MY LIFE AS SPINNER DUDE

Posted by admin at March 30th, 2009

This year, I have had the great opportunity to judge winterguard shows in different parts of the country. 

Traveling on business  is an exhausting process.  In my younger days I thought it was an exhausting process.  So, my views of it haven’t changed.  The process is rather exciting but  the canned hotel rooms from city to city?  Sigh.

As an example, my room from a rather large chain hotel in LA County is exactly the same as in El Paso, TX.  The bed coverings, the furniture, the lamps, even the bathroom freebies are all the same.

My only complaint about the “rather large chain hotel owned by a prominent religious organization”?  Get new televisions!  Geez…the big black box that takes 2 mins to warm up and takes up all that space?  Flat screen kids….you’ve got the cash.  Time to upgrade.

Posted by admin at March 11th, 2009

It’s hard to believe that The Blur of Fur has been at The Casa for a year now,  but he has.     He has settled in nicely to our little routine here in NC SD.  Our little family is trundling along nicely.  There will be more roadtrips for him to hone his overlord skills,  more open stretches of Pismo Beach to explore and  more puppy licks to covet.  We can’t wait!

Posted by admin at March 8th, 2009

This organization, no matter what others may think, really does look out for the welfare of all those involved in the teaching profession. 

LD and I were, once again, at the CTA’s Equity and Human Rights Conference held in San Jose this weekend.  OK, all the free adult drinkies and snackies we could handle were gleefully consumed at the Friday night cocktail party.  Yippy for free drinkies!   

Upon prior exploration before the cocktails,  we discovered that the Fairmont Hotel is connected to San Jose State University.  It is a hip trendoid area of town with the San Jose Rep, an arthouse movie theater and onto San Jose State University within strolling distance of each destination.    We walked around SJSU and enjoyed the campus.  We landed in the library where they had two excpetional exhibits:  The Beethoven Exhibit and the John Steinbeck Exhibit.  I got to play some of the instruments that belonged to Beethoven and and see some of the manuscripts Steinbeck wrote.  I was thrilled. 

The conference was an alarming reminder of how education is going to suffer in our great state.  I am especially alarmed at all the cost cutting measures smaller districts have already taken.  I enjoyed all the workshops and got to hear perspectives on what it means to be Asian American, a multicultural pefromance group from Los Osos HS (SoCal), some horrible stories on how the INS ripping families apart in CA, and some Kinder teachers and their presentation on how to make your school a more caring place (character education).

Good friends S and P invited us to their home for a delicious pulled pork dinner and prior to that it was lunch with S and her kids.  How much fun is that? 

I hope LD enjoyed himself.  Judging from schhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwaaaaaaaaag, I think we both had a great time.