Technology-enabled Substitutes

Yesterday, The substitutes of one of the school districts I work for participated in professional development. They learned how to access the teacher's websites and to use the Smartboards. Technology-enabled substitutes will be able to carry on with lessons in the technology-enabled classrooms when the teachers ...moreare away. The laptops can still come out and the students do not have to complete worksheets all day long.

The substitutes spent the morning in trainings and the afternoons with teachers in their rooms learning how technology is used in the classroom. This experience was the first of its kind that I ever witnessed. The principal also conducted a training session with the substitutes on how to be an effective substitute in the district. This planning for school-wide and student success is commendable. We will provide substitutes with a list of every teacher's website until the district website can be updated to include that information. They were also given directions for laptop basics and turning on projectors and smartboards.  An issue still outstanding is the ability to log into the teacher laptops.  A substitute username and password will have to be enabled on all machines and laptops that are connected to the smartboards. It would
be helpful to create hotsheets for each room that is technology enabled for the subs with quick reference sheets for the programs the students may be using.  We should also create a substitute website that has information and training tutorials.  Since the technology-enabled substitutes will be called first to serve in those classrooms, it does provide incentive for them to learn on an ongoing basis.
UPDATE!
On a sad note, in another school, the susbstitutes  allowed students from another class to use the 6th grader's laptops.  Substitutes need to follow the plans we leave for them as teachers, they definetly shoud never allow students to tell them what they "usually" do, because the students "usually" lie  to substitutes.  When in doubt, check with another teacher nearby, call the office and just maintain that it is your responsibility to follow the teacher's plans.  As a teacher it is hard enough to miss a day with our class, it causes huge problems when susbtitutes deviate from our plans.  We spend time getting those plans ready and it is frustrating  when we come back to havoc. In this instance, the offending students tried to visit blocked sites, they changed the students backgrounds and settings and added items to their favorites.

Sunday Morning Discoveries

I love my Sunday mornings with the NY Times, I have a little more time to read each section and enjoy myself.  There  are always the alarming articles, such as the bedbug situation at the Lincoln Center, but the technology section  usually provides me with something I like, from Pogue's Posts and video to  amazing vignettes like this one. Incidentally, Atomic Tom has a great sound.

Upping the game

After last week's incredible presentations, I have upped my game when giving internet resources to my teachers.  Instead of  looking for  Prepositional Phrases PowerPoints for one of my English teachers,  I was haunting Prezi and looking for  presentations that would make the most of the Smartboard. Most of the lessons in the Smart exchange are a bit young for the 8th graders so I was seeking other quick solutions.  Now I am off to investigate how the two programs can work together, can I upload an old PowerPoint to Prezi and then work with it?  I will update you when I get the answer. So far Prezi does not have a lot of grammar teaching resources on  their site, just those made by students, and I do want to be able to provide the best alternative to spending hours making Smart Notebook lessons.

8th Grade Prepositions~Mrs. Groom on Prezi

This was the best one I found so far. It appears that most of the grammar Prezi presentations were geared for English language Learners.  I will be sure to share them with my friends that teach Bi-Lingual and ESL students.

Teacher Interview Questions

As an offshoot of last week's discussion in my Intro to Ed. Tech class, I though I would share a helpful link with anyone out there still looking for a teaching job this year. You know that if we get the interview, and that is pretty hard these days, we have to make the most of that moment. You may have read about some of my worst job hunt moments last year in this blog, and I hope to help alleviate some of your fears.
The Apple posted this article recently on how to answer the toughest interview questions effectively. There were some admirable answers, especially to the question, "What is your greatest weakness?"  We hate to have to answer that one!  It is impossible to do correctly without being self-serving and we want to be honest, but we can't because then we would appear weak.  If you like, please post YOUR toughest interview question in my comments section. If you would like to share YOUR worst interview moment, I can give you a link to be a guest blogger on this site.

The Help

The Help by Kathryn Stockett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
What a read! You would never know this was a first novel. Tell- all book of the secrets of southern maids and the women who employed them during the civil rights movement era. Maids/ mothers who don't get to raise their own children, instead they take care of a procession of white babies who turn on the when they are "educated" about color distinctions. Jim Crow laws and their implementation in everyday life. Power-mad Junior League ladies don't stand a chance against their maids once they get to "writing" about what really goes on in the households they work in. The stories remind me of Flannery O'Connor's way of expressing things that are too ugly to speak about, but it's uplifting nature allows for hope.
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Poll Everywhere

Make your own poll voting question with Poll Everywhere

Try this audience polling system at Poll Everywhere

Create interactive meetings at Poll Everywhere

Try this audience polling system at Poll Everywhere

Need Time to Play and Blow Off Steam

I created this little creature and uploaded it with my son's accounts in Spore and Youtube. Even teachers need to play sometimes...

Post Tutorial Search Behavior

Hating life and PowerPoint right now

PowerPoint fragged up on me three times today with my macbook making the most incredibly weird noises.  Having to employ the hard shutdown always makes me nervous.  I had to redo a few areas of our group presentation many times because it refused to SAVE! Even when it did the backup every few minutes, it still didn't have the changes.   Since my entire weekend has become this project, I could have done without this nonsense.  I still couldn't embed video, like I can do on  non- mac machines. I just couldn't find the feature on the PowerPoint for mac. I wanted to upload the whole thing to Issuu as a flipbook, but it wouldn't take the formatting.  I had to go to Plan B for the Web 2.0 component.

I used slideshare instead.  I did not yet use the narration feature, because we have to narrate as a team.  I look forward to doing that on my own when we are done.  It would be too hard to do it with three of us in different places.  Slideshare has been a resource for my blog when I want to post a bunch of pictures from an event. As a presentation solution, I was thrilled with some of the free options it offered.  It has some great features and I wish I could change my tooltime to that tool.

Can you read our Webspiration?

The most illuminating thing that happened this weekend was having to work as a team.  Giving up control of even part a project has to be  the most challenging feeling ever, and one we have to remember stresses OUR students out as well.  I had to understand and implement what Brian's main ideas were from our  mindmapping in Webspiration.  I hope I stayed true to his ideas, if not, it is tooooooooo late.  I started working on what we had, then he added more and I had to match it all up again to make sure I didn't miss anything.  Note to self: Don't even start until it is all done. I have no idea if Roma finished our  Timeline activity Gant chart, our meeting this evening did not come about due to scheduling issues.  So now I have to rely on the email for communication until we can all talk again in Wimba.   Wimba as a crutch?  I am officially spoiled and hate having to go email everyone as they are not on Skype right now.

I chose the peace sign because what is contained in the this Tagxedo
just a "piece" of the whole IT picture. I know, very corny.

Spending the entire weekend tracking down appropriate pictures, videos and articles to make the mindmap come to life was accompanied by the endless sneezing and snuffling of my nose.  Infection from all those school kids has finally set in, and I am tainted. At least now I have a comprehensive understanding of the history of Instructional Technology and a trash-can full of tissues.  I could have just read the textbook, but then I would have had no reason to yell at my family for asking me silly questions when everything was going wrong.

 I also made a Tagxedo to enhance the presentation and spent some time rearranging the Webspiration so it wasn't so busy, then Brian really fixed it and it looks nice now.  Too big to actually read the screen capture in a photo here, you will have to be content with my Tagxedo instead.  I was unable to do the things I REALLY wanted to do with this project.  I wanted a blinking eye between the  time eras, and I wanted to shoot words out of a cannon or a rocket as a transition as well.  I especially wanted a photo of Tompkins with the macs from the 80's to include, but I can't always get what I want. The transitions won't work well in a  web 2.0 sharing scenario unless I convert the entire thing to a movie.  This will not work for me because of the video clips I want to have in it.   The audience will be able to just move ahead after they watch what THEY want.  Oh, well, best laid plans...

Exposed

Exposed by Alex Kava
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Excellent, learned more about Ebola Zaire and others I didn't know about.  Maggie O'Dell under the "gun" once again. Kava is the master!   The scenario Kava builds is so completely plausible, it is scary. You never know what is going on the minds of the people around you. Everyone has their demons, but some choose to act.
I cleaned out the whole Kava section in my town. Sorry everybody!  The'll be back in a week, can't put them down!  I will have to check the county before we lose the inter-library loan service due to budget cuts.
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Holt's Intro To Educational Technology: Waiting for Superman

Holt's Intro To Educational Technology: Waiting for Superman: "There is a new documentary out in select theaters entitled 'Waiting for Superman'. It explores the inefficiencies of America's school syste..."

Reflections on Wimba, Skype, and Project Management

The Wimba Whiteboard or Eboard.

This week I spent hours on Wimba and Skype, meeting with my team members and working on our History of IT project. It was an interesting experience. When I took online classes before, they were asynchonous and our group projects involved emails and posts, not live communication. After using Wimba for this, I do not know how I will be able to give it up at the end of our class. I will have to use something like Adobe Connect or Go to Meeting to get a similar experience. As I use Wimba more, I learn new things. I took the tutorials a while ago, so I was relieved when Brian showed us how to get the whiteboard feature back by pressing the eboard button.  I also learned about project management this week and gant charts. I've never heard of them before and apparently people have been using them forever. "What a concept!" Amy, my professor, was pushing us to use a free Web 2.0 tool. I found Tom's Planner, it looks very visual and you can share your chart online.  Another I found was Basecamp.   It will be interesting to see what my friend Adrienne, the quintessential project manager, writes in my comments. Anyway, my team member may choose a product that she is comfortable with over the ones I just mentioned. We will have to wait and see.

How I search for Web- Based Tutorials

Whitewash

Whitewash by Alex Kava
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book had me running back to the library to get all the other books by KAVA.  Glad I found her, I love murder-mysteries, CSI-type and criminal-profiling books!  Quincy M.E. was my favorite TV show as a kid; I just thought that Dr. Quincy was fascinating and I seem to gravitate towards those kinds of books as an adult.  There are a few surprises in the end of Whitewash that I never would have guessed.
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Loving it!

She gave me top status!

This morning I walked into the teacher's room whom I had worked with last week.  She just started teaching again after having a baby and does not have a lot of technical experience.  She is by no means afraid of technology, but she has not had exposure. Nor did she attend any of the summer trainings.  She saw me and her face just started glowing, she had three new ideas for for technology integration that she wanted me to teach her how to implement.  An OnCourse teacher website, uploading word documents to the smart assessment tools and assessing her students with the PE clickers and having her students blog their daily journals, WHEW! She also shared her experiences of technological mishaps that happened when I was away from her room.  The most impressive thing she said was that she felt like she could be helping other teachers by the end of the year.  A teacher-learner becomes a teacher-leader!  I wish we could all have "students" like this; people who are just dying to know something and can't wait for you to give them that little nudge in the right direction.  I couldn't have been prouder than her mom when she told me how she had figured out some things for herself and shared them with her team.   The she showed me how she had "added" me to her class.  At the end of the day I was wrung out, trying to get her trained in everything she wanted to know, but it was so worth it!

Mindmapping is supposed to be clear, isn't it?

I was looking at the examples of the mindmapping exercises that previous Intro to IT classes had completed and there were many that were too busy for me to want to look at.  I recently had to get glasses so this is an issue for me personally, but it may not affect a younger generation.  I enjoy  the clean lines of Facebook  and find them preferable to the busyness of Myspace that my younger students frequent.

This image is from the Worst PowerPoint Presentation

I teach my students that when they create PowerPoints, that they should use images effectively and no more than 2 per page.  The type should be 30 points or more.  I was impressed with the inventiveness and creativity of many of the IT History projects, but there was just so much going on that the message of the history of IT was lost. It would have been helpful to  have the guidance of the presenter to take one through them.
I started looking at various mindmaps on the web to see what I liked and what I disliked.  I loved this simple drawing of the life of William Shakespeare, but it was not interactive.  Another one I enjoyed was the ICT/Glow and Learning styles Mind map, again, it was not interactive.  I did eventually find a few that I thought were useful and interactive using free software called Freemind. This mindmap on Ubuntu was compelling, I liked the mouseover effects. It reminded me of  annotating The Heart of Darkness for our Litt. Reaseach class with Professor Honecker's class.  It will be interesting for me to see how busy our group project turns out...

Apps for Special Education

Wow, thank you Dustin, for sharing this information. We will make use of it. I am re-posting it on my blog so I do not lose it. I never know when a blog might go down, so anything I need to have, I tend to re-post. Plus, Dustin's blog was SO popular I just had  to post a link to it here.
iPhone, iPad and iPod touch Apps for (Special) Education

Halo and Geography Lessons?

Link to website that bears this photo

I have been living with Halo in my house this summer. My son and my husband play it all the time.  They can't wait for Halo Reach to come out.  Today my son got a geography lesson. The kid he was playing online with at 6:00 at night, our time, told him he had to go to school.  My son argued with him," It is six at night, you are going to school now?"
They had a whole discussion of timelines and datelines, "What day and date is it in Australia anyway?"  So now my son is busy looking up timelines on the computer to track when this player will be home from school.  It will be 2 am and my son better NOT be online then. I may have to set my alarm clock to check to see if he sneaked out of bed. This gives me a tool I can use when teaching geography now.  For extra credit  homework: Get the time and date from three online players and try to figure out where they live using the international datelines. You may NOT ask them where they live (Poor playing behavior anyway).

Watch it, you made the plist

Ok,  after three hours with  Apple Support, it turns out that one of my Macbooks has more issues than the other.  The new one started working right after two hours of TLC by Titianna and Matthew. The older one, the one you all chipped in to buy me, needed another hour. Apparently, it wasn't just the  DNS server connection, but the library had plist issues and doc issues and more.  We were all over the preference files and in places on my Macbook that I should never need to go.   I hope it doesn't feel violated. Happily enough, now I can post from my favorite computer, in Safari instead of (insert cough here) Firefox(Apple needs to purchase Firefox BTW, that is my solemn recommendation).
I know that my PC, which is a very nice four-year old Dell, was getting excited thinking I was actually going to use it  more frequently, but I had to break the news to it gently.  It needs an update, a bigger hard drive and a makeover that does not involve dust as its main outfit.  My graduate class is saved and as an extra bonus the Fantasy Football site my husband was having trouble with is now fixed as well.  If you ever have trouble with your Macbook loading Safari pages on Blogger, do  all this first.

1. Empty the cache. Check it.
2. Reset Safari. Check it.
3. Unblock Pop-ups. Check it.
4. Plug in the ethernet and see if it is a wireless problem. Check it.
5. Install all updates. Check it.
6. First verify and fix disk permissions. Check it.
7. Reset the PRAM. Check it.
8. Make a new administrative account and see if the page loads that way. Check it.
9. Check DNS servers in Network.Check it.
10. Check for Safari plist  stuff in home library preferences. Check it.

I AM JUST KIDDING, CALL APPLE SUPPORT AFTER NUMBER 5 FAILS TO WORK.

The Emergency Blogging Scenario has been implemented.

Yep, there is a lot of strange things happening here.  

The Emergency Blogging Scenario has been implemented.

I am posting by email for the first time because blogger has apparently decided not to play nice with my macbooks. However, there is always a silver lining, I have my first guest blogger from Apple, Titianna.  She spent a hour or so with me,  and even posted on my blog.  I am now talking to some mythical, Apple guru named Matthew (Senior advisor) who may or may not be able to help me.  I have discovered that I can post in emergency situations- not like any of you are going to send  911 to me if I post an SOS here. I can post hyperlinks and SOME pictures by email.  Okay, so these are features I always knew existed, but I never had the need to check em' out.   Why do I need to do that?Read my earlier posts about my graduate class, Intro to Instructional Technology. 

So, that is the continuing saga of my blog life.  I CAN post and make different features come to life through the power of my email.  Since I have been hating email lately, and those of you who read my Facebook know what I am talking about, it is nice to know that email is good for something today. Here is my hyperlink to the support page from Apple, apparently my DNS server keeps getting lost. It keeps looking for the old server.

trying to blog

;oyhoghkhlj;jpjllh mickichele.blogspot.com

Yet another day at apple (Guest Blogger Titianna)

Today was a great day here @ apple support. Michelle is a sweet wonderful person that called in to us because she was having issues with Blogger and blogging on here.
Well, we did some troubleshooting (the basics, check the internet connection, run software updates etc.)
Michelle was probably one of the funniest and nicest people I've gotten today. She's really made my day.
She actually knows most of what you're supposed to do anyway for Safari. She emptied the cache, and cookies and reset safari and everything. Which is a lot more than most people can do on their own. We're not quite done yet. But by the end we will have this fixed! :-3
Until then. Enjoy Kirby-robics
To the right! (>^_^)>
To the left! <(^_^<)
Touch the sky! ^(^_^)^
Touch your toes! v(^_^)v
HUZZAH! Get a kiss! <(^3^)>

I've got trouble, trouble, trouble...

What are the odds that when I HAVE to blog, that I cannot get on my posting area without dusting off the old PC.  Both macbooks refuse to load the page. I can view the blog, can't do a thing to it.  It is funny that now I have to blog for my graduate class and I can't just relax and  blather on the way I usually do.  One of my favorite, successful bloggers  just dumped all her ads so she could say what she wanted without some advertiser telling her she curses too much. Now, I would never curse on my blog, because I am a teacher, but that does not mean that I never read blogs that involve a curse word here or there; in her case it would be at least once a sentence. It took a lot of thought for me to decide which blog to use for the class, I have several, based on my different interest and some that I use just for serious work. but I didn't want to choose one of the work ones, because that is like, you know, work.  I enjoy blogging for myself usually and don't enjoy the work blogs as  much.

First Majors Class,  They had blogs donated by  Stockton's Literature
Department.  They posted their assignments, pictures and videos of the
projects they completed in our class to share with their familes.  
Their blogs became mini- digital portfolios of their writing process.

Since I now have to blog I am wondering if this is how my students feel. It is an eye-opener, because I normally just talk about whatever I am interested in at the moment and now I feel like I may actually have to talk about my intro class a little bit. I will also have to care a bit more about spelling and grammar. Most of the time I just fix mistakes when I happen to catch them; which in the case of this particular blog of mine, can take months, or even years.
Now I know that people will actually READ it, specific people, and not just my beloved random readers, do I have to be interesting?   NOPE! It is my blog. As a teacher having my students blog, I may have to ease up on the restrictions just a tiny smidgen.  A few years ago I tried an editing day once a month with my seventh-graders, where we went back over our blogs and one other blog  and made corrections or suggestions for corrections. This was a great idea that I had forgotten about. I will suggest this to the teachers I will be training this year.
UPDATE:  If I had actually read the assignment, I would have known that I was supposed to  post a relevant link and picture per post.  I apologize if I forgot to put the appropriate caption under to picture to bring attention to the relevance. I am actually excited that we get to blog for this class inspite of my earlier questions. It may the one area in which I get a decent grade if i read the instructions carefully. The link I will share today will be to an article I wrote about blogging in the middle school classroom. Since I saw so many new blogs this week, I just thought I would share my experiences.  I would also like to share an amazing blog by Ben, a student.  He has  links to other amazing blogs, also by students. You can see the types of projects that are post-able to blogs.

Flipping over the Past

When I woke up today, I was greeted to three special notifications waiting in my Facebook.  Students from my first year of teaching notified me that a movie was coming out for our favorite book that we had read together, Flipped,  by Wendelin Van Draanen. They want me to go see it with them as a group. I cannot express how much that means to me. Five years ago, we created our first vodcast book talks together and this was the book we shared with the world. This group of kids have always had special memories for me, enough for me to allow them to face me on Facebook. They are the only group of students I communicate with in that forum, but in all fairness, they are of driving age now. I sometimes gasp out loud when I read what they are posting, once in a while I will offer a tidbit of advice or a bit of encouragement, but I mostly just watch their growth from afar.
Today I am grateful for this connection, we will plan a movie reunion event and extend our special time over a book that brought us all together as one. When I think back on the books I shared with my teachers, there are a few that I always connect to them particularly. I saw "Of Mice and Men" at the Walnut Theatre in Philadelphia in 2006, and actor Anthony Lawton was masterful as always. However, he was fighting with the ghost of Mr. McClean, the Teaneck High School English teacher who lived this book with us in 1983. I write "lived" beacuase he did not merely read it aloud to a bunch of us misfits, he firmly planted it in our minds with all the voices and emotions of a live play. I had a lot to live up to when I got my first teaching job. I am indebted to the wonderful men and women who have shown me the way. Thank You...

I Don't Feel Different

The pension system in this country is whacked. I wanted to continue paying into my old pension at my new job, but guess what? Now that I have moved from pubic education to higher education, I have a new pension plan. according to my financial advisor, "You are different now."
I just did this a year ago when I moved from a charter school to a public school. Instead of letting me just keep paying into the PERS plan, I had to roll over to TPAF. Now that I am in Higher Education, I am something else entirely. I am not touching my TPAF for the moment, in case I go back to public school next year, but I just hate monitoring all these different accounts. I forget what is which half the time between the actual pension, the 403b and the credit union. Let me point out what nobody else is saying, NONE of the accounts are doing me ay good because the stocks and bonds markets are performing so poorly and NJ hasn't contributed their share in years. I am actually losing money!

I may do better by burying my pennies in a mason jar behind my sister's house. I would never bury it on my property, that would be too easy for the government to find and tax. They will never look for my money at her house, right?

Great Author!

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


One of the best books I have ever read, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan opened up new worlds to explore about older chinese practices and life. I am sad it is finished.

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Dangerous Pie?

Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie by Jordan Sonnenblick

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I picked this book up for my son and of course I had to read it. It was a wonderful choice for any adolescent, especially those with siblings. It gets very emotional while still maintaining the coolness that makes it a perfect read for a middle school boy. I had to force him to start reading it, after a chapter or two he was hooked finished it in two days. We are now trying to force my daughter to read it, but we may have to steal those Twilight books away from her. She keeps re-reading them.

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Her fearful Symmetry

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Wonderful storyline, unlike any I have read. Great surprise in the middle.

Grapefruit Grumbles

Yesterday I was scrolling through my emails and I checked out one of the healthy ones from Lifescript Heathy Advantages. I can't get them to leave me alone, I have unsubscribed and still don't know how I got on their list. BUT they had a recipe for Grapefruit Brulee, so I opened it and had a look. My husband brought home a huge box of grapefruit for Christmas from some grateful customer. These ruby red grapefruits were kinda sour- as grapefruits go, so I jumped at the chance to find a recipe that would make them palatable. I dutifully cut the rind and pith off, sliced them into neat thick sections and topped them with dark brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon and butter pats. I broiled them until the sugar started to sear.
I arranged them on the plate and poured the extra melted sugary mix over them. After calling the boys to try them, ( My son had a friend sleeping over) I grabbed my blackberry to take some food shots, as I generally do with new recipes I am trying out for the first time. Good thing I had it...


The experiment did not go as planned, guess I will throw the rest of those grapefruits out.

I do feel bad for my son's friend, every time he comes over he is "treated" to vegetables, which he won't eat at home. He does eat them here with a bit of encouragement. I do not think he will want to visit us anytime soon, even though I followed up with Lucky Charms for breakfast.

My new friend Alice

So Alice came over yesterday. She was waiting for me when I got home. She may be my best friend ever because she brings me groceries that I don't have to stop at the store for. She is good looking too, all spiffy in her blue and black box, sporting her name. Alice saves me money and doesn't make me have to clip coupons, she gives them to me. She also wraps everything up in big ziplock bags so nothing spills. I can talk to Alice ANYTIME I want and she will come visiting me a few days later with everything I told her I needed. She is a lovely friend who my sister introduced me to. I couldn't believe she was as good as Pinky said she was, so I invited her to my house. It would be hard to forget such a friend, but in case I do, she will email me and ask me if there is anything I need, she will remind me when I should order those embarrassing sanitary products that I hate to have to put into my cart in the grocery store. For all I love about this new woman in my life, I do wish she brought me more foodstuffs. BUT she knows I am trying to lose weight, so she brings me dry goods and paper supplies, stuff to clean my house with, and lots of choices. Alice doesn't charge me for gas (shipping) and actually saves me money because what she brings me is the same price or lower than I could get it in the store.

If you want to meet my friend Alice, ask me to send you her link, you will get $10 off your first order with her if you go through me and I will save more money too. Thanks Pinky!

Eating my words

Well, It was an amazing movie, last night we saw Avatar by James Cameron. I didn't want to go, didn't think I wanted to see some Jar Jar Binks look-alikes, but they didn't look like him at all. It was truly weird how at first the Pandora creatures looked so alien, and then so beautiful. The humans looked puny and sick by comparison. I should just stop being a naysayer and force myself to do things I don't want to on a much more regular basis. There are certain movies that stick with you for cinematographic value alone and this will be one of them.
Everything was beautiful, even the weapons. In "Alien", when they were using those machines that they put themselves into, those giant robotic forklift things,I thought they were cool, but clumsy and very limited. The ones in Avatar were elegant and had a range of motion that was breathtaking. They were a magnificent melding of machine and human with very fast reflexes, running and jumping ability. Even the helicopter-like things with the side counter-rotating rotors were mesmerizing. They reminded me of the steampunk machines in The Golden Compass that looked strangely futuristic and historic at the same time.

The planet was stunningly developed, I always thought the movie Legend would be hard to beat for beauty, but the glowing phosphorescence of the plant life against a dark sky reminded me of private underwater realms that we rarely see.

I hope you all get a chance to see it- I will not spoil the plot but I hope to see it in 3-D soon at the IMAX theatre.

Vindicated

My husband has been under a lot of pressure this year. My daughter won her softball championship, my son won his baseball championship, I won the dream job, so he had to win, finally win his Fantasy Football league. We were going to ask him to move out if he lost. After months of "Screaming Sundays" the verdict is in, he won in both leagues. It wasn't about the money, it never was, it was about being CHAMPION! Can you tell we are a bit competitive in my family? Yep, we are. After like 6 years of crazy draft parties and him stealing all the computers and televisions every week for the endless round of games, I finally feel like it was worth something. I watched him meticulously prepare the championship trophy for each year's winner (not him) and feel bad that he will have to prepare his own. As commissioner no one will laud his skill at picks and transactions, but we know here in our house how he suffered through every choice, how he questioned every player's ability to advance him toward the playoffs. So though he will never read this, it is out there in the ether- the vindication that he is the MAN! You go Baby!

Out in the Sticks

Of course I have to drive at least a half hour to get some decent yarn unless I bug my local woolspinner. After speaking to a few friends about their favorite places to get yarn, I decided to just drive to a Rosie's Yarn Cellar on Locust Street in Philly.

It is far easier to drive there than negotiate the twisting roads of South Jersey all the way to Cape May. I asked my daughter is she felt like a quick jaunt to the city and we had no trouble finding it at all. Mapquest finally came through! We even found a parking spot right in front of little shop. It WAS in the cellar and I was surprised by all the choices.

I took it easy, didn't spend too much and finally bought the Clover bamboo circular needles I had been moaning about for the past year. This shop has sidewalk sales and a blog that is updated frequently. They offer classes and have a frequent shopper program. I will have to organize a field trip for my knitting group.










I haven't knitted in over a month and have been itching to get some wool for a new hat project. My son and nephews could use some matching hats and I figure I will start this week while I am off. My daughter picked out a nice Irish Tweed for the boys.

It will be sufficiently manly enough for them. Rosie's had a decent selection of buttons so if anyone is making a sweater, they have the wool AND the buttons. Our knitting group is getting ready to start



up again, so I am excited to see what everyone is working on. We had a bit of a falling off from August to November and I was so sick in December. I haven't seen some of our members since summer. Next year I guess we will not meet in the Summer and Fall. I will quilt instead. There is a fabulous new quilt shop in my town. I have to make quilts for both my kids to take to college. Knitted blankets don't really keep you warm like a woobie quilt.

Too lazy

I am so mad bubbleshare went belly up. I had tons of pictures on my blog from them and I just don't have the umph to go reposting them all so that my previous postings make sense. UUUUUUUGGGGH! as Charlie might say. I am alone in the kitchen debating the day and what I should do with it. I can stay home and waste it listening to my husband scream and yell his way through two chanpionship playoffs in fantasy football, or I can get out of here and do something constructive. Maybe a yarn shop visit? HMMMMMMM. Two of the dogs took off this morning chasing after squirrels in the woods behind our yard. One didn't come back for forty minutes. I had to wake up my daughter to help me look for her. Yes, this is a shamless plug for the garden fence if you are reading this, my hubby. Enough already. I wendt out and checked out all my herbs, they did very well under 2 feet of snow. Christmas morning i was out there digging out the rosemary for dinner. It loves the snow, but the parsley was decidedly wimpy. The sun today may rescue it. It should dig some of each herb up and bring them indoors for the winter, I just don't remember which herb didn't make it through last year. Can you tell I already have cabin fever in December? I want to garden already. Wow, it is going to be a long winter.

I know what this is all stemming from. I have been sick for the last month- yes MONTH. I could barely get through each day at work and I came home and collapsed. My poor kids had to eat junk like pizza and chinese food and subs for dinner. I wish this sickness had led to a huge weight loss, that would have been worth it, but no luck, I actually gained two pounds while I lie in my bed, too sick to even read. That is true, I have never been so sick I couldn't while away the time with a good book,but I lost a whole month of my life. My new cycle students think I have no lungs because I haven't had a decent voice for them yet. I typed a lot of messages on the smartboard for them instead of trying to choke my way through an explanation. I have no idea what was wrong with me, an upper respiratory infection that outlived two z-paks and 2 rounds of leviquin. I think I know what set it off, I have been surrounded with students who have been sneezing and coughing their germs all over my room since September, but really, a month? I still choke all night long and have other embarrassing issues to boot. Well if that ain't enough to cause cabin fever in December, I don't know what is. Here is hoping the new year brings me new lung strength and a renewed love for soup, because after a month of it, I may never make a pot of it again. I am also sending out my thanks to my wonderful friends who drove my kids places and dropped of soup to help me get better. I can never thank you enough, my family would have starved without you.

What to make for Christmas?

Each year I do a little reflection on what a holiday meal should be. After years of turkey and trimmings or ham, I am always looking to make something memorable that my family and friends will enjoy. The year of the lamb chops was good, it stood out from the others. This year I just happened to catch an episode of Down home with the Neeleys, and they were making Cornish Game hens with lemon pepper. I thought, "Well, I could do that, except for the lemon pepper, it seemed to ordinary to do to a beautiful little hen." So I went off on an internet search for a better idea. Paula Deen had the stuff I was looking for, and I changed her recipe to make it my own. Luckily I was able to dig some fresh rosemary out of the snow in my kitchen garden. It did make all the difference. Just so I don't ever lose this recipe- I am posting my version here. I hope you try it, it is delicious! Probably the most memorable Christmas meal since the deep friend turkey.


Ingredients
6 Cornish game hens -about 1 pound each (I bought frozen and defrosted them- They were fine!)
4 cloves garlic
1 (1-inch) piece of ginger, peeled
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (Paula uses peanut oil)
2 tablespoons orange juice
3 tablespoons Orange marmalade (I just used Smuckers)
1 tablespoon orange zest, minced
pats of butter ( at least one for each hen.
Fresh Rosemary- one bunch.

Directions
Rinse hens, trim off excess fat, and pat dry; salt and pepper the insides of each. Place in marinade container.
Put garlic and ginger in food processor and process until smooth.
In another bowl, mix soy sauce, honey, oil, orange juice, marmalade and zest. Add the garlic and ginger. Pour mixture over game hens, coating well. Refrigerate overnight, turning in marinade several times.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Place game hens in shallow roasting pan; pour marinade on top. Tuck a slice of orange in each hen along with a spring of rosemary. Tuck the rest of the rosemary around the hens. Put a pat of butter on each hen. Bake for 1 hour, basting every 15 minutes. Shoot some of the glaze inside each hen when you baste. Remove hens to serving platter. Pour cooking juices into small, heavy saucepan and boil for 4 minutes, or until sauce thickens. Pour over hens just before serving. Serve with wild rice and a healthy salad.