Ghost Whisperer Randomness

So I was flipping channels tonight and happened across the intro for "The Ghost Whisperer" ... it's actually a pretty interesting intro, very similar to the intro for Desperate Housewives, but then I noticed that the style seemed very similar to that of Jerry Uelsmann's wife, Maggie Miller. So I googled it, and sure enough, "Each one of the frames in the opening titles of GHOST WHISPERER is based on an original creation of artist Maggie Taylor."

I'm kinda proud of myself for recognizing it. It's also kinda neat because she came and spoke to one of my digital art classes in undergrad and talked about putting live goldfish on her flatbed scanner and stuff (and then wondering why they died so quickly). Randomness. I wonder if Tiffany remembers... she was sitting next to me in class. Man, that was a long time ago.

Google Search revisited

So I discovered something kind of strange today. Chris was googling the name "skeene" yesterday, to see what pops up, and I noticed in my website hits that a couple of them came from people searching for "kendra coppage" ... which is me 2 1/2 years ago. So I was curious what pops up when I search for kendra coppage... and I discovered that there is actually another Kendra Coppage... she's a runner. Yep... all the pages that came up either referred to me, or to Kendra Coppage the runner. Funny. So I searched for kendra skeene, and I'm still the only one (hooray), but there were some pages that came up where there was a kendra and someone else with the last name skeene in the same document... and all of those were for marathons and other running-related things. That amuses me because I couldn't run anywhere if my life depended on it.

That's all I have to share today. I know. I'm boring. Sorry.

Teaching at STC

So I had my first day of actual teaching at Southeastern Technical College yesterday. How should I describe it? Well, exciting, exhausting, and excellent are probably the best descriptors.

I was actually there in the building from 9:30am - 10:00pm, and was on the road for 90 minutes before and 90 minutes afterwards. Plus, of the 12 hours I was there, I taught for 6 1/2 of those hours. So it was a pretty exhausting day. But everyone I work with is so nice, and helpful. And my students are all super-nice and really eager to learn... so it was really great, and a lot of fun for me. Plus I may already have a couple of extra responsibilities / extra hours to do some other stuff that sounds like fun. And a woman in one of my classes offered to see if anyone from her church would let me stay with them Tuesday nights so I don't have to stay in a hotel every week. Even if that doesn't work out, it was so nice of her to offer, and hopefully that will work out.

I've got my own office, and I've finally got a computer set up in there, so it's starting to feel like home. Over this next week they should get the projector set up in the Mac lab so I can do more teaching in there, with the beautiful G5s that are just for this program. And I'll be getting business cards printed, too. I'm, like, official or something.

So I'm just really excited about everything that's going on. I really feel like I'm right where God wants me right now, and I'm excited to see what He has in store next. It should be an interested couple of months coming up.

Broken Email Form

If you've ever tried to contact me via the actual "Contact" page on this site (instead of comments on this blog) then I did not get your message.

Although the contact form itself was written just fine (and any messages sent to Chris were, in fact, received), it appears that past web hosting issues were preventing me from getting my mail, unbeknownst to me. So, just so that everyone knows, I was not blowing you off if you did send me a message.

Now, rather than try to get the problem fixed (which I've tried to do before, only to encounter helpless hosting services who refuse to acknowledge there is a problem and pretend like I just don't know how to check email), I just have that page sending to a different email address, which has fixed the problem. So. Now you can contact me.

expensive tastes

So a couple years back, Tiffany brought a bunch of stuff back from Japan, and included in her stuff from Japan was a lot of green tea. The labels were all in Japanese, of course, so all I knew was that it was "Japanese green tea." And I loved it, so I drank a lot of it. Now it is gone. It's actually been gone for a while. I tried finding more, and what I found was Sencha green at Wards... but it's not quite the same.

So today I went down to the Savannah Tea Room to see if they had what I wanted. After lots of explaining and lots of tea-sniffing, we found it... and I discovered I have very expensive taste in tea. While I could get an ounce of Sencha for $3.00 from them (and I could get that at Wards for even less), it was $9.00 for an ounce of Gyokuro, which is what my taste buds crave. Alas. I settled for an ounce of Cherry Blossom Sencha, and headed back to my computer to find some Gyokruo (Jade Dew) green tea online... only to find very similar prices everywhere I go. Considering I'm always excited about how inexpensive it is to be a tea drinker, I'm just not able to bring myself, so far, to purchase some of this pricey loose tea.

So far, the cheapest I've found is here, but I'd have to buy a lot of it. Enjoying Tea also has an okay price. But for now I'm gonna keep looking for alternatives. Alas.

My brother is so cool

So my brother and his girlfriend are on vacation this week, and they stopped by to visit on Saturday. They've already done the tourist-Savannah stuff, so we basically just hung out. When I told him about my dead Mac desktop that I don't know what to do with, he decided to take a look, because he used to work at a computer repair place. Well, we didn't fix the mac, but what he *did* do is salvage my hard-drive, which made me very happy. I'm kind of afraid to take apart computer stuff, because I don't know what all the parts do. But I told him to have at it, so he took apart my external hard drive, swapped the hard drive in that with the desktop hard drive, and then we plugged that one into my new laptop... sure enough, it worked! I was able to retrieve what little was on there that wasn't on my backup drive, and then I was able to wipe it so that I can get rid of it without worrying about someone getting my old info. Ah, happy day.

We tried modding the case so that my external drive housed both harddrives, but it didn't quite work. So for now I've just got everything back to normal, and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that desktop. Now we're guessing it's the power supply that's shot. But everything else works just fine.

shocking

This story is fantastic. Apparently some guy in Australia generated enough static electricity from the friction between his wool sweater and his synthetic jacket that he scorched carpet and melted plastic, without even realizing it. I don't know why this story makes me smile so much... it just does.

I wear many hats - The New Job blog

I have a new job.

Chris wants to be sure I specify this as "I have another job" which means I have not quit any of my other jobs.

Which means I have 3 part-time jobs, plus freelance.

Anyways. As of today, I have a new part-time job as Adjunct Faculty at Southeastern Technical College in Vidalia, FL (90 minutes from Savannah). At the end of this month I will begin teaching 2 days a week for their Computer Graphic Design Specialist certificate program. I will have my own office, and I will be teaching two courses - Intro to Computer Graphics, and Publication Design. I will teach in a mac classroom and a pc classroom that are specifically for these courses. I will be developing the curriculum for Publication Design from scratch, and modifying an existing curriculum for the Intro to Computer Graphics class. I get to pick out books and stuff. And I am so excited.

The classes are on a quarter basis, and after this fall quarter, I will most likely be teaching two different classes for the next quarter, and so on and so forth as long as they like me and I like them. This kind of thing is exactly what I've been wanting to do ... well, pretty much forever. It's a great opportunity, and a great foot in the door.

Of course, part-time doesn't pay the bills, so I'll still be working the other 3 days a week at my current job. And tomorrow my SAT class for Princeton Review starts, so that's my third part-time job (although that one is REALLY part-time, because the classes are only about 10 hours a week for a few weeks, and they are few and far between here in Savannah). Plus freelance web design, which is very random and never guaranteed (even after clients guarantee they want me to do it, it's not really guaranteed). Oh yeah, plus that movie we're making.

So I'm a busy, busy girl. But I'm a happy busy girl.

Now I must get to bed so I can be up and ready to proctor an SAT practice test in the morning.

back in savannah

Well, we're back in Savannah, after almost a full week of visiting family in Florida. We haven't been down to visit our parents since we moved to Savannah, so we figured we had to get down there (and good that we did, with all that was going on with Chris's mom). Anyways, we had a very busy long week, with a LOT of traveling (with $3 gas!!!) So I just had to map out our trek. You'll find that numbered below.

1. We started out last Wednesday night, driving the 8 hours to Fort Myers (where my family lives) but made a short pitstop in Gainesville to have dinner with a couple friends to break up the drive a little.


2. We spent two days in Fort Myers, hanging out with my family.


3. Drove to Lakeland Saturday, where Chris's family lives


4. Sunday we made a short trek back to Fort Meade to visit Chris's grandparents


5. Tuesday we headed out, stopping in Orlando to meet my sister-in-law's boyfriend


6. After killing a couple hours in Orlando, we made our way up to Jacksonville, where we had dinner with my brother and his girlfriend, then drove the rest of the way home to Savannah.

Yes, we had a busy but productive week.

And now that I'm back, I have a cold. blah. go figure.

New Orleans

If you've been following Chris's blog, you know that his mom was stuck in New Orleans during this recent ordeal after the hurricane. Well, I'm happy to report that she arrived home safely last night, and we were all there to greet her (which in itself was something, since Chris and I, as well as his brother Sam, all live in Georgia now and just happened to be coming here for the weekend already). She added some details to the story we already knew that just amazed us all... and would be, I think, almost too much to recount.

Chris may add a bit more later, but what I want to make clear from all this is the fact that the National Guard did not help these people once they arrived in New Orleans. Chris's mom was in the Superdome (after escaping her hotel that had been looted) and there were shootings and stabbings there all the time. She feared for her life, and rightly so... people had to fight to protect her on a couple of occasions. When the National Guard did finally arrive, their purpose was to block people IN the Superdome, not to protect people... they saw shootings and stabbings happening, and did nothing to stop them. They pointed their guns at people when they felt they were in danger, but did nothing to protect those who were actually in danger.

Even once they made it on a bus (Friday, after being stuck there since Wednesday), no one was concerned with really helping them. Deborah tried to tell them, whenever she could, that she had a home to go to and if they would just let her off the bus, she could get to a hotel and get herself home, but they wouldn't let her. She was not really safe on the bus, either. So she literally had to escape the bus in Fort Worth in order to get to a hotel and get a flight booked for home.

I'm just amazed and disgusted with just how little was being done to actually help these people.... And the government and the news are spinning this to be a better situation than it really is, so I think it's important that we all know just how little is being done to help. And if you've seen news stations where it look terrible (because I have) I want you to know that it is actually worse than what you've seen. We are very blessed that Deborah made it out safely.

Fair Trade Soapbox

So this past Friday, the crew of Pezheads - The Movie trecked to Gainesville, Florida, in the hopes of conducting an important interview. When that fell through (grumble grumble) we moved on to Plan B, which was to interview random people about their thoughts. We happened to be in Gainesville during the first week of classes at UF which means that the entrance to the Reitz Union was filled with student groups trying to recruit members. So we got to say hi to Steve Lammers from RUF in Gainesville, as well as Chris's friend Alan who works for Campus Crusade. Also, right next to where we were set up, was a group of grassroots-types who were informing people about Fair Trade. And they were giving out stickers, which is always a way to get Chris and my attention. So I went over to talk to the girl and learned all kinds of cool things about Fair Trade.

I mean, I already knew about Fair Trade with regards to coffee, especially, mainly due to an article in an old re:generation magazine. But it was good to get thinking about it again. I believe strongly that as a Christ-follower, I should be concerned for the well-being of others... and not just other people in Savannah, but other people living everywhere. That's why I think that healthcare should be more widely available, and that's why I get mad at people who support Right to Life but not Right To See A Doctor After You're Born Whether You've Got A Great Job Or Not. (yes, I am upset that I make too much money to get free healthcare but not enough see a doctor after I've paid my rent). Anyways. Back to Fair Trade.

I would do a terrible job of trying to explain the whole idea behind it, but Oxfam Fair Trade does a fabulous job for me. So you should read up about it there. The super-short version is that companies that sell coffee are buying it from the growers for less than it cost these growers to produce it, because they can. Then they sell it to us for ridiculously high prices so they can buy a new Mercedes. And I think that's disgusting. What Fair Trade does is pay growers a fair price for their coffee... above their cost of production. This still is a low enough price that companies can afford to do it without losing much by way of profit. And it's just socially responsible.

I'm really not one to rally for ... well ... anything, mainly because I'm not a big fan of debates, and rallying for something requires debating people who don't agree with you, or struggling with frustrations against people who just don't care. So I tend to just have my own convictions and stick with them, without doing much to try and do anything about it. Terrible, I know. But it's true. The same way I don't walk around trying to "evangalize" to every non-christian I meet, I also don't walk around yelling at people for drinking Starbucks coffee. But I do try to "vote" based on how I spend my money, however small a contribution that is. Chris and I, eventually, want to open a coffee shop... at which point I want to serve only Fair Trade coffee. But in the short term, I was thinking "I should only buy coffee from places that serve Fair Trade Coffee." But that opens a whole new can of worms.

The only place I know of near me that serves Fair Trade coffee is The Sentient Bean. That's great when I'm at home, because it's about a half-mile from my home. (And I MUST point out that their double espresso is 50 cents CHEAPER than the coffee shop 2 doors down from my office, and at least 25 cents CHEAPER than Starbucks, neither of which buy their coffee at a fair price. Think about that). But although there are 6 coffee shops a very short distance from my work (less than a mile, and most less than half a mile), none of them serve Fair Trade, so to say that I'll only buy Fair Trade coffee paints myself into a corner of Not Buying Coffee... an idea I'm none too fond of.

But the cute grassroots girl at the Reitz Union told me that they were able to make it a requirement for coffee shops on UF campus to sell Fair Trade... even the Starbucks that moved in! So then I thought "Well, maybe I should go into these coffee shops and suggest they buy Fair Trade. Then I would be able to get coffee downtown. And I would be doing something good. I mean, it's quite likely that these people have never thought of it before, and so they aren't consciously ripping off coffee farmers in 3rd world countries.

So that's my new plan. And by ranting about it here, I may feel a little more fire under my butt to actually do it. Stay tuned.

Oh yes, and I must point out that the Christian Study Center of Gainesville serves fair trade coffee (way to go, Dr. Horner!). And coffee shop owners can buy organic Fair Trade coffee directly from Sweetwater Coffee in Gainesville. Man, I love Gainesville.

new computer

My new apple has arrived! Finally, I'm back on a mac... and a sleek thin 15" powerbook that fits nicely in my backpack, at that. =) Much happiness. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return to customizing my new extension of myself.

books

Today I finished reading Blue Like Jazz. I would definitely recommend it... the author is just really honest about his thoughts about God and spirituality, and just dealing with things in life. It was great... and awesome because he was so open to admit that he doesn't know everything, that he has faults, and here's what he's learned from some of his faults, and here's what he's learned about God and about life and about love from other people. Very great food for thought. And he's a bit of a hippie liberal, which is great too, because a lot of his non-conventional thoughts on stuff really resonated with what I think... and it's just good to remember sometimes that not every Christian is a die-hard Republican.

I also finished listening to the audio book of Lord of the Flies today. Good book. Disturbing. I had a friend in High School who had read it and felt it was necessary to add "I have the conch!" to many conversations, so I kept being reminded of that throughout the book. She also felt it was appropriate to interrupt conversations with "But I'm cute!" ... that has nothing to do with Lord of the Flies, I just remembered it.

I'm going to bed now.

apples and green peppers

So when I said my computer wasn't functioning well, what i really meant was that it won't boot up. I suspected it had big problems, but thought maybe, just maybe, a cord came loose and that once I dug around through all the cords, it would start up again, but I was wrong. (Sorry, John, but you can still have it if you want to try and make it boot up). So I finally bit the bullet and ordered my new laptop. I mean, I'm a web designer. I can't very well be without a computer. So I'm all kinds of excited for when my shiny new apple comes to my door. It should be soon.

In other news, I gave up on my green pepper plant about a month ago. It was crawling with bugs and flowering but not actually creating peppers, no matter how hard I tried to pollenate the flowers. So I gave up, stuck him out on our back porch where I was sure we'd forget about him (it's kind of a pain to get to our back porch, and it's nothing to look at, so basically the only person to go out there is Chris, when taking out the garbage). Well, much to my surprise, it's completely thriving out there. Chris watered it while I forgot about it, and the rain's been helping with the watering, too. Plus, green pepper plants love heat, so I guess it's having a great time in the 97 degree whether as opposed to the 78 degree weather indoors. Because, much to my surprise, I have a single solitary green pepper growing on it now. Oh joy and happiness. I can't wait for it to get big so I cut him up and eat him. Now at least I know never to try and grow a green pepper indoors. Or tomatoes, cuz that one is still gigantic but lacking in fruit... I guess they need to be outside for that stuff to happen. ::sigh::

The Sleeping Bag of Myself

So in between working, prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching soon, and sleeping, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. That's what happens when I don't have a TV... I have to find some other form of entertainment, and reading is a long-loved pastime I haven't done enough of lately. I devoured all the Harry Potter series as audio books (so I still don't know how that chick's name is spelled, cuz I haven't seen it)... and I really enjoyed them, as well as enjoying the ability to "read" and do other things at the same time, as long as those other things didn't require thought... like laundry or crocheting. I've also been doing actual reading, too (as opposed to listening). And it's been great, I've been devouring lots of stuff... some beautiful, some just bizarre, some a little of both... but whereas watching too much TV made me stupid, all this reading is causing me to internalize a lot.

Right now, for instance, I'm reading Blue Like Jazz and although some of it is just so-so, some of it is amazing. So I have all these beautiful little stories in my head, and then I don't know what to do with them, other than go through life absorbed in the beauty of these little stories. I'm way too much in myself and not in the world, I guess. It reminds me of a phrase from a book I read earlier this summer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where Oskar talks about "zipping up the sleeping bag of myself" ... or something like that. I thought that was a beautiful phrase, and I guess that's kind of what this is like. I'm probably not making any sense, but that probably goes along with the rest of it, too.

no interesting title

Well, let's see... i haven't posted for a while because althought I've been waxing and waning between super busy and waiting on feedback from everybody about everything (like I am now) there's not much to talk about. I'm trying to make enough $$ in freelance work to get a new apple laptop, as my 5-year-old mac has decided to pretty much quit functioning on any useful level, and considering it's so old, I've pretty much given up trying to get it to behave any better. So Chris and I have been sharing his computer, but we both need it too often so that causes problems. But I need a couple other projects to go thru before I'll be able to get a new machine... so I just dream about it a lot.

I managed to finish (barely!) crocheting a baby blanket for Luisa before her shower last Saturday. It turned out very well, i must say. I was very proud. And Luisa seemed to like it, so hooray!

And... for now that's it. Nothing exciting to share about my birds or my plants (which although they're flourishing, never did really provide me with much in the way of produce). Oh! Katie gave me a wonderful goldfish shower curtain that makes me smile. I took a picture and will have to post it soon.

So that's all for now. Sorry to be so darned boring lately.

busy again

Well, I spent the past weekend in Indiana, visiting my family up there. It was a lot of fun, and great to see everyone again. I hadn't been up there in almost two years. Since I've returned, I've been busy with work, freelance projects, and crocheting (I told Luisa that I would make her a baby blanket, and the shower is this Saturday, so I don't have much time yet to finish it). So... haven't had much time to post, and haven't thought about much other than all the things i have to do. I need to get working on prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching next month, too. I'm feeling stressed for the first time in a long time. Not a bad feeling... just different.

service rant

I don't know what's going on with companies that do their business online lately, but I haven't gotten proper service from anyone without complaining in over a month. Really, it's ridiculous. We ordered stickers to sell for the movie, and they wouldn't have arrived in time if I hadn't emailed a complaint at how long they were taking (once I complained, they printed and mailed them off overnight that day so that we got them in time). We ordered business cards that were supposed to arrive within 10 days, but they didn't arrive within 20 days and so we didn't have them for the convention. I emailed multiple times with no response, so I called and they printed them and mailed them out within 2 days. I registered a website name for a client on Tuesday, and as of today although my payment had gone through, the info hadn't actually been processed and I still couldn't access the website. I emailed on Thursday and got no response, so today (Saturday) I emailed and said that I had 5 sites with them currently (which I do) and that all further sites would be hosted with someone else if I didn't get an immediate response, and low and behold, the site was up within 2 hours. Really. Ridiculous. I'm having similar trouble with freelance work, where I am not getting paid unless I harass the accountant(s) regularly. I'm starting to get really frustrated with the way things work. Why can't any companies do their job unless I complain that they haven't done their job? Is anyone else experiencing this?

PEZ recap

This should be my last plug about our documentary for a while. Just so you know.

The PEZ convention this past weekend in Cleveland was awesome. Really. I know it sounds strange, but it was great. Even though the three of us drove 13 hours straight overnight getting there, have to wait 5 hours upon arriving at the hotel before we could check into our room, slept very little while we were there, and then drove back 13 hours straight overnight, it was all worth it. We set up a mini studio in our room to film interviews, the guys spent most of the weekend filming rooms or doing interviews, and I spent the bulk of my weekend meeting people, figuring out when people could do interviews with us, and making sure the guys were fed. I walked close to 10 miles during 2 days without even leaving the hotel, and it wasn't that large of a hotel. I didn't even realize it at the time, but looking back, yeah, it was pretty much nonstop walking. But I loved it. I like meeting people, and everyone was so nice and helpful and fun. (Even the older dealers who don't really think we're going to finish this and have a good product were very nice tolerant of us and barely even let on that they weren't taking us seriously.)

The one thing that never ceases to amaze me, though, is the amount of money people sink into their collections. Chris had a (what I thought was reasonable, even generous) $40 allowance on PEZ for the weekend, and then I gave him another $10 on the last day. But he would mention to someone (anyone!) "Yeah, I have a pretty small budget of what I can spend this weekend" they would always reply "Yeah, me too" but it soon became clear that their idea of "small budget" was something like a couple hundred dollars or more. I met an 11 year old who has been collecting for "9 or 10 years" and who must have spent over $500 on PEZ over the weekend, judging by what he told me he had already purchased when we interviewed him on Friday. Intense.

But yes. Much fun. And we have a lot more planned, although there's only one more convention we're going to film, and that's in November. But we have a lot more filming to do, overall.

So yes. That's all the excitement for now. I've actually got quite a few things keeping me busy right now, so it will probably be a while before I can post again. It's good to be busy.

PEZ-a-mania

We're here! Me, Chris, and Chris left Savannah last night at 7:30pm, and we arrived in Cleveland this morning around 9am, slept in the car for an hour, and then started wandering the hotel. We can't check into a room for another 30 minutes or so, so we're killing time in the lobby with their wireless Internet. Looks like it will be a fun weekend, although right now we all just want to take a shower and a nap.

This will probably be my only post from here, but later today we'll start posting photos and updates at our PEZheads - The Movie website, so check there.