The Rush of an Auction...

So, I woke up today a little past a quarter to 10, which was remarkable in and of itself as I didn’t fall asleep until nearly 2am last night. I headed out to the living room and saw Linda sitting on the couch. Rich was nowhere in sight. “Hey Linda, is Rich at coffee?” “No, he’s at the sale.” DOGGONE IT! Over the past couple of weeks, Rich had talked about going to this sale and we had talked a couple of times of going... together!! I could have sworn he was going to wait for me. But nooooo… it was past 9am. Silly me for sleeping in on a Saturday morning!

I took a boot camp style shower, got dressed and headed out to the fairgrounds. All of the furniture had already sold, which was fine – I most certainly didn’t have the money for the useful stuff; I had a goal… a vision... I would play the $1-$3 game on something small. First, I had to stake out something I considered worthy of money. There was only one item: two small plastic bins; the top of which was filled with various shoe and leather cleaning supplies. Mostly, I was in it for the bins; perfect for putting other micellaneous crap in.

After an hour long wait, it was my turn. The auction was headed up by Mike Crabtree. He’s a no-nonsense auctioneer with a witty sense of humor who hails from Atwater. Out of all of the auctions I’ve been to, he’s my favorite auctioneer. For those who haven’t been to auction, it gets intense really fast! The item was announced, “Shoe shine stuff!” I instantly raised my hand, “$1.” Good. Someone else counterbid, “$2.” Another bidder raised it to 3 dollars. DOGGONE IT AGAIN! That was the top of my limit. But no, wait, it was only $2.50. I quickly raised my hand, “$3.” Surely, it was mine. Someone raised it again to $4. NOOOOOO!!! It’s past my limit… I’m done. But then I just had to look up at Mike who was looking at me with those eyes that pleaded, "Nick, you want this item, don't you??" Well, before pulling into the parking lot, I told myself that $5 was the absolute max I would spend on anything. *sigh*…Fine. “$5.” A couple of seconds pass that feel like forever. Soon I heard the magic words, "Sold to number 120!” It was mine! All mine!!! Bwa ha ha ha!

Then it hit me… I spent $2 more than I really wanted to. And all I got was some fairly useless junk.

Damn Mike Crabtree. I hate him. :)

My Newly Purchased "Treasure."

P.S. -- Yes, the wife was mad. :)

Lion's Carnival = The Sugar Rush From Hell!

I received a call from my American Legion post commander asking if I could volunteer at the Lion’s carnival on Friday night. The job was to man up the “cake walk” booth from 7 till 9:30. Sounds simple enough… count me in!

Believing it to be like a recent event that took place here in town in which maybe 5 people would visit the stand at a time, I thought I’d add a little fun to it and create a couple of signs that said, “keeki baiten/shiai/geemu” One for each. "Baiten," if it was an actual cake stand, as in vendor; "shiai," if it was a game, and if I was wrong in saying "shiai", I’d simply put "geemu" below it to cover my rear.

Japanese is different; most certainly eye catching in such a small town. Eye catching equates to more visitors… or so I thought.

As I was walking toward this supposed stand with my wife and mother-in-law, I noticed a large crowd. Not large: HUGE! And it wasn’t a cake walk… it was more like a cake gamble. There were 40 some-odd numbers randomly placed on a 3 huge tables creating 3 sides of a rectangle. The fourth side simply acted as a barrier between the workers and the crowd.

The lines around the tables sometimes went two or three people deep. The game was that people were supposed to put a quarter on a number. Up to two quarters may be played on any number. A wheel was spun and whatever number it landed on, the winner would gets to choose a cake of their choice.

It was very fast paced and very fun. So much so, that I ended up playing, too! Bob Little told me that #1 was overdue to win. So I threw down and we’ve been best friends ever since! :) The cake I chose was all chocolate with chocolate frosting: quite delicious, I dare say!

Eventually a small group of about 6 kids from Carlinville Middle School came to play the game: Cassidy, Adelmo, Kyle, Kory, Kris and Maddie. It was unbelievable how much they won. By the end of the evening, the group of 6 ended up leaving with 15 cakes. Tragically, one was dropped, one was stolen and four were given away. However, since they left towards the end, I managed to talk them into waiting so that I could take a picture of the group with what remained of their winnings.

When I caught up with them, I noticed Cassidy’s mother looking rather not-so-happy. The first words out of her mouth were something along the lines of, “What the heck are we going to do with all of these cakes?!” Honestly, I couldn’t blame her. The imminent sugar rush of 6 teenagers would seem to be a task more suitable for the National Guard rather than a single mother! I don’t know how she faired that evening, but the happiness on the faces of those kids would make any task worth suffering… at least, I think.

Kody, Adelmo, Kyle, Maddie, Kris and Cassidy show off their winnings.

"The Gang"... in a nice picture!

STUPID GUSTAV!!!

It's one thing to live on campus and face this absolutely horrendous weather we got goin' on today.

It's a completely different thing if you have to drive nearly 50 miles with a deadline!

I've never been so scared driving to school in my life. Visibility was terrible, puddles extended a good 2 feet into the road, and semi's... I have nothing against the drivers as they're just doing their job. But the trucks they drive make visibility that's already bad next to zero! Thus, passing them was ridiculously scary!

Suffice it to say, I'll be glad when every last remnant of Gustav is dead and gone!!!

Amen.

~N.

The ISA Welcome Party!

Finally! There is a shindig I can attend that works with my schedule: the International Students’ Association Welcome Party!

The party was held out on the patio outside the student life building and featured a good mixture of students and faculty, most of the students hailing from either Japan or India. Snacks were available featuring lemonade or iced tea, cookies, and cheese ‘n cracker/mixed veggie platters. They were perfect snacks to tide you over for a late supper!

After we hung out and met one another for awhile, Mr. Lane gave a series of announcements that, unfortunately, quickly lost most of the audiences’ attention.

Eventually, we were all given a piece of a postcard and were instructed to find the others that had the matching pieces in order to form the complete picture. Each group consisted of seven people and we all introduced ourselves to each other.

After that was completed, we flipped over our pieces of the card and saw a star shaped sticker. Our next task was to find everyone else who had the same color of star and repeat the introduction process. Then it was game time!

A miscellaneous item was read off of a list and each group had to find this item and give it to a designated runner who would then take it to Mr. Lane for “validation.” I ran my butt off trying to get several items, but every time I did, somebody else found one quicker. I hate it when that happens!

Around the time the game started, the humidity started to rapidly increase as well. By the time the game was over, practically everyone was covered with sweat. I guess these things happen in the Midwest.

By the time this particular game ended, it was just past 8 – 45 minutes later than I told my wife I would be heading home. Thus, I had to make my exit. Upon departing, Dana asked me to mark times that work to meet on campus for the newly reformed ISA. We’ll soon see if I can keep attending or not.

It was a lot of fun to hang out and meet new people. One particular freshman, a girl named Ashley from Farmersville, was very pleasant to meet! She’s studying Russian. Personally, I think she should take Japanese (no offense to you Russian speaking people out there!).

Here’s hoping that I will meet those people from the ISA Welcome Party in the days to come!

~N.

The First Week...

Well, the first week has come and gone. Honestly, it may take another week to get a more definitive feel as to how this semester is going to turn up. It’s been okay so far, but it could’ve been much better.

Again, my classes are only on Tuesday and Thursday. My first class starts at noon. It is a weird feeling walking into class in the dead middle of the day, but it’s not too bad. The class is Intro. to Mass Media Communication. The professor, Dr. Jamison, seems to be nice and knows what she’s doing. However, we didn’t have any sort of class introduction, so nobody knew anybody during that first day; yet we still had to sign up for a partner project due later in the semester. Point being, you don’t know if the person you signed up with is going to be a studious partner or one who really doesn’t care. Here’s praying mine is the former.

During our first day, Dr. Jamison noticed that many students had two books with them. The UIS bookstore’s website listed two books with two completely different titles. Suffice it to say, many students went ahead and got both books. Come to find out, one of the books was an earlier version of the book actually required for the class. Of course, I got my books online and therefore cannot return it for a full refund, which is entirely not fair an error which should be put on the shoulders of those running the bookstore’s website.

*deep breath*

During my 2 hr, 45 min. break, I went to check on textbooks deemed close enough to online-used cost to go ahead and purchase, including my Japanese textbooks. You have no idea how stoked I am about that class. Moving on…

My break was fairly short lived, but in the future, it will be nice to sit in the lounge area on the second floor of UHB and have lunch while dabbling with various homework assignments or browsing the Internet.

Japanese class!

The first day of Japanese class felt very rough and little somber due to a tragedy suffered by someone in the classroom over summer break. The course review was nice and very much needed as many of us have forgotten quite a bit of material *grimace*. However, the second day felt like the Japanese class I remember from last year. Some of us joked here and there, and for the most part, we had fun. The second day consisted of grammatical review which again was rough, but very much needed. Now that we’ve gone back over it, we should be okay. Key word: should. J We’ll see.

My third on campus class only meets on Tuesdays from 6 – 9:30. Ugh. But it should be okay as there are times where we don’t meet at all during the week. Read: it’s a blended class. The professor we have for the class was attending a family matter and so we had a substitute teacher by the name of Nan. No, she’s not an Australian grandmother… her name really is Nan. She is a delightful woman who had us introduce ourselves to other classmates by filling out a sheet of various topics and finding people to fulfill that topic. For example, one of the topics was “Is left handed,” and so you would find someone who fit that bill. It was actually kind of fun, and now that the class knows one another, it could be a very enjoyable class.

Oh yes, I’m also taking an online class – Introduction to the Teacher’s Education Program, which is run by Professor Dunn. Our first week consisted of online introductions answering several different questions: where are we from, what type of community is it, what do you find are problems facing today’s schools, etc. Many of the students in this class seem very outgoing and friendly, which is awesome.

This is also the class that I have yet to receive my textbook for. It’s been nearly 2 weeks. Needless to say, the person I ordered it from is going to get hammered for this! Thankfully, Professor Dunn is a God-send who has put up online PowerPoint lectures that go over the first couple of chapters!! Because of this, I was still able to participate in our first class discussion question: What is a school?

Other projects for this class seem interesting, such as a family tree going back three generations, including what education they achieved. Also, there is a movie review where the plot has to be based on education. Oh, “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”

School is shaping up okay. It is currently Friday evening, and I am about to go volunteer at the American Legion again before going in to work a little early in order to get LEADS certified. Work today is from 11p – 3a. It should be interesting. J Wish me luck!

My question for you is: What do *you* think a school is?

Take care all!

~N.