Story A Day

Following the busy conference with ITTI, I spent a couple extra days in the Bay Area to visit my college friend, Nate, who is out here studying public policy at UC-Berkeley.  I didn’t get to do any site-seeing at all during the week, so it was fun to check out some touristy spots!  We visited Muir Woods first, scoping out the amazing giant Redwoods, and chatting it up on the trail along the way.  I teased Nate about his lack of knowledge about salmon and trees, and he teased me about my naivete with regard to gay lingo, as I looked at him befuddled a couple times throughout the day Following our trip to Muir Woods, we headed to Fisherman’s Wharf, and the Golden Gate Bridge.  The scenery around here is pretty surreal.  It was a good time.  I head home in the morning, after 12 days away!   Check out the San Francisco Photos.  Here’s one as a teaser…

Following the trip to Jamaica, I flew straight to San Francisco to dive into a week of intensive work with a team I’m grateful to have worked with over the last year.  A group of directors from multiple Breakthrough sites, me included, have spent the last year testing and refining research-based practices at our respective programs, through a project called the Improving Teacher Training Initiative (ITTI).   This week, our crew brought that work to a larger audience, training additional site directors in these practices.  The week felt like a bit of a marathon, but we are all walking away feeling newly inspired by this work, and energized to improve our sites even more.  Here’s the smiling ITTI leadership team, at the end of our long week together

It’s been a crazy week, but I’m finally getting my head above water after just finishing up 5 days of non-stop work at a conference in San Francisco I came straight here (as I am still in San Francisco) from Jamaica, where we were on a trip with the company at which Tim works.  All in all, I have been away from home since last Wednesday, and I will be here for a couple more days, since I am visiting a college friend before flying home on Monday.  So, there will be a couple photo posts in the coming days, but to start, I’ll post the photos from our trip to Jamaica.  It was a lot of fun, and the place we stayed was far fancier that anywhere we’d probably be able to afford to pay for ourselves!  I posted one of my favorite photos below, here’s the link to the full album:  Jamaica Photos

I am currently in San Francisco at a super busy conference for work, after just spending a few days in Jamaica, courtesy of Tim’s employer!  Great trip, and lots of photos coming soon.  It might be a few days before I post again, for you avid blog readers out there…

At 1:00 am today my Uncle Conrad passed away.  He battled Type 2 diabetes for much of his life, and unfortunately succumbed to its effects at the young age of 55.  My Uncle Conrad was full of life.  One of his hobbies was performing as a magician and hypnotist, and some of my favorite memories were the shows he performed at my high school graduation party, and a college graduation party.  He was hilarious!  He also owned a magic shop at one point, and we used to visit and see magic tricks – though “a magician never shares his secrets,” he’d say. A loving and caring person, taken too soon.  We will miss you, Conrad…

ArGh!!!!  This morning was a clumsy morning…unfortunately the victim of my clumsiness was an innocent Macbook, property of my employer.  See, I was trying to be all productive – getting some work done from home before driving my dad the the airport midday. I was holding my laptop in my left arm, and when I motioned to plug the cord in I guess the shift was enough to change the weight balance to one that led the laptop right over the top of my arm onto the ceramic tile kitchen floor.  SMACK!!  It fell completely flat, didn’t even hit a corner.  I thought that might be a good sign…though it did hit pretty hard.  I picked it up, gave it a little pep talk (after some profane exclamations on account of my stupidity), and hoped for the best.  When I hit the power button all I got was…BEEP, BEEP, BEEP.  No good.  No good at all.  I called the tech office at my place of work and pleaded for advice…they figured it was the RAM being dislodged and told me how to make sure it was snug in its housing.  I crossed my fingers and turned it on again…BEEP,BEEP,BEEP.  After a bit of googling I learned that after checking the RAM, this sound likely means a cracked motherboard.  After driving my dad to the airport, I headed to the tech office to learn my fate.  Once I got there, in the brighter light, it was obvious that the screen was also completely cracked – yikes!  The good news is that my employer has a very good coverage policy for these kinds of events – phew!!  I have a loaner now, and mine is off to get repaired.  I was reminded by this event why I also have that special insurance rider for my own laptop – I like to call it stupidity coverage It covers my laptop, even if it’s my fault – ie: dropping it, spilling something on it, etc.  I highly recommend it if you don’t have it already, and are as clumsy as me!

Since they were unable to come around the holidays, my dad and Tracy came to visit this weekend.  We spent yesterday afternoon watching the Viking crush the Cowboys with my sister, Kathy, and her fiance James.  James has a very nice TV and sound system, so we also watched Star Trek.  The bass was so intense that the couch shook during the explosions…cool!  It’s been a fun weekend!

The skating crew!  Check it out…

Tim and I joined a few friends tonight for an evening of skating at The Oval in Roseville.  I would not say that skating is one of my strong points, but I am always happy to give it a shot By the end of the evening, I was getting up some speed, and I only fell 5 times – that’s a low number for me I didn’t have a camera, as carrying one would have been a risk given my frequency of falls!  However, my friend Sandy had a camera, so I’ll post more photos when I get them from her.  In the meantime, here is one that Tom took of Liz with his IPhone..

I just realized that I didn’t blog last night It wasn’t because I was crabby again, rather, it was because I was distracted by the Grey’s Anatomy & Private Practice episodes!  They are two of my favorite shows, and they’ve been on hiatus for the holidays, so it was a good night of catch up Tonight, we are awaiting the arrival of my dad and Tracy.  Their flight gets in at about 11:30.  It should be a fun weekend of catching up!