what a lovely summer it's been...

Two and a half months went quickly, as I knew it would. It was lovely to travel home to Southern Nevada and then (finally!) to the Olympic Peninsula with Peter.

Moapa Valley was hot and I had a fabulous time playing with nieces, nephews, siblings and parents. My family really is fabulous, and I'm getting better at just relaxing and enjoying. Radical acceptance is such an amazing concept.

The Lyle's pool was refreshing, and I am graciously
refraining from posting a fab little video I've got of
these two bathing beauties doing some hilarious
"water aerobics"

It was great to see Cholie

and I got to help Jes make me one of her awesome
and soon-to-be-famous custom-designed dolls

I am so proud of Jes and her fabulous first novel. Seriously, I tried to write a novel last year for nanowrimo and failed miserably. But Dead Ringer is a juicy pulp that maintained a clear narrative strand, had vibrant purple details of teenage interaction with believable dialog, and the end was totally dark. Love Dad's influence! :)

Now I am scrambling to be ready for school. I realized yesterday at 8pm as I was leaving my classroom after a nine hour work binge that I will NEVER be done. I could work all day everyday and still want more because I just...can't...let...things...alone! A perfectly fine syllabus must be edited and re-edited and perfected ten million times. With the schedule change to a traditional 6-period day this year I have to let things go in order to survive. Especially if I'm going to complete my National Boards certification! Ahhh, national boards. I hope that I can make this process bend to my own goals that are very much in line with a language arts classroom yet possibly take a bit more time to explain or justify. Oh yeah, and I need to take care of myself in here somewhere! Me and my lovely crippled hip. These physical therapy exercises are such a freakin' pain. I'm trying really hard to enjoy the process and get all meditative as I become more mindfully aware of my core muscles...but I'd rather be sprinting my butt around a track and doing bounding drills. *sigh*

finally

Hee hee, I just realized that the only way I can access my blog is through the bookmark I made of my sister's blog. I am obviously a dedicated blogger.

Summer is glorious, and I have been traveling and reading to my heart's content. On the plane to visit Cholie in D.C. I finished Hal Borland's When the Legends Die, which is a heart-breaking and beautiful novel about a Ute Indian boy who is forced into an assimilation school which he eventually escapes to become a bronc rider in the rodeo. It's a text used by my colleague as a summer read for "honors" 10th grade, but I had never heard of it before. I was reading Vine Deloria and he recommended it as one of three books that "give a good idea of the intangible sense of reality that pervades the Indian people." That commendation pushed the book to the top of my eternal "list" and I'm excited to add it to my 10th grade curriculum next year, supplemented with Sherman Alexie pieces and historical context.


Washington was fabulous, not least because I finally got to meet Nichole's adorable kitty Scout, pictured here nestled beneath the cilantro on the porch. The very best part of the trip was getting to see family--so many darling nieces and nephews. Cady is such a gorgeous, sweet and helpful eight-year-old. As we trudged up and down the mall (the American History museum, Air and Space, the castle) she was so courteous and opened doors for strangers who were obviously impressed with her manners and over-all adorableness. And Gavin is a sheer tornado force of fun and energy that only a boy his age can balance. His golden locks really are enough to make me cry, even when he yanked on my arm in an attempt to play solo 1-2-3 jump. Audrey is a total hoot; she looks so tiny but seems fearless, rushing into the fray of whatever her older siblings are doing without a care. Like her big brother and sister she's a solid muscle baby, and a super charmer (she had Peter-in-palm, day one). Sarah is still a delightful little screamer, and I can't believe how big Nellie is! Timothy took us up to the National Cathedral and I had fun sprinting after Nellie and trying to teach Sarah how to smell roses. The "bishop's garden" had a beautiful variety of blooms. Only some had scent but those that did were delicious and surprisingly distinct from one another. It was pretty hilarious to watch Sarah put her face right next to the bloom and breathe out, or in with her mouth. Funny, the little things.

The site-seeing highlight of DC was DEFINITELY the dome tour. My sissy rocks for many, many reasons, one of which is that she got Peter and I on a dome tour of the Capital building. I'm not scared of heights, but looking straight down from inside the dome right beneath the kinda creepy but still gorgeous Apotheosis of Washington fresco made my stomach turn a bit. It made me feel bad for teasing Peter about his mild acrophobia. It was great fun trudging up stairs amid all the scaffolding and the outside view was not scary at all (what with the big white slide just beneath us), just gorgeous on a day with 10 miles of visibility.

New York was also fabulous. I spent way too much money in two days (how? how?! where did it go?) and my sunglasses inexplicably turned up "missing" at the Met. Romeo and Juliet was gorgeous and I, unlike my blushing sister, loved the pants. But somewhere between the first intermission and the final curtain someone swiped the sunglasses that I put under my seat. Crazy! At the freakin' orchestra pit of the Met! Anyone who knows my horrible track record at keeping sunglasses can appreciate my grief, especially since I quite liked the enormous, second-hand, "Juicy Couture" with a giant, gaudy label on one arm. Weep. Hmmm, reality check, I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, my fabulous partner's work does score complimentary tickets to the Met. The universe is not such a cruel place after all. I got to see two shows (God of Carnage was also very fun...my first Broadway play experience) and go to restaurants recommended by the fabulous Irene, who's blogging skills cast a sickly palor over my own feeble once-every-two-month and picture-heavy posts. She can be viewed below doing baby squats. Thanks to her, I ate edamame ravioli that is bringing another tear to my eye just thinking about it. And crazy fate! As Peter and I boarded our plane home, who should I see in the coveted first aisle behind first class row of seats but the fabulous Irene, falling asleep reading over a copy of her exams. I tapped on her the shoulder and she said, "Oh, hi," and then "Hi!" as the context sunk in. We knew we were getting back in town around the same time, just didn't realize how same. Then I read The Great Gatsby on the ride home. What a wretched book. Impressively structured. Tragic. Horrifying. Utterly American. *sigh*

Research presentations, AP students and pools

Last Friday I took a personal day off from school to go see my friend Irene's "Research & Inquiry" presentation at UW. She and I are in the same cohort in the doctoral program, but she has actually continued full time :)

The "R&I" is a big rite of passage for doc students, so there's a get-together afterwards and I was also able to see my friend Maxine who recently had a baby AND was presenting her R&I (she made me feel like such a slacker...). It was great to see them, and Irene began practicing the "baby squats" documented here.



This Friday was a big relief for my AP students and I. After an insanely packed Semester attempting to prepare them for the big exam, they took the test on Thursday morning and everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief when it was all over. They really are sweet kids--the day before the exam I told them their homework was to get plenty of rest and eat a healthy dinner and breakfast. The kids decided to meet at a local diner at 6:15 am for one final get-together before the exam an impressively enough, I was able to get up and out of the house by 5:45 in order to meet them at Mitzel's family restaurant.

The night before I went to the drugstore and bought a pack of the fanciest pencils I could find, then at Mitzel's we ceremoniously passed around the "magic pencils" for them to use on the exam. We had a pretty amazing party in class that day after the test, complete with a wii boxing tournament and more sweets than anyone should ever encounter in a single day. Luckily there was a track meet that afternoon, so I was able to pawn off the extra goodies to some throwers and my jumpers.



FINALLY the pool in our building is being filled! The weather has been quite lovely lately, despite a few ugly rain showers here and there, and now our building manager has begun the process of getting the pool ready to open. And yes, I am too lazy to take the picture from downstairs, so that diagonal line is my condo window, open so that I could stick my iph camera out to take a picture. The iphone is a slippery little sucker, so there was a definite moment of fear that I might drop it the five stories down onto a neighbors porch. But luckily that did not occur and just look at what a lovely picture it took (ha! the iph takes horrible pictures...for all the pictures of my students I had to tell them to hold very still for at least five seconds).


Now if only I had a kitty cat...

no addictive personality here...

Woohoo! No more Sri Racha, Cholie! ;)

Friday was a gorgeous afternoon in Seattle, so Peter and I decided to grab a few cheapseats to the Mariner's game. I'm not sure if you can tell just how high up we are in the stands, but our official ticket assignments were one row in front of the very top of the stadium. Luckily we were on the side with a phenomenal view of the sound behind us, and we grabbed a few empty seats closer to the steps for this lovely picture of the Mariners Moose. Which leads to the question, Why is the Mariner's mascot a moose? Did there used to be moose in the area before people moved in? Really, shouldn't the mascot be a big salmon? After I suggested this to Peter he agreed and added the excellent idea that the security guard could cart the salmon around as it flopped on some sort of plate while encouraging fans to cheer. We are an idea couple.

The game was exciting--we got to see Ichiro hit a single that brought two runs, and although Ken Griffey, Jr did not get a hit I now know from the jumbo tron that his favorite song is Ice Cube's "Today was a good day." It was pretty cool when Ken went up to bat, because the stadium suddenly had a visual eruption of camera flashes of all the fans taking pictures of him. From our vantage point high above the action it was an impressive effect.

One of the most exciting aspects of our winter holiday fun in San Francisco was finding a store in Chinatown that sold big bottles of Sri Racha hot sauce for less than half the price of a big bottle at QFC in Seattle.

Peter and I are of one mind and heart when it comes to hot sauce.

well

It was so exciting and fun to see Lara's new blog that I thought I may as well start my own. Maybe for some reason blogging will be more achievable than journaling, since keeping a journal has been a woefully underkept new year's resolution since I was at least 11 years old. Although I do have a fabulous 20 pages or so from 5th grade written in a little white leather journal with a birthday inscription from my dear cousin Emily, who I think I recall from conversations this summer is a bit of a blog-a-holic. But when are writing and reading a bad thing? Especially when it means staying aware of people you love?

My next goal, after figuring out how to perhaps print these posts to fully "count" as a lasting journal, is to get my big sister Nichole to start a blog...