N is for Netflix

Today at the gym I watched a movie on my iPhone. Usually I listen to music, but for a change I decided to just pick something from my Instant Queue on Netflix and that was that-- I was entertained as I plodded along on the treadmill. When I was a kid, if you wanted to see a movie, you had to go to the theater, and if you wanted to watch a particular TV show, you had to be in front of the television when it was on. There were no recordings of either of those. It's obvious that over the years, technology has really changed the way we view things, but I have to confess to a moment of amazement this afternoon when I looked down at the tiny screen in my hand and saw those credits roll.

Life Lesson: Today is the tomorrow we only dreamed of yesterday.

V is for Vegan

Vegans are people who only eat plant-based food. Unlike vegetarians, vegans do not eat eggs or any kind of dairy products like milk or cheese. Today I went to a movie called Forks Over Knives. Its premise was that eating animal products is the cause of almost all of the heart disease and cancer in the world. They also claimed that switching your diet to a completely vegan one can reverse those diseases, even in people who are deathly ill.

Like most documentaries, this film made a convincing case, but even as I was sitting there, I started to wonder about what a vegan diet would include, but more importantly, what it would exclude, too.

Never mind the obvious loss of chicken, steak, burgers, chops, and seafood-- start with breakfast: besides the usual scrambled or fried eggs, there would be no muffins, pancakes, or waffles, and no milk for your cereal. At lunch, no cheese means no pizza or lasagna, and almost every kind of baked dessert has eggs, too, so no more cookies or cakes, and of course there would be no ice cream, either.

That would be a tough adjustment, even if someone was convinced it was the right thing to do. Most of the people they spoke to in the movie were in a life or death situation, where changing their diet meant a chance at saving their lives, so to them it was worth it. Even so, they all said that they felt much better once they made the change, AND... they were still alive.

As for me? I'm still thinking.

Life Lesson: What's easy is not always what's right, and what's right is not always what's easy.

U is for Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet lights have many uses.  Forensic teams use them to test for blood or other body fluids that may be invisible to the human eye, and there is is also a security strip in US paper money that will glow; the treasury puts it there to prevent counterfeiting. Doctors use them to diagnose certain skin conditions, too. Sometimes they are found at clubs and concerts, and they are also used in some plays and other performances, just because they are cool-looking.

UV lights are better known as "black lights." If you've ever been to the planetarium over by the high school, then you know what I'm talking about. Black lights are those purpley lights they have when you exit that make light colors glow. Personally I love being in ultraviolet light-- it's bright and soothing at the same time, and the way it makes white shine gives you the illusion of seeing in the dark.

Life Lesson: There is more to most things than meets the eye.

T is for Trusting Technology

I was a little crabby this morning when I got to school and discovered that our network was experiencing outages because of a website upgrade. My lesson plans relied upon being able to access our web-based course, and that was not happening. Today was also the last day for three-and-a-half weeks that students will be able to use computers in class-- since all of our mandated testing is online, the labs and lap tops are reserved for that use until June 8.

Of course I adjusted (paper and pencil will not become obsolete any time soon in my classroom, despite what all the pencil-less students might believe), but it was a hectic way to start the day and end the week. This inconvenience also came on the heels of Blogger being down indefinitely. I haven't missed a day of posting in just over 800, and I was feeling some anxiety last night as I checked every fifteen minutes or so to see if it was back. In the end, I realized I could just post to our class discussion board, and that is what I did.

Choose your own Life Lesson:

Adapt or perish. ~HG Wells

OR

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people. ~George Bernard Shaw

E is for Everything I Want to Write About is Taken!

Today is my sister Courtney’s birthday, but I can’t write about that, because the S, the C, and the B are already taken in my alphabiography. Nor can I write about my brother, Bill, or book reviews, or corn on the cob, or SOLs, or Survivor, or scolding students for being sassy when they should be silent. I can’t write about my magnificent mother, either, because the M is gone, or people without pencils, or getting good grades, or zipping zippers, or having headaches, or yackety yacking. I might have been forever fooling with fruitless fantasies, except for the existence of the ever-excellent E!

Life Lesson: A little alliteration is always a last alternative.

P is for PostHunt

The fourth annual Washington Post PostHunt commences on Sunday, June 5, at 11:30 AM. What is that? you ask? Well, the PostHunt is kind of a puzzle-solving scavenger hunt that anyone can participate in. If you want to play, you just have to show up at Freedom Plaza on that day.

The premise of the whole crazy thing is to "challenge participants to solve five ridiculously complex puzzles plus a final End Game in less than four hours. Finding the answers to those puzzles requires following a clue, possibly scrambling to another location, pausing to scratch your head and consider what it all means, then repeating."

My nephew, Treat, and I have joined the competition each year since it started back in 2008. We have had varying success, never solving fewer than 4 of the 5 puzzles, but never solving the end game, either. On the Saturday before, we pore over the Washington Post Magazine for the first clues, familiarizing ourselves with the official map, and making note of anything that may play a role in one of the puzzles. Then on Sunday morning, we hop the metro and join the throngs that are gathering for the challenge. The weather does not always cooperate-- we have been drenched, frozen, and fried, but it doesn't really matter, because it's really a lot of fun.

Maybe we'll see you there this year?

Life Lesson: It's the journey, not the destination, that counts.

G is for A Gift from the Sea

On the first day of our vacation in South Carolina, my mom called us down to the beach to see all the sea stars. There were hundreds, and since this was our first time there, we had no idea if it was a normal thing in those parts. In any case, it was exceptional to us. Over the course of the week, the starfish became much rarer, and we turned our attention to finding sand dollars and shells. I did pull a live whelk from its hiding place in a tidal pool, but as tempting as it was to keep it for its shell, after a few photos I reburied it with a wish and a prayer.

I recognized the whelk from a day trip I took to the Outer Banks one February a long time ago. On that day, it was sunny but freezing, and the beach was deserted. Huge, unbroken whelk shells, the kind and size you never find just lying on the beach, were everywhere-- so many that we couldn't carry them all to the car.  I wasn't worried though, because I was coming back in a few weeks, and I planned to fill a bucket with them then. I would have, too, except they were all gone.

Life Lesson: The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea. ~Anne Morrow Lindbergh