Musings on Life and Living

[Note: This has been cross-posted on my Adventures in Substituting blog.] It is shortly after 7 am on 31 December 2010. In just 17 hours, this year will be over. At times it felt like it was just zipping by and at other times it seemed like time would just not move forward. Despite the numerous personal difficulties that I have experienced this year, from not being afforded many opportunities to teach during the end of the last school year, to applying for hundreds and hundreds of full-time teaching positions and only having one interview (that didn't produce anything other than a long early morning drive across the state and back again), to running a business that started failing in 2009 and finally closed this summer, to a few extremely personal trials that some, but not all, are aware of... despite all that, there were good things, too. Some of my highlights of this year has been the many opportunities to teach during the first part of this school year, especially in a new scho...

This is just another DVD wish list (mostly for reference purposes only, but if you feel like gifting one or two, we won't complain). This one is specifically for CG and Stop Motion movies. It is our goal to someday own all of these movies on DVD. Ones we own are crossed off. PIXAR MOVIES Cars 2 Finding Nemo Monsters Inc. DREAMWORKS ANIMATION Antz How to Train Your Dragon How to Train Your Dragon 2 Kung Fu Panda 2 Madagascar 2 Over the Hedge Shark Tale WALT DISNEY ANIMATION (CG) A Christmas Carol Bolt Dinosaur Meet the Robinsons The Wild Tinker Bell (the first one) Valiant BLUE SKY STUDIOS Ice Age Ice Age 2 WARNER BROS. The Polar Express IMAGI ANIMATION STUDIOS Astro Boy Planet 51 TMNT  (CG animated) OTHER STUDIOS 9 (Starz Animation) Barnyard (Omation Animation Studios) Happily N'Ever After (Lionsgate Films) Hoodwinked (The Weinstein Company) Igor ...

Christmas has come and gone, and with it, the joy of trying to find gifts for everyone and making plans to accommodate family and friends near and not-so-near. Our Christmas festivities officially began on Christmas Eve Eve, when we got together with our friends Noah and Cherry to exchange gifts and to watch "The Rocketeer" - a movie that neither Gretch nor Cherry had seen. We made a bunch of chocolate chip cookies for them, and also got a framed print of the first picture we had with Noah and Cherry in Illinois, taken at Jimmy John's. I will refrain from sharing the picture online, if only because I don't know if they want it publicly shared or not (even though Gretch and I agree it is an adorable picture of the two of them!) They gave us a grey and maroon American Eagle hoodie, a nightlight of the Leg Lamp from "A Christmas Story" and a vintage Snoopy Christmas mug from 1958: On Christmas Eve, we headed over to Gretch's family's where we had a wond...

Gretch and I have had to be creative with our Christmas plans this year, due to financial restraints and other issues. However, that hasn't stopped us from finding and/or making presents, doing some decorating, and, of course, baking on Christmas Eve day. So, for those who can't make it to our home and don't go on facebook, here's our Christmas tree, with presents under and around: Yes, that is a Charlie Brown Christmas Tree, and yes, that really is what we are using for our tree this year. We decided that the amount of time and effort required to put up our large tree and decorate it with lights, garland, ornaments, etc, was just too much. Also, we really don't have the space in our house without massively rearranging everything. So maybe when we have a bigger place, and kids who want to put the tree up. For now, though, we are happy with our little tree with its single red ball ornament. Is there really any food combination in this world that is better than chocol...

The following is the text of a post I shared on my Adventures in Substituting blog this morning. Since I know that there are many family members and friends who don't regularly check that blog out, I wanted to share it here, as well, since it has much to do with what I've been doing since Gretch started working last week. In the beginning, I didn’t know how to read. This was very frustrating for my mum and my teachers and, if memory serves correctly, for me. My mother, being the brilliant, wonderful, amazing mother that she is, realised that whatever the school was doing wasn’t helping. So she dug through her boxes, and she found what she needed. McGuffey’s Eclectic Reader for Young Children: I don’t remember what the reader actually looked like, and it is quite possible that the versions were much more recent than those shown but, nonetheless, Mum taught me how to read in a very brief period of time by guiding me through McGuffey’s reader. For this I shall be eternally gratef...

Gretch and I traveled to Washington this to celebrate my dad's 63rd birthday. His birthday is actually on Tuesday, but my brother Abram and his fiancee, Jen, were coming down this weekend to see my brother Aaron's daughter in a play on Friday, and they are going to Minnesota for Christmas, so it was decided that we would celebrate Dad's birthday a little bit early. (Which really isn't that early, seeing as we typically celebrate birthdays on the Sunday before the actual day. Unless it was for my birthday--those Sundays quite often coincided with the Super Bowl and, let's be honest: nobody wants to celebrate a birthday in competition with the Super Bowl. Not even people like my family members who, with few exceptions, have little to no interest in professional American football.) We spent Friday afternoon at Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Peoria with Jen and Ariana and looked at books for an hour. (Have I mentioned yet that I am a voracious and unabashed bibliophi...

It has been a while since I've posted a good old fashioned rant on here. And since ranting is part of what this blog is all about, I thought I'd share a recent email I sent to the good folks at County Market in Champaign. For those who are not aware, County Market is a grocery store located throughout the upper midwestern states in America (with some stores in Louisiana and Pennsylvania). I went to County Market this morning to buy milk and cereal. While shopping I overheard a customer asking an employee for help finding an item, and was shocked when she blew him off, muttering that she was doing her own shopping. She was wearing her work uniform at her place of work. I registered the encounter, but didn't think too much of it until a few minutes later. After making the purchases, realised I had grabbed the wrong brand of milk. County Market has an on-going program in which customers who buy 9 gallons of milk will receive a coupon for a free 10th gallon. These purchases are...

Gretch and I were blessed to spend our Thanksgiving holiday with both sides of the family. This is one of the things for which I am most grateful. We live close to both sets of parents, so it is possible to see them often, although we don't get to travel to Washington quite as often as we would like, it is still nice to know that Mum and Dad are only an hour and a half away. We went to my parents' house on Thanksgiving Day and stayed until Saturday morning. While there, we spent time with many of our nephews and nieces, worked on teaching our niece Liberty how to throw her head back and cackle and then utter the phrase "foolish mortals" (still a work in progress--she doesn't talk yet, and the throwing her head back and the cackling parts haven't quite synched up with each other), and we hung out with some of my brothers and their wives. And, of course, we ate. Oh, goodness, how we ate! Mum and Dad made salad, pies, and provided a home for the meal. Tom and Tab...

I participate on an interfaith blog that focuses on LDS and Evangelical issues. Those of us who regularly contribute to the blog (either as blog post authors or as commenters) have teamed together to do an interfaith study of Paul's Epistle to the Romans. I was assigned to review the fifteenth chapter. What follows is the review which I gave. It is divided into two parts: a summary of the chapter and the application of some of the teachings. Summary Romans 15 continues on from the advice started in chapter 12, giving practical advice to how the Saints can “present [their] bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is [their] reasonable service.” Having discussed a variety of aspects of practical Christian behaviour in the previous chapter, Paul starts off by admonishing the Romans to “bear the infirmities of the weak” and to “every one of us please his neighbour for his good to edification.” Paul then gives counsel that we be “likeminded one toward another” that w...

As many of you are surely aware, I am a long-time supporter of drug prevention programs that focus on teen leadership training and empowerment. Most notably, I am a volunteer drug prevention specialist through Operation Snowball, Inc. and the Illinois Teen Institute. I got involved with these programs in 1996, when I attended a Snowflake event at Washington Community High School. Snowflake is a prevention program aimed at middle school/junior high students. I attended my first Snowflake as a 7th grader, through the influence of two of my older brothers, Anton and Adam, who were both involved in the high school's Operation Snowball chapter. I remember being bewildered at first, but quickly coming to enjoy the atmosphere. I could not tell you a single thing we were taught during that evening event, but I can tell you that I was there with my best friend, Carl, and we met a girl there named Colleen. When we got to high school, we became friends with Colleen (or Co, as we came to know ...

For the first time in the eight and a half years that I have been voting in the state of Illinois, I missed an opportunity to vote in an election. And I am going to be perfectly honest: I am very upset. And not with myself. You see, I have been registered to vote since I turned 18. I have never, since that time, not been registered to vote. I have always been registered in the state of Illinois although, in all this time, I have lived in at least six different precincts. However, my registration has never ceased to be in this state, and, for the past five years or so, it has been in Champaign. So even though Gretchen and I moved in August, we both knew that we were still registered to vote. Or so we thought. It turns out that Illinois has what I am going to call the stupidest voter registration rule ever. I didn't even know about this rule until about 20 minutes ago, when I arrived at my polling place to get my ballot for what I believe was one of the single most important election...

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Gretch and I love watching movies. If our recently posted list of movies we currently have on VHS that we want to get on DVD wasn't indication enough, we have the fact that we watch movies all the time at home. It is an inexpensive diversion that lets us do something together and it is something we love doing. Today was an unusual day for us though. We usually watch one movie each evening. It is typically how we wrap up the day. We did watch a movie this evening. But we also watched three other movies today. And I watched a movie yesterday afternoon while Gretch was helping her friend Hannah with a photography project. So six movies within about a 36-hour period. Not too shabby, eh? So what was being watched in our home? Well, yesterday I watched one of my many education-themed films, "Freedom Writers". In addition to being an amazingly inspirational film about the power that one teacher can have on her students, it is notable as one of two films that has ever made me cry...