What the Heck Happened This Summer?

Well, you know I haven't written since the end of spring semester, so here's the catch-up.

I got a job taking customer service calls for Convergys, complete with 7 weeks of training. I've never had to take that much training before; it was like a whole semester in itself.

Once I started taking calls on my own, I started the summer semester. Five weeks of school in what would normally be 16. All I needed to take was Education Technology & Multicultural Education, but in order to qualify for the school loan (since my scholarship didn't come in til the fall), I had to have six credits, so I took a private voice course to bring my credits from 5 to 6, an almost $500 difference. (Doh!)

I gotta admit the Ed Tech class was so fun. I ended up doing so much more than I was asked, because I wanted to know how to do the projects I had in my head, not just get by with the most basic boring project. It's embarrassing to admit I didn't know how to make a PowerPoint Presentation before, but now I can do that, edit a website, make a DVD (editing audio & video), even decorate a bulletin board. Woohoo! My biggest projects are on my eportfolio, which I add to with every class to have available to my next interviewer. Techno-swank!

MultiCult, as I call it (just kidding) was informative. I was braced for a PC-stringent re-education camp. Despite some parts of the book that made me scoff, I appreciated that there was something actually objective to learn. Like the difference between equality & equity, stages of ethnic identity, and the like. It turned out to be more positive than I thought, like not all white males are the devil, whodathunk?

The voice teacher that usually teaches only voice majors got to be MY teacher, supercool. It was very helpful, and I'm glad she recorded all the lessons, although I have to lock myself somewhere quite, turn the volume all the way up, and press my ear to the laptop to review it. Looks like it's time to use the hookup speakers.

So the week after summer semester ended, we closed on the house! August 14th to be exact, Jared's sister's bday, so now I'll remember when to celebrate every year our house anniversary. We now live at 48 South Marble Canyon Drive Cedar City, Utah 84720. It's so nice to not have your address include the words, "box" or "apt" or "turn off the paved road." No, seriously, I love my house. A shout out to all the friends and family that helped us move out & back in again, including my in-laws, my sis Cami, Jared's h.s. buddy Steve, sis-in-law Amber and her fam, including my nephew Alex, and his buddy Cameron (who I swear had bronchitis and would not stop moving furniture even with my begging and his nose bleeds)!

The first day sleeping there was so eery. I felt like I was sleeping at someone else's house, which is always hard. No, it was like I was sleeping at a friend's house and they had put us in their master bedroom. The ceilings were so high, I felt like I was outside looking at the stars. The icemaker in the fridge wasn't that loud, but because it was so new to me, I kept waking up. It wasn't til the third night that I actually got a full night's sleep.

The next week I spent unpacking and figuring out where to put everything. The hard thing wasn't finding room for everything; it was trying to decide which of the twenty cabinets to put the medicine, or where in the umpteen drawers in the kitchen to put that 2nd pasta maker I got from a friend. I have way too many kitchen toys, mostly donated by a divorced friend who was cleaning house of ex-reminders.

I also spent that week finalizing & distributing my posters & fliers. You might have seen my picture on facebook. I put a similar pic in my piano teaching ads and trotted around town asking to post them up in businesses windows & boards. I really liked how they turn out. (I'll go back to this post & add the pics later, just gotta finish debriefing.) You know, local business is more likely than I thought to support other local businesses. I'm all for Ma & Pop stores, which to me is the antithesis of federalizing. But I digress. It was tough, but I got almost all my posters/fliers distributed. The bleeding toes were so worth it; I've never felt so confident and interconnected with others. I'm already accumulating some students, by the way, to start teaching in October or once we get a piano, which might be earlier. We're looking at some deals this weekend in Las Vegas. Funny, Jared did all the research on buying pianos. But he likes to do things like that, research & development, hunting for the best deals. Why do you think it took two years to buy a house? If only he could put that gift toward yard sale shopping, and the world would be ours.

The next week (last week) was the first week of school. I'm taking (inhale) Teaching Math for Elementary I, Music Technology, Private Voice instruction, Choir, Teaching Dance, Teaching Theatre, Assessment, and Special Education. I was looking forward to Music Tech, but the teacher is one of three in my classes that was thrown into the course at a moment's notice. So far I've been called a guinea pig, an experiment, and a pioneer. Not good signs to me, but I try to stay positive.

Last Saturday was our official house-warming party, which turned out to be a blast. My bestest friend from h.s., Shayla, came down on her way back up from Zions and slept over. Don't you love those friends you see after being gone for a few years and it's as if you'd just hung out together yesterday? I love that we have that, although it makes it less motivating to do all the things I know good friends do, like call (sorry!).

Sorry about the text only blog, I'll throw together pictures when I have time to think. The only reason I'm writing a blog now is because I threw my neck out bending down to pull up my pants while in the little-lady's room, so I have nothing else to do. I think it's from the constant doing-something's, multiple scooter trips per day, and the lack of sleep.

Speaking of which, in my Teaching Math class, we have math homework that said in the syllabus it was due today, right? It was a LOT of homework, and the math is completely different from what you normally learn, because it has nothing to do with plugging in numbers, it has more to do with critical thinking, working outside the box, finding multiple ways to do the same thing, and the like. So I made sure to pace myself and do a quarter of the hw each day until it would be ready today.

Well, last night, I'm working on the last quarter of the hw, and it's thrice as long as everything else. So I do what any must-have-a-4.0 girl would do, stay up til 2am finishing it. I go to class, we review some of the questions in the assignment, then everyone leaves after class without handing in their hw. And I'm like, did I miss something here? Turns out we're not done discussing it so we don't have to turn it in yet. NOBODY had completed the hw yet, except for one OCD guy I knew, not that that is a reflection on me... Anyway, So I say out loud to the teacher, "The hw's not due today? I stayed up til 2am getting it done." She immediately replies, "Don't ever do that again. I'm not that stringent." So instead of acting offended and put-off, I chose to look at it like, "Okay, here is a teacher that cares. And I'm never doing another assignment on time again. I'll accept that." This is the one and only time I'm going to vent about it. At least nNow I won't throw my neck out again due to lack of sleep. Late-night math isn't that productive anyway; my mind goes on standby after midnight.

One more thing, then I'll let you go. This last week New Harmony was literally "under fire." They had a fire that started a month ago from a lightening storm and has been festering ever since. Officials have been letting it burn (controlled) to keep wild fires from occurring. Well last week the fire got out of control. There were several times my sister's family & Jared's parents' family were almost mandatorily evacuated, but instead it was just strongly suggested. Jared's brother, John, is staying with us until we're sure they're not in any danger anymore.

Cedar City got all the smoke though. I almost passed out a couple times walking to class on campus just because there wasn't enough oxygen in the air. You could see the ash floating around, and everything had an orange eclipse-like caste. Now it's better in New Harmony but headed toward Cedar. Fun fun fun. K bye