summer CAMT

wednesday night i headed off to san antonio with 2 other teachers for what i suppose is my first business trip. yes, we were headed off to one of the largest math teacher conferences in the country, about 8000 teachers strong, at the convention center on the san antonio riverwalk. this was a last minute request from our principal so the nicer hotels on the riverwalk were basically booked so we stayed at the ramada limited not too far away. sometimes limited means rare, expensive, and valuable because there aren't very many of them. this was that other type of limited.

the conference consisted of 1 hr conference sessions all day thursday, all day friday, and saturday morning. there were hundreds to choose from. some were more popular than others. thanks to the fire marshall, the conference for the advancement of mathematics teaching (CAMT) was extremely interesting. once all the seats in the room were full, no other teachers were allowed into the room, they would need to find a different conference. no big deal, right? wrong. the conference periods had a 15 minute break between. but everyone was in such a big hurry to get to the next conference, they would begin leaving early. the conference leaders knew this, so their conferences started becoming shorter and shorter, so their attendees could get to the next session. they would then wait in hordes outside the classroom and start rushing in as soon as the doors opened. this means if you happened to go to a session that merely let out on time, or if you happened to need a drink or restroom break, you were definitely not making it to a popular session. unless you did the ever popular, sneak up on the side and work your way through the crowd of people that have been waiting twice as long as you have. rumor has it one lady got removed from CAMT because she could not control her anger towards these people. perhaps you think you would cleverly attend the session before the popular one held in the same room? no problem, they've already thought of that. everyone must leave the room between conferences to make it fair. this means if the one you wanted to go to was in the same room as you were already in, no chance of you getting back in the door because so many people are already waiting. it was crazy!!! i went to boring conferences to avoid the madness. i mean seriously...its a math conference?

despite all of that, the funniest part was actually the materials, or lack thereof. most conference leaders would hand out a CD or some handouts that were pretty useful to bring back for your classroom. but a lot of leaders did not have enough handouts. people would get downright nasty, demanding teachers from the same school share, or those that came in a little late did not deserve one, or storming out of the room when they didn't get a handout. my personal favorite moment of the conference was when a lady sitting next to me did not get a handout and seemed very upset. another lady nearby gave her one, and shared with another teacher from her school. the lady promptly got up and left. she just wanted the handout, not the lecture. even funnier was how angry the ladies at my table got about this, and spent the next 45 min talking badly about her.

all in all, i learned a few things, got some interesting ideas. also i got to meet up with friends from usaa at the riverwalk 2 of the 3 nights, and had a great time. CAMT 2007 is in the books.

our un-vacation

it all started last week when i took a look at our summer schedule and realized that our 'oo we need to take the sailboat down to corpus' weekend excursion needed to happen this weekend or it would most likely not happen at all. so we made plans to take our summer vacation down to corpus. friday night we gathered up all the camping gear, hooked up the sailboat, and we were off! the chances of rain in the forecast kept us slightly subdued, but we were naively hopeful that we would escape any bad weather. i mean seriously, other than in west texas, what is the percentage of time that weather forecasts are correct? (i exclude west texas because although these weathermen also mess up the important forecasts, their percentages are boosted because most days the 'its gonna be hot and dry' works out pretty well for them)

friday night we got into town and dropped off the boat at ross' parents property and said hi to james, ross' cousin who lives next door. we then checked in to a hampton inn nearby. ross bargained our rate down by about $30 dollars (though it was still painfully high) and we tried to open our door. the lady reprogrammed our keys no less than 3 times but to no avail. i don't know whether to blame her or the door. but it worked out well. because she gave us another room, a room that was a higher rate than the discounted rate we just paid. it was a suite with a king size bed. the best bed that either of us have ever slept on. we took note of the mattress brand and had a pleasant evening. this, it would turn out, would be the highlight of the trip for me.

the next morning we hit up h-e-b to load up our cooler as we intended to camp on the beach. we then drove out to padre island and it was drizzling some as we drove. it seemed to be letting up as we got closer, yet every time we would mention 'hey the rain stopped', it would simply begin to rain again. we got out to the beach and sat in the car watching the rain. this was fun. james met us out there and then we checked out the boat ramp. we unhooked the boat, but then it started raining harder. forgive me for saying this in TEXAS in JUNE, but it was sooo cold with the wind and the rain, that we had to abort our sailing AND camping mission.





determined not to let our vacation be ruined (we DID just drive all the way down here!), we decided to go to the texas state aquarium in corpus. this was pretty fun, and we could get a good visual on the lexington from the aquarium as well, but did not go on board.






it was no longer raining but more rain was in the forecast and darkness was approaching in a few hours, so we made the joint decision not to go back out to the beach, though the sunny skies left us feeling very torn as to what to do. we set up our awesome propane stove at a park along the waterfront and had our picnic dinner there. we saw a regatta of sunfish sailboats, which was cool, but also kind of rubbing it in our faces a little bit. afterwards, we went to half price books that ross used to hang out at, and some of his old chess buddies were even there, so he got a couple games in. then we went to barnes and noble (we love bookstores :) ) for awhile. then we went and saw a movie. this wasn't quite the day we had planned, but it turned out to be fun in spite of the rain and change of plans.


so saturday night we hadn't planned to stay in a hotel, we'd planned to stay on the beach. so we tried to scout out a cheaper hotel, though the spring air avalon suite mattress back at the hampton was very tempting. so the next day we woke up and the sun was shining! we were glad we'd stuck it out, as we had considered driving back to austin the evening before. we loaded up and drove to the beach. The ramp was packed, the skies were clear, and we were stoked! We got the boat rigged up, put her in the water, raised the sail, and.....all the fishermen started coming in. A storm was coming in from the south. We could see the clouds. ross asked a guy we'd been talking to, how long, 1 hour? the guy said 20 minutes. as he said this, it began to rain. then, it began to pour. we frantically tried to pack up the boat while about 30 other boaters did the same. we could not have been wetter if we'd just gone and jumped in the ocean. so, basically, we got as close to sailing as possible, without actually untying from the dock.




and then we drove 200 miles home. soaking wet. and that was our summer vacation: sailing in corpus.

A Quick Update

Since Sharon has been so busy learning to be a teacher, she has forgotten to post! Ergo, it only seem right to sneak into her account again to post on her behalf. Unfortunately for you, it's been a pretty boring week.

Well, her birthday has come and gone and so we shall start there. My gift was a necklace with an alexandrite gemstone, her birthstone, and if she ever picks it out, a "teacher bag" that she's been wanting. We went to eat at "The Y Bar and Grill" in Oak Hill. The Y is amazingly well designed with some unique architecture and an outdoor eating area overlooking the woods. An outdoor eating area featuring trees with funny faces actually. Apparently someone thought it would be funny to glue disguise masks on a few trees in the woods. We sat outside and started with some crab stuffed mushrooms and listened to a local musician. Not much else to tell I'm afraid.

Yesterday however, we experienced our first real wind of the summer ( that is, wind not accompanied by a storm ). It turns out that sailing season in Austin is every season except summer, which features 0-5 mph winds on a regular basis. Bummer. We got some 15-20 mph winds yesterday so we left work early and went to the lake. My hiking stick broke off my rudder ( a long pole attached to the rudder ) and so it was a little annoying because being forced to ride in the back of the boat makes it impossible to distribute your weight for maximum performance. Sharon took her turn at the helm too - she's not going to admit it but she kinda likes it. We got some new gear to make sailing better for us; namely a dry bag so we can safely stow gear on the trampoline. We stayed out until sunset before coming in. Here's a shot that even came out good on a phone camera.
It also turns out that Sharon doesn't like waiting forever for me to rig and derig the boat so she has demanded that I find a simpler, faster way to do it. She'd so be a manager had she stayed at USAA ;) But OK, so I did some thinking and she was right - it was worth it. I probably whittled 20 minutes off of our rig and derig time. Now the hiking stick is fixed, some other questionable hardware replaced and we are set to maybe hit the beaches in Port Aransas with it this weekend. If you are interested you can see plenty of videos of people "cat surfing" on youtube.

Ross Hytnen

fishin' excursion

now, try not to be jealous that we live about 5 minutes from one of the best lakes in texas, attend a church with saturday night services, and live down the road from charles who not only has a fishing boat but is willing to come pick us up early in the morning to go out for some good ol' fashioned fishing.
you probably know that ross has gone fishing several times over the last 3 months we've been here. this weekend i agreed to tag along to see what the fun was all about. the 6.30am wake up call doesn't seem as early after getting up at 6am for the past 2 weeks, which helps. the lake was smooth as glass and it was a gorgeous morning.


the last time i went fishing it was i guess well over a decade ago, when a much younger sharon went out in 'the bass boat' with dad, pawpaw, matt, and a trusty ol' snoopy fishing pole and bobber. this was a trolling fishing trip and the guys let me reel in the first fish...a striper. we caught 4-5 bass, but all of the fish we threw back because they were just under sized. plus we have a lot of fish filets in the freezer that still need to be grilled up. fish fry anyone? come on over.

we also got to observe a sailboat race as we went by one of the marinas, which was pretty cool, and get an up close look at mansfield dam. and when we got back, there was still plenty of day left! all in all....pretty fun, i must say.

the authoritarian

i have survived week 1 (of 6) of my teacher training class and week 1 (of 4) of summer school. i highly favor the mornings at summer school to the afternoons being a student, because in the mornings i am totally in charge. well, not totally, because i'm just the student teacher, but for the most part, after 1st period, i was in charge of the 7th grade math classes.

the students we have, all 85 of them, are a little scary. but one must not let on that you realize they are scary. in fact, the first morning there i felt as if i was at a juvenile detention center, with all the teachers barking out orders demanding military straight lines, shirts tucked in, and no second chances. there is definitely a fine line of tension between quiet learning and utter chaos that i'm constantly praying will not snap, particularly during class periods on my watch.

i believe my finest teaching moment of the week actually came during the end of the week quiz. one young man was trying to recall the order of operations and i told him that all i could help him with was to try to remember the acronym and work through the problems using it (PEMDAS). he told me that he not only did not know what an acronym was but he had no idea what i was talking about, though the other student teacher had done a review on it 5 minutes prior to this conversation. i said, an acronym is where the letters in one word stand for letters in other words. scanning through my mind i came up with NBA...the national basketball association. the boy told me 'i have no idea what you are talking about'...his loss. the boys at a nearby table were apparently impressed with my NBA knowledge and tried to stump me with MLB...to which i answered major league baseball, and was met with stunned looks. yes, i had exerted my authority in not only math matters, but now also in sports. so sit down and listen to me students! ;)

in other news, ross and i celebrated his birthday last week with a trip to KOBE Japanese steakhouse, where they gave him some complimentary porcelain chopsticks since it was his birthday.

last night we cooked some kabobs on his birthday present (propane grill) and he even wore his cook-out apron, a bday present from nana.

also this week we had a little dinner party team awesome austin-style (will. lisa. summer plans??),participated in a small group from church, went sailing on lake LBJ, watched the spurs dominate with some friends, got a DVR and DishNetwork(!), and met up for lunch in downtown austin.

minnie is helping me write this post and wants you to know that she killed a very large lizard yesterday and is currently hoping i would share some tunafish sandwich with her as a reward.

a public service announcement is that summer has arrived. you should not go biking at 1pm on a saturday afternoon, as ross and i just did. it is simply waaaay too hot.

back to work

most of you know that i have decided to switch careers from IT to teaching. the process has included a hiatus from working for the past few months (march-may) which has been at times enjoyable and at times frustrating. last week i started back to work by attending a seminar with other teachers from the school district that i will be working at in the fall. we were working on creating a standardized district curriculum and common assessments for the upcoming school year. it was a good way to get introduced to the state objectives for 6th grade. it was also a time to see that some teachers are embittered and resistant to change, while others are motivated and excited to embrace whatever catalyst is needed to propel students toward achievement. today i started my classroom seminars and in the morning i will face my first day of student teaching. i guess its kind of easy to get caught in a 'grass is greener on the other side' mentality when facing the challenges of beginning to teach and remembering the certain comforts that come from being a professional in the corporate world. some days i wonder why i would leave a profession that allows me to wear whatever i want, show up whenever i want, and show up and only need to focus on what i need to be doing and where i need to be. but i try to remind myself that in some ways these are selfish ambitions. and i want to do something that when i look back on my life i will have made a difference in someone else's life, not just been successful in my own. so in some ways i'm super nervous about becoming a teacher and sometimes a little sad to have left something that i had learned to enjoy. but mostly i'm super excited! i can't wait to share with you the things that happen this summer during my training, and this fall in my 6th grade math portable classroom!

"Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight," declares the Lord.
--Jeremiah 9:23-24

interaction

you may have noticed that this month boasts more posts than any other month this year thus far. moreover, if you glance at the blog archives you will notice this month also has more posts than any month in 2004 or 2006! however, all this posting and so little commenting is very discouraging!! you guys suck!

just kidding. but seriously. come on. the video was funny. and impressive. so help me out.

identity theft

so ross and i had made up a budget in excel for the summer and we had set up quicken accounts. yesterday afternoon i spent some time transferring our budget information into quicken so we could better track how we are doing. it was while i was going back and re-categorizing expenditures into our budget categories that i noticed 2 charges to avis car rental. because neither ross nor i have rented a car from avis, this was rather disturbing. it was even more disturbing because we had recently lost a debit card and had to call the bank to cancel it and request a replacement. after talking with ross (actually we were IM'ing...we have a hi-tech marriage ;)) we were both up in arms ready to call usaa and demand justice. i decided to check the transactions online on the banks website so i would have it handy. funny thing was i couldn't find it anywhere. the only transactions with matching dollar amounts was to ACH W/D-TRAVIS COUNTY WC ONLINE PMT...our water bill. accidentally we had accepted quicken's suggested memorized payee as avis car rental(ACH W/D-TRAVIS COUNTY WC ONLINE PMT). oops! too bad...we had our hopes set on being on the next citibank commercial.

lost and found

i have returned from my vacation to portland to visit friends...i trust ross has kept you well entertained in my absence! i had a great week of sightseeing and catching up with friends. also i had my first experience drinking bubble tea...its rather interesting. i'd never heard of it but its apparently a phenomenon. i also got to play in a softball game, go to saturday market in downtown portland, see a play, go to church and youth group at ggbc, see a 10ft sturgeon and feed rainbow trout, count fish at bonneville dam, hang out with friends, have a picnic and 2 barbeques, share pictures, and eat lots of ice cream from DQ. it was most fun, but i'm definitely glad to be back with ross! he was at the airport to pick me up with flowers and then we went and got a drink and watched the spurs beat the suns. we are going to have a repeat evening tonite minus the flowers and airport.

today in the office closet i found something that had been frustratingly missing for the past couple months. yes, we managed to misplace this important document after only days of having it. there aren't many uses for the actual document it seems, but of course we managed to misplace it before i'd used it at the DMV, etc. thankfully, now i can officially become mrs. hytnen.

Creepy and Funny and Tragically True

The Creepy and Funny ...
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2457332

The Tragedy ...
http://www.amazon.com/Latawnya-Naughty-Horse-Learns-Drugs/dp/0533091020/ref=sr_1_2/103-7583323-5108611?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179437744&sr=8-2

Double click the above link to highlight it for copy / paste.


Ross

What I do to Sharon's things when she's away...

Sorry Sharon - they had to come off so I could wire it for the trailer.
I think it still runs though but keep your fingers crossed anyway.


Ross

A call for recipes ...

Living in Austin has been great fun for me thus far. Typically, early Saturday morning, Charles and I set out on Lake Travis for a long morning of fishing ( I'm not sure Sharon enjoys the early wake up call though ). Having Charles as a fishing partner is especially useful for me because he doesn't actually eat fish. What I catch ... I keep. What Charles catches ... I keep.

By the way, being able to do this is exciting in and of itself because in San Antonio the only place available for fishing was on USAA grounds. I'm not making that up.

I've brought home fish 3 weekends running with each weekend being more fruitful than the last. Today we caught 18 fish. After throwing seven of them back after running out of space to keep them and giving four away to a neighbor, my personal stash looks like this:


If memory servers that's 3 white bass, 2 black bass, a crappie (the small fella on top) and a striper (the bigun taking up the length of the pan). Unfortunately for them, they have been turned into this ( spoon added for size reference ):


And have a destiny with this:


Thus, we need lots of fish recipes! So if you have a good one feel free to post it :)

Ross

Sail Day Photoblog ...

Here is a brief photographic addendum to the previous post.

Hoisting the mast in "dry dock". When fully extended the sail reaches the top of the mast. If you look closely, our other sail boat is under the awning of the shed in the background.

Sharon and I finally under way ... so far so good.
Uh Sharon.. the pulley just snapped...
Stranded at sea - making the best of things.
(The problem is the red rope in this photo...its broken off the travelers block and I am holding it by hand now.)

Slowly arriving at our destination ...
Ugh, finally back. I was exhuasted from holding the sail and fighting the rudder on a choppy lake. Sharon seemed quite rested however ...

C'mon pull this trailer out already!

Stolen Accounts and Finicky Cats...

I have sneakily guessed Sharon's password to this blog and can therefore post without her knowledge... So I thought I'd update you with a brief tale of our first sail on our very own finicky catamaran.

I'll leave it to Sharon to post pictures soon.

I spent Friday and part of today figuring out how to actually rig the cat correctly. It's tougher than you might imagine due to the awkwardness of maneuvering the very tall mast.

Oops, Sharon just walked in and caught me. So to continue...

We found a sail sport friendly park from which no motorized vehicles may be launched and decided it looked like a good place to put in. Rigging was a fairly routine event as was the launch itself. Actually the entire sailing experience was going relatively well until...

The sail suddenly burst from it rigging and flew out 90 degress to the boat at about mach 3. The hardware that holds my main sheet to the super-traveler had just snapped, fell into the water and plummeted about 200 feet into the deep channel of the river. Don't worry though - we do end up surviving this ordeal.

It turns out that holding a sail by hand on a sunfish and holding the sail of a catamaran by hand are night and day. There is just so much more sail for a catamaran that the amount of wind you need to hold onto is very much more formidable. We did manage to limp the boat back to the dock, unrig and pack up. Unfortunately in the process I fell off the trailer and cut my lower back and thigh on various metallic protrusions.

Over all, a very strong learning experience; next time will be much smoother.

For a video of our model boat in action see: http://www.sailingtexas.com/cboats99hobie14.html
Video is in upper right corner.

PS
Sharon finally got a working dishwasher - I had two spare dishwashers for some reason.

PPS
Sharon bought me a nice gas grill for my birthday. It's a little early but we have freshly caught fish (21" bass + 3x14" bass) to cook so I get to play with it already!

Goodbye for now. Sharon will probably be changing her password so who knows when you'll hear from me again.

Ross.

pillow talk? (v2)

every once in awhile when ross is sleeping on his back and head propped up on the pillow, then he will start to snore. if he turns over, this problem is quickly resolved. this weekend while camping, i was awakened from my not so deep and not so comfortable slumber by VERY loud snoring. i tried to turn him over to no avail. so he had to be awakened. this was not an easy task.

sharon:ross
sharon: rosss
sharon: ROSS
sharon: ROOOSSSS
ross: what
sharon: you need to turn over
ross: huh?
sharon: you're snoring
ross: i wasn't asleep
sharon: you weren't?
ross: no. i've just been laying here with my eyes closed.
sharon: you were? well you were snoring very loudly. it woke me up!
ross: it must have been someone else
sharon: you're right next to me.
ross: i'm just saying....i'm not the source.
sharon: ok.

i'm in trouble!

hopefully ross won't buy one of these:

The SnuzNLuz alarm clock connects to your online bank account via WiFi and donates your real money to an organization you hate every time you push the snooze button. Best you get out of bed when it tells ya to.

visitors!

i was a little worried that with no test to study for and the house clean and no thank you notes to write that i'd be a little bored this week. not so! for starters we were terrorized by this wolf that you can see ross had to fend off. just kidding. thats the neighbors german shepherd, and when he stands up ...he's taller than ross! he's an ocassional unwanted visitor (at least by me) on our porch. i guess he was a little excited that my mom and rachel came to visit for a few days, because he came to visit those days too! we checked out the texas history museum downtown and the hamilton greenbelt while they were here and had a really good time. the star of the show however was minnie the cat. i do believe she agrees with me that J-Jo the dog was unwelcome, as she spent about 2 days hiding under the bed after he surprised her one morning.this weekend evelyn and daniel came up and we all went camping at pace bend park, on the north side of lake travis. we had a really good time.




of course we took the texan obligatory bluebonnet pics.


one last visitor we had was a bunny rabbit! it was waiting for us the other night in the driveway. good thing we drove up and startled it because i'm pretty sure minnie was stalking it! and now we are preparing for one more set of visitors! ross' parents are coming in tonight to see us.

home living

well it turns out living in a home is quite different than an apartment. many evenings and a lot of time on weekends are spent working around the house...its high maintenance! we are very fortunate however that ross is quite the handy man and can handle most all the tasks himself...well maybe with a little help from home de pot. our back porch hangout/gym area is about 75% complete. we've worked out several times back there and now just need to get some bamboo blinds purchased and hung. the kitchen sink is a continual thorn in our side as it seems to have issues constantly. pictures and artwork are slowly making their way onto the walls. ross busted out the riding lawn mower last week and did a little work on our 'jungle' as i like to refer to it. he showed me how to drive it but i was promptly relieved of these duties. we've had 2 sets of visitors so far: jfer came into town for the Easter weekend. She and I went to the movies and of course the mall and worked on my wedding album. All of us went to church (where Chris Tomlin led worship!) and in general just had good times. Our outdoor adventures were postponed to her next visit due to the freezing (quite literally--sleet on Easter!) weather. Our other visitors you can see below: 5 deer that like to hang out in our yard sometimes! Our third set of visitors are due next week and we can't wait!

am i smarter than a 5th grader?

for whatever reason ross and i have watched this show 'are you smarter than a 5th grader' the past 2 weeks. aside from annoying theme music, overly dramatic people, awfully smug children, jeff foxworthy, and excessive commercial breaks...we find this show entertaining for some reason. i think we enjoy knowing so many more answers than the contestants that it makes us feel good about ourselves. i do think, however, that their selection of contestants in not equally weighted. we have yet to see a professional like a doctor, lawyer, computer programmer on the show...one could argue they don't need more money, but i'm just saying that i think they would do well. but mostly i would like to see a teacher on the show, like a 5th grade teacher, because i'm sure she would blast that game apart. but i guess it wouldn't be as 'entertaining' if the contestants were 'smarter' than a 5th grader. if, of course, you are silly enough to believe that answering random questions from a school textbook correctly makes you 'smarter' than another person.

i however have been engaging in my own reality show of 'am i smarter than a 5th grader' the past month as i've been studying to take the TExES exam to be 'highly qualified' to teach 4th-8th grade mathematics. this requires me to have mastery over certain competencies that i shall be required to teach students on the TAKS test. Some sample questions are provided, but not really enough to practice with. So I looked online and found that you can take released TAKS tests for all ages here. so beginning with 3rd grade and going up through 11th grade, i took all the TAKS math tests. i sighed with relief when the 3rd grade test was no problem and was somewhat pleased when i was able to complete all tests easily in less than 1 hour each. i'm not sure if the excitement was justifiable, as i am a college graduate, but nonetheless at least i do know how to do what i am to teach students to do. of course, doing it well and teaching it well are far from the same.

i also took the 8th grade social studies just to see, and was pleased to execute that one flawlessly as well. try them out! it will let you know if 'you're smarter than a 5th grader', according to the state of Texas.

home de pot

being married apparently requires lots of trips to the home depot(or as i affectionately refer to it: the home de pot), as i have been there more times this month than i think i have been in the rest of my entire life combined. this sunday afternoon found us in the hardware aisle finding numerous different sized bolts required to put together a weight set. it also included a trip to the pvc pipe aisle for parts for ross to install our dishwasher. the dishwasher that was supposed to be fun to go pick up in corpus christi because we were going to camp on the beach. but due to rainy weather (i refuse to call it bad weather, because i heart it) our dishwasher trip disintegrated into a boring marathon 12hr trip of a saturday. so while we were at the home depot buying things, then ross bought me something! a plant. the cashier appeared mortified while ringing it up and said 'what IS that?', it rang up as 'carnivorous.' haha, thats because we bought a venus fly trap! it is currently uninteresting looking, but as soon as it grows the characteristic 'trap' then i will post a picture of it.