Drama

When I was in elementary school, I was involved in a few plays and musicals.  I was the narrator for “Snow White.”  I was a Lost Boy in “Peter Pan”, and the Crown Prince in “The King and I” (we didn’t have enough boys, and I had short hair, so…).  Despite being an introvert, I absolutely loved being in plays — from the audition to rehearsal to helping with set design to opening night.  It was all awesome!  I didn’t do drama later in school though, and I didn’t have a particular reason — it just seemed to fall off my radar as one of my great loves.

So, I have had it in the back of my head that I’d like to do community theater sometime, but it’s been so long since I did anything like theater that I wasn’t sure where to start.  Well, it turns out that I’m not taking any dance classes over the summer (my teacher is leaving — boohoo!), so I was looking into other classes today and found the perfect drama class to get me back into things!  It doesn’t start for another month, but I want to go NOW! 

Catch up, anyone?

May has felt unbelievably long.  I swear the beginning of May was like three years ago!  And April?  Pfft, that was last century, right?!

I think I’ve finally adjusted back to life as a regular person who doesn’t read 1200 pages every weekend and doesn’t have to take a stance on every little thing!  It’s awesome to be back in the classroom teaching.  I’ve had some normal conversations with people this week, including lunch and dinner with friends today (I have something resembling a social life these days!).  I got DVDs from the library last weekend, and I’ll pick up another one (“Doubt”) tomorrow.  I got some new toys!  I held a newborn and blew bubbles with an almost 4 year old last weekend.  I will go see the new Pixar movie “Up” at some point (not the 3D version though because 3D honestly weirds me out!).  June will include attending a pre-wedding party, at least one birthday party, and lunches with colleagues.

Hello life, it’s nice to see you again. 

Teaching Thursdays #87

Our semester is half over already!  The first three weeks were super.  And then…we hit the hard stuff this week.  Rational functions.  *screams!*  With great fear and trepidation, we learned how to add rational functions and how to solve equations involving rational expressions (which are extra tricky because you can do the algebra all right and still get answers that don’t actually work, as though math wasn’t tricky enough already!).  And today we did story problems with this type of setup:

Mary can paint the room in 7 hours, and Casey can paint it in 9 hours.  If they work together, how long will it take them to paint the room?

That may seem like a straight-forward enough problem but the math equations that are required to solve it are so non-intuitive.  And teaching non-intuitive math to students who kind of struggle with math anyway is a big challenge.  So we had a bumpy week.  I’m hoping all of us feel like things smooth out next week.

Baby #3 of 5!

The third 2009 baby in my family has arrived!  Madeline Mae was born late last night in California.  All is well, and my aunt has promised to e-mail us pictures of her new granddaughter later today.  We can’t wait!

And now, I’d like to borrow technology from Star Trek to beam me up to California please!

Baby Ben

I met baby Ben today!  My Mom and I were at the hospital when he was having his official measurements and footprints done.  Many great photo opportunities!  He is precious, and baby and parents are doing well and going home tomorrow.

Baby #2 of 5

It’s a boy!  Benjamin Daniel!

Coming into 2009, I had five pregnant cousins.  The first two have had boys (Christian and Benjamin), and the rest are all girls.  Baby #3 should be arriving very soon!

13,001

A quick tidbit:  One of my teaching colleagues sent me a link for the Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine (tailor made for a math geek, yes?).  It has a lot of cool features way beyond doing funny things with dates, but I was most intrigued by the date calculator, which informed me that I was 13,000 days old yesterday!  And today?  13,001.

Let’s play a game

We’re still waiting for babies — first labors are apparently on again, off again, and contractions stopped, and well, the babies are happy where they are for now!

One of these babies will be a girl, and we know the name.  The other is a mystery.  So while we wait, would you like to guess if it will be a boy or girl?  You could also guess a name if you wish (that’s my favorite part!).  I don’t have any idea what names they are thinking, but their last name is very long so that may be a factor.

So, guess away, please!

Two in labor!

My cousins who are expecting babies this month are BOTH now in labor!  This is entirely too much fun (for those of us not doing the laboring, that is!).

Oh, happy day

It’s been an exciting Monday so far.  Imagine that, a Monday being exciting!  *giggles*

Two of my cousins are expecting babies this month, and one of them is finally having contractions this morning!  *happy dance* Go babies, go babies.  I can’t wait for the big news.

And my friend Jenn is engaged!  She and her fiance have bought a house too.  So her life is growing in wonderful and huge ways!

Anyone else got big, good news today?  You could join the celebration!

My news of the day (so far…) is that I’ll finally be starting thyroid meds soon.  Oh, and my students did well on their first exam, and tonight I’ll be dancing!