Podcast

Well, Brenden and I attempted to make a podcast. With no idea what in the world we were doing, we followed Keri's advice of making it like a conversation, and we rambled on for over 13 minutes talking about Facebook as digital writing, as well as other means of digital writing.
That was the easy part. It's so easy to have a conversation about something you know about or have an opinion about. The not easy part is trying to get it formatted into something that will be able to uploaded into my blog.
I am not a Mac person. I actually loathe Mac and it's non-right click button ass. But since I know nothing about these editing programs, and there was already one installed on the Mac side, I am trying to use it to my best ability.
Garageband is actually not too bad to use. I've used MovieMaker on my computer, so it's kind of like that, but still, I have no idea what I'm doing.  I've managed to cut down our talking from 13 minutes to less than 5, but I still don't know if this is what we are supposed to even be doing.
I'm the kind of person that needs confirmation that I am doing things right, and I feel like I'm not doing anything right so far.
Maybe a few more minutes of editing and then attempting to upload it to my blog is what I need to make things feel right, but I kind of feel like I'm at a standstill right now.

I'm not a podcast kind of person. I hate hearing my own voice. I had to listen to NPR so much when I was doing my internship at Planned Parenthood that I haven't listened to it since. Listening to people talk without seeing them always makes me think of that cheesy Delilah radio show where she plays love songs and talks with a porn voice. (Maybe that's what I need to do to stand hearing my voice...)

I think it could be useful in some ways, but I don't know if I am up for it. We'll see.

Draft 1

Podcast 2 

After all is said and done, now that I have 2 podcasts under my belt, I feel a little better about the process.  Yay for learning something new today!

What's important

So as I'm sitting here trying to focus on all the things I should be doing, I can't get one thing out of my head. My dear friend, Cynthia.  She's in her mid-30s. She's the life of the party. She's that crazy lady that is still so in love with and sexually attracted to her husband it kind of makes you sick. She has 2 awesome kids, and a step-son that is the cutest thing ever. She has an amazing house that her and her husband built. She's beautiful. And she's brilliant. She's a Process Coordinator for SPS, which is an incredibly tough job. Special Education takes special people to run it, and for her to be a big dog like that, you know she's amazing. She (obviously) has awesome friends.She's just got it all going for her.



She found out yesterday that she has a progressing Stage 3 Glial brain tumor. Almost her entire frontal lobe is covered by a tumor.  They think they can remove a large portion of it without permanantly altering who she is.

How does life change that fast?

Earlier this year, Easter weekend actually, she started having major headaches. She got to the point where she couldn't even function. She came to Pipkin one day, and couldn't move or talk or function. I took her to the hospital and sat with her in the waiting room for hours until they finally admitted her. Her doctor had done and MRI and a CAT scan, and a PET scan, and even though they found the huge white spots on her brain, they refused to do anything about it. They said it wasn't cancer, and that they could give her pain medicine, but there wasn't really anything he could do.
Luckily, she found Dr. Sami, who is amazing, and he actually did his job. He found out the truth, although it wasn't what any of us wanted to hear.

It's completely scary to think that she had a tumor for that long and didn't know. It's terrible to think about how many people don't pursue it any more when a doctor says he can't do anything else. And it's completely horrifying to think about losing my friend.

Just makes you think about how tomorrow isn't guaranteed and we all need to really think about what is important to us.  Since I love country music so much, let me cheesily quote Garth and think about "if tomorrow never comes."

Getting Started

This is my blog. La la la la. Julie's blog. :) If you sang that to the Elmo tune in your head, we should become friends. If not, we can still be friends, but you might not get me.

So I was trying to come up with a really cool blog title, and I came up with pretty much nothing.

I went with Chapter 27, because I love Holden Caulfield. I know I'm not a teenager anymore, but I totally get that teenage angst and not wanting to grow up. I agree that there are far too many phonys,  and my cynicism sometimes keeps me at a distance from people. Life can be depressing, and sometimes it takes a lot to finally see how beautiful little things are. And like Holden, I use way more profanity than is needed.

I have another connection to Catcher in the Rye that makes it memorable to me. My first year teaching, I had Juniors. We read Catcher in the Rye, with me reading most of it outloud because they can't cuss without going into fits of giggles at age 17. Some of the kids hated it, some loved it, some must have slept through it.
January 27, 2010, I was reading his with my 6th hour kids. One of them asked if they were ever going to make a movie. I replied, "I'm sure they will after JD Salinger dies. And that could be any day, he's getting pretty old!"
During 7th hour, I had 2 of the kids from 6th hour come rushing in. JD Salinger was dead.  How fricking ironic is that? The rest of that year, at least once a week, someone would ask me who I was going to kill today?

Guess you gotta be known for something.