Tag: b-wiser

B-WISER 2010 goes by FAST!

Hard to believe that camp is almost over. We had our last day of classes today. I think version 0.99B of the Energy Course was an improvement upon last year’s version 0.99A. But it’s still in Beta.

On Tuesday, we had teacher’s night out, which was, as usual, a blast. The six of us loaded into Dee’s van at 4pm and headed to Toyrifix, the cool toy store outside of Wooster. They had a number of new items which I wound up buying. Even found a small gift to give dad as part of his birthday gift.

After the toy store, we went to Cape Cod Red Slobster for supper. Carolyn ordered appetizers for us, and several of us had drinks. I had a mango daiquiri which was very yummy. (I didn’t used to like daiquiris, so maybe my tastes are changing – or maybe I only like mango ones). The appetizers were stuffed mushrooms (which I didn’t have), fried clams, and scallops wrapped in bacon. Yummy. For my main course, I opted for coconut shrimp and crab legs. We were all stuffed when we shuffled back to the van and on to the movie theater.

The theater had a number of movies (and it was $5 night), but we wound up picking Killers, a movie I knew nothing about. It started a bit later than the others, so we had some time to visit the craft store next to the theater. The store is Pat Cattan’s and it reminded me a bit of Hobby Lobby. I found some sodium polyacrylate “pearls” that they were selling which were much larger than any I’ve seen before, so I bought a box.

Back to the theater, we watched the movie and really enjoyed ourselves. Romance, violence, humor, pretty people and Tom Selleck made for quite a fun evening. We were still chuckling about the movie when Dee got us back to the dorm.

So anyhoo, about that key piece of equipment which I realized I hadn’t packed (back in April) – turned out I also needed it for the second lab! Thanks to Mary, our liaison extraordinaire, I got some digital voltmeters which I could hook to the solar panels and we were able to do that lab. And the girls really liked the solar powered cars we got them.

The week finally cooled off today, so hopefully tonight will be an easier night to sleep. Right now the girls are outside doing their talent show, while a few of us are inside listening from inside (where there are no mosquitoes). Tomorrow we have exemplars (female scientists) who will talk to the girls, then the final ceremony (and I’m not doing the slide show – yay!). And then I leave my peeps here *sniff* but get to go home to my kitties *yay*.

B-WISER 2010

If it’s Father’s Day, then I must be at B-WISER! (Happy Father’s Day to those of you who are fathers!)

I got up early this morning and was on the road to Wooster by 8:15am. Arrived at the dorm around 11:30am and immediately spied Ann, the nurse. The two of us headed to Applebee’s to meet up with Joyce & Dee, who were saving spaces for us. We had lunch, then returned to campus where I dropped Ann off at the dorm & moved on to Severance, the chemistry building. Once Mary, who’s our Wooster liaison and does all of the important stuff like get the money & register the girls, and looks after us teachers, had arrived and let us in, we had our safety lesson (I passed the quiz!) and unloaded.

While Dee and I were setting up for tomorrow’s labs, I realized that I had forgotten a key piece of equipment – the voltage probes for the LabQuests! So tomorrow’s lab will be a lot more qualitative and analog. Thank goodness I brought a galvanometer along to show induction! I think (I hope) it’s the only thing I’ve forgotten.

We returned to the dorm, then headed off to Walmart along with our roomies, Carolyn and Joyce. I picked up some index cards for the radiation lab later this week. Carolyn bought a knock out rose for our room for the week. (She’d already bought 2 desert roses at her first Walmart trip of the day.)

The girls had almost all arrived by the time we were back, so soon we were sitting in the very hot lobby waiting for the time where we introduce ourselves. The girls had time to learn about their groupmates, make up a poster, then create a sketch, song, or cheer for displaying to the rest of us. We judged the, picked, group 4, then headed for supper.

Our dorm this year is Holden hall, so we’re right next to Lowry, where the dining hall is. Only Monday & Thursday we’ll be dining in Kittredge, which is closer to our old dorm than this one. Go figure!

After supper, we went to the football field to wait on Gary Broadbent, the boomerang guy. He was late (as usual), and when called, was surprised to discover he was supposed to be here! (He’s a great guy, but not the best about appointments, apparently.) We returned to the dorms, where Carolyn & I went to Walmart again – I had forgotten a fan, she needed a few more supplies. Ah well!

Gary arrived an hour later than intended, but we saw his show and it was entertaining as always. Then we teachers got snacks ready – ice cream sundaes. The alumni girls were done first, then the boomerang babes showed up later. The ice cream choices were vanilla and cinnamon… Not my first pick, but many of the girls enjoyed it. Toppings were choc, strawberry, and caramel.

Carolyn & I are back in the dorm. The fan is a godsend. Gotta work on a presentation for Energy tomorrow. And bed. 🙂

B-WISER 2009

I have been tweeting my camp experiences this year. I went ahead and paid for a month of unlimited texting since it’s B-WISER camp this week and Chicago next. What with the guest ‘net account not working until after classes begin, I got behind on LJ and Twitter. Finally caught up.

Writing this on my phone at the college bowling alley. Abba playing on the juke box. Heh.

Camp has been fun this year. I think the energy course is going well. (Amy, the song YMCA is playing now. We of course sang “It’s fun to be at the B-WISER camp!”) Got some ideas to improve it in future. Might remove radiation – for time – content was good tho.

Tomorrow is the last day of classes. Man, the week flies!

B-WISER 2008

Yay! I can has Internets! 🙂

Wooster has changed their IT policy and you can’t simply connect to a cat-5 jack in a dorm room and then access the Internet. You now need an account to do so. So our contact at the college has gotten dorm accounts (for this week) for me and two other teachers who have bought our laptops to the camp. This is good cuz I need to upload photos to the B-WISER images site for the girls to access tomorrow.

The camp has been going very well so far. We have 52 girls, which is up from last year’s all-time low. That’s excellent. The goal (with our current schedule of morning classes different from afternoon and teachers double-teaming) is 60 girls a camp, so we’re not far off the mark.

Sunday, I arrived right before noon. And I wasn’t the last teacher to show. Five of us then went to Applebees for lunch. I returned to the dorm to meet the camp coordinator who had 5 laptops for me to help pad out the 12 in the room I was assigned. I got the room set up as well as I could and returned to the dorms right before one of the really big rains hit. (Big ol’ hail fell – just a little smaller than moth-ball-size.)

We introduced ourselves to the girls, watched them perform their “getting to know each other skits” and then went to supper. After supper was the evening activity – originally planned to be the hot air balloon, but due to weather, being an engineering activity. The girls got an 8.5×11″ sheet of paper and a foot of cellophane tape (gah, Metric system anyone) and they had to build the tallest free-standing structure. They got a practice sheet & tape, then they created their final one. The tallest one was 1.13m tall. Wow!

Monday was sunny to start out. While Dee was working with the girls in physics, I met a couple of the tech department to get a hub for the room. When I met ’em, they asked why I didn’t use room 205 instead of 210. 205 apparently has 16 PCs (it’s a Mac campus, so Winders boxes are rare) and with the two laptops with decent wireless, I’d get 18 (the max number of girls at any point in time). All we needed in 205 was a projector and screen. Apparently that wasn’t difficult to requisition. So I put a sign on 210 saying we were in 205 and tested things in there. It all worked. Yay!

After lunch we had computer classes and the girls seemed excited about getting 1GB flash drives. One girl said “oooh, I’ve been wanting a flash drive!” Even if they don’t use ’em with the Portable Apps programs on ’em, they’ll have a nice little storage device. I did my internet safety presentation and two of the three classes had enough time to research a female scientist.

The evening activities for Monday were scavenger hunt, bowling, and crafts. I worked at the crafts station and made a little binder clip deer. Kind of cute, but I screwed up the ears. I went to bed exhausted.

Today went a bit smoother with technology – only had to leave physics once to upload some photos and check the weather. And then we were given our usernames & passwords to access the ‘net in the dorms. Yay. In the afternoon we used OpenOffice.org Calc Portable to calculate work and power expended going up stairs. And then when classes were done, it was teacher’s night off.

Six of us headed out to the Toyrifix toy store first. I got a couple of olde fashioned toys (one for me, one for dad) and Looney Labs’ Fluxx card game. Then we saw Get Smart and I really enjoyed it. Then supper was Red Lobster where I had Tuesday’s shrimp special. Mmmmm. We then had a short stop at Walmart so Carolyn and I could pick up The Spiderwick Chronicles. We also got 10,000 BC too (I got the one with the National Geographic extra DVD on saber tooth tigers).

I’m sleepy now – just a few more photos to upload and then I’ll head off to bed.
Now

“Why would an Eskimo need an air conditioner?” “SUMMAH!”

For those of you lucky enough to never see a Rex commercial, the title of this post will make no sense. Heh.

Anyhoo, today was my second day of Summer Vacation. Yay! It’s nice not having to work. Of course, today I was at the school, but that was mostly for a Design Team meeting about the new school (and the architects provided lunch for us – woohoo). Yesterday, however, I spent a nice day hanging out with Linus. He basically sat down beside me or on me no matter where I was in the house. I even got my first assignment done for my summer course.

Now that summer is here and I can breath again, I’ve been working on B-WISER preparations. I found 1GB USB drives for $5.99 a piece and bought the store out (45 bought – and I’ll need to get a few more because we’re up to 49 girls now as of my last correspondence with the camp coordinator). The drives arrived today and they’re just what we need for the computer class. And they’re very cute. (Oh, and I’d tell you where I bought the USB drives from, but I’ll wait until I get the others ordered – don’t want you folks buying out my second choice, also $5.99 a piece!)

One thing that I worked on yesterday and today was an image gallery for my website. OK, so it uses up my last database on my webhost, but it’ll be very helpful for getting B-WISER photos out to the girls. (I used to just bung ’em into folders on my website – this way the girls can actually SEE what’s there.) I’m using Coppermine Photo Gallery (one of the photo galleries that Fantastico can automatically install) and I like it. Especially now that I have it working. Heh.

I already had 2005, 2006 and 2007 photos from B-WISER on a folder on my webhost, so I wanted to use the Batch Add Files option that the program provides. Only every time I tried to use it, I’d get a couple of different warnings. One was a permissions warning, the other a warning from either ImageMagick or GD version 2.x (the programs used by Coppermine to make thumbnails etc). I posted a question about stuff to the InMotionHosting support forum, and one of the techs asked me to PM her with more details. However, before she got back to me, I slogged through things today and found out the problem. Coppermine *said* that either permission levels 777 or 755 would suffice (which all of the folders were). But the program worked only when I set all of the folders to the more permissive 777 setting.

So now I’m fixing and tweaking and making the place look more inviting. I don’t, for the moment, want to have user accounts for the site, so I’ve disabled that, I think. I’m playing with the morpheusXgreen theme, though if I later find it’s not standards compliant, I may switch to one of the default themes. (One of my summer goals is to update my website and go to XHTML 1.0 transitional and be as standards compliant as I can.) Check out the B-WISER photo gallery thus far.

B-WISER 2007, the rest of the week

After only 4 hours of sleep last night, a full day, and a 3 hour drive home, I’m rather zonked. But I’m going to try and write about Wed-Today.

Wednesday was Flight Day in Physics. However, I only got to hang out with groups 1&2 and 5&6 since I used the middle session to go and place the 300+MB of photos already taken onto the machines in our computer lab. (It wasn’t just me taking photos, several teachers and a few students were bringing me cameras to upload pictures from.) So during computer class, I showed the girls how to use the GIMP to edit photos, concentrating on changing image size. The classes went pretty smoothly and quite a few girls enjoyed playing with the program.

The evening program was an engineering project where the girls had to design a device to shoot a ping pong ball aloft for as long as possible. They were given quite a few items including card stock, rubber bands, and Popsicle sticks. After the first round, they got another half hour to modify their devices and try again. While the girls worked on this, I worked on the Impress presentation I was going to show the girls the next day in computer class. It was fun working on my laptop outside while I watched the girls work.

I didn’t get to see how things ended, because I headed back to the dorm with Joyce & Carolyn to photograph the cakes the girls were having for snacks that night. There were two huge sheet cakes, one chocolate, one white. And they had white & chocolate milk to drink. I stuck with white cake & white milk myself. Tasty tasty!

Thursday was electricity day. The girls worked with circuit boards, light bulbs & batteries, then they made “dancing rice” balloons. But the COOL thing was the Van de Graaff. And it was working WONDERFULLY – the best I’d ever seen it do. We had puff ball after puff ball on the thing. We only had 2 girls where nothing happened, but everyone else had something happen. The laughter was so great, one of the chemists in the building came in to see what was so fun. She just laughed when we explained it.

In computers, I showed the girls OpenOffice.org Impress Portable (a presentation/slide show program). Quite a few of the girls really took to the program and made some really neat slide shows of photos from the camp and beyond. I learned several tricks from the program which they discovered while exploring. And I showed them the presentation I’d made the night before, with lovely photos of Ollie & Floyd (elsaf‘s doggies) on one slide too. (One of the girls the day before wondered if I was going to include any doggy photos in my slide show. So I did.) The girls got to take their flash drives with them when they left class that day. 🙂

The night was counselor’s night off, so Dee and I met groups 1&2 for supper around 5pm that day and headed over. Betty, one of the former co-directors (and co-creators) of the camp, was in town to be an Exemplar the following day, so she sat with Dee & I during supper. Lois, the other former co-director and co-creator was also in for the same reason and had supper with Joyce & Carolyn. It was fun to catch up with our former bosses. 🙂 (Betty was also my junior high science teacher, heh heh.)

The evening program was Gary Broadbent, the boomeranger. Once again he dazzled us with his l33t boomerang skilz and showed off some of his boomerang collection. He brought with him a young man from Japan who’s been training with him here in the US. Takeshi (not sure how it’s spelled, but I think that’s what Gary called him) is a street performer and did some of his tricks as well. He did some yo-yo tricks that were unbelievable!

After the program, the girls put on a talent show. I sat in the lounge watching it and worked on the slide show for the final day. The skits were entertaining and all of them were better than the first act… (The first act being us teachers singing the B-WISER song, which is sung to YMCA.)

We finished the evening with a surprise party for my roomie, which was LOADS of fun and very entertaining. I think we were all sore from laughing when it was over. When we got back to the dorm room, I finished up the slide show and finally got to bed at 2am.

Today went very quickly. We each sat in a room (or part of a lounge) with one of our exemplars and introduced them to the girls. I got Dr. Vi from Wooster, who is 93 years old, wanted to be a doctor at aged 12, graduated from Case Western reserve in ’45, and helped start the Free Clinic in Wooster in ’92. She was fun to listen to and I think the girls enjoyed listening to her tales. I know I did!

After our last meal together *sniff* we all headed off to Mateer auditorium for the final ceremony. Each of us teachers introduced a counselor who then introduced their girls & gave ’em cute little awards. The counselors did a cute sketch. And at the end, I showed the slide show I’d been working on all week. It turned out very nice. It was 10 minutes long (191 slides) and elicited the right number of laughs and “awwws.” I was quite pleased. 🙂

I gave Carolyn a few final hugs (she’s such a fun roommate) and then headed home. After 3+ hours driving and a supper at Culver’s, I got home to two little kitties who were happy their mommy was FINALLY home. I’m happy I’m finally home too. And rather tired as well.

As we said repeatedly this week, this was the best B-WISER ever. We all just had a blast putting on the camp this year. The girls were great, the teachers were great, the directors were great – it was all great. Yay for B-WISER!

BWISER 2007 Days 1 & 2

Yesterday was our first full day at B-WISER and first day of classes. I woke early and decided to get up around 6:30. My roomie, Carolyn, followed suit. The two of us headed for breakfast and had pancakes and sausage. (Carolyn was disappointed in the lack of eggs. I was OK with the lack of eggs myself.)

The morning session was physics, and Dee had the girls doing measurement and density, with me as the faithful assistant. However, I spent much of the second period opening the Cruzer Freedom 1GB flash drives we’d gotten the girls. I put labels on all of them (which had a girl’s name and a female scientist’s name) and separated by groups. And during the third period, I headed off to the computer lab to see how things are set up.

The student machines had a Novell logon that was written on the chalkboard, but the machine hooked to the room projector had a Windows logon that I had not been told. So I decided I’d get my laptop at lunch and use it to run the projector. I had managed to turn on the projector during this testing session, and I’d also successfully transferred the Portable Apps onto one of the USB flash drives. Things were looking good.

After a delicious lunch, I headed off to the computer lab and found that half of the girls were already there. I had the idea during lunch to transfer the Portable Apps onto the computer desktops and tried to do this with girls sitting at machines. Then when they all arrived, I had them do that for me. Meanwhile, when I tried to get the projector on, it wouldn’t come on. So I couldn’t show the girls what I was wanting them to do, but we still managed to get the files transferred onto the PCs and then onto their flash drives. And eventually I figured out the projector. (Definitely a case of the Mondays.)

While the files were transferring onto their flash drives, I did my presentation on The Internet: Search Safely, Search Securely, Search Skeptically. Thanks to of all the aggro at the start of the period, we didn’t have time for the girls to research their female scientists. Alas! But the second and third classes went very smoothly and they did get to research theirs.

After class, Carolyn, Dee and I went to Walmart to take Carolyn’s new shoes back and for Dee to get photos printed. I picked up an extension cord for the wireless router. Then we were back for supper and the evening activity. The girls had 3 activities they were alternating though – bowling, a scavenger hunt, and a craft. Joyce and I supervised the bowling. And even got a game in with Anne, the nurse. I was doing VERY badly at the start, but finally got my groove at frame 9 when I got 3 strikes in a row and wound up with 127. judiang would have been proud. 🙂

Today was another early awakening for me, and Carolyn finally got her eggs. But no meat today – just hash browns with the scrambled eggs. I also had a chocolate muffin, and requiring more carbs, toasted an English muffin and put grape jelly on. Yum!

Physics had the girls racing balloon cars to work through Newton’s Laws and then outside to blast off film cannister cannons. Well, the first two periods had the girls outside. During period 3, they got outside, watched as the rain began down at the end of the street and headed towards them, then Dee herded them back inside before it hit here. So they did the film cannister cannons over the sinks instead. Heh.

After lunch (mmmm, pirogies!) it was time to teach computers again. I showed the girls OpenOffice.org’s Calc Portable and we entered in all the data and calculations for the Work & Power lab. Then we had the girls run/walk/climb/tiger dance (yes, one of them did this) up the stairs outside the classroom. I timed them doing this, then we had them enter the data into Calc. And instantly they had their work and power in climbing the stairs. Woot!

We teachers had the evening off, so I headed off to the chemistry building to meet up with the other teachers, who were helping the chemistry group clean up. Then we headed back for the dorms to get our money. It was time to go to the Toy Store! Yay!

We went to the toy store where I found dad some father’s day & birthday gifts and got me a couple of physics toys. Then on to the movie theater to watch Ocean’s 13. I haven’t seen the first two movies, but having enjoyed this one so much, I think I need to rent the other two. Mucho fun. Finally supper was at Jake’s steakhouse. Where I had beet battered fish & chips and a very nice brownie & ice cream dessert.

We ladies had a blast out this evening. I really love teaching with these ladies each summer and am glad that we were able to have the camp despite the lower numbers.

I rode a balloon!

Today is the first day of B-WISER 2007. I got up at a decent hour and was on the road by 8:15am. I had breakfast at McDonald’s on the way. And was in Wooster within 3 hours. Wherein I had lunch – from McDonald’s… No matter, it was lovely seeing my friends once again.

Around 2 we headed off to the classrooms to get our rooms ready. Dee and I set up the physics room, and then I went off to Taylor with Carolyn and Joyce to check out the computer lab. Alas, the room was locked, but there were computers in it. Woot!

At 4, we introduced ourselves to the girls and at 5:15, headed off to supper. As usual, the food in Lowry was excellent. I had lasagna, salad, an apple & banana, and dessert (brownie & chocolate chip cookie). Tasty tasty! We teachers managed to all sit together (there’s only 9 of us staff this year) and we chatted for quite awhile catching up with our lives. (Two of our group have spent a year retired and are really enjoying themselves.) Around 6:30, Carolyn, Wanda and I headed to Walmart for a few forgotten items. I picked up a Belkin wireless router for our room (only $40) for camp and will have to put it with my other B-WISER items for future camps, if we can have them. As you can see by this post, the router is working just peachy keen.

Once we were back, the girls were in the basement of Douglass (the dorm we’re all staying in) learning about hot air balloons. And then the balloonists went out and began inflating the balloon. They took girls up 3 at a time for a short ride (tethered the whole time) and when the finished the alumni girls, they let teachers go. Well, of COURSE I had to go. So Joyce and I went up for a short hop in the balloon – my first time in a hot air balloon. It’s cool, cuz you don’t realize you’ve left the ground.

I, of course, took photos.


The balloon in all its glory.


The balloon lifts!


Wanda and Dee enjoy the flight.


A shot from in the balloon basket itself!


Susan got a photo of Joyce and me in the balloon.


Wanda got a photo of the balloon glow.

Portable Apps

This Sunday I’ll be heading North East to Wooster for B-WISER Science Camp for Girls once again. There was a fear that we wouldn’t even be having the camp this summer – enrollment is down big time. We have 30, maybe 32 girls, signed up now, however, so we’re going to do the camp, but with half the staff we usually use. As one of the senior teachers (heh, I still think that’s funny – I’m younger than most of my coworkers at this camp, but I’ve been teaching there many years now) I still have a job there. Phew!

In order to accommodate the smaller staff, we’re splitting the morning and afternoon up into different classes. Normally Dee and I would teach 6 sessions of physics. This year, we’ll teach 3 sessions of physics in the morning, and then in the afternoon, we’ll teach 3 sessions of computers. Dee is in charge of the physics in the morning with me as her assistant. And I’m in charge of computers in the afternoon with Dee as my assistant.

Computers, eh? Wow, what to teach for computers? I had a lot of ideas and little time to implement them. (Wouldn’t it be cool if we could do computer based labs for a week?) But what I finally settled on was getting the girls something they could use even after camp – portable applications and a little flash drive to store them on. (Thanks to the College of Wooster bookstore which is giving the camp a nice deal on 1GB flash drives!)

Monday won’t actually require the portable applications – I’ll be working on Internet Safety and Skeptical Searching. I haven’t decided yet if we’ll use Firefox portable to do the session or just have the girls use the browser that’s on the lab computers we’re using.

Tuesday we’ll definitely get into the portable apps. I’ll introduce them to the programs on their flash drives. Then Dee and I will have the girls do a lab on work, power and energy, but we won’t have them do the calculations. We’ll return to the computer lab and use OpenOffice.org Portable‘s Calc (the spreadsheet) to do the calculations. 🙂

Wednesday is when I introduce them to the Gimp. Yes, there is a Gimp Portable. And it works just fine. We’ll be uploading photos each night to my website of the girls and they can download some and manipulate them. Mostly I’ll focus on resizing pix for webpages and presentations.

Thursday we’ll return to OpenOffice.org Portable and work with Impress, the presentation program. We’ll have the girls create a presentation of the pictures they worked on the day before. And best of all, they can take everything home with ’em when they go.

Friday we don’t meet for classes, so that’s all we’ll have to teach during the week. I included some other programs which we’ll put on the flash drives, including GAIM, a media player, Clam Antivirus, a PDF viewer, and Sudoku. 🙂

The 2006 B-WISER Storm

In my last post, I hinted that the last 24 hours of B-WISER didn’t go as smoothly as usual. Well, Thursday night, the teachers took the girls to supper so that the counselors could have a night off. (This is usually on Wednesday, but this year was different.) The girls that Dee & I were meeting said to meet in Lowry, where the food was, at 5pm. Caroline and her team teacher Joyce were to also meet their girls there. So we all headed off to Lowry a little bit before 5pm. Caroline and I had our swim suits, hoping to repeat our fun swimming evening of Tuesday. Well, we did get to get wet…

Once we were at Lowry, we waited for the girls to come and watched as it got dark outside. And windy. Very windy. And after a bit the rain began. And it was furious. The power flickered several times before finally going out. Well, not all of the girls in Caroline & Joyce’s group were there, but by now the cafeteria was open, so we all headed upstairs. The food was already prepared, so was hot. However, they had no way of keeping it warm. As more folks filtered into the cafeteria, I’m sure they didn’t have quite as nice a meal as we did.

We were still waiting on our other groups and missing girls, who were still stuck at the dorm, when the cafeteria first announced that they wanted us to use paper products from that point on. Then later we heard they were going to stop serving by 6pm. At five til six, our remaining charges finally arrived – the thunderstorms had stopped enough to let them through.

Those of us who were done headed down to the lobby again. And found out that it had really gotten bad outside. The reason Becky and her charges didn’t get over in time is because they headed out only to have a tree crash down just a few feet in front of them! Needless to say, they all ran for the safety of the dorm and waited for the storm to clear. Their trip to see us was still an adventure, avoiding all the downed trees. Eep!

Becky later took photos of some of the devastation and I’ve got a few to post.

One of the paths is blocked by a downed tree.
One of the paths is blocked by a downed tree.

Trees on power lines - eek!
Trees on power lines – eek!

That poor car!
That poor car! Thankfully that wasn’t one of ours.

The evening activity was canceled that night, but the girls had been planning a Talent Show for after snacks anyhoo, so we used that as the evening activity. When we got back to the dorm, the generator was running, so the hallways and lobby had light. We did the Talent Show in the lobby. We teachers started it with our brilliant rendition of The B-WISER Song. (Basically, YMCA but with new lyrics for B-WISER.) We actually hit some of the notes and often sang the right words, so we were very impressive. 🙂

The girls did a great job with the show. Several soloists (wow – to sing in front of your peers a capella – very ballsy – or is that ovary-sy?) and many skits. And I’d even signed up to recite poetry. I recited “The Lobster Quadrille” by Lewis Carroll. Oh, and told two science jokes which only the teachers got. Heh.

The next morning, we headed off to Lowry for breakfast. They managed to get some hot water (they have 1 gas range in the kitchens) and cold milk and other things. I had cereal, oatmeal (now I know what sawdust & wall paper paste taste like – with a touch of cinnamon), an orange, and milk. Wasn’t bad.

Our 6 exemplars managed to get into Wooster (which was impressive, because the city was practically a disaster area still) and they all talked to the girls. I got to listen to a lady who worked for Smuckers, another who’d recently been to Antarctica, and a third who worked for NASA. Then I was stationed at the OB/GYN’s station while 3 groups of girls came to listen to her talk about math, science, genetics, and other things. So I got to see 4 of the 6 exemplars. Not bad.

For lunch, the cafeteria folks had grilled out and provided hamburgers, hot dogs, smokies, and baked beans. Plus plenty of fruits and veggies. They really did a great job with a bad situation. We all applauded them for their efforts.

We wound up having the closing ceremony in Lowry too, because it had plenty of windows to get us enough light to see. A lot of parents were already there and watched as the girls got their certificates and we thanked everyone involved. Then *sniff* it was time to leave my fun co-workers and head home. Always sad to say good bye to them. But by 2:30 I was on the road and out of Wooster. (Thankfully, my usual route into & out of Wooster was one of the few free ones).

As of Friday night, there were still nearly 13,000 people in Wooster without electricity. Now there are apparently only about 6,000. Still a lot, but it looks like they’re getting things sorted out.