tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-291291022024-03-13T04:08:47.249-07:00Meanhappyguy's BlogRambling, lots of rambling.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger623125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-67340630846627213682014-02-23T20:13:00.001-08:002014-02-23T20:13:10.719-08:00307Nothing like looking through some old posts and then realizing I have broken off yet another attempt at writing. Apparently, I started a "Write 300 words" each day, and then up the word count by one each day. Two years later... I'm on post 7 or 8! Whoop!<br />
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I could write 300 (307) words about a lot of things, but if I know myself, I want to go the easiest route, and that subject today is teaching. Not just teaching, but a conversation I had with a father at ultimate frisbee practice today. I attended a masters and grandmasters practice/pickup game this morning, and it was a lot of fun. It wasn't only fun because I was younger than everyone there (masters you have to be 33 and grandmasters you have to be 40), and actually made some plays on defense, it was mostly fun for the community. I ran into a few friends from Tacoma ultimate, and a few other guys who have been around for a long time playing in Seattle.<br />
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A new guy (well, new to me) and I talked after playing ultimate for a few hours about education. He has a son who is in 6th grade, and just finished the APP program that's interim location is the same location my school is moving to next year. I had some questions for him about logistics of that move, but to make a long conversation short, the discussion turned into an APP discussion.<br />
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He was very happy with his son's progress through the APP curriculum, and as a sixth grader he is now taking algebra (which is normally a 9th grade class).<br />
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As a teacher at a title 1 school, I have mixed feelings about APP programs.<br />
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Pros:<br />
great for challenging kids<br />
good for putting kids in situations where their entire existence is "the smart kid" in a regular-paced classroom<br />
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Cons:<br />
A very homogeneous group. The kids are all smart, and the vast majority are white kids of privilege.<br />
I wonder how these kids interact with students and people later in their schooling and life, can they act appropriately and respectfully around students in a regular paced class? What about people with learning disabilities?<br />
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I don't mean to group all APP students into one basket, I know there are plenty of differences between individuals within the program, but it seems like education and learning really isn't going to be difficult for this group of students, so instead of challenging them with harder classes and at a faster pace, why not put the primary focus on team work and building social skills and leadership?<br />
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PS: it is okay to go over 307 words!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-238502677923876442014-02-23T19:45:00.002-08:002014-02-23T19:45:46.050-08:00Fastest months everI've been aware of the phenomena: "time speeds up as one ages" for the last ten years or so, but it continues to amaze me. These last two months have flown by. I was busy coaching basketball every day after school, and busier with teaching and my master's program. I can't really tell if the time speeding up thing has to do with age or being busy, but it is probably both, and we tend to get busier and have more responsibilities as we age.<br />
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Spring should fly by as well, as it always does, which has me eager to start planning hiking trips for summer now. I'd love to get into the Enchantments, a place I haven't been, and need to win a lottery to have an overnight pass. I entered the lottery, wish me luck!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-15539309232732417302013-12-21T12:49:00.000-08:002013-12-21T12:49:58.466-08:00Time fliesA wee 14 month blog break. I'm almost halfway through my fifth year of teaching in Seattle, and winter break just began, giving me some time to check up on this blog and other things that have accumulated dust.<br />
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Oregon relationship petered out shortly after the last blog post. I still think about her every now and then, wondering what could have happened differently. Probably not much.<br />
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I joined a lifelong friend for a section on the Pacific Crest Trail this summer. He and another friend did the whole hike, from Mexico to Canada. I joined them in Central Oregon for 96 miles in 92 hours, or thereabouts. The pace was a little ridiculous, but the terrain wasn't too bad--mostly flat. We had a lot of time to talk on the trail, and the topic of relationships came up. He is married with no kids at the moment. We talked about what we look for in a partner, and he brought up something that I had never really considered. My things were pretty straightforward: good sense of humor, nice, attractive, smart, sporty (and I think in that order, for me).<br />
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He mentioned "an adventuresome spirit" is something that he really enjoys that his wife has. That kind of blew me away, because I hadn't considered that a trait, and it absolutely is, and a very important one at that.<br />
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Everyone has their own goals and values and priorities and all that. Right now I am up to my neck in teaching and coaching, and I am loving it. I'm loving it to the point that I don't really have time for a relationship, or at least the kind of relationship I'd like to have (where I can spend meaningful time with the person). I know the draw of a relationship will intensify with time, but regardless of how busy I am, I always like the idea of an adventure--whether it is a long travel, a quick bike ride around Greenlake, or a day hike. I think I'll always find time to fit those adventures in.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-40715397941270223372012-10-08T22:53:00.001-07:002012-10-08T22:54:26.878-07:00Where'd Summer Go?Summer didn't necessarily go by fast for me this year. It seems like it did now, but that's only because teaching has started up again and that first month of teaching freaking flew by. Honestly can't believe it has already been a month.<br />
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I thought I would probably be down in Oregon this summer, living with the girlfriend, but that didn't quite work out. No good story to tell really, other than we weren't ready for the jump. I thought I was, which made things, and continue to make things, a bit strained between us, but we're still trying to figure things out. We're at a very interesting point right now, where it would be easiest to just part ways and call our situations too difficult to make compatible--but we're also in love, so we don't really want to give that up. Love hurts? Long distance sucks? We'll see.<br />
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Motivation is a big part of teaching, and it seems to be an equally large part of me writing. I had the entire summer to write and maybe wrote two pages worth. I was just watching the below video and felt incredibly motivated to write. I really love it when, well, anybody really, but more so when masters of their craft are genuinely excited and performing at 100% and impressing one another. It can be music, it can be other forms of entertainment, or even a parent. I don't think giving 100% is really feasible, that is what leads to burnout, unhealthiness, accidents and injuries. But those uncommon moments when people do give 100% can be truly remarkable, like beginning at 3:20 in the below video. I wouldn't recommend skipping any of the video, but Clapton's solo, followed by the pianist, and their accompanying smiles makes my day.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-67035980109106978272012-07-08T13:25:00.003-07:002012-07-08T13:26:05.807-07:00TimeThis is my second summer break with no real obligations since the summer of maybe sophomore or junior year in high school. I've had a job or classes every summer since, which seems a bit weird as a teacher. I've only been teaching for 3 years now, but contrary to popular belief, we have a lot going on in the summer most years. Last summer I took a class every week day in July, and the summer before I was working as a substitute teacher. This summer I have it pretty easy, and although I've already spent a handful of days in my classroom, and most days I think about how I could improve my students' learning, I have already felt the boredom of having too much time.<br />
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Griping about having too much free time isn't going to win me much pity, but having too much time is an interesting thing to me. All school year I am slammed with obligations right and left, and I have to make time for myself, at the cost of other, possibly more important, things. And then summer hits, and time slows to a crawl. The problem isn't really the free time, it is more that I have free time and nobody else does. Girlfriend is working and busy with rec. soccer and other things. Housemates are busy working. I find myself doing things by myself a lot, learning guitar, taking photos, jogging and biking--which are fun, but I am realizing again that I am a social animal, and I wish I had more events during the week that I am doing with others.<br />
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Having nothing planned for this day and the next few is also a bit of a bummer. I like free time, but I think having at least one or two things a day to look forward to makes life much less lonely. That said, I didn't have anything planned yesterday, which turned into a few hours of pickup ultimate and then going to an amazing Sounders game with my housemates who had an extra ticket--which broke me out of my loneliness slump pretty quickly!<br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">I'm planning on biking out to Mercer Island today, which is about 20-25 miles round trip (my longest bike ride ever?), and then dinner with the folks.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-19458610619011781812012-07-06T20:18:00.000-07:002012-07-06T20:20:08.718-07:00Dog Days<br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;">I walked down to the park this evening and asked a guy if I could take some photos of his dog, which seemed a little less awkward than asking the baseball team of boys 10 years old if I could photograph them. I still had a majority of blurry photos, and I didn't notice until after the fact that the ISO was on 1600 the entire time (which lets in more light, but makes the quality grainier).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">The following photos are a burst of three, showing off Finn's quickness!</span></span></div>
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-14689866411577099872012-07-02T21:54:00.000-07:002012-07-02T21:56:33.136-07:00Photography Quiz (F-stop blues!)<br />
((Apologizing in advance for the weird formatting, I've previewed this post a few times and it looks weird every time, but I am tired and tired of hassling with it...))<br />
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More fun with the camera this evening, trying to figure out this whole F-stop and depth of field thing. I tried mightly this weekend, at one of the largest ultimate frisbee tournaments in the world, to capture some of the action on the field, but when I took a look at the pictures afterwards, nearly every shot was blurry.<br />
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I was a little frustrated, because I tried just about everything out at the fields to ensure at least a few of my photos would turn out nice. I tried automatic setting, manual setting, single shot, burst shot, and I even tried burst shot while manually changing the focus of the camera as the burst was shooting... but nothing I did made any difference to my blurry photos! If you couldn't tell already, I'm a bit of a newbie...<br />
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Last night I did some reading in the camera manual and found that what I needed to be changing is the F-stop. For some reason the automatic setting on the camera reverts to usually the smallest F-stop setting, because at that level, there is less light needed for optimal shooting... the problem lies in the fact that a small F-stop means a very narrow focus range, which means someone's elbow might be in focus but the rest of their body isn't... which makes for a lot of blurry photos!<br />
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So why not shoot with a high F-stop all the time to get everything in focus? Well, a lot more light is needed. I'm learning various tricks to get more light, but you always have to give something up to get more light. The longer you expose the photo, the more light you get, but the harder it is to keep the camera still. The higher ISO you use, the more light you get, but the picture gets grainier.<br />
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Here are a couple of examples, and then a quiz! <br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZQXzUFlhzdQ/T_J0K6tz11I/AAAAAAAABO0/qZ8qwWVe3v8/s1600/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+011.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZQXzUFlhzdQ/T_J0K6tz11I/AAAAAAAABO0/qZ8qwWVe3v8/s640/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+011.jpg" /></a><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8UGXWcLsrpA/T_J0Ojb0HPI/AAAAAAAABO8/AKbpZfdn1wI/s1600/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+012.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8UGXWcLsrpA/T_J0Ojb0HPI/AAAAAAAABO8/AKbpZfdn1wI/s640/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+012.jpg" /></a><br />
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Here are the specs for the above two photos:<br />
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top(left?): f-stop 5.6; exposure: 1/6sec; iso: 400<br />
bottom(right?): f-stop 20; exp: 2sec; iso: 400<br />
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The bottom picture is a whole lot crisper, and it has to do with the f-stop being much larger, but you see the camera shutter was open for two whole seconds, which means I HAD to have a tripod for this shot or my hands would have shaken the camera into drunken blurriness! If you think (like I thought) that the top photo might have just been blurry, take a look at the difference between the line on the right with "Bill Clinton" and compare the blurriness of that text to the text in the bottom left or top right of the page--THIS is what was happening to my photos at the frisbee tournament--a little bit of focus, but usually not on the action, and the rest of the shot was blurry, which wasn't what I was going for!<br />
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Here is another example.<br />
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<img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eBns1BTs6pY/T_J0R3VnHeI/AAAAAAAABPE/m9XPH2vJzrM/s640/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+017.jpg" /><br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mrO9RH51R88/T_J0VdzLX4I/AAAAAAAABPM/jl-Uc12fhzY/s1600/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+019.jpg"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mrO9RH51R88/T_J0VdzLX4I/AAAAAAAABPM/jl-Uc12fhzY/s640/2012-07-02-+F-stop+blues+019.jpg" /></a><br />
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Tilted the page back a bit more in these shots to show the loss/gain of focus--here are the specs:
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top: f/5.6; 1/5sec; iso: 400<br />
bottom: f/29; exp: 5secs; iso: 400<br />
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Again, in the top photo there is a fine band of somewhat focused text. You have to look close near the Bill Clinton line and compare it to the text at the very top and bottom of the page. The bottom picture is much more in focus throughout, even though the ISO is the same, but you see an even bigger f-stop and now a five-second exposure, 30x the length of exposure of the top photo! Again, thank you tripod.<br />
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Now for the quiz! Let's see if anyone still reads this blog and has any interest in photography...<br />
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I took seven photos of my computer screen as I began typing this post. The photo was from about six feet away, and zoomed in on the text with a white background to help with light issues--this time I took the photos hand-held, which is a very big factor in the blurriness of photos (which I realize I didn't get into much in this post, but it does help answer this quiz correctly!). I will give you the specs of the seven shots and you tell me which photo you think came out the most in focus, also, which photo came out least in focus--only from reading the specs. I will post the photos Friday!<br />
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1--f/45 exp: 1/6sec iso 1600<br />
2--f/45 exp: 1/4sec iso 1600<br />
3--f/29 exp: 1/10sec iso 1600<br />
4--f/5.6 exp: 1/80sec iso 400<br />
5--f/29 exp: 1/5sec iso 800<br />
6--f/20 exp: 1/10sec iso 800<br />
7--f/20 exp: 1/20sec iso 1600<br />
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Good luck!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-79924147912072499152012-06-29T17:03:00.000-07:002012-07-02T21:55:13.877-07:00Post more, noob!Last post was a little depressing for me, seeing as how I hadn't posted since April. I've got more free time this summer than I have had in the past, and there are definitely a few hobbies I want to get back into--one is writing and another is photography. Hopefully many more pictures will grace this blog space, and hopefully they will be from the outdoors! As it stands, it is still cloudy and rainy in Seattle (our summer doesn't start until July 5th for you non-Pacific NW'ers out there).<div>
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I was messing around this afternoon with the camera my father handed down to me last year, a gift I really haven't taken advantage of yet. I am trying to get the hang of all the bells and whistles on the camera, and how to make best use of the telephoto lens. Here is a Magic card from last weekend's gaming night--I'm surprised by how narrow the focus range is, there is really only about an inch or less of the card that is in focus. This shot is taken from about six feet away, and you can see the bottom of the card is out of focus, as is the top.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-7534305037387306202012-06-26T10:32:00.003-07:002012-06-29T17:05:07.672-07:00WSOP and Live Poker!Probably many of you poker bloggers out there have already heard, but a former poker blogger won a WSOP event a few weeks back, Brandon Schaefer. We used to play basketball together growing up, and we still hang out once or twice a year--he's got a very interesting life story, and if you do a quick search you can see that right now he's back in flight school for the Air Force--and the WSOP shoot out event he played was the only tournament, WSOP or otherwise, he will play all year long. Nice work!
I got bit by the poker bug, and I decided to make this entire week a big long party for my 30th birthday tomorrow, so I headed up to Tulalip casino yesterday for some poker. They have a $40 buy in tournament with rebuys for the first 40 minutes.
I played NL cash for an hour before the tournament started and sat down UTG and opted to play the hand instead of waiting for the blinds to pass... good decision--I found AA and raised it up. Got re-popped by a non-believer and doubled up. Unfortunately this would be just about the only hand I won at the cash table or at the tournament for the rest of the night. I was playing weak/loose, which isn't optimal, but didn't come close to hitting any of the draws that I was priced in to see!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-48927711834376463712012-04-06T20:30:00.003-07:002012-04-06T21:41:56.254-07:00Gossip, Umbrella, and a Prank Gone WrongMavis glances at her cards one more time before looking around the table. Someone is surely pulling a fast one on her. She hasn't been dealt two aces since she was 75 and playing poker in South Lake.<br /><br />Ernie, to her left, puts this poker game on every Tuesday night in his room -- 205. It might be him, but Mavis has been playing in this game for three years and she would have expected this type of prank would have come sooner from him.<br /><br />Across the table is Deloris, Mavis's best friend in Smokey Acres. Deloris is capable of pulling a joke on her, but is falling asleep every deal, and is in no state to stack the deck in Mavis's favor, especially on Ernie's deal.<br /><br />Clyde is the likely culprit. Sharp as a tack, and wearing his trademark bow tie, Mavis has felt Clyde had more than friendship on the mind since he moved into the home last year.<br /><br />She plays it coy, looking for a facial expression from any of her three table mates.<br /><br />"I call." Mavis says as she tosses two pretzels into the pot.<br /><br />Smokey Acres strictly forbids gambling on the premises, so the residents have a well known currency of pretzels = $0.25, Werther's Originals = $1, and Thin Mints = $5. The girl scouts love coming by each spring, as the residents pounce to stockpile for the year, which are cashed out in early December by Tony, an ex-college football player turned nurse. Winning bettors often share their good fortune with their grand children via Christmas letter.<br /><br />Ernie folds, Clyde has to wake up Deloris, who blindly throws in a pretzel "gotta see a flop" she sleep-talks, and Clyde checks his option.<br /><br />Ernie flips over the first card, a red three.<br /><br />"Dag gummit, Ernie!" Clyde says.<br /><br />"What??" Ernie responds.<br /><br />"You forgot to burn a card again, you sack of knobs!"<br /><br />"Oh, what's that? Oh, suppose I did."<br /><br />He turns over the three of diamonds and flips over the next card, a third ace. He also flips over a ten and a five to complete the flop.<br /><br />Deloris looks dejected, and checks. Clyde bets a Werther's and Mavis eyes him sharper than a spoke on an umbrella when it is close to someone's head, eventually calling the Werther's. Deloris folds.<br /><br />Ernie flips over a 6.<br /><br />"Gosh darnit to heck, Ernie!" Clyde says.<br /><br />"What's the matter this time?"<br /><br />Clyde sets down his cards, rubs his aged hands together, blows on them, and then holds them out over his cards as if the cards were a camp fire.<br /><br />"... forgot to burn again, didn't I?" Ernie says knowingly.<br /><br />Clyde nods.<br /><br />Deloris snores.<br /><br />Mavis stink-eyes the whole table and neighboring county.<br /><br />Ernie flips back over the 6 and reveals an 8 as the true turn card.<br /><br />Clyde eyes Mavis, who is staring directly back at him now.<br /><br />"I hear you bought my grand daughter out of Thin Mints last week. Why not save some for the rest of us?" Clyde directs at Mavis.<br /><br />Ernie smiles.<br /><br />Mavis growls at Clyde.<br /><br />"You know, Thin Mints have always been a favorite of mine." Clyde says.<br /><br />"Put your money where your mouth is, you old coot!" Mavis chimes in.<br /><br />"She speaks!" Clyde says playfully. "Well, okay, I bet three Thin Mints."<br /><br />Mavis quickly calls.<br /><br />Ernie starts to peel off the river card...<br /><br />"Burn and turn!!" Clyde and Mavis both same simultaneously, as Mavis whaps Ernie's hand with the back of hers.<br /><br />"Ouch! Okay, okay!"<br /><br />Ernie burns a card and sheepishly places a four of clubs out on the board as the river.<br /><br />Clyde looks at Mavis and then lowers his gaze to her plastic tray full of Thin Mints.<br /><br />"How much you got there, young lady?"<br /><br />"You have eyes, use em'"<br /><br />Clyde smiles.<br /><br />"Well, I suppose you've got more than me, so I'll just go ahead and bet all of mine..." he looks at Ernie, "All-in, in case there was any doubt, I may as well make it official."<br /><br />Mavis checks her cards again, still two aces. She checks the board, and there is still an ace out there. A ten, an eight, a five and a four.<br /><br />Mavis sits back in her chair.<br /><br />First time she has been dealt aces in ages, and she doesn't feel good about it.<br /><br />"Come on, sweet heart, we haven't got all day" Clyde ribs.<br /><br />Mavis glowers at him.<br /><br />"Well, she's got to have something, or else she wouldn't be thinking so long" Ernie chimes in.<br /><br />"One would hope so, but I don't think she has anything at all, she just doesn't trust me." Clyde says. "Look honey, your queens are no good."<br /><br />"Show me an ace and I'll fold" Mavis says.<br /><br />"Now, now, I play by the rules, you know that." Clyde responds.<br /><br />"Play by the rules, my ass!" Mavis snarls.<br /><br />"Come on sweetie, call or fold." Clyde says.<br /><br />Mavis attempts to disintegrate Clyde with her eyes, but her dream doesn't come true.<br /><br />Mavis throws her aces into the muck.<br /><br />Ernie and Clyde both gasp.<br /><br />"Ah hah!" Mavis says as she leaps out of her seat. She grabs Clyde's hand and flips it over, six-seven.<br /><br />"You dirty, rotten, no good scoundrel!" She directs at Clyde.<br /><br />"And you! You rooster-clucking, no-good fish-eating moon-howling duck!" She directs at Ernie.<br /><br />"Whoa there! You can't turn over my hand, you didn't call!" Clyde says.<br /><br />"To heck, I can! You two cheaters are going to get cut off once Tony hears about this!"<br /><br />Mavis hits the alarm button on her wheel chair. Within a minute, Tony is in the room and asks Mavis what the problem is.<br /><br />"These two cheats are trying to take me for all of my Thin Mints! Look at the board, and look! Bowtie over there has six-seven and bet it the whole way, you don't play six-seven like that!" Mavis shouts.<br /><br />Deloris wakes to the shout.<br /><br />"Oh, hi Tony, didn't see you come in." Deloris says.<br /><br />"Now Mrs. Goodell, you know this game has its moments, and you know Clyde plays off the cuff quite often." Tony responds.<br /><br />"Bull shit cuff!" She responds.<br /><br />"Even if Clyde has the nuts, how the hell did you fold aces there?" Ernie says.<br /><br />Mavis smiles, for the first time in weeks.<br /><br />"Now sonny, who told you I had aces?"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-68642832407977252112012-03-27T21:23:00.003-07:002012-03-27T21:33:33.806-07:00JitteryI figure there isn't much point to try and name my posts counting up by 300 if I only post once or twice a month... kind of defeats the purpose of the whole "300+1 words a day" theme. The first three months of 2012 have flown by, as time is tending to do the older I get. Teaching has been and continues to be fun, but crazy. Having four different classes to prep for doesn't make for good teaching or a happy teacher. I find myself prepping lessons the morning of, and special ed. teachers trying to figure out what I am teaching so they can plan accordingly, but I haven't gotten the things together in time.<br /><br />Big changes coming in June/July! Excited, but a little jittery.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-63324066030016539202012-02-17T20:18:00.001-08:002012-02-17T20:29:20.953-08:00306Quite a few interesting things on my mind lately. I just got out of the hot tub and remembered a lot of conversations I've had with gf over the past few weeks. She is amazing, and particularly amazing at the way she can make me think about myself and do some self reflection. Last week she said that I am pretty hard on myself, which is something I had never really considered until she said it.<br /><br />I think I am, and that is kind of weird to admit. I know through poker I've learned not to get angry on things outside of my control, so when that ace spikes on the river against my QQ v. AK all in preflop, I know it was a coinflip to begin with. It stings, I don't think anyone can deny that, but thinking you lost an 89% hand on the river, while technically you did, realistically it was a coin flip and you lost a 50% hand, big whoop.<br /><br />I do get mad at myself when I play poker or any other game/sport poorly, and I had a good conversation with Tyler about this after racquetball this Wednesday. I told him how I was kind of laughing at myself and enjoying playing racquetball tonight, even though I was playing terribly. I had spoken with GF earlier in the week and said how I have a lot of fun at racquetball, but I've noticed that I am ALWAYS more chipper and talkative when I am ahead, and when I am losing I stop talking and focus on the game. This Wednesday I was down 0-8-9 playing cut-throat with William and Tyler, and I just kind of laughed at how poorly I was playing, instead of getting frustrated. I ended up losing 10-14-15 that game, and crushing them in the next game 15-4-2.<br /><br />I was kind of surprised I made it to 10 in the first game, and I was just rolling in the second game, and I think my positive attitude had a lot to do with it. I also know how sucky it can be to play a sport or game with someone who is taking it too seriously, and I never really thought of myself as "that guy", but maybe I have been, and that is something I'd like to put an end to. I honestly don't care 90% of the time if I win a game, but I would like to play well.<br /><br />Something about just sitting in the hot tub for 15-20 minutes is great for my creativity and productivity. I don't give myself enough empty time to think most days, I'm racing from school to video gaming so fast that I don't stop and think. Vow to think more outside of video game strategy or teaching! Two things I realized or re-realized tonight in the hot tub: 1) I am very happy teaching, I want to continue teaching regardless of where I am a year or two from now geographically; 2) I really love gf, and I want to make sure she knows this every day.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-39222610031817589562012-02-08T21:43:00.000-08:002012-02-08T21:52:50.372-08:00305Writing is hard. It is hard to get the motivation to write, even though I think about it a handful of times a day. Some random thing will happen and I'll think "that would be a great start to a story" or "that would make a good blog topic", but when I sit down at a computer I run through my routine of email checking, Facebook, sports highlights, news and video games. Writing is about number 12 on my to do list when I sit down at my computer.<br /><br />I'd rather be playing a video game right now, but my conscience has guilted me into writing because I haven't blogged for a while now. Hmm, what to write about... I guess Jeremy Lin is the hot topic of the week. The first Chinese-Taiwanese descendant to play in the NBA, who is averaging about 25 points in his first three games with significant playing time. He also happens to be the cousin of my junior and senior year roommate, Stan Lin! Great to see Jeremy getting playing time due to the Knicks injuries and taking advantage of the opportunity he's been given.<br /><br />Speaking of basketball, I attended my third ever middle school basketball game (since I've become a teacher), and of the three games I've attended I have filled in as a referee once and on Monday I filled in as the timer. Ah, public school funding! I had a blast though, and only once made a mistake in my team's favor. I blew the horn when the coach of my school's girls team was screaming for a timeout and the refs weren't listening... so play stopped when the horn blew and the refs were forced to give her a timeout, hah! It wasn't too blatant though, because my team had the ball and they were just dribbling it up the court.<br /><br />I had a really good conversation with the coach of the opposing boy's team, who was doing the scoring for the girl's game while I did the clock and horn. He's been coaching and teaching for a few years and has tiny aspirations to join the high school basketball coaching scene, but says it is very competitive. Middle school is very loose with sports in public school, which is nice, but it will be interesting to see where my teaching and coaching aspirations take me!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-66818512882897212802012-01-25T23:41:00.000-08:002012-01-25T23:51:58.780-08:00304<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8wdqJlIp6Og/TyEDv6ASOHI/AAAAAAAABDM/YY4g3eLGJ8E/s1600/MP-2012-01-25.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 347px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8wdqJlIp6Og/TyEDv6ASOHI/AAAAAAAABDM/YY4g3eLGJ8E/s400/MP-2012-01-25.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5701842724786944114" /></a><br /><br />Well, I lost a back massage bet tonight. Fortunately it is to my beautiful girlfriend, and losing because we cleared 50% on a 172-team duplicate bridge tournament!!! We had a top hand for the first time in a few weeks, which is more due to the opponent's misplay than our superiority, but I must admit we did screw them pretty good on that third hand!<br /><br />Just prior to the bridge tournament, girlfriend and I were working on a shared google-doc spreadsheet called "Bridge Cheat Sheet" which is the convention we'll be playing by, just American Standard. It is very simple right now, but I assume it will get more complex as we continue to play and run into situations that give us trouble. I was a bit worried about spending too much time during the tournament looking at the cheat sheet for what I should bid instead of playing quickly and having good etiquette, but during the tourney I only looked at the cheat sheet maybe once? The act of making the cheat sheet itself was a big help, kind of like the act of writing note cards to study for an exam helps just as much as quizzing yourself with the cards later.<br /><br />We still ran into a few tough spots, but for the most part we played much better than last night (a 108/110 finish!). Only two of our hands were under 40%, which is pretty amazing considering almost all of our hands last night were under 40%! Marked improvement!! We talked about reviewing all of the hands we get under 20% on, but I may have to bump that up to 30% or 40% (in this case we only had two hands under 40%, but they were also below 20%...).<br /><br />I think just continuing to play together and discussing our hands as they go will be the best way for us to improve, but if any of you bridge experts have any other suggestions, please let me know! I really enjoy the casual but involved play we are doing right now, and I am looking forward to fifty years from now and still playing this very fun and tricky card game!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-69249116723951262352012-01-24T21:52:00.001-08:002012-01-24T22:10:04.694-08:00303Well, my continuous writing on the blog lasted all of... three? days? I think I've learned enough during my and others' past failures to know that even though I haven't accomplished what I set out to (lots of writing on a daily basis), this doesn't mean I have to leave the blog dusty for months. My first thought was to write 607 words and combine two blog entries, but then keeping track of the numbers would get all sorts of confusing. I think I'll just start off where I left off previously and pretend that the week of snow and rain and travels southward to Corvallis were enough of a distraction to prevent me from writing. A load of baloney, but whatever!<br /><br />School was cancelled most of last Tuesday, and all of Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, making for a nice early mid-winter break! When I found out school would be cancelled for Thursday, I raced down to Corvallis to spend a nice 4-night weekend with the girlfriend. The drive down was a little crazy, leaving at 5pm on a very snowy Seattle. Luckily once I slowly made it down the driveway, hopping on I-5 was easy and I didn't leave the interstate until I was down in rainy Oregon.<br /><br />Driving on I-5 just south of Olympia was insane. Only one lane was plowed and the rest of the interstate was like a motocross with bumps making driving with any semblance of control nearly impossible. I stayed at 20mph in the truck lane and thankfully come Centralia the rest of the freeway was plowed.<br /><br />Corvallis had record flooding, which was pretty awesome to go see. The flooding on the Willamette River was so high that classes at OSU were cancelled on Friday! We went and checked out areas near the river and an entire park was under water, as the river was 13' above normal water level. I got a neat shot of a park bench near the river walk, almost completely under water:<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qrR8ZLl22Ag/Tx-cgqTVw7I/AAAAAAAABC4/LuCeFxwLaNo/s1600/Corvallis%2BFlooded%2BBench.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 226px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qrR8ZLl22Ag/Tx-cgqTVw7I/AAAAAAAABC4/LuCeFxwLaNo/s400/Corvallis%2BFlooded%2BBench.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5701447738199491506" /></a><br /><br />Now to figure out how to transfer phones from my photo to the web without losing so much quality...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-57362165530319358282012-01-17T13:04:00.001-08:002012-01-17T13:17:45.792-08:00302Snowpacaplyse 2012 has begun in Seattle. With no snow on the ground this morning, I still got a two-hour late start at my teaching job. Nothing like some snow fear to start the calendar year off! By the time I got ready to leave, after much deliberation as to which transportation method and route to take, I donned my full bike rain gear and headed into the silent snow storm.<br /><br />Snow was already sticking on the long driveway, so I walked down to the end of the driveway and up the slight hill before getting on my bicycle. It was snowing hard and I didn't see any other bikers on my two mile trip. The only sketchy part was coming to a red light and not being able to stop behind the SUV in the left turn lane, so instead of stopping I cut through the lanes of stopped cars and rolled to a stop at the light itself.<br /><br />Only a handful of students showed up for the late start, which promptly turned into a two-hour early dismissal as well, and the principal came onto the intercom and told all of the students to call their parents to come get them ASAP. It was still snowing hard, about an inch in an hour out on the field.<br /><br />My students decided to go to the lunch room for a quick bite before their parents picked them up, and I was left in my room with the snow falling outside. I began blasting Adele in my room, wondering what someone would say if they came into my room at that moment.<br /><br />I feel like I am a fairly complicated person... I have my rock out to Adele moments. But while I was rocking out to Adele and the snow was slowing to a halt outside, I realized everyone is complicated. Everyone has their rock out to Adele moments, which I mean as doing something out of the ordinary for their persona. A tough guy has his soft side, a softie has a tough side. I like how each person is so different, and I find it intriguing that we really don't get to know each other very well as people. I bet a lot of cats know their owners better than the owner's friends do.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-56491694968907915822012-01-17T00:33:00.000-08:002012-01-17T00:43:00.848-08:00301So this numbering system could get confusing somewhere down the road, but it is really just a speed bump in my writing process. I like to make organized lists--I love Excel spreadsheets--but the deep down reason for the organization is laziness. Both in wanting to save myself work in the future and also procrastinating by making an unused spreadsheet instead of doing something much more pressing... grading homework, playing video games, etc.<br /><br />I am late already posting this, my excuse is MLK Jr. Day and not thinking this Monday to be a typical week day, but all I did today was play about 8 hours of Star Wars: The Old Republic. I had tried the Beta of the game back in December and enjoyed playing, but wondered how the story would continue to develop. Flash forward to this month and I have friends and roommates playing the game and the pull was strong enough to get me to try the game for at least a month.<br /><br />The game is pay to play, which was a bit of a hurdle in wanting to try the game out again, but more pressing was knowing that if I bought the game, I would be playing it... a lot. I have a hard time buying a game and not playing it (oops, Skyrim?), especially if I am paying a monthly fee. My thriftness dictates that if I pay $15/month for a video game, that is only like $0.02 per hour if I play it 8 hours a day! (please don't check my math, it is late.) Also, oddly enough that same logic does not apply to my monthly gym membership or monthly phone bill. I rarely go to the gym, and although I do like to use my phone, it is mostly for the mobile internet and I don't spend hours and hours on the phone just because I have unlimited minutes (at least during certain times of the day).<br /><br />Also, instead of writing 300 words a week day, I'm going to try and up it by a word each day into infinity and beyond, hence the 301. Here's hoping a 302 follows tomorrow, with something more creative than a breakdown of my illogical lazy video game justifications!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-4903432647402484212012-01-13T22:13:00.000-08:002012-01-13T22:30:10.258-08:00I will write 300 wordsFound an old post after posting the bridge IMPs post, and read that I wanted to write 300 words a day. I'm not sure why I never started doing that, but for all of the times in the past month I've talked about wanting to write, I now vow to start! Three hundred words a day doesn't seem like that much... I'll say 300 words per weekday, to give myself time to catch up or skip the weekends if I'm off doing something fun.<br /><br />GF asked what I'll write about, and I think mostly just what is on my mind, but if I'm feeling creative I might have some fun in fantasy land.<br /><br />Today Carmen and I took the 8th graders to a trail work party as part of the 8th grade wilderness program at my school. It was really great to see the students getting dirty and working pulling out invasive vines and garbage from a ravine in the city. The kids were really proud of hauling out bbqs, trash cans, shopping carts and a hundred different beer cans and bottles.<br /><br />On the bus ride to the trail work site, I closed my eyes along with the student sitting next to me and half-pretended to meditate. I decided to tell the students in close proximity what I was thinking about as my eyes were closed.<br /><br />I envisioned being in a natural hot spring on a mountaintop with my gf. I think we were in Japan, on Hokkaido. At the top of this mountain, soaking in the warm 105 degree hot spring, the view is unbeatable. I can see out into the valley and I can hear the waterfall the hot spring is creating down the side of the mountain. The waterfall disappears into the fog lining the valley, and cherry blossoms poke out of the valley floor for as far as I can see.<br /><br />All around the hot spring are trees unlike any I've ever seen. These trees look like giant cat-structures. And on many of the branches are snow monkeys, who have a tendency to cannonball into nearby hot spring pools.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-51813787349235980052012-01-13T21:44:00.000-08:002012-01-13T21:51:10.134-08:00IMPs!Ever since seeing a link to <a href="http://www.bridgebase.com">BridgeBase.com</a> on <a href="http://pokerandbridge.blogspot.com/">Mojo's blog</a>, I decided to try the site out and I am impressed! The players are much nicer than Yahoo or any other place I've played, and the details of the game are blowing up in front of my face.<br /><br />GF and I are starting to play together a few times a week, and although bridge has an incredibly steep learning curve, we're having a lot of fun learning together through the ACBL Learn to Play software that I believe Mojo suggested as well.<br /><br />We played our second-ever pairs tournament tonight and still have plenty of learning to do, and IMPs do a great job of blowing all of the little mistakes we make into lots of points for the other teams!<br /><br />I like that the only hand we got positive IMPs on was the hand that everyone at the table passed, hah!! I did pat myself on the back for getting set in diamonds, which at the time counted as positive IMPs because it was better than letting the opponents go nuts in hearts... but it eventually ended as the -0.9 IMP hand.<br /><br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a3wIV7mSNxo/TxEXT0YayYI/AAAAAAAABA0/X2HRIpGUg3k/s1600/IMP%2BWoes%2Bwith%2Bsarah2.JPG"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 356px; height: 400px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a3wIV7mSNxo/TxEXT0YayYI/AAAAAAAABA0/X2HRIpGUg3k/s400/IMP%2BWoes%2Bwith%2Bsarah2.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5697360632846403970" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-59873178355909308302011-12-03T18:15:00.000-08:002011-12-03T18:41:59.753-08:00WPBT 2011 Winter Trip ReportIn lieu of not actually being in Vegas this weekend with the rest of the poker blogging community, I decided to make a game-day decision and hit the 11am poker tourney at Tulalip on my way up to the parents' cabin to chop some wood.<br /><br />I've been waiting a long time for a hot streak at a casino, mostly due to me never playing at casinos anymore... but it seems like every time I go, I'm always the one with the hard decisions and mediocre hands. The first few hours of today's tourney I got my hot streak--man do those feel good! It wasn't all luck, but that rare combination of good play, good cards, AND a little bit of luck. I wouldn't say I was a card rack, but I did get KK,QQ,TT, AKx2 and AQx2 in the first two hours and won every hand, most seeing at least a flop (so not just picking up the blinds). I knocked out five or six people before I busted, which is a record for me in a live tournament, and the most I've knocked out in any tournament in probably five years.<br /><br />This morning, when the tournament started, I think I did a good job of assessing who I was up against, where the soft spots at the table were, and who to look out for. At some point in the second orbit, a lady in her 50s or 60s and a guy in his late 20s or early 30s were in a hand. The board had run out all hearts, and the guy had position and had been betting each street. It gets to the river and the lady looks like she doesn't like the river card, but leads out for the first time, which surprised me a bit, and the guy pops it 3x her bet. She re-raises all-in. Warning bells?<br /><br />At this point I am fairly certain that she has hit her inside straight-flush draw on the river, and that he has the Ace of hearts. He deliberates for a minute or two before calling and being shown the 4h for the rivered straight flush. He slams his ace on the table.<br /><br />He was aware of the warning bells, but not able to lay it down--not sure I would have either. Probably not. But with that read, and seeing the hands, I decided my poker sense (spider sense) was keen enough to start opening up my game and trusting my reads.<br /><br />I ran over the table. It was amazing. I started growing my stack by applying as much pressure as I could to the weaker players, which worked perfectly. It gave me a chip advantage over the other good players, which had them steering clear of me. Every race I got into except one in the first two hours I was ahead, and I was pretty certain I was ahead going into the race (also, I was the one raising 80% of the time). The only time I gave someone a bad beat was AJ v. AK aipf, but by that time my stack was at 25k and his was at about 3k, and he had been the BB coming over the top of my initial raise, so I wasn't folding.<br /><br />We started with 5k, I was at 30k after an hour of play and 50k during our second break, which would be my high point. Just before going to break, the dealer said, "well, you're a shoe-in for the final table." Mother fucker. Jinxed me good.<br /><br />I get back from break and we're down to 3 10-person tables from 90 starters. I get in a blind vs. blind battle with the fairly amateur poker player to my right. I'm BB and he raises 3x, I call with A9c. Flop comes AAT, he checks, I bet about 1/3 pot, he calls. Diamond flush fills on the turn and he winces, checks his cards, and jams on me. It is about 11k more, which is about the size of the pot before his bet, and I call. He shows the flush and I don't fill up on the river, which cuts my stack in half to 25k. In hindsight, my biggest and really only mistake of the tournament. Both of the hands I've described have been the "oh shoot, that pesky card!" and then the person jamming. Actions speak louder than words!<br /><br />Lost two more flips, one where I had 88 vs. AK and A6 aipf, would have knocked them both out and been up to 50k again, if not for the Ace on the river. And then my bust out hand a few hands after we consolidate down to the final two tables is 99 v. AK, Ace in the door and no more help.<br /><br />Felt like I played really well except for the one hand, although I did get into a lot of flip situations and got lucky early, unlucky late. Wondering how optimal my play was... I know you need to race in the quick blind tournies, but not sure how much racing is necessary. Time will tell!<br /><br />Headed up to the cabin afterwards, got the chainsaw going and continued adding to the wood pile for the rest of winter. Hoping to get as much wood sawed from fallen trees and chopped to dry before the rain really hits. This week was unusually dry, which made today a great day to get up to the cabin. Looking forward to more poker and wood chopping days in the near future!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-76270355266069390682011-11-18T21:00:00.000-08:002011-11-18T21:23:25.274-08:00November 2011I think I'm going to look back on this post and smile. I tend to go through my blog every few years and reminisce. I'm writing this from a train with spotty wifi, so hopefully I remember to save before sending...<br /><br />It is Friday, November 18, 2011. That is one thing about being a teacher, I sure do remember today's date a lot more than I did before teaching. Also, I can hold my pee a lot longer than I thought. It sure does suck when I feel like peeing and there is only one minute left on lunch break and I have three more hours of teaching before my next break.<br /><br />It is Friday, and I'm on a train down to Corvallis to visit gf. I've got the next week off, as I've gotten (most) of my parent-teacher conferences out of the way. GF teaches the beginning of next week, and then we're taking her car back up to Seattle for Thanksgiving with both sets of parents. Serious stuff! I'm pretty excited.<br /><br />What I'm not excited about is the prognosis from my doctor. I'm typing with my left pinkie in a splint (bad jam, splint for the next 2-3 weeks), and she said I strained a tendon in my leg (hamstring) and can't play any sports for the next 8 weeks. That means no Seattle 1/2 marathon that I intended to run with gf, and would have been my first ever. My mom is volunteering at the event and I might join her. This also means no basketball, volleyball or skiing.<br /><br />I'm bummed about the basketball and skiing, but I'm thinking about pretending I didn't hear the part about volleyball. I joined a rec-league "softcore" team for the first time and the level of play is so low that it would be hard to injure myself playing... and it is fun! For some reason my knee doesn't hurt jumping or cutting, but only running and walking downhill. Something to do with the pushing off or pulling up of my leg in my stride. Stupid running. I can even bike to work with no pain, but the running makes my leg feel like it is hanging on by a thread.<br /><br />Back to gf, I am excited, more excited than I've been in a long time (maybe ever?) to be in this relationship, and it is nearing the three month mark. We both expressed being excited for this week, almost as excited as our first date (a 3-night backpacking trip in the Cascades!). The distance has been difficult (4hr drive apart), but with the holidays coming up, it shouldn't be too difficult for the next few months, getting to see each other quite often for longer periods of time.<br /><br />The big decision on my mind, and one her and I have discussed numerous times, is that we want to live together next year, but we haven't yet decided on which location to choose. Corvallis, Seattle, or some place in between. Right now we are leaning towards Corvallis, because she has a house there already, has a perfect 15 minute bike ride to work (similar to mine in Seattle, but I'm renting with 3 other guys), and I could use the time to get a Master's in Teaching or up my teaching certification to high school. I think high school would fit me a little better than middle school. I make kids cry more than I feel comfortable with.<br /><br />Today, a girl took a boy's back pack into the girl's bathroom and took whatever he had taken from her in the first place back. Another boy calls her a thief, she explains what she did and then bawls because she's been called a thief. So, I didn't directly make her cry, but I just told both of them to keep their hands out of other people's stuff while she sobbed in the corner. I think she got over it. Not as much of that in high school, I think?<br /><br />I'm looking forward to a lot of things. This next week with no teaching, winter shenanigans with friends, more time with the gf, more family time, and lots and lots of video gaming now that I can't play sports!<br /><br />Also, I'm starting another push up and sit up workout regime. I started at 10 push ups and 20 sit ups on day one, and now I'm up to 21 push ups and 42 sit ups. I have done them all in a row without stopping so far, and I'm wondering how many push ups and sit ups I can get to without crumpling. I think maybe 25 push ups and 50 sit ups would be a good spot to stay for a while.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-48874140551981439662011-10-29T18:22:00.000-07:002011-10-29T18:52:36.572-07:00Writing Redux: UpdateNot sure if this can be called a redux yet, if it is only one post without any likely to follow anytime soon... but ho hum.<br /><br />Life is good. Really good. Girlfriend is down in Oregon, which isn't great, but the positive is that it gives me all of the time I need to focus on being the great teacher I intend to become. People keep praising me for doing such a great job teaching, but I feel very underwhelmed about my performance these first few years. I've tried my best, and I'm not sure what else I could be doing better, but there is just so much more to do.<br /><br />I talked to a friend earlier this week about just being amazed at how some of my students can succeed with the hand they've been dealt. Parents who are so busy their children are neglected, or more commonly with my students--parents are involved with drugs and neglect their children. This seems to be a big factor in students that do poorly in school, and understandably so--but then there are these diamonds in the rough that are at or near the top of my classes and they get very little support at home. I'm not sure how they do it. Maybe they want to be the opposite of their parents, so they try that much harder? I don't know, but it continues to amaze me and excites me to keep their dreams going.<br /><br />I'm coaching ultimate frisbee again this year at my middle school, and boy what a difference a year makes. Last year we were defeated... don't think we won a single game all year during the regular season, and I think we won one playoff game (every team got a playoff game), oh, and we also won a game by forfeit. This year, we just finished the regular season undefeated, with playoffs coming next week. The only thing I've done differently this year is institute a spirit award.<br /><br />My league frisbee team won the spirit award this summer, and received new discs as a reward. Everyone on my team donated their disc to my middle school team, and instead of using them (we have about 10 discs that are already cut up from our concrete playground area next to the tiny grass field) I decided to reward them as a spirit of the game award. I decided that my team captains each game would be responsible for picking a player on the other team who we would give one disc to (and I never interfered on this decision), and then I had the ridiculously tough decision to pick a player on our team to give a new disc to. Every week this was my most difficult decision, as almost every player deserved one. We were cheering for good plays from either team, we were letting contested calls go the other way, we were helping players up no matter which jersey they wore.<br /><br />The game I coached today was the last game of the regular season, and we entered 5-0, playing the second-best team in the league at 4-1. We got out to a quick start going up two points, but then as the substitutions began we lost the next three points. We traded points to 5-5, and then the opponents took half 5-6. We had a great talk at halftime about playing hesitantly because we didn't want to lose, instead of that, we needed to open up and get back to our ways of having fun. We took the next two points to get up 7-6. This lit a fire in our opponents, who won the next three points to go up 7-9. We were down two points and only had five minutes left before the horn would blow. The lineup I had out on the field wasn't our greatest by far, and they had just been quickly scored on. Some of the better players on our team were pleading with me to let them play, but I didn't think it fair to take the group on the field out after such a short point. I hadn't done so all season, and I wasn't about to now.<br /><br />The kids stayed on the field and eventually won a very hard-fought point, and the seven kids I had spoken to about playing the next point RAN onto the field, because they knew we only had one minute to score the next point to tie the game. If the horn blows when the game is tied, you play a winner-take-all sudden-death point, which is just what happened.<br /><br />We had to throw the disc off, which is usually seen as a disadvantage because the opponents get to be on offense first. After a few turnovers and jitters from both teams, one of our new girls got a great "D" and we worked the disc down and scored the final point to finish the regular season undefeated. For the third time this season, a player was carried off the field on the shoulders of other teammates. The season has been storybook thusfar, and I can't wait to see what next week and the playoffs bring.<br /><br />From a coaching standpoint, I have no doubt that we can beat any team in the league if I play my best players. I won't just play those players though, and I need to make sure all of the players know that we will win and lose the championship as a team, not by just a few of our players.<br /><br />Other than coaching, I've been playing a little Everquest on the Fippy Darkpaw progression server, and I've had my first real brush with being interested in learning guitar. GF brought her old guitar up to Seattle for me to practice on, and I really like messing around on it. I don't so much like learning the chords and the way my fingers ache.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-44657964557153199692011-09-12T22:05:00.001-07:002011-09-12T22:06:45.857-07:00New Camera!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ll8_RSqoZxs/Tm7kve6BLuI/AAAAAAAAA4s/wBzhxCP_GZ4/s1600/2011-09-12-%2BNew%2BCamera%2BGolden%2BGardens%2BSunset%2B011.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ll8_RSqoZxs/Tm7kve6BLuI/AAAAAAAAA4s/wBzhxCP_GZ4/s400/2011-09-12-%2BNew%2BCamera%2BGolden%2BGardens%2BSunset%2B011.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5651706086797946594" /></a><br /><br />Thanks for the hand me down, dad!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-68791552197919953782011-07-30T19:54:00.000-07:002011-07-31T18:47:39.642-07:00Summer Luvin'Back in April I was excited for the approaching summer break, but was a little curious as to how I would spend two months without work or school obligations and stay somewhat productive (and not just turn into a 2009 version of Waffles). Fast forward a few months and I've now finished a summer cohort for science teachers which took up an entire month of my summer break. I've got one more month left, and I feel like I've spent more than enough time being productive--now I just get to kick back and enjoy myself with no qualms about being sloth-like.<br /><br />I'm just finishing up my first full week of summer break, and here was my schedule for week 1:<br /><br />Friday: Finish class at UW, lie around the house and play Fifa 2011 with housemate and a friend in town until we get called by another friend, saying he's at a mansion in Capitol Hill with his buddy and two Austrian girls in a hot tub, and that we should come over. We waffle on it for a bit, wondering why they would invite us over if they've already got themselves two Austrian girls and a mansion, but turns out there are other ladies over as well, and they want to get some gender equality going on. We're sold and stay up until 3am drinking in a hot tub that cascades down into a lap-sized pool, surrounded by girls in bikinis. A good start.<br /><br />Saturday: Wake up in the p.m., go to a going away party for an ultimate friend of mine who is moving to Switzerland.<br /><br />Sunday: Day of motorcycle riding up to Anacortes to visit Mount Erie and do some rock climbing.<br /><br />Monday: wake up at noon, drive sister and her friend to the airport for their flight back home (she was visiting for a wedding and mom's bday). Go to trivia night and rock a few categories. Meet up with Brandon for his "acceptance to the Air Force" party at Die Bierstube, where many of his friends have already congregated and I witness about four boots passed around, Brandon starting and finishing three.<br /><br />Tuesday: Sleep in, play lots of video games, then an ultimate frisbee game in the evening.<br /><br />Wednesday: Sleep in, motorcycle up to parents' cabin near Darrington, begin the arduous task of killing weeds from their old garden. I have visions of grandeur of getting the garden up and running again, but the problem is my parents rarely visit the cabin anymore (due to some health concerns with pop), and whatever I plant this year will likely just die come winter. Getting it prepped for next year is a goal, though. So I spend about three hours bush-whacking my way through 8ft-tall weeds. I borrow a neighbor's weed whacker, which I promptly kill the string in about ten minutes on the tree-like weeds. I take a three-pronged hoe (without gloves) and begin hacking at the weeds, and quickly lose the three-pronged head into the dense mass of weeds. I continue to whack away at the weeds and actually knock the weeds down to shin-high using the baseball-bat like stick. It was a workout and a stress reliever, but I got some nasty blisters on my hands, which weren't helpful for...<br /><br />Thursday: ...golf with Erin! I convinced her to take it easy on me this time, both due to her crushing me by 13 strokes last time, and the fact that my hands were all blistered up. We played best ball for the full 18, which I had never tried before, but was a lot of fun. Both shoot a tee shot, take the best tee shot and both shoot from there, rinse and repeat. We parred the first few holes and then tail-spinned a bit to finish the front side +9... I was hoping to shoot around even par, but somehow we managed to triple-bogey a hole when we both hit out of bounds tee shots and some poor subsequent shots on a par 3. We did better on the backside (+3?), making a few birdies and no triple bogeys, finishing with a 79 on a short par 67 course. No three putts between the two of us, thank god!<br /><br />Friday #2: Packed for overnight backpacking trip to Goldmyer Hot Springs:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.goldmyer.org/springs1.jpg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 225px;" src="http://www.goldmyer.org/springs1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><br />The picture only shows the two small pools outside of the cave, but the cave itself is amazing and goes back 25ft, where the initial flow is 117 degrees!<br /><br />Made a two hour trip to the pool in Seattle with Erin to lounge in the sun before heading out backpacking with Andy and Leah. Nothing quite like lounging by the pool with a fellow teacher at 1pm on a Friday. She even snuck in a beer in a nalgene for me--a great friend.<br /><br />Afterwards, I picked up Andy and Leah and we made our way out to the Goldmyer trailhead and hiked in the easy 4.5 miles (on a closed road) to the hot springs. I was content to spend the evening relaxing in an isolated hot springs in peace and quite, but two young ridiculously attractive ladies in bikinis joined Andy, Leah and I... rats. A fitting end to the first week. <br /><br />Just before bed we walked out to the nearest bridge and stared up at the stars, and witnessed one of the coolest night skies I have ever seen. So many stars it was almost impossible to make out constellations, a handful of speedy shooting stars, and at one point I counted five different satellites moving across the sky simultaneously.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29129102.post-76989273431019279492011-07-21T22:06:00.000-07:002011-07-21T22:45:31.051-07:00Witchcraft and WizardyNot a spoiler!<br /><br />Just got back from watching the final Harry Potter movie (7B?), and really enjoyed it. As I was leaving the theater, I needed to head to the grocery store to pick up some things for my final day of summer class tomorrow, so I reached into my pocket to check and make sure my ID and credit card were still in my pocket. Nope.<br /><br />I was only a few steps outside of theater #7, so I went back to my seat and looked around for my cards. I found the credit card underneath the back of my seat (in the spot where all the popcorn and soda stick together). Pretty sure the credit card and ID fell out when I checked my phone after the movie, as they get caught in the nook in the back of my Droid often.<br /><br />I kept searching for my driver's license, but couldn't find it anywhere--I checked the ground all around and behind my chair and the chairs around mine; I checked the row behind and in front; I checked the seats themselves and the arm rests, all this in a dark theater with the light of my cell phone, mind you. I thought maybe the ID fell out before the movie when I put my credit card and ID card back into my pocket from buying the ticket, but before I left theater #7 I made one more sweep of my chair area. And found it.<br /><br />The ID card somehow fell into a small nook underneath the armrest between the seats and was held elevated above the ground. It took me another few minutes to figure out how to get the ID card out from the secret nook. I almost destroyed the driver's license with a snake fang on the spot, damn hidden whore cruxes!<br /><br />One thing I really liked about the Harry Potter series is how JK Rowling's characters are all such a piece of her. I often envision myself as an old man sitting on a mountain top. Not that I have all the wisdom in the universe, but it sure would be fun to have people come to me and ask advice, and usually just shoot the question back at them and see them discover their answer on their epic journey to me or from me.<br /><br />"Damn crazy kook up there on the mountain! What does he know?... oh wait, maybe I should stop blaming other people and start figuring things out for myself *gong*"<br /><br />Almost all of Dumbledore's speeches are JK Rowling's voice of reason, and for some reason it carries more weight coming from a great and aged wizard than it does from a single, poor mom. Adding in faults to Dumbledore in the movie was a great touch, too.<br /><br />Having only read the first book, I wasn't sure how the movie would end, but it ended exactly how I hoped.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0