You are Never Too Old

...for a themed birthday party! 17 of my friends and I went to Pirate Island Pizza in Orem for my birthday! We didn't know what we were getting into, we thought it might be like a cheesy-Chucky-Cheese, but it was actually really fun! The food is not too bad and reasonably priced and the waiters and waitresses are all dressed up like pirates!






Little did we know Thursday nights are karaoke nights, so I karaoked for the first time in my life on my birthday as well! Well, first time somewhere other than a living room that is....

I have such amazing friends and am thankful that they are also the type of people up for a little random fun! Thanks for everyone who helped make me feel special on my birhtday!

Graduate School.

Life happens when you have other plans, right? I was fully not intending to turn the age I am turning in two days, still single. In the likelyhood I will be supporting myself on a teacher's salary for the rest of my life I think I might start a Masters of Education program, either at Utah Valley University or Southern Utah University - starting this June! Okay, so I applied to UVU yesterday....

I was starting on a master's equivalency program through BYU (Reading Endorsement), but then decided, maybe I just ought to get my masters if I am going to put in all that work. This might cramp my $$ and travelling style though. Priorities?

Enabling or Helping?

I'm afraid I have just officially become an enabler of failing students. Our principal wants us to save the world one failing student at a time, and I'm not against this, per say, but I have decided to go the extra mile this term and I think I'm enabling really and not helping some of these kids. Who is to say who deserves the help? I have helped out quite a few kids who do deserve it, but now, on teacher development day I am helping a kid past my deadline of helping, pass my class, argh!

I think everyone deserves help and mercy, it is in my nature, but some kids are truly better served by experiencing the consequences of their actions. But I set myself up for this one. In an effort to help more students I sent home personal notes with progress reports to every one of my failing stduents asking them to please come get some help from me. I guess I will just have to see if this motivates any of them to work harder next term, or whether I am a push-over this term and should be failing a million students instead!

Big Brother Anyone?

Do you remember reading 1984 in junior high and not being very alarmed by it? Nothing like that could ever really happen; cameras in the walls of houses? It was way past 1984 by then anyway. Then the movie Minority Report came out and the thought of anything happening like in movie was enough to make me stop at the preview. However, even then, far fetched, right? How about Eagle Eye? A computer single handedly taking over the United States by tapping into the vast surveillance data the country holds. I didn't buy it. I'm not a conspiracy theorist. Talking, free-thinking computers reach beyond the limits of my suspension of disbelief. But with the new technology coming out in 2010...who knows what is around the corner.

I was watching the news yesterday and guess what new gagets are coming out and about. One, the new airport scanners that show every hair on your body. (Privacy violation, anyone?) Can you imagine the storage of sketchy pictures of everyone in their birthday suits? Two, cops in California are experimenting with video cameras that look like blue tooth devices they are required to wear and record every interaction with "civilians." Again, can you imagine the stored data of all of those events? Third, new cell phones (again blue tooth style)that can write texts by voice command. Can you imagine the instant upload of data of anything that comes out of your mouth?

It just doesn't seem like we could be too far off from Orwellian prophecies for the future. I'm not worried - but I just don't think it is as far fetched as I once supposed.

Hoping For Day 500

Sometimes love just doesn't work out. And it's okay. (Some of us who have been single for a really long time are becoming experts on being single!) Sometimes it's not that you don't have chemistry, it's not that you don't have things in common, or that you don't actually like hanging out with one another or have fun together. Sometimes it's just not there, and it's okay. Sometimes it's just the wrong hand in glove.

500 Days of Summer is not necessarily a movie I would recommend, there are sketchy moments in it, but it was a really good look at the struggles of being single and the magic of falling in love. Tom falls in love with Summer and it is magical, for him, but not for her. In the end, on day 500 of their relationship, she has married someone else and he can't understand it. He calls her out on how she always just wanted to be friends and never wanted a "real" relationship with him, and didn't beleive in love. She says he was right - right about love and relationships and right about marriage - just not right about her.

On day 500 Tom goes to a job interview and meets a new girl, Autumn, and he decides it's not fate the guides relationships, not the cosmos that necessarily drop the right person right at your feet, but taking advantage of good opportunities for love when they come. He gets her number and the rest is up to the viewers' imagination.

What I got out of the movie? Catharsis I guess. You move on from broken relationships and heal. Don't lose faith in the possibility love will come your way. And take advantage of opportunities for love. And I'm hoping for my day 500 - let's hope it comes in 2010. Maybe like for Summer in the movie: I will be reading in a cafe and he will come up and comment on what I'm reading and then he'll be my husband! :D