Ann & Catherine's Page

Rio Distance Learning

We do distance learning. It owns us. Please no one sign up for CDA 125, I hate those dental vibrators. - Ann

And she's only been doing distance learning since November! - Catherine

A Sad Walk in the Rain - A spontaneous short story by Ann and Catherine

The desolate clown walked slowly away from the circus tent. He knew he no longer had a home there. As he looked longingly back at the colorful tent, he remembered vividly everything that occurred there that dreadful day. After the trapeeze fall and the subsequent investigation, he would be a bold person to show his face inside the big top. He never meant for the accident to happen...He thought he gave sound advice to the acrobatist, when he told her she could easily make the jump from the tightrope onto the elephant down below. She hadn't asked for his advice, but he gave it anyway. What hostile feelings did he harbor for her in his heart? Were they manifestations of his own death wish? Would death be a sanctuary from his fear of truly living? The clown began an existential downward spiral that only the harshest alcohol could cure. The inebriated clown pondered these things as he made the sad walk alone in the rain....

Ruminations on Technology

It's lame to learn about technology when you've sort of picked it all up already. I don't have any formal training in tech stuff, but you just become accustomed to using it socially and at work.-Ann

On a serious note, I'm amazed at all the technology available now. I'm astonished at all the online tools that are available. - Catherine

It really is kooky how much we can do now - a few years ago, the internet was completely new and novel, and now we can access websites on our cell phones (which were also non-existant 10 years ago!) -Ann

Travel stories

Last year, Rio sent me to Guadalajara, Mexico. One day my friend and I decided to eat in a tiny restaurant in a pueblo we were visiting. The waiter took our order but left the menus with us so we continued to pour over it. We then realized the waiter was actually the owner - He'd placed his photo (a huge one) on the front cover. Then he came back out to look at the menus... he'd forgotten what was included in the plates we had ordered!! Actually, he came out to look at the menu 2 to 3 times. It turned out that he was the chef as well. At that point, we got a little scared, and wondered if we should just leave because he couldn't even remember what he was cooking. To make it worse, he said he might not have all the ingredients needed. It was sorta like something out of a movie or tv show. However, we decided to chance it and stay because the other restaurant nearby looked kinda scary. After maybe twenty minutes or more, we finally got our food. We ate with trepidation but it tasted and looked alright. -Catherine

This is the street of the infamous restaurant. By the time we decided to eat, the street had become empty.

My travel story involves pain. My family went to Italy last summer to give my mom a chance to see her own family roots, and so we went to the small town of Agnone in Molise. We stayed in a bed-and-breakfast that we had to ourselves and were guided by the son of the family who owned the place. He didn't speak any English, so my sister Elizabeth had to translate everything he said. He took us all around town and gave us a very detailed tour, but when we got to the copper factory outside of town, we had been given too much information to process and got tired and restless. My brother Matthew decided this would be a good time to begin a game of "slapping", but he fortunately found a stick with an acorn on the end that he could use to hit me with. He kept hitting me (and sometimes himself), and we couldn't stop laughing about it. Our mom kept scolding us, and our poor Italian tour guide had no idea of what was happening. We weren't such good ambassadors for our country, but that acorn stick was a great way to pass the time. -Ann