Journalism Day, Fired Up & Bad Tweets

Last week the fab-u-lous newspaper staff and I along with my hall monitoring buddy Rhonda piled into two school suburbans and journeyed to participate in The Dallas Morning News Journalism Day extravaganza.

On the way there, I asked the amazing Shannon, my editor-in-chief, how she was doing. To which, she responded (in hopes that I would mention it in my blog) that she was "Fired up about life."

While the kiddos attended some interesting seminars presented by professional journalists, I hiked over to another building for a session about "social media" taught by a very nice techno guru kind of guy--Kevin Sharpe. The session primarily focused on Twitter and TweetDeck.

Instead of raising our hands to ask questions, we were suppose to tweet our questions. Fine and dandy, but I noticed something. People (like me) would tweet a question, but rarely were those questions answered because people were lost in their own steady stream of tweeting. It all rather reminded me of those people who stand in the produce section of the grocery store and look like their talking to radishes when they're really talking to someone at the other end of their Bluetooth. (At least, I hope there's someone at the other end.)

Although I'm still not quite sure about why everyone should be all a twitter about tweeting,  I figured I would just roll with it. So the next day when I returned to school, I really tried to implement some of this new found knowledge. Instead, I couldn't get logged on to TweetDeck. Some dumb upside bird with error 500 appeared, reappeared and reappeared over and over and over again. If that stupid bird, weren't already dead  I think I would have popped him full of birdshot myself.

And they wonder why teachers are so reticent about implementing new technology into their classrooms.

Yeah, I guess you could say that I'm pretty fired up, too. I'm just not so sure it's about life.

Tweet that.

Melancholy, Journalism Day & A Few of My Favorite Things

I’d like to say my brief blogging hiatus was the result of some fun-filled extravaganza involving sandy beaches, shopping and sunshine. (Don’t ya just love alliterations?)

Instead, it was more like a melancholy malaise brought about by a wide collection of things…my father’s illness and death, the impending doom we call yearbook, and let’s not forget that smorgasbord of angst dished out by this thing we call life.

You see, I was waiting to see if all this melancholy would disapparate and my FunnyBack would return. Then, I realized if I waited for that to happen, why that could possibly take, like, forever. Some things you just have to work at to make happen. (And we all know how I feel about things.) So as I was saying, some things you just have to work at to make happen–kind of like those 150 or so yearbook page proofs (which btw got mailed Friday).

So-o-o-o let’s all do the dance of joy for that–and hope none of those pages contain anything that should have been in the “Things That Will Get You Fired Folder.” Yes siree, Missy, there’s no telling what is lurking out there. I did catch the Sports Studs headline. (Jeez Louise, what were they thinking?)

In addition to slogging through all those page proofs last week, we also attended the Dallas Morning News High School Journalism Day. I must say my kids looked fab-u-lous… so fab-u-lous, in fact, that I told them it didn’t matter if we didn’t win anything, at least we were the best looking bunch. I also got to embarrass all of them by bringing the chicken, sitting him at our table and making our photo editor take pictures of him. Hails bails, it doesn’t get much better than that.

All in all, it was a great day filled with some of my most favorite things. Here’s my list of…

A few of Richie’s favorite things…

#5…An unending supply of free Starbucks coffee
#4…A free tasty little continental breakfast and a free tasty three-course lunch
#3…Time to actually eat said tasty free breakfast and lunch
#2…No bells. None. Zero. Zippo. Crack fire, I get goose bumps just thinking about it.

And, drum roll pah-leese… Richie’s No. 1 favorite thing…My kiddos winning some awards.

Yep… as politically incorrect as that sounds, I love it when the kids win. Remember, this isn’t the YMCA. Winning matters. Competition matters. Success matters. And yeah, I know I told them that they looked so fab-u-lous winning didn’t matter, but Jeez Louise, we’re not in cosmetology.

Next weekend is the big state journalism convention in Austin. I get to spend three days with 13 teenagers. (Can’t you just feel the excitement oozing?)

Let’s hope we come back with some more awards (the newspaper is up for a state Star. Woo-hoo!)

If not, I’m teaching a session on blogging. Maybe I can finally hand out some of those cards I never got to give out in New York City. And, of course, the chicken is coming along.

Who needs sand and sunshine when I’ve got kids, Austin and the chicken?

OK, OK OK, so maybe I did book a trip to Barbados with my BFF Jennifer. After all, the chicken can only take you so far.