travelertrish - October 26th, 2009

1. Visit our new website: www.faihouse.org. I must say, says she, dusting her fingernails, I am pretty proud of it. And having to rebuild it from total scratch wasn't a bad exercise. Some things I got righter the second time.

2. Spa! one of you asked how that went. Well, it was just lovely. I do have some photos that WILL get uploaded sooner rather than later, but for the past week, I've been trying to restore the backed up files to my wiped-clean computer. The B&B we found was reasonably priced and more like a European B&B-- shared bathroom (though we were the only ones in the building besides the owner, so we didn't have to end up sharing anything.) Nice quilts. Very antique-look. Wood. Nice lamps. The breakfast was scrumptious. And then we headed over to the Hot Springs themselves. This is something I love to do, and have done maybe five or six times. Only before we stayed in the campground. We read aloud from Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. We talked about our vision of our future. It was wonderful. The masseuse was not brilliant, but was perfectly adaquate. I give her a B+. It was a great getaway.

3. Computer woes: Here's the rule I broke and so read it and learn: Back up your computer files. And THEN test your backup. I worked with Judy on Sunday. That girl has enough on her computer to copy in about three minutes. She doesn't need a complicated backup system. Me, on the other hand, I've got something like 130 GIGA bytes. Sheesh. Takes hours. I need to get it done overnight. I had done the backup because that computer was acting sort of wonky and I didn't trust it not to crash on me. Which it did. But what I hadn't done was TEST the backup system. It turns out I just couldn't get the computer to recognize my backup files AS backup files. So it won't go in and restore them for me.

4. Tell No One. If you can't stand to read subtitles, you should get a reading course and get better. This is not a movie I thought I'd go for. I thought it would be too violent. It was violent at times, but so wonderfully shot, so well-crafted, such a nuanced and compelling story, that the violence didn't bother me. Rent that sucker!

5. Movie-making. Whew! All the movies are finished, though a couple of students needed some outside help to GET finished. I'll put the evaluation of the course up on the Worlds Touch Blog when I get it done. I learned a lot, including that not all students are going to love me. What a concept! Not loved by all? How can that be? But I do know that I'm a very intimidating teacher to some people...one reason why, if I ever tell you I'm going back to teaching high school, please shoot me on the spot.