Musings on Life and Living

This is a topic that has been showing up among many different friends over the past few weeks, and I thought I'd write up a post reflecting on it. The topic is: making friends. I realised something about making friends a long time ago, while in high school. actually. It is this: our friends do not have to be people with whom we have much in common. I had a fantastic group of friends in high school. We are all still friends today, over 12 years later. Some of us had a lot in common: we went to grade school together, we were in band, choir, or drama in high school, or we had other classes together. Some of us had absolutely nothing in common other than a mutual friend. I have one great friend who became a friend solely because I sat next to him in freshman year biology and we had to dissect a fetal pig together. Later on in my life, I began making friends with people at my young single adult congregation in college. By no means an all-inclusive list, here's just a snapshot o...

I have been blogging about education for over three years now and recently wrote my 600th post on my teaching blog. Over the many, many, many months I have been blogging, I have had nearly 10,000 spam comments captured and blocked from showing up on my site. I usually ignore the spam completely, but, every now and then, I skim them just to see what weirdness shows up. What follows is a comment posted from some company out of Italy. (And yes, it was originally written in Italian but I used Chrome's native page translation software to convert it to English. Or something close to it.) It was too amazingly bizarre to just ignore, but I don't like posting spammy stuff on my teaching blog (it is, after all, a way I communicate with parents), so I decided to post it here. Besides, Gretch and I haven't shared anything recently. This will hopefully change soon. Enjoy! Because women that terrifies them oils?  will be fat, but the essence of small sums and see the results for ...

When Gretch and I got married in 2008, we moved into a two-story townhouse (with a finished basement) across the way from some good friends of ours. The unit to the right of us was empty and the unit to the left was occupied by a wonderful woman who worked as Sunday School teacher at a local church. Our apartment managers were fantastic, and we really liked where we lived. (This isn't our unit, but it is very similar to where we lived.) Then some college students moved into the vacant unit next to us, along with their loud stereo, drum set, and three large dogs. After a day when I came home to find several dog turds in my front yard, I went to the manager and complained about the dogs. His response: "Wait, what dogs? They didn't say anything about having dogs!" I told him that they did, indeed, have dogs. He promptly kicked out the dogs and their owners. But a few of the guys stayed. With their stereo and drums. Then our rent went up again and we dec...

Shortly after Gretch and I moved into our current place, I was given a calling in church as an Assistant Webelos Den Leader. I was later made the Webelos Den Leader, which is a responsibility I've had for nearly three years. I have loved working with my boys and my Assistant Den Leaders, as well as with the Cub Scout Committee Chair, the Cubmaster, and the other Den Leaders. Over the years, I have advanced all but one of them into the Boy Scouts. All but one earned their Webelos badge and the Arrow of Light and many earned the Compass emblem and one, two, or three Compass Points. Many have earned the religious square knot for our church. So I feel that we have had a very successful Webelos program. The Cubmaster we had when I started was one of my best friends, and so I worked with him closely in planning Pack Meetings and filling in for him when work or school presented a conflict. I was essentially the Assistant Cubmaster without actually having the title. He was released from...

Gretch and I started dating on August 16, 2007. (This is what we refer to as our first anniversary. Our second anniversary is our wedding, June 20, 2008.) From the day we went on our first date until about November 18 or 19, we saw each other every single day. It was either that Sunday or Monday that I left Champaign to go home for Thanksgiving Break and get a bunch of assignments completed. Upon returning to Champaign on Thanksgiving Day, we continued to see each other every single day. We maintained this daily contact until we got married and then onward for a few years. I think the first time we were apart for any period of time more than a day was when I went to the Illinois Teen Institute one year without Gretch. Or it may have been when she went to Chicago with her best friend for a weekend. Over the past six years, we have rarely been apart for more than a week, and then only once a year. But this year has been different. First, Gretch went to Utah with her mother to visit ...

My oldest brother, Tom, recently started a blog on which he muses about life, religion, family, parenting, economics, and politics. I love it, of course. His most recent post was about his role in a community orchestra. Tom was always a "first trumpet" throughout grade, middle, and high school, but he is playing the third trumpet part now. You can read his musings on this topic here . His post got me thinking. You see, I, too, have played the trumpet since I was in fifth grade. I have been in bands and other ensembles for most of the past twenty years. (I am currently on my longest hiatus since leaving for my two-year mission in 2002 due to scheduling conflicts and the lack of a car to get me to rehearsals on time.) And for most of these twenty years, I have been assigned the third trumpet part. I may have played first trumpet my senior year of high school and I played first with the St. Joseph CAR band last summer, but other than those brief times, I've been on the ...

I love my job. I love my profession. I love what I do. I love getting paid to do what I do best: teach, educate, guide, inspire, influence, shape, mold, produce. It brings untold joy, even though there are days that I feel like beating my head against the wall in frustration. Teaching is hard, challenging, and difficult to do well. But it is oh so rewarding to see the fruits of my labours. But there is one part of my job that I don't particularly enjoy: the comments, sometimes cruel, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, made by others not in my profession. This poem by Taylor Mali is often how I wish to respond to some of the more obnoxious things that I hear from my friends. Right about the time May comes around, I hear a really silly statement from people not in education: Gee, teachers are so lucky! They get paid for a full year but only have to work for nine months! It must be so nice to have three months of paid vacation every year! I wish I had three months of vacation! ...

Gretch noticed that I had not made an update to our blog since last April, and really I hadn't made a post about our lives since January, which means that there are a host of important things that have happened that I haven't gotten around to writing about. Some of them were because I felt like it was all I wrote about, and I wanted our blog to be about more than just one topic. Some of them were because I felt like I hadn't reached a concluding point that could be shared. And some were just because I had gotten out of the habit of updating again. (I think I set a goal to update once a week and lasted about two months. Oops.) So, what have we been doing since January? I'm not going to cover everything, but here are a few of the highlights: January Gretch and I went to Washington for Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend to participate in the Washington Community High School Operation Snowball event. Gretch ended up not going due to health issues, but I attended for...

Dear Senator Brady, I am a lifelong resident of central Illinois, having grown up in Washington and moving to Champaign in 2001. As a result of my location, I have been long accustomed to the different political climate that exists in the southern half of the state and the climate that exists in the Chicago area. Most notably, I have often felt that Chicago politicians are much more ruthless, while I have always felt our downstate politicians have been more honest and authentic. I first learned about you in 2006, when you began your first campaign for governor.  I was immediately impressed by your background, your message, and your dedication to helping Illinois get out of its ongoing financial crisis through improving the business climate, reducing expenses, and increasing revenue. I am proud to say that I voted for you in the 2006 Primary election. Then you ran again in 2010, and I again voted for you in the Primary election. Then I voted for you in the General election....

Today is my father's special day. Not only is he the best father ever, he's pretty awesome! To the best, funniest, loving, smart, cuddly Papa ever! Happy Father's Day Papa! Love Gretch (and da Bunny!:D )

Bunny Face The Plunge The Bunny, The Frog, The Hedge Hog and a Flower Content Paws on the Table If You Plant It It Will Grow Shopping Plum Tuckered Out Nibbler Peek a Boo! Peek a Boo! BW The Bunny and The Bro

So, I haven't updated this blog in a while. In fact, it has been over three months. I am going to try to get back into the swing of things. I think part of the reason I haven't been updating is that I've felt like we haven't had much to share. Probably the biggest news of the past three months was that the students in my school, with the support of parents, teachers, and community members, logged 1,247,277 minutes of reading in 193 days and, as a result, I am now bald. I'll start growing my hair back after school ends in about five weeks. Today, though, I wanted to share the text of a talk I gave in Sacrament meeting today. I was asked to speak about strengthening the family through the Gospel of Jesus Christ and was encouraged to use recent General Conference addresses as my framework. Below is the text of the talk I wrote, which is pretty close to what I actually shared. I had several people tell me afterwards that they really appreciated my message and requeste...