Fiesta fashion goes to the dogs

Yesterday, we went to the King William Fair, which is in one of the oldest and most expensive parts of town. Since it's expensive to live there, it's expensive to party there as well. The prices for food at King William fair are almost double what they are at other Fiesta events.

The King William District is a beautiful and historic part of town, though. The streets are lined with tall trees, and stately victorian homes. And yesterday, they were lined with people who dressed up their dogs, along with the usual Fiesta fashion.







And as a transition into more Fiesta What Not to Wear...the sign says it all...


Dude, like, you're so, like, 1985! I love the flipped collar.


I think the woman at the table is thinking the same thing I was thinking...where can I get a dress like that?


Typical for Fiesta, and San Antonio in general...


'Nuff said


This little guy has the right idea...after a hard day of Fiesta-ing, take a nap!

More Fiesta-ing

Believe it or not, I've managed to live in San Antonio for the better part of the last 10 years and never been to the "Battle of Flowers" parade. Monica and I didn't actually plan on going to the parade today, because we know it gets crazy downtown, but we wanted to go to Market Square and hang out for a bit, and the parade route pretty much ends at Market Square, we happened to be there when the parade started, so we figured, what the hell?

The colorful flags (or whatever you call those things) in Market Square



More "What Not to Wear--Fiesta Edition"




Who knew? Maybe Rachel can be a dancer...


It's all about the shoes: Since the parade is so long (well over 2 miles, I think) the queens on the floats wear comfy, funky shoes. All along the parade route, people shout, "Show us your shoes!" It's hard to see, but this girl was wearing flippers!


My favorite float in the whole parade. Sit Ubu, sit. Good boy!

Fiesta Oyster Bake as viewed through the lens

This year was the 90th anniversary of the Fiesta Oyster Bake. We spent two hours hawking pizza, then wandered around for a couple of hours before heading home.





What not to wear, Fiesta edition. You can't see the line in the picture, but this cowboy had pressed his Wranglers, as all good urban cowboys do.


Rachel at her first Fiesta...


And the sea of people...the main reason we don't stay late.

In which I complain about work

Yes, I realize that people I work with read this. Yes, I realize that people in other places have been fired for talking about work on their blogs.

I'm not about to say anything here that I wouldn't tell anyone I work with anyway, so I'm not that worried about it.

This week was TAKS testing, and the party line, the district mantra, the state mandate is that these tests are good for measuring student achievement. Maybe so, but they're breeding a generation of anxiety attacks, and not just in the kids. When a third grader nervous because they might not pass third grade if they miss the test or don't pass the test, something is wrong with the system. A single test should not be the determining factor for a child's success.

What makes it worse is that my school district makes people in my position go out and monitor the test, meaning that we go out to the schools to make sure they're not cheating. This just adds a bunch more stress on the teachers and students, and I don't care what the testing director for the district says, every campus I've set foot on has had nervous teachers and counselors because they're afraid I'm going to write them up for things they're doing wrong.

I try my best to put the counselors, principals and teachers at ease and let them know that I understand what they're going through. I remember what it was like to be a teacher, but there are test monitors who don't remember, and who take the opportunity to strike fear in the people they're supposed to be there helping. Each of the past two years I've heard horror stories on the campuses I've monitored about their last test monitor and how mean they were, or how they just made everyone feel uncomfortable.

It's really a shame. It's a long enough week as it is, especially for the teachers who have to sit for hours on end watching kids take a test. No reading, no grading, no email, nothing. It's mind-numbing, and having someone there looking over your shoulder for a mistake that could cost you your teaching certificate makes it that much worse.

It's the part of my job that I dislike the most, so I try to make sure the staff at the campus aren't afraid of me. I do my job, but I make sure they know I'm in their corner. It's too bad everyone doesn't do that. We'll all be glad when this week is over.

32 down, 8 to go

By the way, a big congratulations to our friends Mandi and Ed. Their baby girl, Darby Elena, was born on Tuesday, April 11, and what a cutie!


And the march of the babies continues...

Take me out with the crowd...

Monica and I went to see a San Antonio Missions game last night with our friend Andy. The Missions are a double-A farm team for the Seattle Mariners. Last night was the home opener, and there were under 2000 people at the game. How do they think San Antonio is going to support a major league team if we can't even support the minor league one we've got?

At any rate, it was fun to go to the game, and a beautiful night for baseball. Unlike Chicago, April is the perfect month to see a baseball game in the deep south. Almost all of the games are played at night (although I still prefer day baseball) and during June and July, it can still be in the upper 80's well after 10 PM, making it really uncomfortable to watch baseball.

We left at the top of the 7th with the Missions leading, and they did end up winning. Here's some pictures from the game...


I love the 100-300mm zoom lens I got off eBay...



This is Michael Garciaparra...yup, Nomar's brother. He plays second base.



Evidently Steve Bartman's mom moved to San Antonio...

Boring

Not much going on this week. The wonderful folks at Monica's school had a very nice baby shower for us yesterday, and we got lots of great stuff for Rachel. Thank you all once again.

I did have to fix our kitchen faucet this week. Wait...fix would imply that the original is still there. I had to replace our faucet this week. It started spouting water out of the top Sunday night, so Monday I went and got a new one. The old one needed to go anyway. It had been leaking since we moved it, along with the hot water line that came from the wall. So now, new faucet, new hot water line, no leaks, and I'm 2 for 2 on plumbing projects in our house.

Monica's new nickname for me is Bob Vila.

Alamo-ed

Can you believe that my wife, who grew up in San Antonio, and has spent all but 3 years of her life living here has never been inside the Alamo?

That's like living in Chicago and never going to the Sears Tower.

Yeah, sure, we've been to the Alamo, but the one time we went, it was late on a Sunday afternoon and we couldn't go inside.

People come from all over the world to see the Alamo. It's the #1 tourist spot in the state of Texas. And yet, my wife, who grew up a mere 10 minute drive from it, had never been.

Until today.



We decided since we didn't have anything to do, we'd go check it out. I've been a bunch of times, but it had been about 5 or 6 years since the last time I went, and they've changed a couple of things--opened up a couple of the rooms on the side so you can walk through them, and moved some exhibits around.

It was nice and cool inside, which is a good thing since we topped 90 today. We spend about 45 minutes walking around the grounds, through the gift shop and into the long barracks (also air conditioned). Afterward, Monica got a raspa--that's a snow cone for all of you northerners--and headed home.

OMG!

Last night, Monica and I were watching Deal or No Deal on NBC, and as I always do, went to the NBC website to play the lucky case game. I did my 10 entried just like I'm allowed, then we left to go over to Pete and Carol's.

On our way over there, I got a phone call--it was from the show. I had been picked as the winner of the lucky case game! We won $10,000!

I almost drove right off the road. We had to pull over so I could catch my breath and let it sink in. Ten thousand dollars!

This couldn't come at a better time...with the baby on the way, we can pay off some things and it will allow us to save more money for her college fund!

If only it weren't April Fool's Day, and all of that were true...

The latest geek craze

Sparky and I are now Geocachers. What is Geocaching, you ask? Well, allow me to explain.

Geocaching is like an adventure game in your neighborhood. People hide caches, then post the latitude/longitude coordinates online, usually at the Geocaching website. A cache can be just about anything. In it's simplest form, it's a weatherproof container with a notebook and a pencil so people can log when they visited the cache. Most caches have little trinkets in them as well. You're expected to leave something if you take something. The caches stay put so other people can find them and that's how it works.

Last week, one of the schools I work at got GPS units. I borrowed one so I could see how it worked, and went to find my first geocache. The first one was easy, but the second one I looked for, just a few hundred yards from the first one, I couldn't find. It was then that I realized how inaccurate GPS units can be if you're looking for a small thing in an exact location. But I guess that's all part of the fun.

The caches we found today I really had to work for. The first one we went hunting for was at the dog park (appropriately enough), and after I got within 20 feet of the location, it took me about 20 mintues to actually locate it. After we came home from the dog park, we went hunting for geocaches close to the house. There are three within about 3/4 of a mile of each other along Culebra Creek, over by our grocery store. It took us almost 2 hours to find all three, but we did it. One was a small film canister that was hanging from a tree, and I was lucky to look right at after only 5 minutes of looking. Another was really easy to find, since the hint left online pretty much told me where to look. The third was the hardest, not just because we had to walk through very tall weeds to get there, but because there was a lot of tree cover, which means the GPS doesn't get as good of a signal from the satellites. I went one tree too far, and upon expanding the search, found it easily.

Now to complete my geekiness, I just need to leave a cache somewhere.

Pictures below...

A picture of the Boeing building at Kelly AFB taken from the first cache site we visited today


Sparky enjoying the squeaky bone we took from the first cache


Culebra Creek, our second geocache hunt of the day. Live Oaks make for really cool black and white photos!

Fried Apples

And I'm not talking about the ones at the Cracker Barrel.

Unless you're calling me a Cracker, and my house a Barrel.

So...the other day, I pull out Monica's laptop and try to turn it on. I stress the word try, because I tried damn near everything I know, and it wouldn't turn on at all. Not even the CD spinup, or a fan noise. Nada.

I looked everywhere on the web to find the key combination to completely drain power from the motherboard, but couldn't find it. I know there is one, because I've shocked a computer into not turning on before, and Apple tech support gave me the key combo, and viola! It turned back on. But I couldn't find it anywhere, and of course I didn't write it down when it happened.

I took it in to get it fixed yesterday, but we didn't get home until after 6 so I couldn't call back the place to find out what was wrong. I called this morning, and they told me the motherboard was fried. Since her machine is almost 4 years old, it's not under warantee anymore, so a new motherboard would cost over $700.

Ouch.

Luckily, her hard drive was intact, so I just had them put it in an external drive enclosure, so she can access her stuff from my machine.

Whomp!

Monica had a doctor's appointment today, and while we were waiting, little Rachel was using mommy's insides like a jungle gym. I put my hand on Monica to see what she was up to, and starting poking and prodding the little tyke.

Bad move.

I swear, our little girl is never going to have any problems defending herself. She decided to try out some of that Kung Fu crap on me. I was surprised by how hard she kicked me, but Monica was just about laid out. She told me I wasn't allowed to provoke Rachel any more because, in the end, it was her that ended up getting all the pain from it.

Where in the hell did doctors learn to count?

Is it 6 months or 7? How come no one tells you about this whole "it's really 10 months" thing until after you're pregnant?

I guess we'll just keep counting weeks...that would be 29 weeks.

A big Texas "Howdy" to all my sister's friends...

Howdy ya'll. I noticed that quite a few people have been visiting via my sister's blog (linked over there on the right) since she finally decided to throw me a link on hers.

Anyway, if I don't know you, welcome, and have a look around, and if I do know you, have fun catching up with the events in my life.

Her first photograph

Besides the first sonogram, of course...



If you look carefully, you can see she has a lot of hair up top. We can't wait to meet her in person.

Teach a man to fish...

Mom and Dad just left today. While they were here, we did a bunch of things none of us had ever done before. We went to Fredericksburg, reneted a boat and went fishing on Canyon Lake, and got a 3D sonogram (which I'll post pictures of in my next post).

It was great to have them down, and the weather cooperated very nicely, as you can see from these pictures.

Dad catches a famed Canyon Lake Shirtfish

Memorium

Two years ago today, Monica and I found out that her mother had passed on. It was, and still is a very hard day for her family, especially now that we're having a little one. It also happens to be her mother's birthday, which made it that much harder.

We felt the best way to honor her was to name our child after her. Tomorrow, we get to see her for the first time when we go for our 3D sonogram. I'll post pictures as soon as we have them.

Garage Sailing

Yeah, I know I spelled it wrong. I did it on purpose.

We took part in a garage sale yesterday at our friend Maria's house. We did pretty well...enough to have some spending money for when Mom and Dad are here. We also got the chance to meet Maria's new dog, Chico.



He's really not that big...I bought a new lens off ebay, and was trying it out. It allowed me to get the extreme close-up of the pup. We had great fun at Chico's expense...but I was not the instigator of this:



I did, however, have to take this picture of our friend Andy and the dog because...well, just look at Andy's shirt:



Get it? It's Chico and the Mann!

I also got way more sun than I needed to yesterday, but not enough to blister and peel, which is a good thing, because I plan on getting even more sun later this week fishing and doing other things outside with the 'rents.

This one's for Google

My good friend Andrea tried to Google my blog this afternoon, but couldn't find it. I told her I think it's because I haven't put my first and last names together anywhere on the old Laleblog. So here goes...

This is Scott Laleman's blog. This page belongs to Scott Laleman. Looking for Scott Laleman? You've found him. Hi there, I'm Scott Laleman.

Take that Google.

By the way, if you're a high school kid and you've come here looking for information about how to get around the blocking software your school has in place so you can get to your MySpace.com page, stop reading my blog and do your homework. I never had any info on how to get around that software in the first place, and in the second place, the blog that talked about that, the one that used to reside here, is long gone because I want to keep my job.

Thank you for visiting Scott Laleman's blog. Have a Scott Laleman day.

The Astronaut, The Social Studies Teacher, and Me

Hey, remember that building with the green neon that I posted a picture of last night?



We were on the top floor of it tonight.

So why were we on the top floor of one of the biggest buildings in Dallas? We were there for a reception honoring Dr. Mae Jemison, the first woman of color to go into space. She's the keynote speaker at the conference we're up here for, but the banquet tonight was for the school where the conference is being held, a Catholic high school here in Dallas.

Dr. Jemison was very cool to listen to and to talk to. She grew up on the south side of Chicago and read a few passages from her book tonight. I got a chance to talk with her for a bit, and we joked about how the oldest siblings always pick on the youngest. She was the youngest in her family. I am the oldest in mine.



Another highlight of the night was the "small world" event that happened. When we were at dinner last night, we were talking with Anita and Roger (our gracious hosts, and the GIS gurus) about funny town names. I happened to mention that I was from Normal, Illinois, and Anita said, "That's where Fred Walk is from...he'll be here tomorrow."


Anita and Roger, our gracious hosts

I did one of those double takes, and asked her "Who?"

"Fred Walk," she said again.

"He was a social studies teacher at my high school," I said, still a little bewildered by this turn of events. I can't remember now if I ever had Mr. Walk as a teacher, but I knew him, and most of my friends had him for class. We had a nice conversation when he got there, and yes, Sarah, he even remembered you.



Overall, it was a pretty entertaining night. I got to meet an astronaut, ran into someone who knows that Ironmen isn't just a Black Sabbath song, and got to eat good food.

Oh yeah, since all of this stuff we're doing is taking place at a Catholic high school, I was a very good Catholic today...actually I didn't have much of a choice. The lunches we had today were either veggie or tuna, and none of the food tonight had meat in it. Still really tasty, though!

Tomorrow, Eric and I present a couple of things at the conference and head home late tomorrow afternoon. It's been fun here, and I've learned a lot, but I can't wait to get home to my beautiful wife and sleep in my own bed.

Big "D"

My colleague Eric and I are in Dallas until Saturday for a GIS conference. GIS stands for Geographical Information Systems, and it's the "next big thing." It's basically using maps to analyze data and it's very cool, if not a bit complicated. I got the "fire hose" treatment of info today, and my brain hurts.

Eric and I got into town last night and went down the to West End for dinner. While we were down there, I had my first celebrity sighting in quite a while. We were finishing up dinner, and saw some action across the street. When we looked more closely to see what was going on, we realized that Howie Long was leaving the resturant and getting into an SUV driven by Terry Bradshaw. Evidently they do hang out after the season is over. Unfortunately I didn't have ma camera with me, but I took it tonight, just in case we had another celebrity sighting.

Unfortunately we didn't, and I didn't have a tripod to hold my camera steady for the cool night shots.



But I'll bet you didn't know I was a lucrative business owner in the Big D.



And here comes the obligatory big building shot...



And finally, a cool picture and an artsy picture. The last one is the building we're staying in.

In San Antonio, a live truck in your neighborhood is never a good sign...

Our quiet little neighborhood has been in the news twice today.

Twice. In one day.

This morning, there was a story on the news about some crazy-ass who locked himself in an ex-girlfriend's garage and slashed himself with a knife. The style of the house looked like the ones in our neighborhood, so I Google Mapped the street name and found out it was the street that's behind our house. Not exactly in our neighborhood, but close enough.

This evening, on my way home, I passed a KENS 5 live truck coming out of our neighborhood, and when I turned on the street to get to our house, a WOAI live truck was sitting at the corner...1/2 a block down from our house (and screwing up traffic, I might add...not that I'd expect any less from WOAI).

Turns out a girl that lives down the street from us was attacked by a home invader earlier today. She had stayed home sick from school, and had awakened to the man standing in her living room. She fought him off, but got slashed by a knife in the process.

This does not make me feel comfortable about going to Dallas and leaving Monica here for 3 days.

If this is wrong, I don't wanna be right...

Just a sample of a photo from my new camera, which I love, by the way...



Yes, that's right...the snapdragons are in bloom. In February. Have I mentioned how much I love living in Texas?

OK, ok, here's one of the puppy for you all too...

Belly!

Early January:


Today:


What a difference a month and a half makes. By the way, I LOVE my new camera!

A new camera

We must have at least 5 cameras of various types laying around the house, almost none of which get used on a regular basis.

Don't get me wrong, I love my cameras, but it's hard enough for me to remember to take my lunch to work with me in the morning. Remembering to take film to the grocery store, and then go pick up the picture a few days later...that's asking way too much.

I loved my digital camera because everything was instant. I could see the pictures as soon as I took them, I could play with the settings to get the shot I wanted, and not have to wait a week to find out if it came out OK or not, and the best part...I wasn't spending any money on a whole role of film to get 3-4 pictures that I really liked. If I didn't like it, I deleted it.

When my digital stopped working a couple of weeks ago, I didn't think much about it because it had stopped working before, but had always started working again at some point and time.

I have finally given up hope.

Two and a half years, and almost 4000 picutres later, I have decided it's time for a new camera.

Monica said she wanted to get me another camera for my birthday, but hasn't yet. I decided that I wanted to move up because, while I loved my little point-and-shoot Canon that I could change all the settings on, there were some things that drove me crazy. Shutter lag, picture size, the time it took to change settings on manual. I really missed having a fully manual, really good camera like the one I learned on in high school. The prices of digital versions of these film cameras had been way too much for me to get one, though.

Until this week.

Best Buy just happened to be having a sale on digital cameras, and Pentax had just released a very affordable model. Pentax. The kind of camera my mother owned, which I learned to take really good pictures on when I was in high school. It was a sign. I had to buy it. It arrives Monday.

What will my first picture be of? My beautiful, pregnant wife, of course. I'll post it here.

Bonus: the camera I purchased can use old Pentax lenses with an adapter. Hopefully Mom still has those lenses tucked away somewhere.

SNOW! It's gonna snow, and we're gonna have a snow day, and go sledding, and, and....

What? No snow? It'll be in the 60's today? Crap.

Thus begins the "March of the Babies"

We received a phone call from our friend Roger, in the Great White North, last night that his wife Bianca had her baby boy on Thursday. So now it's time for the rest of the dominoes to fall.

Our friends Mandi and Ed have a baby girl due in April, Pete and Carol's (brother and sister-in-law) baby boy is due in May, and we're bringing up the rear in June. All we need is some friends who are having a baby in March. Anyone want to sign up?

It's actually pretty cool, because since I'm so old (as Monica loves to remind me), I figured most of my friends were done having babies, and I figured we'd be one of those couples with no friends that had kids the same age as our kids. I'm glad I was wrong.

This morning, while we were lying in bed, I looked over at Monica's tummy and saw that it looked oddly deformed. One side of her belly was sticking up way farther than the other side.

It's the first time we've seen Rachel this way, and it was pretty cool...in an "Alien" sort of way.

Busy, busy, busy

My camera broke last weekend, so I didn't get any really good pictures at the rodeo this past weekend. Monica and I took our nieces Rebecca and Claudia to the carnival part of the rodeo on Saturday. We also took them through almost all of the animal barns, which was cool because these city kids don't get to see a lot of livestock up close and personal-like.

This week is hectic. In addition to starting another pilot program at one of my schools (this time with email), and teaching a 6-week online class, and trying to clean out the spare room, I'm also preparing for my presentation at TCEA on Thursday. I'm actually going to Austin Wednesday and spending the night. I'm really finished with my presentation, but I need to rehearse, because I'm taking a new approach to powerpoint. After watching Lawrence Lessig's talk on Free Culture, I decided to adopt his style of presentation, which one of my colleagues called "minimalist powerpoint."

I'm really going to have to get my timings down, though, so I don't look like a bumbling idiot in front of a room full of people.

Wish me luck!

It's like Chicago, but without the cold, snow, or murders...

It just took me 90 minutes to go 20 miles.

Why?

Because in San Antonio, there are no alternate routes, so when there's a wreck on one of the expressways that blocks 2 out of 3 lanes, you either sit in traffic on the expressway, or try to wind your way through the maze of southeast-to-northwest and southwest-to-northeast streets (like I did). Either way, you're going to waste away a big chunk of your day. Next time, I'll sit on the expressway...at least that way I don't have to worry about stoplights and turns.