I’m sure folks are busy designing their lovely Jack-O’-Lanterns for me (heh), but I thought I should warn everyone there’s less than 24 hours to go. Tomorrow morning I’ll be posting the entries for voting. dark_pheonix has designed some real fun ones, so there will definitely be something to vote on. Hope to see some more designs as well.
Good luck in your designing and may the best pumpkin win! 😉
I have purchased my pumpkin for this year’s Halloween Jack-O’-Lantern, but I was lost of ideas on its design. So I had this inspired idea – why not let my friends design it? I have many talented artists on my friend’s lists, and even not-so-good artists can design a decent Jack-O’-Lantern (witness my previous ones, for instance). I apologize that I haven’t given you much time for designing it. Rather than having Beggar’s Night (AKA Trick or Treat) on Oct 31st like any sensible town would, my town (indeed, most of the county towns) has Beggar’s Night another night. And for us, this year, it’s Thursday. In order to have my friends’ list vote on the entries, all entries will need to be in by Wednesday. And Thursday after school, I’ll see who won & carve my pumpkin to the best of my ability. Disclaimer: My carving skills are not all that honed, so the resulting Jack-O’-Lantern may have only a passing resemblance to the original design! But I’ll do my best to do it justice.
So, onto the contest rules:
This is the pumpkin to be carved. Design away!
You’re welcome to contribute more than one entry if you wish. If you have kids who want to do the design, that’s OK too. I’m looking forward to the designs you folks will come up with!
Oddly enough, the worst day of my recovery so far was yesterday. Yesterday morning I took my last Vicodin, but I’m not sure that it was working anymore for me anyhoo. So I switched to Ibuprofen (with Acetaminophen on the off hours if the pain is still there) when I take my Amoxicillin. Still, I had many moments of pain – like having overly sensitive teeth. I even pondered going home from school early. I ended up not doing that, but my afternoon was not as productive as it could have been.
Today, the pain wasn’t as much, which is nice. However, there was some time when one of my sutures came unraveled enough to get caught between my back molars. Very annoying. Either it’s finally broken off or dissolved, but the annoying thread is finally gone.
In the non-teeth front, my physics students had their egg drop contest today. They came up with some clever platforms upon which to drop naked eggs. There were two in particular which had some great physics in their design. All but 3 groups managed to survive the drop from the 3rd floor, which is very good. (We drop from 1 meter, second floor, and third floor. They get full points for the egg surviving each drop.) The winner of the contest had a platform that was only 16cm off of the ground. Pretty impressive!
The egg drop contest is the first of four engineering projects that my students do during the course of the school year. Next up (probably next week) is the Comeback Cans. Then we have the two bigger projects, both worth test grades. The catapult contest and the toothpick bridge contest.
What I’d like to do some year is create a few more engineering projects for later in the school year. After the toothpick bridges, we’re out of mechanics (it’s in the unit with scaling) so any further engineering projects would need to be wave-based.
BTW, the prize for this first contest was a pair of Sonic Sound Sizzlers (yeah, a bit repetitive for that title). It’s a pair of strong magnets in oblong shapes that, when thrown so they connect in the air, will make a fun sizzling sound. I love it when Walmart has cheap-o physics toys on sale!
Anyhoo. here’s hoping yesterday was the worst of it and everything is downhill from now on. I miss having crunchy foods! (I ate some peanut butter today because I’ve missed nuts.)
I’ve been doing very well in the wisdom tooth extraction recovery. Yesterday, in fact, I went shopping with the parental units! I bought a pair of new shoes (Land’s End from Sears) and pre-ordered City of Villains. judiang and I have been playing the beta of CoV and have been enjoying our bad selves. 🙂 So I decided, what the hell… Alas, I can’t even blame being on Vicodin for the purchase because it was almost time to retake the medication. 🙂
So last night, I even ate real food. Sort of. We stopped at Bob Evans for supper and I ordered chicken noodles and mashed taters. I asked the waitress if she could pick out the chicken and stick with mostly noodles & broth. She was very kind and did a good job at that. It was nice to eat something other than Slim Fast shakes. I ate so slow that even dad was done before me. And then for dessert, I got a chocolate fudge sundae. That was mighty fine ice cream! Mom and dad had a few bites too. But the cool ice cream on the gums was a pleasure. Of course, I had to top that lovely meal off by doing my warm salt water rinse in the bathroom. Bleh.
After my exciting day yesterday (heh – well, that shopping experience and a walk to the post office were my only adventurous events of the day – I watched more DVDs the rest of the time) I took it real easy today. I watched The Revenger’s Tragedy (the sixth of my six DVD rental) and listened to my new Doctor Who audios. And watched The Cat Came Back, a DVD I’ve had but hadn’t yet watched. I still have part 4 of LIVE 34, the latest Doc7 audio from Big Fish, to finish. And I’ll probably watch Iron Chef America. But I’m done for the day as far as activity is concerned. 🙂
Oh, supper tonight was Mrs. Grass’s noodle soup with lots of soda crackers soaked in it. I also had two bananas during the course of the day, and lunch saw me added some grits to the diet. (And the grits inspired me to my first bout of flossing since surgery.) OK, I think I’m starting to make less sense. Amazing, for all the rest I had today, I’m awfully sleepy. Since I’m going to work tomorrow, I’ll head to bed early. Hopefully I can get through the day OK tomorrow. I think I will.
Thanks to all for their kind & supporting comments on my last post re: wisdom teeth extraction.
The teeth are out. The gauze is being replaced every 15 minutes (or whenever I wake up). The Vicodin & Amoxacillin were taken at 3pm. I have a dull throb of pain, but nothing horrible. And I’ve slept through two movies so far. 🙂
Alfie, with Jude Law, I only rented for the eye candy. I missed most of the beginning but saw the end. Mmmmm, Jude Law. That’s all I wanted from that flick.
Team America, World Police. Ah, if only I’d been asleep during the big vomit scene. Still, the bits I saw were silly, violent, and fun.
I’ll go put on another flick & drift in and out of sleep again. They’re helping me sleep, which is good. And if I find any that I think I’d like to see again, well I have ’em until Tuesday!
Tomorrow (or rather, later this morning) I shall be knocked out for the first time in my life. Well, there was the time I slipped & fell on the ice & hit my head – I think I was unconscious for a few seconds. But, no, I’m talking about having a general anesthetic. Yes, tomorrow is my wisdom teeth surgery.
So at 9am EDT October 14th, I shall be arriving at Dr. Kim’s office in Troy and they’ll put me under & pull out the top two teeth and saw thru the bottom two & pull them out in two pieces each. Bleh. Tonight, I ate my last meal before 7pm and I am not allowed anything to drink now that it’s after midnight. I bought some slim fast drink mixes, made ice, and have a fresh gallon of milk, so I’m going for the sippable suppers for the rest of the weekend. (I also have pudding & Jell-o for variety. The cashews will have to wait!)
I picked up 6 DVDs at the rental place for watching (or sleeping through) this weekend. I miss the days of $.99 DVDs at the local Hollywood Video. Rather than costing me $6, they cost me $24. This, and the fact that I still haven’t seen all of the DVDs that I own, is the reason I don’t usually rent DVDs.
Since I don’t actually think in the morning, I also purchased some masking tape (purple, of course) so that I can tape my fridge shut & tape my faucets shut too. This will remind me not to drink anything. Providing Leo doesn’t remove the tape, I’ll remember in the morning not to drink anything.
So, anyhoo, if you can think of poor (scared) Trina in the morning, do so. I do good at avoiding the whole surgery thing, but every once in awhile, it happens. Bleh.
Still, I shall leave you all with one of my favorite sketches from Laugh In. (From memory – no idea if the words are perfectly correct.)
A woman is talking with a doctor. “I’m afraid this is difficult for me to say…” he tells her.
“It’s OK, I can take it, Doc.”
“I’m going to have to perform emergery surgery. Um, emergency surgency. I’m going to have to perform emergency surgery. See, I told you it was hard for me to say…”
I’m a slave to pattern, so I have to have a post tonight. But I don’t have anything to write about. So…. Maybe I’ll have something to write on the 14th.
Oh, I suppose I can wish Granny a happy 85th birthday for tomorrow. Except that I already wished it yesterday at her birthday party. And she doesn’t read my journal, anyhoo. (I still haven’t gotten her a birthday gift. Suppose I can find a book for her – hoping she hasn’t already read it. 🙂
I live in a rural community. Our school still has an agricultural science program (now run though the local Joint Vocational School) and FFA (Future Farmers’ Association). So when October comes, our school puts on the Fall Fair. The FCCLA (what used to be Future Homemakers of America) works with the FFA to put on the do. The band performs their marching band program (senior night for marching band, even). We don’t have football, so Fall Fair is our big event while other schools are having their various Homecomings. (Our Homecoming is in December, during basketball season.)
Friday night was Fall Fair. I arrived shortly before the event commonly called the Farm Olympics. AKA the Class Challenge. Each high school grade sends a team of 8 students, 4 males, 4 females, to compete in 8 silly competitions. This year, all of the teams had matching t-shirts of some sort. The juniors and the sophomores actually had shirts printed that were quite cute. The juniors went with green with pink writing. The sophomores, black shirts with white print. The seniors and freshman hand-did their shirts. I loved the seniors’ slogan: If it’s rigged, we will win!
Since I teach juniors & seniors, I rooted for their teams. But I enjoyed watching them all perform. All of the competitive events revolved around team effort – either in pairs or all as a group. The first was quite unique – they were tied into a knot of 8 kids & had to untie themselves without unclasping hands. The seniors must have rigged theirs (heh) because they were unknotted within seconds. It was entertaining to watch – sort of like extreme Twister.
Other events were the three-legged race, extreme flag tag (the freshmen kicked butt in this event), leap frog – over & under (the seniors wound up cheating and were disqualified because they were TOO obvious), bat spin (run down the gym floor, pick up a bat, bend over with it touching your forehead, spin 10 times, and run back – I’d be sick on this one), the wheelbarrow race, etc.
Halfway through the events, they reported on the winners of the Fall Fair events (anyone from the community can enter items from a variety of categories, farming, cooking, crafts, etc.) Then they announced the winner of the Kiss the Pig contest. In year’s past, the FFA/FCCLA were able to goad teachers into doing this, but the past few years it’s just been seniors. One of my senior boys announced that he wanted to win the Kiss the Pig contest this year. But all through the week, I heard the names of other students in the lead. So what is a kind teacher like me to do? Why, put $10 in his jar at lunch! I was quite pleased when he won and came up to kiss the pig. Lucky kid! I am so nice, aren’t I? 🙂
The final event of the Class Challenge was for each student to run down the gym floor, stuff 4 marshmallows in their mouth & shout “fluffy bunny!” Of course, with 4 marshmallows in your mouth, you aren’t very loud, so the judges (holding the bags of mar-mars) had to listen carefully. Most of the students ate their marshmallows, but I noticed the Sophomores had a spit bag for their teammates to use when they returned to home base. (Um, yuck!)
Well, after a hilarious evening of good sportsmanship (and only a little cheating) and teamwork, the sophomores came in first, followed by the seniors, then juniors, and finally freshmen. I enjoyed the evening of silliness. And it’s a lot more fun than most high school sporting events because no one takes it too seriously.
So what did I do tonight to try & top last night? Went out to see TWO movies at the theater. I saw Serenity and Wallace & Gromit. Had supper in between them and followed the movies with a hot fudge cake at Big Boy. Yum! I enjoyed both movies and will definitely see them again sometime. (DVD purchases? Most likely…) Tomorrow’s supposed to be laundry day, so hopefully I’ll be a good gurl and clean house too. We’ll just have to wait & see.
Lord, save me from boring meetings! I missed school Monday and Tuesday of this week to go to useful but boring meetings in Columbus. Lots of statistics (which I got the first time they explained them and didn’t need reiteration the following day) & educational jargon.
I’ve discovered that I’m bored at all meetings except for technology meetings (usually – have been to one or two clunkers there too). This Friday I’ll be going to the monthly county tech meeting, which I’m never bored at. But most of the other meetings I have to attend – YAWN.
Well, I figure that’s why they pay me the big bucks. 🙂 I teach for free – I love teaching. But they pay me to go to boring meetings & grade papers. Of course, I showed them! I had the chemistry students grade their own tests today. Ha! 😉
Actually, I spent most of Thursday & Friday afternoon coming up with my sub plans for Monday & Tuesday (had the kids reviewing & then taking tests – hated to do that to ’em with a sub, but we need to keep moving). Last night I was lying in bed trying to remember what I had planned for Wednesday. I arrived at the school to find out I hadn’t actually written the week’s lesson plans! Whoops! But at least I took care of Monday & Tuesday.
So, having chemistry grade their own tests was one way to figure out what to do this week. Print out a lab, grade tests, start the next chapter. There we go, lessons for the week. 🙂
On Thursday, I went on the Light the Night walk with our band director, Jared, his fiancee, Melanie, and another band director from Troy, Stephanie. Thanks to my kind contributers here and offline, I raised $160 for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Thanks again!
We arrived at the Fraze Pavilion in Dayton and registered. Since I’d raised over $100, I got a free t-shirt as well as my red balloon for the walk. Nice! Stephanie had raised over $300 so she also got a free sweatshirt & a wind breaker which they’ll mail to her. (One of her co-workers’ husbands got corporate matching to help – nice!) The four of us raised over $600 – not bad for 4 school teachers.
After we picked up our free gifts, we moseyed over to the food booths. Papa Murphy’s Pizza (sold locally at the Walmart in Troy among other places) had pizza and I nabbed a slice of cheese pizza. I picked up a 7Up as well – the 7Up bottling company provided those. We moved onward and discovered that Chipotle’s was also a food sponsor. They had half-burritos they were giving out. I picked up a steak burrito – yum! That filled me up aplenty, so I didn’t need to partake of the chips, hot dogs, or bagels which were also available. For the walk, I grabbed a bottle of water.
We continued our mosey of the area and another booth was selling cute (and very soft!) teddy bears with Light the Night t-shirts for $5 a piece. The four of us couldn’t resist, so another $20 was raised for Light the Night. We then were ready to pick up our glow-balloons. They were helium filled with a wire that went up into the balloon powering a blinking light. The handle was the battery supply. Unfortunately, the helium was substandard or something, and there were a lot of balloons, like ours, that barely floated. No matter, we just tied ’em to our heads/glasses/ears.
Carl Day, anchor for Channel 2 News (a Dayton TV station), was the local chapter spokesperson. He’s been a 9-year survivor of lymphoma. He spoke some, letting us know that we were one of the biggest groups to march. Jared estimated 5000 of us. Could have been – there were a lot of us! Anyhoo, Carl introduced a lady whose daughter is fighting (and looks like she might be winning) the battle against leukemia. The little girl was so cute – 4 years old or so. She had her white survivor balloon. 🙂
Anyhoo, we started the walk as it was getting dark. It was neat to see all the red & white (lots of white – yay!) balloons with their blinking lights (in various stages of flotation) as we walked through the nice neighborhood that Fraze is a part of. We walked around a pond and all we could see in front or behind us were people walking. It was a very nice sight.
After two miles or so, the walk returned to Fraze and they gave people Hostess fruit pies or ice cream. Our party went for the ice cream (teeny tiny containers of strawberry – picture Taste portion, elsaf & judiang). We could have stayed for the final numbers (crowd size & money raised) but we decided to head back – it was almost an hour drive back.
Of course, having had the Chipotle’s for supper, we decided we should stop at the nearest one for burritos for lunch the next day. Wearing our lovely Light the Night stickers as we went through the line, Jared & I both managed to get free burritos! We’re still not sure why – after all, Melanie & Stephanie didn’t. But hey, I’m not complaining! That was very nice of the lady at the till. (Could be she was to give out free burritos to the first X Light the Nighters who went through the line. We weren’t sure.)
Anyhoo, Jared drove us all back to Troy where my car was waiting. Then I headed home, burrito & teddy bear by my side. (Dying balloon in the back seat, where it still resides.) I had intended to take my free burrito with me for lunch the next day. Of course, I forgot! (I don’t pack lunches, so it takes some effort on my part to remember when to bring a lunch in. And Friday mornings, I just don’t have that effort.) No matter, I had my burrito for supper!
BTW, if you still wish to contribute to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, you can still do so. You can contribute through this link, or go to their website.
