Summer is here!

So I guess I'm only averaging like one post a month. How cruddy. But! School's almost out, so now I feel like I have something to share! Classes finished up this week (and let me tell you, you are glad to have NOT seen us over the last two weeks--it was awful trying to get everything together to finish up). Finals are next week. I've still got a little bit to do...one project, a 4-6 page paper, and one written final. Kyle has to edit a memoir (I'll be the beta) and he also has one written final. Then Spring 2010 is OVER!

And 2010 Summer Session 1 begins for me. Yaaaaaaaaynot! I've got two classes: American Literature and Aerobics. I'll be having classes every day, but on the upside, there are only two classes and hopefully Aerobics won't have much reading (there's a health lecture that goes along with it). Kyle will be working full time. He's already got 30 hours for the week after finals and since one of the other carry-outs at Menards is transferring departments, he'll probably get more. He's shooting for about 40 hours every week. I'll keep my 15 hours at work until summer school is over, and then ask for as much as I can. I can't see that I'd get more than 25-30, but we'll see :)

We have some summer projects as well...last summer we remodeled the inside of the house we live in right now, so this summer we're going to work on the exterior. A new paint job for the house maybe, some landscape, cleaning out the garage. And of course the attic needs to be cleaned and organized and our bedroom furniture needs to be finished. It'd also be nice to get our wedding pictures framed and on the walls as well as some other pictures we have.

Other things to do over the summer: go on long walks at night (this is one of our favorites, especially if it involves walking to the gas station for slushies), watch movies, go do other fun cultural things (probably most will revolve around visiting the library and participating in their free events), go camping a few times (I'm actually looking forward to this), go to the temple (we'd like to do this several times, actually), work on genealogy, read books that we want to read....Kyle's also going to be figuring out what he wants to do for his honors thesis (yikes! that's coming!) and looking into grad schools. I plan to continue to donate plasma so I can save to go on a school trip to Orlando for the National Convention of Teachers of English (NCTE). That's in November.

Other than that, I think it'll be easy going. Lots of cooking out and doing other fun outside things. Summer is exciting! I love opening our windows and hearing the noise from the street (so does our cat!). And this is the first summer since Kyle and I have been together that we've not had to travel an hour and 45 minutes to see each other! The fact that we can be together for the whole summer is just...amazing.

Suuuuuummmmmmmmer is heeeeeeeeerrrreeeeee!

Comic books as literature?

Wow it's been AGES since I've last been on here! Unfortunately, there's nothing too new to catch up on...things have been super-busy with classes (try getting three hours of sleep every night for a week!), but what else is new, right? I feel like every time I blog, I say that. And it must be pretty boring for readers, because I have like a month in between each post and all they ever say is "well, my life has been pretty busy..." Great.

On an up note, I've recently embarked upon a new course of study for some of my final projects in my classes...comic books. This, of course, has Kyle pretty excited, because he ADORES comic books and graphic novels. Mostly I'm studying how they can be useful to use in a classroom setting to teach things like plot, character development, morals, etc. Mostly I'm focusing on comic book superheroes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (along with other DC and Marvel superheroes), but I've also become intrigued with the idea of turning novels into graphic novels. For instance, last night at Maring-Hunt library I checked out a graphic novel of Pride and Prejudice. After reading the first few frames, I've decided it was amazing.

I'm intending to create a unit plan for one of my classes around using comic books to study English and I'm actually very excited about it. For my Young Adult literature class, I want to address the issue of using graphic novels in class and give some examples of my experiences in reading graphic novels of novels (not only did I check out Pride and Prejudice, but I also have Jane Eyre and King Arthur, and I'm looking forward to checking out Beowulf as well as Walden at Thoreau). For my digital literacy class, I'd like to take the information I found and publish it to a website and include a database of some lessons I've created around teaching comics and graphic novels and perhaps add a blog of my research (I'd update it more than this, I think).

So, there are only five weeks of classes left (eeeek). I need to work hard to get this together. But I'm actually quite excited about it :) For once, I'm into my final projects as opposed to being opposed. It feels pretty good.