Facie’s Ramblings

So apparently I have five drafts that I have not posted. Mostly I just don't have that much to say. And if/when I do, I tend to reread it and decide it is just too disjointed to a post. So, here comes yet another attempt, which will be yet another bulleted update on my life, for the two of you who still stop by occasionally. :-) I finished most of my Christmas shopping yesterday. Hooray! The snow falling and my playing Bach's Wachet Auf (Sleepers Awake) made the day pretty darn good. If I could find a way to upload the version the string quartet at our Lessons and Carols did last year, I would. I am telling you it is hard not to listen to that song and feel a a sense of calm as well as an appreciation for the beautiful music. Google it (or find it on You Tube), and you probably won't be disappointed. I went to my first building holiday party Friday. I knew only the people on my floor and a handful of people on two other floors. But I did meet a few more. The food was ...

This post doesn't have anything to do with my being kind, which I mostly am. But I was pretty sure I had already used the post title I really wanted, "Make a decision already." Yep, just checked now, and I wrote a post with that very name three years ago, ironically about the topic this post is going to be about! But I digress. The real story? Ladies and gentleman: Facie bought a smart phone! This is monumental for me! Can you tell?! I am using a lot of exclamation points! The details: My over-three-year-old phone had been dying a slow death for quite some time. It couldn't hold a charge for an entire day. To make matters worse, my car phone charger died, but it seemed silly to replace that, knowing I was going to replace the phone soon. Or so I told myself for the past six or eight months. But despite my stopping into the Verizon store a few times in the past five months, I just couldn't pull the trigger. Last week, when my phone decided to shut its...

It's funny (and not funny, ha ha) how when you have a baby, you think that it cannot possibly get any harder than this, with the lack of sleeping and the constant worry about almost everything. But as your kids grow up, you realize just how easy you had it back in the day. This morning, I read an article about a mother who choked the boy who was bullying her daughter. Before I even read past the headline, I found myself almost siding with the mom. I would never do anything like that; after all, I am the one, unlike hubby, who tells my kid to turn the other cheek. But I can see how as a parent you could become so frustrated, worried, angry, etc., that you could be pushed to that point. As both a parent and educator (albeit not too regularly for the latter), bullying concerns me. It is sometimes difficult to determine when it is just teasing/being mean and when it has gone beyond that. Of course it would be great if everyone just got along all the time and no one was ever mean t...

This post is kind of like a "Random Ramblings" post (interesting that I just capitalized the "r" in "Random" when I refuse to use initial caps in my blog or post titles), except it is specific to things as of late that either I don't get or I find interesting. Here goes: With all the technology out there, one might think (one being someone other than I) that when you click on the "Find product in store" icon on a company's website, and an "in-stock" notation pops up for a selected store, the product might, oh, I don't know, actually be in said store . Since I am not "one," I don't think that to be true. Mostly because it has not been true for Walmart, Target, and Walgreen's the few times I have used this feature in the past 30 days. Third grade seems a little young to have an i-Phone, don't you think? Well, I do. But apparently quite a few parents of other third graders do not agree if I can believe ...

I have not hidden the fact that I think a lot of technology is ruining us. People become so dependent on their smart phones, iPads, laptops, GPS devices, etc., that they forget about human connection and even doing things the "old-fashioned way" at times. And sometimes people who are always wired (well, wireless is more like it) don't realize that not all of us are. For example, if you send an email a couple of hours before a meeting/practice/event/test change, you cannot assume everyone will read said email in enough time. There are some of us who still have our stupid phones, so unless we are sitting in front of a computer 16 hours a day (and sometimes that is not even enough), we are bound to miss things like that. But, of course, technology can be wonderful. I am glad I have a cell phone, even if it is stupid. When my relatives, traveling from two counties away, arrived late to meet me at the Steelers game, I knew what was going on thanks to my phone. And texting al...

I have been in a weird place lately. Over the past week or two, I have nearly "written" several posts in my head and pretty much finished one while at the park Thursday. The ramblings lent themselves to names such as the following: "If I actually publish this post, I am pretty sure some friends will be calling me with great concern" "Where is my happy place"  "I can't cry hard enough" "Missing person" "Paralyzed by fear"  As for the first title, well, it is probably obvious that when that post was swirling around my head, I was pretty down. Fortunately, that post never came to fruition. Later, things looked up and something got me smiling again. But, alas, something else had me singing the blues before too long. It could have been another struggle with Jordan (that happens a lot lately, and I am quite sure a post will eventually come of it). Perhaps Brian and I were arguing about Jordan (yeah, it's a problem) o...

It is pretty rare for me to write a post not even 24 hours after I posted my last one. But I read a supremely annoying article on Yahoo today (from the New York Times ), and I had to comment on it. Here is the link, if you want to read it for yourself. In the meantime, let me summarize: You can apparently do almost everything you would ever want to do (and things you probably did not even know were possible) with a smart phone. Therefore, you don't need a point-and-shoot digital camera, a camcorder, a GPS system, or a digital music player. And apparently the desktop computer and thumb drive have gone the way of the dinosaurs. Excuse me while I go throw out all of those things and go directly to nearest Apple store so I can buy a super-smart phone. I also need to burn my desktop computer, but how about if I finish this post first, okay? We have a quite-old desktop computer. This may be a bad example, because the computer is now at the point where it turns itself off several tim...

Yep, that is me. In addition to my bullying class, I am also taking a class on digital literacy. I figured if I want to return to the classroom (which I am still not 100 percent sure I want to do), I should be aware of the technology teachers and students are using. Fellow teachers are throwing around words like promethean boards and elmo projectors. Here I thought Elmo was just the furry red monster. Sigh. I used a Mac for 13 years at my last job. I do not like PCs, but, alas, this is what we have at home. When I put in a disk last week, it took me almost five minutes to figure out where it went. On a Mac, it would have shown up on my desktop. But on PC, I had to go somewhere else (where, I already forget). I cannot figure out how to close and not quit out of programs (I want command W!). My computer seems to freeze/lock up way more than the Mac ever did. And when it does, I get this irritating message that asks me if I want to "End Now." Except now is more like three or fou...

Generally speaking, I am not a big fan of technology. I like email, but sometimes I miss the days when college friends and I would mail each other letters over the summer. I am glad I have my cell phone, but with many minutes and free long distance, it is no longer $ keeping me from calling my faraway friends, just time (and that laziness thing again). I like auto bill pay and paying bills online because my memory is awful and I like scheduling and paying a bill when it suits me. But even with my limited technology prowess (I hope this is the right word, but I am sure one of my wordy friends will correct me if not), I think having a blog will just give me one more reason to be on the computer every evening. Like I just had to write another post today because of football. The Manning I thought would be playing next weekend will be staying home instead. And the Manning I thought would be vacationing next week will instead be heading to Green Bay. I did not catch too much of either game, ...