Christmas Begins

I turned in my final grades last Friday and almost immediately started to prepare--really prepare--for the holidays. It included the following:

Shopping

My bags were heavy with wares from a trip to the outlet malls with my friend Kate

Wrapping

Baking

Yes, that's butter. Lots of butter.

And yes, those are dinosaur sprinkles. Merry Christmasaurus.

Eating

The Bûche de Noël at La Petite Creperie in Woodstock

The remains of Wyatt, the turkey, from our Friendsgiving (Trevor and I did not participate in the Wyatt consumption)

Crepes from Iguana Cafe

And hanging out with some fantastic people

Like some of my coworkers for our end-of-semester holiday feast...

This is where that log cake de noel came in.

Our Friendsgiving friends...

Cristen, mixing up some egg whites for homemade egg nog

Jayson, taking a picture before we sat down to eat

My awesome mentee Angelica...

Angelica with her presents before we hunkered down for some crepes

And family...

On Friday, I went with Mom and Bosco to check out the model train display at the Hancock Center.

Taking it all in...

Still taking it in..

We walked home from the Hancock and had some lunch before playing with some cool blocks. It was the perfect day.

Applesauce: the snack you eat right after lunch

Blocks!

 On Saturday the Power clan got together. Rae was able to fly in from Florida, but we missed Letty, who's been helping out in Atlanta for the last few weeks and only got back to FL yesterday. She'll stay at home for the holidays, but then go back to the TSA office in Atlanta until they can find a replacement (a replacement for Letty? impossible, so good luck, suckers).

Sadie ripping open her Ugg boots from Destiny

Sadie showing off her Girl PoWEr tee shirt from Auntie Rae and Auntie Letty

The cousins Sadie and Destiny--Sadie is in her final of four costume changes for the night

Angi with her new loud eyed baby Dora

Tonight we'll go over to Mom and Dad Bork's place to do some gift exchanges, and then to Sean and Angi Power's to hang out with them and Rae before she has to leave tomorrow. There will be more eating, drinking, and hanging out with our favorite people, and we'll be sure to take some pictures. But until then, Merry Christmas!

VWrite Wrap Up

Wednesday night was the closing party for the VWrite program this semester. There was a lot of food, fun, and maybe a few tears shed as the mentors and mentees recapped an excellent semester together.

Mentors and mentees, at the pot-luck VWrite party

Angelica, mentee extraordinaire

Angelica and her mentor and mentee buddies with their VWrite diplomas

At the end of the party, Angelica wanted to know: did we think that some of the Gage Park High School students would ever be back to volunteer as mentors themselves for the VWrite program? I thought that was a terrific question and I really hope that the answer is a resounding yes!

VWrite Update & Some Selfish Feel Good News

So, anyone who volunteers knows that the only reason to volunteer is a selfish one: to make yourself feel really good.

But the good and wonderful people at Open Books, where I've been volunteering, have gone above and beyond making me feel good and have named me their November "Vol-Star," which is a huge honor for me. You can read about it on the Open Books Tumblr page.

But when I got the e-mail from them, I realized that I'd neglected to write a post about the college visits I went on with Angelica, my mentee in the VWrite program, so this seemed like perfect timing.

Last month, Angelica and I took a campus tour of Columbia College Chicago, where she's interested in going after she graduates in 2014. She's thinking about studying television and movie directing, but she was also really interested in the music program they have at the college.

Getting some tour tidbits from our guide (who may be on Saturday Night Live in the near future...)

Angelica, in the music performance theater

Why, hello. Yes, I'll be going here soon.

After the tour, Angelica and I went to say hi to the Bork parents since they were so close. My mom thought Angelica was "adorable," which was not surprising, and after a chat we took a picture on the deck.

But our collegiate visits weren't over; Angelica was embarking on Gage Park's fall break, so the first Monday she had off school, she came with me to MCC. She'd visited the campus with me before, but I'd forgotten to take any pictures. I didn't make the same mistake this time.

Angelica, looking super studious in the MCC library

We had a great time, and it was so much fun to show her off to my colleagues. And my students in the Monday class (17 male/3 female) were also very excited to meet her. The boys may have showed off a bit on her behalf; they were a lot chattier than usual--and they're usually unbelievably chatty.

Angelica and I are almost through the official VWrite program--it's just one semester--but we've decided that it would be weird to not see each other anymore. We decided this over noodles at Urban Belly the other weekend (she really wanted to try traditional ramen and I didn't need my arm twisted to go with her).

Us, in front of giant bowls of noodles and some wrinkle beans, which were good but even more fun to say. WRINKLE BEANS!

You can't see it, but she's enjoying the delicious ginger candy they gave us after dinner

A. showed me the "good" way to take a picture of yourself: from above

We have a VWrite potluck after Thanksgiving, and then we made plans to get some crepes later that week. It's probably meaningful that many of our outings revolve around food. It means that we like food (mystery solved). We did decide that the post-crepe get together would be to work on her job applications, so there will be some work done. But we'll probably have to work on her applications over some cookies. Or banana splits.

All in all, working with Open Books and Angelica in this program has been a terrific experience. And if any of you are interested in volunteering, you should check out what they've got to offer (which is a lot).

Have a wonderful, turkey, potato, stuffing, and pie filled Thanksgiving!

College Sticks

In October Trevor had an unofficial reunion of his Columbia College pals. The weekend coincided with the Expo Chicago art fair, and friends came in from New York, North Carolina, and Alaska. And, of course, Chicago.

Our friend Adam, who lives in Fairbanks, came in on Friday and stayed with us for the weekend, and on Saturday we started the day at Navy Pier for the art fair.

We saw some pretty good stuff, though not everything wanted to be touched as much as this thing did

T and Adam walking and talking

On the #66

After we were arted out, we went to Martha and Jeremy's place, where the actual reunion festivities were going down. We had a barbecue, a bonfire, and lots of good art and non-art related conversation.

Some of the gang in the backyard: T taking the picture, Jason, Kyle, Jen, and Adam at the grill

What's up?

Me and Kate

Jeremy and Martha at the bonfire, where we spent the best parts of the night (which included a thirty minute stint of us trying to guess the punchlines to Kate's jokes [some dirty, some not]). I laughed until my stomach hurt.

Kate and Adam doing...yoga?

Now, we had a great weekend and Trevor was able to catch up with people he doesn't get to see that often. They talked and laughed about their time at Columbia, and told hilarious stories about each other and some of their friends who couldn't make it for the weekend. But what really hit home for me was how much of an impact their college years had on them.

Most everyone in their crowd is doing something related to photography or design. They've all continued to be creative people in many aspects of their lives (although Kyle doesn't formally shoot, he's a husband, the father of two girls, and he's doing social outreach, so he's a whole different kind of creative). Watching and listening to them was inspiring and hopeful. They'd bonded as friends and as artistic peers, and the work they made and learned about during school has stuck with them.

The college where I teach has a dramatically different environment than Columbia's, and the students I teach in my gen. ed. composition classes will never quite have the bond that other classes--those within a student's major--would have. But sometimes I get an inkling that my class has stuck with my students. That comes more frequently in my creative writing students--in July I wrote a post about a painting one of my spring creative writing students gave to me, and this past Friday I received an e-mail from a student in that same class who wanted to update me with pictures of her new baby (she was pregnant during our class) and thank me for helping her and pushing her writing.

But today I got an e-mail from a student I'd had last spring in a composition 2 class. That class focuses around source-based writing and I have my students read Columbine by Dave Cullen, which is a thoroughly researched, wonderfully written, but horrifying book about the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School. And my student, who is a soldier now stationed in Afghanistan, was, on his off time (I can't imagine what "off time" consists of in Afghanistan, but it's certainly different from my off time, sitting on the couch watching The Ring and drinking hot chocolate), browsing through the news and came across an article about the new book Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon. The article focuses on an interview Solomon had with Sue Klebold, the mother of one of the Columbine H.S. shooters, and my student saw it, remembered our class, and "just thought [he] would share."

Now, is this the same as inspiring a conversation of ten former students as they sit around a bonfire, ten years after graduation, waxing nostalgic and artistic? No. But it's what I've got and it made me pretty happy.

Playing Catch-Up

Yes, it's been a month since our last post. So this is me, playing catch-up.

But zombies are slow to catch up. They're slow at everything.

I went to school on Halloween dressed up like a zombie. I didn't take the train like this; I drove instead and wore big sunglasses to hide my really gross make-up. My students were doing a peer-review so they didn't have to listen to me very much; I'm glad because they were so weirded out by my appearance that they wouldn't have been able to pay attention.

One of my students also dressed up for the Pride Club's Halloween costume contest. Here she is, flying through the air in the Commons.

Hermione, casting a spell; Supergirl, flying; Rosie the Riveter, flexing

Halloween night I met up with Bo and his parents for some trick-or-treating. He was a lion--the cutest one ever--but he refused to wear his hat so he's a headless lion. Still cute, though.

I'm so cute! Even without my lion hat!

Why is my auntie trying to eat me? Oh. She's a zombie.

After Bosco-treating, we went to the Power place to hang out with Sadie and her parentals. Sean did their house & lawn up with Halloween fantasticness. It was scartastic. Terrifyic. Really cool.

Sean got a video of those zombie shadows and a projector to put them in the window. A. Maze. Ing.

Sadie was done with her tricks and treating by the time we got there, but we all still got to hang out and eat dinner with her for a while until she went to bed. She showed us a seriously great dance move she learned in dance class: it involves her hopping onto one foot. She rocked it.

The weekend before Halloween, Trevor and I went up to Door County to hang out with Grandma and Grandpa Madel. It wasn't Albie's first trip up there, but doesn't he look adorable?

Albie = Adorable

We got to spend Saturday night with Grandma's book club, the Mysterians. A mystery writer named Bryan Gruley was in town from Chicago for the weekend to do some readings at the local Door County libraries, and one of the Mysterians was hosting a cocktail party for him on Saturday. The party was a lot of fun, and all of Grandma's Mysterian friends, and Bryan and his wife, were gracious and interesting. And Bryan was so gracious that he implied he might be willing to come talk to my creative writing club. I will begin harassing him about this soon. I also started reading his first novel, Starvation Lake, but the copy was Grandma's so I only got through the first dozen pages. I'm going to get my own copy soon.

The view from Grandma and Grandpa's place

Trevor, sneaking around in the stacks at Untitled Used Books

I'll have more news later (sooner than a month..)!

VWrite Goes Theatrical

If you read our post from last month, you know that I'm part of the Open Books VWrite mentoring program this year, and I'm mentoring a fantube-ular girl named Angelica, who's a junior at Gage Park High School.

On Friday night, Angelica and I went on an adventure to see the play Black Watch, which was brought here as part of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's World's Stage program. I still have some connections at CST from when I worked there 1,000 years ago, and there was a secret discount (not really secret, but I'm trying to feel special) for the Black Watch shows last week. I snagged some half-price tickets and Angelica and I played it fancy for the night.

Well, not too fancy. This is where we ate dinner.

And no, it wasn't fancy. But it was deeeelicous.

The show wasn't at the CST main stage on Navy Pier, but at the Broadway Armory in Uptown. It was the perfect place for such a militaristic play.

Angelica outside of the house (gymnasium)

Our seats

The view from our seats, before the play began

Obviously we couldn't take pictures during the show, and thank goodness. We needed all of our attention focused on the ninety-five minute action and emotion-packed drama that was unfolding on the floor. The ten-man cast was excellent, and the scenery, music, and special effects were heart poundingly fantastic. If you want to see a very mild taste of what we saw, check out this video of the cast rehearsing.

And what was even more exciting than watching the actors march as the Black Watch soldiers do, was Angelica's commentary on their skills after the play. She was in the ROTC for a year and knows her marching stuff, so her critique was informative and expert.

Angelia, outside of the Armory

Mentor and Mentee, on the town

After the play, we needed to debrief, so we went to get some refreshments at Margie's Candies. I'd never been there before (which is insane. absolutely insane), so I was thrilled she'd suggested it.

And it was the perfect after-play treat.

Um, that's a lot of ice cream.

So we both finished the night full of culture, new ideas about the weeks ahead, and sugar. Lots and lots of sugar.

This upcoming Saturday we're going on a campus tour of Columbia College, so there will be more pictures. Until then, get tickets to Black Watch and then get some ice cream. It won't be with me and Angelica, but it will still be pretty good.