I am currently listening to song #766 on my Xmas MP3 playlist. That is, the last of the songs. Wow – I got through them all before Christmas!

Guess I can shuffle the playlist and begin again. 🙂

Today we had the Andersons over for the family Christmas celebration. Mom made Gramma’s noodles and some smashed taters (with sour cream added), plus had earlier made pickled eggs (another Gramma recipe). Amy and mom made banana salad (one of Aunt Mary’s recipes). Dad came over to my place (next door, see) to bake the ham. I made dezert and cheeseball (the type like I made at Thanksgiving). And at 2pm, we sat to await the family.

There are some things one can count on when the Andersons come. Uncle Bob & Aunt Madeline usually arrive early. Uncle Doug & Aunt Charlene always arrive late. Cousin Patty and Cousin Gregg (Doug’s kids) are usually even later than Doug. Cousin Shelly (Bob’s girl) & Brett have the two little ones (Mallory & Brooke) in tow, so it really matters on the kids on when they’ll get there.

Well, the gathering was scheduled for 2pm. And since no one had yet arrived, we began to fear that maybe folks thought it was Sunday. (Well, no one really thought that, but we did joke about it.) And shortly after 2, the first guests arrived. And to the shock of everyone, including himself, Uncle Doug was first! He and Charlene were astounded that they were first. Lots of hugs were shared and we heated up the bean greens that Charlene had brought. Plus she had Chex Mix – yum!

Turns out Shelly & co had arrived at Bob’s earlier that day and everyone was going to head over after that. And they were there by 2:30. Mallory & Brooke had asked before hand to get clear on who was who (we usually see them once, sometimes twice, a year). And they got my name right, at least. It was lovely to see them all again. Madeline brought a decadent chocolate cake and some crackers for Patty’s radish dip (that had yet to arrive).

Patty was there shortly afterwards, with said dip. She’d hollowed out a red cabbage for the dip and that was a hit for the day. Dad said the prayer (amidst arguments on whether God was watching us or not – long story) and we all ate. And sure enough, by the time we were all seated (in the dining room, kitchen, and living room) Gregg arrived.

The food was wonderful and I ate far too much. Then we sat and talked for hours. Eventually, I passed out presents wearing the Santa cap & reindeer cap that the girls had brought. (I like to be thorough.) Once things were winding down, I escorted people next door to see my newly (well, before last Christmas, actually) remodeled kitchen. Folks seemed to like it. Then everyone headed home and by 6:30, we were just the four of us again.

The day was very fun, but unfortunately, that was tempered by the fact that no one commented to Amy about her engagement. Normally when someone in the family is engaged, that’s the main talk of the next family gathering (at least, that’s what I always thought was the case). Alas, that was not this case. In fact, in the Anderson family, the only one who really seems pleased is mom’s Cousin Lynelle. When she got Amy’s pre-announcement (to get the news and general date out to folks) she cried. And every time, she says, that she thinks about it, she gets teary eyed. She’s truly happy for Amy getting married. She is, however, a shut-in and won’t be able to attend. 🙁

Although the lack of discussion bummed (or angered) us (poor Amy cried) out, we figure that for most of the folks, they probably just don’t know what to think about it, let alone say. I, for one, am thrilled at Amy and Rachel getting hitched. Heck, I’ll even go to Minnesota in August, that’s how happy I am about it. 🙂 But for us, Amy being Lesbian is normal. I think for many of the Andersons, it’s still something alien. So we’re disappointed in the lack of “congratulations” or wedding discussions, but we do understand why there was none of it.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is echoed at the Short gathering this Christmas Eve. I’d like to think that it won’t be, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

I love my local auto service shop. First, they’re just 2 blocks away from my house (convenient). Second, they’re very knowledgeable (loads of certification in just about anything auto related, including hybrids). Third, they’re no more expensive than anyone else around (and the Newton Spirit Card has a $5 off oil change coupon – woohoo!) Fourth, they’re darned nice (they offer to drive me into school when I drop my car off in the morning on the way to work – unless it’s raining, I usually thank them and refuse). Fifth, if they find something majorly wrong during a routine check, they’ll let me know and what the cost will be, and why I might want (or not want) to go through with it.

Well, today, I got one of those calls, alas. Turns out her cooling system’s been leaking. She’s a 10 year old Shadow and still had her original tubes etc. Plus the battery was low and might have trouble starting in cold weather. (Hmmm, it’s winter.) So, I told them to go ahead with the (gah) $480 worth of fixes. The good news is that, in the 10 years I’ve had her, this year has been the first with any real maintenance costs. Earlier this year was a $600+ charge for some other fixes (she still had her original spark plugs too!) Actually, I don’t think $1000 will be too much of an investment (probably not the best word there) if this keeps her going for another 10 years. They assured me that this really ought to be the last big charge she’ll cost me for awhile. And as the boys know their stuff, I’ll believe ’em.

But the good news is that, if poor Miriam (yes, I name my cars) does eventually pass on and I need to buy a new car, they’ll be able to take care of her, too. Especially as I’m most probably going to get a hybrid when I next purchase a car.

So, it’s the Christmas season and I’ve spent money on presents (which I love doing). And I’m waiting on my car insurance bill to arrive. And I recently had a roof replaced on my house and garage and paid that on an interest free credit card. And now I have this car repair to pay for. Damn, I’m glad I’ve (a) got credit cards and (b) have money in savings. Of course, that money in savings is going bye-bye. But I suppose that’s what savings is for – when things pop up like a tree falling on your roof or your car needing new tubing.

On the more plus side of things, I’ve wrapped most of the presents I’m giving out this Christmas. I still have things to do WRT the family cookbook. I promised updates at last year’s Christmas gatherings, but I’ve been putting it off. I’ll come up with *something* for Saturday, I’m sure.

And on the very plus side of things – tomorrow Amy’s coming home! YAY! We pick her up at the airport at 8:30pm. She’ll be in town until December 26th. So it’s a short visit, but we’ll get the most out of it as we can. The Anderson Christmas gathering is this Saturday. The Short’s always gather on Christmas Eve. And of course, we open presents on Christmas Day. 🙂 (Even *Leo* gets to come over to the folks’ house on Christmas Day.)

When I tell you that Miracle on 34th Street, It’s a Wonderful Life, and White Christmas are some of my favorite movies to watch, you get an idea of the type of soppy (and not so soppy) stories that I enjoy. Hey, if they’re Christmassy, they get a bit more leniency in the saccharine department. So it’s no surprise that I eventually wrote a story to fit in with such fare. Back in 1999, in the final issue of Dreamtime (the PMEB fan fiction webzine), I contributed a Doctor Who story starring the Seventh Doctor (anyone surprised?) and Mel. If you’re interested in reading Miracle on 23rd Street (or in some rare cases, rereading it) then click here. Thanks to elsaf and Steph for still keeping the Dreamtime website going.

Firstly, I shall join in with elsaf and judiang and make a Twelve Days of Christmas list.

My LiveJournal 12 Days
My True Love gave to me…
12 drake57s a-hopping.
11 elissahs a-calling.
10 elsafs a-hugging.
9 girlycomics a-hooting.
8 gordon_r_ds a-writing.
7 gregmces a-smooching.
6 indefatigable42s a-flaming.
5 light green judiangs.
4 drumming michaellees.
3 Palestinian redstarrobots.
2 goat shebits.
And a the_ladylark in a tomato tree.
Get gifts! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

And second – I now know what people mean when they talk about a night that swallows light. As I was driving home from grocery shopping tonight (to get stuff for tomorrow’s teacher carry-in) I was just astonished at how dark it was even when my lights were on. I first wondered if maybe I had a pididdle, but no, both of my headlights were fine. Just damned dark. The dark that sucks out the marrow of light. (Ewww, that’s rather gross imagery.)

So, what is Trina taking for the carry-in? Reuben Dip. Probably one of the most fattening things in the family cookbook (and my family excels at fattening).

REUBEN MIX


1 can sauerkraut

4 oz. cheddar cheese

4 oz. Swiss cheese

4 oz. Monterey jack cheese

½ cup Miracle Whip

3 small packages of corned beef



Bake at 350° for 30 minutes. Serve warm with rye bread.

When one teaches seniors, one must realize that there are times when seniors have other things on their minds… Often called “Senioritis,” the times when this occurs most strongly is right before Christmas break and right before school is out. So, what does one do with seniors when they’re antsy and don’t feel like studying? Have ’em build toothpick bridges, that’s what!

I added the Toothpick Bridge competition to my repertoire of engineering projects (which includes catapult building, come-back cans, and egg drop platforms or carriages) several years ago when I got a example lab on it. When I first assigned it, it was an out of class assignment to be done individually or in pairs. (Several of the engineering projects that I assign are like this.) But a few years ago, I was over a week ahead of my usual schedule when the Christmas season was fast approaching. And we’d just finished solids (including stress, strain, scaling, and support). So rather than move onto thermogoddamnits, I thought about having the kids build the bridges in class, in their lab groups (most groups of 3 kids). This has now become the tradition.

Today, the physics students began building their bridges. They’re still optimistic about things and have good physics plans. But as the week continues, they’ll learn to LOATHE toothpicks and glue. And then they reach the stage where they’re experts at having the toothpicks and glue do as they wish. We listen to Christmas music while they work and I can usually get some grading done. (Which is good – I need to grade their catapult research papers and reports.) But the best thing is testing them when we get back from Christmas break. The students are always amazed at how well their bridges actually do perform. It’ll be interesting to see which lab group wins this competition. (So far, no group has won more than one engineering contest this year – pretty evenly matched class.)

Today is the day to give out hugs (and receive them) apparently. I like hugs and thus have been giving them out today. And I’ll gladly accept any you might give. 🙂

*HUGS* TOTAL!
give trinalin more *HUGS*

Get hugs of your own

After a long discussion with shebit about my obsession infatuation with Sylvester McCoy, I decided that I needed an LJ icon with Sylv from The Last Place on Earth. The quandary cames when I realized that I’ve used up my 3 alloted icons. Solution? Pay for my LJ account. (Well, I was figuring on doing so anyhoo.)

To see the conversation, click here. I will admit, the icon isn’t as sophisticated as some I’ve seen, but I figure I shall learn with time.

As for today – plans are afoot… It’s cleaning day! Yay! (Or is that ergh?) Dishes are being washed, clothes are being washed (can’t use the dryer until the dish washer is done – some eejit installed the dishwasher circuit on the 220V dryer circuit when my house was originally wired). I plan to reorganize my reading room and my den (a bit) and possibly even go through closets. Hey, anything to put off grading chemistry tests! (They’re pretty ripe by now – it’s been over a week since the kids took it.)

As I mentioned earlier, I adore Christmas music. I have converted all of my Xmas CDs (and a few albums/tapes) to MP3 for ease of listening. Since I have an MP3 player in every room in the house (barring the living room/dining room, where I have wireless speakers that can pick up music from my computer), MP3 is the way to go for me. After all of my conversion, I found out that I have 766 Christmas MP3s. That’s almost 41 hours of music. And so far this season, I’ve only listened to 487 in my playlist that includes them all.

As with my nonXmas music listening, I have ecclectic tastes. I have no problem listening to Julie Andews sing “I Wonder as I Wander” followed by the Chipmunks singing “Hang Up Your Stocking.” Or Loreena McKennitt singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” followed by the Muppets singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” One CD in my collection that’s probably not in most people’s is The Cincinnati Men’s Chorus’ A Homemade Holiday.

The Cincinnati Men’s Chorus is an all gay chorus from, as you might imagine, Cincinnati. Five years ago, the Dayton PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians And Gays) chapter worked on bringing the CMC up to Dayton to do a fundraiser for both organizations. Each year it’s become more and more popular – and my folks and I have gone each year. Last Saturday was when they held their Dayton Concert (basically, their dress rehersal for their Cincinnati performances). It was, as always, wonderful. And if anyone reading lives near the Cincinnati area, I encourage you to attend their concerts this weekend. They perform tonight and tomorrow night at the Jason-Kaplan Theater at the Aronoff Center for the Performing Arts. It’s at 8:07pm tonight and 2:07pm tomorrow. Check out their website for more information.

One of neat things one can do when one’s Christmas tune collection is in MP3 is figure out which songs are most prevalent. I discovered that I have 12 versions of “Away in a Manger” (no idea how many are the English version and how many the American style), 14 of “Hark the Herald Angels Sing,” and 16 of “O Come All Ye Faithful” (two as “Adeste Fideles”). But the number one duplicated song that I have is “Silent Night” with 24 versions (three as “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht”).

Now, if you were to ask me what my absolute favorite Christmas song was, well… That’s not an easy decision. It has changed throughout the years. I know it used to be “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” But “The Coventry Carol” has been a favorite for a long time, too. (I love Alison Moyet’s version.) And “Pat-a-pat-a-pan” and “I Wonder as I Wander” (both sung by Julie Andrews). But there are many others that I love. Since I enjoy choral singing (especially boys & men’s choruses) the King’s College Choir occupies a good deal of my collection. And since they and Julie are English, I know a lot of English carols. And two versions of several popular tunes. (“Away in a Manger,” “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and others.) Etc. etc.

So I know you’re dying to know what all exists in my song collection… Thanks to MusicMatch, and Adobe Acrobat, I can make a songlist of all of my Christmas tunes. You can find it on my website here.

So, Monday, dad and I headed down to the Dayton Convention Center to the SOITA Tech convention. I was looking forward to it (despite getting stuff ready for a substitute teacher – but it’s never easy for a science teacher to prepare for a sub). Last year we learned a lot at the workshops. And I intended to do the same this year.

The best, I felt, was the Metadot Portal session run by the tech from Piqua, one of our county schools. As usual, Jim and Erich did a great job. I decided after the session that I might go ahead and use Metadot for the school website and include the Intranet stuff that I’d originally intended to use separately. Since I can set up users and groups, I should be able to block the Intranet specific stuff to just staff and students (hopefully). But this will also allow the staff to access things they might need at home.

The other session that might eventually be a time-saver for me, was about Progress Book. Currently, for grades, we use GradeQuick by Jackson Software. It’s not a bad program, and is very good for the money. But it means that I have a lot more work to do in order to get grades to our DA site. Progress Book would be a direct connection to the DA site and would allow for things like Lesson Plans and parental access to current grades and stuff. But it costs $5 per kid! (Hey, we have no money, thanks to the state of Ohio, so even $5 a kid is a LOT of money to be spending.) As more schools in our DA site’s region start using Progress Book, the per student costs should go down somewhat. So perhaps this might be an option for the 2005-2006 school year.

During the lunch, which was very good (like last year), Leslie Fisher, of www.lesliefisher.com, gave a presentation about Gadgets You Must Have. And basically, she was me but with unlimited funds. Most of the stuff she had, I could honestly say I either wanted or already had. (The one exception being that she’s Mac-based and I’m PC-based.) She said that the presentation that she was going to do for the teachers on the other two days was going to have even more gadgets.

Leslie Fisher also did the Flash workshop that I attended. While dad was busy at the MDECA (our DA site) meeting, I was learning how to make some basic Flash animation. I think I got the better deal. 🙂 Well, at least ine was more fun. Dad’s was very informative.

We really only had two complaints about the whole day. The first was that there was no way to tell, in most cases, whether you’d be getting a good informative workshop, or whether it was just a sales pitch from some vendor. (I got pretty lucky – the closest thing I had to a sales pitch was the Dell guy talking about Disaster Recovery. And he managed to prevent it from being a Dell commercial. Dad, OTOH, was at a few sessions that were more about buying solutions than solving problems.)

The other complaint was the same one that we had the previous year. We love the fact that SOITA now has a tech-only day. Most of the teacher and administrator workshops they have on days 2 & 3 aren’t what we techs need. But they don’t have the vendors present during the Tech Day. And yet, it’s the techs with the purse-strings. Or at least, with the recommendation power. As for me and dad, we ended up going to the conference on Tuesday afternoon in order to meet with the vendors. Since dad only works one day a week for me, to have him go for a day and a half to the SOITA conference, means he’s worked a week and a half.

We’re glad we went to the vendors. We always learn something there. This year, we were mostly interested in finding out about the prices of LCD projectors. And we think we found the one we’ll be getting (with REAP grant funds – remember, we have no money). The vendors were pleased to see some techs there – turns out they wish they’d been present for the tech day too. Actually, one vendor probably wasn’t happy to see me…

WorldWise, out of Columbus, had a table with some “educational software” for teachers. Priced nice and low. And as soon as I saw the table of software, I almost had a fit. Actually, I did speak my mind (albeit slightly censored) to the salesman there. Most of the software (I’d say 90%) on the table was stuff that I’d seen in the elementary classrooms that ONLY plays at 256 colors. Stuff that I’ve had to either throw away, or find 1 classroom machine, reset it to 256 colors, and install the games only on it. (Which, IMO, is a waste of my time.) Why the hell are these guys flogging this crap to teachers? I know, it’s to get rid of the crap that other people won’t buy. Most of the teachers don’t know they’re being ripped off. I’m just glad none of my teachers were at the conference. I was very angry – I’m still a little steamed. I mean, when I run a network with Win98 computers, and they’re TOO POWERFUL for the software that the teacher’s just bought, that teacher has been RIPPED OFF. Grrrrrrrrrrrr – thieves, the lot of ’em!

Anyway, I almost felt sorry for the vendor there, except that he probably knew full well what he was doing. And he was probably glad he *wasn’t* there on the day that the techs were present. I know I’m not the only tech in the county who hates this out of date software – so there’s got to be lots of us techs in the region who can’t stand it.

So, in summary, the SOITA conference was a good thing. We got cool bags (once again) and some nice freebies. And both dad and I learned some stuff. Plus I got to vent off steam at a hapless vendor. All in all, a fun time.