Today I’m at the 20th Anniversary Reunion of the Blue Thunder Marching Band in conjunction with Boise State’s 75 Year Anniversary and Homecoming. That’s a lot of capital letters. Reunions are generally pretty depressing affairs, if you ask me, but this is being kind of fun if only because I really know relatively few people. Twenty years worth of alumni is a lot of people to not know.

Plus, I get to wear comfortable shoes and – gasp – blue jeans! – which is nice.

There are a lot of cute band babies.

Hopefully today’s game will be more fun than last week’s.

It’s fun to play again, though. Ryan and I are skipping the homecoming parade but we’ll be marching pregame. Hopefully we’ll get some good photos….

My laptop finally arrived! Thoughts:

• I hate Dell. I really do.
• I love my computer, though.
• Even though it isn’t anywhere near as brown as I was led to believe.
• But it’s this really gorgeous copper-brown subtle color.
• The inside? With the keys and stuff? SO pretty. Everything’s silver, no black.
• I’m a real keyboard snob, and this keyboard is AWESOME. The touchpad mouse is actually usable, too! I can get by on this without a wireless mouse for quite a while, I think.
• Can’t quite figure out how to make the webcam work.
• Vista is weird, but I think I like it.
• Office 2007 is REALLY weird. But I think I’m (going to) like it.
• Oh, man, it is SO nice to have a laptop again. I feel like I might actually catch up on my e-Life again. You know how long it’s been since I posted on this blog, but did you know how long it’s been since I read any of my sites/comics/etc. or caught up on email? Ye gourds.
• Dell didn’t send my laptop case, but it should be here Monday. That’ll be nice; the bag I’m using right now is not designed for a computer, and really hurts my shoulders.
• Note to self: check out the speakers.
• Came with nice headphones.
• Still hate Dell.

I’m working at the high school as an “intern teacher” and have been steadily getting more integrated into the classroom. I’ve had the chance to lead the class a little, and I’ve had a few amazing adventures in other peoples’ classes that you can read on my teaching journal. (If you’re reading this, and don’t know where my teaching journal is, contact me…)

The football season is off and running. I have no comment on the Washington game, except BLAH. However, this does mean that my job at the band office is also off and running, and that’s its usual mixed bag. I LOVE working with the kids, but there are other aspects that are rather challenging for me. I think that the good things will continue to outweigh the bad for the short semester ahead of me, and then I’ll have another set of problems when I can’t work at all! Hooray.

Ooo! I got my hair cut. Feels GREAT.

This is so stupid – I never intended for this to be a newsletter blog. I’m going to make a really earnest attempt to write decent posts for this site again – in fact, I may go to my “private” journal and see what I’ve written recently (not much) that might could be recycled. I haven’t had time to write ANYTHING lately, but I can do better.

Wow, I can’t believe that I haven’t posted on this blog for twenty days. I guess that’s just a sign of how crazy busy my life has seemed to be in the past few weeks. It’s hard leaving, starting, and getting used to jobs. Band camp is hard, too. So, as it turns out, is “intern teaching” – whatever that’s supposed to mean.

The worst thing is, I have very little to say…

I have the most awful blisters. Yesterday I tried to wear some cute new shoes to school – little orange leather slide-mules. Unfortunately, they made my feet sweat like nobody’s business, and I quickly found I couldn’t walk without stopping every few hundred yards to mop out the inside of the shoes with a paper towel. (Ew.) I guess that probably loosened up my skin just in time for me to put on heels for pregame; half an hour later, I was hurting pretty bad, and knew that blisters were starting. I wasn’t sure what to do, because I knew the orange shoes wouldn’t do much good, either. That’s about the point when I discovered Meredith’s flipflops under my desk and decided that they’d be an improvement. They were, too – all except for the tighter-than-anticipated toe strap, which rubbed oozing bleeding blisters between my toes. By the time I got home, I had silver-dollar-sized, teardrop-shaped blisters on the balls of each foot, and open sores between the big and second toes of each foot to boot. Today, I’m limping around in my plush slippers that – fortunately – actually look like normal shoes at first glance. I’m supposed to go camping tomorrow, and I’m really not sure what I’m going to be able to do other than sit in a camp  and whine. I definitely have to get some better shoes – there’s just no getting around it. No more Payless shoes for me.

You’d think I would have already learned that.

Yesterday was our season opener against Weber State. I’m afraid we beat them pretty badly, and broke one of their players in the process. Well, broke his leg, anyway, which isn’t as bad as it could have been. Unfortunately, the broken-legged football player was apparently scheduled to get married today, so that’s got to really suck. The band looked really good – and really big. Hooray, big band!

Owwww.

I’m not getting any reading, writing, crafting, cleaning, or anything else done.
Bleh.

That’s all for now. Got to go back to work. Smooches!

Well, today is Tuesday, and Friday is my last day at MotivePower.

Earlier today I got tired of typing out procedures, so I decided to take down photos and posters from my cubicle walls. That, as it turns out, was a mistake. Now I’m sitting here in a depressing gray box, and it makes me feel sad and unwanted – even though I did it to myself. I’m tempted to print out a bunch of pictures of the workplace and put them up, if only to break up the grayness.

On Monday I go back to the band to serve as one of its graduate assistants for one last season. I’m happy and excited, even though I know it won’t be all rainbows and lollipops. (Rainbows and lollipops?! What the heck is that supposed to mean?) I really loved working for the band, and it will be fun to have one more season – particularly when it’s going to be as awesome a season as this one is shaping up to be. The band is going to be enormous, the team is going to kick butt, and – yeah. I’m excited.

(Also excited because my laptop ought to arrive sometime that week! Hurray!)

The following Monday is band camp, and I’m sure that will be an exhausting five days. They’re extending into the evenings two nights – looong days.

And the Monday after that, school starts. I’ll be working at the band office 20 hours a week, observing/student teaching at Capital High School, and taking nine graduate credits: English Teaching: Writing, Literature, and Language (T/Th 4:40-5:55); Teaching Secondary Students with Exceptional Needs (Th 6-9, yikes – Thursdays are going to be rough); and Content Literacy in Secondary School (Mon 6-9). Ryan will be in the Exceptional Needs class with me, which should be a lot of fun, I think.

Come January, I’ll be a full-fledged student teacher, and come May, I’ll be a certified teacher….

Well, I think I’m going to go home now. I’ve got some laundry to hang up (oooh, my aching wrists) and, hopefully, some pointless reading to do.

…when you’re in the funny papers.

…when you’re in the funny papers.

Bowl win boosts BSU’s profile
Admissions inquiries spike in January

Interest in Boise State University’s academic programs has jumped sharply in the aftermath of the BSU Broncos’ dramatic Fiesta Bowl win.
Online inquiries to the admissions office have increased 135 percent since the Broncos won the bowl game in overtime Jan. 1, BSU President Bob Kustra told faculty and staff Wednesday in his annual spring speech.

The graduate school has been getting 10 times as many applications as it normally does in the first week of January, Kustra added. The applications are coming from all around the country.

“There’s only one reason for this, obviously, and that would be the Fiesta Bowl and the national attention that has been focused on Boise State,” Kustra said.

The Broncos, who finished the season with a 13-0 record, have long been popular in the Boise area. But since their win last week grabbed national attention, Kustra has received hundreds of congratulatory e-mails from associates and strangers around the country and the world.

“We are going to benefit immensely from this experience in terms of media exposure coast to coast,” Kustra said. “Without question, the success of this football program has elevated Boise State to the national stage.”

Kustra’s spring speech is an annual event presented in advance of the spring semester, which starts Tuesday.

Long before the Fiesta Bowl win, BSU was adding academic programs, planning new construction and mapping out a strategy for becoming what Kustra likes to call a “metropolitan research university of distinction.”

It’s obvious to those who work on campus that things at BSU are changing, said Leslie McFarlane, business manager for university housing. Among other things, student housing is full, with another residence planned.

“We have all new management in my department, and we’re creating new mission statements,” McFarlane said. The Fiesta Bowl win might take this growth to new levels. On Wednesday, Kustra said the image of the team, the nature of its strategic win and the attention the drama garnered would help university officials reach their goals.

This year is BSU’s 75th anniversary, and officials are gearing up for a fundraising campaign aimed at raising $200 million to $300 million.

The public campaign will not get under way for months, but Kustra already is raising money.

The university will announce on Jan. 19 details of the largest donation BSU has ever received — a donation that was in the works before the Fiesta Bowl victory, Kustra said.

Now “there is significant potential to engage donors beyond what we thought prior to this grand win,” he said.

Kustra talked about the university’s plans for its interactive learning center, a $14 million high-tech teaching building scheduled to open this summer. It is one of many new projects planned for the campus, including a stadium expansion that will hold BSU’s first faculty club.

But most of his speech was devoted to the rewards Boise State expects to garner from the Broncos’ performance. With more applicants, BSU will be able to be more selective in choosing students — and subsequently to increase the quality of academic programs, he said.

Kustra added that many of the people who sent congratulations also commented on the humility and civility of the BSU football players and coaches.

“I … saw an amazing team never give up,” Kustra quoted from a former Oklahoma fan’s letter. “If college football means anything in an academic context, what more can we teach?”

An Ohio State fan wrote: “If you could just bottle up what your university hasn’t distributed, we could use it out here in the rest of the USA. What will these young ladies and gentlemen that you are teaching become? I can’t wait to see.”

Okay, so I wasn’t really rooting for Florida or Ohio State. Conflict of interest, you know how it is. I wanted Ohio to lose, to throw even more chaos into the BCS pool, but I dislike Florida intensely, so yeah. But it doesn’t matter who you were rooting for, this is still damned funny. Yea team Photoshop!

I spent the day of NYE sick in bed, the evening staggering around pep rallies in downtown Glendale (??? It could have been Phoenix, I honestly have no idea where I was) trying not to pass out from germiness and exhaustion, and the night of NYE from about 10 o’clock on fast asleep (and probably snoring). The following day was spent circumnavigating the University of Phoenix stadium (anyone else think it’s funny that the UP has a stadium?) and then experiencing for the most extreme football game of my life. As a result, two things I intended to do didn’t happen. One, I planned to do the Polar Bear Plunge here in Boise. And two, I didn’t write a New Year’s post.

I’ve never been a “resolutions” kind of gal, to be honest, but somewhere around January 2006 I decided to embrace the idea of doing something “every day” that scared me. It started out with small things and evolved into a yearlong adventure of pushing my own limits, breaking new ground, making valuable mistakes and learning even more valuable lessons. And I kept that “resolution” all year long. It was an amazing year.

Seems to me there’s no reason to stop a good thing, and that’s why this year I plan to continue pushing myself, continue “doing the thing you think you cannot do.” Of course, there’s more to this than simply doing scary things – if there wasn’t, I’d be reduced to a mere adrenaline junkie. And what better way to illustrate the finer points of this new way of life than to draw on the game America is STILL talking about?

Accept no excuses. I’m very good at rationalizing. If I’m tired or sick, my mind can come up with all kinds of reasons why I don’t really have to go to work/school/etc. The pep rallies surrounding the Fiesta Bowl were no exception. I was so sick, and the idea of just lying in bed and letting other people take care of it was very tempting. But I had a job to do and a life to live, and I couldn’t do either of those things from my hotel room. If you can do things that hurt, that take every bit of physical willpower, then you can do things that are just uncomfortable and new.

Do the right thing. Early on during the Bronco’s stay in Arizona, we got word that one of our players had been sent home – not just benched, but actually flown back to Boise – for a violation of team rules. Most of us were envisioning he’d indulged in the use of recreational chemicals at that point. Not so. Coach Pete sent the player – someone who saw play time, although not a starter – home because he was spotted outside the hotel after curfew. Not doing anything bad, just breaking curfew. It was a hard thing for him to do, because it cut a good kid out of a historic game and a memorable trip, but it was the right thing to do for our clean program. Sometimes the right thing to do is also the scary thing – you often find that you’re standing alone when you stand up for what is right.

Have faith. Our QB threw an interception, allowing the opposing team to score a winning touchdown with 1:02 left on the clock. In the stadium, people deflated, sat down, turned away. Around the country, people turned off the TV. But I refused to believe that it would end like that – it just couldn’t. So I reached over to Ryan, took him by the hand, and said, “There’s a whole minute left.” Sure, it was crazy. How often can you pull off a touchdown against a highly-motivated team in only 62 seconds? But we did. We scored, we went into overtime, and we won – and everyone who gave up, who had no faith, missed it all. I’ve always believed that things happen for a reason and that things will turn out for the best in the end, and that belief has helped me accept the situation when things go badly or when they fly out of control.

Be creative. By the time we hit overtime, our defense was worn out, and the Broncos had pushed themselves to the limits in a veritable shootout against OU. We had known all along that we probably couldn’t beat OU on sheer physicality or depth of chart, so we fought back using our brains instead. Coach Pete pulled out all the stops with some crazy plays, and they paid off. Not only did his trifecta of “trick” plays win the Fiesta Bowl, but they got the entire nation talking about Boise State – about new styles of football – about the BCS system - about Coach Pete – and about creativity. I know I can’t always compete with other peoples’ strength, experiences, opportunities, etc., but I also know that the best way through is not always a direct route.

Do the impossible. A touchdown in 62 seconds. A hook-and-lateral on 4th and 18. And, stop the presses, a behind-the-back Oscar-winning Statue of Liberty for a two-point conversion. All of these things are impossible, but the Broncos did them anyway. The Broncos could have gone for the safe extra point to go into double overtime, but instead they reached for the stars.  Too many times, I think, we tell ourselves – or let other people tell us – that something is impossible just because it hasn’t ever been done, or because it’s crazy, or because it’s unlikely. But if you refuse to accept that something really is impossible, then all you have to do is do it…

Prove your doubters wrong and your supporters right. How many pundits and fans said that Boise State could never hang with Oklahoma? How many loyal Broncos said we had a fighting chance? With a minute left in regulation, the TV cameras focused on an OU fan holding a sign that read “Sorry, Cinderella, but the clock just struck midnight.” Maybe they didn’t know that Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings?

Be strong. In those frantic moments after the game when we all thought Dave was badly sick or injured, I was terrified. He is the closest thing to a grandfather that I have had in my life, and a hundred nightmares of watching him die at a rehearsal or performance flooded into my mind when I saw him lying there on the ground. Fortunately, I’ve inherited some excellent crisis-mode traits from my parents, and while people around me were falling apart I was able to help the security guards and comfort upset staff members and students. I knew that other people needed me to be strong, and that I needed to be strong for myself if I was going to get through it all.

Enjoy. The entire city of Boise is basking in the afterglow of the Fiesta Bowl. When you’ve done something truly wonderful, something truly challenging/scary/impossible, you have to take the time to stand back and appreciate what you’ve accomplished. (The converse is true as well – when you do something truly scary, and it backfires, you need to take the time to evaluate and appreciate what went wrong.) People have an innate need for celebration and recognition, even and especially recognition from themselves.

And so, in haiku form, my New Year’s Resolution:

Reach within myself
for the wings that carry me
high, striving higher.