Saturday, January 13, 2001
We played with 2nd graders in Cincinnati today. Very silly, very fun. In the show when i said i was going to the zoo with Ogden Nash before i could start the poem "The Panther" a large portion of the audience had all turned into monkeys. I had to growl at them a bit to get them to quiet down.
Other than that, i've been thinking a bit about religion today and have been browsing some information about the Baha'i Faith. We were reading about the middle east in the 1980s today on our drive back to Asheville and i began wondering if there is any way to unite people of such radically different religious persuasions. Which led me to contemplating who this god is that people keep fighting over.
I have dabbled in many faiths (mostly judeo-christian), but never studied any particular one in detail. I find that bahai has many interesting ideas that seem open for discussion including the unity of all religions.
By the way, has anyone ever figured out how the whole evolution/creationism thing works? i mean they seem at odds most of the time.
My mom justified to me when i was a kid and studying evolution in school that she always thought of god's days as being much longer that what we consider a day. A friend of mine once explained his vision of god was not an entity but the a web of spirit that connects all life. A 4 year old once told me something to the effect that things like nature can be explained, but the whole world is magic and that's what you can't explain. My own personal view is some sort of compliation of all that, but today i'm thinking that perhaps god is the primordial sludge from which all life was born and to which it returns, as well as that little bit of magic that beyond our genes and upbringing makes each living thing unique.
Many days that little breath of life that makes me say "ah ha!" and pushes me in a new direction is enough to make me feel that there is a greater power than me out there somewhere.~w
wendi's 12:02 AM ravings
Thursday, January 11, 2001
Well ciro convinced me to buy a datebook rather than a handheld thingy, but now i have a new thing to lust after. I saw a CD-RW with USB that would be cheaper with CDs for backing up my hard drive than buying enough Zip disks to do the job. Crazy huh? So, i suppose that's really geeky, but hey, i'm behind the times. Everyone has one of those now days don't they? Or have people upgraded to DVD now? I'm just lagging behind with a CD-ROM drive. I gotta catch up, right? Geez i'm bad. I may go for this though if my bank account will allow it before the rebate expires.
Other than that...today we did shows for k-4th graders in kings mill, OH. The 2nd and ups remembered us from last year and were especially silly. It was a fun silly day for the most part. We did have problems with a goofy warning light coming on in the rental car, but after 2 hours we ended up not exchanging it, just wasting 2 hours. We plan to exchange it in Asheville where they are nicer to us at the Hertz counter. We decided that the problems that car makers are having must be rubbing off on Hertz. They seem unwilling to let many of their cars leave town these days. My guess is that they are not making big profits on the resale of their cars when they reach their mileage cap, so they are trying to avoid extra costs like retrieving them from other states. The current line of 2000 Tauruses seem to have more problems than usual too, which can't help either. So i guess it makes sense that they only want to give us high mileage cars from other towns these days that are close to the mileage cap. It just means we spend more time trading cars in the end.
Well...i guess that's it for now. I seemed to waste a lot of time my free time on piddly things rather than creative pursuits today, but i suppose you have to have days like that every now and then. Tomorrow we play with 2nd graders and then i get to visit home for the weekend.~w
wendi's 11:56 PM ravings
Wednesday, January 10, 2001
I'm thinking of studying library science, but i'm not sure if it's worth the time and money. It interests me, but lots of things related to books interest me that don't require spending money on another degree. I've just started tossing it around in my brain, so i'll see how it sits. I have a friend from high school who i hear is a librarian, so maybe i should chat with her about the whole thing. I spend a lot of time in libraries for this job and have grown fonder of them than i already was. Any suggestions out there?
We played with 4th graders all day today. They were outrageous!! It was fun sitting with the 5th graders at lunch who felt like they almost knew me since i was at their school last year as well. Some of the girls i guess actually made it to state with a poetry performance that they say was influenced by seeing us. Very cool! It's nice to know that our work is just the seedling for new ideas from these kids. It seems like there are more and more jobs out there where it's hard to see the good you put in the world by doing the work. While i don't hear back from every kid, it's nice to know that now and then i hear that i've made a positive impact on a child's life. I wonder what the world would be like if more people spent their work day feeling like they were making the world a better place?
The TV just went out. I had the HBO series, OZ playing and was listening to it while typing. Figures it happened just at the exciting part. It's kinda fun having TV in the hotel rooms since i've never had cable at home. So many times there isn't anything on anyway, so why pay for it? But i've found that i settle for watching more when i have it available. Well it's over now, which means it must be about bed time for me. Oh, but i did see an ad for a new movie that i'm interested in seeing. It's by David Mamet who's writing style i love (The Untouchables, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Wag the Dog are a couple of his more mainstream films). It's called State and Main. I just enjoy the way that he puts words together. Some call his writing hyper-realism, but mostly i just find it fast-paced, gritty fun. I really have no idea what the movie is about, i just saw some familiar faces and heard "written by David Mamet" and went "Ah ha! a movie maybe worth seeing!"
Now the TV is trying to tell me not to eat raw fish. What??? No sushi? That's just plain wrong. Granted, i wouldn't eat sushi just anywhere that included raw fish, but still, i don't think i could cure that craving if i had to give it up. That's enough to leave me cranky. I guess it's time to turn the TV off and read something happy before i go to sleep.~w
wendi's 11:25 PM ravings
Tuesday, January 09, 2001
Blogger has a new server! Hooray! The posts are faster now. Although my computer is particularly slow tonight because i haven't refreshed it after messing with a bunch of images. I got a wild hair (or hare) to change the scrollbar color (see it's green >>) and frittered away a good part of the evening setting it up to my liking. Now, it's late, i need to pack and sleep, but my clothes are still wet cuz the silly dryer in this hotel couldn't seem to dry them. Ever feel like you took a little time for your own personal fun and hours later discover that a hundred things aren't done? Well, that's me today. I'm also running out of battery power (both for my computer and my brain).
The best thing i did was play with 1st and 4th graders today. I wrote "smart-alecky" last year when describing these kids and now i remember why. They are wacky! Fortunately i had enough sleep last night and was on my toes!! I had a blast with them though.
Chavez withdrew her name today for Labor Secretary. CNN.com has a whole lot more to say about it than i do. I didn't follow it too closely, but it seems like folks who dislike how she is anti-minimum wage laws and anti-union found a technicality to get her outta there. I've never belonged to a union, but i have worked for minimum wage. I think i would rather keep the miminum wage personally, and i know quite a few teachers who hope their unions can make some changes to salary standards for their jobs in this country. So, my initial reaction is good riddance even if she is a kind hearted lady.~w
wendi's 11:47 PM ravings
Monday, January 08, 2001
I saw this thing on tv yesterday about The 1900 House. Along with Survivor and Temptation Island it's a new series that focuses on "real" life people rather than actors. However, in this case an English family is traveling back in time for 3 months to live in a house furnished as it would have been in the year 1900. That means, little hot water, gas lighting downstairs only, heavy layers of clothes to be hand washed, and no fancy pre-packaged "feminine products." These are some pretty tough people to truly try to leave the 20th century amenities for that long. However, if you wanna have a go, PBS is currently looking for volunteers for their Frontier House. They advertise "time travel, plant crops, build shelter, 180 acre homestead, live like a pioneer, experience the wild west, no TV, no phone, no cars, no electricity, no computers, no experience necessary." hmmm, i wonder if that includes shootouts with the "neighbors" who really don't want you there because your homesteading on their land? or prairie fires? i'll be interested to see how it develops since it seems like it might at least have some educational value.
We played with 2nd graders today. They were full of great ideas and sillieness. Hmmm, favorite moment? Terek chanting his ideas to himself when he wasn't called on so that they seeped into the the discussion anyway. Also, his poem that was nearly a haiku about a shark that he shared with ciro and me before we even made it into his classroom. I just hope that he continues to find an outlet for his creativity and enthusiasm.
I'm back on my exercise schedule too, i did my sit-ups and swam laps in the hotel pool before crawling in the hot tub to soak. Maybe i was feeling guilty for eating 4 cookies and a cup of hot chocolate for an afternoon snack. But, hey...i deserved it, i got my paperwork done.~w
wendi's 11:40 PM ravings
Philadelphia is on TV tonight. I really should be getting to sleep, but i stumbled across it and it seems awfully good. I'll keep watching it while i'm working on this at least.
Let's see, today we moved back to the Hampton in Batesville, Indiana, a town famous for it's caskets. I suppose it's rather odd to watch a movie about a man who is dying in a town know for it's burial services. Hmm, i'll try not to think about that too much.
I've been debating about whether to go totally geeky and buy a Handspring Visor or save what little money i have and just buy a new date book for 2001. Ciro and i were talking today about how easy it is to get caught up in the "buy, buy, buy" nature of american society. Do i need a visor? Not really, a datebook would do. Can i afford a visor? Not really, and a datebook is only about $10. Do i want a visor? Yes, because it's a cool toy. Not very good logic for buying a toy. So, i really should be shopping for a datebook i guess. It's just not as much fun. Besides, if i bought a visor, then i'd just find some other nifty toy to fixate on that i don't need and can't afford. That's the way our society works right? You never can have enough stuff, just keep saving for the next big thing. How often do we think about saving up money to donate to social services, charity or other good works? So, instead we pay taxes and complain about them. If people saved money to donate each year to those services receiving public funding we wouldn't need the government to do it for us. We would also have a lot more control over which services received funding. But, it would take a lot of discipline for me to rearrange my thinking to save like that. It seems like there are always ways to spend that money on myself...saving for retirement, saving for a house, saving for a car. As it is, most charitable donations are tax deductable, but even so, i don't know many people in my income bracket who think about that sort of thing. Hmm, maybe i should look into doing something to change my budgeting to include donating to causes i believe are worthy. That would probably do more good than just complaining about how the government chooses to spend my taxes. Of course it means time, effort, and paperwork on my part, but it's probably worth it.
Well, in order to be alert tomorrow, i should try to get some sleep. I caught up with myself this weekend, but sleeping till the crack of noon makes it really hard to get to sleep early.~w
wendi's 12:34 AM ravings
Sunday, January 07, 2001
Here's an interesting story i found today: Cultivating plan to set classrooms on the farm. I know that when i was in school the majority of my peers lived on working farms that no longer exist with the development rage in King County. It seems sad that in order for kids to learn about farming that a school would need to buy a farm, but at the same time it may be the only way to save that heritage in some areas of our country today. I hope that Barry Lia and people like him are successful in making projects like this happen. Perhaps great hands on learning experiences like an educational farm are what we need in this country to get kids excited about learning again.
Other than that...i slept today. I guess i needed my rest, so i got it. Ciro and i went out on a dining adventure that ended up at Max & Erma's since our first choice (Buca di Beppo, which we'd found reading a local dining guide) turned out to have a 1-1/2 hour wait. Our 2nd choice was stuck in the middle of UCinn basketball traffic. We were looking for pasta and based on what we saw it seemed the most likely candidate. We got pasta, it wasn't anything fancy, but it was pasta. Since we had already given into corporate dining it didn't seem like a very big leap to corporate books (and it was right next door) so we wandered around a Barnes & Noble for a little while. I didn't buy anything, but i did read a bit of The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran which was very beautiful. Ciro picked up a copy of Bury Me Standing which looks really good. It is about the Roma or Gypsy culture and their persecution. A friend of mine was reading it several years ago and had told me it was very good. Hopefully ciro with share it with me. But for now i still have a couple of Terry Pratchett books to read. I just finished The Color of Magic which was good silly fun and i'm looking forward to starting The Light Fantastic shortly. With that, i'll think i'll go feed my imagination.~w
wendi's 1:23 AM ravings
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