The Case of the Missing Wheel

While Chris is galavanting all over New England for the PEZ movie, I had my own adventure Tuesday morning in Savannah, when I left my apartment to drive 90 minutes to work only to discover that my car only had 3 wheels. The other one was stolen and replaced with an old car battery which propped the car up. (yes, the whole wheel. Rim & tire. This seems to be a common question). The last thing I had stolen from me in Savannah was a bike tire off my bike, so obviously the criminals that prowl my street like rubber. And of course this would happen the first time ever that Chris has gone out of town without me since before we were married. And while everyone else I know in this town is out of the state for vacation. (This all sounds oddly familiar, because the last time I was left all alone without Chris or anyone else I knew in town, my water tank exploded on the road and I came down with an terrible stomach flu and could hardly get out of bed, let alone take care of myself).

At any rate, I spent Tuesday morning talking to police, buying lugnuts to fasten the spare doughnut to the car (thanks to some friendly officers who took me to the car supply place and put the wheel on for me), hunting down a rim that fit my car (two junkyards later), and finally waiting at Sam's for an hour to have the rim and a new tire put on the car (I was the first person TO Sam's but somehow at least 3 cars were serviced before mine... I even overheard someone telling the girl working the counter that I should have been in front of these other people). So I was massively late to work, but luckily made it in time to teach my classes. And I didn't even break down in tears. Being the big sissy I am, that's saying something. I did, however, wake Chris up to whine to him and call both my parents more than once during this whole mess.

Unfortunately, at the moment I can't say I learned anything from this ordeal, other than I should never let my husband leave the state without me.

As for Chris, he's in New Jersey today, and will be in Connecticut, New York City, and Washington DC tomorrow, and hopefully will be on his way home to me Friday. He's got all kinds of exciting stuff happening, which he'll be talking about at Making of PEZheads - The Movie when he gets a breather.

Goo & PEZ

Well, let me tell you what Chris is doing right now while I'm sitting in Savannah. Chris is in Buffalo, NY with the guitarist from the Goo Goo Dolls. No kidding. The guitarist, Robby, is working on a PEZ cartoon, and today a band he produces is filming the music video for the theme song for said PEZ cartoon. And Chris is there to film them making the music video, as well as to interview Robby, and The Juliette Dagger, which is the band doing the music video. All for the PEZ documentary. He drove 9 hours Saturday to Washington DC to pick up the other Chris, then the two of them drove 10 more hours to Buffalo last night, and they've been at this music video shoot since morning. He's having a good time. I'm jealous because I have to be responsible and work for a living. But, truth be told, I would probably be bored and freezing up there, so I guess it's not too bad.

Anyways, that is our news. We're really excited to get this kind of footage for the documentary. Good stuff. Goo stuff. Ha.

Buttons!

We have buttons! They're pretty awesome. Everyone needs a button of the Chris PEZhead on his/her backpack. You should go get one. Or twelve.

Oh, and the exciting news I've alluded to? It's close. I'll probably wait and let Chris post about it after it happens, since it's his thing, but I may not be that patient. So... Monday I should be able to let the cat out of the bag.

Kids' Thanksgiving

Today we had "The Kids' Thanksgiving" down in Jax. My brother and his fiancee hosted thanksgiving for me, Chris, and Chris's brother Sam. Our friend Paul came and had thanksgiving with us, too. Matt & Sara made the turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli casserole, stuffing, and candied yams. I made the corn casserole, green bean casserole, deviled eggs, and Chris made "pink stuff." We also brought pumpkin pie. So we had a LOT of food. It was yummy. There were leftovers to bring home. That made me happy. I really love thanksgiving. I think it's my favorite holiday. The whole point of the holiday is to eat lots of yummy food and hang out. And sleep, although I didn't get my traditional nap this year. Really, you can't beat it.

And we were pretty happy with our ability to hold our own with a full thanksgiving dinner cooked without the help of our parents, who until now were always in charge of thanksgiving preparations. I think we did a pretty good job of handling things. Our only mishaps were turkey that had to be put back in the oven to cook longer, and hard-boiled eggs that I had to nuke a bit longer because I didn't cook them all the way through. We live and learn.

the suspense is killing me

Ooh! oooh oooh! I am jumping out of my skin with exciting news about our PEZ movie, but I'm afraid to post it anywhere because I'm afraid I'll jinx* it. It seems like every time good stuff potentially will happen, it doesn't work out if we tell people. Bleh. So I'm holding it in until we have confirmation. Let's just say Chris has an exciting adventure ahead of him, and I don't because I have to be at work. Poor me. Lucky Chris. More later. In, like, a week.

* Yes, I know all my Calvinist friends are rolling their eyes at my use of the word jinx, but really, that's what it feels like. even if it's not true. that doesn't change what it feels like. so shush up and get over yourselves. ::wink::

PEZ Interview

Chris did an interview with House of PEZ website about the documentary we're making. You should check it out.

Fame and Fortune await!

...or maybe not.

Since the program I'm teaching for at Southeastern Technical College is so new, they decided to feature it in the Winter newsletter. Complete with a picture of me sitting in the Mac lab, and a quote, too. It's really strange that everyone at this school is walking around with a copy of my face staring at them.

In other news, we're selling fun new stickers for the PEZ movie... if you buy them, you're helping us to make this movie a reality. Plus I'll be your best friend. I mean, you can never have too many best friends.

Shameless PEZ plug

This past weekend we went to Myrtle Beach to film another PEZ convention. This one was a lot more laid back than the others... we got to hang out on the beach and stuff. We got some great interviews, and met the woman behind the voice of the Snapple commercials (who is an avid PEZ collector). It was a lot of fun. So our movie website has been updated with posts and photos, as well as a new trailer that went up about a week ago. Check it out - www.pezheadsthemovie.com.

Really. Check it out. Why haven't you clicked on the link yet?

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.