Wreckless Cooking While Under the Influence of a Stupid Teen Novel

So before you can understand the depths of my sadness you must understand two facts: 1) I once read that the kitchen sink is filled with more germs than a toilet. Since then I've been petrified of anything that touches the sink. 2) I hate to waste food. Wasting food has been ingrained in me as the worst kind of evil.
    So every morning I make shakes for me and my roommate for breakfast. These shakes sometimes can be hard to blend if I add too many berries. This morning's shakes were a killer. I spent half the time mixing it by hand to get all the berries to the bottom and it took me twice as long to make. I was running late for church and I was trying to put everything back when I knocked my cup into the sink. "Noooo!" I screamed. I had no other quick breakfast food to bring with me and I didn't know what to do. I saw the shake in the sink and I thought, "scoop or not to scoop" I had this argument in my head between oh-the-money and oh-the-germs. I got a spoon and scooped the top section off the surface and dumped it into my shake. I then poured a little of Julie's shake into mine and warned her that she needed to have a little extra food with her breakfast. I tried not to think of the germs as I made my way to church. Julie keeps the sink impeccably clean, so it's probably just my own ocd that makes me freak out.
    This evening I made chicken and rice soup for dinner. Once everything's prepped it's mostly just stirring, so I brought in a chair and my book. Once my mise en place was set up with seasonings, I just stirred and read. And then my book got really good. You see, Anna just realized that she was in love with St.Clair and she just got back to Paris and she wasn't sure if they could maintain their friendship now that she was aware of her feelings and he bought her a banana charm and it was so sweet...and then I needed to add the seasonings. So I opened up the bottle of thyme and started to shake as I continued to read. The bottle felt strangely empty and I realized the thyme bottle is my only spice bottle that has no shaker lid, just an open top.

   I gasped as I looked at the entire contents of my thyme bottle floating on the surface of my boiling soup. I grabbed a spoon and scooped out as much as I could and laughed at myself. I always have a problem with underseasoning, I guess I would not have that problem today. The soup turned out pretty good, but I guess I need to pay better attention when I cook. Apparently I can no longer read and cook at the same time. The soup turned out fine but I now need to buy some more thyme...if I could have thyme in a bottle, I would put a shaker spout on it.

I need to focus better when I cook

Wait, This Isn't the Shower for Bridget?

About ten years ago or so, my friend, Aleta, went to a party where a girl suddenly burst in, tripped, spilled all of the articles from her purse, collected her things and quickly left. This was actually a game. The party attendees were supposed to write down as many things they could remember about this mystery guest. For ten years she has told me about how she would love to do that and today, that dream has come true - only better.
   Aleta threw a baby shower today for a friend at church. I didn't know most of the people there (I knew 3), but I came as the mystery guest. I dressed up in a bold print dress and my vintage Audry Hepburn hat and showed up thirty minutes late to the shower. Guests were building scrapbook pages for the mom to be and I wandered around the room, waiting for an opportunity to get to know people.
   The night before, I was in a panic. I did not have a good back story to my character and I needed a reason to: a) be at a shower and not know anyone there b) have people frequently see the contents of my purse. Finally this morning at around 9, I had come up with a solution that seemed easy and probable. In my story, my mom was supposed to come to the shower and she suddenly got ill. She asked me to go in her place so I could bring a present and take pictures of what happened.
    Back at the shower I finally sat down to do my page for the scrapbook. I introduced myself to all sorts of people (including accidentally introducing myself to the mom-to-be who looked a little confused as to why a stranger was at her party). I got up the courage to talk to my first group.
  "Hi, do you mind if I take your picture? My mom was supposed to come and she got sick so she wanted me to take pictures so I could show her later." I then proceeded to pull out several items from my purse as I looked for my camera. Those items included several books, anti-bacterial gel, sunglasses, and I think even some chapstick. I finally pulled out my pink camera and snapped a shot. I repeated this 6 times throughout the party at each table. Some people saw me take out my stuff a couple times and I'm sure they wondered why I didn't just keep my camera out.
   We sat down for food and I felt like I was giving an unfair advantage to my table mates as I was talking longer with them, but they were just so entertaining and interesting that I was actually giving them true facts about myself that I didn't even intend to include: my city, my church city, my most recent vacations, my gluten intolerance, my penchant for French food, the fact that I speak a little German, and about my blogging. One girl at my table had never had a chocolate covered strawberry before. I took a picture of her second bite and she looked like she loved it. She even said she had to thank the mom-to-be for getting pregnant so that she could try chocolate covered strawberries. Such a fun group.
   Then Aleta stood up to start the games. She had told everyone there was to be a game of memory requiring you to be perceptive. She had a tray of baby items on display and started to cover them.
   "Oh, but first, I just want to welcome you all to Carrie's baby shower..."
   I covered my mouth with my hands and then said, "Wait, who? Carrie?"
   "Yes"
   "This isn't the shower for Bridget?"
   "No, it's for Carrie."
   I stood up and covered my mouth again, "I'm so embarrassed. I'm at the wrong shower, wait, not Bridget, right?"
   Aleta shook her head no.
   "I'm so embarrassed." I started to walk out from the front of the hall to the back end passing each table to get to the exit. "It was really nice meeting you all. I can't believe I did this!"
   Then as I was about to leave, a woman told me to wait and she took out her camera and took my picture. I stopped and said, "Oh, I better get the present."
   I walked back to the gift table and took my gift off of it and ran out the door hearing people laugh, as they were trying to be polite and hold it in.
   I got to my car, shut the door, and laughed heartily. I was on a high for hours. It was just like acting again only even better! The people at the shower then had to list as many facts they could remember about me. I wish I could have overheard their reactions when they found out the true story. After the game was over, Aleta texted me saying they wanted me to come back, now that they knew who I was. The woman sitting at the table with me won (unfair advantage since she was so nice to talk to), but a woman at the first table I took a picture of got second place with 13 facts correct. She was a pro since I probably spent only 1 minute total with them.
   That was so much fun! I can't believe it worked out so perfectly. What a fun thing to play such a great role in making a friend's ten-year long dream come true.

What is Purple For?

Today is pi day and I really like to celebrate it. I mostly like to do this because I never let my kids have a day off. It's nice for them to get some relief from the normal day and also do something fun. We were talking a little bit about pi in the teacher's lounge and a fellow teacher asked, "Does pi really go on forever without repeating?"

"Yes, it's irrational," several math teachers responded at once.

"Irrational, what's that mean?"

"That it goes on forever without repeating," I responded.

"But how do you know? Are there other numbers that do this?"

             I was a little surprised, but I continued on and with the assistance of other math teachers, we started to explain about square roots of numbers like 7 or 10 and how we can approximate the decimal value of those numbers by multiplying by a series of more precise decimals that narrow down the upper and lower bounds, but that you can never find the exact decimal value of your answer. It makes more sense if I can explain it with a white board and some markers, but he understood.

"But what's it for?"

       What's it for? That threw me. Does it have to be for something? It's like teaching someone colors and they point to a swatch of color and ask,  'what's that?' and you say, 'purple' and they say, 'what's it for?' Purple's not for anything. I guess we use the word to describe things that are that color, but it's not like we'd be in an emergency situation asking if anyone nearby has some purple.

      I finally figured out that he was asking how it was used in math or life and I explained that you would use irrational numbers to describe the length of the hypotenuse of certain right triangles. Kind of like asking, "What things are purple?" which is a much more valid question.

     It made me realize that people think that math is like art or poetry or movies. And in one sense, it certainly is like those things in that it is beautiful, allows people to be creative, stimulates the mind and fills up a lot of our time. But it is different in that it is not made up. I mean there are parts of it that people just make up and we all agree on it, but in principal, math is not created, it is discovered. He thought that someone made up the idea of irrational numbers and then tried to use it, when really irrational numbers exist and someone finally found them and named them.

    Let's take pi, for instance. Pi was named pi by a Welsh dude in 1706 (William Jones). Why? Because he made up the name. With good reason and all that, but he made it up. That was his creative choice and a bunch of people agreed and now math cannon causes us all to follow this choice (or not, if you feel a little rebellious). But the essence of pi, it's existence and the refinement of our knowledge about pi is not created by the whim of a smart nerd. It is discovered. A bunch of people from ancient times on noticed that the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter is always equal to the same number, no matter what circle. When you get a constant like that, it seems like it might be interesting to study. So people did: Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Israelites (Pi is mentioned in the Bible!!), and Chinese among others.

       Archimedes (on my top ten list for cool dead guys) refined our knowledge about pi and even gave it some upper and lower bounds. Not because he arbitrarily and creatively sat down to make up some number, but because he studied this number and found out some true things about it.

    So to summarize: Edison did not create electricity, neither did Ben Franklin, math and science are discovered. No group or body of people said, " What do you think we should make 2 + 5  equal?" 2 + 5 = 7 because we labeled (the creativity part) ** + ***** = ******* with certain symbols. This creativity part doesn't change the number of cows I have if I had 2 and you gave me 5. Who decided it was 7? It just is! The label may change, but the amount of cows I have does not.

   So there is my rant about how people think math is some made up set of arbitrary rules that people memorize so they can be super nerdy and prove that they have better memories than you. Math is about logical analysis of the world around us and it is described using a specific language. Ok, I feel a little better, thanks.

  I'm going to end this with my Pi-Ku for today. It's like a Haiku only with a 3-1-4 pattern
Oh, pi day,
joy
you bring to all

What is Love: A Junior High Perspective

I always ask my kids a non-math related question at the end of each test. The latest one was, "What is love? Give an example." and I got quite a few great answers and I thought I'd share some of them with you all.

Love is like a fat kid and food.

A four letter word

Love is finding happiness. It is unexplainable, but still it exists. Although it is not perfect, it can be healing or painful. The joy of a loved one around you is also different from the pain of losing a loved one. It can be found in the hardest places, but still it is there. It can be love for friends or family, each love has a different meaning. People say it is hard to find, but it is everywhere. The pain of losing your beloved dog is so terrifyingly hard to forget, while cuddling on a couch during the cold winter is very warm. It is different in every situation and person. It is undefined.

What is love? Baby, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, no more.

Love is where people are willing to care for one another. To love someone that is not blood related to you is the most difficult and magnificent of all. If two people are willing to set aside their differences and are willing to protect one another. The couple must feel comfortable around each other and not let anything stop them from loving each other. This is love, the way it should be.

...sorry, I got nothing...

Backward it would spell Evol (Evil) Coincidence?

1. I believe there is a song with that title.
2. Scientifically, it is the urge in animals to reproduce. That's all.

God is love; He sent His only son to die for us.


    And that, my friends, is why I teach.