The roof...is on fire

Tonight's installment from our North Las Vegas Hometown Emergency Planner wheel is [drum roll]:
HOW TO PREPARE: FIRE
1. Install smoke alarms.
2. Create an escape plan that includes two escape routes from every room in the house (easier said than done) and walk through the routes with your entire family.
3. Clean out storage areas. (to have less flammable stuff around)
4. Check the electrical wiring and extension cords.
5. Never use gasoline indoors.
6. Teach children fire safety.
7. Install fire extinguishers.
8. Know how to shut off power and gas.
9. Pay attention when cooking.
10. Don't smoke in bed. (As Mammaw says: Never ever smoke in bed/or else you might wake up dead.)

And now...
HOW TO ACT: FIRE
1. Use water or a fire extinguisher to put out small fires.
2. Do not try to put out a fire that is getting out of control.
3. Never use water on an electrical fire. Only use fire extinguishers approved for electrical fires.
4. Smother oil and grease fires with baking soda or salt. If it is in a pan, cover the pan.
IF FIRE IS SPREADING:
1. Get out!
2. Once outside, do not try to go back in.
3. Stay low to the ground, under the smoke.
4. Use the back of your hand to check the top of the door, doorknob, and the crack between the door and the door frame before trying to open a closed door.
5. If you are trapped, hang a white or light colored sheet, towel, or shirt out a window to alert firefighters to where you are.
6. Use stairs - never take an elevator.
7. If your clothes catch on fire, stop drop and roll.

Oh, and at some point you should have called 911. Probably near the beginning, as soon as you noticed the fire.

My post is late tonight because I've been on Pinterest. Instead of making a "practical life skills" powerpoint for my students, since tomorrow is our last full day of school, I ripped off a bunch of pinterest images and pasted them into a presentation which is perfectly legal because I am not giving it for profit.

A Fitting Memorial

Let's begin this post with the actual memorial for Memorial Day, "In Flanders Fields" by John McCrae:

And now to add in some photos of and/or taken by myself, as I enjoyed this morning off by hanging out with Krista in the Boneyard. Here then, unformatted and in no particular order, I give you the history of Las Vegas.

Our tour guide (Troy?) under the city's founding date on an old Golden Nugget sign.

In the back is an old sign for the El Cortez, where I like to park my car when I go to Fremont St.

First and last sign you see on your way in/out of the tour.

We reminisced about the days when "T.I." had a family-friendly show.

You were unlikely to have seen anything in the above display that you won't see in anyone's photos who has ever visited the Boneyard. Krista (pictured above) is tres professionnelle, so I look forward to seeing her interpretation, color-corrected and in proper order and format. I'm sure her collection is where my FB profile photo and/or cover photo will come from.

Happy Memorial Day.

Still Out of Focus

Bah!

Tonight I'm playing with the newsmaps.

http://newsmap.jp/

You can choose the topics that you want, and if you scroll over the headline, it gives you a summary of the story. This is the same as a wordle, except with headlines.

Thank me later.

News of the Weird, Kevetching About Lonely Planet, and Being Appreciated

1. News of the weird: a zombie outbreak has affected my middle school. No, I don't mean the normal designation of young teenagers as "zombies." This time, the students are literally writing a "z" on their neighbor's arm, and then saying that they are a zombie. I learned about this two days ago, when a student asked if they could put a "z" on my arm and make me a zombie. Um...no. But I am intrigued by this situation. I wonder how it started, how quickly it has spread, and whether anyone is doing any research or keeping statistics on it. In the future, I might make this an actual classroom activity. "If you have a 'z' at the top of your paper, congratulations, you are now a zombie! I am your zombie overlord. Your mission is to infect the entire school building. Each day I will give you ten z papers. Give them out to whomever you contact. Give me a full report tomorrow and receive ten more z papers." Then we see how long the experiment takes, and we graph the results. I can hear the students now: "Ugghhh! We already did this, it's so last year. And we did it ourselves and we didn't have to make a graph." Then I will claim it is a longitudinal study. Just for fun.

2. The article that I posted earlier on Facebook: "Discover Life in the Nevada Desert." When I saw the link to this Lonely Planet article in my twitter feed, I expected to see a piece on the Extraterrestrial Highway, Beatty, the entrance to Death Valley, or similar. But no, it's about Las Vegas. It talks about how Las Vegas is "an artificial playground" where "tourists outnumber visitors 20 to 1" and predicts that our entire water supply will be used up by 2021. Yeah, we already knew that.

Then it talks about the Springs Preserve. I have been a fan of the Springs Preserve for quite some time. I even posted photos of it to the dead blog on July 1, 2007. That's how long I've been a fan. I attended a teacher appreciation event there in 2011 and I haven't been back since. I highly recommend the flash flood exhibit the article mentions.

So, the article is pretty cool, except that they haven't told you the price. I consider it my civic duty to correct this oversight. Of course, the last time I went there was free because I was being appreciated. You can also see that I get a hefty discount for being outnumbered 20 to 1. This is one reason why the title of the Lonely Planet article is misleading. You cannot discover life in the Nevada desert without knowing about the hidden menu.

After they don't tell you how much you'll pay to get in, Lonely Planet goes on to close their article with a list of blatant falsehoods. It says that there are no other green spaces in Las Vegas. The LVNV Parks and Recreation park finder page lists at least 68 parks, not including the dog parks, skate parks, golf courses, or state parks, and also not including North Las Vegas or Henderson. Also not including the 50 miles of trails like the one on which I took the photo seen here, which has a hunk of the Stardust (I saw that place implode!) at the Lamb Wayside trailhead, and these markers every 1/4 mile of the trail.

Oops, it's sideways. It says, "Neon to Nature," and that's my left foot there on the bottom right. 

The very last thing that the article says about town is...ride the Monorail. This is why the people who write these articles should be residents with no vested interest in any given businesses because DO NOT RIDE THE MONORAIL! It crashes. It's also no good for getting anywhere unless the only place you plan to go is someplace between the MGM Grand and the former-Sahara. (Oh for another implosion! But no, the Sahara is being renovated. Darn the stupid tanked economy and the responsible repurposing of buildings!) The Monorail doesn't go anywhere at all near the Springs Preserve. Boo, Lonely Planet. Boo. 

I mentioned that long-ago teacher appreciation dinner at the Springs Preserve. Even now, I still recall the purple lettuce and how delicious it was. Speaking of being appreciated, I would like to share with you this year's piece de resistance, Popsicle Stick Ms. Hendrix. The beginning art student who made this masterpiece  is an anonymous 6th grader who has likely never seen me. They totally nailed it: notice the messy orangeish-red hair, the googly eyes, the shocked O of a mouth, and my favorite blue jacket! I raved about Popsicle Stick Ms. Hendrix for about 5 minutes with each of my classes. The note, if you can read it, was from one of my 8th graders. 

It says, "Thank you for making geography worth learning. It's really boring but you seem to make it a little less boring haha. -Unknown :)"

These were not the only appreciations I received this year, but they were the ones that made my day. 

Today's Valuable Safety Tip

brought to you courtesy of the company that sends posters to science teachers:

That's it. That's all I've got. However, I dare say it's enough. 

Enjoy your Tuesday night, my two loyal readers! 

Water, Water Everywhere

It's the question that's on everyone's mind, but few have the courage to ask it: how much water can a person safely drink before hyponatremia sets in? I have the answer. I got it from Scientific American. I was inspired to ask the internet this question because even though the past two days have been a perfect and cool 75 here in the Mojave, with enough rainfall to make weeding the patio easier than it normally is, I know what's coming. We got a taste of the 100-degree heat about a week ago, so I remembered this image I ripped off from Pinterest (which means WHO KNOWS where it came from), and I started making vitamin water.



Doesn't that raspberry lime one look good? I thought so, too. The pineapple mint looks disgusting if you ask me, and I like both pineapples and mint, but I won't be trying that one. What happened when I went to Fresh and Easy, however, was that raspberries were expensive and blackberries were cheap. Fresh and Easy also didn't have any sage. So I made Blackberry Lime, considering that none of the homemade vitamin water websites tell you exactly what "vitamins" you are getting from your diluted fruit water. There linked for your convenience is a list of combinations you make at home, from a blog that uses this very same platform.

I've been downing an average of 64 oz per day, and according to the aforementioned magazine, you can safely consume 1,000 ml or 32 oz per hour and not come down with hyponatremia. Now you know.

The Scientific American webpage has a tab at the top for citizen science, which you know that I'm into because science is cool and the internet makes it easy to participate in data collection projects. Current projects include a marine debris tracker app that you can download and send data when you see debris on beaches, a museum transcription project that I was hesitant to learn more about because to learn about it you had to actually do it, and even a project that involves uploading photos of roadkill to UC Davis!

I encourage participation in this kind of stuff.

It now occurs to me that this whole post is dedicated to a set of #firstworldproblems. That's ok, though, I think. Most of my 3 readers live here in the 1st world as well.

Well, unless something drastic happens, my next post is likely to be just a photo. Until then...have a great time collecting data while sipping your delicious fruited waters!