Dual Blog! a. What I do during Japanese class b. Hipstamatic iPhone App.

Whenever I tell people that I 'facilitate' a Japanese class, people ask me, "can you even speak Japanese?" And I reply, "No I don't, but I have a student teacher who teaches the class for me and he is great." And naturally, people want to know what I do with the extra two hours, when I'm not teaching. These two hours have become my favourite hours of the day and I always try to be a good steward with the extra time.

Every day I start out by checking my email.

The stapler is no doubt covered in germs so I use a lot of hand sanitizer.

These two hours are an excellent time to drink some coffee. Kyle left this mug in my car. He said I could have it.

Grade some papers.

Star Sticker. Kids love star stickers.

Also, I use the time to plan ahead and organize my notes and thoughts for teaching future Freshman World History classes.

If there is time, I might chat up a buddy on gmail or try to do something creative like write a blog entry.

Hand sanitizer is vital to teachers.

50 year plan for never living alone: or how I hope life works out.

Last night, for listening club, we watched a depressing and beautiful documentary about the Hlemmur bus terminal in Reykjavik Iceland; specifically the homeless people who spend their time around it. Depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental illness were some of the issues connecting each character, but the one heart wrenching aspect of each of their lives was parenthood. Each of the characters had children, mostly grown up and independent, whom they were no longer in contact with. This common theme lead to overwhelming depression which also contributed to the alcoholism and drug use. Everytime a character would speak about their children, my heart would break. I'm not afraid of being alone, nither do I run from silence, but it is a Biblical truth that we aren't meant to be alone. (Gen 2:18)

You can call me a momma's boy, socialist, whatever, but here's my plan for never again in my life, living alone if I can help it. The entire plan, which is in no way revolutionary, revolves around the extended family unit and my empathy for my own parents. "He's gonna be changing our diapers someday," my dad often jokes. What he doesn't know is that surely some day when he is elderly and can't take care of himself or my mother or visa versa, I will indeed refuse to send them to any assisted living community. I'll build an extension onto my house, buy a new house, pitch a tent in the back yard, or do whatever I need to do to have my parents live with me.

Both of my parents are fairly healthy and relatively young, only 24 years older than me, so I don't forsee them needing assistance for a very long time. Also, if one were to die, mine or in-law, I will in a moments notice take in the other. I would even like for them to live with me earlier. I can think of a ton of benifits to having my parents live with me:

Free childcare. A live in cook who works for hugs and the occassional scrabble or golf game. Wisdom for my kids to learn from. And a bit of heart wrenching entertainment when they start to get loopy. There will be books that need reading, crosswords that need finishing, and kids to spoil.

If I have my children though within the next 5 years or so, chances are very high that my children will be out and on their own around the same time that I need to take in my own parents and we can all just be old together. And to complete my cycle, hopefully I was as awesome a parent as mine were and my own kids will be willing to take me in!

Music! Jay Reatard! Watch Me Fall!

What just happened? I'll tell you what just happened. I was just checking out Duksjen the Movie on myairblaster.com. When a song came on. An insanely catchy punk song. And in that instant, nothing made sense. I looked down at my green Van's and felt my beard and asked, "Who am I?" After a moment the Shazam app told me that the music playing was a song called Rotten Mind by a young man named Jay Reatard. Needing to investigate, I stopped the movie and went to iTunes to sample whatever I could find and decided to buy his latest album. And listening to it a couple times sparked some intense emotions. I'm stoked obviously to have found this, but at the same time...

Jay Reatard (pronounced Retard, but I say it Re Atard because I don't like the "r" word) plays a brand of early punk very reminiscent of The Clash and other various '70s punk bands, but a helluva lot catchier. Produced at my ideal level of lo-fi, this punk album has hooks catchier than a pop album complete with a forced brit-punk accent.

...I'm borderline pissed that this human existed and no one bothered to tell me. I honestly thought I had friends who were good at finding music, but this album makes me the indie rock finding king of my friends...

I started out by buying 'Watch Me Fall', his latest album, but shortly I'll be expanding my Jay Reatard stash hopefully to include his entire prolific collection. I can already tell that 'Watch Me Fall' will take a long time to get stale, but next on the "to buy" list is 'Blood Visions.

...It's also tragic that I only discovered Jay Reatard days after he died (May 1, 1980 – January 13, 2010). So in memory of Jay, I highly recommend that if you're reading this post, at least go on iTunes and sample some of his licks...

Shredding: DIY stickers

This is my new Burton Blunt 162 wide and I am stoked on the entire board and the graphics are sick. But I do appreciate a good sticker job on a snowboard and in the spirit of DIY I've decided to pass on the traditional huge die cut company stickers for the most part and come up with some of my own. I'm still going for the die cut look though, but with a less than capitalist message.

For the stickers I bought a roll of white vinyl sticker sheet. If you go to the store and ask someone, this would be the same stuff that shelves are lined with. Then all I did was cut out the letters to a positive lesson with my handy dandy x-acto knife and KABLAM! Positive board '09. I thought it would be fitting to make a sticker that warns kids of the dangers of drugs to offset the fact that I'm a school teacher riding a snowboard titled 'Blunt'.
I'm continuing the spirit of my last board where I spray painted the top sheet white and used colorful Sharpies to write positive messages all over the top sheet. But this way, I won't ruin the sick graphics. Also if you read my last blog post about my goal for this shred season, my board will carry on that goal even when I fall into the 'I'm cool, but I'm really just self conscious' trap. I'll update you on future stickers for the board, but in the meantime try your own mega limited edition die cut stickers!

Musical Bands: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Now that my fundage has greatly increased, I've been able to spend my money on the really important things in life such as snowboard videos. And as you may have read before, from snowboard videos is where I find much of the music that I enjoy listening to. I found Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's little gem of an album, Up From Below, in this year's Transworld video, Get Real.

The track '40 Day Dream' sets the backdrop for Chris Grenier's part and from the first time I watched Get Real, the music from Grenier's part stood out as something I should look into further. At my first listen though, I had my doubts about the rest of the album. Only two tracks really stood out as usual. The other besides '40 Day Dream' was 'Home' and while they're still my favourites from the album, the rest deserved much needed second and third listens. The best way I can think to describe this album is a pleasant marriage of a full country band and psycadellery. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might sound like the hairy baby wandering through the desert the mother and father and father and mother of whom are Neko Case, Neil Daimond, Radio Head, and Zooey Deschenal all living at a Spanish mission in Texas at the turn of the century with a full horn section. However Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might be classified, they are good!

Letter Writing!!!

Today is Monday and I am sick. Really sick. Probably dying of Swine Flu if you ask my roommate Melanie Dee Jones. And what might I do on a sick day? Read? Maybe. Watch a movie? Probably later. Plan ahead for my classes? You gotta be joking me. Nope. Today I'm writing letters (and then blogging about letter writing)

Why letters? Everybody knows that Devin Colby Jones prefers hand written sentiments to e-mails or texts any day. I am finding that I have a passion for handwriting and letter writing gives me the opportunity to practice my otherwise illegible penmanship. The English language is a beautiful thing when written in cursive! And writing in cursive is a dying art the death of which would classify cursive now as a form of caligraphy.


Also, letters are special because each one has taken a journey! Sure an e-mail or text might go to outer-space and back, but outer-space is so cold. An email hasn't been exchanged from human hand to human hand, sent through sorting machines, ridden on an airplane, train, boat, bike, or mail truck. E-mails are just as easily discarded, but a letter is usually kept, and becomes your very own personal history. My grandparents saved all of their love letters during the second world war, and my family often revisits the letters to remember Howard and Dorthy's true romance. A million emails are bunk compared to a couple letters back and forth from England and France to Montana in 1943!


Here is a letter I just recieved from my friend Brian in Colorado! I don't think it's legible via computer, but he uses a 4 color pen, it's mega funny, and he sent me a gift also with it. He randomly saw some Cinnabon Chapstick in the store and bought me a stick! My camp name is Cinnabon and Brian and I worked together at Sambica a bunch of summers ago. I got the camp name because one time I said I thought women should wear perfume that smells like something that I want: Cinnamon Rolls. Sometimes people still buy or point out cinnamon roll flavoured or scented things! This letter was awesome, one of the best I've ever received!
.

Ellensburg, where the livin' is green! GARDENING!

In the spring of 2009, Mother and Father Jones decided, "We should grow a garden this summer. Devin Colby, invent us a garden." Traditionally, we try to grow some sort of garden, at least an herb garden, but this year, we've finally got it right!

The water bed was a core value of the Jones family in the 1980's and early 90's so we had a couple water bed frames sitting around. We decided to use the frames to create elevated growing beds for our garden. On the ground, lining the beds, we laid down special weed blocking cloths, then filled the beds with soil. And the area we chose to place the beds receive ample water from our automatic sprinkler system!
In our garden we grow spinach, zucchini, squash, kale, cucumbers, tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, tomatios, bell peppers, Anaheim peppers, eggplant, Japanese egg plant, a bunch of herbs, Swiss chard, and two types of lettuce. We grow some other veggies that I cannot remember the names of.

Last Sunday, I invited Cam and Sara to dinner, where we harvested the veggies for dinner and cooked together! It's a teriffic feeling knowing that we grew and picked the vegetables that we're eating.
My favourite vegetable right now is kale. Kale is very nutritious with a large concentration of vitimin K and vitimin C. "Loves me some vitimin K and vitimin C!"

I really wish I could share some tips or tricks for gardening, but our garden is very low maitinence. All I do is eat the vegetables. The weed cloth keeps the weeds from growing in our garden, and the garden area is automatically watered every Day!