1. What did you do in 2007 that you'd never done before?
Uhh, I got my motorcycle license

2. Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t think I made any.  I probably won’t this year either.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
well the Rafting Miracle baby was born, but I’m not that close to Justin.  Aaron and Amy are expecting, but I don’t know the due date.  That should answer how close they are.  Helen’s boss had a kid. 

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Grandma, Granma and Gramps are all coming close.  L

5. What countries did you visit?
Ireland!

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?
a teaching position.

7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Rock climbing with Helen.  It was fun to try something new and discover that we both enjoyed it.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I guess maybe skating the inline marathon

9. What was your biggest failure?
the wind at said inline marathon

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
lots of shotokan blisters.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
well I bought a new car, even though I didn’t want to… Dribble died.   Also, I bought a new camera.  Again, not intentionally, but my other one kinda went south.  

12. What was the biggest risk you took?
I’m not much of a risk taker.

13. What is the one decision you made that you wish you could change?
I don’t dwell on shit.

14. Where did most of your money go?
gas (again), bills, lame things.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Going to the dunes with Helen!

16. What song will always remind you of 2007?
well, Helen and I listened to the Cupid Shuffle and Soulja Boy a lot

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
Happier or sadder - Happier
Older or wiser - yes
Thinner or fatter? - neither
Richer or poorer? – luckily, having started with $0, I can’t get poorer!! Well…

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
earn money

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
spend money

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
spending the weekend leading up to xmas with Helen and her extended fam, then xmas eve with mom dad and Micki, and xmas day with the Harrings and the Pulias.

24. What was your favorite TV program?
uhh, I watched a lot of Top Gear socially with Krajniak and Rich.  I don’t much like this new crap that’s on these days.  I also watched a bit of Jeopardy! With Gram and Gramps.

25. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
not really

26. What was the best book you read?
(new) Harry Potter 7 
(old) I reread the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies by Robin Hobb.  Those are still my favorites.  I also got into the Dresden files.  Nothing spectacular, but they’re pretty decent if you’re not looking for Shakespeare.

27. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Daft Punk came out with a third CD.  It wasn’t as good as the last two.

28. What did you want and get?
a green belt

29. What did you want and not get?
a purple belt

30. What was your favorite film of this year?
probably Die Hard 4.

30b.What was your LEAST favorite film of this year?
oh God there were too many lousy movies to count this year.  I think No Country for Old Men is probably the worst I saw though.

31. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 26.  I was in Champaign and Helen and I went to Tom’s wedding.  Then we went to Dos Reales with her mom and Barry because Helen’s mom and I share a birthday.  I did a barbecue the following weekend I think.

32. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
a smaller ratio of cancerous tumors per elderly relative in the family.

33. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2006?
I got off the fashion train in 1999.

34. What kept you sane?
I read books voraciously to escape reality.

35. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I can’t stand celebrities. 

36. What political issue stirred you the most?
I am not a fan of the politics

37. Who did you miss?
Helen

38. Who was the best new person you met?
I don’t think I met anyone new.  I guess there were probably some new UIC people. 

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007:
I don’t usually learn my lessons.  I figure out what I should have done, but then I inevitably make the same mistake again.  It’s like I don’t care or something.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
I don’t like giving that kind of power to a song.  A movie maybe, or a book definitely, but not a song.  I’m not sure why this is.

Scribbled by Matt at 3:19 PM CST

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it's been a long week.  Thursday I headed south to Urbana.  I took the new I-355 extension to I-80 to I-57.  It wasn't any faster than any of the previous routes.  IL-47 remains king.  When I got there, I helped Helen make cookies for her coworkers.  We made a good 150+ of GF sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and chocolate cookies.  daaaaamn good.  i think the sugar cookies are my favorites. 

Friday while Helen worked, I went and had lunch with Joel.  We swapped stories from the last few months, and i got to hear about his time in India.  sounds like he had a good time, but is glad to be back.  after lunch, helen was done with work, so we went to do some shopping.  i finished my xmas shopping and we did a few errands.  then we went to her mom's house to eat some chili and french fries with her mom and Barry.  then they went out and we watched Love Actually, Helen's first DVD.  after the movie we went to work on Kathryn's bench.  Helen got to use her new router for teh first time!  It was pretty sweet.  then we filled in the nail holes and stained it.  

Saturday we painted and sealed the bench.  It looked pretty awesome.  Then we went to Uni for Helen's 5 year reunion.  I enjoyed the food while Helen talked with her old school buds.  We took a tour of all the things that had changed at Uni, none of which I could tell was new or anything, but it was cool to see the school.  I saw Helen's handprint on the wall on the first floor.  then we went to Helen's dad's and carried Linda's stocking stuffers for everyone down south to Mt Vernon.  the drive went pretty smoothly.  hardly much traffic, and some decent xmas music.  we arrived in Mt Vernon and got to see Kathryn before she went to bed.  We spent most of the evening trying to chase Bear off of Helen's bed.  Then we watched The Incredibles, laughed about how Kathryn appears drunk when she's tired.  

Sunday we woke up, played more with Kathryn, and opened our stocking stuffers from LInda.  THey had lots of useful things in them, breath mints, office supplies, a lighter, and a white castle hat!  We all put on our hats for a while.  Wendell put his on sideways tto become "Gangsta Wendell" and then Kathryn couldn't take it anymore so we let her open Helen's present.  She loved it!  She was sitting on it immediately as it was perfect for her size.  We had an early dinner of Helen's grandma's pasta casserole dish, and then we went to Wendell's family's gift exchange.  It was pretty cool.  Everyone buys one gift and then everyone picks one at a time.  You can choose to open your gift, or steal someone else's, which was amusing to watch.  Scott was nice and stole Wendell's dvds.  Helen got a birdhouse, liked it, had it stolen from her, and got another one in exchange.  We all laughed a lot.  The food was good too.  Also, it seems like Wendell has great-grandkids who are college aged.  I didn't get the full story there, but between all the people i talked to, that's how i figure it.  AFter the dinner, we headed back north.  I tried to take pictures of Helen asleep in the car, but they didn't come out better than making Helen look like a 300 pound man.  

Monday Helen had to work again, so I drove north.  Luckily mom and dad were home, because they'd had the locks changed on Friday after teh doorknob broke.  whoops.  We spent most of the morning and afternoon wrapping presents and getting ready for xmas.  I spent most of the day trying o get my DVD for grandma' to work.  For some reason Day 1,2,3,4,6,7 all work fine and Day 5 didnt.  How irritating.  We cooked a lot of food and then missed teh 5:00 service so we had to go to the 7:00.  It had some good points, but some weird points too.  Like I don't quite know why there was 2 girls who did an interpretive dance in front of the cross.  And I'm always put off by guitar solos during the church worship songs time.  You're not there to be a rockstar.  After church we drove around like usual to look at  lights.  As we left the parking lot, we noticed that the church had a live nativity scene, complete with a donkey and some sheep.  I didn't see a camel.  Then we came home to open presents.  Micki gave me a spongebob blanket and Biaggi's coupons for me and Helen.  Mom and dad gave me a nice outfit.  At some point during the evening my camera stopped working.  It just stopped showing anything in the lens.  LAME.

Tuesday morning I made pancakes and Helen arrived around 9:30.  We opened our stockings and ate some chocolate.  Then it was time to head to the Pulias for the first half of xmas.  Helen was pleased to discover that Elf was playing on  USA.  She's been wanting to watch it all season!  Gram passed out the holiday $ and we ate ate ate.  Dino and Gigi were there all dressed up for the holidays.  People kept changing the channel and we had to move from room to room while we socialized.  Gram was looking ok at some points and sometimes bad.  Gramps seemed to be doing ok.  I talked to Meagan's boyfriend Joe for a while. 

At 330ish we left for teh next round of family fun time.  We got to Grandma's house before AJ left, so that was good.  We got to play with Kate and scare Grace, as usual.  Kate had me first spin her in the chair, and then spin Mary Joseph and Jesus figures.  They seemed to have a good time.  Gram changed some things up this year and did a new version of Luke 2 involving a lot of 'lefts' and 'rights' and we passed little gifts around.  It was a lot of fun.  Then we did the 12 Days.  Helen and I were Ten Lords A Leaping.   I showed Gram her DVD.  Everyone liked ti a lot which was good.  I didnt have as many pictures of Sean and Megthough , because their cameras didnt get included in the picture day swap. 

Wednesday Helen and I played Scrabble.  She whupped my butt once again.  She's better at seeing words than I am.  I do ok.  I got "Zone" on a  triple word score with the Z on a double letter.  Dad got home early, right as Helen left, and he and i went to do some returning.  He swapped a shirt and tie, and returned a game.  I got a James Bond novel and a sci fi book.  

Yesterday we went to Woodfild for lunch with Gram.  Uncle Mike came too while James and Tory worked, and Aunt Lois and Emily went for peticures and shopping.  We ate at the Cheesecake factory, which ended up being pretty lame.  There was an hour wait, and the food ended up being either fried in  peanut oil or cross contaminated.  (Uncle Mike ate it anyway).  I had a pretty good spicy chicken sandwich though.  Then we more than earned our free meal by sitting around for over TWO HOURS while Uncle Mike tried on six pairs of pants, several shirts, jackets and sweaters.  Sigh.  Then we had to hurry home so i could go to karate.  It was a good workout, we did some core body training and then some self defense exercises.  Katlin was home for the hoildays so she came with.  

Today dad and I went to do some errands.  We stopped to look at the camera I was thinking about at Office Max.  it turned out to be on sale for $20 cheaper than anywhere else, and also, it came with a free 2GB card.  So I went ahead and spent dad's money.  I felt bad.  I think he was a little jealous of my camera.  He never says anything, but you can sometimes tell.  And he never would say no to us.  It's awkward.  

He and mom went to take food to Gram and Gramps today, and I took Micki to buy a camera for her.  She ended up going with the slightly cheaper, smaller camera.  We went to 4 different stores to find it, but finally found one.  She likes it a  lot.  

Sorry for the boring report nature of the post.  I've been watching Dr. No, and possibly not paying as much attention to the computer as I should have.  Now it's time for bed.

Scribbled by Matt at 2:37 AM CST

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well i think i'm finally done with grad school assignments!  thursday night after i came home from karate, I peeled my blisters off and sat down to finish my paper for 448 and my portfolio for 432.  the paper was due by 9:30 and I emailed it in around 8.  the portfolio was apparently due wednesday and for some reason i had friday in my head, so i sent that off as soon as i dotted the final i and crossed the final t.  in between i went to mom's school to help mom's friend's kid prepare for his German I final.  H e wasn't too into it, but i can't say i would have been in HS either.  there was one word that i didn't know, so i asked Jonas, and he didn't know either.  so we just made that one up.  he was doing alright on the rest of them.  in between all that and tutoring i dropped off some food at Grndma and Gramps, and was there fro all of ten minutes.   

friday night after tutoring, Helen came up.  we made some chicken something in between sweet and sour and stir fry.  i need to separate those recipes and make them how they're supposed to be made.  i bought the good chicken, and you can really taste the difference between a boneless skinless breast and the stuff that comes in a box with grill lines painted on.  we ate dinner, helen made a gf pumpkin pie,  adn then fell asleep watching It Could Happen to You with Nick Cage and a really really really irritating mexican girl.  I thought the ending was kind of lame.  the court room scene was too stupid.  But overall it was a nice movie.  I slept through a lot of the middle.

Saturday  we went up to Crystal Lake for her mom's family's christmas party.  i ate a lot of fudge.  we watched Kathryn open christmas presents and helped her play with them.  then we ate a lot of turkey and ham and mashed potatoes and green beans and corn.  after eating we played a movie trivia game.  i did alright., although i didn't speak up, and consequently let the other team get about half a dozen answers that i had said first but not loud enough.  it didn't matter in the end because we all chose to bet it all on the final answer and both teams got it wrong.  so we tied at zero.  after that game we went to play charades.  i sat there without any clue how to pantomime "The Bishop's Wife" and no one got that one.  but my second time I had "Twas the Night Before CHristmas" and Helen's mom guessed it before I even did anything.  that was weird but good.  it had snowed all day so then we all had to scrape cars adn slowly drive back south.  I guess Helen's mom and Barry tried to make it all the way to Urbana but got snowed in in Kankakee.  Helen and I returned to Lisle and the fun of a backed up sewer.  So she slept on the couch while dad and i dealt with It.

Sunday was Cookie Day at uncle AJs.  Helen and I went to Menards first to do some christmas shoppoing.  she got something for the gift exchange, a new hammer hook, a present for micki, and the rest of the stuff she needs to finish Kathryn's xmas present.  Then we took the new I-355 for the first time past 55 and it seriously cut the drive to AJs from 45 minutes to 20.  although I had to pay an extra two tolls.  I think it cut Scott and Cassandra's drive from Tinley Park to Crystal Lake down significantly too.  We got to AJs with a quick stop on the way to get Grandma her Coke fix.  I had an italian beef sandwich with some good giardineira again.  Then it was time to Make Cookies.  Micki and Helen and I took it easy this year and made the chocolate drop pretzels.  The highlight was when I asked my little cousin Kate to help with the sprinkles.  Micki took a picture of me and Helen pouring chocolate and putting sprinkles on, and only then  did we notice that Kate was poouring sprinkles in her mouth.  Her green tongue was hilarious.  Gracie was glued to her mom's side for most of the day.  She did sit on micki's lap and color for a while.  Then we went down to the basement to play Catch Phrase.  I like that game.  We did pretty well, but AUnt Mary Kate, Uncle Dan, Dad, Tory, and AJ beat Helen, Grandma, Uncle Kevin, AUnt Jan, Aunt Meghan and I.  Then Helen headed back down to Urbana and we came back north.

Monday I had my meeting at Mather H'S.   I now have a staff badge.  I met with my CT.  German classes are Periods 1, 7 and 8.  So that should be interesting.  We'll see how good my German is first thing in th e morning.  Luckily? that's the harder class, so it will be the last one i take over.  The dude seems happy to have a student teacher, so he can take time to fill out applications for a principalship.  Also, I'mhis 9th student teacher in 12 years.  And since you can't have one the first couple years, I'm pretty sure that means he has one aa year..  We'll see what that means.  He says he follows the book pretty straightforwardly, so I'm going to have to get to know Deutsch Aktuell.  I've only been familiar with Komm Mit up til now.  

I met up with David at the CHristkindlmarkt for an hour or so.  It was good.  We spoke German the entire time, which was really good.   Also it looks like Micki got into UIUC!!  SHe hasn't gotten a letter yet, but her friends were telling her it's online so she found her name and it says "accept" next to it.  Which is kind of weird but hey, whatever works.

The rest of this week I have to do the last of my Christmas shopping, get an oil change, and then I'm heading down to Urbana and Mount Vernon for the weekend.  

Now it's over the river and through the woods... 

Scribbled by Matt at 12:13 PM CST

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i don't know why some words irritate me.  I don't use 'google' as a verb.  I don't use 'blog' as a noun or a verb.  The latest one is 'high def'.  We've been using 'HD' for a few years now, why the sudden need for change?  More importantly, why do I care?

Micki was home sick yesterday and today.  Yesterday afternoon I watched the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie with her.   It wasn't bad.  Long though.  Almost 3 hours.  So there were definitely someslow boring parts in there.  I felt like 2 and 3 pulled a Matrix.  They thought that the first movie had a grander scope than it actually did, so movies 2 and 3 tried to live up to some ideal that they really didn't need to.  Also, I think getting to see your family for one day every ten years is a pretty lousy situation. 

As you can tell, I'm procrastinating doing homework.  GER 448 paper and ED 432 portfolio to go.  The portfolio is half done.  The paper...

I'll probably start cleaning soon.  Or something.  I guess I shouldget back to work. LAME. 

Scribbled by Matt at 11:29 AM CST

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well it looks like it's about time for my weekly tuesday update...

the weekend was over rather quickly.  Friday, I went to Rory's and saw what he and Patrick have been working on in the loft.  It looks pretty good. We went to the video store, but didn't find anything, so we decided to go see what we had lying around.  Mickey and his friends wanted to watch Mafia the spoof of Godfather, Goodfellas, and Casino.  It has Lloyd Bridges and Jay Mohr.  There are some funny scenes, but nothing spectacular.  After that we watched Munich, which was about the Israeli assasination squad that went after the Palestinians responsible for killing the Israeli Olympic team at the 1972 Munich games.  It was interesting to see.  The movie had to make some stuff up to make it all flow together, but it was interesting to see the differences.  It was also interesting to think about how much time and effort the Israelis put towards taking out 11 individuals while the Palestinians were portrayed as blowing up busloads of people in the same time.  

Saturday wewent out for Micki's birthday.  We went downtown to the Christmas Markt.  I bought an olivewood angel and my boot of glühwein.  Then we went to Giordano's for pizza, and Oakbrook Mall.  After a quick stop at Gram and Gramps' I had dad drop me off at Joe's mom's in Willowbrook for the "Stock the Bar" shower.  It was kind of weird.  The maid of honor went on and on about how drunk she was going to be at the wedding.  I haven't heard idiots BRAG like that since listening to Aaron rant at U of I.  You can always tell what kind of person someone is by how they takl about alcohol.  Anyone over 21 who makes a big deal about booze is just trying to get attention and make people think they're hip.  I probably shouldn't make random judgments about people I've only met once I guess.  Oh well.  I talked to John who I hadn' seen in a long time.  And the party was catered by Portillo's, so I can't complain too much :).   I had my first Portillo's italian beef sandwich with hot giardineira and holy crap.  I did not know what I was missing.  Who knew that cauliflower and carrots and peppers and who knows what else could be so damn good???  Then Krajniak drove me home in the ice storm. 

Sunday I helped dad with groceries and did homework until it was time to go to Gram adn Gramps' for Gram's 82nd bday.  She and Gramps are still getting used to the whole new situation and it's kind of sad but kind of sweet too.  Gram didn't eat much and Gramps yelled at us for bringing too much food.  Gramps beat me at the Crossword puzzle in the Sunday Trib.  Then Gramps was joking about how we used up every plate and fork in the house adn he was getting dishwasher hands.  So I made the mistake of offering to help (because it was already all done).  whoops.  I'm sure I won't hear the end of that one for a while.  

Monday I had to finish up my portfolio for GER 448.  Three hours driving to and from the city just to hand a binder to my professor.  Sigh.  At least I abused my printing priveledges to print it all out.  Gotta get SOMETHING out of a 3 hour drive.  Karate was fun.  We did sparring drills for the first time in like a year, so my right foot has a nice blister forming, and my right calf is sore.  Then we did kata.  I guess I'm not going to test this time around.  The curse of the green belt remains. 

Today I helped mom's kids paint their volcano and pick out some good facts to share with the class about volcanos.  Man, some of these kids are off in their own little world.  As they were painting the rest of the class was working on something, and my group kept talking and talking and talking.  Mostly they were talking about the episode of Spongebob, where he and Patrick pretend to be married and have the baby clam... Sadly I knew exactly what they were talking about, but that's beside the point.  I kept asking them to quiet down and I don't think they even heard me.  They wanted to talk about their shows so they talked about their shows.  

Only two more assignments to go and the semester is OVER.  My portfolio for ED 432 is almost done, but I still have  a few things left, and then the paper for GER 448 that the grad students have to do.  Friday morning at 9am I am DONE DONE DONE!  

Strange and Stupid things in the news...  Santa is too fat.  Santa shouldn't be allowed to say "ho ho ho" because it's offensive to black women.  Santa can't say Merry Christmas because it's offensive to non Christians.  Seriously people, get a LIFE. 

One of mom's friends has a son who is a freshman in high school.  Apparently he was really bored in class (while they were talking about diversity), and drew a picture of a plane bombing the middle east.  Now, I'm not trying to condone this or anything.  But he was suspended for 10 days, and the principal said that the school was thinking about pressing charges for a hate crime.  a hate crime.  what the hell are they thinking?  the mentality of school administrators baffles me.  hasn't anyone taken any educational psychology courses?  this disgusts me.  although, in my favor, the kid takes German, and the mom asked me to come over and help him keep up with it, so that's a little bit of extra tutoring for the holidays.  

speaking of the holidays, if anyone needs a last minute gift idea for me, i wouldn't say no to a severed horse head pillow from The Godfather :)

now back to putting my laundry away so when Helen comes up this weekend she has a place to see the floor.  :)  I haven't seen her in like a year. :( 

Scribbled by Matt at 11:42 PM CST

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well i'm sitting at the computer lab with nothing better to do until class starts at 4, so i might as well post... i apologize if i rant about the girl across from me who has been sniffling and sneezing CONSTANTLY without using a kleenex, or the girl behind me who has been holding a conversation with someone on the other side of the room, which stops only when she calls someone on her damn cell phone, or the conversation TWO ROWS away that i can still hear....

micki's birthday went fine on tuesday.  i bought her the box set of the Anne of Green Gables books.  So Helen, you're still set to buy her some vodka.  we still haven't gone out for her birthday dinner.  i think it's going to be lunch this coming saturday at pizzaria uno's downtown. 

thursday dad took the day off and scheduled a repair dude from sears to come between 8 and noon to fix the dryer, and from 1 to 5 to fix the furnace.  i got home at one and the dude for the dryer still had not come yet, and had not called saying he would be late.  dad called sears to let them know that he purposefully scheduled them at different times because they had to work in the same 2' by 3' space.  around 1:30 the furnace guy comes.  he cleans it out, pokes around and leaves.  after he leaves it stops working.  then the dryer guy comes around 4:30, still hasn't figured out what a fucking phone looks like, and spends thirty seconds putting in a new igniter.  after he leaves, the dryer guy comes back and puts in a new igniter there.  ok.  we now have two working items.  thank you.  you may have wasted 5 hours of my dad's time, but at least you fixed something.

observation went fine last week.  i tallied and organized all of the permission slips, money, lunch choices, and parent chaperone numbers.  (then i didn't observe yesterday and the CT mutilated my nicely organized list).  my professor came to observe me, but all i really did was wander around during the III/IV class and help them translate words into German for their Timeline of the Berlin Wall posters.  The posters came out pretty good.  I'm impressed by their creativity.  I liked the one group that put in random sections of exposed bricks.  and the group of all guys whose timeline was nice, but very utilitarian with lousy handwriting and commented "man, we really could have used a girl in our group"  *I* laughed. 

i went to observe again Thursday and I was helping the students translate more words.  One kid had a bunch of stick figures holding up signs that said "Freiheit!" and "Einheit!" (Freedom and Unity) and asked me for other similar words. 
Me:  "how about 'gleichheit' - it means equality
Student: "ooh, that's a good one"
Teacher: "what's a good one?"
Student: "gleichheit"
Teacher: "sameness? why would you use that?"
Student: (pointing at me) "he said it means equality"
Teacher: "no, it doesnt, it means 'sameness' "
now i know for a fact that gleichheit means equality thanks to Herr Murray's constant stream of "Freiheit, Gleichheit, Solidaritaet!"  not to mention that i have never in my life heard of the word sameness (although i'm no english teacher).  this was irritating.

i don't remember what i did this weekend. saturday rory and i went to see Hitman with the dude from Die Hard 4.  it was alright.  nothing exciting but it could have been a lot worse.  i bought a student-teaching outfit.  i clean up good.

sunday i went to try and retrieve some data from Jenny's dead computer.  whenever her computer boots it says "Master File Table Corrupt" and will not load windows.  so i start poking around.  she has two hard drives, C and J.  C is the main one, with windows loaded, and has her documents, J has her music.  now jenny can re-rip most of her music but there's a hell of a lot, so J is her priority.  I manage to get the computer working fine, but only if J is not plugged in.  so we get the stuff from C, download it to a flash drive and put it on her new computer.  nothing i do can salvage the J drive though.  i try plugging it into her new computer.  it is recognized in the hardware manager, but you can't see it in the hardware profile, or through windows explorer.  i try and boot her old computer from a boot disk.  i can get to the J drive in dos, but i can't see any files there.  i tried making a boot disk from NTFS.com, but it didn't work and then i got tired of trying.  so i was minimally successful.  i might try again later.  hmm... thoughs?

yesterday i dropped off some food and stuff at Gram and Gramps and then came to class.  last day of GER 448!  we still have stuff due, but no more lectures!  after class we went over to Jak's Tap for some expensive burgers and mediocre fries.  i had to miss karate to go, but i guess it was worth it.  she talked about some of our different options for graduation with a degree in second language education which was cool.  she mentioned caitlin's school in VT and some other places where the undergrads could go to get their masters degrees.  she did suggest the MAT programs in language over a MEd program, while the two other MEd students and I looked at each other.  she's also heavily research bent though, so it's cool.  who knows, maybe a PhD IS a possibility?  I'd definitely have to find myself a spot at a teaching-oriented school and not a research-oriented one though. 

today i observed.  i was somewhat vindicated about the teacher arguing with me over the translation of gleichheit when she started arguing with a students grandmother who is in town from Switzerland for the holidays about the translation of the word "checkers" (as in the game). 
Teacher: "what do they call checkers in German?"
Gma: "we call it checkers
Teacher: "well I think they call it Damenspiel"
Gma: "no, we call it Checkers"
Teacher: "no, they call it Damenspiel, see it says so on my card"
I wanted to throw something. 

another stupid thing...
so i got a call a few weeks ago from Mather High School saying that they were happy to have me for student teaching in the spring, they sent information to the CTE (UIC council on teacher education) and could I come in to meet my cooperating teacher?  I call back and say sure, we set it up... Yesterday, German Sara says that I better go in to CTE to make sure that's ok because they can make my life hell if i piss them off.  so today i go in there, the head lady (who makes Frau Engelmann look like an actual Engel) was not there, but the secretary says that yeah they have my information, it's all set but they aren't going to send out an acceptance letter to me until next week.  she suggests that i email the head lady to run it by her.  so i do that, and i get an email back saying that she "can't confirm placement" until the letter goes out, and that the letter will tell me what to do about contacting my school.  uhhhh.  so even though your secretary has confirmed the placement, even though i didn't contact them, they contacted me from my information which CTE gave them... i'm supposed to... what? 

everyone is a fucking moron.

Scribbled by Matt at 2:42 PM CST

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the rest of the weekend turned out a lot busier than expected.  saturday i was woken up early to help plan the day around a broken dryer and lots of wet laundry.  i was originally supposed to go to Palatine Grandma's for lunch with Dad, and then out with Rory...  so mom was thinking maybe I shouldn't go with dad, i should just go to the laundromat and get stuff done.  But then, I in my infinite wisdom pointed out that Grandma does in fact have... a washer and dryer.  So we loaded up the van with laundry (mostly mine) and drove north.  We grabbed Portillos for lunch.  Gram hadn't had their food before, so we got her a bowl of minestrone.  she liked it.  we watched the John Denver movie,  The Christmas Gift on Hallmark.  It's a cute movie that you can't watch all that often.  Five minutes in, Grandma says "I bet he falls in love with a local girl and saves teh town from something"  But it was cool to see the mom from Malcolm and the dad from That 70's Show ("can you fly Bobby?") in a movie from the early 80's.  It ended up taking longer to get all the laundry done, and then Uncle MIke, Aunt Lois and Tory came back from St. Louis, with dinner, so we stayed longer.  Me like dinner.  Oh, and I forgot to ask Aunt lois about the whole joining facebook thing.  WEEEEIIIIRRD. 

Sunday dad and i did a lot of shopping.  We left church and went to Target, where we bought expensive chocolate that we couldnt' find in Dublin, and I got a firesafe.  It was time to  trade up and give Micki my lockbox for college.  Now I'll feel better about keeping my backed up files somewhere safe, as well as other things like car papers and my passport... Then we went to Kohls and i got jeans on sale for $12.  Being a dude is awesome sometimes.  We dropped a coffee off at mom's school and went to Borders, where I got micki a birthday present.  only in our family would I buy a book for someone's 18th birthday present.  i feel kind of lame.  like there should be some vodka hidden in it or something.  then we went to Caputos to buy more rapini for Gramps.  We got home and I fell asleep on the couch watching What's Up Doc? with Barbara Streisand.  It's funnier than expected.  In an over the top slapsticky kind of way.  

Today I observed.  I think today could have been my last day hours-wise, but I want to keep going through next thursday so I can go on the fieldtrip to the Christkindlmarkt downtown.  :)  Although I suppose it's not kosher to buy glühwein in front of high schoolers.  damn.  I did a lot of photocopying today, which was alright.  

After observing i went to drop food off at Gram and Gramps'  I think it was an on-edge day over there.   Gram has a doctor appointment tomorrow where I think she's going to get some not-so-great news, so Gramps was extra short.  Now, in as far back as I can remember, Gramps has never used a telephone.  and Gram is usually pretty quick and to the point whenever she uses it.  I remember when I was a kid and she'd call and we lived in Rhode Island and I expected to be bombarded with questions about school and all that, and all I'd get was "Matthew?!  Is your mother home?"  anyway... so with Gram a little bit slowed down adn hampered by oxygen cables, Gramps has inherited phone duty in the house.  while i was there the phone rang, and i hear
Gramps: HELLO!
Gramps: Who is this! (notice the exclamation point and no question mark)
Gramps: HELLO?
Gramps: HELLO!
Gramps: Who is this???
Gramps: Who is 'me' ?
Gramps: Hello?
Gramps: Jesus Christ Dorothy!  If you're not going to answer the phone, don't answer the phone! 
appareently Gram made the mistake of answering, possibly when she heard him ylling, possibly before? I dont konw.  All i know is that a phone callthat was answered by the two of them at the same time caused mass chaos. 

Class went fine.  We met over at Student Center East (the Union) which made it difficult to concentrate on class with Seinfeld, then Friends, thn Raymond playing ont he large flat screen twenty feet away.   But i got through it.

Karate was pretty good.  We went through the belt test for the brown belts who are testing this weekend.  It was a good workout.  Part of it was a competition basics round where they barked japanese at us adn we had to do it.  I know some of the simpler commands, but none of the fancy ones.  and it was only fancy ones whenever iw as up there. i felt bad when i messed up a knife-hand block, but then rory messed up a front punch and i felt better.  after the lower belts when home we practiced some shuto and heianso (sp?) strikes which were new and different.  

now i should get to bed.  another long day tomorrow.  observing.  and it appears that my professor is going to observe me... observe the kids take a test on wednesday.  lovely.  

AND, it's Micki's 18th bday.  so we're going out for dinner.  I made a joke about getting her some cigars.  Mom didn't get it.  Then we laughed a lot about buying cigars for an asthmatic runner.  

good night. 

Scribbled by Matt at 11:52 PM CST

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mmmm thanksgiving is definitely the tastiest of all holidays.

Monday was long.  I woke up, went to Oak Park, went to UIC to attempt to do homework, didn't get enough done, went to class, discussed the "speaking lesson" went to Karate for what Mr. Brien termed the "Turkey Burn" in which he worked us twice as hard so we would earn that extra slice of pie.  I'm not much of a pie fan, but we have other foods.  

Tuesday was also long.  Lot's of driving.  Oak Park, UIC, Naperville to tootor, then Palatine to help Grandma put up her xmas decorations.  She was supposed to go to St. Louis for Turkey Day with the Mary Kate fam, the Uncle Mike fam, Aunt Mary Lou and Uncle Dave to visit the Brunos, but Gram has a kidney infection and pneumonia.  My three grandparents take turns being the sickest.  It's awesome.  So I did an hours worht of hauling heavy things upstairs tuesday, and then a couple hours worth of decoration Wednesday morning.  Then I came home to Mom being sick.  Glen was however in town and gathering people to meett at Giordano's in Downers, so I went off to find Glen, Jen, Rich and Krajniak there.  There was some question about whether Joe was coming.  He and Alina had been at the mall doing wedding things, and were apparently on their way when Krajniak called to ask what they wanted on their pizza, Joe answered, said "oh fuck" and dropped the phone.  Alina called a few minutes later and said "we are unexpectedly unable to come" and that was it.  Sid and I felt the need to Kick Joe at which point they called us to say that Joe had gotten into a fender bender and was waiting for the tow truck.  whoops.  Then we retired back to Casa de Krajniak, where Bobby was having some sort of LAN party in which everyone could see what he was doing because he was using the tv as his monitor and everyone else was using laptops.  I had no idea what was going on.  I think it was also the first time that I'd been in the house and the entire Krajniak family was also there.  It was not however a time when I left the restaurant after Krajniak and arrived at his house after him.  No, I did in fact leave about 5 iminutes after and arrive ten minutes before.  Go figure.  The presence of all the people made us decide to go to Rich's.  He has a pretty nice townhome in Naperville, pretty close to me actually.  We watched the episode of Top Gear that has a dude on inline skates with 3 jet engines strapped to his back race a car down the track.  Car won by about 1.5 seconds.  I was impressed.  The stupid guy from American Idol was on the show and made an ass out of himself later.  Rich's cats stayed hidden under his bed but i still became sneezy after a while.  

Thursday, Dad, Micki and I went to Uncle Jimmys for the Turkey Day feast.  Joey stopped by in his CPD uniform for a few minutes.  Gram and Gramps were happy to see him.  I sat with Dan, Bonkica, Meagan, her boyfriend and Ian at the dinner table.  Meagan's boyfriend commented on the awesomeness of the Italian Thanksgiving Feast.  Mike said "Meatloaf, smeatloaf, double-beatloaf." as he dished himself out mashed potatos, and i think about eight people yelled out "I hate meatloaf!" in response.  It was awesome.  We ate from 2 to about 4 and then some of us fell asleep at the table, some of us fell asleep watching tv and some of us sat around.  Uncle Jimmy and Meagan had everyone laughing as they were retelling stories from their trip to Italy in '02.   Meagan and Jimmy both have a good gift for storytelling.  Eric was playing with a pay phone he bought on Ebay.  it works, now he just has to figure out how to mount the thing on his wall, it's a heavy one.  I talked to Uncle Eddie and Gram and Gramps a bit.  Gramps liked his bottle of Pagliacci olive oil i found.  He liked it even more after he got the chance to lecture my dad on how to pronounce "Pagliacci" so that was fun.  When I got home, Dad and I watched Dutch the traditional Thanksgiving showing.  That movie is hilarious.  

Today Sid came over and the three of us went to Fry's Electronics to check out the deals.  I got another SD card for free, a program that claims it can copy DVDs for free, and the new Bond movie for $7.  Dad got the SD card, an XD card, a flash drive, and a printer for less than the price of the ink cartridge alone.  Sid bought one of everything including a digital camera, a HDTV tuner card, and a remote control helicopter, and a program for creating your own Claymation.  I don't pretend to understand why, but I enjoy shopping with the impulse buyer.  then, i FINALLY gave him his irish whistle, which he says will annoy Doug to no end.  

Tutoring today went fine.  I listened to the radio tell me stories about idiots shopping at woodfield.  some guy got there at 4am, shopped for three hours, and only bought a sweater.  then he complained about the bad deals.  uhh, they're online.  for everyone to see.  if there's nothing you want, then today is probably not a good day to go shopping at 4am.  then dad adn i went to Walgreens to get our xmas photo cards done.  which, i guess I'm going to make Helen get in the future ;-)

it does not feel like 4pm.  I've been up for 11 hours.  maybe it's time for a nap. 

Scribbled by Matt at 4:03 PM CST

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Rory and I went to see No Country for Old Men last night.  It was fucking terrible.  Although I should have realized that anything from the wonderful people who brought us Fargo, and O Brother would not amount to much.  The opening was pretty good, with some crazy dude killing people with the pneumtic gun that they use to kill cattle, and a down-on-his-luck hunter finding $2 million at the scene of a drug deal gone sour, but then it pretty much ended.  There was one good gun battle, a few good action sequences, and for every good scene, there were two scenes of Tommy Lee Jones blathering on and on about a dream he had where he was walking throught he mountains or some shit like that.  The main character was killed off screen, and they show his body at a weird angle, which leads you to believe that maybe he's not dead, so for the next twenty minutes you're waiting for him to maybe pop out of a closet and shoot the bad guy, but no appreantly he really did die and you just don't know.  And lastly, I'm pretty sure that if you took out the main character's wife and her family, Woody Harrelson, lots of unnamed Mexicans, Tommy Lee Jones, and pretty much everyone else in the movie except for the main two people, you actually wouldn't change the story all that much.  Honestly the only way I could make sense of the movie was to pretend that the killer didn't really exist, but actually he was Tommy Lee Jones's evil split personality.  That is the ONLY way this movie makes ANY lick of sense.  Also, Tommy Lee Jones's lines were written to make him sound like a southern cowboy and he says the dumbest stuff like "I'm fixin to quit this room"  to which Rory replied "I'm fixin to quit this movie" (after I explained what I though 'quit the room' meant.

Today I went to Westchester to visit Gram and Gramps and see relatives that I haven't seen in a long long time.  Gram's brother Ed came up from Kentucky for the weekend.  With him came his wife Rosemary, their oldest two kids, Tommy and Susan, Tommy's daughter Krista, and Krista's baby, Reagan.  I think the last time I saw any of them was at Ed and Rosemary's son Mike's wedding in 1993.  Uncle Paul and Aunt Mary were there too.  I've seen Uncle Paul like eight times in my life even though he lives in Riverside.  Uncle Paul's daughter Summer was there.  She's my mom's cousin, but she's the same age as my oldest cousin Joey.  I havent seen her since we were kids either.  She's on husband number two and baby number one, whom I both met today.  Aunt Susan and Bobby were there.  I know them!  Susan is mom's cousin.  Bobby is probably the second cousin to whom I'm closest.  He and I go golfing every now and again.  Susan's step son Michael was there.  I haven't seen him since we were in High School, and that time I think I might have seen him at McDonalds.  Try explaining to your friends that the kid two tables over, who lives in the same town as you, might be your cousin but you're not sure, because you havent seen him in five years.  I felt like an idiot when I had to ask him who he was.  But at least I said his name before he did when he said he was Bobby's stepbrother.  Michael was there with his wife and their FOUR KIDS(all girls).  I couldn't imagine being 24 and having four kids.  Uncle Jimmy just looked at him and said "give it up!  you're never goingto have a boy.  it's NOT in the cards!"  Uncle Sam said "I'd be locked in the garage with the car running if that was me"  Michael's been to Iraq twice with the 101st Airborne, and is now doing his last four years with the National Guard.  

I went back and forth between bowling and ferrying people to Gram and Gramps.  The plan was to meet somewhere close, so people could go visit in groups and I think it worked out really well.  Although apparently Aunt Anne didn't like it so she refused to come.  But hey I think the world would explode if my grandma and her siblings were ever actually in the same room with one another, so it's probably best this way?  I did pretty good at the bowling.  My first game was a 148, beating Michael by one pin.  It was at this point that Aunt Susan informed me that the high winner would be awarded a trophy, and put in charge of planning the next event to pass the trophy.  I thought that was a really good way to do it.   My second game I had to bowl for both me and Uncle Sam.  poor Bobby had to bowl for himself, Krista, and eventually his mom too.  I bowled better for Uncle Sam than I did for myself.  Summer tied my high score in game two, but since my other game beat her other game, that was determined to be the tie breaker.  So I'm in charge of planning the nextfamily bowling tournament.  Watching the four little girls run around was pretty funny.   The youngertwo, (3 and 2) were absolutely crazy.  The 3 year old would constantly run over to the tables where other kids were having birthday parties and start trying to take the presents, then run up and down the lane, then run and grab onto Krista as some sort of safe point, while Cassy or Michael or Susan, whoever wasn't occupied with the 2 year old would chase after them.  It seemed like while they weren't exactly the most well behaved kids, they were a happy family.  Like the parents didn't get angry and yell.  I thought that was pretty impressive in itself for two 24 year olds with four kids.

after that we went over to Gram and Gramps' for a while.  We talked about the different methods Eric and I have for clothes shopping.  Eric really wanted to go to Nordstroms with his mom and Dan while he's home for the holiday to look for good deals.  Eric is the spoiled one.  AUntie Karen had been calling him all day trying to figure out what the evening's shopping plan was, Dan took off work early to go with them, and no one could get ahold of him until he called Auntie Karen saying "I'm home, why aren't you here, we need to leave right now"  I laughed and said that I'd once made it to Kohls and back in 20 minutes with 2 new pairs of pants.  Uncle Sam said that if it didn't come at Menards or Home Depot, he didn't buy it.  

I fetched pizza for mom and Gram and Gramps and then went to hang out with Der David.  We made a brief appearance at Heidi and Natalie's new apartment.  The four of us studied abroad together.  And Natalie is a german teacher, so I figured it would be good to remind her that I'm getting my M.Ed. and will be teachign German next year.  FIND ME A JOB!  I didn't quite know what to expect, I assumed some sort of social gathering, but other than like five friends of the girls, David and I were the only ones there under 50. I did laugh a lot when heidi's mom or aunt or something said "the senior bus is leaving"  David and I sat in the kitchen talking the entire time and then we headed out.   

Tomorrow I might be going up to Gram H's to put up xmas decorations but I dont know yet. 

Scribbled by Matt at 1:44 AM CST

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While observing today, the kids in 2nd year were acting out skits from Rapunzel. In pairs they were pretending to be the Prinz and 'a friend of the princes' riding through the woods when they hear the sad song that rapunzel sang that got the prinz's attention.  then they had to improvise a dialogue.  Frau E. was the Rapunzel, locked in the tower, singing a sad song.  The best group started with a kid clapping his hands over his ears and shrieking "oh my god, a dying dog!"

This whole thing with the 'moment of silence' is getting out of hand.  the kids are arguing about it and debating it left and right, every time they're not on content stuff.  Someone should point out what idiots they all are.  I don't feel like I'm in a position to do so.

Last night I went to Krajniak's free bowling party.  He won 2 hours of free bowling, and chips and salsa for 16 people by dropping his business card in a bowl or something.  I went but didn't know anyone because they were all people from his work.  But it was alright.  4 of us were there to start and it was a good warm up round.  I barely scored over 100, but took second to Krjniak's 130.  the second game more people were showing up and i improved to a 147, taking second again to one of Krajniak's work friends.  Then the third game we had a full 8 people and decided to wager a round of drinks on the outcome of the team's score.  My lack of money must have kicked in because I kicked ass and led our team to victory with a 157.  We won 478 to 384.  Didn't even need to bowl the tenth frame.  But then everyone left.  So I didn't get a free drink anyway.  Lame.  I did however win my own free 2 hours of bowling with salsa and all that that's good sometime Jan-Feb of next year.  

i suppose i should get back to work now... 

Scribbled by Matt at 3:44 PM CST

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Hmm, it's been a while, Mr. internet. 

Classes have been going fine.  Two weeks ago in the Tuesday class the prof wasn't clear on what to do for a response paper, so anyone who turned one in last week was declared done for the semester.  so THAT's good.  one class down, two to go.  

the monday class continues to plod along.  we're working on different lesson plans to reflect structured input, structured output, writing, speaking, listening, reading.  i'm giving the matt harring half assed approach and it seems to be working fine.  eventually i'll put it all together in the TaskStream format.  so that should be alright.  then, because i'm one of 3 grad students in the class, i also need to be working on my final paper for the semester.  it's going to be on student motivation.  like most of my papers.  i keep writing about motivation.  i find it fascinating.  mostly because i have none myself.  i requested one article through interlibrary loan like a month and a half ago and it finally came in yesterday.  

the wednesday class is going alright.  i dont have much left to do, other than the fieldwork journal, and our group presentation.  and all i have to do for the group presentation is find some articles to make the class read.  i donwloaded a bunch off of the online uic library site, now i just have to read them to see if they suck or not.  the two groups that presented last night were boring as shit.  one was about tracking, and one was about small schools.  and i think all i walked away with was a reaffirmation of everything i already knew about two of the most boring issues in education.  

observing is going alright.  i have 45 hours or so down.  i started teaching some in the first year class.  and i dont know if it's because the teacher is a control freak or because i suck, but she keeps interrupting me while i'm doing stuff.  today i went over 1 page of new vocab with them, and then a worksheet of words to translate, which they were supposed to do for homework, and generally had about three out of the twenty words down.  i got through ten of them.  the CT did words 3-6 though.  i dont know why.  i have to get my shit together to interview her tomorrow for the fieldwork journal.  

today on my way to observe, i saw a woman on a cell phone in an suv BACKING down the interstate because she'd missed her exit.  not to mention that it was the MANNHEIM road exit on the westbound Ike.  which is probably the biggest exit west of the city.  it has it's own exit lane for about a mile.  at least 4 signs.  sighh.  

my computer seems to have some lovely new spyware that ADAware and SpyBot can't kill.  I've managed to get around most of it, but it keeps popping back, and I don't have the time to deal with it for another month.  it seems like most days of the week i leave around 7:20am and get home between 9 and 10:30 pm.  then i promptly fall asleep until the next day.  i usually have a few open hours in the middle where i can't seem to get much done.  what FUN.

this weekend i went down to urbana and helen and i ate a lot of FOOD.  friday we made gourmet mac and cheese GF style.  Helen asked me to look around whole foods for manchego cheese, which is some type of sheep cheese.  i wandered around what i thought was the cheese section at least three times (based on the number of times i passed the gouda, saying "That's-a-no-gouda!") before i noticed that there was ANOTHER shelf of cheese around one more corner.  Helen wasn't very pleased with my joke, but she seems to have adopted it nicely.  heh heh heh.  

Saturday we went out for 2 year dinner at Biaggis!  Biaggi's is so damn delicious.  Then Sunday we made enchiladas from scratch.   the corn tortillas involved corn flour and water and were pretty good.  then we got one last custard cup before they close for the winter.  cold fudge is awesome.  

now i should probably get back to homework.  

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee 

Scribbled by Matt at 2:34 PM CST

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sorry for the lateness of this post

Friday, I went to observe.  For me, the school day started with a trip to an assembly!  I saw the Tradition of Excellence assembly, in which the school brings in two alumni who have made contributions to their field and the community-at-large.  This year’s two figures were pretty impressive.  The first was Charles Carey, the chairman of the Chicago Board of Trade.  He is an impressive figure, but not the best speaker.  He kind of stood there and talked about how luck played a large part in getting where he is today and mentioned that OPRF is a good school… I got the impression that no one had really told him what to expect or what was expected of him.  Luckily the second dude is a motivational speaker by profession, so he did a kick ass job.  It was John Register, a qualifier for the 1988 and 1992 olympics in hurdles, who had a bad landing one day at practice that resulted in the amputation of his leg.  Less than two years later he was competing in the Paralympics as a swimmer, and soon after as a long jumper, where he beat a world record to get second place.  So that was pretty cool to see. 

Deutsch Unterricht was fun.  I don’t really remember much of what we did but I helped two first year students interpret Rumpelstilzchen.  The one girl was from Turkey and said she understood the story fine, but couldn’t answer the questions as well, while the other student answered the questions fine, but couldn’t understand the story.  If I’d have had more time I would have gotten the two of them to help each other, but since I didn’t have much time, don’t really know them, I just read the story sentence by sentence and asked them questions for this round.  Then in Ger 2 and Ger 3 I just kinda helped out on random stuff as I do… 

Then I went to visit the grandparents, and was immediately put on leaf raking duty.  Uncle Sam stopped by with his leaf vaccum thing and between the two of us we had the front yard done in no time flat.  Then Gramps put us to work with a garbage can (he has like 30) that had a spot for wheels, but no wheels.  So uncle sam found a piece of metal, cut it to size, used gramps’ 90 year old tap set to put threads on the end of it, drilled holes in the bottom of the garbage can to hold a wooden block, searched all over the crawl space to find a proper sized conduit holder, and in effect, built an axle from scratch in about an hour and a half.  I’m continually impressed by the things that he can do.  I’m also continually impressed by the things that can be built from scratch by the crap laying around at my grandparents home.  Then I had to go tutor, which went fine. 

Helen arrived around 6:30, and she went for a run while I cleaned and bought some barbecue fixins.  Then around 8, people started to show up.  Isla was on time.  She had a picture from work that was an x-ray of a dog that came in to the animal clinic with a barbecue stake through its heart.  In and out of the right ventricle.  Apparently that’s the good ventricle to get stabbed through, as the dog went home with no problems two days later.  Luckily the stake plugged its own hole so to speak until they got it to the vet.  Then, they apparently just kind of pinched it shut and as it came out the one side, suture suture suture, and then as it came out the far side, suture suture suture.  Wow.  Jenny came after I bribed her with promises of a pass to use the Chicago öffentliches verkehrsnetz, that my stupid college makes me buy even though I don’t use it.  Juarez and Kathy came, Krajniak came late and left about thirty minutes later, the loser.  And Jason came too.  ::crack::  eventually, people seemed to be cold sitting around outside, but only Isla Jen and Helen were near the fire, so I think that’s part of it.  So after we ate, I brought us inside and they all stood around staring at me, waiting for me to entertain them.  I brought up a bunch of dvds that no one wanted to watch and I brought up Settlers, which Jenny demanded we play.  It was met with mixed results.  Helen didn’t play, and Kathy’s comment was “wait, I wouldn’t be sitting here if I’d known not playing was an option!”  Juarez seemed to think it was ok.  He talked about the online version, which I think Scott and Cassandra have.  Healy was pretty in to it and enjoyed himself, and Jenny of course liked it.  Next time I’ll just invite Healy and Jen for a Settler’s party, and everyone else for a something-else party I guess. 

Saturday we slept IN, and then went downtown for Helen to attend a GF cooking thing at the Whole Foods in Lincoln Park.  It was $30 and came with an autographed book.  I probably could have sat in the back and waited but I didn’t want to intrude, so I wandered around Lincoln Park, sat and watched idiots try and get into a closed El station, then sat and watched idiots try to park in a busy as hell parking lot, and wandered around Best Buy, making lists of movies to buy when I’m not all-but-unemployed.  Observing all day and going to class all night sucks.  After the class, we went to walk around in the Loop.  I parked by UIC and we walked in.  We looped around and around for 5.5 miles, meeting up with David for some tea and to chat, which was good.  I hadn’t seen David since my last barbecue on my birthday, and I got to hear about his new job, his breakup with the GF and all that good stuff.  Helen was bored with my walking tour of the city after a while and then we headed back to the burbs for dinner.  Micki’s team got 3^rd at State for XC which they were pleased with.  Oh, and Helen, Shawn’s brother IS in the book.  It says he won regionals, took sixth in sectionals, and 30^th at state.  Helen and I went to Paneras for dinner, where the girl behind the counter stole $2.69 by not giving me back my gift card claiming there was nothing on it.  This is what I get for A- using multiple gift cards and confusing the kid and B- not saying anything when I noticed. 

Today we woke up and headed west for the annual Governor’s European Cross Country Run, just outside the quad cities in Iowa.  Awesome as always.  Not knowing exactly how long it would take, dad left at 8, picked up two of micki’s friends and stopped for lunch.  Helen and I left at 9:30, stopped at the grocery store, ate in the car, and we arrived about five minutes apart from each other.  Not too bad.  Uncle mike and James showed up a little later, and we had a good run.   The course was a hell of a lot wetter than previous years, which I rather enjoyed.  There’s a really windy creek that the course usually crosses 3-4 times and this year we definitely crossed it about 10-12 times.  There were two rope swings, one rappelling spot and two points you had to climb up a rope, half a dozen hay bale piles across the path, and more dead branches than you can count.  James finished a little over an hour, Helen and I finished in an hour forty, and the girls finished in about 2 hours today.  I’m celebrating the first time beating Micki ever.  The race this year was a nice 5.4 miles, so I think we did pretty well.  I didn’t have to walk as much as last year, and there were a lot more PEOPLE around us this time too.  We didn’t bother finding any prize ribbons this year either, although we did find the people who had found the grand prize… a bike.  Man, I think if I saw a bike in the woods, I’d just leave it there.  at one point, helen and I were standing waist deep in a creek, waiting for them to get it up the far bank.  Then we turned and found a different part of the bank to climb out at, only to discover that the girls with the bike, failing at their original spot, followed us, so I had to be nice and help them, thus getting stuck behind them again.  I got nice and soaked but didn’t lose any shoes.  We definitely saw a few shoeless people, from the muddy areas we went through.  And a deer, who was running as fast as he could in the other direction.  J

After the race, we headed back to aunt lois and uncle mike’s for some showers and food.  I’m still amazed by the fact that half a dozen people can shower in a row at their house and all get hot water.  For dinner, she made French fries, and Italian sausage.  I ate a lot.  Then dad and I split the drive home.  Now I should probably go to bed because I’m observing in the morning. 

Scribbled by Matt at 2:02 PM CST

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Tuesday I went in to the office at OPRF to get a parking pass.  So I now can park in the faculty lot for the month of November at least.  No more paying meters!  Why didn't I do this the first day??  Tuesday's class was fine.  I'm starting to warm up to being there, so I've started talking to the kids more and helping them, rather than standing awkwardly in the corner wondering what I should be doing while the teacher walks around in her haphazard way.  I don't mean to sound bad about my CT.  I say she's disorganized, but it's more that *I* couldn't function in her chaotic manner, it works for her.  Then Tuesday's class was fine.  It continues to irritate me that Tuesday, the day I only have to be at UIC for an hour is the day that consistently gives me the most trouble finding a parking spot on the street so I end up having to pay to park in the lot.  Grrr.  Class was a guest speaker who talked about Math and Diversity Education.  Yes, I fell asleep. 

Wednesday I observed again.  The teacher brought in macaroni and ham for the 3rd/4th year kids because it was Emil's favorite meal in the book, and she bought in jelly filled donuts because they were talking about Berlin.  I ate one to be polite, but I really don't like jelly filled donuts.  I don't really like jelly filled anything to be honest.  I'm still working up a lesson on reflexivverben and 'was machst du gern in deiner Freizeit"  to do with the kids coming up.

Wednesday's class was alright.  We had a guest speaker who talked about NCLB, which was ok.  All he really did was bash the hell out of it and say how much it sucked from a teachers and an administrator's opinion.  But we already knew that for the most part so it wasn't really useful, but then he talked about how to act during an interview, the kinds of things that principals look for and the kind of questions we should be expected to answer and the kind of questions we should be asking, and that was really useful, so it evened out.  The dude was wired like an eight year old on a sugar high though.  He's the new principal of a school opening in the far western suburbs next year, so he's getting to build it from the ground up, which i suppose would make me rather excited too, so I won't make too much fun of him. 

After class I met up with Rory at the Westmont Chipotle for Boo-Rito Day.  Apparently at Chipotle if you show up dressed like a burrito, burrito bowl or taco on Halloween you get a free burrito.  Well I can't say no to that.  I wrapped an off-white towel around me, put strips of green, red, brown, and black construction paper all over my shirt and foiled my torso and head.  Rory had a giant necklace burrito bowl, complete with red wire basket, and thus we dined.  I was a little disappointed in my counterparts from the burrito eating world who merely wore an aluminum foil hat, or one tiny band of foil around the waist, but I suppose it's ok.  Then we went to the Wheaton one to get lunch for today :)  after the burrito eating, I went back to Oak Park to join up with Juarez, Kathy and Tom for some zombie movies.  We watched Planet Terror, half of that Grindhouse movie from last year, with Bruce Willis, Freddy Rodriguez, and Rose McGowan.  It wasn't that great, but I've seen a lot worse.  After that we watched the original Dawn of the Dead, not the remake, but the George Romero version.  It was laughable, but entertaining. 

Which leads me to my Poll of the [Insert Time Period Here]:
What do you enjoy more, Zombie movies, Vampire/Werewolf Movies, Stalker-slasher movies, or classic horror movies (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. of the 20s/30s)?

Today's objective is homework and some major room cleaning.  I have a floor!

Scribbled by Matt at 12:07 PM CDT

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i woke up today at 7:17.  I normally leave around 7:30, because every minute you leave after 7:30, you have to add 5 for traffic.  I hate the suburbs.  It took me 15 minutes to make it past the light at College and BU because the damn light that shouldn't be there anyway was out and blinking.  I managed to make it to Oak Park with enough time to just make it in the door by the bell.  Which i shouldn't have to worry about because the teacher has taken to showing up about 2/3 of the way through announcements, like 4 minutes after the bell, anyway.  but the lame news is that the meter i've been parking at for the last two weeks QUADRUPLED it's price over the weekend.  It used to be 25 cents gets you an hour... so now i have to get there even earlier to find a parking spot and probably hike the rest of the way.  bullSHIT. 

observing went fine.  the first year kids were doing nach erzählungen for der froschkönig.  the second year kids were doing nach erzählungen for rumpelstilzchen.  the third/fourth year kids were finishing their skits for Emil und die Detektive, and starting on this poster about Berlin that I found a bunch of web pages for them to use.  next week I'm going to start getting my hands dirty with the entire class instead of just helping out one-on-one, by doing 'was machst du gern in deiner Freizeit' with the Ger I kids and reflexivverben with the third and fourth year kids.  it should be fun times.

class was fine.  we were supposed to start a half hour early and get out a half hour early because there was this guest speaker from McGraw Hill talking about teaching culture in the foreign language classroom.  he was pretty cool, his stories about how he's from venezuela, and the stupid things he did accidentally when he went back there after living in the US for fifteen years, were pretty funny.  I saw Inma there, my professor from last semester, and i saw Rott, who was my advisor for a while, still technically is, and has no idea who i am.  i should have gone up to her and just started talking to her.  but she probably would have just said "i dont know who you are" to my face and i would have looked like an idiot.  i pointed her out to sarah, and my irritation must have shown through.  her response was "ok, i'll trip her if she comes near us" then we went to class, where we did stupid busy work activities and definitely didn't get out a half hour early because my teacher has about as much sense of how long things are going to take as my 3 year old cousin.  she also passed back our midterms where she definitely added wrong and gave me a 87.5 instead of a 92.  she probably did it because she's lonely at her office hours.  every week she begs us to stop by.  looks like i'll be making an appearance this week. 

karate was good.  rory and i made fun of sensei brien about story time and he proceeded to tell us a twenty minute long story while the rest of the class warmed up.  then we did a lot of ab and glut exercises that supposedly will help our kicks come exam time.  when the hell is my exam again?  then we worked on kata, and he mostly had good things to say about mine.  so that was cool.

ok, now i'm really going to bed so i can get up for observing tomorrow. 

Scribbled by Matt at 11:23 PM CDT

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An Update on the Grandma
We totally gutted Gram and Gramps' basement last sunday.  When we arrived, I had to climb in through the window because you couldn't get through the doors upstairs.  It's kind of sad to see the changes.  I mean, the changes are all very very good.  But the Nostalgic Matt that doesn't ever want anything to change remembers the basement as it was when I was a kid and it was our playroom.  There was a blue shag carpet that had been there since the sixties, and probably had more dog crap and other things I don't want to think about.  It went in the mid 90s.  We took the one fifty year old couch and tossed it, took the newer couch and gave it to Ian and Meagan for their condo, and got Gram a new daybed.  All of the  BetaMax tapes are in boxes under the tv (they got rid of the betamax player in the mid 90s, but "there's good movies in there").  Most of the time was spent sending people to distract Gramps so we could throw stuff out when he wasn't looking.  Gram is a little more amenable to throwing stuff out but they came from a time when they didn't have much, so everything Gramps has been able to accumulate means something to him because he had to earn it, and everything else is saved because 'you never know when you might need it'.  Uncle Sam and I drove the couch over to Bartlett on Friday, so that was fun.  I hadn't been to Uncle Eddie's house in maybe 20 years even though he lives a half hour away.  Uncle Sam laughed when I said that.  His response was "don't feel bad.  I've only been there five times in my life and I used to live a block away"

Gram's health is holding.  After the fiasco with the bronchoscopy she went back in this past tuesday and had it done.  The procedure collapsed her lung, so she had to stay there for an extra two days and she was PISSED about that.  AND it turns out that the procedure didn't really accomplish anything, because the tumor is completely blocking her lung, so they had to get their scraping from the top of it and I don't think it showed anything.  SO she might have to go back to get the test done with a needle.  I don't know if she will.  Also, we realized that she's been lying to the doctors if Gramps is in the room with her because she doesn't want him to know anything.  So mom had to tell the nurse that Gram has emphysema, and not to ask Gram anything unless she clears out the room first.  Sigh.

Random School Updates
School is still going.  So for my monday class I was supposed to turn in a bibliography for this one paper a few weeks ago.  My teacher finally got it back and she marked a bunch of mine that she didn't want me to use and asked me to come to her office hours.  She spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the library's webpage worked and I spent most of the time explaining how to search for things (what she had told me to come so she could help ME with).  Then she selected a bunch of stuff and told me to go get it from the library.  I didn't bother telling her that the books she told me to get actually weren't in the library, I had to get them on interlibrary loan.  We'll see how this goes. 
The tuesday class is fine.  We spent most of the last two weeks talking about sexual/gender identity.  We had a guest speaker who was definitely very informed and very passionate about the subject, but sometimes I wonder if going for all these rights for specific groups is the best way to go.  I mean why should there be a zero tolerance policy for harrassing LGBT students?  Why not just make it zero tolerance for everyone or not at all?  Singling out one group is only going to bring them to the limelight.  People are morons.
The Wednesday class is fine too.  I think I'm supposed to be researching something for it for this week but I don't remember.  The teacher is alright, but you can tell she's used to working with undergrads and doesn't really expect much from us.  We don't do much in the class.  We started to workshop lesson plans this past week, and she said we could write something new or bring in something that we'd done, so I brought in one from my literacy class and I was in a group with two kids who had hastily written one the night before, so on one hand I looked a hell of a lot better than them because mine was all laid out in the TaskStream format and I had put in info for everything, but I also looked lazy because I did it months ago.  It's kind of stupid assignment.  We should have done something with other people in our content area or something.  I dont know. 
Observing is going well.  I've still been doing random things and helping students one-on-one and not done anything ::on my own:: yet.  She had me find a bunch of websites about Emil und die Detektive for the kids to look at to get some info about Berlin.  I wrote them on the board and about six kids copied them down.   they're supposed to print some pictures off to make posters this week.  We'll see how it goes.  I should find my old Berlin photos.  :) 

Weekend Update:  Without Norm MacDonald
I went down to Urbana for a fun filled weekend!  Saturday morning Helen and I finally went to redeem the gift certificate she gave me last christmas for the Rock Gym 101 class at Upper Limits in Bloomington.  It was a lot of fun.  We learned to belay (onbelay! andale?) and tie knots to keep us from falling.  Then we were turned loose in the silos to climb.  Helen beat me to the top of the first easy route in the silo and all the rest we made it some portion of the way up before getting stuck.  But we both had a really good time and are planning to do it again sometime.  It's not too bad to go back, only $14 entrance fee plus about $10 rentals to have the run of the place for the day.  and if I wanted to buy equipt, you only need a harness, shoes and a carabiner.  Although as my dad said, the rope costs $300.  but he's got two in the garage.  one rapelling rope and one climbing rope (there's a difference?).  I definitely want to take the rapellling course.  Then I'd feel comfortable doing what dad said he used to do, walk the back way up to the top, attach a top-climb rope, rappell down, then climb back up.  I was telling dad what we did and the equipt we had and I was trying to remember the name of the belay device...
Me:  yeah the thing... kind of a cube with a bar in it... APC? ATC?
Dad:  uhh, we used to just wrap the rope around ourselves. 
Dad's stories are funny.  The belay device he used was a figure-8, not the ATC, and he used webbing, not a harness (a 20 foot long belt that you wrap around yourself several times).  I guess I won't be borrowing his equiptment anytime soon.  Maybe the ropes though.  :-D  I wonder if mom would let me screw a bunch of those climbing footholds into the chimney.

Coming home there was a train crossing the main road in Bloomington, so instead of waiting to get on the highway we decided to find the scenic way.  We drove around a bit and ended up on US-150 which turns into University in Champaign, and runs parallell to I-74 the entire time, so we just took that.  About fifteen miles outside of Bloomington I saw the wind generators that I'd seen from CR300E outside of Gibson City.  No wonder you can see those things from twenty miles away.  Theyre HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE.  We decided to take an adventure and go find them.  And man, it took forever to get to them.  No matter how far you drive, they're still another mile away over the next hill.  Three gravel roads later, we finally made it to the base of one.  And they're so spread out too, they must cover a good mile wide by 5-10 miles long or so.  We took a bunch of pictures and then returned to our route. 

We got back to Champaign, fed Helen's mom's cats and Barry's cat, went for a walk around Urbana, and then met up with Jen and Andrew for dinner at the Courier.  We all got delicious milkshakes, and heard amusing stories of Jen dealing with and catching criminals at the Rantoul Walgreens.  idiots.  Then we went to Crane Alley for some drinks and desserts.  I got a glass of chianti, Helen got a Bacardi and Sprite, Jen got an Amaretto Stone sour and Andrew stuck to martinis.  then Jen and Helen each tried a cosmo.  Then we went back to Helens where we chatted more until we all started falling asleep, at which point Jen and Andrew left to go stop by a swing dance. 

Today we fed the cats again, did some grocery shopping.  played with the cats and watched tv until the sneezing made us leave.  then we carved pumpkins!  I made mine look like a skull.  It turned out alright I think.   Helen made hers look like her boss, which turned out really well.  She's good at capturing the important details like that.  :)

You can also see the pumpkin man Gram made for her last year, and the Snoopy skeleton.  And Wendy! from Great America!

Now I suppose I should go to bed.  I have to get up in six and a half hours to observe.  I hope I don't have homework...

Scribbled by Matt at 1:22 AM CDT

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i probably just should have stayed in bed thursday.  not that it would have solved all of the problems, but a handful of them it wouldn't have hurt to do without...

i got up to observe and left early (7:35) hoping to make it to Oak Park by 8:45.  (on monday i left at 8:15 to get there at 10:00 - got there at 8:45, and on tuesday i left there at 8, and got there at 8:45)  so leaving at 7:35, obviously I'll make it to Oak Park by 8:45, right?  I got there at 9:15.  What. The Fuck?  So I sat in my car until 9:40 and just went to observe third and fourth period in the German class.  My name was apparently 'Mike' on Thursday.  I figure if the teacher has called me Dan and Joe on Monday, Mike on Thursday, I only have to go through Steve, Ian, and Eric before she gets to Matt.  This only makes sense if you know my cousin's names on my mom's side.  So anyway the classes went fine.  After fourth hour the teacher asked me to show her how I found abunch of information on the internet about Emil und die Detektive which the third and fourth year students are reading, so I showed her what kind of things I search for, and we printed out a bunch of lesson plan information that she can use for games and movie viewings and stuff... I walked out of the building and got to my car at 12:40.  Apparently my meter had run out around 12:35.  There's $10 I didn't need to spend. 

So I go home and call mom to figure out car stuff.  Micki has a car for practice and mom is at school without one, but she has no students because it's parent teacher conference day.  Mom of course has picked this day to forget her cell phone again.  Which wouldn't have been a problem except Uncle Sam called to say Grandma was in the hospital.  So I call mom's school, ask Becky to go tell her to call Sam right away, call dad to tell him to call Uncle Sam, and I get ready to drive mom's phone to her so she has it. 

When I get to school, mom tells me that it's lung cancer and grandma probably only has about three months.  Mom's not doing well, none of her brothers are doing well about this.  So I turn around and go right back to Maywood to visit gram.  Gram's pissed that Sam told mom because she didn't want to tell mom until Saturday when the school week was over.  That's grandma.  We think grandma has known about this for a while now. Maybe as much as a year, and just didn't tell anyone.  I know she was in to see a doctor while we were in Ireland, but no one ever heard anything from that meeting.  Thursday night she was pretty bad, she'd be smiling and talking to people, but then every now and then she'd just totally break down, because she knows that everyone has been telling her to go see a doctor but none of us have ever pushed her to do it.  Apparently she's just kind of been sitting back hoping that everything will go away. 

So I've spent all day thursday and all day friday at the hospital.  Friday on my way in (I can't resist bitching about moron drivers!), as I'm turning left off of 1st Ave, I notice that there's a girl who wants to turn left out of the parking lot, north onto 1st, so I pull a little further than I need to so she can turn behind me.  I have the right of way obviously, but I can't make it, there's oncoming traffic, and I dont know if it will clear up behind me to give her room to go, so I figure I'll be nice... The idiot is on a cell phone and she pulls out, even though there's oncoming traffic in both directions.  She sits half behind me, half blocking the left southbound lane.  An old dude in a van pulls up, can't get past her and screams out "get off the fucking phone!"  then he starts honking, then she starts yelling "what are you yelling at me for, it's THIS idiot's fault" and she's pointing at me.  This is what I get for trying to be nice to people.

Friday Gram was supposed to have a biopsy done.  First they were going to do it with a needle, but apparently they couldn't do that because either the tumor is so big that they're worried about hitting it, or there wasn't enough fluid to do something... I dont know... I hear one thing from some people and something else from other people.... as usual, gram is mixing up stories and making things up so Grandpa doesn't know what's happening.  (He knows that something's up, but no one has told him anything important yet).  So they couldn't do a biopsy with the needle, so they went with plan b to do a bronchoscopy, but you can't do a bronchoscopy if you're on aspirin or blood thinners, and grandma is on both.  So they told her to come back tuesday and we'll take it from there.  we were all pretty surprised that they let her go.

Mike was at the hospital taking charge most of the time.  It's good to have a doctor, a judge, and several police officers standing around the room, as family of the invalid.  You don't get any crap from anyone.

And how this got started in the first place?  Thursday Mike locked himself out of his house.  So he walked over to Gram and Gramps' to get his keys.  He saw that Grandma was basically blue and said "you're going to the ER right now."  She later said that she had been having trouble breathing all week, hadn't told anyone but Gramps, but made him not tell anyone else, but she'd decided that she either had to say something to someone on thursday or just accept it and die right then and there.  Knowing grandma, she says she was going to tell someone, but it's more likely she wouldnt have.  So thank God that Mike came in when he did.

She's home now, on oxygen.  She's at a high enough dose that she can't have one of them portable ones, she needs the giant tank on constantly.  The not being able to breathe well thing has definitely affected her appetite.  When I was pushing her in the wheelchair, a couple times I had to maneuver her around things and I basically just lifted up the wheelchair with her in it.  I don't think she weighs more than 80 pounds.  It's kind of scary.  So now there's talk of making the basement into a bedroom for her... which is another Major Event, because my grandfather has not voluntarily thrown anything away since 1935.  Which is what comes from being the child of italian immigrants during the depression I assume, but nevertheless, it's a challenge to get him to throw out a couch that wasn't comfortable in the sixties, but to him is still 'fine'

and now micki is babysitting, mom is at a bagpipe dinner for Auntie Karen, and I'm trying to get dad to go to his coworkers wedding so I can clean up the laundry room after the pipes backed up while he was in the shower without him knowing about it.  i guess three showers, several loads of laundry and several loads in the dishwasher were too much today.  my room smells like a sewer.  mother fuckers. 

Scribbled by Matt at 6:13 PM CDT

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Monday I had to get up ridiculously early because I was driving down to Oak Park for my first day of in-the-classroom observing.  I woke up at 5 to get ready, figuring I had to leave by a little after six to get there a little after 8.  I check the school’s website one last time to make sure I had the bell schedule right, and notice a tiny little note at the bottom of the page that says they’re on a late-arrival schedule on Monday the 15^th.  WTF!!!  Thanks for telling me!  I didn’t have to be there until 10:15 it turns out.  So back to bed I went!  Left at 8:15… and stupid traffic… I got there at 8:45.   I walked in the door and went to sign in.  “hi, I’m from UIC, here to observe”  “oh, I think someone called down about you… what’s your name?”  “Matt Harring”  “hmm.”  I look down at the sheet and quite clearly they have “Joseph Harrington” written down.  So my CT is kind of a nutcase.  She’s apparently really disorganized and haphazard it appears.  But she has some great ideas about things, so I think I’ll survive.  And she apparently likes that I’m ‘good with technology’ or whatever the kids are saying these days, so maybe I can help her on that and get a good review.  :-D  the first class (German I) she referred to me as Dan.  The second class, (German II) she referred to me as Joe.  The third class (Ger III-IV) she didn’t introduce me at all, but I was still walking around helping people who had no idea who I was.  Awesome. 

Class was fine Monday night.  I’ve already forgotten what we talked about.  Oh right… Input activities.  Most foreign language classrooms do a ton of output activities, where the student is expected to produce the language, but not so much input activities, where the focus is on helping the student to process the information that is being presented.  For instance, given a list of sentences, put them in order.  The student has to understand what the sentence is saying and use clues to figure out what happens next, but they are being presented with real language, and not expected to say stuff without knowing what’s going on.  Both input and output activities are important to have in the classroom in a balance, but the trend is to go with more output activities.  It was interesting, I’d never really thought of that before. 

Karate Monday night was fun.  We were doing sparring drills the entire time, which has NEVER happened before, especially in Mr Brien’s class.  Mr Brien taped off a bunch of 6’ by 6’ squares and one of us would stand in the center of the square and someone else would shift in and throw punches and kicks and try to get us to back out of our square.  We had to shift sideways and keep them at bay, or sometimes shift sideways and throw stuff back at them.  Mr. Brien kept walking around yelling “this is YOUR house!  Make them PAY for coming into YOUR house!!!”  it was hilarious.  And somehow, I kept being the person guarding the house so-to-speak, when he would forget to tell us to switch.  So I would always have the ten minute slot of defending and then only a minute and a half slot as the attacker.  He’s really losing it sometimes.  Last week, he had Rory and I demonstrate this one drill and he told both of us to be the offense, so when we started sparring he got confused and told one of us we were doing it wrong….  Anyway… that lasted almost the entire evening and then we did some 4 point sparring and he’d pick opponents for us.  My footwork needs some attention, and Rory and I still are the ones most often yelled at for getting too close.  I don’t know what it is, but you’re supposed to be a full step away from each other, step in with a plan, and then shift back out when you’ve either succeeded or been thwarted, but he and I still get in too close and just stay there throwing things left and right…  Sensei Brien told me to take my heavy bag and throw it around and kind of shift around it while hitting it, and that will help, so I got to try that.  There’s this girl in class who is seriously over 350 pounds and she’s pretty terrible.  I don’t know how she has a green belt, but anyway, she comes three times a week and I assume she tries really hard, but she absolutely is terrified of sparring.  When we sparred Monday night, she sat out until the very end, but then one of the black belts offered to go an easy round with her… I think it just made it worse because the guy’s intentions were good but he really has no clue how to ::help:: people.  He kept letting her score without trying, which was the absolutely worst thing to do.  He should have told her up front that he was going to go light and had her focus on something specific.  My inner psychologist felt bad.

Tuesday I went to observe again.  This time I had to be there at 8:45, so I figured, ‘oh, I left at 8:15 yesterday and got there at 8:45, that might have been a fluke, so I’ll leave a little earlier and see what happens…”  WRONG.  I left at 7:50, and just barely made it there by 8:45.  I wanted to get there and be in the classroom before the bell rang to end the period before, but I was just barely walking in the class with the rest of the students.  I spent first period helping one boy catch up with his conjugations of sein He did pretty well.  And I think I helped him.  Second and third period I didn’t do much but the teacher had these photocopies of the equivalent of the high school yearbook from the German exchange students, their Abibuch, and I thought it was a fantastic idea for authentic language coming from students at the high school level.  These are the kinds of descriptions of high school aged students that are written by high school students.  So that was cool, and I ganked a copy before leaving.  

Class Tuesday night was fine.  It was Stacy, our professor from last fall, talking about students and sexual identity.  It wasn’t really anything different from our class last fall, so most of us from the fall 06 cohort kind of tuned out.  I zipped back to naperthrill for tootoring, and worked with DN.  He got an A on the last test he took!  And I think she marked one wrong that wasn’t wrong but I don’t know if he corrected it later or something.  Then he asked if we could work on the multiplication flashcards, and he got it a lot better than I expected.  He even said ‘oh it’s like adding, only faster’ which I thought was so impressive.  We went slow, and worked on counting by each of the numbers… 7 x 6… that’s seven 6s or six 7s… 7…14…21…28…35…42!  Then we worked on brainstorming for a writing assignment.

Today I had to catch up on my ED 432 work.  I’m supposed to bring in 5 copies of a lesson plan to go over, and I have no idea what to do, so I just brought one from 504… I figure that’ll be good enough.  And we didn’t even end up needing it.  I did finally do my ‘first five minutes’ activity.  I stood up there and introduced myself in German and kind of repeated myself for a minute or two until someone caught on and answered me.  I had them laughing a lot, and I think had I had another minute or two they would have gotten it.  I slipped up once or twice with my German, but I don’t think anyone noticed.  Well… only the other Sara would have noticed if anyone, but I don’t think she did.  For the most part the class seemed to like it.  in fact they liked it a lot more than I expected them too.  I heard a few people say that they were glad they didn’t have to go after me because I was a hard act to follow, so that was kinda cool.  The only negative input I got was from a few people who said it was too challenging.  If that’s all they have to say, then I’m fine with it.  that’s the whole point.  Was that in a class period, and with the support of their classmates, everyone would be able to respond to me, even if they didn’t 100% know what was going on, they’d at least be able to say “ich heiße ____” and well, they’re not going to fill in that blank with their own name and not know what they’re saying.  And in doing that, they are going to know that they survived the first day of class where the weird ass teacher didn’t speak a lick of English, yet they successfully completed the task.  So suck on that people!

Scribbled by Matt at 10:37 PM CDT

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Another successful rafting adventure!  This year we went to do the Upper Gauley River in West Virginia, which I have been told from some sources, is the hardest whitewater river in the United States.  This claim seems rather odd, as I can’t find anywhere that has the guidelines for how they are rated, or any sort of listing of rivers by rapids…

Anyway.  We were to meet up at krajniak’s at 6:30 Thursday to head out.  The drivers were to be Joe, Krajniak and Alina, but due to last minute car difficulties of Alina’s, Isla became the third driver.  Most amusingly as she has no license.  Isla picked me up late because of work, yet the rest of them had only arrived and left for food when she and I showed up with our dinners.  Boo yah.  We headed down to Alsip to pick up Sid, Jen and Andrew, and then we were off.  Sid and I hopped into Isla’s car to avoid the baseball-related themes, and lack of legroom in Joe’s car.  We made it to Indianapolis before talk started popping up about finding a place for the night.  I thought that was kind of lame, we could have made it further but we ended up staying in Centerville, about 40 min SW of Indy.  Oh well. 

Friday we got up at a decent time and hit the road again.  Sid and I annoyed… serenaded Isla by singing along to her mp3 player to such tunes as The Naked Gun themesong, and deuling banjos… and spouting quotes from Ghostbusters 2 most of the way.  Our car was the only car lacking a GPS navigation system, and we spent most of the ride mocking the other cars for their superior technology that did not really help them at all.  When we got off to get groceries and supplies in South Charleston, Isla Sid and I made it back to the highway first, by taking the route we’d come in on, not the one that the doo-dad told us to.  We missed one turn just north of Glasgow, and as we went back to it, we saw Joe continuing past us in the other direction.  We eventually found Krajniak, who had made two wrong turns, and we found our way out of that mess.  Joe’s road choice did actually end up beating us there, but he wasn’t following his GPS, and he did get a speeding ticket along the way.  Then Krajniak bypassed the stop to get the key, but still managed to be the last one to reach the cabin. 

Friday night we unpacked and picked our bunk buddies.  Sid and I took the room with two single beds… I had previously vowed to take the hammock out in the yard, but it was broken L  We went for a hike in Carnifex Ferry Battlefield State Park which turned out to border our cabin’s site, which was pretty cool.  We had a good view down on the Gauley River, but you couldn’t tell where the rapids were because the dam wasn’t open.  It’s a huuuge difference!  We hiked around in the woods for a while, scared a lot of deer around, climbed a few rock formations, and the like.  Then we went back to the cabin for dinner.  The girls all got their wine and got in the hot tub while Joe, Krajniak and I did dinner.  We made burgers and hot dogs which turned out pretty good.  The conversation in the hot tub turned to religion and all that and it got irritating to listen to so I wandered off for a while… but I did have to return for s’mores. 

Saturday morning we got up and headed out to the rafting headquarters.  We’ve now been there three times so we can find it pretty easily.  Right at US 119 and WV 60.  after much going back and forth, we discovered that we were in fact doing the Upper Gauley, which is the harder section of the river, we were all pleased about that.  The river is only commercially run on days when the Army COE opens the dam to let water out, which is about 15 days per year.  It’s the Summerville Dam, which is also near the town of Gad, making it the Gad Dam, and it’s on the Gauley River, which makes it the Gauley Dam, but they seem to like the more boring Summerville Dam better.  Don’t worry, when the trip leader told us that, I did in fact smack Krajniak with my paddle for good measure.  We put in right at the base of the dam, and the rapids started immediately, which was awesome.  Our guide said that the Gauley River is one of the top five rivers to run in the world, but I don’t exactly know how they determine that, so I’m just assuming it’s considered hard because the rapids are constant… like the Colorado might have three class VIs but nothing in between and this one has five class Vs and a constant stream of IIIs in between or something.  Who knows…  according to American Whitewater, the Gauley has five class Vs that are at the lower end of class V.  I don’t even know what that means either.  we paid extra for wetsuits, which I don’t think we needed under the conditions but it was alright.  The air temp was 60 and the water temp was 65, so every splash felt damn good.  We made it through all the Class V’s before lunch without a hitch.  I think our guide was a little disappointed in our raft’s ability to paddle together.  Sid and Jen in the front weren’t exactly paying attention to each other.  In the other raft, Joe got bumped to the front because the guide said he has no rhythm.  We stopped for lunch and watched some of the other rafts go through the rapids there while we ate.  Then we were off again!  Sid and I jumped off of Jump Rock.  Wheeeeee!  Then at the last class V the guide attempted to throw sid and I from the boat.  He took a bow after losing half the raft for the cameraman on the bank. 

Then we went back to the cabin for another night of sitting around in the cabin.  Since the river didn’t have any good spots for us to fall out and swim for a while, Sid and I were not able to take our yearly taking-a-picture-of-each-other-taking-a-picture, so we were forced to do it in the hot tub.  I hate hot tubs.  They’re so damn hot.  I feel like I’m a boiling chicken getting ready for dinner.  So I got out immediately afterward and went to shower.  We made shish kebabs for dinner on the grill… chicken, steak, pineapple, onion, green pepper and mushrooms.  Everyone else either sat in the hot tub or watched satellite tv.  Joe said he’d go hiking with me, but then alina and some others said they wanted to hike in the morning.  I knew that that wasn’t going to happen, so I wandered off on my own for a while.  Gone Soft! 

In the morning, we packed up the cabin, threw out our food scraps and trash, (left without hiking) and headed down to the New River bridge overlook.  We took a few pictures and then back to the cars!  Isla drove for the first three hours.  Somewhere on Rt 35 in Ohio I took it upon myself to name the three cars.  Joe became Herbie the Love Bug, Krajniak was deemed Car 54 (Where are you??), and we started out as the General Lee, but then became General Speedy Lee, and then when the Scooby Doo theme song came on Isla’s mp3 player we became the Mystery Machine.  I drove starting at the lunch stop in Chillicothe, somewhere in south central Ohio and Sid and Isla dropped off immediately.  This is better than two years ago, when I was nominated least-tired and had to drive from Tennessee all the way to Louisburg KY even though I’d only had like ten hours of sleep in the last 72.  We stopped for gas in Dayton and then again near Gary Indiana. 

Scribbled by Matt at 11:03 AM CDT

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Mr Brien's comment to the orange belts.

karate tonight was entertaining.  we did a lot of sparring practice in preparation for the tournament that i'm missing this weekend.  my sparring has gotten a lot better these last six sessions, but i'm still not very competitive.  i should just hang back more.  i tend to get bored and then throw something and then get kicked on the shoulder, which shouldn't count but they give it to them anyway.  Rory and I continue to get yelled at for staying in too close.  Rory's judo training has also made him throw crappier punches at karate, which is amusing.  we sparred a bit last thursday and had to ref our own matches which was entertaining.  some dude tore a ligament in his ankle or something, and some idiot punched rory in the nose. 

class tonight was fine.  i had to give a presentation on Competency Based Language Teaching.  i started working on it sunday in urbana, but didn't get very far.  but i had time to let my head mull it over which helped.  i did most of it last night then finished up in the computer lab today at UIC.  i'm more looking forward to my "First Five Minutes" presentation on Wednesday.  I think I'm going to do the getting to know your classmates names ice breaker from Italian 101 at UIUC.  that was one of the few ice breakers that i enjoyed.  our professor for my monday class this semester is kind of technologically inept.  last week she started class 20 minutes late because she forgot her password to the UIC wireless network and we had to wait for some tech guy to come type his in.  today she couldn't connect her laptop to the digital projector.  it turned out that the cable wasn't plugged into the wall.  another twenty minutes.  then an hour before the end of class her laptop battery died and she ran across campus to get the power brick.  seriously.  is it so hard to figure out that "i'm not good with technology.  i should come to class five minutes early to make sure things are working" ?  i mean, i dont normally care, but this is becoming the norm, not the exception. 

i spent the weekend in urbana! where it was ninety degrees.  it's october.  what. the. hell.  on friday i got there after tutoring.  crap i need to call about not being there this coming friday.  we made thai food and watched tv.  saturday we went to the farmers market, then rented the movie Crash.  i couldn't get it to work on my laptop... i think that that my combo drive is starting to crap out.  it comes and goes as to whether it plays discs or not.  so we watched it at her mom's house.  i thought it was pretty good.  a little predictable at parts, but it had a good message.  mainly that everyone is a little bit prejudiced and that it just breeds more.  i took an online test for class last week (the Race IAT) that says I have a strong preference for white people.  i dont think the test actually measures all that much more than the internet's ability to confuse me, but hey, it's from HARVARD, it must be right... right?  then we fed helen's moms cats, then we drove over and fed barry's cat and dog.  his pets didnt seem to mind two strangers wandering around the house and giving them food too much.  then we thought about going for a run but ended up just walking around campus.  i made helen walk past my old apartment on coler to say hi, and then we walked around champaign and back down the quad and over to krannert. 

sunday we cleaned Helen's kitchen, found cat barf on her back porch, then went to do some errands.  we looked at doors and halloween stuff at Menards, and Helen bought a router to make some christmas presents.  luckily she waited til now, she got a free "router accessory pack."  AND she bought me a MANLY HAMMER.  :-D  a 22 oz Fat Max.  so now when we go do Habitat I don't have to borrow hers anymore.  we stopped by Helen's mom's and I made Tom-the-cat's paws twitch when i rubbed his belly.  then we attempted to do homework, went for a run at Meadowbrook (I'm finally starting to not call it Castle Park all the time), and then ate with Helen's mom and Barry.  chicken!

now i should probably get to work on one of them *useful* things I'm supposed to be doing.

Scribbled by Matt at 12:25 AM CDT

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So I show up to this middle school in Glen Ellyn.  I ring the buzzer but no one lets me in, so I walk over to the teacher who has door duty, announce myself and ask to be let in.  He tells me to go to the office, but no one’s there so I stand there for at least fifteen minutes.  I was told to be there at 7:45, I was there at 7:45, the school day starts at 8:06 and it’s now 8:00.  people are coming and going, some of them seem to know what they’re doing.  finally one lady comes over and starts to tell me what’s going on.  Now apparently all this while, she knew that I had my first two periods off, so that’s why there’s no rush, but I’m kind of wondering, hey I want time to look over the plans, make sure I got everything.  We finally get to my room.  I’m an 8^th grade math teacher, subbing for someone who is out getting trained to use her SmartBoard.   Also, it’s a half day, so my periods are only 20 minutes long.  

Ten minutes later the secretary comes back.  Would it be possible for me to come sit with the in-school suspension kids for my two plan periods?  I have no problem, I got nothing better to do so I go along.  She takes me to this conference room where a lone black kid is doing math problems.  I say hey, and plop down and start doodling Marvin the Martian.  Then I hear a crinkle sound, like from a bag of chips.  I look up and the kid looks up.  Ok, there’s two of us.  We’re in a room that’s not much bigger than a closet and we’re sitting about five feet away from each other.  WHERE COULD THE NOISE BE COMING FROM????  A few minutes later, another crinkle.  I look up, the kid looks up.  I look down and out of the corner of my eye I see his hand fly up to his mouth.  A few minutes later, another crinkle.  I look over at my sheet telling me what the rules and regulations are for in-school suspension.  It doesn’t mention food, and the kid is more or less doing his work so I decide not to give him a hard time.  A few minutes later, another crinkle.  I look over.  The kid has his hood over his face trying to hide his mouth.  He’s managed to hide his eyes, not his mouth.  A few minutes later, another crinkle.  This time I see out of the corner of my eye that he’s trying to shake a lost chip out of his sleeve, still thinking that he’s being discreet about all of this.  This poor kid gets an F in deceit.  I debate telling him to go get a napkin and eat like a normal person, decide he’s actually punishing himself (not to mention embarrassing himself) more than I ever could and so I refrain from saying anything, and hold my laughter until I leave.  Well we know this delinquent won’t be graduating to a life of crime any time soon!

Now it’s time for math.  Third period was fine.  We corrected their homework and then they did their homework for tomorrow.  Fourth period took a quiz.  Fifth period was a little less on-task.  But they got the work done.  The three kids who were working I let go at the bell, the rest of them I made clean up the mess they made.  Seventh period there was an aide in the room, so the kids got to work a little better.  Also, I was a little more forceful in suggesting that they do their homework and extra credit than I had been in fifth.  Eighth took a quiz.  Ninth period was a zoo.  The kids knew they were getting out at 11:30, we corrected the homework in record time and now they decided it was time to party.  One kid spent the entire period ripping up paper and was walking towards the fan with the intent of ‘making it snow’ when he realized I was watching him.  I shook my head and pointed at the trash can.  Another girl was shooting twists of paper with a rubber band at every single person she could hit.  When she noticed that I was watching, she immediately went into this loud “oh I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’ll stop speech” AS SHE’S LOADING UP TO SHOOT SOMEONE ELSE.  These kids are morons.  Finally the bell rings and they all get up to leave and I tell them that no one is leaving until the floor is immaculate.  Which resulted in 29 of them standing by the door, asking “is it good enough yet” over and over while one kid does most of the cleaning.  I hope they missed their busses.  :-D

Then Micki and I went to visit Gram and Gramps for lunch.  We ate grandma food, did crossword puzzles, a sudoku, and sat around outside while grandma made things.  I want to be able to be handy like them.  Gramps wired his garage from his house and then the shed from the garage.  The two of them make all kinds of crafty things (which I try to collect).

Then I tootored.  My little third grade buddy at 5:15.  he’s doing pretty well.  We worked on place value up to the ten thousands today.  I can definitely see improvement which is good.  Then at 6:30, I was with the jr high girl, who told me she got straight A’s for the first time this fall!  It’s like I’m being useful!

Helen arrived while I was out,  and went for a run.  When I got home we made pasta and watched Sister Act, then went to Oberweis for some ice cream!

Today (Saturday) we got up early (by Matt’s standards) and went to watch Micki’s XC meet.  She took 11^th in the JV race.  Not too bad, there were hundreds of girls out there, but I couldn’t tell if she was satisfied or not.  There were schools from as far away as Mahomet there, so it was a pretty big meet.  

After her race, Helen and I headed up north to Six Flags.  Joe had 4 free tickets from Deloitte Day, so we got in for free and there were hardly any people at the park.  I don’t think I could go there anymore on a regular day.  We took it easy and just wandered slowly from ride to ride.  I was about to list each coaster we went on in order and frequency, but I wont bore you with the details.  We did do the Déjà Vu, which I’ve never been on, because it’s ALWAYS closed when I’ve been there.  luckily Joe’s work also gave each of us $20 in Great American dollars, so we didn’t have to pay for food either.  Which is good because a small ice cream was six freaking dollars.  I had a footlong corndog for lunch which hit the spot and then it was back to more coasters.  We did a water ride and got soaked.  But one trip on batman completely dried me off.  I called James to see if he was there, and we bumped into him, Emily, Matt S. and his girlfriend a few times here and there.  so that was cool.  Helen won a Wendy from Bob the Builder stuffed doll and Joe won a Marvin the Martian.  I failed to win the giant karate spongebob, but did manage to earn a consolation monkey.  (we don’t tell him he’s a consolation monkey because we don’t want to hurt his feelings)  Then we ended the day by going on Raging Bull, as it is Joe’s favorite.  When we were done, there were no people in most of the lines so we moved from the front car to a middle car and rode it two more times without even bothering to get back in line.  My favorite is still the Viper.  I don’t know, everyone else seems to love Raging Bull.  I mean I appreciate the speed, but that’s all it really has in my mind.  I need to go upside down.  J  after that, Helen and I went out for thai food in downtown naperthrill for dinner.  

Sunday we headed down to Tinley Park to play with Helen’s baby niece.  Lil Kathryn is almost 14 months now.  She kind of walks while holding on to people’s fingers, and sometimes she just walks on all fours, not crawling, but walking on all fours.  She has some speed to her.  We picked up some toppings from target and made a gluten free pizza for dinner and some ice cream.  Hersheys has special dark syrup!!!!!  In case you were wondering.

Now I should get back to work on homework, or better yet, go to bed.  But we all know I’m going to go back to preparing pictures for the internet…

Scribbled by Matt at 1:22 AM CDT

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