopter.  He gets the brilliant idea to bring the New York Rangers to Mystery to play the Saturday Game, and well, you’ll have to watch the movie to see what happens.  As in any small town, there is a bit of drama, and the movie is successful with its character development as it follows the lives of the most popular residents of Mystery.  Russell Crowe, who is not normally one of my favorite actors, is pretty good in this movie as the family man / town sheriff who is growing too old to play in the Saturday Game and must face some tough decisions about what is best for his family versus what is best for Mystery and the integrity of the Saturday Game.  Burt Reynolds is excellent as the no-nonsense judge who also struggles as he raises his teenagers.  In fact, perhaps the funniest line of the movie is said to his character by his wife.  She is consoling their teenage daughter, and he wants to know what’s wrong.  “Walter,”  his wife says, “if you don’t leave, I swear I’ll tell you!”  If you have kids, especially teenagers, you can appreciate the truth and the humor in that line, more so if you see the movie and know the daughter’s issue to which she is referring.

Even if you don’t like hockey, this is an entertaining film with dramatic moments interspersed with comedy.  Its one shortcoming is the fact that there is too much adult content for it to be considered as a family film.  However, adults will enjoy the fine performances by the large ensemble cast which make Mystery Alaska a well-rounded, heart-tugging and entertaining film – definitely recommended by this blogger!