I Love My Job!

So yesterday in my AP Calculus classes (2nd and 3rd period of the day), we did a fairly hard problem. It surprised me that in both classes after we got done the problem both classes clapped! Of course I was feeling pretty good about the class and myself, just coming alive for the love of math...

A couple kids stayed after class to ask questions, but the one question I loved the most was a girl who pondered much more than Calculus in the class. Her question was simple, "How do I get those rings of color in my hair?- they are really cool" Now not only am I disappointed that I didn't reach all the kids with that amazing problem, I find out I have a bad hair dye problem"

and Kristen & Linda you thought you had hair troubles!

(all pictures from google image)

Bye Bye Dairy Queen

I decided every time I do a new banner heading I will place the old one in my blog. Who knows maybe someday, someone will come up with an easy way to make blog posts into a book. Of course mine would be a best seller :) (just kidding in case my humor did not translate well)

...but anyway, it is funny that some people think Michael and I take all these great adventures, because here we were in North Carolina, and we were all excited to be at the Dairy Queen (we actually have one picture of the sundae maker laughing at us). But in our defense there are no Dairy Queens by us, but I guess that could be a good thing for our waist line.

The new picture was taken when we visited Hearst Castle on our way up to SF. Story still to come.

The FB photo's story continues: The Bike Ride

So when we decided on San Fran for our 4 day weekend it was my job to figure out what we would do. So I picked out 3 things, unfortunately 2 of them involved a about an hour drive to get there and the 3rd only took about 15-30 minutes. So it was back to the drawing board.

Having been to SF before on two occasions, we had already seen Alcatraz, China Town, The Trolley and the cable cars (there is a difference!), Ghiradelli (aka chocolate) square. I did find a walking tour of the Victorian houses, however it started at 11:00 and was only 2hrs so that killed the whole day.

Finally Bingo! We saw bike the bridge. Well it would be about an hour to 2 hour trip from where you pick up the bikes, cross the bridge, and take the ferry home- but that was the standard trip- so pf cource we couldn't just settle for that - no, we had to plan for a whole day of biking.




So we decided we would go to the Presido (the one thing on my original list-pictured above), then to the Golden Gate Park, and then by Seal Beach, cross the Bridge then go to Sosolido to catch a ferry. On the map (which was actually attached to the bike) it did not look like that far of a trip. But then again the bike company didn't really promote that trip... and know we know why!

1. The map stinks!!! It left out many roads so a frequent site was us stopped and looking at the map. (Actually a nice lady who lived in SF felt so sorry for us she went into her house and got us a better map)

pic of us in Golden Gate State Park at the observatory (this is a great park!)

2. Not sure how this works out geographically but the trip was about 70% up hill! And let me tell you those hills of SF are steep! (OK so I walked some of the hills instead of biking)

3. The map was not drawn to scale, so we actually did about 25+ miles. Did I mention it was up hill? It took us from 10 am to 6 pm to complete our trip.

But then we had a nice hearts day dinner right on the bay to unwind. Amazingly I was not sore the next day-but the opposite, I was energized. Michael and I talked about doing another tri in our future. In fact this past weekend on Saturday we went for a 15 mile bike ride (only took us 1.3 hours due to the fact of not being so hilly, and not getting lost and looking at a map every 15 minutes) and we went swimming on Sunday.

The Story Behind the Face Book Pictures: The Bridge

I must have a facination with bridges. I remember taking the wrong road in Pittsburgh when crossing one of the bridges at night for the first time. All the bridges looked so pretty lighted up, I was just marveling at them. (Pittsburgh bridges). Then two years ago we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and had a great time. I took such great pictures (if I do say so myself) of the lines in the bridge that I had my top 4 framed in a collage that is hanging in our living room. (Brooklyn Bridge pics need to scrool down some to see them)

So when debating what to do in San Franscico this past weekend, when Michael found out we could rent bikes and ride across the Golden Gate bridge I was in. (It was quite a ride to get there: the story of the 20+ bike ride going up lots of hills will be saved for another blog).

The fun fact of the Golden Gate bridge, is that there is a port-a-pottie about half way, and they painted the outside to match the bridge. Now that is dedication to the "Golden" part. We had lots of fun going across the bridge, stopping to watch surfers, see the SF skyline, see Alcatraz, and make resolutions to someday sail under the Golden Gate Bridge, while watching all the sail boats in the bay.

I took lots of pictures of the bridge, so it was hard to narrow down my top 5 (but I did it Linda!)

and I have scattered them through my bridge blog for your enjoyment! :)

Jesus must of loved Math

I started teaching trig the other day in one of my classes. To refresh memories of painful memories for some, trig involves angles. So the math powers to be decided to call angles after the Greek letters. So I was showing my class the Greek alphabet, and explaining how to write the symbols.

So after I said the letter "a" in Greek is called alpha, I wrote it. I told the class that I remember it as a fish. One student asked, "oh is that why people get the fish tattoo?" I replied no, that is the Christian fish (I heard murmurs through the class, and just chuckled0