Recent Posts

Categories

Interwebification ♥

I am an artist & teacher with a ❤ for visual expression, educational methodology, homesteading, & Jesus. My geek-love is The Joshua and we have three peanut-butters: Caleb, Jack, & Louritta.

Please Pray

02/03/2004

Josh & I are going through some rough stuff right now. Our relationship is strong (so don’t think that it’s relationship problems…cuz it’s not), but we just have some difficult challenges right now. Please pray…God knows what is going on and we would really appreciate blankets of prayer right now. Thanks.
Oh, and I just watched the movie Whale Rider and it was awesome. I also watched The NeverEnding Story…which is a little hokey, but still as enchanting and imaginative as I remember it to be. Good stuff.

Super Bowl Time is Strange

02/01/2004

I was walking down the sidewalk of my apartment complex and no other human being was in sight. I could, however, hear a play-by-play of the superbowl coming from about every other window. People had their apartments filled, windows open, superbowl blaring, and occasional cheers/jeers. It was such an interesting cultural commentary that everyone (except me) was glued to their television.
I used to watch the superbowl. I used to be interested in it. Now, I have to many other things that are of higher interest so I do them instead of the superbowl.
The streets just seemed so empty. No cars. No people. Many of the people I did see earlier were wearing jerseys or colors of their favorite team. And I…I’m wearing denim. As usual. People today choose to support their favorite team by wearing their colors…I guess that means that my favorite teams are The Gap and Levis. That I can deal with.

Broomball Defense

01/31/2004

The PBCC Jr. Highers had an ice-skating-then-broomball night tonight. It was a ton of fun. They gave me these wretched skates at first which made my feet hurt so bad, I swear I felt a hearbeat in my arches. I returned them and put on hockey skates, which were difficult for me to skate in, but at least they didn’t give my feet any heart-like qualities.
The broomball was fun. It’s funny how so many kids aren’t trained in team sports. I kept watching the huge mob of kids follow the ball around the ice (very few actually play their positions or, heaven forbid, stand back in case someone hit the ball their way). I was thinking, “Dude. If I was ever on a team that played like that, my dad would make us run laps!” Anyway, it was a blast.
We did a staff vs. student game and that was neato. I ended up playing a lot of defense since that’s where I was mostly needed. It was 7 staffers against 15 Jr. Highers. So, when the ball got hit down towards the goal, I’d block for my people so they could get in for a clear shot. Anyhoo, that would basically mean me fending of 7 kids or so by myself. I figured out the ultimate way of defending. I’d yell, “BACK OFF you guys! Give her some room!” At which point about half of the kids would just back off. The rest I’d hold back either by checking them into the boards, picking them off, or putting my stick in front of them (is that legal?).
We had one goal that was some beautiful teamwork. One of our middle players hit it up to Dave who passed it to Jenny who passed it to Mark in the center. I blocked some kids out of the way and Mark just slapped that ball straight down the center for a goal. It was awesome. I love stuff like that. I love when your team learns to slow down the game and take control of the ball. That, instead of the “just hit the ball in some direction” method of playing.
Anyway, good times.

Stupid Spammers

01/29/2004

Some of you may have noticed that I just got hit this morning with over 100 spam comments advertising for gambling. I have also received a bunch of spam regarding penis enlargement, Viagra, and psychic readings (among other things). Anyway, it is SO IRRITATING! Luckily, I have de-spamming software ready to go so I can get the stuff deleted.
Who thought of slapping personal blogs with annoying advertising crap. And does it actually work? I know it just ticks me off really bad. I will not involve myself in any business that spams blogs, spams e-mail, or calls me on the phone (including charities). I’m not trying to be mean or anything…I just get really annoyed with people who advertise products and services that have no tact. They think they have the right to do their song and dance on my time and on my server???
I think the government needs to put down some strict regulations about spam. It is so irritating. Especially when the companies don’t need to pay for their advertising. That means that they hit us, the possible-consumer, really hard with nothing coming out of their wallets and no consequences. At least when they have to pay for advertising they are more conservative, think about it a little bit more, and are selective on where/when they place their ads.
Stupid spammers. I was thinking that some good consequences would be: burning down their house, loading up their computers with viruses (the “You Stupid Jerk of A Spammer Virus), and kidnapping their children for large ransoms. That’s what I’ve come up with so far.

Top 10 Goals for Your Life

01/28/2004

One assignment that my students have is to write a list of the top 10 things they want to accomplish in their life. This gives us a starting point for what they want to make their Art about. Here are some of my favorites (original spelling/grammar has been preserved):
Alex, a 6th grader, said:
1. Be an astrophysisist
2. Find out about dark energy
3. Find out about dark matter
4. Find out about black holes
5. Find out other stuff about the universe
6. Understand quantum physics
7. Get only good grades in school for the rest of my life
8. Win the Nobel Prize
9. Unify the special and general theories of relativity with quantum physics
10. Figure out how to create a stable wormhole (to make a time machine)
Yuta, an 8th grader, said:
10. I want to be the king of the country. Or the president.
Hiromi, a 7th grader,said:
3. I want speak english relly good.
I’ll post more in the comments if I find more good ones.

Can’t Everyone Walk Through Walls?

01/28/2004

Yesterday my new students this semester were working on a student information sheet that asked them questions so I could get to know them better. One of the questions was: If you could have two superpowers, what would they be and why? The students were excited to write down their answers and were having great discussions about the value of different superpowers.
One of my new students, whose English speaking skills weren’t exactly great, asked me to explain what the question meant. I said, “You need to think of two superpowers…or special powers or cool things you wish you could do.” He nodded.
I said, “What about flying?” He paused for a moment, then shook his head no.
“What about walking through walls?” He thought about it, then shook his head no.
So, I tried another, “What if you could close your eyes and wake up anywhere in the world that you wanted?” He looked very confused. He looked at all the other kids writing their superpowers and seemed to get very frustrated. He shook his head no.
It then dawned on me that he thought that I was asking him what superpowers he actually had. He must have felt very strange looking at everyone else making their list of superpowers…wondering why he didn’t have any. Wondering if Americans are crazy mutants.
I said, “No…What superpowers do you wish you could have? If you could what superpowers would you want?” He let out a sigh of relief, smiled and nodded excitedly. He then proceeded to put down flying and reading minds as his superpowers.
What an interesting and hilarious incident.

He Doesn’t Know Why

01/25/2004

Today Josh presented the PBCC Jr. High site to the Jr. Highers. He really worked hard on the site and I do say he did a really kick-butt job on it. Anyhoo, he came in this morning with my laptop and was hooking it up to a projector and whatnot so it could be projected for the grand opening presentation.
Josh comes up to me and says, “All these kids that are geeks, but don’t know they’re geeks yet are coming out of the woodwork. That kid over there, he doesn’t know why he’s here.” I looked up and saw a disheveled boy (whom I’d never seen before today…although others told me that he’s been coming for awhile). He looked a little lost, standing as near to the technology as he could as though it beckoned to him, offering life and happiness. Even when Josh was leading worship and I was finishing the set-up, I looked around and saw all of the kids attentive to the worship. Except this tecno-geek-boy, who stared at me and my computer, mesmerized by my selection of an abstract screen saver.
This boy later came up to me and said, “I really like your desktop.” I looked at my solid azul desktop. It felt awkward. Kind of like he was coming on to me. I wanted to say, “That’s sick! I’m married and you’re in Jr. High!” But it wasn’t a come on meant for me. It was meant for my computer. The computer he fell in love with this morning.

Whew!

01/24/2004

I recently finished cutting 13 speech pieces for the Centennial High speech team. I’m amazed at how much of my time it took. Josh kept wondering why I said I’d do it, and I guess I wondered a few times too. But, when I was in high school, Speech had such a huge impact on my life that I just want to give back to the program. Obviously, I can’t coach from here, so all I can really do is cut pieces for kids. It’s getting harder now though because I don’t know most of the kids on the team.
Anyway, it’s one of those programs that I don’t miss much because it took up so much of my time (my evenings and weekends), but I do miss a lot because I just loved doing it. I love seeing kids improve their skills & grow & have fun. And I really thought I was a pretty good coach because I could actually cut good scripts, and give kids critiques that were constructive, and be consistent at the tournaments and whatnot.
I suppose I should explain that there are two major areas in speech: interpretational and public address. Public address would be a speech that is given to persuade, inform, etc. Probably like most speeches you have seen. Interpretive is a cutting from a book or play that is interpreted (not acted). It could be serious or humorous in nature and often included playing multiple characters. I coached both areas, but my high point was interpretation pieces. It’s cool.
Were any of you ever in Speech?

Isn’t It Romantic?

01/24/2004

Tonight I called Josh before I came home from work and asked him if we could go out for dinner. “And not somewhere normal, somewhere nice.” He said okay, even though he had band practice later in the evening.
So, we went to the Olive Garden. We didn’t dress up or anything…wait, Josh did change into a button-down shirt. And we went. The wait was like 30 minutes so we went for a fun walk across the street to Walgreens where we tried to figure out the difference between all the different kinds of lip balms and read the ingredients on the different kinds of cough drops. (We settled on good-old Carmex and the new Halls Fruit Breezers). We stopped at Game Stop on the way back where Josh played a demo of Double Dash (why? I don’t know!). Actually, we walked in and there was a small child (age 3 or 4?) “playing” the demo (actually just pushing buttons and staring at the monitor). Josh was disappointed and pretended to look at something nearby until her parents told her to leave. Then he jumped on the console so fast….
We sat outside of the Olive Garden and chatted until our buzzer thing went off. Then we had a nice meal and he even let me get some Bow Tie cheesecake to go.
Sometime during the evening I said, “When’s the last time we went on a date?” And he coudn’t remember either.
It was nice and I felt so much love.

Holy Crapola of Crap

01/22/2004

Well…I’ve just been mocked because of my lack of blogging recently. Seriously, I’ve been freaking tired. First, I’ve been working on a website for a local organization, cutting speech pieces, grading a slew of student work from 2nd quarter, prepping for 3rd quarter (which started Tuesday with all new students…whew!). To top it all of, I got a nasty cold on Monday. My throat kills and my head has one of those crazy congesty-runny things going on. Good time to get sick. I had to cancel my Jr. High girlz Bible study Tuesday night because I couldn’t function properly, so I came home and went to bed. I still have a ton of curriculum to finish and I’m supposed to teach our staff how to use the new computer system at a workshop tomorrow. On top of that, the screen on my computer is totally broken so it either takes me three times as long to do my work (because I can’t seen the screen and have to keep moving windows around). Or, I have to plug for time on Josh’s computer, which in and of itself should explain my lack of blogging. Some other interesting news has been happening as well, which I’ll blog about later.
I’ve been really interested in how people mess with the Bible to get it to “say” what they want to believe. Not a lot of Christians are looking for truth anymore…but are very often explaining away things that are socially taboo so they don’t have to look like an evil Christian. I had a friend try and tell me that homosexuality is okay because “in the Bible, the homosexuals God destroyed were actually destroyed because of pedophilia and group orgys…not because they were homosexual” and because “Soddom and Gommorah is just a metaphor” and because “the Old Testament is no longer relevant today.” When I questioned him about passages in the New Testament that seem to clearly say that homosexuality is a sin, his response was, “Well, aren’t we all sinners? Why should we pick on them?” Which eventually narrowed down to, “It’s just offensive that you would think homosexuality is wrong.” Because, I’m always so worried about offending people. Maybe I should just trade my salvation and awesome relationship with God so I can be less offensive.
The funny thing is that a lot of people who try to argue away the Bible with me argue with philosophies or studies they read in the media…but never with the Bible itself. The conversation usually ends when I ask them to show me in the Bible where it says that something is okay. I usually don’t hear back from them after that. That kind of sucks because I’d be interested to hear what they actually find.
Anyway, stuff like this really disturbs me. Aren’t we all in search of the truth? Are we so proud that we can’t admit when God is right? Are we so smart that we can deem a study by the New York Times to be more relevant than the word of God?

Newer Posts
Older Posts
© 2025 Steph Lewis |