Panama

I'm having one of those evenings when I really feel like I should be writing something, and for once the normal excuse of, "I haven't done anything interesting lately" doesn't apply. The thing is, I have done something interesting lately. It was interesting while I did it, but my week long vacation in Panama was deliciously normal. In answer to the question, "How was your trip?" I can only respond, "Good. It's a beautiful country. That canal thing is pretty cool. Oh, and they have a really old church that's kind of in ruins now 'cause they used it to build the new city after the fire. Oh, and I went zip-lining in El Valle." That's not to say that I didn't have a good time. On the contrary, it was a lot of fun and I saw some pretty cool stuff, but I didn't get arrested or anything. Not that I wanted to. There was that time in the Canal Museum that I sat down on a bench and the guy told me not to (it wasn't roped off. I'm still perplexed as to why they would put it there in prime sitting position without some kind of signage telling people not to sit on the antique railroad benches).

All that to say, I had a great time in Panama. If you want details feel free to ask. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few. Click for larger images. (Update: I just clicked on some of them, and they're not bigger. I don't know why. Sorry.)

Cathedral ruins in Panama la Vieja. I'm jumping in this picture, that's why half of my legs are missing. I do, in fact, have legs.

The view from the top floor of that tower. That's part of the modern Panama City through the window. It's massive.

Climbing on ruins in Panama la Vieja. Yeah, you can do that there.

They had these crazy, fume-spewing buses. Apparently I'm famous there. They named one after me.

The next day we went to Casco Viejo. The National Theatre was open for visitors. Yeah, it's was pretty awesome. They have a raked stage. Teaching tool! Yes!

In El Casco Viejo there are beautiful buildings like the National Theatre right next to run down ones like this.

The sad thing is that it was obvious that this house was once quite beautiful (it even had a pool), but they left it to mother nature for whatever reason (probably financial).

A trip to Panama wouldn't be complete without visiting the Panama Canal. There it is. These are the Miraflores locks on the south side of the Canal. You can see a container ship in the far lock (behind the building). Those containers are about the size of a tractor-trailer.

Another container ship entering the locks from the lake.

The view from the Causeway towards Panama City. The Causeway connects two small islands to the mainland and was constructed from material removed to make the Canal. Talk about a pile of dirt.

Me in the harness getting ready to go zip-lining in El Valle. Look at my bad self.

It's super blurry, but that is indeed me going down that zip-line. Surprisingly enough, I wasn't at all afraid. I think I might be a little bit crazy. Either that or I just got used to heights from working in grid in the PAC.

I stopped a little early and had to pull myself the last few feet.

"THAT WAS AWESOME!"

There's this huge stone wall in the jungle with writing from the indigenous people. It is a lost language, so no one knows what it means.

A picturesque waterfall. El Valle is full of little rivers. On the way back from the wall writing place, Curt and I decided to forgo the use of a bridge and cross one. I fell in. I got my shoes and shorts wet. Thankfully the camera was saved.

Flying

I’ve enjoyed flying for as long as I can remember. I was that kid with my nose pressed to the window watching the ground slip away beneath the wings of the plane. It was magic. A lot of times, knowing how something works, the intricacies of it, the scientific reason why something is possible, takes away the sense of wonder. But knowing, though roughly and in the vaguest of terms, how an airplane works hasn’t changed that awe. Maybe that’s why I enjoy flying so much.

I’m reminded of the poem about ‘slipping the surly bonds of earth’ and ‘touching the face of God’ that I memorized in middle school (and have mostly forgotten in the ten years since…oh my gosh, it’s been ten years since middle school). Maybe God didn’t give us wings to start with so that we could be in awe when He did.

Anyway, the cabin crew is picking up the trash, and the fasten seatbelt sign just popped back on, so I guess we’re almost to Panama. It’s been a good flight. They aren’t stingy with food on this airline. We got little sandwiches and Oreos with our pretzels.

P.S. In case you're wondering, I wrote this on the plane, then published it later. I was not on the internet on the plane, although that would have been cool.

Fact: Free Time Leads to Slacking

I've known since my high school days and especially the summers of watching the same movies over and over again (Mulan one year, The Emperor's New Groove another) that I don't get anything done if I'm not really busy. In a way, I'm glad that summer is over so that I can get back to being productive. In other ways, I'm sad to see the summer go. The Olympics ended today, and although it was getting a bit tiresome going to work exhausted from staying up too late watching some event, I will miss the pageantry and the weird sports (what's with syncro diving?). But the sports void will soon be filled with college football and the regular fare, so I'm sure I won't miss it too much.

More than the demise of anything else I associate with summer, its end means the beginning of school. Although I spend most of my vacation time feeling pretty useless, it's time that I'm not stressed out. This school year, if it's anything like last year, promises stress, short nights, long work days and mistake after mistake which I will have to fix. The most stressful thing is the ever present worry that one of my mistakes might get someone hurt or get me fired. That seems ridiculous, I know. I tell myself that every time it pops into my head. But it doesn't change the periodical reminders that teachers (especially young ones without tenure) are essentially at the mercy of their students in many ways. It doesn't help that I'm supposed to be teaching my students about things which are inherently dangerous, like power tools and fly systems.

Anyway, if you're wondering why I haven't been writing, blame it on summer.

Interesting (and unrelated) observation: I've been having a hard time writing in paragraphs lately. I spend so much time around drama and dialogue that I've started thinking in it. I can bang out a conversation about something pretty quickly, but paragraphs and narration are something of a trial. I'm pretty sure it's not a good thing.

The End of a Languid Summer

Well, it's August. The new school year begins in a couple of weeks. Although one week of freedom remains, I have accomplished very little this summer. There was plenty of sleeping, reading for fun, playing Nintendo, and absolutely no working. It is generally around this time of year, at the end of periods such as this that I begin to feel particularly worthless. I've been unable to motivate myself to actually get things done, save for a few days here and there. A handful of days of productivity in two full months of vacation.

I remember feeling this way at the end of the summer before my Senior year of high school. I'd put off all of my summer work until that last week and spent most of it researching, writing, translating and reading.

I've been so lazy this summer that I've hardly written anything, and have failed to meet my post quota again. Let's hope the school year gives me something to write about.

Here, in the spirit of self-loathing, is list of things I wanted to do this summer and didn't:

• Learn at least 2 new songs on the piano
  
• Read 6 plays (I read 4)
• Find a One Act to do at Districts
  
• Redo my room
• Loose 20 pounds (I've lost 10-ish. Okay, 8-ish)
• Design the Fall play (I've done one [bad] sketch)
• Write lesson plans for the first 2 semesters of school (ambitious, I know)
• Make something
• Grow spiritually
• Learn how to care for theatrical lights

Thing I have done:

• Cleaned my room (hey, that's an accomplishment)
• Watched a whole lot of movies (yay Netflix)
• Doodled a LOT
• Learned to play "Sweet Home Alabama" on the guitar
• Beaten Mario Kart Wii
• Beaten Super Mario Galaxy
• Beaten Battalion Wars II (are you getting a good picture of my summer?)
• Finished Pride and Prejudice
• Slept a LOT
  

Paper Chandelier

Last weekend I found myself in the Neiman Marcus at the Mall at Millenia. This venture into the foreign world of the modern shopping mall lead me to one of the most brilliant things I've seen in quite a while; an idea which I intend to plagiarize in my classroom. It was a chandelier of sorts, although that might stretch the definition thereof, consisting of sheets of paper, wire and binder clips. Visitors from all over the world had written messages in their native tongues, drawn a flag, created a picture from words, whatever came over them at the time. I love this idea. I love how individual it is, and how it is in essence a cloud of thought which is ever changing. I think I will attempt to make something similar for my classroom at school and give the students the opportunity to share their art work or thoughts in a relatively anonymous way. There is, however, the danger of getting a lot of profanity and vulgarity if placed in a high school classroom. I think I'll try it anyway, and trust that they can be mature about it. Yeah, right.

Reader challenge: My own note is up there, see if you can guess which one it is! (No fair if I already showed you...) Post your guesses in the comments.

In Search of Inspiration

I find that in the slow summer months (may they last forever) that I have little about which to write. It's not that I don't want to, but a play by play commentary describing my afternoons sitting around playing Nintendo and carrying on long and intense conversations with my cat isn't particularly interesting.

Then came my trip to Border's this weekend. As Curt and I searched for the hard cover Strunk & White's, I happened upon an intriguingly small cube-shaped book. The Writer's Block emblazoned on it's binding caught my eye, and I soon found myself flipping through its worn three inch pages. This is a book that has seen some hands. Stopping on random pages, I began to see why. Page after page of prompts. Things to write about; fiction, autobiography, a story heard long ago, all of them there on a 3 x 3 page waiting for me. So I bought it (and got a discount because it was a little beat up), and I'm going to use it. Maybe I'll share some of it here. Maybe.

It's Over

They have this really great tradition at the 9th Grade Center. On the last day of finals, the teachers walk their students down to the bus loop and wave goodbye as the buses pull out. I think the real purpose is to prevent fights by getting the students out of there as quickly as possible, and by flooding the area with adults. It is nonetheless satisfying to see them leave. Once the buses are gone, the teachers cheer. Goodbye and good riddance. It was a great feeling.

Anyway, we still have another two days of work. The end of the year is packed with paperwork, and since I've never done any of it before, it takes a really long time, which is why I'm up at 1:00AM working. It's been a long time since I've done this. I want to say I miss this feeling of burning the midnight oil, but when I did that I generally had a lot more sleep than I have this past week. In any case, back to work.

Daylight Savings

Today daylight savings became a mosquito buzzing through my daily routine. Ages ago I looked forward to the beginning of daylight savings with childish excitement. Daylight savings meant the fireflies were coming back soon. It meant my brothers and I could play outside longer, even after dinner, and it would soon be warm enough to wear shorts and make mud pies under the swing in the spring rain and float paper boats in the puddles under the hemlock. We would come in after a long day of playing Davey Crockett in the yard, our faces sweaty and sticky, black necklaces of dirt and sweat around our necks, our sleeves zebra striped from being dragged across our faces.

Daylight savings meant summer. Kick-the-can at night, baseball out by the chicken house (we were moved to the back after putting a hole through the parlor window), long afternoons reading, soccer, skipping rocks in the pond, riding our bikes out to the road to get the mail, no school. Summer was great. I loved summer when I was little. Somehow there was always something to do. That was summer in Virginia.

Now daylight savings means I have to turn a light on in the morning to find my way to the bathroom, and I drive home as the sun sets in my rear view mirror.

Deathly Hallows

I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows around 6:3o yesterday evening. When I finally put the book down I was glad that no one else was around because I looked liked I'd recently been crying (I had), smelled like I'd spent more than 24 hours (with a good 7.5 hours of sleeping) in bed, leaving it only for food and bathroom breaks (I had), and felt simultaneously elated and aimless. Now that my weekend of Potter-mania was over, I had no idea what to do with the rest of my time. I was very close to picking up the book and starting over again, knowing that my first read was extremely fast, and that I therefore missed many of the minute details. But the thought of going through all 759 pages again was a bit daunting. This thought, coupled with the realization that reading it again would mean that one of my coworkers would have to wait longer to read it (as they are waiting on my copy), prevented me opening the book.

I got to work today hoping that at least one other person would have finished, but alas, I was disappointed and had to bite my tongue many times throughout the day as we discussed the series up to the end of book six. Hopefully tomorrow will yield more people who have finished the book, so I can finally start talking about this with people.

Deathly Hallow's Eve

I got home from work today and found that I was not at all hungry, and that it is far to hot to go hit a tennis ball against a wall at the community center. Instead I planted myself in front of the computer, a dangerous place for a Harry Potter fan on the eve of the book seven release. I don't want to be spoiled, see. So I thought I'd check J. K. Rowling's website to see if the door was open (explaining this statement would take too much time and energy), and low and behold, it was. And as I read Jo's letter to her fans which was behind the door, I started getting a little teary. It wasn't a particularly sad letter, no gut-wrenching goodbyes or inspirational epitaphs, it was just thank yous to all the people who have helped her along the way. My sadness wasn't just for the loss that I might be feeling (I have this horrible feeling that she's going to kill him off), but for her as well. She has been writing these books since 1990, and now, 17 years later, it's all over. I've been reading these books for only a couple of years, and I'm incredibly sad about it ending. Granted, I'm a sap when it comes to anything ending, but that is besides the point. The end of the Harry Potter feels akin to the last show of "Les Miserables" at UHS, my senior show, or even graduation, although I am not as elated as I was then (perhaps that feeling will come when I see the gloriously brown UPS truck roll around the corner tomorrow).

Anyway, to avoid being spoiled, I'm avoiding Facebook (you know some joker is going to put it on their feed), e-mail (lest the live or die list appear in the subject line, and basically any website that isn't violently opposed to spoiling Potter fans. I know it's extreme, and a little ridiculous, but I've been counting down to this since January or February when they announced the release date.

In other news, I haven't heard back from University High yet. I'm starting to get a little worried. And no, Dad, I haven't called Osceola, lay off it.

Anyway, I'm off to finish Half-Blood Prince so I'll be ready for the UPS man when he comes.

Interview (Reprise)

The interview this morning went very well. They didn't offer me a job on the spot, but they did go over the classes I would have if I am hired, which I think is a good sign. The conversation when well. I didn't stutter or say something stupid, which is quite impressive, because when I get nervous I stutter a lot and say stupid things. So, I'm optimistic. As I sat in the lobby waiting for my interviewers to come out, I realized that the place still smells the same, after 4 years it really hasn't changed at all. A few coats of paint, but it's still the same.

And now for what I really want to talk about: Harry Potter. I went to the midnight showing of "Order of the Phoenix" with some friends from work (so that we'd all be miserable at work the next day together). The first 15 minutes were absolutely perfect; I couldn't stop smiling. The rest of the movie was also quite good, although I missed the subplots that were lost in translation from book to movie. The best thing about this movie was, in my opinion, casting. A few new characters were introduced (Luna Lovegood, Dolores Umbridge, Grawp) and each was almost exactly the way I imagined him/her. The fact that the screenwriter, designers, director and actors were able to paint the same image I had in my head speaks to the quality of J. K. Rowling's writing and the filmmakers' dedication to maintaining the spirit of the original text.

They made some significant changes to the fight in the Ministry of Magic which I found unnecessary. For example, the Dumby/Voldy battle produced something that look astonishingly like the Priori Incantatem link that was described in the Harry/Voldy fight from Goblet of Fire. I suppose that really comes down to a difference in interpretation, but well, I think I'm right. The Dumbledore's Army scenes were really great though. I imagined the Room of Requirement a little differently, but that happens.

Overall it was a really good movie, and I suspect it is better when not compared to the book. It is impossible to fit a nearly eight hundred page book into a two and a quarter hour movie.

The Summer of Potter, as I've heard it called, continues with the release of the final installment of the book series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on July 21st. All I can say about that is: Harry had better not die. Or Ron and Hermione.

My Bed is my Muse

I wrote a lot of papers in college. A lot of papers. But I seldom wrote those papers at a desk. I would start at my desk, fully intending to be efficiently productive for several hours. But after the first 30 minutes I would get restless and start fidgeting and inevitably migrate from the desk to the bed. For some reason I could never write at the desk. Ever. If I was downstairs I would migrate from the table to the couch and back again.

So, in an attempt to get this cover letter written, I've migrated to my bed. Maybe if I can't get past the first paragraph I'll go back.

On a different note, I didn't meet my post quota for June either, but I got pretty close, so I count it a success. It is summer after all.

Arduous Processes

For the last several months, my aging computer has been running slower and slower by the day. In order to rectify this situation, I have embarked on the long and arduous process of wiping my hard drive and starting over in an attempt to cleanse my digital self and be rid of the demons which inevitably plague Microsoft machines. So I spent part of Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon backing up the 25 Gigs of information stored on my trusty laptop. My documents and other non-music files fit easily onto two CDs. I abandoned the CD strategy on Backup Disc 5, somewhere in the B's in my music collection. So I put all the music on my iPod and plan to download a program which will let me rip music from iPod to .mp3. I'm sure one exists--I had to do the same thing when my hard drive melted a couple Christmases ago. Now to find one that I can easily download and use.

And while I'm on the subject of arduous processes, I've been cleaning my room. It sounds rather childish and perhaps a little trite, but it is really taking a long time. Not only is there the standard mess of living in it, but I also have ten years of garbage (not literally) crammed into every crevice of every drawer and more knickknacks than I know what to do with. Unfortunately I inherited the pack rat gene and am completely incapable of throwing something away if it has any semblance of sentimental value. For example, I found a ticket stub from when I went to see the national tour of "The Producers" at the Bob Carr. Who keeps that stuff? Oh, right, me. But on the other hand, I also found my Tartu, Estonia bus pass from summer project five years ago. Now that has some sentimental value. Perhaps my best strategy for combating my pack ratty nature is to learn to discern what really matters in life. And then I could write a book about it. Maybe start Pack Rats Anonymous. The possibilities are limitless.

Why, one might ask, am I doing all of this stuff which I clearly do not enjoy? Because it means putting off looking for a job. If anyone thought graduation meant an end to procrastination, then well, they clearly do not know me. So, I'm putting off finding a job. I've done some of the paperwork, but I need to revise my resume and write a cover letter or two for principles of local schools.

Anyway, Windows Service Pack 2 is calling my name. Talk about arduous.

P.S. I'm thinking the quota is going out the window this summer. It's just not practical.

Summer Project Time

Well, I'm not going to make my quota. I blame this on being gone for half of May. Oh well. Maybe I'll try to make up for it in subsequent months. Maybe. Anyway, now for what I really wanted to write about.

Every summer around the end of May students from all over the nation embark on Summer Projects to, well, everywhere. And every time I get a giant bag of checks from Such-and-Such Summer Project at work my mind flashes back to my own summer project and I grow simultaneously nostalgic and jealous. Perhaps this is enhanced realization that I, having gone and returned from my summer vacation, am not getting on a plane and going anywhere, and that I, being boring and unmotivated, am working all summer sorting checks for all the people going on summer project to exotic places. And then I'm reminded via internet and work that several of my friends are on summer project. Keith, Scott, Katie...the list continues. And while there is some consolation in the knowledge that they too have to get up in the early hours of the morning, I know that their days will be filled with something fun, exciting, and more importantly, varied, whereas mine will indubitably consist of typing, sorting, batching, more typing, breaks at 10 and 3, and lunch somewhere between 12 and 1.