5:40

Is it strange that my favorite sleep comes between 5:40 and 6:10 on weekday mornings? This is the 30 minutes before I force myself to get out of bed (or start beating myself up for not being out of bed)after my alarm clock has gone off . For some reason, I love it. It's still dim, my room is fairly cool, and sometimes I'm still dreaming but I'm just conscious enough to be aware that it's a dream, which makes it all the more sweet. I wish Saturday mornings were like that. But on Saturdays, I know that I don't have to get up. So I slip back into a deep sleep for a few more hours, and the dreams that I was having aren't as sweet, spoiled by length and depth.

Strangely enough, I like getting up in the morning, at least when there's something to do. I like the stillness of the earth before the sun comes out and starts cooking the magic out of the air. In the morning, the day is full of possibilities.

New Glass

I got a new camera lens on eBay today. I'm really excited about it. Enough so that I'm writing a blog post about it. I've always had a thing for photography. As I kid I dreamed about becoming a photographer and traveling the world taking pictures of things. But somewhere around my sophomore year in high school, I earned a 'B' in photography and decided that it was something at which I would never excel. That's what a 'B' meant to me. Because I'm Asian. Sort of. Anyway, it was the only time I received anything less than an A+ in an elective, so I figured I must be pretty awful. I don't really know why I got a 'B' in photography. I do remember opening one of the school cameras in a dark bag that wasn't zipped all the way and ruining a whole roll of film. I suspect it was too technical for my brain to handle at the time. Also, developing film is really difficult.

Fast forward seven years and I've graduated from college, have a job and some steady income. I buy a digital point and shoot. And over time, the pictures I take become better. I can see results immediately. This is what I was missing in high school photography! Immediate feedback. I finally was able to compare results right then and there and try to fix them. So a few years later I had the opportunity to buy a DSLR and I took it. I'm so glad I did. Every time I take it out, I get a little bit better. I'm learning a new art form and documenting life as I do.

So, three years after getting my digital point and shoot, I've taken almost 4,000 pictures. Most of them are of my cat. Who could resist that face?

More Reactions to NPR

I've been listening to NPR a lot lately. It's a nice break from the inane conversations I have every day at work. There's lots to like about NPR. No, not the pledge drives, although I think I would be ecstatic if Ira Glass of This American Life called me and shamed me into pledging. But I like hearing the stories. I like that the news comes in narrative form, with real people telling the stories. And I like that more often then not, it makes me think about the world outside of my microcosm.

So I was listening to an All Things Considered* story about soda in America. The story posits that children today drink too many sugary drinks, largely due to a lack of education about what those beverages do to the human body. There was even mention of children who drink soda in the morning to "get them woke up." Kind of appalling, right? When asked about water, the kid says he can't drink water, he has to have something with flavor or his digestive system acts up. Really appalling, right? So all of this I agree with. Something should be done. I'm not opposed to taking soda out of schools, it's a small step, easy to make, and would probably do a world of good (although they tried to do that when I was in high school, and if memory serves me correctly it lasted less than a year). Then the reporter asked whose responsibility it is to educate children about good eating habits. Parents? Teachers? The guy at the Quik-E-Mart? "We all bear responsibility," the interviewee said. Again, I don't necessarily disagree with this. As a teacher, it's my job to help mold my students into happy, healthy, productive young adults, whatever that entails. The problem is, how do I teach them something if they go home and their parents teach and model the exact opposite?

This highlights a more widespread problem with education today, something that I've observed by interacting with parents. Lack of parental support and involvement. The principles, concepts, and behaviors that we try to instill in students at school are undermined when they go home. The problem isn't always with teachers or the public school system, although we tend to take the blame. It starts at home. That goes for learning and nutrition.

*Question: do you italicize radio program titles, or put it in quotes? Standby for MLA check--my handbook is still within arms reach of my desk, even though I haven't written a paper in years. Indeed, you do italicize. The episode title goes in quotes. I WIN!

She Supposably Won a Pulitzer

I'm a bit of a grammar snob. That's not to say that I have perfect grammar, know how to use a comma properly, or know when to use whom. But I do my best. So, imagine my indignation when I heard a Pulitzer Prize winner say the word supposably on NPR. Supposably. Really? I thought to myself, supposably? I can understand when my high school students mispronounce supposedly, they are neither educated, nor do they care. But a Pulitzer Prize winner?

So, in the midst of judging her for her use of supposably, I got to thinking, I must sound like an idiot with some of the slip ups I make. Glad I'm not on NPR.

If you're interested in the story, you can find it here. It's actually quite good, despite the early slip up. The supposably [tsk, tsk] is in the first four minutes.