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...