whence I come...
What's new in my life:
It's
now August 2004. Our cats, Sith and Shmi, are healthy, but still small.
Jedi's starting to fill out. And we're still trying to adopt. Last year,
we were working on adopting from Russia (read
all about it in my blog); now we're hoping for a domestic adoption.
Adoption runs in our family--we just had a sister, Hellie, adopted in
July!!!
What's no so new in my life...
I'm from South Dakota (where my birthplace is), 
Minnesota
(where my heart is), Pennsylvania (where my family lives), Kentucky (where
I spent 10 months), Michigan (where I lived for 4 years of grad school),
Oshkosh WI (where I live now). Although I was born in South Dakota and
my body lived there for twenty-some years, my heart moved to Minnesota
when I was in seventh grade. Unfortunately, my parents refused to quit
their jobs and move, so I
had to wait until college to get back in touch with my heart. My maiden
name was Ann Marie Paulukonis. The picture on the right is from third
grade. It's my favorite grade school photo. The picture on the left is
one of my senior photos. I loved that bear, Noel!
I attended the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, where I had some of the best experiences of my life. I involved myself in environmental issues. I found out that talks at conventions are much more fun if you get the audience to blow soap bubbles while you are speaking. I fell in love with snow when I realized it is a lot more amusing when you do not face shoveling it at 6 in every morning. I philosophized, theorized, and surfed the Net before it was popular; I tried playing the organ, acting and designing lighting plots. Most of all, I did mathematics.
In
1994, I received a BA in Mathematics and Liberal Studies (Concentration
in Technology). I received All College Honors with Distinction in Mathematics
for my senior thesis"Nothing in Moderation, Everything in Excess:
A New Weighted Statistic on Permutations." Only ask me what that
means if you know what Combinatorics is. The only people who really understood
what I was doing were my advisor, the department chair, and myself. Sometimes
I wonder if even we did. (That's a picture of my best friend in college,
Krysa Stroot. We were roommates for just one year, but she'll always be
"my college roommate.") The math major isn't applicable in my
day-to-day life, but I do still love math. My major application these
days is in my personal financial life. I truly enjoy keeping a budget,
investing, and reading about financial information on a daily basis. My
favorite website is the Motley Fool
(especially the message boards). I do not day trade, and I do not follow
stocks on a daily basis. Rather, I appreciate learning more about how
to keep my financial life in order and on the straight and narrow (well,
not narrow--I want it huge!).
A close second in my interests was computers. I got started with e-mail a couple days into my first year of college. I never quite got into programming, probably because all of my friends were absolute computer whizzes. I just loved using anything technological I could get my hands on.
Following graduation, I spent ten months in Kentucky, as a volunteer for the Christian Appalachian Project. The first six months I was busy as a preschool teacher, which I loved but which wasn't my calling. The latter part of my time I worked at a warehouse, where I helped them convert the inventory over to Access. I also became a licensed forklift driver. And counted over one million toothbrushes.
One of the best things I learned while in Kentucky is to try to live my life as though I were not going to live forever. That is, to go ahead and do things I've always meant to do. I made a list of things I would do if I knew that my last day in Kentucky were the last day of my life. Then for two weeks I tried to live as though that were true. I did some pretty cool things over the next few months: I wrote a letter to my grandmother just before she died, I slept outside under the stars for the first time in my life, I went and saw more of Kentucky than I had in the previous six months, I learned how to drive a forklift. I wrote a list of things I want to do before I die (updated periodically).
The next four years I spent in graduate school at Michigan State University. Not the most thrilling time of my life. But I did meet the man who is now my wonderful husband, Eric J. Johnson, during this time. If you want to see some of the papers and projects I created while there, my ancient website still exists. You'll recognize some of this page from that site! But please, ignore the absolutely horrible web design on the old site. I originally created those pages before WYSIWYG editors. I hadn't taken any HCI or usability courses yet. I since have, and I dread seeing most of those pages.
As I neared the end of my dissertation, I got a fantastic job at the University of WI Oshkosh as the Instructional Technology Developer. I love my job; I have fantastic coworkers and a great boss! I help faculty integrate technology into their teaching and learning. Primarily, I am the campus administrator for Desire2Learn and assist instructors with putting course materials online. I'm also involved in web accessibility. I serve on the Senate of Academic Staff, where I participated in the UW Oshkosh strategic planning in 2001, helped draft a policy on granting emeritus status to retired academic staff, and chaired the elections committee for 2002. During Summer '02, I was on the Handbook Review Committee, a project I truly enjoyed working on. In September 02, I was elected President Elect, which brings with it a lot of other interesting committees. And, of course, the Senate presidency in 2003-2004. I LOVED being president and being involved with what was going on on campus. Staying involved, I was appointed a Provost's Leadership Fellow for Fall 2004.
At the UW System level, I'm the Oshkosh rep to the Learning Technology Development Council (LTDC). On a national level, I'm a member of the Community of Academic Technology Staff (CATS), primarily a California organization. I've attended the conference in 2001, 2002 (when I presented a paper based on my accessibility work with Sean Ruppert), and 2003.
Eric and I married on August 12, 2000. We had a wonderful honeymoon on a cruise down the Alaskan coast. ...Except for the evening I was locked out on the balcony for 2+ hours. Just one of the many hysterically funny [honestly!] things that happened during the wedding and honeymoon!
Memorial Day weekend, 2001, we were extras in the Red Green movie Duct Tape Forever! We were both featured in the PBS "documentary" about the movie, Red Green Goes to Hollywood. The movie was shown nationwide...in Canada. We are in the courtroom scene at the beginning of the movie. Eric should be able to be seen--he's in the second row, far right side (if you are looking out at the room, not at the judge). He's a Possum Lodge member! I'm inthe second to last row on the other side, one of the townswomen. I think I spotted my head in the documentary, but.... If you check the extras site for our photos, you'll see the costumes we are in, so you might try looking for them rather than us.
Later that summer, we bought a house--on Friday the 13th of July. We have been brought fully into the "joys" of owning a 100+ year old home. In August 2002, we replaced the 18 year old furnace. In October, we learned--in a fairly unpleasant way--that our lateral sewer line needed to be replaced. ::sigh::
In
August 2002, we brought Jedi, a boxer puppy,
into our family. Although I still maintain I am a cat person, I have discovered
I actually enjoy Jedi as well as his best friend, a boxer named Emma.
In Nov '02, we adopted two kittens from the the Oshkosh Area Humane Society.
Sith is a grey with white tiger-striped male. His sister Shmi is a darker
grey with barely-able-to-be-seen black tiger-stipes. Shmi has allergies
and/or is obsessive comlusive. I have a cat on Prozac! She was very sick
for a while and stayed under 7 pounds until she was 2!
My parents are Jay and Mary Ann Paulukonis. They live in northeast Pennsylvania, on a mountain. They own a stained glass studio (The Paulukonis Studio) at which my father works full time. They make windows and panels, including on a commission basis. They do not make the glass--they make things out of glass. In addition to her design work (and more) for the studio, Mom is the Family Life minister for the Catholic Diocese of Scranton.
I also have one older brother, Michael
Paulukonis. Remember the commercial from the late 90s or early 00s
with the guy who wrote the yellow pages? That was my brother--he wrote
the yellow pages for a while. He now has a comptuer-related job, which
is kind of funny for a guy who dropped his computer science minor 11-odd
years ago! He's also an artist, which he would prefer to be his full time
job!
Most of the art genes in my family are in the rest of them, but I have a few as well. Lately, I'm been working on making books, art postcards and visual/art journaling. I've dabbled in tens of others as well--sewing, origami, soap making, Sculpy clay, puppetry, stained glass, cross stitch, knitting, piano, organ, clarinet, recorder, rubber stamping, scrapbooking, etc. You can see some of the things I've created on my art page.
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annmarie@new.rr.com
any opinions expressed on this page are solely AnnMarie's