What's with all the blogging?

I'm not sure. Sorry it isn't more interesting :)

Today is the last day of school till next Monday. That is SO exciting. The kids were pretty crazy yesterday, even my normally good classes. I was in a good mood though, so I didn't really mind. They'll be worse today, I'm sure of it. My only hope is that so many of them will miss/skip school today that it lowers the craziness factor.

Oh, and I'm reading a really cool book right now. It's called "Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution." It's this fascinating look at how she used fashion in a political manner because she really had no other political power, at least early on in her reign. The other nice thing is that even though it's a "history" book (as opposed to historical fiction) it's very easy to read, especially for us non history majors.

Ok, time to go face the cat herding.

Two more days!

Two days of school and then a glorious 5 days off. I can't wait. These next two days can't go fast enough and they'll be a total joke since the kids will be bananas and impossible to deal with for the most part. I've got the planning done, all the Crucible essays graded and now it's just to keep them as in line as possible for the next 48 hours. It'll be a bit like herding cats I think. This is the first real break we've had since school started in the middle of August, so it's very exciting.

I think things finally got sorted in terms of Thanksgiving dinner, who will be where, when etc. It was pretty stressful for a bit though and I got sick of being stuck in the middle running messages between my mom and brother. I finally told him I wasn't going to try and guess what she was thinking and he had to speak directly with her. I think that worked.

Not too much else of interest going on really. Jon and I met for brunch at Aut Bar which was fun. Definitely a different atmosphere than when we went at Halloween. I covered the Hawthorne Heights show on Thursday night (a bit of an adventure, but I'll tell it another time). I'm mostly posting because I heard through the grapevine that Sarah, who is off in Nepal being a real anthropologist (go Sarah!) enjoys reading about our mundane little lives over here :) So, Hi Sarah! We miss you! Sorry I can never IM you because everything is firewalled at school!

Happy early Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you all survive the first round of the holidays :)

PS-I've been watching the AMAs tonight and have to say that I find it relatively uninspiring. I was interested to see Taylor Swift's performance because everyone has gone so ga-ga over her but her performance was pretty lackluster. I don't know if there was a sound mixing problem or what, but her voice sounded thin and was drowned out by all the other instruments. I also have a guilty confession. I kinda like that song Pink performed. Does that make me a bad person? :)

Oooh, winter

As most of you Michigan-based people will have noticed if you surfaced at all this weekend, we got our first real snow. The type that starts to stick. The type that begins to accumulate. The type that I love, love, love at least until January 2 when I've had it with winter.

So, I woke up this morning and looked out the window trying to decide if I wanted to get up then or sleep horribly late. It wasn't doing anything. Maybe raining a little, but a pretty uninspiring day from the looks of it. I stayed in bed. When I woke up again, maybe an hour later, it was snowing. Those HUGE fat gigantic flakes that sort of drift down and make it look like a cartoon snowstorm or something outside. I loved it. I probably just watched it snow for a good 10 minutes.

Now, normally I'd decide that the snow was a perfect excuse to stay all snuggly and warm in my bed and I'm sure that the next time this happens (or if it's still happening tomorrow morning) I will ignore the beauty of it and roll over to go back to sleep. However, today it was still novel. Today it was still pretty and the cold, crisp, snow-smelling air made me want to get up and go out in it. So, I did. I used the "excuse" of needing to go grade papers which I always do at ERC since I get nothing done at home and went out to enjoy the snow. I even snagged a seat by the windows which, sadly, was really cold since it's drafty, BUT I got to watch people go by all bundled up as the flakes drifted down. And they keep coming too. It's snowed all day and is STILL going strong. I think the ground is too warm for it to really stick, but it's so pretty, at least for now.

Yeah, I'll be sick of it soon enough, but even at this point in my life there's something still wonderful about the first real snow of the season.

:)

Adventures in Journalism

Well, I had a new experience last night. One that I hope not to repeat, but it was kind of interesting (and a little funny) now that I'm roughly 24 hours away from it. Let me explain:

Last night I was covering the Kings of Leon show. Openers were The Whigs and We Are Scientists (WAS were the ones I was most excited to see, I missed seeing them two years ago and was psyched to finally see them live.) I had a photo pass and ticket. I got to the State (er, Fillmore) Theater with no trouble, found parking right away and even was able to skip the long line of people waiting in the cold because my ticket was printed by Live Nation and not Ticketmaster (beats me why that matters, but, whatever). So, I mosey my way to the front of the theater and meet up with a security guard that almost always works at the State/Fillmore and actually remembered me. He was very nice, friendly and, to be honest, gives me some preferential treatment (he's the guy that managed to get me to the front of the crazy crowd at the 89x Christmas show two years ago and let me photograph Fall Out Boy from basically the photo pit even though I didn't have a photo pass that night). No problems photographing The Whigs.

Then come WAS. I'd gotten talking to one of the other photographers and we discovered a problem. According to this Big Scary Bald Australian or British guy that worked there, his photo pass was only good for Kings of Leon and he was not to photograph We Are Scientists. Now, I've run into this sort of thing before but usually you get permission to shoot one of the openers and not the headliner, so this seemed a bit weird. I looked at my pass and it seemed to be good only for We Are Scientists, but I didn't advertise this to anyone and didn't think anyone would ask. No problems shooting WAS and they played a fun set. My security guard friend even let me stay up in the photo pit (to the side) to take notes during the rest of the set (I didn't have my camera out).

Then came time to get ready to shoot Kings of Leon. I'm standing in the pit and Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit comes up and looks at my pass. He says I shouldn't be up there, my pass was no good. I feel that I HAVE to get some photos of the headliner and figured I'd just stay to the side (cameras were allowed in the show which is a bit unusual) and get some pictures that way. Security guard (SG) guy pulls me up to the front.

Ok, let me take a moment here and say that what I SHOULD have done was fess up and tell SG that Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit said my pass wasn't good for the headliner and sucked it up. I didn't. Ok, that's totally my fault but I guess I thought that if I stayed to the side and only got a few photos, and kept out of peoples way no one would care. Er, wrong.

So, Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit somehow saw me (I thought he was backstage) and I am physically removed from the pit. At first I thought they were going to kick me out of the show entirely. Nope, hauled up to the production office where Big Scary Bald Australian/Brit made me delete the card in my camera. Luckily not all of my photos from the night were on there and I'd swapped cards so I may have lost a few photos of WAS and all of the Kings of Leon pictures, but I still had photos of The Whigs and WAS on a separate card. He then told me to put my camera in my car.

I was able to finish watching the show but, needless to say, the fun of the night was gone. At first I thought that he'd gotten ALL my We Are Scientists photos but then remembered as I was driving home that I'd swapped cards before Kings of Leon went on. I was really worried that Sherri (my editor) would be super pissed, I'd be blacklisted from shows, etc. etc. and maybe that blacklisting thing will still happen, who knows. Sherri, however, was pissed that he made me delete my photos and thinks it's idiotic that they give passes for everyone but the headliner. I mean, come on, unless you're the Rolling Stones or something, get over yourselves! I mean really!

Yeah, so, it was quite a night. I'd prefer not to repeat it. Maybe this makes me a "real" journalist/photographer now that I've pissed someone off. I guess in the old days he'd have taken the film, eh? I accept my responsiblity for the whole thing, but he was a bit of a douche too. (But some of the WAS photos are really cool, I'm glad I didn't lose them all, AND the WAS bassist gave me a big smile right as they were starting, so that was kind of cool).