Back in Illinois, and typing up this post on my brand-new Macbook!

Last Saturday was my graduation from Illinois State University. It feels weird to be completely done with school (at least for now) after being in school for so long. Even when I wasn't taking classes for a year, I was still planning school, so this is so different. Now I get to look for a job......yay. Plus I need to take my APT test, make sure ISU completes my entitlement, and apply for my certificate. Probably pretty much in that exact order. I do plan on getting in job applications in online to the various school districts, especially since they stay on file for a year.

I really like my Macbook. It's fun to play with the built-in iSight camera. (Kalen doesn't quite appreciate the awesomeness of Photo Booth). It's also nice to have a computer that is fast and actually has all its parts still working. Especially the battery. I like being able to use the battery for longer than 2.5 minutes. I just need to finish getting everything set up the way I like it. And get all my stuff on it again. I miss my tunes!

Anyway, it's probably time for bed now, so hopefully I'll update this when I have a job, or at least more news.

So we're getting down to the wire now. Four weeks and counting until I'm finished with student teaching! I so can't wait to come home. I miss all you jerks.

Most of you have heard all my third-grade stories by now, so I won't get into them here. They're a good group of kids though. Still not sure that I really want to teach third grade. I think what I'm really tired of, though, is teaching someone else's classroom. It's so different when it's your own classroom, and you've got your own established procedures, so you know them just as well as the kids. Plus she has a bunch of strategies and things she likes the kids to use, and a lot of them are different from what I'd do. Third-graders don't like it when you do things differently. I'm happy to be giving up math now; that's where most of the annoying strategies are. Especially now that the reading TAKS is over (I hate TAKS stuff!)

Ah well. Next step will be getting a job. I've got my APT test scheduled for June, so I should be certified by July. I'm so excited to graduate and be a real teacher. Guess I have to start job searching though, and getting letters of recommendation from people. I'll have to ask my cooperating teacher to write one for me on Monday, just to give her plenty of time. Hopefully I'll be going on job interviews in June and July. I don't know how much I can do till I get certified, but I'm applying anyway. At least my application and resume will be in the systems.

See you all in a month! =D

It's nice to enjoy spring weather in January. I like being able to walk outside without a coat and wander around barefoot--although I can't do too much of that. I haven't gone to the pools yet, but I did go to the hot tub last night with some of the other student teachers. We think that the San Antonio natives probably think we're crazy, but it's been so pretty out. At least for us Illinois people. I can't wait to have some time to go swimming.

Liz and I went out grocery shopping today. I don't think she knows where the HEB *close* to our apartment is, and I didn't bring Garmin, so we ended up going to one about 20 minutes away. I did manage to see the Borders on our way though. I'm planning on doing some book shopping this weekend. I also need to get the stuff to hook up the cable in my room.

This afternoon we had our student teaching orientation. (I still can't believe I'm actually a student teacher now). I met my cooperating teacher and I got to see my classroom. There's 20 kids in my room, which is a good size, I think. Enough for some fun activities, but not so many that they get unruly or groups get too gigantic. I'll be observing for the rest of the week, then I'm probably going to start taking some classroom responsibilities, but probably not doing much actual teaching yet. I'll be taking over science and social studies first--they have TAKS tests in math and reading, so my CT wants to keep those for as long as possible. Apparently that's how the last student teacher did it, and it worked out well.

Anyway, tomorrow I meet the kids, so more about that later.

OK, trying to finish this off here.

Anyway, for the rest of Thursday. After I got off shift, we had a TD run, which I think has been adequately covered in other people's blogs. Best part was when we decided we had no idea how to solve the last puzzle, and just starting guessing eyes, and it turned out my guess was right. After True Dungeon, I went to play Are You A Werewolf? which was a lot of fun. I got there a little late, because the TD run had ended up behind a bit, so I only had a few minutes to get over to the convention center after getting all the stuff done in the admin room. So when I got over there, they'd already started, but since it was basically a "come and go as you like" game, I just had to wait for enough latecomers to get there to start a new circle. We basically stayed with the same people for most of the time, with people drifting in and out of the circle. This led to some interesting meta-strategy ingame ("he's wearing a hat, so he's a wolf!"). The one time I was a wolf, me and my fellow wolf managed to kill all the villagers without losing either of us. This was partially due to some luck in killing the seer first round, and partially due to the fact that we managed to play the strategy really well so that neither of us were ever suspected.

Friday morning, I was supposed to play a game, but I couldn't find it in the room the program book said it was supposed to be in, and there was nowhere that I could find that told me where it actually was, so I just gave up and went to the dealer hall. I wandered around for a while before going to find Lesimony's booth. I bought a chainmail bracelet and a copy of Widseth's first book. Then I went back to the Tavern, where basically the same things happened as Thursday, except that now we knew that the Gencon tickets were messed up for the second round. After volunteering, I hung out in the Tavern for a while and played part of a round of Three-Dragon Ante, in which I was totally kicking ass. But I had tickets for NASCRAG, so I had to head over there before we were finished. So I handed off my pile o' winnings to Cody, who was coming over to relieve Kalen on shift.

I got to NASCRAG and, after trying to figure out what was going on for a few minutes, finally got hooked up with a group that was short a couple of people. After we picked up another guy, we got ourselves a DM and settled in to play. It was really fun, crazy and awesome, and apparently we did really well. The DM told us afterwards that he thought we were great, especially since none of us had ever played before. My character was basically a country-singing bard, so I got to use my bad southern accent, and I got to sing in said bad accent. We ended up advancing to the second round, but since I was volunteering during the round, I couldn't go. The team got alternate for the third round though, so they still did well. :)

Saturday, honestly, wasn't very interesting. I was doing door for the Tavern all morning, which basically involved taking entrance tokens or generics from people and occasionally answering questions. And talking to the other Tavern people. Then I wandered around the dealer hall and the convention center until it was time for the live read. I got there a hour early, figuring that it would be crowded as usual, but it was a really huge hall, and not that many people showed up. (Suspected to be due to the misprinted ticket snafu). It was still fun, but not as fun as years past due to the fewer people. I stopped to snag some swag on the way out of the hall, during which time Matt convinced people that I'd left, so they went to the dance without me and I missed it. :( Oh well. My fault for wandering away from the group.

Sunday morning was the LKOK special, during which I managed to die, but got True Rezzed, so it was all right. Then we had the TD Riddle Reveal, where it turned out that we'd generally been on the right track for most of the puzzles but had somehow managed to miss a critical piece that would have led us to the solution. Then we all went out to lunch together, and I headed back to Normal, after Dad figured out which directions to give me and we found out that the map didn't quite match up with the road, so I had to get turned around to get onto the right road. Got to my dorm and went off to sleep, since class was bright and early the next morning.

Gonna try to update about classes tomorrow.

Well, I'm back at school now, but this entry's not about that. We'll get to that later. Right now, I suppose I'm expected to give a report on GenCon. Luckily for you, mine probably won't be as long as other people's, mainly due to the fact that a) I don't expect you to care that much and b) if you do care, you can generally get the details from the other reports.

OK, Thursday. Picking up from where I ditched Dad in the dealer hall (http://anothermisadventure.blogspot.com/2007/08/4dventure-gencon-thursday-august-16.html), I headed off to the Tavern for our morning run of True Arena, which is a shuffleboard-based, player vs. player combat tournament. Ryan was signed up for this slot, but he wouldn't arrive until later. Despite the fact that I actually arrived earlier than the 11:30 time I'd been told to come (the Tavern opens at noon), the boards were already set up and a practice game was underway so that the new volunteers could see how it was run. I'd run a round last year, though, so I knew how it was supposed to go. I met the other volunteers and we started getting to know each other. Then the players started arriving, and after some inital confusion on how the assignment of boards and opponents was going to go, we got sorted out and started running the battles. Round one went fairly smoothly (Ryan advanced through the first bracket, but was beat out in the second.

We then moved on to floating/getting people to sign up for Bar Fight (our next player vs. player combat in a slightly different style). Between calling out for Bar Fight, we mostly chatted with each other and with players as they came up to ask us questions (or as we approached them to harangue them). That was pretty much all we had to do between the fights. We did try to add flavor to the tavern. Later Perkeo brought us all foam swords, which naturally led to foam sword fights. We greatly amused the Mariott drink guy anyway. The Bar Fight ran smoothly. I did the first part, then handed it over to Hatrel as I ducked out to grab some water before my throat conked out. As the Bar Fight really didn't need a lot of people running it, I hung out front and chatted with the girl running door for a while.



To be continued later--now I need to get some sleep so I can get over this cold.

Hmm, July 29th...so three weeks till classes begin again, and two until I'd hoped to be getting into my dorm. Of course, that second part is contingent on whether or not I can get a dorm parking sticker. Apparently since I'll be living in the dorms for the first time this semester, I'm counted as a new/transfer student. And even though (as I just learned from the ISU parking site) returning student parking applications were due June 29th, the information for new/transfer students has not been sent yet. I'm thinking it's probably going out tomorrow, since they're claiming late July. Hopefully I can get a space. I do NOT want have to deal with getting to my clinical site without a car.

I like ISU, at least for the classes. But their bureaucracy SUCKS.

Kinda tired (and lazy) from my content test today, but I promised pictures from DC. Here's some of my favorites, but I can put up specific pictures if people request something they want to see more of.

( Behind the cut! )

Well, Kalen and I didn't really get anywhere today. We tried, but it turns out that we really don't know how to drive around D.C. We were going to visit the National Cathedral. I didn't really get good directions though, so we got lost pretty quickly. So we drove around for a while, sort of a mini-driving tour. We saw the Pride festival that was going on, and we drove past the National Archives, which was cool to see, particularly since it wasn't on our list of things to see.

Our original plan called for spending the evening in Georgetown and having dinner at a tapas bar called Jaleo. Decided to skip it though, since neither of us had our heart set on it. We figured we could go to a place in Naperville that Kalen knew of. We then tossed around the idea of going to see the Mall at night and visiting the Lincoln Memorial, which we didn't get to yesterday, but Kalen was too sunburnt to feel like walking. So we just hung around the hotel. We did do some vacation-y things though. We ordered room service for breakfast, and went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. It was really good food though. We got some of the hotel's specialty martinis with dinner, and had grilled scallops and a Caesar salad (we split both). I really liked the cream sauce the scallops came in. We also got rosemary sweet potatoes and some kind of slaw that was good.


Backing up to yesterday...
In the morning, we went over to the Museum of Natural History to check out the gem exhibit. They really do have an amazing gem and mineral collection. I took a bunch of pictures, and will post some later, probably with a big picture post after the trip. We wandered around the museum a little more, and walked through the fossil exhibit on our way to lunch, but other than the gems, they didn't have much of anything that the Field Museum doesn't. We found a special exhibit of wildlife photography that was really cool (they had some extremely cute penguin pictures).

Afterwards, we walked down to the Washington Monument for the singalong. There's some videos and pictures on this site. I told Kalen we'd have to tell Danielle that we sang with Dora the Explorer =). We only ended up staying till 3:00, because we kinda forgot to bring sunscreen and were starting to get burned--Washington D.C. doesn't have the drugstores on every corner like Chicago. We then walked around to see the monuments. Unfortunately, we didn't realize how much of a hike some of them are. Obviously, we saw the Washington Monument.

After the singalong we headed to the Jefferson Memorial. It was really cool to see, but it's all the way across the Tidal Basin. I think it may have been a mile or so out. Maybe a mile and a half. We stopped about halfway and had a snack at a snack bar pavilion (Gatorade and ice cream). After we managed to get out there and saw all the sights, we walked back towards the main part of the mall to see the FDR Memorial. This one was really awesome, with a bunch of statues and waterfalls, and FDR quotes carved on the walls. We meant to circle around to get to the Lincoln Memorial, but we ended up coming up to the center too much. We found ourselves at the WWII Memorial, so we walked around and checked that one out, and got a picture of the Illinois pillar. We continued towards the Lincoln Memorial (because we *really* wanted to see that one), and on the way, we saw the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Eventually, I just couldn't walk anymore, so we just decided to go up to the Metro stop and take the bus back to the hotel.


Tomorrow: We're planning on seeing the Capitol, Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and White House. Look forward to the picture of me shaking my fist at the White House!

Driving through PA (Thursday)


Man, am I tired. Kalen and I got up at 8:00 this morning, left at 9, and got back to the hotel at about 5:30. Today was our museum day, so we spent the day walking around the Mall and various museums. We did get to see a lot of cool stuff though.


Our first stop: Smithsonian Institute Castle Building. There's some cool stuff to see here, like the coin display and the samples from the other Smithsonian museums. We took a mini-tour, since the docent came over with a few people just as we were going to look at this display case, so we just joined up to listen to a bit of the history. We came back here later for lunch after the Freer Gallery and then a quick bathroom stop before heading to Air and Space. Still haven't done much souvenir buying, but I got a bell from here.

No pictures from our first two museums: Freer Art Gallery and the Holocaust Memorial Museum. The Freer Gallery was pretty vacant, since it's not one of the Big Name ones, but I thought that it was interesting. It had a great Whistler collection and a lot of art from Asia. The Holocaust Museum was really interesting to see--lots of first hand stuff that really made you think.


The Air and Space Museum. We had fun here, checking out the "How Things Fly" exhibit and visiting some of the famous artifacts. We got a bunch of pictures of the cool stuff.


The Museum of American History is closed for renovation, so they had an exhibit of some of the favorite artifacts at the Air and Space Museum. We had to get in line to see it, since of course everyone wanted to come see Dorothy's ruby slippers. You could tell which displays were the most popular, because they had lines around them that immediately dropped off right after the display.

We had planned to go to the Museum of Natural History next, but after walking around for 7 hours, we were tired and our feet were hurting, so we decided to go there tomorrow and just head back to the hotel afterwards. We grabbed a quick snack at the food court McDonald's and took a moment to rest before we left.

Tomorrow is the sing-along, and we're planning to visit the monuments on the Mall. We should probably get more visited, because it won't take us two hours to visit each one. After that, if we're not too tired, we'll take in the Museum of Natural History. We'll probably at least pop in and check out the gem hall anyway.

Time for the D.C. Vacation blog! I took some pictures, which I'll upload later, when I feel less lazy. Pennsylvania is pretty fun to drive through, except that the hills cause a lot of pressure changes--my ears kept closing up!

Kalen and I arrived in D.C. at about 3:00 today and got checked into our hotel (www.holidayinnonthehill.com). The rooms have internet, but not wireless, so only one of us can be online at a time. Luckily, there's plenty to do in D.C. :D We're on Capitol Hill, only a couple blocks from the Capitol building. We relaxed for a while, went swimming, and watched some TV.

For dinner, we walked over to Union Station and ate at Sbarro's. Then we wandered around, checked out the architecture, and window shopped a little. Checked out a couple of tourist-y shops for souvenirs. We didn't buy anything yet, but I found a pretty thimble and some other cool stuff.

Tomorrow: visiting some of the museums on the Mall. Hopefully I'll get some pictures uploaded.