Tuesday, 25 December 2012

Well…Xmas started off pretty good this morning. The kids opened their gifts, and Jennifer and I each got a gift from Owen (scarf and hot chocolate mix for mama, Star Trek glasses for me). Owen ran around the house looking for clues to uncover the Wii, which was ultimately hiding in the coat closet in the foyer.

No sooner did we rip open all the packaging, however, than we noticed Isla was sick. Jennifer took her temperature, and got a reading of 102 (relax, it was Fahrenheit, not Celcius). So, Jennifer volunteered to stay home wiht Isla.

I felt really bad about this, and even offered to stay home instead, but Jennifer pointed out that Isla would probably want to nurse a few times. And I left Thanksgiving early when Isla was sick for that holiday.

So I showed up at Jennifer’s family’s holiday party – I brought the food Jennifer prepared, and I added the wrapped gifts to the appropriate piles for the dice game.

During the dice game, I decided I would keep two or three gifts unopened and just bring them home to Jennifer so she could have the fun of unwrapping something totally unexpected. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very lucky, and only scored three games during the regular play. For the second phase, I was able to steal two more gifts and no one stole any of mine, so I was left with five gifts. I unwrapped three of them, and decided to keep the other two to bring home.

Here’s a funny thing: After a few people had left, Jennifer’s aunt wondered aloud what happened to the purple scarf she had wrapped up. The green scarf went to one of her niece’s, but she didn’t know who got the other one. She even called her other niece (who had just left) to see if she got it. I thought maybe one of my unopened gifts were the scarf, but she said no, those weren’t from her.

Once Owen and I got home, we discovered Owen had scored the scarf. I hadn’t realized this because I won a can of poppycock and, when Owen brought over his gifts to me, I saw he had won a can of the same stuff. Wrong. While my can was, indeed filled with poppycock, Owen’s had the scarf in it. So, if any one in the family is reading this…Owen got the scarf.

Jennifer got to open her two mystery gifts this evening. One gift was a box of Starburst candies, and the other was a wrought iron star with a hook hanging below it (for hanging a coat, or something). Jennifer said it would be good for the mud room. So, her two mystery gifts turned out to be successes. Both her aunt and her grandma, feeling bad that Jennifer wasn’t there to party with the rst of us, also gave Jennifer a couple of gifts, so she got some other stuff, too. 

If you want to read something super funny, it turns out Jennifer’s not the only one who had a lousy Xmas.

Sunday, 23 December 2012

Despite my strong desire not to, we had to pay a visit to the local Target this afternoon.

The first thing I tried to do there was have some prints made of our holiday card. Generally, I think of Target’s photography department as a place where good pictures go to die…but we had stopped at ProEx just minutes earlier, and they were closed. For good.

So I went up to the self-service kiosk and, after waiting about ten minutes for it to become available, I ordered my prints. When I was done, a receipt spit out telling me my total. I then noticed that nowhere at any time was I asked if I wanted glossy or matte. So I muscled my way through the crowd and got the attention of the kid working behind the desk.

ME: Hey, I don’t see on here if I’m getting matte or glossy.

HE: Well we can only do glossy on this machine.

ME: Well I want matte.

HE: Yeah, we can only do glossy on this machine.

ME: Well can you do matte on any other machine?

HE: Yes, if you order from that computer right there.

ME: That’s the computer I was just using. It never asked if I wanted glossy or matte.

HE: You need to select “Prints in Minutes” to get matte.

ME: Oh, well you should make that more obvious. Well, can you just make mine matte for me?

HE: Uh…well we’d have to go back over to that machine and cancel your order and then resubmit it. But you’ll have to wait for the others to be done.

ME: But there’s, like, four other people in line now.

HE: Yeah.

ME (dropping the receipt on the counter): Forget it. I’ll go somewhere else.

Monday, 24 December 2012

Today we spent all day getting ready for the remainder of our Xmas celebrations. Jennifer prepared all sorts of tasty dishes, and I kept up with the dishes for her while she did that. We kept stealing time to finish wrapping presents in our basement. I love it when our house is abuzz with activity, and we were plenty busy all day.

In the evening, we went to Jennifer’s sister’s house for our family Christmas party. My kids swapped gifts with their cousins, and they recieved gifts from their grandparents and great-grandma. I even got a few gifts: a card game and two books!

When we arrived back home tonight, I brought the gifts upstairs and Jennifer arranged them nicely under the tree. She put a few small gifts in our stockings, too. I found time to complete the wood robot, so I stuck a bow on his head and propped him up on a cabinet in our living room. We decided that it would be fun if Owen had to search around the house for his big gift (a Wii), so I wrote out a series of seven cards, and placed them around the house. One, for example, said, “Where do we keep Isla’s bibs?” and then he’ll have to go look in that drawer and there’ll be another card saying, “Where do we take baths?” and then he’ll have to run upstairs and look in the tub. Hopefully he’ll think it’s fun, but you never know with kids.

Thursday, 20 December 2012

Today my department at work held their annual holiday party. I got to leave work early and I drove over to a nearby restaurant. We held a gift exchange. Or maybe it’s more of a gift grab, since we all picked numbers and then selected gifts based on our number.

 I arrived with a gift in much the same fashion as last year. Last year, I checked out Google Images until I found a Barnes and Noble coupon and, finding a 30% off coupon, I went and purchased something. The price limit on the gifts is $15, but with a good discount like that, I selected something that sold for $20, but paid less than $15. They also had free gift wrapping there, too.

So…same thing this year. Only I couldn’t find a 30% off coupon, just a 25% off coupon. But that worked out fine.

I left with a gift card to Best Buy (the gift I selected) and a bottle of fancy-schmancy beer provided by my boss. A really big bottle – like the size of a wine bottle.

Today I actually scored two bottles of beer – having earlier been given a bottle of homemade “Apocalypse Ale” from a co-worker – and two gift cards, having finally received my Amazon.com gift card for winning a writing contest at Hamline back in September.

Friday, 21 December 2012

 Happy Solstice! And…surprise…the world didn’t end.

(People have been talking about the coming apocalypse today, but it didn’t happen.)

I think it’s funny that most people go through the day without acknowledging, or maybe even knowing, that it’s the winter solstice, especially since it’s truly the reason for the season. I didn’t hear anyone mention it at work, unless I said something first. I wished a few people “Happy Solstice,” and they gave me that “you’re a weirdo” look. I get that a lot.

It’s better to call it the December Solstice, or Southern Solstice, than to say “Winter Solstice” (like I did, above), since it’s not winter in the southern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere’s Winter Solstice is six months from now.

Here’s an article about all the holidays celebrated on the shortest day of the year, regarless of whether they’re celebrated now or six months from now.

And here’s the latest episode of Atheists Talk that I hosted: “Vegans, Vegetarians, and Atheists.”

If you want something a little lighter to watch…check out Isla singing with her cousin a couple of weeks ago…

Saturday, 22 December 2012

 Today is my first of eleven consecutive days of no work.

I bottled some home-brewed beer this morning. I wanted to have it ready in time for Christmas and…well…it won’t be. But I’m still gonna wrap up a few of them and include the min the dice game we play with Jennifer’s family on Christmas Day. I’ll just have to include a note with them that says something like, “Don’t drink or refrigerate until January 10th (or after).”

I’m also slowly making progress on a wood robot. I’ll post about it later this month, if, indeed, I do have it done by Christmas Day…which is the renewed goal I’ve set for myself.

Our holiday festivities today featured my sister and her husband coming over to our house. We walked to a nearby restaurant that we like and then they came back to our house and we swapped gifts. They had gifts for our kids – including shoes for Isla that she immediately put on and wanted to wear even tonight as she was falling asleep – and a helicopter that really flies for Owen. We gave them some gifts for their dogs. And a home-brewed beer. Not for their dogs.

Wednesday, 19 December 2012
My holiday break began at approximately 12:30 this afternoon. Yes, yes, I still had to finish work today, and there are still two more days of work to go this week, but the tough stuff is all over.

As I mentioned in my last post (see: Last Post), school is done for the semester as of yesterday.  But, as of early this afternoon, I also completed one of the toughest speeches I had to deliver in Toastmasters.

After completing the Competant Communicator book back in May, I needed to select two books from the Advanced Communicator series. One of the books I chose was Interpretive Reading. My hope was that this book would make me a better public reader (which I have done with increasing frequency lately, having had my writing published in a couple of books). But I also figured it would be an easy book to get through, since I wouldn’t have to write any speeches, I would just have to read stuff. And easy is good, since I’m often busy with homework these days.

Well, it started off easy enough; I just had to read a short story. Then there was a poetry reading, which I managed well enough. Well, for speech #3 in the book, I had to recite a monologue.

Okay, first: Recite? Yikes. I can’t memorize entire monologues!

And, second: Monologue? What was I supposed to do, find a Saturday Night Live bit I liked and memorize that? The assignment did say that I could use a stirring speech, but assignment #5 is a recitation of a speech, and I didn’t want to duplicate.

Well… I ended up choosing a speech anyway. I couldn’t find any monologues I liked, so, after posting for suggestions on Facebook, one of my friends suggested Chaplin’s closing speech from his 1940 film The Great Dictator. I actually found this movie kind of boring and overwrought, but the closing speech is among the best five minutes in the history of cinema.

So, after introducing the speech – by drawing attention to Chaplin’s reluctance to move from silent film to talkie, and his desire to draw attention to the plight of citizens in Germany – I recited this:

Tuesday, 18 December 2012

I turned in my final paper for class this afternoon. I went to the professor’s office, knocked and, when there was no answer, I slip the paper underneath the door. I’m done with school for the semester. Another four credits in the can – a total of 12 credits for the year. Yay for me. Oh, also: beginning next semester I will officially be a senior. And, at my age, that’s starting to feel about right.

I’ve alluded to this in other posts, but now I’m gonna talk about it more… I am dumbfounded at the lack of effort other students put into their work. Last week, we had to deliver panel presentations on our final paper. At least one student didn’t show up. Either day. So she got a zero. And since you can’t pass that class without doing every assignment, I’m not even sure she’ll get credit for the class, even if she aced everything else.

The presentations were to last 8-10 minutes, and at least three of them were under 5 minutes. One of them was closer to 3 minutes, I’d guess. Each panel was supposed to have a leader who provided an introduction and tied the presentations together in a theme. At least two of the four panelists didn’t seem to know this, as they both kicked off their panels by saying “Well, I didn’t know we were supposed to give an intro…so…I’ll just start, I guess…and then we’ll go from there.” As for the presentations themselves, a few of the students verbalized their scatter-brained approach to the assignment, flipping through their papers willy-nilly and assenting that they only had a rough idea of what their final paper would be about. This, I remind you, was several days after our rough drafts were due. And, even on that day, only about a quarter of the students turned in anything.

It occured to me that this didn’t happen when I was at Century College.

Well, okay, it happened, it just didn’t happen as regularly. In every class, there was always a student here or there who griped that they didn’t have time to finish an assignment or who showed up on test day completely clueless that there was a test scheduled. But, for the most part, the students I worked with took the assignments seriously, and were prepared for class. I graduated from Century with a 4.0 GPA, but in every class I took, there were always other students who received A’s, too. In fact, when I look back at several classes, I know that I was not the highest scorer. In a biology class I took, the teacher told us the high score for every test (“Someone scored 48 out of 50!”) and only once was the high score mine. Another time, a student whined that he didn’t think anyone in the class could possibly get an A, and the teacher divulged that a few students were, in fact, exceeding 100% at the moment. In another class, I ended up with a 91% (just barely an A), while the students who sat to my left and right both said they were doing better.

So, what’s the deal? Was Century easier and, therefore, easier to score A’s, and easier to get the work done on time?

From what I’ve seen…no. If I was to list the college classes I’ve taken from most difficult to easiest, the top five would consist of four classes from Century, and only one from Hamline. Of course, I took ~20 classes at Century, and have only completed 7 at Hamline (this includes the so-easy-I-didn’t-even-know-it-happened internship)…but, still. Maybe English is easier than Chemistry (yep) and maybe Chemistry majors are more diligent and nerdy than their English counterparts (again, yep). And maybe Chemistry is just more interesting than English (oh my god, yep!).

But here’s another thought: Maybe, just maybe, getting a degree from Hamline – even if you recieved all D’s – is more prestigious than a degree from Century – even if you received all A’s.

Century was populated with students who were gunning for that certification, award, or Associate’s degree that they’d need to get a better job. Many of them were adults who were already in the job market, and either didn’t like their job, or wanted to get an even better job. That described me. I worked in retail: shitty hours, incompetent managers, lousy dress code, mediocre pay, and – worst of all – dealing with the public. I yearned for the opportunity to use my brain at work, to be managed by and work alongside non-idiots, to have better pay, better hours, to not have to dress like a stooge every day, and to not have to deal with other people as much. I knew that, one day, I would show up for a job interview, and my Associate’s degree would be pitted against someone’s Bachelor’s, and I wanted to be able to say, “Yes, it’s justa two-year degree, but – goddammit -I paid for it myself and I kicked ass. Notice I graduated with high honors!”

And I had to hope that that would work, because the next candidate would walk in and say, “Yeah, my GPA was 2.3, and I missed four or five classes every semester, and I turned in half-assed work, if I turned it in at all. But notice I graduated from Hamline!”