I’ve got an LCD monitor, a laptop computer (the school’s, actually, but it’s still mine to use), a home wireless network, a cordless phone, dozens of MP3 players, and a home theater system. Still, judiang has never considered me to be a member of the 21st Century until yesterday, when I finally got myself a cell phone.

There have been many times while I’ve been on trips when my owning a cell phone would have been very handy. Sometimes one needs a phone when one is at my folks’ cottage at the Lake. And of course, trying to find people in and around airports has been made far far easier thanks to mobile phones. So with these concerns in mind, I spontaneously bought a Virgin Mobile Pay as you Go phone. My regular monthly phone bills are rarely more than $25, so I didn’t want to spend an additional $20-$40 a month on a cell phone. I liked the TracFone like what dad got, but it costs $100 a year to keep it running, and that’s not including the cost of phone calls. The Virgin phone, OTOH, is only $20 every 3 months or so (or every 5 months if you don’t mind your phone being inactive for awhile) and that includes the phone calls. Yes, the calls are expensive. 25 cents a minute for the first 10 minutes in a day, plus 10 cents a minute after that. But this is a phone for vacations and emergencies. I think I can handle it.

And I discovered when I got it home that it’s the perfect phone. Click here. Now type in “45373” into the zip code box. Look at the map. Notice that gray blurb just above and to the left of Dayton? Yup, that’s where my home town is! So people will NOT be able to use my phone to find me when I’m in the area. 😉 They can only contact me when I’m in Troy or Piqua or at the Lake or in Chicago, etc etc. How’s that for a perfect mobile? (This was not my original plan in buying the phone, but it’s something that I think I can live with.)

It does seem to have good coverage in all the big cities that I tend to visit. Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston, LA, etc. So it should work fine on my trips around the country. And, as I wrote earlier, it works at the Lake. (I called both elsaf and Judi from the Lake. Left a message with their respective services and Judi returned my call. (Elsa is at work, I believe, and thus in a dead spot.) Oh, Judi, turns out it does charge for incoming. But I’m now at the 10 cents a minute stage for today, so that’s OK.)

The phone uses Sprint’s network, so it’s all digital. But there is no roaming. I believe dad’s TracFone does do roaming (with twice the cost per minute). When I listened to the phone messages that I left on my home answering machine, I was amazed by two things. The first, that I thought it was my mother and it took until the second call to actually realize it was me. The second, that it actually was very clear. Cool!

Oh, another reason why I opted for the Virgin phone rather than the TracFone – it’s a much cooler cell phone. I went for the swanky AudioVox 8610 so I’d get full color and stereophonic ring tones. I found the ideal ring tone for my phone, too. (See the “current music” to find out what it is.) And someday I’ll be in an area where my phone works and I can download the ring tone. 😉 Oh, it has two games on it as well. Blackjack, which is OK, I guess. And something called Magic Hexa, which is rather fun. Sort of like Tetris and Super Bubble Pop.

So, there ya have it. Trina’s finally joined the 21st Century. Are you happy now, Judi? 😉

When I was still in school, Señora Wilberding (lovely German name for a Spanish teacher, don’t you think?) was my 8th grade grammar teacher, freshman & sophomore Spanish teacher, and junior creative writing teacher. Sometime after my sister graduated, Señora left Newton and went part time at Lehman Catholic High School in Sidney. This past year, however, she returned “home” to Newton and is teaching Spanish there once again. During the year, I and a few others helped her out with her computer woes and she considered us her Computer Gurus (a title that I rather like). To thank us for our help throughout the year, she invited us all over for dinner tonight.

Alas, half of us were unable to attend. The band director had some sort of church function that he had to be at and the English teacher just got home today with her newborn baby (congrats Ann!). But the business teacher and I both were able to attend. I arrived a bit early and found the place with little difficulty, despite the fact that it’s been years since I’ve been to her house^*. Mary Beth arrived soon after. Señora’s husband headed off to watch a baseball game down the street so the three of us had an evening to ourselves. Lasagna, salad, garlic bread for supper, mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert. It was all very yummy. Kudos, Señora!

We talked all through supper and then had dessert out back on the porch overlooking their lovely garden. And we talked and talked. It wasn’t until I was being eaten alive by the mosquitoes that we finally headed in. And that was nearly 10pm. So, four hours spent with my former teacher and current co-worker. It was quite lovely.

^*Señora is one of those devoted teachers who really cares for her students. She has them over to her house occasionally, calls their homes if they’re not doing homework, and does everything she can for the kids. I was talking with one of my junior boys this year who had mentioned that she’d been calling to check on his homework progress. I said “and that’s the difference between us. She actually cares if you pass or fail her class. I really don’t care if you pass or fail chemistry.” I probably should care more, but I doubt if I’ll ever get to be as caring as Señora when it comes to her students. Something to aspire to, I think.

It’s been awhile since there was a new Doc7 (Sylvester McCoy) audio adventure. And, alas, it will be awhile until there’s another new Doc7 audio adventure. So I was rather excited when The Harvest arrived today. I was walking to work and stopped in the post office and there it was. I decided I’d listen to it after I finished The Evil of the Daleks. (Working on computers is a mindless enough task that I can listen to audio adventures without a hitch. So the summer is when I finally get caught up on all of my audio adventures – and relisten to several more.)

The biggest worry I had while listening to The Harvest was about the quality. The last Big Finish Doc7 adventure was Master. My review of it wasn’t hugely negative, but also not hugely positive. And since it will be March of 2005 before we get another Doc7 audio (gee thanks, Big Finish, for postponing that audio until after you play out the rather dreary adventures of Doc8 and Charley) I was concerned that I wouldn’t have any good Sylvish adventures for a very long time. The Harvest had to satisfy my Sylvish ears for the next 9 months. So, did we have another Fearmonger or another The Dark Flame?

I’m happy to say that I really enjoyed The Harvest. It has some sparkling dialog and a new companion who works well with both McShane and the Doctor. (Yes, Ace is calling herself McShane now. Or “Just McShane” as she often corrects people. The Doc still calls her “Ace.”) Hex (Thomas Hector Schofield) is a nurse from 2021 and his favorite expression is “Oh my god! Oh my god!” (Sylv doing an imitation of that is priceless.) Still, when you’re meeting people like the Doctor and McShane, you’re bound to have some “Oh my god!” moments like Hex does in this story. Part One does a good job of introducing us to Hex. McShane shows up about halfway in. The Doctor appears briefly, but it’s a great appearance. Parts Two-Four have all three of them in equal measure (with a good deal of time having the Doc and Hex working together). The story is good, the action riveting, and, as I said earlier, the dialog sparkles. The ending to Part One is a particular favorite of mine (and, whether intentional or not, is a fun dig at Death Comes to Time, which is another Audio Adventure that I love).

I haven’t read many reviews (well, so far only one, and that was just one line to say it was loved) so I don’t know if I’m the norm on this or not. Still, with a bit more work, I should have a Synopsis and Review for the audio up on my Sylv Site soon. (Heck, just to indicate how much I liked this – I’ve already begun relistening to it. I got to the middle of part three when I finished making the ice cream and cleaning up my mess.)

*sigh* I’m gonna miss Doc7, Hex, and McShane. (Wow, whoda thunk it – I’ll actually miss McShane! I didn’t think that was possible anymore, but when she’s written right, she’s back to being a good character.)

Happy Summer! Well, to those of you in the Northern Hemisphere, at least. ‘Twas a lovely day today – an Open Windows Day, as I’m sure Leo would call them if he could speak.

So, back to B-WISER. I spent Wednesday night going around the dorms helping Becky and Charlene as they checked on the state of the girl’s straw bridges. That was pretty interesting in itself. The ideas that they came up with – plus the variance in quality/progress throughout the camp. We got back to our dorm about the time the girls were supposed to be in bed.

Thursday was Current Electricity Day. “One of these days I’m gonna run away and join the circuits,” I always say. I don’t understand why boys are encouraged to build electronics and girls are not – the girls always love building circuits and playing with lights and motors. Some of them even asked where they could get the various pieces parts to play with at home. (RadioShack is the answer. If you’ve got questions, they’ve got answers. The answers are usually “I don’t know,” and “I’ll have to ask my supervisor” whenever I ask questions, but there ya go…)

That evening was the bridge contest. I helped out a little in the Check In process, but then headed off to KMart with Carolyn while Becky and Charlene judged design. This is when I bought my Martha Stewart towels. (She did a very good job in making those towels, BTW. For $4, I got a nice fluffy towel that actually wraps around me!) I was back in time for the bridge testing. Turns out the bridge I picked to be the strongest actually was. It even beat the B-WISER record. (It held 1350 grams – not bad for a bridge made of straw and pins). It also won overall, since it had a long span and was pretty tall compared to the other bridges. (Just now realized that I didn’t take any pictures of the bridges. Bad journaler! No cookie!)

Denise (who was totaling up the points) and I headed off to join Carolyn, Joyce, Dee, and Dennis at TJ’s, another bar in Wooster. When we arrived, Carolyn paid for Denise’s drink, to congratulate her on taking up the role of co-assistant for the camp next year. I had an Amaretto Sour (a better one than the one from the Jaol) and water – which Dee picked up. The six of us talked and laughed for another hour or so before returning to the dorms and bed. Only one more day of the camp!

Friday is the day that Dee and I always end with static electricity. Sure, static usually goes before current electricity, but the van de Graaf is a wonderful way to end the week. Alas, the one that we borrowed from the physics department of Wooster didn’t work all that great. The little one that Dee brought (brand new – thanks to a grant from the Tipp City Rotary Club) worked just fine.

Me and my fluffy hair. I’d always start the activity off so that the girls would be afraid to touch the van de Graaf.

Dee does her Phyllis Diller imitation.

One girl does her Dandelion imitation.

After the last class, Dee and I rushed to finish packing (we’d done most of the classroom stuff the day before) and then headed for McGaw Chapel where the final recognition ceremony was. We teachers began the program by embarrassing ourselves with the B-WISER Camp Song (sung to the tune of “YMCA”.)

I had one of the girls take our picture as we sang. She got all of us but Sue. From left to right: Sue (not in photo), Wanda, Bill (hiding), Joyce, Dennis, Carolyn, me, Lois, Betty…

…Denise, Charlene, Becky, Ann, and Dee. I think those pink shirts really screwed up my white balance on those shots… (Notice that Bill and Dennis were spared.)

After all the girls got their certificates (and the counselors even honored us teachers with certificates – I got the Big Kid award), it was time to go out to our last supper. I do have a photo with Sue here:

Carolyn, Joyce, Lois, and Sue. Sue will be the other co-director of the camp next year.

After supper, I meandered back to the room with Carolyn and we packed up our plants (we got free kalanchoe plants that were leftover from the Alumni weekend. I claimed a cute little red one. Carolyn took a red one, a yellow one, and a pink one. She’s got a gorgeous garden at her place (no grass, just flowers) and they’ll be right at home. I apologized to mine cuz it’s gonna die. Let’s be honest with ourselves) and hugged and drove off back home.

Bleh – it is warm in the house. Come on, breeze! Let’s let these Open Windows mean something!

This is a long and image laden post which ought to cover the rest of my B-WISER week. So I’ve decided to put it all under an LJ cut. Perhaps someday I’ll put together a webpage of B-WISER trips. This could well be a good start to it.

It all began as it usually does with us teachers and counselors arriving the day before the girls. Dinner at the Barn Restaurant – all you can eat buffet and heavenly desserts. It’s all thanks to Lois that we eat there every year. At the farm where the Barn is, there is a string of shops. The one we all visit (and spend lots of money at) is the toy store. I bought some Frigits, a couple of rockets, a pull-back racing rat for Leo, and a few other toys.

Sunday’s the day when the girls arrive. It’s usually the day when we teachers get our rooms ready, but since we met at Severance (the Chemistry building) when we checked in the day before, Dee and I were able to set up our room the day of our arrival. So, that morning, Carolyn, Becky, and I did that long two hour walk that I’d talked about in a previous post. The afternoon was time for goofing off. At quarter til 5, everyone gathered at the Douglass Lounge and the girls all did their skits that they’d been working on since 4:15 and then we introduced all the teachers. And then it was supper time!

Monday was our first day of classes and it was rather uneventful. The evening activity was Dr. Helen Free. And eventually it was time for bed. Ah, Monday night… A night that shall rattle along in my memory for a good long time.

We had a major storm that night. Shake the rafters-style storm. There was even the flash/boom of a nearby hit. But that wasn’t anything to write home about. The power must have gone out, but I didn’t really notice it. I think I actually fell asleep as the storm died away around 2am. At 3:30am, however, the most incredible noise started up and woke me. It was loud – a rumbling that was phenomenal. I figured it was the trash man and looked out sans glasses. I saw what I figured was a shape in front of the trash dumpster and told Carolyn it was the trash guys. Well, many minutes passed and the noise continued. So I got up again and this time put on my glasses. No, that wasn’t a shape, that was just the driveway I saw. Then it finally dawned on me – the fan wasn’t going anymore. But the hallway lights were on. Ah! A generator. The Generator from Hell, in fact. Carolyn and I had to shout to hear each other. And what was worse, the beds vibrated from the sound. I must have dozed off despite the loud rumbling, but the vibrations made poor Carolyn ill.

A little before 6am (I was awake again and had been for awhile) I noticed the fan was running again. However, the generator was still going. Thankfully, it ended a bit after 6 (then started again before finally turning off for good). Bleh – a very unpleasant night. (Worse for Carolyn, poor dear.) When we asked the others at our end of the hall, turns out no one else heard the Generator from Hell. Ah, guess it’s under our room. Bleh!

Tuesday was Work and Power day for Dee and I. We had the girls play with balloon cars, Alka Seltzer Canons (using film canisters), and running up the stairs to calculate their work and power. Tuesday evening was the teacher’s first real night off. Joyce, Dee, Carolyn and I went off to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Yes, I’d seen it already with judiang, but I liked it enough to see it again. At one point in the flick, Joyce and Dee were startled by something on the screen, and that managed to wake Carolyn up so that she could see the rest of the film.

After the movie, Joyce called Bill and Dennis, the token men of the camp, and told them we were heading for The Olde Jaol. All of the outdoor tables were taken by the time we arrived, so we sat indoors. I had an Amaretto Sour (no surprise there) and later a strawberry smoothie (no alcohol) and munched on the appetizers that were going around the table. We talked and laughed and listened to Carolyn’s stories and laughed even more. Bill has yet to learn his lesson – Carolyn more or less treats him as a straight man and usually gets some zingers in at his expense.

Tuesday night was, thankfully, uneventful, storm-wise. And Wednesday is usually one of my favorites. Flight day! We had the girls inside playing with flight toys and outside playing with water rockets and stomp rockets. And now I can finally put in some photos.

A girl, midair, jumping on a Stomp Rocket.

A water rocket going off.

We do Flight Day on Wednesdays, because the evening program is Gary Broadbent, America’s number one boomeranger. He’s a great motivational speaker and he loves science. He’s come to B-WISER for several years now and I never tire of seeing him. The poor guy is a bit OCD (OK, so maybe “a bit” it a bit too mild a description) and has the world’s largest boomerang collection. His house is even in the shape of a boomerang. He was doing trick catches and while he tried to do the mouth catch, it took 42 tries before he got it. (See, I told you “a bit” was too mild.) He usually gets it in 2 tries. (I think he was distracted – when he was talking about his oldest daughter, who suffers from Cystic Fibrosis, he said he’d taken her to the children’s hospital the day before and she was down to 50% lung capacity. This is a man who lives for his kids first and boomerangs second.) Still, he kept the girls entertained for two hours, showing off his boomerangs (no, they’re not all V-shaped sticks) and throwing many of them and catching them.

Gary Broadbent and the Colossal Comeback. This is a boomerang with a 4-foot diameter. He threw it and caught it a couple of times that night.

Some of his cool boomerang designs. A bat, a snake, and even Tigger!

A toucan!

Boomwatch:2004. Derek (the young man who was our go-fer this year), Carolyn, Joyce, Lois, and Bill.

Lois’s birthday cake. Her 80th birthday was the day before, but we had the cake on Wednesday night. And since there are so many girls, we had two cakes…

The Periodic Table Cake. My kind of cake! (Actually, the first cake was white cake, and I had some of it. The second cake was chocolate, but I passed on that.)

I think I’ll tackle Thursday and Friday tomorrow night. I pretty much wore myself out just writing about the start of the week. Heh!

I’m home, I’m watching the new episode of Monk, and I’m getting caught up on LJ. Leo’s next to me on the end table. He was happy to have me back. I was happy to be back. 🙂

I’ll update my journal when I finally get caught up. Got some photos of some hair raising experiences (or maybe they’re just of ladies on the van de Graaf.)

This is just a quick entry to say that the week is nearly over (duh!) and I’ll be coming home tomorrow – woohoo! I have had a blast this week (and have been busy, which is why I’ve barely updated the journal). I’ll have many pictures to post this weekend – the periodic table birthday cake that we got for Lois’s 80th birthday being the geekiest of the lot. But also some shots of girls shooting off water rockets and maybe some pictures of folks on the van de Graaf (if it works out fine tomorrow).

This year will be Betty & Lois’s last year as assistant director and director of this camp. Next year, Denise (see the picture from my last post) and Susan will be co-directors. Cool! So I guess I’ll have to come back next year to support our new directors. 🙂

Oh, while Carolyn (I had to go back and edit my earlier entries to spell her name right), Joyce, and I were at K-Mart tonight, I bought some nice purple & green towels for the bathroom. Bye bye old blue tatty towels! Hello new cheap ass towels! (Still, Martha Stewart made these towels, so I’m sure they’re good.)

Ah, another wonderful day at B-WISER. Dee and I had the girls doing measurement – volume and density. They had fun and enjoyed the Chinese yo-yos that we gave them as toys. One girl (after receiving her toy at the end of class) said that physics was her favorite with robotics second. 🙂 We know how to bribe the girls! The evening session had Dr Helen Free, patent holder and mother of 9 children, who talked with the girls about Diabetes. She worked on the 10-reaction reagent strips that are now very commonly used in hospitals and helped in the design of the portable glucose meters that diabetics use. She and her husband (who worked in the same field) were inducted into the Inventors Hall of Fame.

I have some more photos to share. This time I’ve included some of the crazy ladies that I work with. (And I mean that in a good way.)

Carolyn’s bed in Douglass.

My bed in Douglass. As you can see, this is a damn site bigger than the prison cell we had Saturday night.

Some of my crazy lady co-workers. Charlene’s in the back. Joyce and Carolyn (my roomie) in the front.

Some other crazy lady co-workers. Denise and Becky.

Dee, my partner in physics helping out one of the B-WISER girls (edited out of the shot due to privacy reasons).

As you saw from the pictures (if you clicked on the LJ cut) I have some zany co-workers. That’s why I have so much fun at this camp. Not only do I get to teach physics, but I get to work with some really cool female teachers. (We’ve got two male teachers on staff and they’re pretty cool too.)

Tomorrow for Dee and I is Work, Power, and Energy!

Yay! I brought along some cat-5 cable along with my laptop just in case the LAN ports were operative in the dorn rooms. They are! Yay! (Thanks to my roomie, I have a cable long enough to reach my bed. Mine was only 10ft long, hers is more like 20ft. And I had forgotten to mention this originally, but when she had me read it to her, she bitched about it, so I’m including it now.)

So I can do occassional updates this week. (In order to wear the kids out, we’ve got ’em busy most of the day. That tends to wear us teachers out too.)

To get an idea of the prison cell that they put us in the first night (last night) I took a couple of pictures.

My bed.

Carolyn’s bed.

We’re back in our proper dorm now (Douglass) and in our proper room, which is much bigger (but still not air conditioned). There’s currently a big thunderstorm going on outside and we’ve got a wonderfully cool breeze, however. So that’s nice.

The girls arrived today and they seem like a good bunch of girls. (The collective noun for a group of girls I’ve always figured was “giggle.” So we’ve got a good giggle of girls this year.) Tomorrow we actually have our first classes with them.

Walked for 2 hours solid this morning with my roomie, Carolyn, and another teacher, Becky. And you know what’s so odd about Wooster? It’s all uphill! It’s amazing – we started our walk going uphill, and we finished going uphill. I’ve always suspected that MC Escher had a hand in the design of this city.

I will probably add more stuff later – I’m ready to read some and then hit the sack. Busy day tomorrow!

The Buckeye Women In Science, Engineering and Research (B-WISER) Institute is an organization of women (and a couple of men for good measure) who try to encourage young women into the physical sciences. Despite this being the 21st century, girls still aren’t being encouraged into chemistry, physics, geology, etc. as much as the boys. So Dr. Lois Cook, professor emeritus last of Wright State University (my alma mater – and my dad’s) and Betty Obara (my old junior high science teacher) started a camp for 7th grade girls several years ago, and it’s still going strong. Lois graduated from the College of Wooster many (many) years ago and was welcomed back to the campus with her science camp. Dr. Ted Williams, retired chemistry chair, from Wooster, is the third go-getter who got this camp off the ground. And me? Well, I teach physics there with my co-teacher, Dee Leis (an elementary science teacher from Tipp City, OH).

When the camp was in its second year (or maybe third? but I think second) my sister and I were contacted about being counselors in the camp. I was a freshman in college and Amy a freshman in high school, and we both said yes. My sister was able to continue as a counselor throughout her HS career, but I kept having conflicts in the summer. No matter, after I became a physics teacher, I came back. This time as a teacher.

The camp is loads of fun – for the teachers and the girls. We all have at least one other co-teacher in our respective subjects (chemistry, physics, earth science, computers, research, and engineering) and this year, we’ll have a robotics unit too! (The engineering bit is part of the research bit and the girls work on projects at night – building straw bridges.) The food is good, the campus is gorgeous, the dorms that we’re stuck in SUCK, but hey – it’s only a week. I love my coworkers (and my roommate is completely mad – and thus wonderful) and enjoy the week teaching science.

Tomorrow morning I’ll pack up the car (it’s already got the science equipment packed in it) and head oop north (and east) to Wooster, OH. It’s a 3 hour drive, so having lots of good music is crucial. Shame the latest Big Finish audio isn’t out yet – I could do with a new Sylvester McCoy adventure to listen to on the way there. No idea how often I’ll be able to check my e-mail or LiveJournal, so don’t expect to read much (if any) from me for a week. (I hear a huge sigh of relief coming from all quarters… hmmm…)

So, take care, everyone! Have fun while I’m away! And be nice to the Random Sylv Pix, dark_pheonix! 😉