Civic Duty

Voted today!!! Yes.

Coffeehouse

The coffeehouse went well tonight. We started with our cover of Mumford and Son's song Little Lion Man and then later the ukulele club played I'm Yours by Jason Mraz.

In the first song the camera messed up so it didn't film the start but that's okay. Here's the
link: Little Lion Man

In the second song Chris and I play with one of my AP Chem students who also does vocals. Unfortunately Evan the Music director was back near Beth when filming and he was talking through the whole performance.... sorry. Here is a link: I'm Yours

Coffeehouse and other stuff

     Sandy has hit and thank goodness there was very little impact at our house. It is horrifying looking at what it has done and the current impact it is having on many places in the United States. My Connecticut friends on facebook have been without school all week and gas is getting more difficult for them to find. At least most of them have still got power and the trees that fell didn't do too much damage.
     We are also very happy for my Uncle John who is home and recovering well. We wish him luck on his efforts to quit smoking. That must be a nightmare.
     Halloween was a good one at the Richey household as we were able to get about 20 to 25 trick or treaters. While most were children in costume, there were a few that were teens out looking for trouble. We heard multiple m-80's going off at around 8:00 to 8:30 near our house, but our mailbox was not a target. It reminded me of Newtown growing up and how the cabbage night and halloween night antics were so prevalent. We have been pretty lucky that this has been all but absent over the years here in Vt.
     Now on to the good news. Tonight is the Fall Coffeehouse and I am planning on playing. My initial goal was to play mandolin on one song with the other teachers, however the chords are really difficult for me to master in the time needed so I will be playing my ukulele instead. Since I have my uke out anyways, I will be also playing with the second performance of the CHS Ukulele "club". I did not play with this club for their first performance in the last coffeehouse because, honestly, I didn't know they were starting that night. I am debating whether to play my normal Uke or to play the banjo uke. It will probably be the normal uke though.

This is the poster for this month's coffeehouse. The girl who is doing the artwork is one of my AP Chem students and she is doing a fantastic job. I particularly like the "hands" in the steam.

Here was the poster from the first coffeehouse this year:

I hope to have Beth film these performances and will get them up on my youtube channel as soon as I can.

Squatching and praying

The 2012 Vt. Squatch 5K went well yesterday. We had beautiful weather for it. We set it up to run for a while then a short walk in the woods with an official Squatch Call then ending with running. We did great and look forward to continuing to run.

Speaking of weather we have a big old storm on the way and we are praying for our loved ones that are in line with this storm.

Finally we are adding a special prayer for my Uncle John who is going through some severe medical issues right now. John, if you are reading this our prayers are with you.

October

Creepy October is finally here and there are some updates so here we go:

1st off the school has announced the new teacher of the year and so my reign has ended. It was great fun and an honor representing the school.  This past week was spirit week and it was interesting not having to work with a class. This is the first year in a really long time that I am not a class advisor. The good news was that I got to cheer for ALL the students. The teachers secretly prepared a fun surprise for our students and performed a surprise flash mob at the pep rally. It went over great and I have rarely seen such unity. Here is a link: CHS Flash Mob

You probably noticed that I was not in this. I could not make the practices and was a bit uncomforable with the dancing part... go figure :)

I was convinced however to help with a repeat performance Friday night at the homecoming football game. There were about 12 of us and thank god as far as I know, there are no videos up of this.

2. This weekend, Beth and I went to the Haunted Forest. This is the second time going there. It was nice although we liked last years theme of haunted fairy tales better than this years carnival. Ultimately though when you get to walk through woods lit up with literally thousands of Jack o Lanterns you can't complain.Here's a link to their show: Haunted Forest

3.Running. Beth and I ran this morning with some success. I only ran about a mile and a half, but could have gone further. I just had that weird premonition feeling that my legs (meaning hip and knee) would start acting up if I pushed it today. I think we are still on track to run our Squatch 5K this next Sat. Regardless we will go out and do it even if we walk a bit. We have had to rethink where we are going to run. Initially I was hoping to hit some of the trails we were running this summer, however it occurred to me today that it is Fall in Vermont and there is a little something called HUNTING SEASON. So we are probably just going to run the Milton Track where we usually run.

4. I am getting in full geek mode for the fall with new episodes of the The Walking Dead and my recent purchase of a Dungeons and Dragons Board game. Watch out N. and Paula at Thanksgiving. This looks like it could be fun. Here is a link to what the game is like and the rules. I actually have the Legend Of Drizzt version which is newer and has different monsters but plays similiarly. D & D

5. Music. Still playing the guitar off and on, not getting much better or worse, but I am back to working on my picking. Trying some Travis Style and linking it to One Tin Soldier. It's a work in progress. Enjoying listening to Mumford and Sons on the ipod. IIt's a little commercial but has a good bluegrass feel and I like it.

5. Finallly, Finally I am starting to see a glimmer of hope for some possible hockey this season. Fingers are crossed that they can get a deal done by Thursday and save an 82 game regular season. by the way nice win tonight by the Pats. I thought they were going to blow another lead though.

Enough for now!!!

Incentive

So here we are, the 9th of October and no I still haven't run a 5 K, But I'm close. Running over 2 miles flat and slow... but doing well. I felt it was time to ramp up the stakes and start looking for a race. Paula had let me know about a zombie run being held near here on the 20th that was tempting. The problem?Well first of all it would have been $77 each which included running with a LOT of other people andin the end all you get is a t-shirt and unfortunately the sizes only went to X-Large so that's no good for me anyways. I started looking for other 5 K's and saw that there was one in Shelburne but it had a significant hill in it. Then there was one scheduled for Oct 27th. Still thinking about it but again there are some decent hills in it and to be honest I just don't feel ready for that. All our running has been on a track or around fields and on a flat trail.
     What was there to do??? Well how about making my own race. Yes that's right. Some time this month Beth and I are going to run the 1st Vermont Squatch 5 K run for Jeff and Beth Richey. I don't know where we'll have it yet, but I am thinking that I'll incorporate the trails and fields we have run and incude a bit more. We also don't know when exactly we will try it. It will probably be either the 20th or the 27th. I did however order us our very own shirts that should get here this next monday. here is what they will look like:

I chose the squatch run in honor of one of my favorite subjects.

Thats all for now!!!

Coffeehouse and running

     Had a  very interesting day. It started with a jump back into running. As I have posted before, Beth and I had started a couch to 5K program at the tail end of the summer and it was going pretty well for both of us. In fact I had gotten through week 7 and was about to finish up. That's when the running hit a roadblock. First Beth got sick.Then I "thought" I was getting sick. This created a really good excuse each day why I should NOT run. It amazes me how even after making such strides, that decision came so easily. And let me make this clear so Beth doesn't feel bad... her being sick did not stop me from running, it was just my convenient excuse not to run. Well needless to say after 16 days of inactivity, I finally said to myself," Enough. It's time to go running again." So yesterday I laced up the shoes, headed out to the fields and began running. I figured I would have lost where I was at so I dialed in a run from earlier in the program and told myself to not push it. To just go with what felt right. After the first 10 minutes I felt great so I kept going. After 20 minutes I still felt great so I kept going. Finally made myself stop after 30 minutes. I did not run fast at all, probably did 2.25 miles in that 30 min. but I was amazed at how easy it was. I even had the energy to get home and do the yardwork I have been neglecting. The ironic part of this is that I just got up about 25 minutes ago and my nose is stuffed up. yeesh.

     Now on to the other news. Last night was the first coffeehouse of the year. Over this past week I had decided to do a song with Chris (science teacher), Will (science teacher) and Evan (music teacher). We were going to do "Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Son. I was planning on playing my mandolin (I think I am becoming the mandolin guy at the coffeehouses). This is a really good song and I highly recommend listening to it if you get a chance. Anyhow, Will ended up not being able to attend so Chris, Evan and I decided to perform Crosby, Stills, and Nash's "Teach Your Children Well". Unfortunately Jerry Garcia is dead and couldn't provide the lap steel guitar intro. I chose to try playing my banjo ukulele that I got in Nashville Indiana two summers ago. I think it came out pretty good. We had virtually no practice time so I was experimenting with my strumming patterns a bit in the song. I wish we had more practice time because at some points I really like how I was counterstrumming to the guitar. Here is a link to the performance on my Youtube channel:  Under New Management

You may wonder what the Under New Management is all about. When the Coffeehouse program started at CHS it was run by our history teacher Bob Damon. It ran for a few years and then he had to move to the Boston area. He passed the torch over to Chris and Will. This is the point when I was first learning to play guitar and mandolin. In my first performance the teacher group that performed started calling themselves "under new management" and we have stuck with that.(note that they may have started calling themselves this BEFORE I started playing with them, I wasn't there to tell...."

On a final note, we have started having interest from a few students and quite a number of faculty to start a ukulele club at school. I love this idea and can anticipate some awesome performances in the future.

Today Beth and I plan on getting away to do some leaf peeping and visit Quechee Vt for a little bit of antique shopping. Maybe I can find an old gibson mandolin for cheap :)