Teri Parris Ford's Blog

Converse

My Twitter account was hacked today. A past student of mine messaged me via twitter, or so I thought, with the exciting news that she lost 20 pounds in 2 weeks and a link. Like a total idiot, I clicked the link. Boom, now I'm messaging my followers that I lost 20 pounds. If only it were true. I got a text message from a current student that I'd been hacked, informing me to change my twitter password. A friend of Jessi's let her know that my account was hacked also. I got back into twitter when I gave up facebook last February. I mostly like reading the crazy stuff my students say, but occassionally I read something inspiring.

New York Times has a great article about our fleeing conversation. I am quite guilty of using electronic media to converse. I now text my kids instead of yelling upstairs. It seems more civil. I email the collegue I share an office with and often facebook message my husband rather than calling. All these "little sips of connection" do not add up to conversation. Luckily for me electronic devises are not allowed in my classroom-- there, I know I have to talk. Believe me, if I could, I'd let all my kids shove plugs into thier ears to listen to their own music and then group message them my instructions!

My husband and I started our morning walking and talking with Balt. It has become a nice weekend ritual for us. We have time to catch up, dream, wonder and converse. It's a rich time. The rest of the day was non-eventful; lots of errands, laundry, a yoga class and family time. For Earth Day, I planted strawberries.

Stop Pushing

So Monika tells me today that she's going to block me on Facebook. For someone who hasn't been on Facebook all month apparently I'm pushing alot of posts and it's ticking off my kids. I recently hooked up my Twitter account to Facebook so when my other social media (that already pushes to Facebook) gets pushed to Twitter, Twitter pushes it to Facebook. Monika said she was informed that I was at the dog park yesterday half a dozen times between Instagram, Foursquare and Twitter. It made me laugh and then I pulled my Twitter off Facebook. I apologize if I've been annoying others. Once I'm back on Facebook I may find I've lost a few friends. I found out from one of my kid's friends that their parents un-friend-ed me from Facebook because I posted too much. It's what I do!

Josh and I were the only art teachers at work today-- us two and three subs. It made for a boring day (not that Josh isn't incredibly entertaining). I got out as quick as I could and took Balt for his walk. I was hoping 44 degrees would feel warmer than it did, but Balt loved it. I got Culver's for the girls (Erika was home sick) to celebrate Lundi Gras. I went to yoga and came home to make King Cake for Monika's French class. 

Not Today

It was the first day of semester 2. I had all new classes with mostly all new students. I decided not to rush into working on projects but to just chat with my kids today-- tell some stories and take roll. I didn't get past the first 4 kids on my list in my first class. In my 2nd and 3rd I got a little further but not much. It wasn't just me talking too much, it was a shortened schedule for backyard and PCT. The day flew by. I love my schedule with a solid 2 class period prep after lunch. I got the gallery show ready, prepped for 6th & 7th, and ran some errands-- so much time to get everything done! 

After school I took Balt for a nice walk. It was about 45 degrees and felt wonderful. I popped into Costco to get dog food and fruit on the way home. I decided to take a two day liquid fast. Coffee for breakfast, a protein drink for lunch and a fruit smoothie for dinner. Jessi had a VR game, Monika had an indoor soccer game and I had to work the hockey game this evening. I grabbed a latte to snack on. My stomach didn't growl until late this evening.

I want to end January on the right track. I'm starting a new 30 day challenge tomorrow. My January 30 day challenge was kind of a failure. I ended up going to yoga for only 20 out of the 30 days of the month, but I did read everyday for at least an hour. For February, which only has 29 days, I'm starting tomorrow-- no facebook. I can post my blog, use the internet, even other social sites. I just won't check facebook for 30 days. I'm curious to see how many notification's I'll have waiting for me? I probably waste at least 1/2 hour on the site daily. I use it quite a bit for communication, so it's not all bad, but I'm looking for a bit of cleansing.It's temperary, but I'm interested to see how much it effects me.

Installing updates

I fell asleep waiting for my computer to install updates. You know how it says not to turn it off or stop? I did once I woke up 3 hours later... I posted yesterday's post this morning.

And yet, another one...

It hit 100 degrees today (a new record high), but at 6:30am it was a nice 75-- perfect dog walking weather. There was a cool breeze blowing at the dog park as Balt and I walked. Balt likes to play more than walk, 

I got out all of my scrapbooking stuff and started working away on my, Jessi and Monika's albums. I am working on all three at the same time. I am only 9 months behind. I'd like to spend the rest of this week getting caught up. It's too hot to do much outside and I had assumed I would use rainy days to scrapbook but heat advisories are almost as bad as snow advisories, only a lot more fun to go swimming in. 

At 4:30pm Monika had her tennis lesson and I went to the pool to swim. I didn't swim much, it felt like being in a bath tub. I wanted to get some reading done, but ended up chatting with a friend for a while.

I started playing with a couple of new aps on my iPhone. Instagram is a photo sharing program with a bunch of cool filters and Posterous is a weblog site. I am teaching a new class on media in the fall and am kind of thinking of it as research, but I genuinely live putsing around the computer, playing with my iPhone and taking pictures. I came back from vacation starving for more photo ops. I hope to get a little better at not only writing a blog post everyday, but getting an image worth posting. 

Outage

Today was our department day away so there were 5 subs at JMM for art. I don't think any problems happened as I left my cell phone # with the sub & plenty of kids have my number so some one would have called had hell broken loose. It was a nice day with colleagues talking about district changes, courses, ideas, students and classes. I'm not always 100% comfortable at department meetings for various reasons but today was comfortable.

I came home to find Erika and Monika cleaning out the Jetta. Erika got it fixed and drove it home. She needs her drivers license still but she didn't seem to think it was a big deal if she drove it (not just today but from now on) as long as she obeyed traffic laws. I had to hold myself back from sounding like my mother (as my mom reads this, I know she's holding herself back from freaking out). Monika suggested I hide the keys from her, but I would like her just to do the right thing. The car works now & needs to be driven so she should get her license asap. I told Erika to call the DMV on Monday and I'll inform my insurance as soon as she passes. Until then I think I'm keeping the keys- no arguments will be encouraged.

Well, my modem is dead. No surprise to me since it's on 24/7. But just one evening without internet is painful. My photos from my meeting and of the Jetta will have to be added later. Luckily Jessi, Moni and I all have iPhones to keep us sane. I can post my blog, Jessi is just listening to music & reading (no Internet needed) but Monika is streaming a Netflix movie on her phone. Oh, how we love our technology.
(photo inserted a day late: Melissa showing Geof and Joe examples of artwork on her iPhone in Joe's living room where our meeting took place AND the VW Jetta being cleaned.)

I can't believe it!

This morning at 4:30am I woke up to my eye balls twitching. I looked at my iPhone to see the time and wondered why in the world this was happening to me. I hadn't had a twitch since June. I threw off all my pillows and laid back into savasana, the yoga corpse pose. I had not had any caffeine the day before, I'm not on any medication, and I had gone to a great yoga class the night before. The only thing that I could think of was I had gone back to work on Monday. It wasn't even a stressful day, but as I was thinking how I didn't feel stressed, my eyes were vibrating otherwise inside my head. Mmmm....I went into work for a couple of hours this morning then to a noon yoga class. The occasional vibrating stopped for the rest of the day, but I didn't return to work.

Every night I turn on my laptop to check my email and work on my blog as well as any other work I might have. Tonight right in the middle of writing an email, my laptop was attacked. I have no idea what happened but suddenly it was spinning into popup craziness. I shut it down and restarted it to the same mess and then restarted a second time in safe mode to scan it with McAfee. My downstairs computer that Jessi messed up had McAfee when it went into it's tailspin and Dell insisted that I purchase Norton for it. So I am thinking I am going to need another license of Norton, I'm not sure what the damage is going to be yet. The computer is still scanning and I am sitting downstairs instead of relaxing in my bed. Now I'm wondering if I'm in for more eye twitching later tonight.

Newspaper Camp

I dropped Monika off at Shorewood for tennis at 7am and then made my way to UW Whitewater out in the middle of no where. After leaving Madison, one drives through one hours worth of farm land, past a couple of quaint towns to find yourself in a very small college town with not a lot going on. I met up with three of my school newspaper editors who had been at the camp since Sunday. They seemed very happy to see me. After a bunch of announcements, I went to a session with my entertainment editor, Tia, about features. Then I went to a session for just advisors on funding. I met up with the girls and took them out for a "working lunch"-- Culvers. They were eager to get off campus and get some GOOD food. I guess camp food was really bad. After lunch we sat through a student press law seminar and then they went to work, while I sat with other advisors at a round table gathering of Q&A time. At the very end, I got a few questions about my program and my goals. It was a good day. I needed to get home to my girls so I decided to hold off on meeting with the editors during their early evening free time for another day in August. 

I picked up a couple of Papa Murphy's pizzas on the way home for the family and had 3 very hungry eager eaters waiting for me. Jessi had a party to go to and I had a yoga class to squeeze in. Jim graciously took care of Jessi while I did my yoga class. Once showered and ready for bed, I called up Dell. The desktop Jessi had allowed to be murdered was attacked again. I was sure it had never really been fixed in the first place. While I do love my Dells, I don't enjoy spending hours on the phone with Dell reps. I'm actually on speaker phone now with someone-- he's finishing up re-installing my operating system. I insisted that the computer be wiped clean of whatever had attacked it. I felt it was the only way to know whatever had attacked it was gone. I have all my software to re-install as well, but that can wait until tomorrow. I'll have to find it all first.

Happy 30th!

Why does seeing this image on Google bring me so many happy memories!? Today Pac Man turns 30. We had good times the two of us! I didn't realize he was 15 years younger than me, but it hardly mattered back then. I spent a few dates more in love with Pac Man then the guy I was with... then I met Ms. Pac Man and things kind of changed.

Hard drive failure

Comp USA went out of business here in Madison so I am forced to shop at Best Buy again. I stopped shopping there many years back when they failed to honor a warranty on a sterio I purchased. Okay, I dropped it but I bought the warranty because that is exactly how I break things normally (occasionally I accidentally run them over too)-- Best Buy claimed I abused it and sent me away for nearly 10 years. Last month I purchased a portable 250g hard drive for a digital mural I am working on. I wanted to be able to take all of my files from home to work. I backed up all of my music and photos, too. Well, I dropped my new hard drive on my way to work yesterday and it broke.  Best Buy was very nice about replacing my broken product this time. I didn't say anything about dropping it; I've learned to keep my mouth shut.

Programming

I am at the VW service center getting a new key programmed for my jetta. I lost a key at the Badger State games last month and am down to having only one which is kind of dangerous in my world. It cost $59 to copy a key and another $50 to program it. That's a bit pricey for a key.
I also spent some time last night updating iTunes and my iPhone. I added 3 new applications; one of which helps me blog a lot easier from my phone. I am giving it a try now while I wait for my keys.