Light The Cauldron

A couple of days ago I was on some random website and this headline jumped out at me:

Key & Peele Sketch Imagines A World Where Teachers Are Paid Like Athletes And It's Awesome
Naturally, as a teacher, I just had to click on the page. What I watched was very entertaining, but also very thought-provoking. Watch it below:


Fabulous, right? From the huge amount of money guaranteed to a talented teacher to the drafting of a "mathlete" who was living on his father's modest paycheck from playing professional football to the "play of the year" getting the introvert involved in the discussion, all of these are things for which teachers would love to be praised.

So why does it take a popular sketch show mimicking a sports show to get people talking? Why aren't teachers paid like athletes? The second question is easy to answer:

1. Public schools are owned by the government, and you know there's not a lot of money there. Church schools (like mine) are paid …

With the normal TV season drawing to a close in May, I tend to find myself binging old television shows over the summer months, when I have time. In June I decided to go back to my DVD collection and watch Scrubs, an insanely funny television show from ten years ago.

I always tend to skip season 1, because the show was just starting to gain its footing, and didn't quite have the quirky attitude it developed in seasons 2 and beyond.



Some of the best episodes of the series, however, come from it's most serious and heartfelt moments. That's what made Scrubs great: while it was a comedy set in a hospital, it knew how to be serious at just the right times. 
Because it would be too difficult to rank the episodes, I just wrote down episodes that I thought were the best of each season. I won't go into too many details, but if you ever get around to watching the show (and you should), be sure to set your distractions aside and enjoy these episodes in particular. 
Synopsis: Scrub…

Last month I had the privilege of attending my fourth Lutheran Women's Missionary Society convention, held in Rapid City, South Dakota. It was a weekend full of missions, fellowship, friendship, and tradition!

As I walked through the Rapid City Civic Center, where the convention was held, I was pleased to notice something about the attendees - they're getting younger!

And no, I'm not talking about facial treatments and hair dye. I'm talking about age.

I remember "attending" LWMS conventions when I was a little kid. My mother would attend the conventions with my grandmother, and my father would take us kids and do all the touristy stuff. Then we would come to the closing service on Sunday morning and worship.

It might have been my young age, but I was convinced this convention was for older ladies. While my mother was definitely not old at the time (she would have been in her 30s and 40s), all the other ladies seemed to be the same age as my grandmother! I jus…

I've now been running for about eight weeks, and I've gotten better. I'm not going to be running any marathons anytime soon, but just the fact that I get a little excited every day that I go out to run, and I feel even more accomplished when I finish!

I have learned quite a lot since my last running blog post, so here's a nice rundown:

SPIBelt over FlipBelt

I told you all about the new FlipBelt that I had ordered and begun to use. I also told you that I'd probably gone for the smaller size and it was shrugging up to my natural waist instead of staying at my hips. Luckily, a friend of mine (who's about to have a baby) sent me her SPIBelt to use. I used it once, and knew I wasn't going to use the FlipBelt again.

Instead of being a stretchy material, it's a belt with a clasp. While the pocket looks really small, it can hold my iPhone comfortably, and I can sneak a couple other things in there, too, if necessary.

I like that it stays around my hips, and it&#…

After several years of hearing from multiple people that I just had to watch Friday Night Lights, the NBC series that ran for 5 seasons, I finally had the time to binge-watch the whole thing.

Everyone was right - I did love it.

Instead of just putting a bunch of stuff on the page, I'm going to give out awards for my favorite and least favorite things. Feel free to agree or argue with me in the comments!


Best Season: Season four. I loved the transition to East Dillon and the growth of a team from the ground up. It really made you realize how great the Dillon Panthers had it, even if it didn't seem so in the first three seasons.

Best Game: It's hard to remember all of them, but I'm going to say any game where the team had the game won before the last minute of the fourth quarter. It's amazing how many of those games went to the last second!

Oh - I have it. In season two, there's a tornado that demolishes rival Laribee High School's facilities and they're fo…

I have always had an issue with standing ovations. This was especially the case years ago, when other people would stand up and applaud for something and I would just stand up with them. Eventually I realized what am I doing? Most of the time I was just waiting for someone else to stand up, and then I would come to the conclusion that it was time for me to stand up.

You see, giving someone a standing ovation means, to me, that you are so overwhelmed by the amazing thing that is happening before you that you automatically just get out of your seat without even realizing it and clap and cheer as hard as you can.

The first time I felt this way was at my very first trip to the Minnesota Orchestra back in college. I went with a few friends and we sat up in the side balcony of Orchestra Hall. The featured piece was great, but they ended the concert with Ravel's "Bolero." I'd never heard the entire piece from start to finish, and the dynamic changes that take place over the…