Cold enough I guess….

Well, I woke up this morning and found it to be 27 below zero outside.  I was very happy I had stoked the fire the night before, and that the house was still warm.  There were a few coals left so before leaving for work I stuffed in more wood until the stove was packed full.

Work went well today.  I am glad its Friday.  I am really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow.  When we got home from work today Erin and I discovered that the house was still warm, but our pipes had frozen.  🙁  This had happened about a month ago, but the difference before was all we had to do was plug in the heat tape and the water was running in no time.  Unfortunately this time the heat tape had already been plugged in and it still froze.  This means that the heat tape may not have been working correctly, or its froze up under the house somewhere.  We’ll have to do some more investigation tomorrow.  We had a heater going under the house for a few hours this evening, but we didn’t see any positive results from that.   We could be “roughing” it for a little while.

We are hoping to get a Christmas tree tomorrow.  We’ll see if the weather cooperates.  Hopefully our house will look a little more Christmasy after the weekend.

Curling, Dinner, and a Concert

One of my students is an exchange student from Thiland.  He is taking physics externally so he can take both of my classes.  He is great to have in class, and very polite and just an all around good student.  In class on Friday he asked if I was going to watch him in the band concert on Monday night.  So Monday after school Erin headed to Virginia.  While I was waiting for her to make the 80 mile journy, I went curling with Tony at the curling club in Eveleth.  It was my first attempt at the sport.  I found that I seemed to bang my left knee up a bit when I would push off to deliver the stone.  There really is a learning curve.  It was a lot of fun.  When Erin made it into town we went out for dinner at Good Fellas just down the street from the curling club.  After dinner we walked around Target a bit where I picked up some much needed chap stick.

We left Target and headed over to the school.  I showed Erin around the school a little more and then we went and found a couple of seats in the upper deck of the auditorium.  The concert started off with the Jazz Band which my thi student was apart of.  It was fun to watch them play.  He was very animated while playing the piano.  The whole concert was very good.  Virginia is really well known for its band and chior programs.  After the concert we had the 40 mile drive to get home and ended up climbing into bed as soon as we got home around 10:00.

An end to the week…

I was able to sleep in on Saturday which was great.  I didn’t get up till 10:00 AM.  It was a beautiful day out with the sun and bright blue sky making the new snow sparkel on the frozen lake.  I went out and did some shoveling to get the steps cleared off of both Jims place and ours.  I then fired up the snow blower and headed down to the lake in an attempt to get the skating area cleaned off again.  I quickly found out how out of shape I acutally am.  When using the snow blower you have to lift up on the handle bars the whole time so that it scrapes the ice as clean as possible.  In doing so my biceps were quickly tired out.  I then came up to the house and did some looking on craigs list for a four wheeler with a plow.  That would be the best way to keep the ice clear.

Saturday afternoon I headed over to Hoyt Lakes to hang out with Kate and Tony.  We went bowling with Kates three kids.  It was fun to watch them wrestle with the heavy bowling balls.  There were a couple of times the rolling technique looke like a shotput.  After rolling the one game we headed back to Kates for some Lasagna.  After dinner we watched 5 minues of “Back to the Future” with the kids and then they went to bed.  Kate Tony and I then played a game of Farkle and I hit the road.  On the way home I got a bit lost and drove about 10 miles towards Two Harbors before realizing I was going the wrong way.  I got back on track and then came across a car full of High School kids in the ditch.  I turned around to see if they were okay about the same time a police officer showed up.  So I continued on my way home.  I had to drive relatively slow because the roads were a bit unpredictable.

Today has been nice and relaxing.  April and Laura stayed the night, so we’ve been watching tv and pretty much not doing anything.  I think Im going to run into town and pick up a christmas tree.  We were going to go cut one, but with hunting going on I think it might be a bit safer just to buy one.

Photos of that to come soon.

Finally Friday

The week has finally come to an end.  To cap off the week I successfully broke the school districts website this morning.  It was only visually down for about 5 min.  It wasn’t fully restored for a few more hours.  I won’t go into the nerdy details too much, but it involved a corrupt file being uploaded causing the site to not work.  I have since made a complete backup of the entire system just for such an occasion.

Erin and I decided to go out to a movie and dinner tonight.  So while I was waiting for her to drive over from school Tony and I went out for a tasty beverage.  When Erin got to Virginai we headed out to the mexican resturant for dinner and caught up on the day.  After that we went and did some grocery shopping before heading to see 4 Christmases at the theater.  The movie was pretty funny.  I really do like Vince Vaughn.  After the movie we made the 40 mile drive home in a pretty heavy snow storm.  It was very difficult to see at times, and the road was less than visible.

Its very nice to have the week done and better yet have the opportunity to sleep in tomorrow.  More than likely I’ll be up at 8:30 feeling like I’ve slept forever.  Crazy to think back to the days when I’d sleep till 2:00 in the afternoon.  Man that was nice.

Ehh

So I figured I should keep up the schedule of posting, but I couldn’t really think of a title for this post.  Work has been well… Work…. The 9 – 5 hasn’t been super duper fun lately, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes.

I got to work with a few of the Parkview teachers this morning.  They were getting trained in on how to use their staff websites.  They were great to work with.  Very upbeat and willing to learn.  I know some of the things asked of teachers (such as a staff website) can really add a lot of work to your already busy day.  These folks sure took it in stride and were brainstorming ways they could utilize this online system not only to connect with parents, but also to provide information for their students.  I hope they are able to log in a couple times in the near future and post a couple more times.  It always helps to practice a few more times right after you learn it to help make it stick in your brain.

My broadcasting class have been given the task of creating a 30 second commercial about the school district to have aired on the local television channels.  Its a tight timeline to have it all done by Christmas break, but they are eager for the challenge.   I’ll keep you posted on our progress and will more than likely post the finished product on here when its completed.

My web design class just took on a big project.  I put them into groups of three and gave them the task of creating a full website including a main site, a forum, and a gallery.  All three installs need to have a very similar design and layout which is very time consuming.  I’ve asked them to make this very professional looking.  Up until now I’ve let them be “creative” with their design, and it has really opened up wide range of design styles.  It will be interesting to see how these come out.  They are a fun bunch of kids to work with.

I was going through my iPhoto library and came across this photo…  I think its kind a cool… A reflection of a tree at the edge of the lake on one of our BWCA trips.

Have a happy Friday.  I’m sure looking forward to the weekend.  Hopefully some fancy posts to follow.  🙂

Vancouver Visit

Erin and I headed out to Vancouver to visit Josh, Stacie, Abbie, and James.  It was a great weekend.  We got to relax and catch up on the last year.  We went out to dinner in Portland, and even checked out Bolt in 3D.

Here is a picture of my great family….

It really was a fun time..  A very relaxing trip and a much needed break from work.  The only difficult thing was having to come back to work.  I’ve decided that you get into the grind of things and don’t really realize whats going on in your life until you step back and take a break from it all…  I’m kinda hoping that I get back into the grind in a hurry so the weeks don’t seem like they are dragging along.

We look forward to our next get together.

Texting on Takeoff

On our Northwest Flight 594 this morning from Portland to Minneapolis Erin and I were sitting in the exit row by the first bulkhead.  The flight attendants went through the normal procedure of getting everyone in their seats and closing the boarding door.  Like any other flight they then came on the intercom and instructed us to turn off all electronic devices including cell phones and ipods.  I made sure that my cell was off and that my iPod touch was stowed for takeoff.  Kay the flight attendant who was seated across the isle from me dissapeared into the restroom while the plane was taxing to the run way.  She re-emerged a couple minutes later with cell phone in hand.  I only noticed because the lights were off in the cabin, and her cell phone was glowing like a flashlight in the dark.  I thought to myself “This is odd.  They told us to turn those off five minutes ago”  I was kinda of annoyed by this knowing that if I had my cell out and running I would be reprimanded for doing so.  As we pulled into position on the runway for takeoff Kay then sat down in her seat across from me and tried to hide her cell under her coat on her lap while she continued to text away.  As a school teacher this is a tactic often observed in the classroom by high school students.  As the plane was just lifting off the ground she continued to text away and check the glowing screen under her coat.  I felt very cheated knowing that I could be using my ever so dangerous iPod touch to listen to music during our takeoff if it weren’t for the airlines rules.  Now I know that having a cell phone up and running during a flight will not cause the plane to fall from the sky, however as a flight attendant who is supposed to be enforcing these rules, I felt that this was a very unprofessional action to take in front of an entire plane full of passengers.

Just my two cents, but if they can do it, why can’t I?

First Skate

This weekend was the first where we woke up to a nice “solid” layer of ice on the bay in front of our house.  We had a few chilly days ending the week so Jim and I decided to lace up our skates and just find out how thick it actually was.

After a couple of holes poked through the icy layer with an ice chisel we assessed the average ice thickness at roughly 2 inches.  There was also very little snow if any at all, and with a relativly quick freeze we were able to see right through the ice.  This was a little un-nerving, but very cool at the same time.  It also allowed us to see the cracks in the ice which did a great job of showing the ice thickness as well.

We skated for maybe an hour.  It was about 27 degrees out and no real wind to speak of, making pretty much the prefect skating conditions.

[QUICKTIME http://www.bbryson.com/bill/files/2008/11/skating.m4v 320 260]

My first post from my iPod Touch

I was searching the web and came across this fancy free app made by automatic ( the people that make wordpreas). It allows you to post to your wordpress blog directly from your touch or iPhone.

If you have one of these devices and a wordpress blog you should really stop by the app store and download it.

Managing work and play…

I’m about three weeks in to my offical work year now.  Its a bit of a rude awaking from what I have been doing for the last year.  I got pretty used to having days around the house when I was in Minnesota, and crazy jam packed working for three week stints in Alaska.  Now I am back to the old Monday through Friday work week.  I usually leave the house at 6:30 AM to make the 40 mile drive to work.  If I’m lucky I’ll get home around 5, but there are plenty of days that I don’t seem to make it home until 6:30 or 7:00 PM.  That doesn’t leave much time to hang out with Erin before I need to get the sack and catch some z’s to do it all again the next day.

Friday night Erin, April, Jesse, Jim, and myself went to the Cook vs. Tower high school football game to watch their cousin Jordan play.  There were some fancy storm clouds overhead.  I really like the big billowing clouds that build up over the midwest.  Tower ended up beating Cook pretty easily, and it was a fun evening under the lights.

This weekend a couple of friends from work Tony (Art teacher) and Kate (English teacher) joined me on a BWCACAST trip.  I got up at 6:00 AM and met them at the Y-Store at 7:15.  We headed to the end of the Fernburg Trail (by car) and paddled through Lakes 1, 2, 3, and went to the edge of Lake 4.  It was a gorgeous day, and I of course didn’t bring sun screen and burnt my face.  I was hoping to get some video of the leaves changing, but it appears I went a week or two early.  I’ll have to think about going in again in the near future to get the fall colors caught on tape.

My grandparents drove up from Alden to Duluth to attend a hawk sighting deal in Duluth.  They called us up and let us know they were in the area.  We were lucky enough to have them stop by today.  We went out for a pontoon ride, and had them over for some venison pot roast for dinner.  It was nice to catch up with them.