Kansas City RenFest

[hesperornis]

www.kcrenfest.com

Check it out. I might try to rustle up some people to go with me this weekend. I would like everyone even remotely associated with the Whitman RenFaire to note the theme of their faire, and to rejoice in the fact that We Did It First.

In other news, today I became officially certified to drive a giant 15-passenger van (though with no more than 12 people including the driver in it, per school policy). Certification involved watching a one-hour video. No actual driving practice was required. Hmm.

In other-other news, my students today couldn't distinguish galena from graphite, quartz from halite (taste it! I said. Eww, no way! They said. How are you going to know what it is? I said. Aren't you going to tell us? They said. Sheesh.), or calcite from anything else. I was running around trying to help where I could, but there was much confusion overall. Maybe tomorrow I'll make sure to remind them to _Read The Directions_ since clearly very few people bothered to today, costing some of them over an hour. *sigh* Maybe I'll get the hang of this one of these days.

Comments

[aspend.livejournal.com]

Yay for pirates! Good luck with the teaching thing. I don't know if this will make you feel better, but I have no idea what ANY of the rock you listed are (with the exception of graphite because, well, that is carbon, and I know me my carbon). :-)

[hesperornis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the main issue being that some of them didn't seem to realise that graphite is what they were _writing_ with, and they clearly could not have written anything with the galena samples. Carbon is light, lead is heavy. Sheesh. :-) *Considers* Maybe they _didn't_ realise that they were writing with graphite. The core of a pencil _is_ called 'pencil lead', after all... darned misleading terminology. :-P