67 Things?

I heard on the radio a couple days ago that the average woman in America has 67 items in her purse. I like to believe that I'm not quite as high-maintenance as the women they were talking about, so I sat down to investigate. This is what I found:

9 pass-along cards (maybe i should actually give them away)

a small "Idaho" pin in the shape of a potato

one ponytail

postage stamps in $.94 and $.04 varieties

a DC Temple Visitor's Center card

grocery list

flyer from Cacao, a cute little chocolate shop we found in Bethesda

key to the church building

pink lip gloss

pens in blue, black, purple and green

one small bottle of Expo Dry Erase Board Cleaner

2 tithing slips

bronze-ish lip gloss

spare car key

an almost-empty pack of Orbit gum

one earring (i made it to church and then realized that I'd only put one of them in... so it ended up in the purse)

checkbook

flyer for the Azalea Festival at the National Arboretum

flash drive

car keys

a gum wrapper

address book

classroom keys

DCA-ORD boarding pass from February

cell phone

old pay stub

wallet (you don't even want to know what's in that)

Target receipt

blood donation appointment card

tickets to an Orioles-Rays game and a Nationals-Marlins game

Nothing shocking except maybe the Dry Erase Board Cleaner. And it doesn't nearly add up to 67 (unless you count all the items in my wallet separately). So ladies, I'm interested. What random/funny/whatever things would we find in your purse? (Guys, too, if you're willing to admit that you have a man-purse.)

Stranded

A colleague of mine has a couple kids at the school and lives near several others, so she drives a few of the students to school every day. One of these students has been in my history class for the past two years (I teach two different classes, not because he failed), so I've gotten to know him pretty well. He's a very bright student, pretty quiet and very talented overall. He's the student that I really have to plan my lessons for, making sure that I'm challenging him enough.

Yesterday morning, this colleague reported that during their morning commute, they had been discussing whow they would take with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Apparently this student wanted to have me along "because she knows where everything is." When she reminded him that knowing geography might not be too crucial on a desert island, he told her that "Ms. Chamberlain just knows EVERYTHING."

I'm glad I've got someone fooled. :)

See you soon.

"Shady Acres today?" I read the note passed to me from Heather, all the way across Hofstetter's physics classroom. I spent most of the lunch periods my senior year running with Heather to Albertson's or the local convenience store / cafe for typical high school food. (It grosses me out thinking about the quantities of tater tots we ate that year. And I wish that were a Napoleon Dynamite reference, but it's not. We probably ate tater tots twice a week.)

As I remember it, my friendship with Heather went back to 10th grade Algebra 2. Mr. Daley's 3rd period class. We suffered through a lot during that class. His hour-long slideshow of his trip to Ireland, accompanied by him on the fiddle (remind me never to do that to my classes). A mandolin accompaniment to "y is equal to x plus or minus the square root of..." whatever the rest of quadratic formula is. We knew a lot of the same people and had all the same classes, and it was fairly natural for us to become friends. By our junior year, we were inseparable: Heather, Amanda and me. Shopping, road-tripping, late-night movie dates with Chuck. Powder puff football, prom, morp and weekly "study sessions" for AP U.S. History that usually turned into pool/dart-throwing contests. Heather was a great friend - smart, witty and always ready to have fun.

Then, about a year and a half after we graduated from high school and went our separate ways, Heather was diagnosed with sarcoma. You all don't need the details of the past four and a half years, except to know that through everything, she remained the happy and spirited and beautiful friend I knew. I'm pretty good at complaining about everything wrong in my life, but I never saw Heather do the same. I have been so blessed to have this wonderful woman (friend, example) in my life and I know she will missed tremendously by all who loved her. I know that Heather has moved on from the pain and trials of this life, but that she is living still in the next, and I know that she will be reunited again with her family and friends. I can't answer the "why" question that I've been asking for the past couple of weeks, but I do know that the Lord has a purpose and that he is watching out for both Heather and for those who are left to mourn her.

http://www.legacy.com/idahostatesman/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonID=126046508

Love you and miss you, Heather. See you soon.

Happiness today

• The smell of Barnes & Noble. And the books.
  
• Sitting on the kitchen counter (or the floor, or anywhere, really) talking to my roommates about just about anything.
• A clean classroom.
• Random texts from people i love.
• The David Archuleta cd that has made it back into my car stereo.
• Using my sun roof for the first time in months.
• Discovering a new class at the gym.
• Great home teachers.
• Planning a trip to the temple with my roommate

Things I do not love quite as much:

• My car getting hit for the 3rd time in a month.
  

I'm Going There Someday...

As a child growing up in the LDS church, I've spent most of my life singing "I Love to See the Temple, I'm going there someday." Over Presidents' Day weekend, I decided to make the trek to Boise to finally make that real! I won't say much out of reverence for its sacredness, but it was a beautiful experience and I'm excited to spend more time there!

I also decided that if I was going to fly all the way out to Idaho, that I ought to just make a weekend trip of it, so I headed down to Utah on Saturday (Feb 14) to see some friends. Jessica & Reece picked me up from the airport and took me back to their apartment in the middle of a Utah blizzard to make breakfast and catch up. I've gotten really bad about taking pictures, so you get a lovely one of me and Jess at the Villa della Regina in Torino. Later on that day, I met up with Alicia, Sarah, Spencer and Amanda at the Timpanogos temple. What an incredible place! The rest of the evening / weekend, I spent with some of my favorite people: Damon, Amanda, Amy and Devon. For the first time in a long time, it was actually really hard for me to come back to DC.

I know, short frizzy hair = not a good look for anyone.

Typical. This is what I get for leaving my camera in Alicia's car. =)

Damon & Me.
Leaving my camera in Alicia's car = very few pictures from the weekend.

Amanda & me.
When we were in Boston and then again in Europe a few years ago, everyone thought we were sisters.

My favorite .... sculptor

I was sitting in my classroom today, planning a lesson and previewing a documentary about Baroque art, and I decided to share with you all my favorite artist. (Little surprise that he's Italian...) I'm not much of an art historian or an art critic. All I know is that this man's art is phenomenal. He uses such intricate details that you actually believe what he's trying to portray. The look of determination David's eye before he raises the sling to slay Goliath. Pluto's hand digging into Proserpina's flesh, as if she were real instead of carved from marble. St. Theresa, a look of pain and ecstasy frozen upon her face. And my absolute favorite, Daphne caught in the midst of her transformation from nymph to laurel tree. Enjoy. And visit, please. There is nothing like seeing these in the round.

Gianlorenzo Bernini

David

The Rape of Proserpina



The Ecstasy of St. Theresa

Apollo & Daphne

Things you may not know

1. I love to cook, but I cannot bake to save my life.
2. I am terrified of heights. (Just ask my mom about hiking Arches. Or the temple in Chichen Itza).
3. Someday I really want to be in Siena, Italy for the Palio (that crazy and often deadly horserace that you see in the plaza on the new James Bond movie)
4. I live too much in the future. Working on enjoying what I’m doing now instead of looking forward to … whatever.
5. I love spending time by myself. I used to spend hours wandering around Rome by myself and loved it.
6. I have more patience for stupid kids than for stupid adults.
7. I hate scrapbooking with a passion. I pretended for years that I enjoyed it, but I just don’t. I’ll put pictures in an album and label them, but I don’t do the frilly stuff.
8. Mice don’t bother me, but I think cockroaches are the most disgusting things on the planet.
9. I need everything planned down to the minute, but I don’t actually own a planner.
10. I have read Pride and Prejudice probably 30 times
11. I’m obsessed with all things Les Miserables. And more recently, Wicked is giving it a run for its money.
12. I had a couple years where I typed everything that I said. Not on a computer or anything, but I moved my fingers to type out the words when I spoke. Maybe that’s why I type so fast now (something around 110 wpm)
13. I have a very hard time playing anything quiet or slow on the piano. I love Edward Grieg.
14. I have a quarter-sized scar on my calf from ice-blocking as a kid. I also have a little one right between the eyes, courtesy of my brother Paul and a heavy plastic toy dinosaur.
15. I’m not a big fan of contacts or glasses, but Lasik terrifies me.
16. I really want to be an artist. I like to sit and draw whatever I can see, but I can’t just create a picture out of my head.
17. BYU made me more liberal and Washington DC has made me more conservative.
18. My favorite toy as a kid was a She-ra action figure. Except that she somehow got broken in half, so I spent most of my time pretending to be a doctor and make her better.
19. I had more snow days in the 3 ½ months of student teaching than in all of my years attending or actually teaching school.
20. I’m not honestly sure if I can come up with 25 things about me that you don’t all already know.
21. I want to be a super organized person, but I’m never motivated enough to do it.
22. Last year I went to the traveling production of High School Musical and loved it.
23. I have very little discernment in good vs. bad movies. (did anyone see the post-Super Bowl Office? Think Andy)
24. I don’t like activities that force me to be in front of a crowd. Guesstures/charades/the performance part of Cranium. Torture. Don’t ask me how I became a teacher.
25. The first CD I ever bought was the Backstreet Boys.