Jen Merrill's Blog, page 9
October 28, 2018
Put a little beauty out into the world
From Thanksgiving 2017 to Memorial Day 2018 I lost 26 pounds. Since the end of May I’ve gained back nearly ten. I can feel it where my clothes are rubbing me again, I can feel it in the rolls that reappeared to mock me in the mirror, I can feel it in my knees. I …
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October 9, 2018
{2e Tuesday} Too much and yet not enough
Intensity is something I am intimately familiar with, in so many different respects. In music, it’s something I struggle to get my students to do. It’s hard to explain but you know if it’s there or not. Music is all about struggle, about push-pull, about increasing and decreasing intensity. I remember one time in high school …
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September 26, 2018
The Rules Have Changed
I lit into my kid today. Doesn’t even really matter which one; later this afternoon his brother is getting Variation on a Theme, followed by Second Verse Same as the First parental duet for both young men, and probably an encore of This Is The Song That Never Ends: What Your Parents ^$% Expect and You’d Better Follow …
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September 24, 2018
MAAR
Back in the glory days of blogging (let’s say the late aughts or so, before social media and monetization took over), I lived and died by my RSS reader. Oh, Google Reader, how I still miss thee. It would collect all the blog posts in one place and I could read at my convenience. Yes, …
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September 12, 2018
10Q very much
Do you 10Q? From the website: Answer one question per day in your own secret online 10Q space. Make your answers serious. Silly. Salacious. However you like. It’s your 10Q. When you’re finished, hit the magic button and your answers get sent to the secure online 10Q vault for safekeeping. One year later, the vault …
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September 4, 2018
Adieu summer, I hardly knew ye
And like that…summer is over. I didn’t intend to take a long blogging hiatus, it just sorta happened. You don’t plan to fail, you just fail to plan. I presented at the SENG conference, attended a friend’s wedding, taught a few band camps, hauled boys all over hell and Georgia for camps and college visits, gave a …
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August 13, 2018
{Book Review} The Gifted Kids Workbook
I’m just going to cut to the chase. Heather Boorman’s new book, The Gifted Kids Workbook, is absolutely brilliant, it’s exactly what I needed a decade ago, and if you’re parenting or teaching a gifted kid (roughly between the ages of 7 and 13), you need to finish reading this blog post and GET IT. {CYA …
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July 31, 2018
The gifted community mourns
Dr. James T. Webb died this weekend. The gifted community is in shock, is in mourning, is absolutely heartbroken. I just saw him a week ago, at SENG, and to my untrained eye he was the very image of vibrant health and well being. The gentle giant of the gifted world, the steadying hand the …
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July 6, 2018
I’d like to reinstall my operating system
“Thank you for calling Inner Workings Tech Support, where we fix it or your money back! My name is Todd, how can I help you on this beautiful afternoon?” “Hi Todd. My name is Jen and my operating system is acting up. It’s sluggish, hangs for no good reason, crashes after a few hours, and …
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May 30, 2018
Still kicking
It’s been…it’s been a long spring, yo. Mid-February I started a longterm middle school band sub gig, covering for a friend going on maternity leave; it started significantly sooner than expected when she had her son eight weeks early. What everyone anticipated being a two month “keep the wheels on the bus through the end …
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