I'm Ba-ack!

This will be a quick catch-up post and then regular blog posts will be starting back up tomorrow. (I have plenty to share.) 

Finally! Our internet issues have been solved. We were puzzled when our neighbors' internet all came back online but ours didn't. Finally our service provider sent two techs out and they discovered that a cable into our home had been severed. Their official write up said, "Outdoor cable showed evidence of multiple animal bites." 

What on earth? We do have coyotes and deer that run through our yards, but I cannot imagine them chewing on our cables. (Mynocks, perhaps? Haha!)

Speaking of Star Wars, I got an unusual FaceTime call yesterday from Mountain Mama Jessica. She put T-Rex on the phone and he said, "Grammy, I have some questions about Star Wars and guinea pigs." 

 Alrighty then! Two very diverse topics but I was game. 

T-Rex (his name is Titan Rex Kailana and he goes by T-Rex) started shooting questions like, "What is the name of the alien in the cantina who looks like a devil?" (A Devaronian also known as a snot vampire. I didn't tell him that part as it is really gross.) "How old was Leia in episodes 4, 5, and 6?" (She was young, maybe early twenties, and how can you remember the episode numbers like that at your age?) "How did Queen Amidala die?" (She died because Anakin broke her heart.) 

The questions continued on and on and I was glad I could remember most of my Star Wars trivia. I have been a huge Star Wars fan since the first movie came out and have several tubs of early Star Wars items. (My favorites are the 1977 Burger King glasses.) 

The current Mark Hamill Fan Club newsletter. Yes, I am a member and have been for decades.

We never really got to those guinea pig questions. 

Coming back online meant I had a lot of catching up to do in various aspects of my life, from hobby happenings to volunteer efforts and then to the education researcher part of my life. I was pleased and excited to get this notice from Research Gate, a site where research from across the globe is posted. 

A paper that I had written with Dr. Michalinos Zembylas has been cited in 250 different research papers! 

I worked with him at the University of Illinois and we collaborated on two research projects, The Emotional Labor of Teaching which was published in Teacher and Teacher Education, and Teaching Science to Students with Learning Disabilities - Subverting the Myths of Labeling that was published in Research in Science Education.

I love to write, be it a hobby history, a pollinator project with Tim and Purdue, or research papers on education. Writing is a true passion. Finding out that research that I had done was useful to other researchers made my day. (I knew it had been cited quite a bit but I did not realize just how much until Research Gate posted the milestone.) I just can't quit smiling about that bit of news.

I might not have had internet, but I could still go to the barn! Midweek we had a beautiful spring day and I met Pony Pal Mila, Cowboy Lukie, and Ian there. We tried to social distance, but this still happened.

Ian, Hokey, and me. You can't keep a Grammy from her grands. (Or her horses.)

This happened, too. (I realized after we had finished that I had TOTALLY forgotten to put helmets on the grands.)

While I was offline I also got a couple of new additions to my collection and there were some other horsey happenings that I will write about in upcoming blog entries. In the meantime, I am really happy to be back.

If you are interested in education here are two more research papers that I co-authored. 

• Isenbarger, L., & Baroody, A. (2001) Fostering the mathematical power of children with behavioral difficulties: The Case of Carter. Teaching Children Mathematics. 8, 468-471.
  
  
• Isenbarger, L. & Willis, A. I. (2006) An intersection of theory and practice: Accepting the Language a Child Brings into the Classroom. Language Arts, 84, 125-135.