Getting to Know Your Machinery,

it's still Christmas, and a Vocabulary Quiz!

Ready?

You know about my magazine problem. Well, my most recent guilty pleasure is the National Geographic special, Your Brain: A User's Guide. You may keep your comments to yourself right now, and thank me later. As for my own machine, I know it pretty well. I even have images of it to share with you so that you can see the inner workings of your second-favorite blogger.

 I made it through Chapter 1 of the User's Guide, "The Learning Brain." I really did. All I'm going to pass on to you is from one little sidebar, but if you want me to talk at you about axons and dendrites, I'd be more than happy to oblige. In the meantime, here are the tips the guide proposes for how to learn more efficiently:

- learn a new language
- listen to classical music
- do puzzles
- eat healthy foods (hold, please, the pizza man is here!)
- walk, jog, or cycle to keep that heart pumping blood up to your brain on a healthy basis

There you have it. The other interesting thing that I learned is that we are more intelligent today than we have been in the past because the world we live in is, get this..."more interesting" than the world of the past. Hmm.

On the Christmas front, I'd like to share an image of a truly heartfelt, thoughtful gift that I received from Amanda:

This, my loyal readers, is The Chain. Each link represents a day remaining in the school year. Certain links are emblazoned with inspirational words, which I have been hanging on my fridge:

I plan to liberally re-post my original image of the chain so that y'all can see the school year winding down, like I do. This time tomorrow, it will be exactly half over. It's simultaneously easy to believe, and hard to believe.

Now for the vocab. You may have noticed that this blog is not-quite-bicoastal. It is composed in Nevada and Indiana. I suppose that makes me a Battle-Born Hoosier. Is there a word for not-quite-bicoastal? Biregional? Bibiomal? Bistatial? Hmm.

This post has been about more than one thing. It may have been better to have broken it into two posts, but I treat my blog fodder like I treat my brain, with a use-it-or-lose-it attitude.

How can we pass along the cheer of the paper chain, before it gets lost in the grind?

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. 

The Wood Sculpture

I have had most of this post prepared for a week, but while googling to possibly understand more about it, I stumbled upon an article on the Goshen College website. To me, it was a long article and difficult to stay engaged with, so I delayed my blog post. Then, this week flew by crash-boom-bang, and I only read the article carefully just now.

During the week before Winter Break, I decided that I wanted a collosal waste of time to eat up part of a class period, but I also wanted my students to practice for their upcoming semester exam. These two desires resulted in me passing out blank paper to my students and instructing them to draw a map of the world freehand. I then had them label various things on the map. 

I was not used to seeing the level of engagement that resulted from this horrible, horrible activity that I would have hated as a student. I would have considered every second of hand-drawing a world map to be a special kind of torture chosen just because I hated it by a cold, uncaring universe.  

My students loved it. Some freaked out, so I reminded them that, "this isn't art class. See?" I modeled my own lack of skills for them on the document camera. 

While grading the maps, I came upon several no-name papers, including the two examples below. "Whose UGLY maps are those?" I thought. Oh, look. Each one has a little heart at the tip of Lake Michigan, which means...you guessed it: they're mine!

Ah-hahaha. Geography is definitely not art class!

I only found two of my own maps in the grading pile. I remember that my maps got worse and worse as the day went on...by 6th period I gave up and used a map from the morning. 

I normally wouldn't link the Goshen College article, but I thought it had some important reminders about motivation.

Now that the world has not ended, it is time for us to pursue things we normally wouldn't, and to do it with reckless abandon (within reason, of course). 

What crazy thing have you done lately that yielded a positive result? What wild idea will you try next?

What happened to social media while I was planning for the apocalypse?

*huff!* *puff!* I just finished labeling and tagging a new album of Christmas photos onto facebook. I don't think I will ever, ever tag an album ever again!

I shared it with the invitation, "Feel free to untag yo'selves," but still! I always appreciate being tagged in a photo so that I know that the photo exists. Then, if I don't like it, I can always untag it. I hope my poor photographed friends feel the same! Ugh.

Speaking of the holidays, which are now over and it's BACK TO WORK! *whip cracks*...

here's one last bit of love from the Northwest Indiana Times:

Ok. Really, now it's back to work...

From See to Shining See

Today I had the pleasure of visiting with my cousin, one of my last goals on a long list that I have accomplished during my holiday break. We spent some time lamenting the death of all of the libraries in our hometown. Every one of them, even the one where I held my first job, has closed, except one. She says there has been a plan to tear that one down as well. She added that they never have anything new, and that if you want something new, you have to order it and they will buy it. I was reminded of volunteering at the library in a town in Pennsylvania during a proposed funding cut. We covered half of the books with black cloth to represent the books that wouldn't be there if the cut happened. There is no Borders anymore. There is no Barnes and Noble nearby - you would have to drive at least 45 minutes to the nearest new book, what gives? We decided that online ordering is about the only option we have left.

Blogosphere, remind me: I can't forget to ship one of the books I have listed on amazon.com once I get home. It sold while I have been here.

Then, this evening my Granny was going through a catalog from See's Candies. Apparently there is a See's Candies in Downer's Grove, IL. I thought it was a western thing. It seems to still be western. The list of See's Candies branches in the back of the catalog (is wrong, first of all - we have many stores in Vegas, not just the ONE listed in the catalog, so therefore what I'm about to say is moot...)only listed one store in the Midwestern region, the one in Downer's Grove.

I propose that the fact that so many businesses exist both here in Chicagoland and in Las Vegas has something to do with the Mob. I'd like to say, "More about that in a future post," but honestly, these two weeks every year are the only ones I have between August and June during which I am able to read books with reckless abandon and blog on schedule. Therefore, I may never mention the Mob ever again.

It is likely that the duplication of our favorite businesses is more about homogenization. I decided to google it, and in the process I believe I did find a new blog to follow. It's right up my alley and is called "Ecological Sociology." Y'all know me, I love maps, so I'll leave you to contemplate the homogenization of our society (and the destruction of our literacy? Or is it only the development of alternative modes of literacy?) by pasting this one from the aforementioned blog. The dots on this map represent McDonald's restaurants. Food for thought.

What is Strange to us Today Will Be Familiar Tomorrow

These words were spoken by Chicago's notorious mayor Richard J. Daley at the dedication of "the Picasso" in 1967.

I learned that during the visit to the Art Institute of Chicago with my friend Caryn, which kicked off my Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana holiday festivities. I meant to share this image during the few days that followed the trip, but forgot until now.

It is a detail from one of the panels from Marc Chagall's America Windows.

Enjoy.

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?