This was inspired partially by Steve Dembo’s little trivia post, but mostly by famed webcartoonist & adventurer Ryan Estrada. Granted, Mr. Estrada’s are much more fanciful, but I still like my list. See if you can guess which one is false! And yes, I know some of these do make me sound a bit full of myself (assuming they’re true). However, I think there are some embarrassing ones in there as well (assuming they’re true). (After this we’ll return to my irregularly scheduled education / technology / art podcasts. I have one half written.)

1. I was born without tonsils. [TRUE! See the comments.]
2. I was also born with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. The lack of oxygen at this crucial point may explain #19 on this list. Well, it explains a LOT of things.
3. There is footage of me getting attacked by a goat. [TRUE! See the comments.]
4. On my first real date ever I locked my keys in the car with the engine running. [TRUE! See the comments.]
5. An astronaut once signed my hall pass. [TRUE! See the comments.]
6. I once had a high school teacher tell my class “Oh yeah, my wolves came home last night.” He wasn’t joking.
7. I have climbed up one side of a mountain and down the other. More than once.
8. I once forgot to take off my glasses while cliff diving, and spent the rest of that week long vacation without them. I am legally blind without my glasses. [TRUE! See the comments.]
9. I once accidentally erased my college advisor’s computer hard drive. [TRUE! See the comments.]
10. After an ATM machine ate my debit card, I walked several miles through over a foot of snow to get it back from the bank. [TRUE! See the comments.]
11. I once met former president Gerald Ford, but at the time I was too young to understand why it was a big deal. My parents still tease me for that. [FALSE! See the comments.]
12. I once pointed to a student’s HTML code and said “There’s your problem, you used two apostrophes instead of one quotation mark.” I was right. [TRUE! See the comments.]
13. After all those art classes, I still don’t hold my pencil correctly. [TRUE! See the comments.]
14. My father is the son of a carpenter from Nazareth. [TRUE! See the comments.]
15. I have taught every grade level there is in the U.S. educational system.
16. In college I started not one, but two international writing clubs.
17. I have been interviewed on the news more than once. [TRUE! See the comments.]
18. As a child when I fell off of my grandmother’s porch railing and broke my wrist, I was berated for misbehaving and not taken to the hospital for 24 hours. [TRUE! See the comments.]
19. I gave up a department chair position to teach art on a cart in not one but four schools, and considered it a step up.
20. I am a fourth generation teacher.

Ok, so there are the facts … sort of. Remember, one of them isn’t true. The question is, which one?

Just a short update, as I don’t want this to become a “medical maladies” blog.   I wouldn’t be posting this here at all if it wasn’t for the one I wrote yesterday, since I don’t want to leave anyone hanging.

My wife is home and doing better, after they adjusted a bunch of the medications she’s been taking.  (kidney failure will do that to you, but we’ve gotten used to it.)  The worst news we got yesterday was that she’s showing signs of the early stages of pneumonia, but we caught it early so she should be ok.

Thank you for thinking about us.

Bad news: This morning instead of going to school, I took my wife to the hospital for high blood pressure.  (Her medication isn’t fixing the problem.)

Good news: This hospital provides free wi-fi.  It’s the first time I’ve ever seen such a service offered by a medical institution, and I’ve been in a lot of them.

Bad news: most web 2.o sites (Twitter, Bloglines, etc.) are blocked.

Good(?) news:  I can’t goof around online, I have to catch up on my work instead.  Oh, darn.

Aiden 018,
originally uploaded by teach42.

Steve Dembo is now the proud papa of a bouncing baby boy! He hasn’t blogged about it yet, but there are a ton of Flickr photos uploaded already.

Congrats, Mr. and Mrs. Dembo! Now the fun can really begin.

I’ve finally read all of the RSS feeds in my Bloglines account.

…

NOW what do I do? 

… for the best SAT question ever.

Students should know that we’re still learning, and they should know how to do it so they can use the same steps.  (Or avoid them, if we’re not really learning.)

Looks like there’s a whole lot of people out there who share my name.

You see, people? THIS is why I don’t have AaronSmith.com as a web site.

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 3,651 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Wow.

I’m at the 2006 Discovery Educator Network National Leadership Conference, and it’s already awesome.

I got here last night, and within 5 minutes of my arrival at the hotel I had shaken hands with 6 people I knew from other conferences, three of them telling me that they were going to show my last video at this conference.

The strangest thing is when people I’ve never met recognize me. I’m used to students calling out “Hey, it’s the Art Guy,” but there’s still something odd about having one of my peers see my hat and exclaim “Oh, you’re the Art Guy!

Oh well. I’ll post more as it happens, along with any and all photographs.

Technorati Tags: NLC06

1. Days so far: 2
2. Days until inventory is due: 3 school days
3. # of items on inventory: @300 (so far)
4. # of trips to the dumpster: 4, plus a computer monitor box full of garbage that I haven’t taken out yet.
5. % completed: 40
6. Weirdest item found: rubber snake, complete with plastic rattling tail
7. Weirdest thought while working: I can see the foot wide stain on the carpet for the first time in months, and I’m oddly satisfied by that.
8. Number of bugs seen scurrying for cover: 1
9. Glad I’m done counting: acrylic paints
10. Not looking forward to counting: 50-100 books, each of which is unique. (I may end up donating some of the more damaged books, as they were for the most part all donated to me in the first place.)
11. I didn’t know I had so much: white paper (That’s not a complaint.)
12. Sanity maintained by: podcasts, educational and otherwise.

…I needed a break, so I took stock of my accomplishments so far.

I’m going to take an unusual detour away from my normal art, ed, and tech ramblings to wish all the Smiths out there a happy Smith Day.

What, you don’t think it’s a real holiday? Well the Seattle Times disagrees!