Useless Fact For Me To Share With You

No word in the the English dictionary rhymes with "MONTH".

Goodnight y'all. I am off to bed after spending my Sunday night on school work prepping for my next two project based learning units for my ELP class. Can I just say eggs and Rubik's Cubes? Wowsers that sounds like some good learning coming down the pipeline.

Hey Dude! coming back to TV........

does it honestly get any better? I loved this show back in the day.

Misc Thoughts From Coffeechug

I was too tired to run this morning. My 3.5 hours of sleep yesterday caught up to me. I felt run down so I slept in and rested. Looks like four days of running in a row coming up.

1. No bishop appears in Through the Looking-Glass.

2. I need one day to type up blog posts and book reviews. I  have notepads of thoughts and ideas and reviews that I need to write up.

3. Thoughts on homework in education? I am writing up a piece about homework and looking for other perspectives to include.

4. If you remember cassette tapes, then stay tuned as I am putting the final details on a new challenge: Cassette Tape Mixtape Challenge.

5. I am in need of a new image for my blog. Last year I had some fantastic artwork submitted(one became the main logo, coffeemug, and t-shirt...thanks Amanda Matthews!). I need some new artwork to spice up the blog. Send your artistic visions my way.

6. What are you reading right now?

7. I am obsessed lately with how cell phones and apps make education so great. Currently digging the new EasyBib app. Can life get any easier? What apps can you not live without that I should try?

8. Never forget the delicious flavor and aroma of coffee in the morning. The only thing that comes close is drinking orange juice with morning breath. Sounds gross, but so good. HA HA! ☺

9. Can you tell that my brain is all over the place this morning! I leave you with this picture from my kitchen. Sometimes Amanda deals with four kids when I act like a 6 year old myself...hence the word on the chalkboard. Yes, Aiden and I laughed and laughed and laughed.

Peace Out ✌ and look forward to your comments, thoughts, and ideas!

Things, Thoughts, and Tidbits From My Scribbles Part 1

In a previous post about the first day back at school I mentioned how I working to unclutter as I downgrade to an office. To hold my feet to the fire I am going to post about anything worth any importance here on the blog to keep track of important ideas.

Here we go:

http://shelfelf.wordpress.com/ - a very cool blog and a great book blogger for YA

http://www.readingrumpus.com/ - another good book blog, but it has not been updated for a long time so not sure if it worth checking out much longer.

http://ericberlin.com/ - A author who write and creates puzzles. If you have not read Puzzling World of Winston Breen then please start there.

http://owlforya.blogspot.com/ - another great book blog for middle grade books.

http://www.kidsmomo.com/ - And yes, another good book blog

http://www.andyremic.com/ - a fantasy author. Not quite YA, but one author I need to check out and read in any free time that I currently don't have.

Book titles written down to check out

















Alright, one piece of paper down and about 500 more to go. I don't think each page warrants this much great stuff.

Summertime = Not Caring

I love summer because I no longer care about time, deadlines, stress, and all the above.

Yes, I have so many things I want to get done, but just don't have the drive to start.

And I am okay with that.

I believe it is part of the process of recharging my batteries to prepare for the onslaught of projects that I will try to conquer in the near future.

Here is to the days of summer when we can just drink coffee and tea all day on the deck, play with my kids, and read books.

2 VERY Important Things for you to do TODAY!!

Two quick reminders that you need to take care of today or tomorrow or else you are going to lose out on something special. Super special.

And don't we all want to be special?

1. Cast your votes for the Coffee For The Brain Book Tournament. We need more votes and this week will wrap up the Final Four and lead us into the Championship Round.

Will you choose Compound or Maze Runner?

Will you choose Matched or Red Kayak?

The form is over to the right so got there now and VOTE. RIGHT NOW. I demand you because I have so much power over you from behind my computer screen.

Feel free to go back and watch the video about voting. http://coffeeforthebrain.blogspot.com/2011/03/coffee-for-brain-book-tournament-your.html

2. Go back and read this post about me sorting my books over Spring Break. Get your requests in today http://coffeeforthebrain.blogspot.com/2011/03/spring-break-goals.html

3. I guess I lied because I need three things from you and not two. What are your current favorite apps? Aiden(my son) and I are always looking for something new to try out. We are currently addicted to Angry Birds Rio and Lanesplitter.

Random Things to Share with YOU!!!

1. Taxi Driver Imitates Michael Jackson, Delights the Internet [VIDEO]http://on.mash.to/gBAE1s


2. People are sharing their meals on my other site from all over the world. Feel free to join in, contribute and learn something about people from around the world. http://www.coffeechuglunch.posterous.com/ If you wish to contribute either subscribe or email your post and pics to coffeechuglunch@posterous.com


3. 50 Brain Facts Every Educator Should Know

Random Links for a Sunday Morning

New Weight Watcher Program??????

Kobe scoring 81 points in a game in 3 minute time lapse


Whole world is getting fatter

History of Sweetheart Candies

Jake Shimabukuro plays "Bohemian Rhapsody"

Another Random Question Thrown In Your Face!

Alright, so I am reading a new book that is going to be released March 1st in Australia and even though I just started the book I have already laughed several times within the first 20 pages.

The book got me thinking about something that made me stop and post here on this blog.

What are some sayings that people say that we all accept, yet we really have no idea what it means?

Huh? What are you asking bald guy?

Example, in the story her mother states the following which I have heard at least a thousand times in my life growing up. "Dead as a doornail."

Yes, we all get the concept in the phrase. You are either
1. No longer breathing
2. In some serious doo-doo and about to get grounded or in serious trouble

Yet, how many of actually know what a doornail is and someone would say "dead as a doornail"?

I had no clue myself so I did a little Google search and found the following info over at http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dea1.htm

I was going to post the info here on the blog, but the author has it all copyrighted so I will let it be. Just go the link and read and then come back here and post something interesting for the rest of us to read.

However, who would have thought it would have dated back to the times of medieval doors?

Another great email from my dad

My parents rock. Here is another email I received from my dad the other day. It is a video from the comedian Tim Hawkins. A pretty fun video covering rock music by the bands as they get older. Check it out and let me know what you think.

THE TRICK IS TO FIND THE MAN IN THE COFFEE BEANS

I received this in an email from my parents. I liked it and thought I would share. Enjoy!

Your task is to find the man in the coffee beans.

This is bizarre - after you find the guy - it's so obvious. Once you find him - it's embarrassing,

And you think, "Why didn't I see him immediately?" 

Doctors have concluded that if you find the man in the coffee beans in 3 seconds, the right half of your brain is better developed than most people.

If you find the man between 3 seconds and 1 minute, the right half of the brain is developed normally.

If you find the man between 1 minute and 3 minutes, then the right half of your brain is functioning slowly and you need to eat more protein.

If you have not found the man after 3 minutes, the advice is to look for more of this type of exercise to make that part of the brain stronger! And yes, the man is really there!

Flavor Flav coming to Clinton, Iowa

http://qctimes.com/business/article_5b03f0ea-258c-11e0-9b49-001cc4c03286.html


This is just what the city of Clinton, Iowa needs.

What Happened to TV Trays and TV Dinners?

Don't you remember everyone had these in their homes? People would get these as wedding gifts. I remember always using these when we visited friends and family.

I never see them anymore. Why is that? TV's are still the main staple for many people. TV's have increased in size and quality so why has the TV tray and TV dinner fallen to the wayside.

My wife and I were talking about this the other day and you just don't see them at all anymore.

I am working on a theory, but must continue to research some possible leads........

• changes in house structure? many homes are more open and therefore people can see tv from their kitchen where houses used to be so walled in from room to room
• more tv's in homes? people now have a tv in about every room where before it was typically just in the living room so if you wanted to watch your show then saddle up with the tv tray
• too busy? people are cramming more things into their lives than ever before and therefore don't eat dinner at home to even require a dinner table or tv tray

Other thoughts?

Things I learned from my massive pile of magazines - Part 2

Continuing to shuffle through my magazines I will continue with my post from the December issue of Outside magazine.

I read an interview of Conrad Anker (check out his blog). He is a mountain climber and does a variety of other things. What caught my eye was an image of him climbing up what appears to be a frozen waterfall. This article made me remind myself that I can accomplish anything(marathon?) and to not be afraid to take risks. Check his blog above you can see some crazy pictures that make you realize that sometimes we live life too "safely" and need to push ourselves pass what we believe our limits really are.

The other article that grabbed my interest was about training. We need to have both hard training days and recovery days. The recovery days really need to be easy and this emphasis is important to me. I plan on pushing my body to a much better racing time this year and in order for that to happen I need to train harder and more efficiently on my hard training days, but really stick to the plan and have those recovery runs where this year I pushed harder on those days than what I should have. Great article.

Outside is a great magazine and definitely more worthy of my money than Maxim.

Part 3 will be posted tomorrow and will provide you with my insights from Men's Health magazine December issue. Stay tuned...

Things I learned from my massive pile of magazines - Part 1

Tonight I began to go through my magazine pile and begin to dwindle down all this reading material. I have not had time to read the 12+ magazines that I subscribe to. I love to read. I love getting mail. Magazines satisfy both of those needs. Here is the first pit stop of magazines

I sifted quickly through the December issue of Maxim. This magazine I receive due to a previous magazine owned by the parent company had gone under so they are filling out the remainder of the subscription with this one. Anyways, I was suffocated by  the cologne and did not find any that I liked and walked away with some crazy races across America that piqued my interest. The Tough Guy Challenge, The Death Race in Vermont, and the Spartan Race were three that would be a tough, but fun challenge for craqzies like me. Probably won't do any of them, but it helps to get me remotivated to start running again. Lastly, an advertisement for the Ultimate Guys weekend where you have three days of going through the tactical training for special operations. I wonder what the cost is of this event to go and blow things up, shoot at targets, and completely overload the testosterone component to us males. This magazine took all of about 7 minutes to get through. Moving on to better reading material.

Moving on to some better reading I had to read the last two issues of Outside Magazine which came in a package with my National Geographic subscription. The one I read was the December issue. Did you know that the Swiss Army knife was made in 1884? That was a long time ago. I remember receiving my first Swiss army knife in 2nd grade from my dad. He told me it was sharp and to be careful. Being a boy it took no longer than that night while laying in bed to slice my finger and it hurt something bad. You live and learn. They no wmake more than 15 million a year. Crazy stuff.

I came across some other crazy stuff, but you will have to wait until Part 2.

Oh boy, I have to do what?

As I sit here this Sunday morning I feel a bit stressed(maybe stress is too strong of a word) with everything going on right now. I have myself all over and many of the things I am working on or want to get finished up are of my own accord. I have tried for the last two weeks to get myself to a point where I could feel good about moving on on some new projects and ideas, but just have not seemed to get to a place where I feel confident about things. So, I have decided to post my to do list here on my blog because putting out here in the cyberspace arena seemed to work when I was training. Here is my list of what I plan to get done this week.

1. I have a stack of about 20 magazines that I need to read through and either discard or keep based on content(yes, I have a massive pile of magazine that I feel contain too much good stuff to toss. I know bizarre, but it fits in well with the thousands of book in my house). In order to forced myself to actually get through these magazines I am going to be making posts about what I feel was valuable reading.

2. I need to get my reading count to at least 40 by next Sunday for the Cybils. I have some serious reading to get done prior our online discussion about our shortlist of best books.

3. I need to finalize some project ideas for second semester. As I finish these projects up I will probably post on my Twitter feed for feedback and maybe even here.

4. I have not made a Nerd Factory video for quite some time. I need to make one because I have so much to share. If you only knew what my parents purchased me for my birthday you would be begging to see the video footage.

Those are my four big things to get done on top of the daily living of teaching, Lego Robotics, coaching basketball, getting back into training (I finally get to run this week), reading my Twitter account(so, so addicted), and my family.

If I get these things off my plate, then that will allow me to enjoy my future projects

1. Coffee For The Brain Book Tournament kicks off in January. Judge meeting on Tuesday, but this tournament is a major time consumer. There is a lot more to running this than I imagined, but I am so excited to see how it unravels.

2. International Pen Pal Morning Club where I am going to expand the global connections of my elementary ELP students and open things up to any BMS student who wants to correspond with students from around the world. The first meeting is this Thursday at 7:35. This will also be another time consumer.

3. I begin coaching basketball with my 8th grade squad starting in January. Enough said there.

4. Lego Robotic team state is in January. Time to redesign robot.

5. Most important to my heart is getting ready for some races in the spring. I need to get back in shape, cut weight, get stronger(physically and mentally) and knock out a race or two before May when Little Hoosier #3 arrives.

6.  Get the Coffee For the Brain T-Shirts order forms out and about to donate the money to charity. The votes have been in for a few weeks and time to get this ball rolling.

7.Enjoy life and what is the point of doing all of this if you don't enjoy it.

I feel better already about posting this and the checklist begins now as soon as I pay bills, get groceries, help clean the house, and prepare for a Skype conference call on Tuesday.

Time to move. Stay tuned and keep me posted with anything going on Coffeechugians