Matthew Abel

Always fun to find it first.

Since I blog about whatever I want, Imma gonna blog about the Geocaching outing my pal Paul and I went on.  Paul’s a guy I’ve known for almost ten years which we talked about a bit – it’s shocking how the time has flown.  We first met in June 2004 at camp and helped re-create the teen program there.  That’s another topic entirely, but camp has grown a ton since we worked there and its nice to know we played a small role in that.

In early 2007 the executive director had a pack of GPSr from Garmin and no one in the Outdoor Ed department knew what to do with them!  Bruce (the aforementioned ED) took the OE staff geocaching, a game which we all considered strange and foreign.  It was all right.  He’d had to make a few sacrifices for the caches he hid to work, but we had a good time.

Fast forward perhaps a week or two.  I’d created a Geocaching handle and so had Paul but I wasn’t really doing much with mine.  Paul came into the office and told me he’d bought his own GPS.  The star was born!  It shows as he has over 3500 hundred finds to my paltry 600.  I really enjoy it, but he does more.  Sam – who proposed to via geocache – loves it even more.

I really enjoy going WITH someone.  Sam and I rarely can these days but Paul and I both had some kid-free time Saturday and we had a grand time.  As I said, we talked a bit about how long we’ve actually known each other.  We both have kids now and his is in Kindergarten.  Zach will be starting next fall.  Paul and I got along really well at camp – and still do – so we’re pretty good friends (camp speeds up that whole process) but it’s still crazy to realize we’ve known each other for so long.  I’ve known his wife almost as long (we were teen counselors together the next year).

Anyway, enough history.  We had some great adventures Saturday.  There were many traditional caches as well as a few mysteries and one Wherigo.  The unknown caches were interesting because I can’t log one of them yet – and that was the most treacherous of all!

Paul and I stayed safe.

I love climbing caches – really!

Throughout the day we walked a few miles through snow, mud, and a bit of dry ground.  I climbed a tree (Paul had climbed a few days before) and we both got our feet wet.  There was  a small lake we had to walk across.  The safety was very much in question, but it seemed sturdy until Paul’s foot went through close to a beaver dam.  Thankfully that was about it for danger.

The major challenge was inconvenience and heavy boots.  There was a cache involving a soybean field turned muddy by the snowmelt.  We also had some snow to contend with.  It wasn’t very deep, but icy and untouched.  Breaking trail is a challenge no matter what you’re breaking.

Above all else, we had a fun time.  We started about two in the afternoon and pushed on until the sunset, stopping to grab some burgers for dinner.

I really enjoyed being outside for such a long time in the fresh air.  It was gratifying to go eat food because I was really quite hungry as opposed to eating because it’s lunch time.  Geocaching is a bit of a mental challenge at times, but I really enjoy it because it gets me outside.  It’s hard to play outside when I’ve no reason to, especially in the cold.

Sam and I are off to Ireland this week, and I’m hoping to have some good Geocaching adventures from that as well.

I spied this one first . The real challenge was getting it out – it was frozen in place.

Paul takes pictures of many of his finds, a practice I may start soon.

On a meta-note, this is one of my first attempts at placing pictures into a post and it has been incredibly confusing getting any sort of alignment to work out.  Not many of the pictures are how I want them, but you get the gist, I am sure.  Also, all of these pictures are Paul’s.  They’re available on his Geocaching profile, but they aren’t mine, so don’t get any funny ideas.

Did you know when you register an URL and start bloggin’ (even if you aren’t bloggin’) you get spam!  I learned something today.

I saw Les Miserables with Wife over the weekend and am kicking myself for never having experienced it before.  ”I Dreamed a Dream” may be the most haunting, beautiful song in the English language.  Truly, this is an excellent.  But what, asks the smart aleck, has that to do with Frankenstein?

I will tell you.

Long, long ago one of my favorite movies was Frankenstein.  James Whale’s Frankenstein, to be exact, a masterpiece of early horror cinema.  Both the Bride and the original were on VHS in the Abel homestead and I watched it quite often, along with a motley assortment of Universal Pictures.  Eventually I found my way to Young Frankenstein – there is a comedy!

Young Frankenstein is incredibly well done.  Many of the sets are the same as the original movies as well as characters and subplots.  It’s not so much a spoof or parody as it is a well crafted love letter, a comical sequel to a series of movies that set the standard for franchises to be run into the ground.  It’s so well done you can laugh at it without viewing the source material.

But!  What happens to Young Frankenstein when (after time has passed) you have seen ALL THE FRANKENSTEINS?  Well it becomes even funnier.  The jokes are richer.  Everyone likes to be in on a joke, you see, and Young Frankensteins main riffs involve the movie Son of Frankenstein – not Bride, not Frankenstein, the son!  That’s when an Ygor first shows up.  That’s where the creepy Bavarian constable arrives.  That’s where we first see a man dedicated to restoring his family name!

Yes, by seeing that, the experience of Young Frankenstein is enriched.

You may have already figured out what that has to do with Les Miserables and South Park.

For those of you blissfully unaware:  The South Park movie is an animated musical comedy that seemingly rips to shreds all sense of propriety.  In the midst of its ribaldry are some catchy songs include an epic, multi-storyline-encompassing showstopper “Tommorow Night,” the height of Act One of this film.  You know.  Just like One Day More in Les Miserables.

I know deep in my heart that everyone involved with Les Mis throughout the years is tickled pink by the fact their musical has helped enrich my experience of cartoon’s swearing.

FIRE BAD!

IN the interest of rounding up my various thoughts and works, please find a link to my Kinja blog:

http://matthew_abel.kinja.com/

This blog is devoted entirely to the subject of the bowtie.  As an article of clothing the bowtie is simultaneously ubiquitous and under-appreciated.

I will be trying to update daily.  My more slovenly readers may scoff at this venture but I am highly invested in the Bowtie arena and am considering starting some sort of Bowtie society.  The Society of Noticing Outstanding Bowtie Supporters.  Or something.

This may prove more responsibility than I can bear, however, as I am also in charge of the American Sandwich Society.

So, here I am looking at webhosts.  I don’t blog much anymore, but I still keep wanting to keep it up and going and so I was thinking about re-registering my web domain and moving the site to a hosted webspace.  It’s fairly confusing.

Start up costs aren’t actually that expensive to start a blog, but its still more than I’m comfortable spending when I don’t even know if I’ll keep it updating.

Also, my Spotify radio turned off for reasons unknown.

Charter Schools — Socializing Debt and Privatizing Profit.

I always enjoy and article that looks at the whole story.  I think this does fairly well.

Charter Schools are kind of a nightmare, not only because I work in the public schools – well that’s about the main reason – but because they kind of have carte blanche with their kids.  They can do a lot of stuff.

I think some things have merit.  Utilizing parents more effectively is good as is teaching students to be a part of the facility maintenance, which may not be a popular view.

However, charter schools are also better capable to dismiss students who really don’t behave well or have severe learning disabilities.  That’s what I’ve seen – kids coming back to the public schools.

And you know what?  Bring ‘em.  I love these kids.

The past month or so I’ve been paging through the books of Tim Fenriss – “The Four Hour Work Week” and “The Four Hour Body.”  Both are extremely fascinating reads and well researched to boot.  I’d recommend them for anyone who works.

The “Work Week” is mainly about outsourcing.  As in, everyone should do it.  As in, EVERYONE.  The main point is that a lot of little crap takes up too much of our time and we really shouldn’t let it.  Not when there are people willing to do it for seven dollars and hour and all of our private information (this bit is admittedly nerve-racking, and addressed).  It also describes a grand business model for an Internet business you basically run for a few hours every week.  It’s about trusting people and relaxing a bit.

Of course, not everyone is going to be able to have a four hour work week – it’s pretty hard to telecommute when you’re a teacher – but a lot of the principles within are incredibly applicable.  Ferriss is a big proponent of media-diets and trying not to fill time with pointless nonsense.  It’s a book about “doing,” if if that doing happens to be parasailing or whatever.  I am sure some would find the book advocating laziness, but they would be mis-reading.  It advocates trusting your workers.

In the case of the classroom, this means trusting the students to do a heck of a lot more and it has been working in my room.   I’m incredibly interested in Ferriss’ methods and finding how to teach some of them to my students – he is very good at learning and has several good systems to do so.

The follow up “Four Hour Body” is excellent as well.  It has a lot of useful exercise and diet tips, but involves itself with a holistic body view as well.  Ferriss promotes a “slow-carb” diet which is a lot like the latest “paleo” diet craze.  The Paleo-diet is a pretty decent method with some good case studies I’ve found.  However, as I recently told someone:  I know how to eat healthy, I’m just lazy.

The downfall of the four hour method is that Ferriss doesn’t seem to have any kids.  I suppose he might promote nannies – he can afford them.  But there’s no “four hour parent” strategy, which is fine by me.  I love my kids despite their recent predilection for screaming.

If you’re really interested in streamlining your time and life, you would do well to read the Four Hour series.  Ferriss can come across in both as an insufferable know-it-all, until you realize he does know quite a bit and it’s working for him.

I’m sick.  Packed to the brim with thick, disgusting liquids in my head and chest.  My head hurts a lot.  And my wife has to work, so I will be alone with two very loud children whom I adore and love, but this makes them no quieter.

I have been quite busy at work trying to make things better in my room and it is going fairly well, but what can you do as a 3rd grade teacher when you have a student reading at a Kindergarten level?  And you are expected to perform crazy comprehension feats with children lacking fluency?  Ah well – they are learning bit by bit and I am sad only that I am inexperienced.

Time long ago I desperately focused on my success.  I figured I’d be very rich by now.  As it stands, I love my children and wife and that’s pretty nice.  But I find myself bored far too much – what am I to do with myself?

These are the ravings of the ill.

Just thought I’d say so.