Ugly Ornament Contest

The official ugly ornament contest.
Once again - Barb wins the contest, by giving Kathy the --- well --- Sperm shaped ornament.

Here you see the victory cheer.
Enjoy this years grouping. Linn gave out the strangly colored people ornaments. Barb found not only the sperm shaped snowman, but all so the porncicle. Fuzzy purple feathers all around.
Kathy brought home a troll man from Germany.
Unfortunetly the crowd called her disqualified - as he did not have a hook sticking out of his head to make him a true ornament.
Hope you enjoyed this years coverage of the Ugly Ornament Contest.

Merry Christmas

Brando got some Reindeer ears for Christmas.

Family photos in front of mom's tree.
We had a really great time.
Christmas eve was spent traveling lower southeaster Michigan.

We started at Mom's house and then moved on to Aunt Pat in Lincoln park where we see family once a year usually. Make sure we know who is alive.
Then we drove to Monroe to see all our friends that we made during all those 4-H years.
Kathy hosts the party and we all had a great time.
Between the ugly (or as this year under protest says- funniest) Ornament contest between Kathy, Mom and Linn and the jello shots and shrimp. We all had a great time. Ice on the driveway, but what did you expect.

Christmas day was spent with Tom's family. So MUCH FOOD. Started with crepes about noon, dinner was around 3 or so and TOO many presents to open.
We had a lovely time. Friday, we sat around and did nothing.
Ok, I lie - I hooked up the blue ray player and we watched Batman. WOW

Christmas is Tiring

They were right.

You do start to look like your owner...

Brando, the smooshed face dog.

Mom and I went to the show at Fox Theater.

It looks awesome for the holidays.  The whole theater is all decorated and they had little kids out front singing carols while people were waiting to get in to sit down for the show.

The show White Christmas was wonderful.  The outfits were amazing, the singing was awesome and David Ogden Stiers plays an officer in the army.  It was cool.  Worth every penny.  
I know he looks a bit funny but he would not sit up for me.

He looks all smooshed.  But he put up with the hat and everything.
Sorry, no good shot of Tom and I this year.

Redid the cages

2 cages become one Fortress as Tom likes to say.

Cages

Thanksgiving and Sadness

Lenny and Sammie

The link above is to the last pictures taken yesterday before Lenny went to the vet for the last time.

We have been struggling with his condition for most of the fall.  We did what any animal loving persons could do for him, but he just got worse and kept losing weight.  For as long as he was happy in most of his life and not wasting away, we were willing to keep medicating him.

Lenny and his brother Squiggy were the cutest little brown guinea pigs I had ever seen.  Poor guys were probably from an in-bred family and wound up having lots of problems.  Come February they both would have been 3 and they spent almost the whole time with me.

They were buried together - as I had Squiggy's ashes- in the flower section of Tom's parents garden.  May they Rest in Peace together.

Trimester over

Thank goodness something is changing.....

This fall has been rather rough and I have been pulling my hair out trying to get it all together.

We finally changed one of my classes for 2nd trimester and I think it will be a little less work. I keep having to remind the counsilor that I AM NOT certified to teach newspaper and that stuff.- Only television.

So, I have two tv type classes and two english classes this trimester. Lets get the lead out.

Thanksgiving will be a great respite.
I need a day or two to chill.

Off to clean pig cages.....

NOVEMBER BABY

Ok, that was silly, but man what a way to start the month.
Big crazy election. Hurray - it was decided completely with no questions to be answered and simply. None of this wait a darn month before we know the real result.

I have become an NPR junkie.
I don't know what to really say about that. I had a bunch of stuff down here, but it seemed ridiculas.
I want to go hear Don Gonyea speak on Monday in Grand Rapids, but I don't want to drive there and take a day off work and all that other crap.

Don is one of the older brothers of my highschool locker mate Holly.
Her family has done a lot in the spotlight types jobs. Don works for NPR, Another does comedy stuff and Holly was a heck of a singer. Anyway, he has a great job following around the President or Barack Obama during the election process.
I know his family must be thrilled any time he gets back to Michigan.

I know I wanted to go somewhere with this, but I really don't know where. Just to say - NPR is cool.

Dog Troubles & Howell Nature Center

Here is one of the owls from the nature center shoot.
Naarah and I went for an afternoon of food and lots of birds of prey. Some of them are hurt and can not be let in the wild and two are fine but have been bonded to people and can not live in the wild.
I have to organzie and find the better pictures.

Here are the pictures of Brando after healing up a ton and a couple days after the vet shaved the area and we could really see what a mess he had going on it there.

It was awful. We had the urge to pull the nasty scabs off. We would whittle away the stuff that was coming off. We think he finally scratched off the big one while trying to get his ear.

You can hardly tell and he probably won't have any scars.

So, the story is. If your dog ever gets ANY dog bites, you have to take them in for Antibiotics, because the slobber gets dragged up under the skin and makes a really big mess.

Here is Tom and his greatest achievement.

The sea turtle pumkin.

I am very impressed. Last year he just drew it on the pumpkin, this year I made him do the whole carving thing.

I totally suck at all that stuff, so I just lent a little hand and took pictures.
Brando was amazed at us and couldn't figure out why were weren't eating the stuff.
I dropped a seed on the floor and he didn't touch it.

Well, here he is doing all the hard work.

Hope it looks right.

Football

YEAH - Football is over for me.

I taped the last home game on Friday and did not totally freeze my butt off. A couple of the kids got rather cold hands and wind blown faces, but I was snug in the booth with all my too expensive equipment to let anyone else in there. ha ha ha ha
I didn't even have to put on my Carharts this year....

So our team may suck and we may not have lights (a blessing for us video folks.) But dang our video looks better everytime we go out.
Some day they may get better.

Now it's off to do some volleyball on Wednesday and then Basketball starts in November. We'll see how that goes.

Sick

Oh man,
The first cold/ death of the fall. I can hardly believe it.
On Thursday morning I woke feeling horrible. I thought I was going to shoot Tom. My throat hurt and I could not breath.
He has been hacking stuff up for a couple weeks now and Paul was at the doctors a little over a week ago now (i think).
So, here I am miserable.
My head hurts, my throat hurts and I'm tired.
I spent yesterday trying to hide from the world and it didn't work well. Today I stopped answering the door.
(Two teenagers or older wearing ties - you know that can't be good.)
Hopefully I could see them, but they really couldn't see me. Thanks for the shades mom. I can only hope the dog barking was scarey enough.

I can't beleive I already took a day off work. And a Payday at that. Oh my, poor me. I can wait till Monday for a check, jeez.
Off to sleep.
me

SCHOOL IS HERE

Did I forget to do a school started blog???
I think I did.

So, I'm back at the School I joined last spring.
I'm still in the "Oops we didn't tell you how to do that?" phase of working here.
It should just be expected, it's a High School and people get so used to what they have done, they forget that there might be a couple people who don't know what to do. The Dean of Students has been very kind and even talked to me in the spring about what does sort of happen around here and if I have any problems at all to call him.

My first two people got to spend a day at home figuring out why they need to behave in here.
I am trying to keep the worst of it from starting, but nipping the unacceptable in the bud. I refuse to have posturing going on in my class room. You know you aren't going to start a fight in front of me (if you have been talking trash for 10 minutes.) so get over yourself and get the heck out.
Sure we have lots of fights here, or after school (mostly) because they all live near eachother. But once in a while someone just swings. Those are the fights you have to look out for.
So I have met a few parents and with 8th graders - they don't scare me much. I can usually bluff them out of anything. And with two having a day out of school, most know - hmm - Mrs. F is not going to take any crap.

Other annoying things.
For some reason the main harddrive, in my editing computer, blew a gasket . The one they just built for me in the spring. I was going to put together the football game that I dragged Tom too. Kind of hard to do that when the computer will not even boot up. Opps.

They ordered my equipment but it is not all in yet. PLUS, the tripod I was trying to get fixed is not available in parts. So, it's either $1,100 for a new head, or just buy a different tripod.
I'm working on the different tripod. Just had to get it in the guys head that I REFUSE to buy a tripod for over $600 for this building. Hello, the office won't give me that much.
If they were replacing the studio tripods, I would love nicer ones, the ones we having are starting to fall apart. But for something that needs to go outside, I need to be able to cobble it back together with duck tape if it ever comes down to that.

Oh yeah, I'm teaching 8th grade English. MAN, I was really hoping to get away from that stuff.
Oh well, so now I have to grade english papers. EWWWWW
Thank goodness it is Wednesday and the end of the day.
I need a nap. Ha ha

Piggie surgery

I know, I know, I know
Do we spend enough on the pigs??? I don't think I could spend any more.....
If it was your dog or horse, you'd do the same thing....

Anyway, Lenny has not felt real well and I had Tom take him to the vet. He HAD a bladder stone, which was removed yesterday.
Poor guy has a gazzillion stitches inside and out.

I have to remind him to eat, have to keep the gut moving, even if it doesn't feel good.
So, turtle pig was partially due to the fact he didn't feel well. Darn it.
I would have noticed earlier, but Lenny is the talking pig, he talked for no reason ALL the time. This made it harder to notice that he was talking about how much it hurt to pee.
Well, that pain is over with, now we have to get over the cut abdomen muscles. Ouch.

Movie Fun

I was having trouble getting the program to actually finish the movies.
So, here are two.
One is Brando playing with a toy, had this a while but it would not save the file.
The second is Lenny playing at Turtle pig.
For some reason he enjoys pulling the foodbowl to himself and eating inside the piggloo.

I guess so no one can sneak up on him.

Olympics

Can my brain fit anymore crap in it???

I have been watching and recording the olympics onto dvd's for a week now. I guess I am whipped. I have been trying to cut out commercials on some of it, and then Tom and I just got some of the best stuff on a couple soccer games. At least I have seen more Equestrian stuff this year.
They are on to Dressage Grand Prix. AWSOME, but only showed like 8 horses. I wanted to see all 33. DARN IT.
Oh well, something is better than nothing.

Slowly getting ready for school. Read two of the books that they suggested for the kids to read. I can deal with one, the other seems a little over their heads. Even a little over my head- they make a lot of references to philosophies, rulers and stuff that 8th graders are not likely understand at all.
ARG, makes me frustrated.
I guess a have 6 more free work days. ewww
later

Olympics

I can hardly believe it is that time again.
Usually I'm not overly thrilled because I can never see anything.

Well guess what. I have Direct TV. Hmm, have you seen the commercials, have you heard the news.......???

I have 6 channels - yes 6 - of all Olympics all the time on my Direct TV. And they are FREE. I don't have to buy the Olympic pass or anything. Some of them are in HD and I am sooooo excited.
So, for all those years we couldn't watch a darn thing, except some good stuff on Channel 9 (which I can't get here.) Tell me what do you want me to record????
I have a huge list already....

What's up???

Hi,
It has been a long week.
I got home from Camp and had a few things going on. Including me being more tired than I could imagine.

So, I have some random images of the dog, and Tom and one I thought was histerical.

I found the sign at the Livonia Laurel Park Place Mall, it was the Eddie Baurer display - and considering that I spend a good deal of money there - that made it even better.

I went to the Monroe County Fair on Thursday.

The Budwieser Clydesdales were there this year and of course the battery in my camera was dead. ARG I saw a large number of people that I know. It was really great to talk and just see how much everyone has or has not changed.

People like to think that Trisha and I are sisters. That was so cute.
By the way Trisha YOU LOOK GREAT!!!!

So, It's been a busy week and we only have a couple more before school starts again.

Hope you all are having a great summer. I know I am trying.

Last day of STN Camp

You know what,  I'll put pictures up tomorrow.  

I only have 10 minutes before we leave for dinner.

37 of us survived STN BOOT CAMP.  We have told them to change the name.  Although the Description does mention the boot camp style.

Some groups were out until 2 am last night EDITING.  Yes, editing.

We were done around 8:30 and I felt proud of that.

The guys were having a hard time getting the shows done and put together by 3 today.  They didn't quite pull that off.

Yes, there were two shows about 20 minutes long of all our big packages from Wednesday and Thursday.  Luckily there were two edit guys that did nothing else, but they still had a hard time getting it all together.

Well, I'm whipped, it's 5:45 central time and we are off to dinner.

Day 3, I think can't remember anymore and Day 4

Okay,

So the last two days have been just a great big blur.  Even with them canceling the 8:30 meeting this morning.
On Wednesday we spent a lot of time all morning in different classes.  We had a guy come in from New York talking about letting the students put video up on the internet and have the chance to be on Channel One.  Well, he was in for it with our group.

The things that will go wrong always go wrong.  We gave him a LOT to think about.  He mentioned it was his worse nightmare to be in front of so many teachers.  Ha ha,  he was right.

So here we all our in the main classroom, talking about everything in our funny grey green shirts to identify us on the evil evening trip.

We were sent to Branson, MO. 

Someone described it as Ned Flanders idea of what Las Vegas should really be.  They were right, except it is in the hills much like the Dells in Wisconsin.  They even had DUCKs.  I wanted to go for a ride.

Anyway, we were out taping from 7:30 pm until 9:30pm.  Yes, the sun went down on the interview.  I didn't get quite the footage I needed in order to make the whole thing work quite as well.  The sun going down hurt us a bit.

We didn't back until 12:15 central time.  AHHHH.

Hence the later meeting on Thursday. 

And here is the man who thought up all this crazy stuff, Dave Davis.

He is been a great deal of fun.

He keeps teaching others what to do and steps back for them to do the hard work.  He mentioned that Friday he'll be more in charge as the helpers will all be up till 4 in the morning putting together the show.

Thursday - the evil day.  We wandered in a little late and ran through a ton of stuff.  Then by 11 am we were sitting at editors trying to make a news package out of the stuff we had shot last night.

Ours sounds really good, but visually it does not cut it in my book.  Not enough b-roll to show what we are talking about.

I have some really awesome outside shots of the Titanic experience in Branson.

Ok, so my shot is faked, cause my partner is in another room. 

This is my partner Sherry.   She is so much fun. 

She is from Kentucky and has the cutest accent.

She pulled out the story and I had to teach her to write conversationally.

She was pulling out all these big words.  I kept saying, make it shorter.  Make it clearer.  Make is simpler.

Then I sent the poor girl back the the sound booth to redo our voice overs.  She was being very careful and enunciating everything and talking slow.

Her second try was golden and we have a great audio track.

To bad the video doesn't quite cut it.

Things Tammy should have brought to camp.

New headphones,  Chris I need a new pair of AVG's.

My darn light and battery belt, Even though it weighs 20 pounds.  I needed the light twice this week.  It certainly got dark last night and theaters never have enough light.

Headphone splitter,  people were getting very testy trying to hear their stuff with 20 other people doing the same thing in the same room.  Both of you wear headphones and it can be quite as a church.

Hmm, I need a new tripod.  Anyone wanna get me a Bogen.  Actually I should get one through Naarah, that should be a good idea for Christmas.......

My darn rain gear, got that new jacket and totally forgot it.  That is what I get for cleaning out my car.  

I have had a great week, but I am totally beat.

Looks like I'm stopping in Chicago Saturday night, Christine and I got together finally on the phone and I'll be staying there.  Hurray.

See you all next week.

STN Camp Day 3

Another Long day......

After going a morning of asking each other questions and learning to focus down to the 3 word focus statements, we were sent out to shoot more footage.  It was a silent movie.  We did a lot of pantomiming.

Me freaking out at a bee.  Ok, laugh now.  I'll try to put footage up later.

After lunch and a little meeting we went back into the edit suite to mess with some really bad footage.  We survived and I am getting quite quick with Adobe Premier.  I know I bought the Mac I should be working on the Apple.    But my  group were all adobe people so I am happy to use whatever they wanted.

Once we finally got done, we went to the world famous Lambert's.   Home of the Throwed Rolls.  TOO FUNNY.  Yes, they throw food.  It was fun and it was all you can eat.

No I did not get seconds on my steak.

There we are standing around waiting to go in.  44 of us.  You should have seen the unhappy line behind us.

The last picture is the outside of the apartments.  I know the guys staying in the corner room.  You will probably see my partner in video later.

I am having a good time.   Working my butt off.  Everyone went out to dinner and I did Laundry.  They are all still gone, its 10pm here.  I'm getting ready for bed.  Have a great night.  I'll try to get video up later.

Few days maybe......

Day 2

They had us working our butts off last night.

We were in class from 6:30 to 9.  We were out shoo

ting already.

This morning we started at 8:30.  We went out and shot

 stuff again.

Then had to edit it.  No Audio which made it a little easier.

Then we watched them and got slammed.

Then we did an editing assignment.  It is 6:20 and we are getting ready to leave for dinner.

Here is a couple pictures of my room.

The apartment dorm is awesome.  I wish they had these at MSU.  4 bedrooms with good size closets, 2 people share a bath and one kitchen for all 4.

Locks on your own rooms.  I love it.

so, here are a couple pictures....

St. Louis

Road Trip......

On my way to STN Camp.

Ok, So I'm already at camp- but this was Sunday in St. Louis -  I had a few hours to kill so I went down to the river and to the Arch.  It was cool.

630 feet in the air.  The little bubble thing you go up in is really strange.   Check it out online.

I got a few good pictures.

Then I drove to Springfield.

I got the surprise then.  It is all up and down hill from St. Louis to Springfield.   Think about driving North Kentucky on 75.  That was most of the trip.  Very Tiring.

3 hours and well, cheap gas.  3.79 was the cheapest I saw.  Hopefully I'll find that on the way back.

The Party --

I have been informed I must put up pictures from the party.Ok, so until I get permission, you'll mostly see my friends. Some

people brought their young ones and well, I prefer not to

put little kids pictures on the web. Ok, so Andrea said it was ok. But my mom got the

good pictures of Jilly, so you'll just have to wait.

Lets see, the first one is my brother, trying to turn into grisly adams. Then Jason, we had fun in the corner talking for a while. A decent picture of my mom, and picture of Greg eating, but of course.

And a picture of Andrea, Gilly and Carmen. I hope everyone had a great time.

I was a bit busy. I have a job for

the summer, and well with house cleaning going on, I didn't get as much done as I would have liked. I have plenty more to do, so don't fret. Plus I have to get started on Lesson plans for the fall.

I haven't heard if my situation is changing yet, but one can only hope.

I don't

even know if we are getting the equipment we desperately need for the students to move forward in their work.

I leave tomorrow for Springfield MO. Yeah, its way out there in the middle of the country. I get to see St. Louis. So chalk up two more cities that I have visited. I should get to work on my pushpin collection....

Why, you ask?

Television Teacher classes at Drury University and a local high school. A weeklong workshop thing. I am looking forward to it. We'll see how much I remember and how hard they push me. Looking forward to it.