Leo woke me up¹ mid-dream this morning, so I remembered bits of the dream when I awoke. I was in an art room (like none I’ve been in before, but I *knew* it was an art room) and a group of us are working on a project and talking. The people are folks my age and some of my students. We’re talking about Christmas movies and one of my students talks about the song “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing” from White Christmas. Before I’m able to contribute the trivia regarding White Christmas being one of the first movies to be filmed in VistaVision, someone else tells about it. So then I talk about my most favorite Christmas movie, Miracle on 34th Street. I inform the folks in my dream that it was released in July and the trailer said *nothing* about it being a Christmas movie². But then I woke up before our conversation could continue.

So, having dreamt about Miracle on 34th Street, I decided to watch it tonight. And I enjoyed it as much as always (which is very much). It’s my ideal Christmas movie. Tomorrow, I’ll probably pick another Christmas movie from my DVD collection to watch. (Yeah, I turn into an Elf this time of year. My family’s pretty used to it by now. Thankfully, I have a kindred soul in judiang!) Since I’ve recently finished watching all of my DVDs of The Muppet Show, I’ll probably watch one of the three Muppet Christmas DVDs that I have.

1. Alas, he woke me up with the sounds of “impending yakking.” Since he was laying right beside me on the bed, I pushed him onto the floor so he could yak on the rug instead. Joy joy.
2. This is true, BTW. There are times when I dream facts. Very worrying, if you ask me!

Today, dad and I went to the SOITA Technology Conference at the Dayton Convention Center. We went last year, and I talked about it here. And this year, I took one of the workshops which last 2 sessions. It was over Pinnacle Studios 9. Since we purchased that for our Newton News crew when we got them a new computer, I thought I should take a peek at the program. Seems like a fun program for editing video. The one question that I really hoped the workshop presenter would be able to answer managed to stump him. That has to do with my video/audio synch problem which I have when encoding DVD videos through Nero. Maybe once I get the Newton News computer done, I’ll try encoding one of the videos and see. (I fear that it’s my processor speed. I wasn’t planning to upgrade soon.)

The first session was over Macromedia Captivate and another program whose name eludes me at the moment. Captivate and this other program do video captures of your actions on the screen, which is great for making short computer tutorials for online use. It’s a cool thing, but since I don’t even have our website done, it’s not anything we need yet.

The Pinnacle workshop was next followed by lunch. They treat the techs well by having a sit-down dinner starting with salad and rolls, then some sort of baked chicken dish with roasted potatoes & steamed veggies. Finally there was a choice of chocolate or lemon cake. (I went with chocolate.) Apparently for the teachers & administrators who come the next two days, they have a buffet. I like our sit-down dinner. Unfortunately we have to listen to the keynote speaker when we’re done. Last year, it was fun. The lady there showed us cool gadgets. This year, it was some Microsoft Monkey (who sounded *just* like Alan Alda, it was spooky!) telling us how Microsoft has the same goals as we do. Yeah, I wanna be a billionaire and take over the world, too!

The afternoon sessions were pretty bleak (two were by other Microsoft Monkeys, so I said “no” to those). I ended up going to Fortres Grand‘s session on their products. And I’m glad I went. (Most of the Miami County techs who were at SOITA also attended this session). Fortres has a new program out that will help with software & hardware inventory. Since it’s the same cost as Clean Slate, it’s a bargain. The only thing we don’t know about is if it works with NT4. If it does, we’ll probably get it.

One of our complaints the past couple of years at the SOITA conference has been that they don’t have the vendors until the next two days. Well, this year they decided to have a Vendor Sneek-A-Peek at 3:30pm (lasting about an hour). Most of the vendors were set up (or nearly so) and dad and I got to talk to most of ’em. We weren’t sure we could do the room in an hour, but we managed it. And got some new ideas and some freebies. So, YAY to SOITA for making headway here. (Unfortunately, the WorldWise company was back, selling crap software for $10 a CD. ARGH! Those poor unsuspecting teachers are REALLY gonna be screwed when they buy that crap and find out it won’t work on their computers cuz it’s too damn old!!!! I mean, that stuff doesn’t work on our machines and we’re still using Windows 98SE!!!)

All in all, a fun tech day. I hope that my students didn’t kill the sub today and vice versa. Guess I’ll find out tomorrow. 🙂

Leo and I began decorating the house for Christmas yesterday, but today we did a lot more (and are, pretty much, finished now). Yesterday I needed to purchase some things, so that took up a bit of my decorating time. I had lunch at the Night Sky Cafe (1/2 of a reuben & a cup of cheesy broccoli soup), which I followed with an egg nog steamer (anyone surprised?) After my shopping was done, Leo and I did some cleaning up and got out all of the decorations and stuff. But at 6pm, I headed out with the folks to see the Cincinnati Men’s Chorus in concert at St. John’s UCC in Dayton. I wrote about this gay men’s chorus last year, so you can read up on them there.

One of the cutest things they did was during their opening number “Winter Wonderland.” For those of you unfamiliar with the tune, there’s a bit which goes:

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Parson Brown
He’ll say “Are you married?”
We’ll say “No man,
But you can do the job when you’re in town.”

When the guys sang it the second time around, they replaced “town” with “Massachusetts.” Got quite a laugh from the crowd. 🙂

So today, Leo and I decorated in earnest. And of course, I took photos to document our progress.

Leo helps get out the boxes from the basement.

Now to put the tablecloth on the dining room table.

Patting down the runner on the table.

The table is now done. Notice the bare bit to the left. Leo insisted I leave that free so that he could lay there.

Leo let me decorate the exterior myself. You can’t really tell, but I’ve got those tube-lights on the fake pine boughs in the window box. Looks cool in the dark.

Leo gets the last of the stuff out from the box.

Time to make sure the tree tastes OK.

Leo rests after the hard work of decorating the tree.

Leo is still sitting underneath the tree. I think he really likes that tree skirt.

As gregmce and warinbabylon have mentioned in their journal entries today, it is World AIDS Day.

Back when my mother was in college to train at being a Microbiologist, she first learned about AIDS. She came home to dad and said “I just learned about the scariest disease ever!” And dad’s comment was, “Oh yeah, I’ve been reading about that in the journals for the past few years.”

Well, we’ve come a long way from a disease that’s only known about in the science journals to a disease that pretty much everyone has heard of. But there’s still no cure for AIDS. No vaccine. And still, not enough known about the disease. Awareness is a start, but we’ve got a long way to go in the study and research for AIDS and HIV. It’s good that we have days like today to help bring that fact to light.

In a more amusing turn, I’ll tell you a story about the time I taught communicable diseases to the 4th & 5th grade. Dad told me about an activity that he used to do with his biology students (and I don’t teach biology, so I didn’t have activities like this one to hand). Each student has a test tube with a clear liquid in it. They each have an eyedropper. They are allowed to “trade fluids” with their friends. Each basically takes a dropperful of liquid from their friend’s test tube and puts it in their own.

After a few minutes of trading fluids, I pick one student at random and say that we need to have a random fluid check. I add a bit of another colorless fluid. And every time that I did this, the test tube fluid turned pink. “Oh no!” I said. “You’ve tested positive for ‘HIV’. Who have you traded fluids with recently – we need to check them as well!” Now the student needs to remember who all he/she traded fluids with. We call the students forward and inform them that their friend has tested positive and we should probably check them as well. Sure enough, this student is pink as well.

Eventually, we test all of the students and usually they’re mostly all pink with a few non-pink ones. That’s when I’ll admit who the first student with “HIV” actually was. And usually the ones who tested negative are furthest from this person. But the students realize that many kids get “HIV” without actually ever sharing fluids with the first person. And that’s the real eye-opener of this activity.

In one 5th grade class that I did this in, I had only one student who tested negative. Apparently when he got home from school, he bragged to his mom that he was the only kid in his class that didn’t have AIDS. He went on to explain the activity to his mom, who is the high school secretary. She said she had to laugh when her son told her that – after the initial shock.

To do this lab, you start with all but one of the test tubes containing water. And in the remaining test tube, put a very dilute solution of a base like sodium hydroxide. (I had my students wear their lab goggles for this lab and anyone who got liquid on their hands had to wash it off, regardless of which test tube he/she had.) The liquid that you use to test for “HIV”? The chemists in the group are saying “phenolphthalein.” They’re right. 🙂

I won’t have those students again for another couple of years yet, but I’d be interested to see if any of them remember the unit they did on communicable diseases. It was certainly memorable for me!