Everybody is going home for the holiday. One of my friends asked me if I was staying in town, and I said “um…I live here, so…yes. And my family lives here.” I am going to have dinner with my family on Thursday. I am kind of envious of all my friends making travel plans and being excited to go home - I don’t have anywhere to go! Although we did get confirmation today that the Los Angeles trip in January is definitely happening, so that’s fun. I’m sad that I won’t get to sign with anybody from Tuesday night until Monday morning though, everybody is going to be hearing all weekend, and I love my deaf friends. Two of them are going together to the house of one of their families, and I am jealous…I want to spend a whole week with my friends, too! Sometimes I hate living off campus. I have the most awesome friends but I have to leave them every night, blah. Don’t get me wrong, I love my wife and my kitties and my kitchen and my restaurants and all the other benefits of living at home…but I wish I could see my friends for longer and more often. Le sigh.

Here is a good site for tech bargains - they don’t sell things themselves, but rather they direct you to deals on other sites around the web. They update frequently and you can get updates via RSS, which means you’ll have no problem snapping up a limited-time bargain on a great new toy. Like travel websites, you can get an email newsletter with the hottest deals. I was extremely pleased by their Buy a Wii page, which monitors multiple online vendors and tells you who has a Wii in stock and who doesn’t! Of course right now only Wal-Mart has them in a package with extra controllers and games for almost $700, which isn’t exactly a deal! But anyway, they list rebates as well as coupons, so you have multiple ways to get a bargain. Their search function lets you search their site as well as eBay, which is nice because “real” vendors don’t always have prices to beat eBay. I think my favorite page would be their Amazon coupons page. Their site is updated all day and all night, the Amazon page has some that were posted at 5am! It can’t hurt to add TechBargains to your feed reader, can it?

I interpreted for friends from school today. They had emailed me a couple of days ago and asked if I could interpret for them for a special event, and I agreed. To be honest, I found it vaguely surreal. I’m pretty sure I was on good interpreter behavior, but at the same time, it was like - hey, I know these guys! Like, outside of an interpreting context! I can’t remember the last time I did actual interpreting for friends, other than a couple of times in a restaurant or something like that. It was cool though, I had a good time. We all went to dinner afterward, and they paid for my meal. My share was actually only about 10% of the actual check, partly because they don’t have tons of money, partly because I wanted to be on good dietary behavior, and partly because I felt like even though I donated my time, that didn’t mean I should go all out and order the most expensive thing on the menu. I was very happy with my salad but there wasn’t enough of it, so I am planning to have a snack when I get home.

A letter from the President of Gallaudet University, Bob Davila:

I received a message today from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) letting me know that during their meeting today, the commissioners unanimously voted to remove Gallaudet from probation. As of today, Gallaudet is currently placed on warning which is the interim step institutions must go through prior to re-affirming full accreditation. While well deserved, this was a decision we didn’t expect until the spring of 2008. This decision reflects a community, including the Board of Trustees, faculty, teachers, staff, students, and alumni, that has come together and exceeded all expectations, internal and external. I will be sending you more details tomorrow, but wanted you to be the very first to know this wonderful news. I thank you for all of your hard work especially what each of you has contributed to a new and better Gallaudet.

Yay!

I’m still reading the “first 50 years” history of Gallaudet, and I find it interesting to note that the oral/manual debate has been going on there since 1868. When Edward Miner Gallaudet convened the first National Conference of Principals of Institutions for the Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb, he didn’t send invitations to some of the schools that had recently been established, which were oral schools. Some saw this as a snub to the oral methods, but Gallaudet said it was simply because they didn’t have principals yet, they were still too new. He said that his school should “provide for the instruction of speech of all pupils until it plainly appears that success is unlikely to crown their efforts.” So even though it may have seemed that he was anti-oral, he was encouraging the use of oral/aural instruction until it was deemed a failure.

I am so tired. This is because I am sick. I worked on a paper tonight and actually got it done. I miss friends. For some reason certain cheats aren’t working on my Sims 2, like maxmotives and familyfunds, this is very annoying. But mostly I am tired because I don’t feel well and it makes me kind of grouchy too. Hope everybody has a good night.

Ack! I forgot to change Ma.gnolia’s password when I changed my blog password, so I hadn’t been getting automated postings up. Here’s a catch-up!