See Below for Long Title

I have decided to post to the blog before doing anything else tonight, because there is a lot to cover and not a lot of time to cover it. Allow me to dump out the contents of my scrambled brain here. For absolute proof that my brain is scrambled, consider this:

I am doing laundry while still wearing pants and not pajamas. This is not supposed to happen. Pants are supposed to go into the washer immediately before pouring the detergent into the machine. So, I present to you: Mostly A Random Collection of Images, Multiple Shout-Outs, and the Inevitable Plug for my Cousin's Band.

First, a gift from Jodi's son, seen during their family trip to New York this week for his Spring Break:

If you look closely, you can see the two of them in the reflection. Thank you very much for that! 

Speaking of Spring Break, here's what we missed from the Disaster Preparedness Calendar during mine. The calendar stayed here, and I went traipsing around in my home state. 

For supplies, we needed to get sterile gauze pads and first aid tape. For planning, we were supposed to find a place for our families to shelter-in-place. Teachers are of course familiar with sheltering-in-place because occasionally gunmen run around in our neighborhoods and we have to lock down our students. I've inserted a handy hyperlink for you in case you don't know what to do. 

Next, while making our way to our gate at Midway, Miss Gokey and I ran into this image of McGruff the Crime Dog, whose website has some handy games to play to teach children how to defeat society's trendiest scapegoat, the omnipresent bully. I have made the image extra large so that hopefully you can read it. 

I should add "My iTunes Account is Playing with my Head" as an item in the long title of this post. In the immortal words of Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, "When life seems like easy street, there is danger at your door." 

Speaking of bands (nice transition, huh?), I have noticed that Shiloh has a habit of playing shows a few days before I arrive into town, and then again a few days after I leave. I am therefore launching a campaign to get them to turn one of the frontmen's songs into a song for the band, so that if I ever see them, he can sing it for me. If you're up for it, please join me in my campaign by sending the title DE NADA to their twitter handle at @shilohchicago. 

With that, I must say that it has been nice procrastinating with you this evening. So, for the piece de resistance, I present to you THE CHAIN. You can't see it, because it's right where it is attached to the wall, but tomorrow's link reads, "Almost There!" Indeed. Returning to the immortal words of Jerry Garcia, "...what I want to know is...where does the time go?" 

LITMB, 

geotrix/jane

Sometimes you win...

...and other times you return home with nothing but a Subway sandwich.

This post is a stream-of-consciousness celebration of the USPS and the little things that keep us sane and happy.

Luckily, word on facebook is that my Mammaw enjoyed the Fig Newmans I got her for her birthday while I was looking for the supplies that we are supposed to buy in March. For the first two weeks:
- a can of meat (veggies)
- a can of fruit
- antiseptic wipes
- compresses

Had I looked at my handy Southern Nevada Health District emergency calendar before the gun show last weekend, I could have purchased the last two items there. I'm still behind a crescent wrench, but it'll get done. It'll get done.

I am very glad that my cousin Randy didn't decide to get married THIS weekend, what with the flooding and the 47-degree weather. Which is glorious, by the way, just not for a wedding day.

Speaking of cousins, I have exactly 34 minutes to finish composing this post before my favorite DIY homegrown Chicago-based rock band, Shiloh, streams live on whpk.org/stream. OR NOT. In order to stream it, I would have to update my RealPlayer, which I believed I did. That settles it. I officially prefer Loyola. :(

Umm...WELL...I'm listening to NEIL YOUNG...
and now something involving instruments that sound like sitars that encourages me to "just travel with" my "mind."
this is confusing. And slightly disturbing.
I'm not a fan of the sitar or whatever it is, so I composed a text to my poor cousin asking him what gives with the sitar or whatnot. Luckily, the message failed to send.

I also abhor the word, "just."

Speaking of junk food in the mail, I just (note that I'm not using the word "just" in the way I don't like) returned from the mailbox with the BEST PACKAGE EVER! It includes some junk food which I will munch while waiting for something to interrupt all of the dead air that's currently broadcasting on WHPK. I...I'm not going to say anything offensive or sacreligious...this Chex puppy chow stuff tastes really good.

I just got off the phone with Dana. Recently, not in this conversation, she told me that one of my blog posts was so all over the place that she affirmed that I need to find focus after finishing my theme of the apocalypse. She is so absolutely right. But this is what happens when I skip a post and then decide to attempt three in one week.

Look for a more sensible post on Tuesday, because...they're on.
In the meantime, what are some of the little things that keep YOU sane and happy?

God Willing and the Ice Storm Doesn't Come

If you are my facebook friend, you know that my family has been in town for several days to celebrate the nuptials of my cousin Randy and his new bride, Deanna, who was given away at the altar by the King of Rock N Roll, Elvis. That's right. At the reception, which was Tony and Tina's, the performer who played the best man congratulated Granny for walking from Arizona to Nevada across the top of the 20th century's greatest engineering marvel, the Hoover Dam.

And thanks to the ice storm in Chicago, they are currently stuck at McCarran.

Las Vegas. You can check out any time you like, but...
You can finish that sentence.

Thirteen miles away on the east side, life is pretty good. In 4.5 minutes a pizza will come out of the oven, and I will be at liberty to grade papers with a stomach full of margherita.

At least McCarran is an arguably entertaining airport. For those who play slots, there are slots. For those who drink, there are bars. There are restaurants, especially a pretty good enchilada place near the Starbucks. Thus, in honor of my family, my list of things to do while waiting for your "delayed," but really-we-all-know-it's-canceled, flight:

1) nap. Ain't no shame. Just sprawl out in the floor, use your carry-on as a pillow, and snooze.
2) Read a book. Some people carry tablets and kindles, but personally I prefer these for gaming. By reading a book, I mean an actual, real, live book with two covers and pages with words in between.
3) Play a game on your tablet, kindle, iPod, or phone. The last time I was stuck was inside an airplane, and I discovered a game on my iPod that I never knew existed. It's called Vortex. It's challenging.
Most airports that I've traveled through offer accessible plugs, so you can also take advantage of the delay to charge these devices.
4) Play cards. You may not have your Apocalypse Kit on you now that it's 2013, but Hudson News is bound to be able to hook you up.
5) Watch the people. In the immortal words of Ani DiFranco, "I'm going to drain my little pink heart of all its malice and/kick back for the afternoon in this flourescent palace."

If you do each of the above things for an hour, you can start the cycle all over again, or you can engage in a number of other activities including flirting, rock-paper-scissors, snacking, shaving, etc.
What do YOU like to do when you're stranded?
Now, you have plenty to keep you busy checking out all of my hyperlinking, and I have a pizza to smash.

The family's 3:20 p.m. flight is now scheduled to depart at 10 p.m. We'll see.

Fly safe! And stay out of the ice.

Oh, for the love...

Pictured below is the day's take:

Are you kidding me? The text is centered again? I should re-name my blog a 2nd time and call it "Centered Text." Anyway, as you can see it wasn't much, but it was honestly more than I expected. I ate only the Ferro Rocher (or whatever) and disposed of the rest, ever mindful of the Legend of the Poison Cupcake.

VD (yeah, I said it again) is a good day to examine the fourth chapter of National Geographic's brain special, "The Emotional Brain." This is the final chapter I will cover. The 5th chapter, "The Aging Brain" is not something that interests me, as I already know that our brains start preparing for death as soon as they reach maturity around the age of 24. Borrowed time, indeed. So, back to the emotions. 

There are only six, according to the scientists quoted in the booklet. They are fear, anger, sadness, joy, surprise, and disgust. An interesting factoid is that humans have what is called an "impact bias" by which we imagine events happening and predict that our reactions will be far more intense and long-lasting than they really are. The booklet also says that we humans underestimate our own resilience. 

On the joy front, 60% of people's predisposition toward joy is genetic (nature). The rest is born of our experiences (nurture). Things that increase happiness include: strong ties to family and friends. Charitable actions. Here's one of Miss Gokey's favorite quotables, verified in...well, blue and yellow text: EXPERIENCES MAKE US HAPPIER THAN POSSESSIONS DO. 

Miss Gokey always uses this as an excuse to take a trip instead of buying furniture, and I totally agree. Finally, older people tend to be more satisfied with their lives than younger people. 

Despite all of these happy facts, the brain, says Nat Geo, has a definite negativity bias. This is apparently evolutionary. We still feel a primal need to protect our family from a looming woolly mammoth. 

The booklet does go into love, but mostly lists the chemicals and brain regions it affects. Nothing good for your VD reading. So, that, over the course of several weeks, has been your brain. Enjoy it while you can, before a zombie comes to make it her/his lunch. 

I have a load of laundry to finish and new episode of Supernatural to enjoy. Although there is a piece of mail I keep waiting for that refuses to arrive (I called to check this afternoon, and it's going to be another two weeks yet), I did get something good in the mail today. If you don't know what it is, you just haven't been paying attention. 

Hopefully my Granny got something good in the mail today, too, from me. Today is her birthday, may it be a fun, productive, and memorable one filled with the kind of joy that lights up both sides of the brain. 

Power to the People

This post is timely to the Super Bowl, which means it's...not timely at all. I would have talked about the power outage issue on Tuesday, if I hadn't been so excited about Shiloh's album release.

This post is also about a little company in my hometown called NIPSCO and the manner in which they perennially ruin my summer vacation. Nine years of living in the desert have made me eager each July to witness a really rockin' summer thunderstorm, and I usually get to. Problem being that five minutes in, the lights flicker. Then, seven minutes in, the lights go out and the house mobilizes to first try to prevent, and then try to bail out, the water that inevitably rises in the basement because there is no power to pump it away from the interior. Every. Single. Summer. The power goes out just like it did at the Super Bowl.

Now, thanks to my North Las Vegas Hometown Emergency Planner wheel, I know not only how to prepare for this annual event, but how to act when it takes place. You may remember my first mention of the wheel back in January. Now you get to see what it looks like.

And here we go again with the centered text. Someday I'll learn how to format, but that day is not today. 

What follows is transcription, not writing, and is actually available on the above-linked website. That, however, is not as fun as the actual wheel, or as fun as supporting your 2nd-favorite blogger. You have already heard most of the power outage information, but here it is stated in a slightly different way, and as we are all aware, repetition is the key to knowledge. 

HOW TO PREPARE FOR A POWER OUTAGE:

- Be prepared to be independent for 72 hours or longer.

- Store at least a 72-hour supply of food, drinking water and other supplies.

- One gallon of water per person per day and food that won't spoil

- Keep flashlights or light sticks, portable radios, and extra batteries on hand.

- If you own a generator, learn its safe and proper operation - use only outdoors.

- Be sure that you have at least one telephone that does not depend on electricity - cordless phones will not work in a power outage. 

- Keep cell phones charged.

- Know how to start or connect a backup power supply for essential medical equipment.

- Know how to manually release and open any electric doors, ie garage doors.

- Keep cash and coins on hand.

- Keep vehicle gas tanks at least half full.

- Conserve electricity during peak energy periods.

HOW TO ACT:

- If your power goes out, check your home's circuit breakers or fuses first. 

- See if the lights in your neighborhood are off. 

- Contact the power company for information or to report an outage.

- If you see any downed power lines, stay at least 10 feet away from them. 

- Protect appliances from possible power surges. 

- Unplug appliances and computers and turn off lights. 

- Leave one low wattage incandescent light on so you know when power is restored. 

(Editorial comment/question: Do you think leaving a light on is really necessary? In my experience EVERY SUMMER because thanks a lot, NIPSCO, there is a white-noisy hum that announces that power is back.)

- Keep refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible. 

- Add dry or block ice to the freezer to help keep food frozen. 

- Discontinue non-essential water usage. 

- Do not drink cloudy or dirty water. 

- Don't be alarmed if chlorine level is higher than normal. 

- Notify water officials of low or no water pressure. 

- Try to stay as cool as possible by staying inside on the lowest floor out of the sunshine.

- If you use a generator, never plug it into any electrical outlet in your home. 

- Plug appliances directly into the generator using heavy-duty extension cords. 

- Place generator outdoors and away from windows, household exhaust fans or dryer vents. 

- If you use candles for lighting, place them on a fireproof surface. 

- In an area-wide outage, traffic signals may be out - remember intersections become 4-way stops. 

- Anticipate long traffic delays while the power is out. 

- Check on neighbors with special needs: the elderly, mobility-impaired, medically dependent, or children who are home alone. 

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! Now, you remember what to do. I suggest getting your own handy wheel for your locality, so that you can read it with your trusty headlamp when things go awry. Mine has a list of important phone numbers such as fire, police, and poison control, which means that my planning activity for this week is already done! Good job, North Las Vegas. My love/hate relationship with North Las Vegas will never get old. 

It's too bad NIPSCO is so good at letting the power go out now, when power outages back in the 80's were a rare thing. As an adult, power outages suck, but as a kid they are fun because of the playing rummy by candlelight. I suppose that if we wanted to, we could play rummy by candlelight anyway, just for funsies. 

And now, without further ado, the world's most delicious sandwich awaits. Enjoy your weekend!

Today is the Day!!!

It's the first day of the rest of your life.
It is the day to attempt to achieve something worthwhile.
Today is the day to move past your past.
Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so get on your way!

But none of that is important considering what today REALLY is...

It's the day Shiloh's 2nd album, Mrs., is released!
(Their website is still linked to their first album. I'll link their label later on.)
It's not Shiloh, but there's also this, which is at least a part of Shiloh, and here you can hear a bunch of b-sides from Mrs.

You may not all have been waiting for it, but I have.

To celebrate, I decided to go to a real, live record store. There is one in Vegas. Miss Gokey told me where it is: on Sahara and Arville. It's called Zia Records, and it's been in town for about five years, according to the blonde cashier. In my own defense, I moved away from that part of town about six years ago, so...

Oh, wait. There's also one on Flamingo and Eastern, and that one's been there longer. Oops. There are also two in Tuscon and three in Phoenix. Zia is therefore described, in my opinion, as a regional chain. It's a comfortable chain, anyway: loads of vinyl, CDs and movies, containing most, but not all, of exactly what you want. I spent my time there wandering around saying to myself, "I wonder if they have..." and my searches were successful about 80% of the time. So. If you're in the area and in need of a physical media fix, Zia Records is your store.

It was a good time to visit a record shop, considering that just last week, Carl Azuz of CNN Student News was talking about how digital media has overtaken physical media in various ways. I'll discuss that more soon, when I review a bunch of Netflix films I've been watching on weekends. In the meantime...

Although I'm not sure what happens with Mrs. today (there's the link to the label), and far be it from me to tell you what kind of music you like, if you have ever had a cousin, or a broken heart, or if you've ever awakened wondering how you got where you are, Shiloh's music is for you.

If you think it's not, then it's a good thing Carl Azuz informs us that Tuesday is the day when most new media is released, so hopefully you find something out there in this wide, bright world that makes your toes tap today.

Achievement and Success

I was driving in to work today and I had a fleeting thought, which I've forgotten now, but some words that someone said to me came back to me in a flash and I thought about tweeting or posting on facebook, "What if some words you said to me were the most important words I ever heard, and you never even knew it?"

Yes, I know it's Friday night. I have NOT been drinking. In fact, I got a late start on the evening but am trying very hard to accomplish some things, and I think I've been succeeding, but we'll see. 

I skipped posting last night because I finally read the "Unconscious Brain" chapter of the National Geographic special, and after some lame excuse about how there is "difficulty...making black-and-white distinctions about states of the brain," the chapter covered Alien Hand Syndrome and drugs, then dedicated four whole spreads to sleeping and dreaming. Needless to say, immediately after finishing it, I fell asleep. I dreamed that Jodi and I were at a Denny's sharing a platter of pickle spears and some limp grilled cheese sandwiches. This is not the first time in recent memory that I have dreamed this. (The chapter informs us, by the way, that people who are actually hungry rarely dream of food or eating, and people who are thirsty don't dream of drinking.)

The most interesting part of the chapter was about intention and action. Apparently, if you research a political figure that you don't like and give a speech from their perspective, you will like them better afterwards. You will also TELL YOURSELF you didn't really mind them in the first place. The authors use this example to show that our brains will often act without processing first. Then, after the fact, our reasoning will think of ways to justify our actions by modifying our memories to make us think we intended all along to do the thing we have just done. Good job, brains. Good job. 

Today is an exciting day because we get to FLIP our calendar page in our Disaster Preparedness Calendar. We are supposed to buy one more can of meat, baby food if we have babies, and aspirin. Check, N/A and check!

Today is also an exciting day because I'm going to end this post by sharing images of the Chain. 

Please allow me to direct your attention to the location of the electrical outlet as compared to the end of the chain! Honestly, not that much time has passed, but those links disappear quite quickly!

In conclusion, I leave you with this week's winning chain links. 

Disaster of the Day

This post takes its title from Anna Nalick's 15 minutes of fame back in the early 2000s, and also of course from the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER, which just keeps on giving!

Miss Gokey gave me some resources from inside and outside of our own community that will be useful for disaster prep, namely a book entitled 31 Days to Survival which I look forward to starting at the start of the next 31-day month.

Also, the Southern Nevada Health District's 2013 Emergency Preparedness Calendar.

Bad news, kids. We're behind schedule. It's January 15th (Happy MLK Day, everyone), so we already missed two supply-buying runs and two planning activities. Also, my blog page has just now defaulted to centering the text. Sorry about that. Hopefully it'll fix itself for next time. 

Okay. I hope you already have a gallon of water, a can of meat (or soup, if you're me), a manual can opener, safety pins and 2 pairs of latex gloves. These are the things we were supposed to have purchased. I have all of these things except the two pairs of latex gloves. 

For our planning activities, we were supposed to have made a family emergency plan and designated out of town emergency contacts. So, now we're up to date. 

Don't you hate it when, on the news, they say, "Will your favorite brand of peanut butter kill you? Tune in later..." Well, that's exactly what I'm going to say about the stuff from the City of North Las Vegas. I have a radio show to listen to. 

I! LOVE! THE INTERNET!

And if you're reading this, then you do, too. Have fun shopping. Perhaps I'll run into you at the Craig and Nellis Wal-Mart. I hope not, but...perhaps. 

Manic Panic!

The title of this post comes from a bodacious and obnoxious hair dye that used to sell in the 1980s.
It has to do with the first celebration on which I will make just a brief social commentary: New Year's Eve in Times Square last night (was that LAST night? Yeesh!). No, I wasn't there. I was snug in a cozy house in Weidman, MI watching the spectacle unfold on national television.

I have never been a fan of Carson Daly (in fact, I'm not even sure that's how you spell it), but I now feel a certain connection with him, or a kind of affection, born from the fact that as soon as we turned on the TV at 11:30, there he was looking and sounding terrified as he held on for dear life to some metal contraption high up in the air. He was saying stuff, but it was hard to concentrate on what he was saying because he was also talking so much about how scary it was to be that high up in the air and how he couldn't wait to be back down on the ground.

Once he was back on the ground, the TV host rambled on about how nice it was to be on the ground instead of in the air. He RIPPED the thing off of his head that whichever pretty quasi-celebrity he'd interviewed had put there, and then his eyes locked in to the teleprompter and he read like a robot. I hope he gets some comp time, or free medication, for his trouble, and I will hereafter view him as a human instead of a symbol of the decadence of American society. I think. Maybe.

I haven't finished reading I Am Number Four yet. I'm about 60% through. There is this totally disgusting puppy-love relationship between two of the fifteen-year-old protagonists and I'm all like, "eew! Gag me with a spoon!" The author, however, again describes feelings of panic in vivid detail, just like Carson Daly did. So. Although this book is clearly geared much more for age 10 than for age 35, there is still something relatable and appreciate-able about it.

Something else happened last night, as well. Shiloh took part in a New Year's Eve show. Despite the world not having ended on the 21st, the Doomsday Dashboard is still up and running (pandemic is trending in 1st place at the time of writing. A close second? Surprise! Economic collapse). I am happy that none of these disasters will prevent us from enjoying the timely record release of Shiloh's 2nd album on February 5th.

In other news, the Northwest Indiana Times reports that New Year's Resolutions are better if you post them publicly, so let this be my public announcement of my official 2013 resolution to be...more balanced.

There you have it. Do you have a resolution, or do you resolve not to make resolutions?

So close you can almost taste it...

...or so it would seem, what with my closest teaching neighbor constantly blathering about the dead bird that he soon intends to eat!

I'm just gonna say it once, because it's true, and then I'll drop it for the duration of the world's existence:

I am supposed to be in Peru right now, but I am not.

Lucky for us, Peru is still populated with tourists, and you can read about my friend's adventures there here, where she compare/contrasts independent and group travel. I have a preferred side of that fence, and I am hoping that by the end of her trip, she will be converted completely to my side. Let's keep tabs on her movements in Latin America.

Two more notes before we get down to business, both dealing with your Greater Chicagoland media. Please join me in impatient anticipation of Shiloh's new album by perusing this lite blurb in the Chicago Reader dealing with the record release which we will never get to experience due to pandemic/cataclysm/megaquake/polar reversal. Please ignore the bit about the puppets, and go to the Empty Bottle because I myself cannot, seeing as I have to teach the very next day in North Las Vegas.

And then, from our friends at the NWI Times via my dad:

Sometime over Fall Break, while riding through the corn fields having a fabulous time, I think I heard this song, which may be content-blocked for copyright reasons when you click on it, on a radio station that my clever friends tell their 10-year-old is Radio Disney.

Immediately, I knew that I would watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. And take notes. Here's the plot synopsis in case you forgot what an awesome year 1985 actually was.

(A saxophone will come in handy after nuclear annihilation.)

Max (12-year-old Mel Gibson with luxurious hair) wanders into Bartertown to retrieve his stolen car and makes a bad deal with Queen Tina Turner. At the last moment, he refuses to kill his opponent in the Thunderdome and is sentenced to gulag (ohhh, the 80s!). Halfway there, his horse collapses and is swallowed in a sandstorm, at which point he is rescued by his helper monkey.

He eventually collapses but is once again rescued, this time by a mysterious stranger who turns out to represent some happy people who live in the Narrows at Zion (though the movie was actually filmed in Australia). This canyon is filled with horribly noisy children and others who all believe that Max is their messiah. He handily destroys their worldview.

He punches a woman in the face and for some reason isn't immediately killed.

Of course she runs away anyway and a cohort of happies ends up back in Bartertown. They kidnap Bartertown's brain-person and the inevitable showdown in the middle of the desert ensues.

The good guys win, but Max ends up wandering around in the desert, and whose baby is that?

There you have it. You may now skip watching it, and you may thank me now or later. However, I recommend that you review it because Tina Turner will always be hott. Of course, I was looking forward to the appearance of Grace Jones at the end of the movie, but apparently I was confused, as she never showed up. I don't think I've ever seen Conan the Destroyer, nor do I think I ever want to, so I don't know what kind of short-circuit happened in my brain on that one. :/

This has been a movie review.

After I review the Last Thanksgiving Ever coming up before week's end, it will be time to turn my attention once again to young adult fiction.

This weekend is historically the busiest travel weekend in America. Be safe out there: make sure your apocalypse doesn't happen sooner than it has to.

(Re)visiting

Now, here at the end of October (only one more post after this one in my favorite month), it's time to regroup and reflect, generally going over our memories and getting our lives in order for the coming of the theoretical end of the world. Get ready for the most shameless self-hyperlinking ever.

I laughed. I cried. I re-read the first 147 pages of Going Bovine on the airplane.  

"'These are not the grades you wish to assign me, teacherling. You will reach for a higher letter or taste the righteous mojo of my Ultimate Peace Weapon.'" 

That was one of the parts where I laughed. I cried on page 105 of the paperback, and I won't quote that part because, in the words of one of my bosses, "I don't want you to cry. I want you to kick a$$."

Now for some updates on recent blog posts:

1. In the chars post, I mentioned the 2012 presidential election. When the students saw my sticker proudly displayed, they told me about a series of youtube rap battles between Obama and Romney. Then they were shocked when I told them I actually watched some of them. I forced Jodi to watch one, but will not link it here. There are several different versions. Some are stupid and some are hilarious. Enjoy. 

2. In off the top of my head, I blather about interactive notebooks. However, last weekend I strongly encouraged students to turn in their notebooks to get an important assignment graded. Most students did, and I was overwhelmed with the amount of reading that I had to do. It took me three four-hour sessions over a span of three days to grade them, and at certain points during the process, I actually fell asleep (beware inappropriate language). 

Speaking of falling asleep...

Recently, an easterner I know traveled to SoCal and posted photos on facebook. Being the overly-sensitive type, I got REALLY upset that they didn't call, didn't write, didn't even send a postcard. This was not the traveler's sole and unique fault. It is part of a pattern that has been established for a while. And now, here I am in Indiana, enjoying a moist, cold day in which the multicolored leaves are just beginning to fall from the trees...doing the exact same thing to them. 

Despite my obvious hypocrisy and resolution to concentrate on that which I have instead of always focusing on what's missing, it's important to me to be able to say to these people that I now understand and reiterate that my not inviting you does not mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't miss you. I doesn't mean that you have fallen off of my Christmas card list. 

I located another Sinead O'Connor song called "The Healing Room" from her Faith and Courage album. It's just bizarre enough to still be super-soothing, and to help calm the anxieties of the approaching apocalypse. Look it up if you want. 

Well, time to go. Jodi and I are off to find some geocaches, an old hobby of mine that I'd like to revisit just once or twice more before the end. 

Chars

Far be it from me to steal thunder from Don Belt and Jonas Bendiksen's article in National Geographic, but that's what I'm about to do. While searching in vain for some writing-prompt-fodder, I happened upon their story and my jaw dropped.

It's about...

Bangladesh.

I sent the article to the literacy specialist to have her figure out the FK/Lexile/whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days, but the end of the population unit passed before I received any feedback. Therefore, instead of having my students read and mark it for themselves, I verbally paraphrased/summarized it for them, and they were...quiet. I might even say rapt. A teacher's genuine amazement can sometimes do that to children.

Here's a summary of the summary I told the kids, generously peppered with large quoted chunks from the story.

The population of Bangladesh continues to grow, but "climate change (if you believe that sort of thing)" is causing the level of the ocean to eat the coastline. In the meantime, the country's three main rivers are constantly flooding, so, in an

ADAPT OR DIE

mentality, "hundreds of thousands" of people have become char dwellers. A char is a temporary island in the middle of a river. The river floods, and an island (char) appears. When the river floods again, the island disappears and another one pops up downstream. So...all of the people who live on char 1 pack up and haul  themselves to char 2. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Here's a quote:
"Ibrahim Khalilullah has lost track of how many times he's moved. 'Thirty? Forty?' he asks. 'Does it matter?' Actually those figures might be a bit low, as he estimates he's moved about once a year his whole life, and he's now over 60. Somehow, between all that moving, he and his wife raised seven children who 'never missed a meal,' he says proudly."
Abe's house is made of sections that can be disassembled and rebuilt in mere hours, and he always keeps the suitcases and legal documents within arms' reach.

He says: "We're all under pressure, but there's really no point to worry. This is our only option, to move from place to place to place. We farm this land for as long as we can, and then the river washes it away. No matter how much we worry, the ending is always the same."

Other news from Bangladesh: they have implemented a fairly successful grassroots family-planning program, and they have an intentional brain-drain because their main goal is to combat overpopulation by getting people out. The story ends when Bangladesh is compared to a little boy who fell asleep on a median in crazy urban traffic there.

Adapt or die.

This painfully heartwarming and inspirational tale of...well, real-life perennial disaster, can be found here.

In the meantime, since it may be my last chance ever to help my electors choose a president, I figured I would go and vote tonight. Here's proof:

Dear society, 

Take that. 
Love, 

One of the kids who falls asleep on medians. 

Drop, Cover and Hold On!

This post is brought to you by the number, "3."

My #3 goal for the day was, "compose a brilliant blog post." But instead, I forgot to write down the school district's definition of an earthquake and exact steps for conducting an earthquake/evacuation. So, what you read is what you get. I've acquitted myself from being brilliant.

That's right, kids! Today was the day of the Great Nevada Shakeout. The website linked here makes it a thing, and it is, but at the middle-school level it's really nothing more than a duck-and-cover followed by a fire evacuation. I say "fire evacuation" instead of "fire drill" because while making high-pitched whining noises to Miss Gokey about it, she reminded me that my middle school's regular old fire drills, because they entail walking 1/4 mile and gathering on the athletic field, are actually evacuation drills.

Earthquake drill!? But WHY, Ms. H, WHY???
Well, you see, here in Southern Nevada we live on top of a hairy network of tiny normal faults. (Incidentally, we also live on top of 1/6 of the Old Spanish Trail, but that's besides the point.) While not as beautiful or interesting as strike-slip faults like the super-destructive San Andreas, the normal faults have made Nevada #3 in the nation for the number of large earthquakes, according to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.

Oh, San Andreas...
The worst thing about the San Andreas is that it's not my fault. Heheh.
Speaking of, this band I am connected to by one tenuous little drop of blood JUST TODAY posted a link on soundcloud.com to a song they wrote called, "It's Not My Fault." Learn it. Love it. BUY it (when you can). Oh, San Andreas...(and, ok, that there may have been the stroke of brilliance I was going for.)

Whilst a wav file played over the P.A. (hard to hear above my 38 shuffling advisory students), we all crouched down so that our heads were lower than the tables/desks for sixty seconds. Then the wav file announced, "this drill is now over," and we headed out to the athletic fields.

The burning question that was on all students' minds as we walked to the fields: In the event that an earthquake occurs and the ground is shaking beneath us, why would we leave the building and go strolling around on the shaking ground!? Valid point, tweenage brains, valid point. Answer: we assume that the building is going to fall apart, and that outside will thus be safer. 

We may in fact have had a chance of passing the drill...if the gates to the athletic fields hadn't been locked. Let's be honest, though, in real life...

Well, in real life during an earthquake, unless it's huge and large pieces of furniture are flying, the students pretty much just stay in their seats and their eyes get wide until it's over. The teacher (me) puts out their (my) hands in a surfing motion and sort of sways along. I've never experienced an earthquake in Nevada. One happened, but I was oblivious to it. Come to think of it, I was oblivious to the one in Xela, as well, until the students kind of all looked at each other and one of them whimpered. As the students' eyes got wider and wider, the shaking got more vigorous and I was reduced to the surfing stance.

In real life you don't get to participate in a meeting to let you know that there is going to be a "shakeout," so. I forgive the athletic fields for being locked. What's an athletic field to do?

Earthquakes are currently trending at 3% on the Doomsday Dashboard.

I encourage all Nevadans to check out the Seismological Laboratory website for a complete guide to your earthquake preparation. For the rest of you, even the New Yorkers (heheh), I take the liberty of offering you this one little vital piece of info for your kits, which I ripped off from the Seismo Lab. Enjoy!