Happy Birthday to me.

I spent the latter part of the work week in Indianapolis at the national NSTA convention.  The entire science department went, and I was able to attend a mix of session covering physics, environmental science (which I will be teaching next year), pedagogy and research findings.  It was time well spent, despite making the week a very busy one.  The large disappointment was the number of presenters who seemed unable to break from their regular teaching, and failed to present properly to an adult, expert audience.  It was nice to be able to spend a good amount of time with department members, as it hasn't happened much during the school year.

I returned Saturday afternoon and had a little bit of time to relax before getting ready for Prom.  I thought it was really early in the year, but it was moved to this date because of conflicts with other things on all of the other Saturdays.  Some of the Indianapolis schools were having prom, as Friday night we saw kids waling around in formal attire, so I guess ours wasn't all that early.  Since the upper school is pretty small the dance was small as well.  Collyn and I spend most of our time pouring drinks, and the kids went through a frighteningly large amount of bottled water, choosing it over soda by a significant margin.  Like Sage, it's more of a party with dancing than a dance, as the kids dance in groups to techno music and there are almost no slow songs.  It was held at the riverfront water tower.  We went to the grounds for the burgoo festival last year, but hadn't been inside the building.  It's very nice inside, not large, but the kind of place you would hold a wedding reception.

Today was another busy day.  After getting in a gym workout I went to the 1st Sunday gypsy jam session and played for a couple of hours.  Then I replaced the head on my banjo.  We went out for a sushi dinner, making this the first sushi we have eaten since moving here.   The restaurant was well recommended and the sushi was tasty.  Then we met up with some friends at the Brown Hotel downtown to socialize before heading over to the Henry Clay building for the University of Louisville music department's annual fundraising gala.  They had a dinner, which we didn't attend, followed by a dance with live music from the department's big band.  There was a dance contest, which Collyn said I had to be in with her, as she had told another dancer who approached me about it a few weeks ago, that I wasn't free as she was playing the wife card and claiming me as a partner.  We ended up winning, and the cash prize was hefty enough that even after donating 1/2 of it back it put us in the black for my birthday celebration.