Quote of the Week board

I have a fun way to make my students laugh when they come for their lessons. It is called my Quote of the Week board.

Basically it's a piece of butcher paper that I laminated and hung up on the wall. I took pictures of all my students and put each picture on the board. Whenever somebody says something worthy of being on the board (i.e.: dumb) I write the quote on the board and then pick 4 people who might have said that very interesting thing. Then, when the students come, they get to look at all the pictures and guess who said the quote of the week. Everyone who gets it right gets a piece of candy. It's very fun and all the students look forward to it. Some even have competitions between themselves for who won't make it on to the board. Unfortunately for them, dumb things just happen to spew forth from their mouths pretty regularly, so most of them have in fact been on the board.

Some memorable quotes of the week:
"How many people play in a duet?"
"You know that stuff that collects in your mouthpiece? It looks like it tastes good." GROSS
"What note does the A-flat scale start on?"
"My tonguing....it's like a whale hitting the water."

So as you can see, this is fun for me too. Whenever someone says something "worthy" they get a piece of candy too- this is how they know their quote is about to appear on the board.

It's fixed

Ok, so as you may or may not know, I am pretty un-savvy when it comes to computers and other tech stuff. So, I have asked me friend to help me with my blog and not I realize that some of you have actually commented and they haven't been posted or responded to (because I didn't know they were there, not because I was ignoring you).

Point is, now it's fixed and I get it. So please keep commenting. And- if you don't mind attaching your initials, so I know how who to reply to.

THANKS! :)

Funny memory

I was driving to the school this morning to teach and I passed a bus stop full of people. There are two buses that use this stop and it made me remember my first week in Austin.

There was a bus stop near my apartment so I used to ride the bus down to campus. Well, one day I was on my way home from the music building and I knew I needed to be at this particular bus stop to catch the bus home. Well, since I wasn't really an avid public transportation specialist, I didn't realize that there may in fact be multiple buses picking up at that stop.

You guessed it, I did get on the wrong bus and as soon as we turned the corner (my stop was straight ahead) I knew I was in for trouble. I figured if I waited long enough, it would eventually get back to the stop and I could get off and catch the correct bus. WRONG. This bus went back to the turn-around point and that was the end of the line.

So, at the end of the line, I asked the bus driver how long until this bus went back to the school and he told me about an hour. I then told him where I was trying to go and asked for a different route. He suggested that I take Guadalupe (the main drag in Austin) back to campus. So I gave it a try.

I ended up about a mile from my apartment, which doesn't seem too bad until you remember that it was Austin and it was the end of August- i.e. about a thousand degrees and I was toting my saxophone and all my junk with me.

I hope the people at the bus stop know which bus they are getting on, because who knows where you could end up in old ABQ.

A fun trip to the doctor?

Last week I had my regular monthly check-up. Since Sheldon is employed by the UNM Hospital system, we have our insurance through them, which basically means that anything we have done medically, we have to have done at the UNM Health Science Center (read: UNM Hospital, or read: home of lots and lots of people who don't have insurance).

Anyway, I got to my appointment about 20 minutes early and waited and waited and waited. Oh, I did do one other thing too. I got coughed on for all this time by some guy who seemed pretty close to death. I tried to talk to him, but it turns out he didn't speak english.

I waited for over an hour to see, you must be able to guess what's coming... a medical student. My doctor was so sick that day that he didn't want to see any of his OB patients so he sent a medical student. Wait- I need to back up, because you might think "that's not too bad, at least you got to see somebody, right?" WRONG

The room the finally put me in, an hour after waiting, had a HUGE leak in the ceiling and a great big trash can in the middle of the room to catch the dripping. This can, however, did not catch all the water, so it was dripping everywhere else too. And then I thought, this is the bottom floor of a a multiple story building- how can it even be leaking on the BOTTOM FLOOR?!?!?
Whatever.

And, since it was leaking for about 2 days, they hadn't been using this room (read: the heater WASN'T on!!!!). It was so cold I had to put my coat and scarf back on. When the doctor finally came in, you know to tell me he didn't want to see me and get me sick, he just looked around and laughed a little and tried to apologize and I just told him it added to the charm of the whole experience. Well, he did come back, because the medical student had a few questions and needed some help so he did end up breathing on me and guess what....

now I'm sick.

Good deals

So once I figured out that it was a boy, I decided I could now go shopping for cute little boy stuff. About a month ago, I saw this jog stroller at Target that I really, really wanted, but it was $100. I kept going over there and checking it out because I figured it would go on clearance soon. It did, but it stayed at $70 FOREVER! And let's face it 30% off is not a good deal.

Well, I went over there the other day and it was still marked $70 but everything else around it had been marked down more so I decided to take it to one of those scanners they have at Target. First of all, getting this huge thing into the cart was an ordeal in itself so I was really hoping it would be cheap. I wheeled the top-heavy cart over to the scanner and it wouldn't scan- well, for those of you who don't know this, you can enter the upc code on those machines too. So I did and guess what?!?!? It was on $24.98!!! I felt so proud of myself for my patience and persistence. And it was in perfect shape- which I found out when I opened it at home (sometimes some of the clearance stuff is junky, but not this).

Plus, I got a super-cute Osh Kosh outfit with overalls and a little flannel shirt and undershirt for $7. I was a major bargain shopper that day. Not to mention the cute little blue sweater I picked up at Wal-Mart for $2. I can't believe people pay full price for stuff. Well, unless you want to buy the "little man" a present, then feel free to pay full price. :) j/k

Catch up

So, in case you missed it, I'm going to have a baby boy! Thats' pretty exciting news. I was reading somewhere that women who have achieved higher levels of education can generally predict the sex of their baby more accurately. Well, I must tell you, I knew it was going to be a boy. And now I finally figured out the reason I spent so much time and money going to school. It has finally paid off. :)