Busy Times

Getting 1st quarter grades in...

Starting the basketball season...

Getting through parent-teacher conferences...

Entering the holiday season...

I knew life was becoming busy, 99% of which was school-related, but tonight capped it all off. With Linds back in Iowa watching State Volleyball, I was sitting in the Lazy-Boy after another underachieving "Office" episode (the 1st couple seasons were ridiculously funny, now.....not so much). While talking to Linds on the phone, she mentioned they went to Wendy's to eat after the game...which immediately left me craving ice cream (which we are out of in the house), so Linds gave me the OK to drive over to our neighborhood Wendy's for a later-night treat. I pull up to the drive-thru and couldn't believe the words that came out of my mouth..."Uh, yeah, can I get a medium, chocolate McFlurry...." (I'm thinking "Where am I....did I just say that")...."I mean a Frosty..." I put on my best "I'm having a bad day face" when pulling up to the window so they wouldn't ask any questions or make a smart comment, and it must have worked because all I got was my Frosty and my change. I was off before you could say Chicken McNuggets...

Well, it has gotten busy lately. Basketball started 3 weeks ago, and cuts had to be made because I had 21 kids try out and 16 jerseys at my disposal (I kept 15 on the team). It was far tougher than it should have been, but the worst part was having to see the kids I cut the next day in class. But other than that, its been really good. We're 2-0 so far, after playing a fairly weak team in our opener winning 46-20 and then picking up victory #2 tonight 50-38 against a top-half team in our conference. Our next game is against a team which will compete with us for the conference title, so it could be a tough one.

Last weekend I did get some time off from school and thinking and everything... I was invited to a Bulls game (great seats...15 rows up behind the hoop) As much as I've said that NBA basketball isn't the most enjoyable sport for me to watch, it was a blast. Here are a few pictures...








So that was my Friday night, and then Saturday Linds and I decided to test our artistic side again with the camera. After hitting up a forest preserve and a ballfield, we came out with these pictures...among others:









Hope all is well with all of you...the weather now reminds me of pheasant hunting with hints of ice fishing. I hope to get at least one of them in sometime in the next few months.

So long everybody...

CEA

Short week of school this week...or a long weekend, however you want to put it. We had our CEA convention this Thursday and Friday in South Bend. It's a pretty cool place, a ton of Notre Dame stuff all over and the College Football Hall of Fame is there. We drove down Thursday morning, leaving here at about 6:00 and getting there around 9ish. The main speaker was...alright. I guess he's a well known writer. Walter....something, I think it starts with a W. Anyways, after that we had a few sectionals, I went to one on collaboration in the Science classroom that was alright, and then one about using everyday materials to teach Science lessons. That one was a little better because it appealed to the cheap me who never wants to order anything out of the overpriced Science supply catalog.

Friday morning I went to a pretty interesting one...Fantasy Sports and Mathematics. It was really good...used alot more math than I use in my class, so I think I'll use a bunch of his ideas.

Not a ton going on today either, so I'm sorry for the boring post. I've spent the afternoon so far watching a combination of the Wisconsin/Illinois, and Northwestern/Indiana games, following the Minnesota/Purdue game online, watching the Dordt/Doane game on webcast, and listening to the Northwestern/Briar Cliff game at times.

And people say guys can't multitask...

During down time, halftime, or anytime the games were all slow, I've been working on basketball practice for next week, fantasy basketball (which starts next week with the new quarter), and figuring out what experiments to use to show Boyle's & Charles's law this week in Science.

All from my laptop with "borrowed" internet and my flatscreen tv with "borrowed" cable.

Good thing my neighbors are such nice sharing people, otherwise I wouldn't get anything done!

Artistic Side

Linds wanted to take some pictures of the fall colors around our neighborhood, so I thought I would try my hand at being a little artistic. I think I did pretty good...these are all my pieces of work...and I even managed to keep baseball out of the picture.

enjoy...

This one...I think I got funny looks from the neighbors for looking straight up at the sky trying to get the camera to focus on the right leaf.

I call this one Barak Obama...it wants change and it looks like its headed for it, but no one knows quite how or when it's going to happen.

This is my John McCain, the true red maverick among a sea of green.


This is one of the stupid Canadians that wake us up every morning before sunrise. It'll be nice when they leave and I can sleep in peace, eh?

Actually, my first picture taken on the adventure before I started looking for stories to go with my pictures.


This is my favorite of all of them, its the background on the computer right now and I think I'm going to get it enlarged over at Wal-Mart or something, it would look good hanging on a wall somewhere.

Call it what you like...Republicans vs. Democrats, U.S. vs. Canada, Summer vs. Winter, American League vs. National League..........


so much for leaving baseball out of it (you really didn't think I could, could you?)

I'll admit it, I had to somewhat crack the stem of this leaf to get it to lay like this, but I think it looks pretty cool. Plus by now it would've been dead anyway, and my picture lasts alot longer.

I snuck up on this leaf, it was just looking the other way, minding its own business when I crept up in full camoflauge and took a shot at it....then the neighbor came out of the garage and I stopped humming the "Mission Impossible" theme song and moved on.

Post-baseball??

Well, its over...the 2008 season is history for the Minnesota Twins, who finished 10-12 wins higher than I personally thought they were going to reach. They also finished 2 places higher in the standings than I thought they were going to. They have two potential (though unlikely now) MVP winners in Mauer and Morneau. Next year's rotation looks like it should be solid, along with quite the battles in the 3B and RF positions for the '09 season.

Well...enough about the Twins, because I'm sure you've all already scrolled down to see the pictures I've posted.


This is the entrance to my classroom. Despite the way it looks, the doorway isn't pink, its more of a dark red.

This is a shot from the doorway to the front of the room. My desk and computer are right in the middle of the picture. you can see my SMARTboard on the wall to the left.

...and here is me with my latest edition...my Twins Territory blanket that I feel really "brings the room together". Notice the strategically placed broom there as well...this is what Sox fans had to look forward to last Monday when they came back to school after the Twins sweep.

Well, I think pictures justify it as a successful blog post, even if I didn't say much. We had Chicago baseball day today at school, so everyone was supposed to wear either Cubs or Sox apparel, so I went to Jewel and bought a $3 Cubs "W" shirt that I sported for the day. I could've worn a Twins shirt...I got it OK'ed, but after the loss, I couldn't bring myself to endure the ridicule.

After school today, I was suprised to find my school mailbox stuffed with a manila envelope. I opened it up to find 75+ sympathy cards written to me to offer their condolences on my team losing the night before. Apparently one of the 6th grade teachers (who I know is a HUGE Sox fan) decided to have his class do a writing activity. Most of them are the typical...

"Dear Mr. Van Schepen, I'm very sorry your team lost. But not really. I'm a Sox fan. Maybe next year. but probably not. I slept really good last night." (signed) A 6th grader.

But a few of them were actually pretty creative...

"...you should teach the Twins more chemistry, because they didn't really have it last night."

"...being a science teacher, you can see the Twins lost because they aren't evolved as the Sox."

"Whoop di doo, too bad for you. The Sox have won and the Twins have lost. I bet your face is really cross. Mr. E. made me write this sympathy letter, even though it won't make you feel better."

and my personal favorite...

"The Sox can't exist without the Twins because every sock needs a twin."

...how many times have I heard a similar phrase from my mother???

So long everybody...

More comments about comments...

“I said it last night, and I’ll say it again…that umpire should not be here. Not in this series. You put your best players in the All-Star game and you put your best umpires in the All-Star game. It’s the same thing with the World Series. You have meaningless games being played right now with very capable umpires and here we get stuck with this guy. It’s ridiculous…and that’s a fact.” (Ken Harrelson, White Sox announcer) Which puts the question in my mind….why can’t we have the best announcers for such a critical series? Maybe Vin Scully or Bob Uecker could make an appearance.

We had a teacher inservice Friday, so there was no school. Which was…good and bad. Good because I wore a Twins shirt to the inservice and I don’t know if I would’ve met a “professional” dress code wearing that to teach. I think that’s where that Twins polo comes into play. It was bad because I really would’ve loved to see the response of the little Sox fans who continually think they have something on me. I know, I shouldn’t be saying anything…but in my defense, I don’t begin the conversations…its them telling me how bad MY team is…I think they’ll get a lesson on Monday on how it feels to be in 2nd place. I’ll take pictures and post them on here…unless the Twins are on such a high that they refuse to take advantage of the divisional lead.

Twins Tidbits

Interesting comments that the White Sox announcers made during the game vs. the Twins on Wednesday:

-“You’ve got to be kidding me. The Twins will be happy tonight with the umpire on their side the whole game.” (First batter of the game…4^th pitch of the game)

-“That’s one thing that MLB needs to change. They need to realize that this is a big series and they need to send the best umpires to make sure the game is called fairly.” (In the bottom of the 2^nd inning)

-“You’ve got to have some sort of a rating system, because this is absurd.” (Still ranting about the umpires in the top of the 3^rd)

-“I don’t care if we play them at Midway Airport, the Grand Canyon, or Grant Park, as long as we don’t have to play them in the Metrodome” (Top of the 4^th)

-“You know what’s amazing..is that we’re playing that bad and we’re going to leave here tonight with a 2 ½ game lead” (In the bottom of the 4^th with the Sox down 3-2)

-“I’ve seen the Twins go up to the plate with hairline cracks in their bats because they’re going for those cheap broken-bat singles” (Bottom of the 6^th)

-1: the number of half innings that the attempted Gomez pickoff WASN’T shown as some sort of “Freeze Play”, “Game changing play”, “Story of the Game”, “Game Summary” or any other excuse that Ken and D.J. could think of to explain why the Sox weren’t winning. (I think it had something to do with your 3-4-5 hitters going a combined 1-11 with no RBI, but I’m no professional announcer)

-Final Score: 3-2 Twins

-To put it in those infamous words…THEY GONE!!!

Put that on the board…

Weekly News

Since I've been on the cycle of writing once a week, I figured I would give you what's happened this week, complete with the title of "Weekly News", which Linds told me not to put because its...boring.

• Well, whether I believe it or not, this past week was the first full 5-day week of school. It somewhat amazes me when I think about the attitude of some of these kids here. Don't get me wrong, there are these kids all around the world, but I say here because well...I'm here. I thought the slow start may have been because it was summer, and they didn't have to do anything for a couple months. Well, to end the babbling, I had 10 kids not turn in the Lab sheet Friday...and it was something we did in class. I just wonder what was going through their mind when I said "It's due at the end of the period" and "Pass the papers to the right". Maybe I was the weird kid, but I couldn't hand anything in late, blank, or not hand it in at all after I went through all that work.

• Continuing with the "boring theme from Linds", she told me I was boring this week Monday-Thursday because again, for some reason, allergies hit me. Don't get me wrong, I think I'm young enough to feel invincible at times, but these allergies really kick my butt. Its especially tough to teach all day when the Puffs with Lotion tissues kept calling my name (I keep a special stash, the kids get the sandpaper) So...it was a week of going to bed at 9, multiple trips to Walgreens, and choking down Airborne (which I don't know if it worked or not, but it tasted bad enough that it had to do some good)

• Friday night I went with Linds and some of the varsity v-ball team to watch the DePaul v-ball team take on Univ. Texas-San Antonio. The head coach of DePaul is married to the varsity assistant at Timothy, so he got us all in for free. So I guess now officially...we made it downtown! We took a minibus with the 12 of us from school and drove to DePaul (which is north of downtown, fairly close to Wrigley) They lost in 4 games, but it was pretty fun to watch, and alot of fun to see where the DePaul men play their basketball games. We also saw the George Miken banners for being All-American and Player of the Year back in the 40's. Afterwards we stopped downtown and got ice cream at Cold Stone before heading back to school.

• Today...wow today. It has been raining since Friday morning. We saw this morning that O'Hare had about 6.5 inches already, and they have to be well above 7 by now. But, we decided that we were going to make a trip to....where else? Target! This was no special trip, however, because it ended with me running through the rain with a 32" big-screen tv in my hands. Dinner was put on hold while the setup procedures proceeded. I let the channel search do its thing to find stations, thinking it would take about a minute with our 12 channels to find. So we sat down for a sandwich, and watched the numbers keep going up................and up......................and up................and (you get the picture). Well, the sandwich was finished long before the channel search was complete at a number well into the triple digits. So we flip through the stations and it wasn't long before each time we were yelling with our new-found entertainment. Out came TBS, TNT, FX, Spike, Discovery, History, TLC (Linds favorite), and.....oh yes, ESPN and ESPN2, plus the Big 10 network. Well, pathetically, this afternoon has been spent watching full HD college football and MLB games, but I really don't feel bad about it at all...

• Well, that may be about the extent of the excitement for one blog. For those of you interested in Twins material, AG posted this link the other day which proves my theory from this past Winter/Spring about Bill Smith, its a pretty interesting read with WAY too many numbers, but the conclusion at the bottom is worth checking out. On the other hand, hindsight is always 20/20...unless you're a Twins nut.

• Big doubleheader today, looking good so far for the Twins...up 5-1 in the 7th. Obviously with all the rain we've had, the Sox aren't playing again, so it will be interesting to see when they make up their games with the Tiggers.

So long everybody...