The randomest of all

On this last day of NaBloPoMo (where I seem to be the last one standing…hello?…is anyone out there?), I offer oodles of randomy goodness…

… We just got an e-mail that ANOTHER one of my cousins is pregnant!  When baby Rex arrived two weeks ago, I was back down to four pregnant cousins, and now we’re up to five again, including both of my California cousins!  (They live sooooo far away! *pouts*)  As my Mom says, “It’s raining babies!”  This is crazy and amazing and so much fun!  I have a baby outfit hanging in my closet that I was worried might hang there for a long while (when I bought it without an intended recipient — but couldn’t pass it up for all of its adorableness!), but I guess I should not have been concerned!  I have 24 first cousins, and they will have added seven babies to our family in less than a year’s time when all is said and done.  WOW!

… The next comment on my blog will be Comment #1000.  Should I offer a prize?

… Happy Advent!  I made it through church this morning with only slight wobblyness.  One of my buddies sat with me, and I refrained from asking him if he’d catch me if I started to fall!  I’m definitely on the mend.

… I have a crazy-busy 12 days ahead, including my dance show on Friday evening!

Life is good.

The things we forget

Somehow in the years in between my Adventures in Schooling, I had forgotten that I have a tendency to be almost finished with a paper and then totally re-write it.  I have a paper due tomorrow (yes, it’s due on the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend…don’t get me started…!).  And I had it mostly written by about 1 o’clock this afternoon.  Super!  I just needed to look up one thing online to sort of finish it off.  Well, I looked up the one thing and then took a break for lunch.  While I was eating, I started mulling over the info online and came up with a whole new angle on the paper that was totally irresistable to me!  And it would require a total re-write.  D’oh!  So I went back to a blank screen with the paper and started over.  Thankfully, it’s almost done…again!  Now, I need to get it completely done before I talk myself into another draft.  *giggles*

Friday Firsts: Writer’s Choice

My First Memories

Memories fascinate me.  It’s amazing to me which events get remembered and how.  In my next life (ha!), I would like to study memories for a living.  What do people remember?  How far back can they remember?  Why are those the memories that stuck — were they very emotionally charged or just coincidental?

I have only a handful of very young childhood memories, say before age 4.  And I often have to consult with my Mom to figure out what the circumstances even were because the memories are so short – just a snippet of time, usually all visual and totally out of any larger context.

My first memories are from a trip to California when I was not quite three years old.  I remember waiting for my brother and Dad to get off the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride at Disneyland.  I think I remember being in my aunt’s house.  That’s it though.  That’s all I remember from that trip.  I do not remember being on a plane or train, playing with toy cars at the motel in San Francisco (which my Mom says that my brother and I said was our favorite part of that segment of the trip!), or many other events from that trip.

My next memories are from a day when I had to have kidney scans a few months later.  I remember looking at a stuffed koala while the doctors took the scans, and I remember being in the car after the tests and examining the bandaid they put on my hand.  My Mom and I were just talking about that again the other day.  Little did we know then how my kidneys would be a central figure in my medical stories much later in life.

What do you remember?

Grad School #16: Thanksgiving Edition

I am thankful …

… to be in a graduate program where people are inspired by the possibility of making a positive difference in the world through education.

… for an abundance of opportunities to be involved in projects that will improve math teaching.

… for professors who make us laugh and who lead such interesting discussions in class.

… for an advisor who understands that people are more important than research.

… for my magnificent classmates who make grad school more fun than it should be (*laughs*), who offer help and a listening ear, and who overwhelmed me with their outpouring of support this week.

A Sunday Re-Do

After a quiet day at home today (watching more TV than I’ve seen since the Olympics!), I went to Thanksgiving Eve worship this evening.  Given how my Sunday went (nearly collapsing about one verse into the first hymn…), I felt like I hadn’t actually been to church this week.  So I was especially glad to get a “re-do” this evening, to get a hug from my pastor (who has been sending hugs and prayers by e-mail all week), and to just have a normal worship experience.  I was certainly grateful to be there.  And I even got to the grocery store afterwards, which is my usual Sunday pattern.

So if today was Sunday (revisited), perhaps tomorrow could be Monday and I’d get to my meetings at school!  No?

A quiet internet

The internet is sooooo quiet this week.  What’s up with that?  Is everyone sick?  Just busy?  Traveling?  Tired of the internet?  I heard that “real life” is The Next Big Thing!

I made it to school for a couple of hours today.  Still not feeling up to par, but I was glad to do something normal for part of the day at least.  I’m on break now so I don’t have to worry about going anywhere tomorrow.

Worse, not better

I woke up this morning feeling worse than I did yesterday, and it was a little clearer today that I may have an infection that triggered my hydration disorder to spin out of control.  So I’m on some additional meds, and I’ll touch base with my doctor again tomorrow.

I’m missing the last dance class of this session tonight. 

From church to ER

My day started totally normally, and then I had a bad episode with my health at church, and ended up in ER!  I’m OK.  My hydration disorder just decided to act especially weird, from what the docs could tell.  So, I’ll lay low tomorrow and hopefully be able to get to class on Tuesday.  Crazy day.

A “No Highlighter” Day

I didn’t do any school work yesterday!  We didn’t have our Friday seminar at school, and my advisor is off at a conference so we didn’t have a research meeting.  So, I did not step foot on campus or do any reading or homework, and I didn’t pick up a highlighter at all, which is only the second day since August that I haven’t used a highlighter!  I even avoided reading e-mail from my school account until quite late in the day (and was glad that the most important e-mail I had received was from a classmate wanting to have a party at the end of the semester to celebrate our survival!).

I spent much of the afternoon yesterday visiting my old teaching colleagues, some of whom had also been my professors once upon a time (and they are especially pleased that I feel so well-prepared for my current program).  It was just wonderful to visit them.  I miss them, and I miss their general attitude about teaching and life.  They are much more student-centered than research-centered, and so the conversations are more practical and people-oriented than the things we often talk about in my program at school.  As much as I value research, my perfect balance would be 1/3 research and 2/3 teaching.  I like to talk about classroom activities and students and projects.  So, it was a super day, and it felt like going home to visit these old colleagues and profs.

Friday Firsts: First Big Purchase

Given that I’ve spent more money on cameras in my lifetime than on vehicles, it should be no surprise that what I would consider to be my first big purchase was when I bought a top-of-the-line film SLR camera back in 1997.

 

I had two SLR cameras that I bought when I was in high school — both were mid-level cameras with some nice features, but they did not hold up for me.  I am hard on cameras, there’s no question about that.  When I shoot events, I take a lot of pictures and I expect the camera to keep up with me.  In 1997, I still had those two cameras, and I had two cousin’s weddings to shoot.  One camera died at the first wedding (ugh!), and I couldn’t use all of my lenses with the older camera, so I shot Amie’s wedding with an old camera and one lens — a standard 50mm lens, no zoom, no nothing.  By that point, my flash was dying too.  It’s a wonder those pictures came out at all!

 

When I got home from that trip, I went to my favorite camera place and asked my buddy there what he would recommend.  He put a couple of mid-level cameras in my hands, and they seemed OK.  Then, he took a Canon 1N off the shelf and said, “Or, if you want to move up, this is a great camera.”  As soon as I held it, I was in love!  The camera was so much sturdier and more durable than my other cameras.  It was made for pros who shot thousands upon thousands of pictures.  When I hit the button to take a picture, it sounded like a real camera!  At that point, my intention was to pursue photography as a career, so it made sense to get the best camera that I could.  But, I wasn’t working and my health was only just starting to stabilize, and buying this camera and one zoom lens and a flash would run over $2,000.  Sigh.  I thought about it for a little while and, in somewhat uncharacteristic fashion for me, I decided to go for it!  It cost more than my first car, and more than I had ever spent on anything to that point (and is still my second-largest single purchase to date!).

 

That camera served me incredibly well for eleven years, so it was well worth the investment.  And I’m still using the lens and flash with my new digital SLR.  I’ve shot at least a dozen weddings, countless babies, graduations, birthday parties, and reunions.  I shot 20+ house dedications as the volunteer photog for Habitat for Humanity.  I served as photographer for a local children’s museum for about 18 months.  I’ve shot events at school and work.  The camera has been on many trips.  And other than slowing down a bit, it is still functional.  It was certainly one of the best purchases that I ever made, and it still makes me smile to think back to the day I felt like I took a giant leap to buy it!