Hodie

So, my amazing sister Emily is one of the more talented people in the world. Seriously. She's a gifted musician, and can play at least 6 instruments. I still remember one day when we were both living together going to college. I had a piece of music I had been working on for quite a while that was pretty technically challenging. After weeks of work, it was starting to sound a little closer to something someone might actually want to listen to. She came strolling through while I was practicing, and asked what I was working on. I showed her, and she asked me if she could borrow my violin for a minute (not her primary instrument--she plays the viola). My jaw dropped as she breezed through the piece of music, making it sound better than I ever had.

Anyway, Emily has always been one to get involved in musical things, and even though she is in med school has still found a way to get her music fix. Her recent gig has been singing with the Salt Lake Choral Artists. We went to a performance they did in November, and thoroughly enjoyed it. When we found out they were putting on a Christmas program, we jumped at the chance to go. I had never heard of Ralph Vaughan Williams' "Hodie" before, but figured it would be good based on prior experience. It was amazing! I now have a new piece of music to add to my "must listen to during Christmas" list. Thanks, Emily! We had a lot of fun.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas. The best part was spending time with family. Christmas Eve ended up being super busy. I had to work all day Tuesday, so it was the first day all week I had a chance to get out to do some last-minute grocery shopping. Turns out I wasn't the only one with that idea. Before I left to go shopping, I wondered if any of the stores would be open on Christmas Eve. Were they ever! What a zoo!

We went to see my side of the family at Heidi's house that afternoon.

While Heidi was busily cooking up a storm, Katie was quietly and methodically making the rounds of the kitchen, looking for anything she could take apart, open, dump or play with.

We wanted to stay longer, but Ryan's side of the family was having their big Christmas Eve bash at Grandma and Grandpa W's. We left a little early so we could make it to both.

We had dinner at G&G W's. Prancer (the family grand-dog) was roaming around, on the lookout for anything someone might be careless enough to drop. LaRae asked the boys to be very careful not to drop anything, because Prancer could get sick from eating people food. My nephew Ian was sitting in a chair that was kind of awkward to get in and out of. He dropped an olive on the floor and saw Prancer heading for it. He couldn't easily get down, so he had to go with plan B. "Alert, alert, alert, alert!" he yelled. The funny part is that we all understood exactly what was happening.

After dinner, we had gifts. Ian and Kai were positively dancing with excitement waiting for their cousins to open what they got them for Christmas. It's so fun to watch those boys play together. They know how to have a good time.



The biggest news this morning is...snow. Lots of it. I'm not sure what we got more of, wind or snow. Here's our nicely covered back porch, covered in snow. The closer it was to the house, the deeper it piled up.
While I chipped away at the ice on the front of our north-facing house, Ryan worked on blasting away what the snow plow left for us in our driveway. We are so thankful for that snowblower!

Hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday. We are so grateful for our family and friends. We love you, and appreciate the time we have to share together.

An experiment

I was in the mood for something different on my salad tonight, and this is what I came up with:

Pomegranate Salad with Citrus Dressing
Salad:
bowl full of a spring mix blend lettuce
sprinkle with a handful of raisins and pomegranate seeds
top with grated cheese (the stronger the cheese the better) and orange zest

Dressing:
3 Tbsp olive oil
juice of one orange (squeeze the orange you just zested)
1 tsp orange zest
1 splash of lemon juice
1/8 tsp cardamom
1/8 tsp ginger
1/8 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp sugar

I loved it! Ryan wasn't wild about it, but I thought it was really good.

Holy Ham!

'Tis the season for Christmas gifts from the administration. (I really do appreciate the effort they make, and realize it's impossible to please everyone. It is entertaining, though, to compare notes on the obligatory Christmas gift.)

So, after 2 interruptions into 4th period for various announcements from whoever has the controls for our PA system, someone broke in again to tell the teachers that we needed to hustle out to the parking lot the moment school got out so we could pick up our Christmas gift. I had kids in my room after school, so I hurried out as soon as I could (after yet another announcement over the intercom). Lo and behold, I was given a ham--a rather large ham. I think it will take me and Ryan a month to eat through it. I didn't have any place cold to put it, and I still had another 45 minutes of work to do in my room. Hope the ham is still okay. I think the ham was frozen. It was still kind of cold when I finally got it home... I think its odds are better than the turkey I was given in the MORNING one year that I had to hang on to until school got out at noon.

My personal favorite for quirky administrative Christmas gifts was the year we got faculty shirts at the beginning of the year, and then a card at Christmas time: "We hope you continue to enjoy your shirt." I should have kept the card, because no one believes me when I tell them that story. The shirts weren't that great, either. We were asked to wear them for parent-teacher conferences, and all of the female staff had an extra shirt/turtleneck on under the faculty shirts because the fabric was chintzy and thin.

Anyway, I'm not a total cynic about Christmas gifts. I realize it's difficult to please everyone, especially when you feel obliged to give a staff a gift that ends up being the same for all. It does bring up a few vital questions though. Do they really need me to give me something? I think I would feel just as loved if they skipped the ham and donated the proceeds to a charity. And the most pressing question of all--what the heck am I going to do with all that ham?

Two is company, three is a party

...and it's a good thing it only takes 3. Yesterday we had a Christmas party at school for the ASL club. I had a whopping 5 kids show up, three of them officers who helped plan the party. Actually, I guess you could say we had 6, because at about 4:30 (well after what time I should have been there) one more student showed up and asked what time the party was going to start. Going to start!? The only reason I was still there was because I was finishing midterm grades (which I hadn't done earlier because of the party).

Birthday fun

One of the nice things about birthdays is that sometimes they end up being stretched over a week or so. Last night, we had some of Ryan's family over. My nephews Ian and Kai made me these very cool birthday cards. On the way out the door, Kai said, "Wait, I need to say one more thing to Amy! Enjoy the 'Bolt' cards." (This is one of two "Bolt" cards.)

Ian is very creative when he draws creatures. His drawings are really fun!

Mom gave me some birthday money, so today Ryan and I went out to our favorite local nursery, and bought a plum tree. Maybe we will be lucky next year and get some plums. The trunk is a little crooked, although the base is perpendicular to the ground. I'm hoping it will straighten as it grows. Right now, depending on the angle that you look, it has kind of a drunk look to it.

Restful Vacation

My parents came out to visit for Thanksgiving. Ryan and I were thrilled. It's always fun to have them here, plus my dad always brings a car full of tools so he can help us with projects we have. Boy do we have projects! This is the roof to our back porch. (They started the demolition before I got home from school, so I wasn't able to get a proper "before" shot, but chunks of the fiberglass roof on our porch have been blowing off over the last few years every time we get a good storm.) Whenever the wind blows, we can hear the part of the porch roof that's still partially attached banging against the beams of the porch.

We ripped the remaining room off, and added some more support beams. We painted the top part (we'll get to the bottom half later.)

Here's a typical Dad pose--in the middle of a project, answering the phone.


I must say, I can hardly keep up with my dad and that's taking into consideration the fact that he has Parkinson's. Tuesday night, after a long day of working outside, we were all sitting around the table playing Upwords. It was obvious that Dad was tired, and his tremors were starting to really kick in. Instead of going to bed (what I would have done), he got up and started fixing the broken doorknob downstairs. He needed a project to help him feel better, and after moving around to get his tools, he had made a visible improvement.

Now that the roof is on our porch, we are waiting with baited breath for it to rain. I can't wait to see the rain/snow dripping off the edges, instead of all over the deck.

And on a completely random note... I went to yoga class today. A student of mine from last year happened to be in the same class. I figured it was only a matter of time, seeing as I also taught the daughter of one of the yoga teachers (although I had her years ago when I first started teaching). Small world.

Catching up

I think I'm finally there! It's been a busy month, as evidenced by the list of things I finally caught up on this week...

• make posts for my blog (top of the list, of course!)
• balance my checkbook (I love the little prompt Quicken gives when it's been longer than a month--the: "You might be trying to reconcile out of order" message. Yeah, yeah, I know!)
• catch up on loads of laundry, although that one never ends
• get all my grades caught up at school--and I had a STACK of stuff to enter!
• clean the kitchen (haven't made it to the floor yet, but everything else looks good. Just don't look down)

So, I'm feeling much better about life. I still have a laundry list of things to do, but it's not as overwhelming as it was before.

Student Gems

It's been a hectic month, as evidenced by all the posts I've had time to write. Friday was the end of first quarter, and my favorite kind of day--a "Quality Teaching Day" (district's term, not mine) with no students.

Each quarter, my students are assigned to hand in a paper about something they did relating to Deaf people and their culture. I enjoy reading them because of the insights I gain into their personalities, not to mention the funny mistakes they make. (I can laugh about them because I'm not their English teacher...) Here are a few from this quarter's batch:

"Well for my deaf culture experience I watched TV for like Thirty five minutes with no sound."
"Being able to hear is a gift and we shouldn't take it for granite."
"The weighter [waiter] came up to our table..."

This quarter has been a good one. It's had its bumps, but overall, I have been very impressed with my students. I think it's interesting to compare the start of the quarter to the end. There are a few students that I had pegged for being total air-heads, and I'm happy to say I was wrong. I've learned a lot, and so have they.

I will survive.

I am so glad the Silent Weekend is over! Our theme was "Survivor: ASL Island". The survivor theme felt very appropriate as I ran huffing and puffing up and down the lovely hill that all of the cabins were on, checking schools out and making things were cleaned and locked up Saturday, while it drizzled rain on my soaking head. I'm looking forward to having my life back. I'm still catching up on stuff at school that I've been putting off because I've been busy hounding people for shirt sizes, hammering out the details of the schedule, sorting shirts, carrying junk out to my car, etc. etc. As I was leaving school one day at a ridiculous hour last week (thank goodness for sports--I don't feel like a total loser when I can see a handful of other cars still in the parking lot at 5:00), I pondered on how really important people do it. How do people like the governor or the president get everything done? I'm in charge of an event involving about 130 people, and it kills every spare moment for three weeks...not to mention the stack of assignments I haven't graded or entered in the computer for the job I'm actually getting paid for. At least I can look at a stack of stuff on my desk and think: "Not important enough to stay any later today for." Can the president do that? Although on second thought, maybe he does, and that's why we are in the mess we are now...

All in all, we had a peachy time. It rained all day on Saturday, which required a little creativity and flexibility, but I'm glad it was rainy and warm as opposed to rainy and cold and snowy, which it would have been if we had scheduled it for this weekend. I work with a fantastic bunch of teachers. Everyone was willing to pitch in and help, which was a major factor in the success of the event.

These pictures were taken Friday night, when it was not raining, and when I still had a scrap of sanity remaining to take some pictures. If you look closely at the tan shirts that look the same, you can see how well Ryan's work turned out. I love Ryan! The shirts were great!

Mike, playing MC for the school skits Friday night.

One of the school's skits. (I only had two of my own students attending, and I just didn't get around to helping them work out a skit because I was so busy with everything else. Crummy excuse, I know, but my students didn't seem to mind. ) I was impressed with the creativity of the skits the different schools came up with.

A corner of the dining hall. Fits 60 people if you squeeze. Squeeze we did! We had to split our meals into shifts because of the size of our group and the smallness of the main lodge. I have no idea what the capacity of the lodge was supposed to be, although I'm guessing there was a fire martial somewhere who could sense a disturbance in the force. Lots of people--not a lot of room.

Another food book

Ryan would be the first person to tell you that I've been a little obsessed with the whole food thing lately. I just finished reading another book by Michael Pollan (the same guy who wrote The Omnivore's Dilemma). The book is called In Defense of Food. It was so interesting! He turns the whole concept of reading nutrition labels on its head, as well as what he calls" The Lipid Hypothesis". His philosophy for eating better is simply put: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

Eating "food" is harder than it sounds. There are a lot of non-food things out there that are pretending to be food, and some interesting legislation that was passed a few decades ago that allowed those things to be sold without the label "imitation" on them. Science has tried its hardest to break down what it thinks all the nutrients in food are, and has promoted the idea that if you get enough of the right nutrients, you will be healthy. Problem is, we still don't know what all of the properties are in raw food items that are good for us, and do helpful things for our bodies. We probably never will. Breaking down the nutrients item by item and packaging them in a sugary breakfast cereal, or attempting to make a baby formula that replaces a mother's milk simply does not work. The whole is more than the parts.

It's funny that most of the stuff in the book are things that my mom has strongly believed, even though for a time it was not considered in vogue to be health-conscious. I remember one time going to a church activity, and someone there who happened to be a chemist of sorts was telling us that science has now found a way to get all of the nutrients you need and put them in a chocolate cake--or any other form you want. He thought this was great, because now you can give kids chocolate cake, and they will get the same nutrition you would get from eating something boring for breakfast. I was fascinated by this concept, and being a sugar-deprived Spencer, thought I'd run that one pass the boss. I told my mom about it, and she said that was the biggest load of nonsense she had ever heard. She also pointed out that if I took a look at the physical well being of this chemist, he was not a prime example of good health and probably not the best source to believe on the topic of nutrition. She was right.

Anyway--a fascinating read. The last part of the book is particularly helpful, because it gives suggestion on ways to eat real food, ways to eat more plants, and how to eat less. Five stars from me.

Still alive.

I think that pretty much sums up how I feel at this point on Friday afternoon, and boy am I glad it's Friday!

Registration was due this week for the Silent Weekend I am assisting with, and I had to place the shirt order on Thursday so we can have them back in time for our big event. Talk about blood, sweat and tears! Wednesday night there were still six schools I had not heard back from. Two of the six had not confirmed if they were even coming or not. Aaaaargh! Fortunately, I finally got responses from everyone, the shirt order is in (some of the sizes are guesses), and I feel like I'm finally regaining some semblance of being on top of things at school. Oh, and did I mention that midterm grades were due on Tuesday? I got a visit from the computer guy at school during 4th period asking me why I hadn't sent my grades in yet...

It always helps to keep a sense of humor at times like this. Sometimes the administration unwittingly provides a laugh. We got matching faculty shirts last week, and were told that a group faculty picture would be taken at 7:00 a.m. Tuesday morning (15 minute earlier than we are really required to be there). In an attempt to pacify us, we were told we could leave at 2:30 on Tuesday and Wednesday instead of being required to stay until 3:15. I always think it's funny when they do that, because the teachers who were planning on leaving early were going to leave early anyway, and the shmucks who didn't have their midterm grades done last week (me) will be there late getting them sent in regardless of what time we have been given permission to leave.

So--Happy Friday to all, and to all a good night!

Word games

The other night, Ryan was on a roll. (Isn't he always...?) After some prodding, I came up with a few of my own. I can't remember most of them--here are a few. Feel free to join in.

After Igor lost his brain, he had to be reminded to get a new one.

That man wrote me a note on toilet paper.
Did you reply?

I heard the John McCain was considering choosing Romney as his running mate.
He was hoping to reMitt some payments on campaign bills.

There was a man who quit his job.
Before the new guy replacing him could move into his office and have everyone know his name, the man had to resign.

Forgive me Ryan if they didn't come out as funny in my feeble attempt to recapture and remember what the originals were. I'm sure there's a pun in that somewhere in that last sentence too, although I think I'm too tired to figure it out.

Quail eggs

This week for the CSA garden share, I got a little box of quail eggs along with the rest of the produce. They are tiny! Ryan made me a miniature Wild and Wacky Willie with one.
It tasted like a regular Wild and Wacky Willie, just smaller! =)

A tour of my room

I got a new camera the other day, and was playing around with the movie feature on it. Here is a panoramic view of my room, now that I've found a place to stow most of my junk. (Pay not attention to the stuff under the counter top...)

The wall is still very yellow, but as you can see from the picture taken from my point of view, I don't have to look at it.

My students are the ones who get to gaze at its yellowness:
Here is my favorite poster I have up in my room. Ryan made it for me (who else?), and used the design he created for a Silent Weekend a few years ago. I love it!
It has been a great year so far. My students have been receptive (for the most part), and I go to school thinking, "I love my job!" I haven't been able to say that every year I've taught. Don't get me wrong, I care deeply about my profession and what I do, but some years are easier than others. So far, so good this year. The jury's still out, but I think it will be great.

Twinkle toes and a redneck power point

My feet were killing me last week in a major way--particularly at the end of the days when I have no prep hour. I used the situation as an excuse to go shoe shopping on Saturday, and found some cute shoes that are very comfy! They are worth every dime (and they ended up being a lot of dimes). I had my long day today, and felt great at the end of the day. Lovely what kind of magic a new pair of shoes can work.

Last night I was in a rush at school and didn't have time to polish up my lesson plans for today. I spent about an hour at home thinking through what I wanted to accomplish with my Level II class, and developing a power point presentation to accompany. I've found that using power point has allowed me to sign more and voice much less. I e-mailed myself what I thought was my completed presentation, and even checked my school e-mail on line to make sure it got there. It didn't occur to me to OPEN the dang thing.

As the first bell rang for class, I opened my power point, only to find that I had sent myself the wrong one. Dang! I had about 3 minutes to scribble some things on some overhead transparencies I (luckily) had kicking around from last year and write some stuff on the board. Things ended up going surprisingly smoothly despite the downgrade in technology, proving to me that I really didn't need to spend all that time sweating out the details last night... right? It's been nice having a fancy projector installed in my ceiling, but it's not the end all be all of education. I hate it when things like that happen though! Doh!

Movie Madness

So apparently, it's a school tradition for each department to come up with a skit of sorts for the opening assembly we have on the first Friday of the year. I personally think it's a recipe for insanity. Because our department is small, and I'm the only one with a prep hour, I volunteered to make a short little video clip for our department.

Lessons learned from my experience last week:

#1 Never volunteer to make the short little video clip.

#2 Don't assume the brand spanking new camcorder you borrowed from the school has an interface for a fire-wire, even though an ounce of logic would dictate that any camcorder would have that.

#3 Read the compatibility information VERY carefully before purchasing and throwing away the packaging for mini DVD+RW discs that should have been mini DVD-RW discs.

#4 The nice people in charge of the video production class are very helpful and sympathetic. They also have nifty equipment to transfer the data from the afore-mentioned camcorder (even though it shouldn't have to require nifty equipment to transfer the data). It took us about an hour to figure out, but hey--I was contemplating just dumping the whole project by that point.

#5 It doesn't hurt to mention your nephew's name when making friends with the people mentioned in #4. They sang Sid's praises to the rafters. Mrs. Atkinson says hello, Sid.

#6 Remember that short little skit? It takes approximately 2 hours to edit the video footage into the 2.38 minutes of finished video. That's without adding music. Which I didn't do. I was too stressed out (and out of time) by that point.

#7 After all of that, don't be surprised if the English department pulls off a mini-Broadway musical on film that puts everything else to shame.

What to do with pesto?

Eat it, of course! I've used some of the pesto I made in a yummy recipe that I came up with on the fly. It turned out pretty tasty, if I do say so myself:

Portobello Mushrooms with Orzo Pasta and Pesto

INGREDIENTS:
2 portobello caps, washed and thinly sliced
1/2 small onion, cut in half lengthwise and then thinly sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1-2 tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped
2 tablespoons oil
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup cream or half and half
3/4 cups uncooked orzo pasta
1/4 cup pesto

DIRECTIONS:
1. Heat a medium-sized saucepan with olive oil. Cook onion, over medium heat for a few minutes until onions are translucent. Add garlic and thyme, cook for a minute, then stir in flour and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add sliced portobellos, stir periodically until cooked.

2. Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Add a pinch of salt and the orzo pasta. Cook for 7-9 minutes. Reserve 1/3 cup of water from pasta, drain.

3. Stir in the cream to the portobello mixture on the stove. Give it a few minutes to thicken.

4. Stir the pesto into the drained pasta. Serve pasta with the portobello on top.

And, if you are wondering how to make pesto, here is an adaptation of a recipe I found on allrecipes.com. There's been an abundance of basil in my garden. I've had to augment it with stuff from the garden share and from the farmer's market. Don't waste your money on the stuff at the grocery store. I got a TON of basil at the farmer's market for $1 per zip-loc bag.

Pesto

INGREDIENTS:
3 cups chopped fresh basil
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup pine nuts
2/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1/4 teaspoon chipotle
1/2 tablespoon lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:
1. Place the basil in a blender. Pour in about 1 tablespoon of the oil, and blend basil into a paste. Gradually add pine nuts, Parmesan cheese, garlic, chipotle and remaining oil. Continue to blend until smooth.

STORAGE:
This keeps up to about a week in a tupperware in the refrigerator. Freeze pesto in an ice-cube tray, then transfer to a zip-loc bag for longer storage in the freezer.

The Honeymoon, day 1

So far, so good. It's always hard to tell if the first day of school is a very good indication of how angelic students will be next week. I have one Level II class that I can tell is going to be a little rowdy unless I can scare a couple of them away.

Here are the last two days in a nutshell:

-Golfing student enters room. "Hey! I have to leave early so I can eat before my game. Hey!"

-More students than I can count--"Where's computer tech? It's NOT in this room?" (It took some of them a good five minutes to figure out that having the manual alphabet on their desks and a big notice on the board: Welcome to Sign I meant that they were in the wrong class. In their defense, there was an error on a lot of the schedules that went out.)

-The kid named Kip. I've never had a Kip before. The students were supposed to write their first and last names on name cards. I went around taking roll, checking spelling of names, etc. and this kid has just "Kip" written on his, when everyone else followed directions and had a first and last name written down. I assume he's being a smart aleck and a Napoleon Dynamite wanna-be, and ask him: "So really, what's your name?" Ooops. Open mouth, insert foot.

-A vice principal willing to make a fool out of himself for us. Thank you, Nick! We couldn't have made our video for Friday's assembly without you. Well, I guess we could have, but it wouldn't have been anywhere near as funny.

-Kids with weird names. Parents, do your kids a favor. Give them a name that anyone can spell and pronounce, and call them by their first name.

The voice-off thing to start class off went really well. I don't know why I haven't done it sooner. It worked beautifully. I'm hoping it's a prelude for things to come.

No more buy-out!

Yeay! I didn't really want a buy-out (meaning I have 7 classes instead of 6, and get paid for the additional class and loss of sanity) to begin with, but didn't argue the point when I was initially reassigned to my new location. Last week as I have been working on things at school, I've accessed my class rosters a few times, and watched the numbers drop in my Level III class from 16 to 10--and this is before I have even had the chance to meet these kids and scare them off in person. Bummer about no Level III, although this is going to make my life a lot easier. The only problem now is that my schedule is lopsided--4 classes one day, 2 the next. I did that last year, and wasn't in love with it.

Last night as I was going over what I'm going to do tomorrow in class for the first day back, it occurred to me that this is the 9th time I've done this. It doesn't feel like I've done this 8 times already! I love the first day of school, and yet despite the number of times I've met a group of kids for the first time at the beginning of the year, it always makes me nervous. It's the proverbial "box of chocolates"--I never know what I'm going to get.

I'm trying something new this year. In the past, I have always started class off by using my voice to explain rule, procedures, my background, blah blah. I'm going to do something different this time. Chris (another ASL teacher) told me he started class with his Level I students "voices off" last year, and that it went beautifully. The kids got into what he was doing, and caught onto the signs he was teaching pretty quickly. I didn't realize how addicted I am to my voice. I'm going to take the plunge--here's hoping it works. =) I'm not worried about my Level I kids. They are "blank slates" and don't know anything different. It's the Level II classes that are keeping me up at night, because I have no idea where they are as far as skill level, and no idea what their expectations for Sign Language are. I'm anticipating a mass exodus--which wouldn't be bad at this point because I'm pushing 40 in those classes.

Well, I'm going to quit blabbing so I can get my beauty rest for school tomorrow.

First day back.

Yesterday was my first official day back to school. I started the morning off by taking a final for the class I've been doing this summer, and then heading over to school to start getting things in order. On my way to school, I noticed sun flowers blooming next to the road. Yesterday was the first day I noticed them in bloom, and it seemed appropriate that it would be on my first day back. My friend Nancy always decorates her class room with sun flowers and has a vase full of them on her desk at the beginning of school because they are such a happy flower. Nancy is the kind of teacher that for her, the first day of school is always a happy day. I'll miss teaching at the same school with her this year.

So far, so good as far as things go at a new school. I know this sounds like I'm a high school student all over again, but it's always a little unsettling to be the "new kid" at school and have to worry about feeling like I fit in. Everyone has been so friendly though, and I have even bumped in to a few familiar faces. I am feeling much better about things than I did a week ago.

Today as I was chipping away at emptying a filing cabinet, sophomores were picking up their schedule and roaming the school, looking for classes. Several came by and said hello, and one even ventured to tell me that he was going to be my favorite student. Tee hee. I think I'm being buttered up already. Sorry kid, not going to work, although I think you are darling.

One week and a day left until we have students. Better get busy!

Veggilicious

It's taken me a little bit to finally subscribe to Zoe's Garden, the CSA (community supported agriculture) I mentioned earlier. I made the first pick-up on Tuesday, and holy moly! It's a lot of food! This is their small share. If you're curious, this is what it included:

• Purple Top Turip
• Tam Jalapano
• Black Beauty Eggplant
• Black Beauty Zuchinni
• Blue Lake Bean
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Red Pontiac Potatoes
• Rainbow Swiss Chard
• Endive
• Kolhrabi
• Salad Mix
• Sweet Danso Basil
• Early Ducth Cabbage
• Honey Select Sweet Corn
• Triple Crown Black Berries

I've looked up some recipes to use all of this, and I'll let you know how they turn out. Ryan found a zucchini pancake recipe that we both gave a thumbs-up too. It belongs to Julie O'Hara on NPR.

Zucchini Pancakes

Makes 10 to 12 pancakes
3/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (3 1/4 ounces)
3/4 cup whole-wheat pastry flour (3 1/4 ounces)
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 to 1 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cups milk (low-fat or whole)
Zest of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 medium zucchini, trimmed and shredded on large holes of a box grater
Cooking spray
Maple syrup, powdered sugar, yogurt or sour cream for serving (optional)

Add the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt to a large bowl and whisk thoroughly. In a separate bowl, lightly whisk the eggs. Add the milk, zest, lemon juice and butter and whisk until frothy. Stir in the zucchini.

Add the flour mixture to the egg mixture and stir gently, just until combined (some lumps are okay; do not over mix). Let the batter rest at room temperature for 10 minutes or up to 30, allowing the leavening agents to start reacting and any lumps of flour to dissolve.

Meanwhile, coat a nonstick skillet or griddle with cooking spray and heat to medium or medium-low. Give batter a quick stir. Using a small ladle or quarter-cup measure, scoop scant quarter cups of batter onto the cooking surface to make roughly 4-inch pancakes. Cook 2 minutes or until holes form on top of pancakes. Flip and cook on second side 1 minute or until golden brown. Serve with maple syrup, powdered sugar, yogurt or sour cream.

My nifty website

Okay, so I spent WAY more time on this than it should have taken, but I'm pretty proud of the result. I designed a website for the Silent Weekend I am assisting with. This is the first time I've had to set up the domain name and hosting by myself--my other projects have been posted through the school district's server. Every time I take on a project like this, I keep telling myself that it will go a lot quicker than the last one because I've already made every mistake I possibly can. Turns out there is always room for more. Anyway, I like it! Ryan did the artwork. I don't know what I would do without him--I would probably have a lot uglier designs for everything I've done over the years.

Calvin-ball

Friday, Ryan and I got a chance to watch our nephews while their parents were at a wedding. We had a blast! In the afternoon, the boys and I decided to go to the park. We brought along my slightly deflated ball to play with. After a few rounds of tag which ended up in me being "It" for the majority of the time, I suggested a round of 500.

The boys seemed to already know how to play, so that part was pretty easy. Jaden started out as the person throwing the ball, and I started to wonder if I really knew how to play 500. He shouted "Mystery box, alive!" Tyson caught the ball.

"Mermaid," Jaden yelled, and Tyson promptly dropped to the ground on his belly and put his feet in the air. "You have to stay like that for three turns," Jaden instructed, "and put your hand under your chin like this." He giggled and made Tyson put his hand oh-so-charmingly under his chin.

Every single throw was a "mystery box" for Jaden. After a while, Tyson was convinced Jaden was making up what the mystery box was depending on who caught the ball. We decided he had to tell Corbin what it was before he threw the ball so it didn't seem like he was unfairly targeting anyone. In addition to "mermaid," there is also "gum", which means that your feet are glued to the ground and you can't move. The only solution is for the person throwing to say "doctor" and toss you the ball. I think if it had been Jaden's turn to throw much longer, we would have had a few more surprises from the mystery box. I guess I really didn't know how to play 500 until Friday. Check back in a month, and I still won't have all of the rules mastered.

"I've seen that face before..."

I was on my way home from class today, and this kid got on the bus that looked oddly familiar. He had an unusually effeminate voice, and carried on a chatty conversation with the driver that was loud enough for the whole bus to hear. He told the driver he was visiting a friend. I caught sight of an "American Idol" wristband, and suddenly put two and two together. He was on American Idol last year, and Simon told him he looked like a bush baby. Apparently he is back for another round tomorrow when American Idol hits Salt Lake. Watch for him when they air it in the fall--I'm sure they will show him again, because he fits into the category of contestants who are really...unusual.

Memories

Here's a tag my sister posted on her blog. It's been fun to read the responses to hers and others who have done this.

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember!

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty funny to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you.

Contraband

Have you ever wondered what happens to all of the illegal fireworks that get confiscated? Ryan and I watched an impressive display last night compliments of our local highway patrolman. He said they are confiscated contraband--at least, that's his story, and he's sticking to it. I think it even rivaled the city's display they do on occasion.

We watched them with a neighbor down the street. I'm not sure if the neighbor was more interested in watching the display, or in making sure his house didn't catch on fire. There were a few that came pretty close to landing on his roof. Fun times for all!

Wanna know why they're called "squash bugs?"

...'cause if you don't SQUASH them, they'll eat your squash. Nasty little bugs. They are kind of hard to squash, too. Last year I had a zucchini plant that died after a long struggle. Once it was dead, I noticed a whole herd of these critters tromping all over the wilted remains of the plant. I just found a couple of them again on my zucchini yesterday, and I've now declared war. I found some helpful information at this website. They recommend leaving a board out next to your susceptible plants, and checking in the morning for squash bugs that have sheltered there for the night. You know what happens next... *!* They have blue guts, by the way.

Incentives, incentives!

I teach the 8-year-olds in primary, and by the time we make it through sacrament meeting, primary class and get to sharing time, the kids are pretty much done with being on their best behavior (not that their behavior was ever very good to start with). The primary chorister is always coming up with ways to try to trick them into enjoying the last hour, with mixed results.

This past Sunday, it was "rhythm sticks". She had 5 sets of sticks--one with the end colored orange, the other with the end colored green. Five kids would gather around the music stand at the front of the room, and follow the color-coded system she had marked to make noise to "Called to Serve Him." As is typical with primary, all the kids were anxious to have a turn, so the chorister told the kids who had just finished banging their sticks to "go find someone with their arms folded who is being reverent."

I have one boy in my class who is incredibly shy. I think a lot of that comes from fear of doing things wrong or messing up in front of other people. He grins a lot, but that's usually all I get out of him on any given day. He is typically the most conversational when I am sitting next to him in sharing time, and he can quietly whisper little side comments to me. I looked over while the chorister was rounding up the next batch of volunteers, and noticed that he had his hands shoved in his pockets as far as they could possibly go. He giggled, and then whispered, "I'm not folding my arms, because I don't want to get picked to go do that."

The cheesiest book I have read in a long time...with a side of corn.

The past couple of years at school (last year especially) I've seen more students than I can count carting around books from the Twilight series. I haven't been particularly inclined to read it myself, but I have heard lots of people gush about how it's their favorite book. Regardless of my own personal opinion of the book, I think it has been a powerful force in getting kids to read. I have never seen so many kids reading books at school, and it hasn't stopped once they finished Twilight. They come back for more, and are picking up all kinds of books. They are even (not so covertly) reading during my class! Because I think it's so great that they are reading, I don't get mad until I've asked little Knarblethorpe to put the book away for the umpteenth time in one class period because she is reading it every time I glance away from her while I'm teaching IMPORTANT STUFF that she will be clueless about at the end of class because her nose was in a book the whole 90 minutes (minus the 8 minutes I actually had her attention). I sound grumpy about it, but actually it tickles me pink, even though I'm not currently teaching English.

So anyway, the book itself. If you love Twilight, maybe just skip this part, because I love you, and I don't want you to hate me. I'm not quite done with it yet (and I'm not sure why I'm trying to finish it), but from the 2/3rds that I've read so far, it is the goopiest, sappiest thing I have encountered in ages. Good land! If you deleted all the parts that described people's eyes, amazing physical beauty and their frequent looks of "frustration" on their faces, I think it would cut the book in half. This has all the sappy romance of Jane Eyre, mixed with a vampire who is drop-dead gorgeous (pun intended) and has all of the draw of the ultimate "bad boy" you should never date but feel curiously, self-destructively drawn to. Their relationship has all of the superficiality of Romeo and Juliet, and seems to be based mostly on the fact that what's-her-name is completely in love with Edward's physical appearance. She doesn't even know the guy, nor does he really know her. I've run out of things to say. I think I'm going to sign off and go finish the book.

My new weapon of choice

I've used a lot of different cleaning products over the years. I've used Soft Scrub with Bleach for a long time, because it seemed to get everything really clean. Everything, including my lungs. Especially over the last few years, I've noticed that after a really big cleaning job (like scrubbing down the tile in the shower), I still feel like I'm breathing bleach fumes for a few days afterwards, even if I'm not in the room I had cleaned. Maybe that's why I don't love cleaning the bathroom...we'll blame it on that.

Anyway, I found this website that has a bunch of different recipes for "green" cleaning products you can make yourself. (I had to type in "recipe" on the website's search function, because the link to the recipes wasn't very obvious.) I tried out the creamy cleanser yesterday, and it worked a treat! I would have to say it is as good if not better than Soft Scrub as far as cleaning capabilities, plus having the added bonus that I don't have a fume-induced cleaning hangover today.

Creamy Soft Scrub
suggested uses: Use this creamy soft scrub on kitchen counters, stoves, bathroom sinks, etc.

2 cups baking soda
½ cup liquid castile soap
4 teaspoons vegetable glycerin (acts as a preservative)
5 drops antibacterial essential oil such as lavender, tea tree, rosemary or any scent you prefer (optional)
Mix together and store in a sealed glass jar, shelf life of 2 years.

Tips: For exceptionally tough jobs spray with vinegar first—full strength or diluted, scented—let sit and follow with scrub. Dry soft scrubs can be made with baking soda or salt (or combination of both) with 10-15 drops essential oil to scent

This took me a little bit to get all of the ingredients, and figure out where to find them. Castile soap, essential oils and vegetable glycerine can be found at a health food store. I would recommend calling around first. The castile soap I found was already scented with lavender, so I didn't add any of the essential oils. I also discovered in the process that lavender and Ryan don't get along, so I will be looking for a different flavor that works for us. Some of the essential oils are pretty potent, so a "sniff test" might be in order before you buy it. The oil, soap and glycerine are a little bit of an investment up front (in the $8 to $10 dollar range), but in the long run it is much more cost effective than what you would spend on a similar cleaning product in the store.

The other side of the grade book.

I had the opportunity on Wednesday to experience life from the other side of the grade book. I took a midterm for the class I'm taking this summer, and I must say, it was an interesting experience. I think it is very healthy for teachers to experience things from student perspective on occasion.

The first thing that came to mind when I read several of the questions was (instead of the answer to the question), "What kind of a question is that? This doesn't reinforce the core concepts we have covered so far...!" I think "minimally meaningful minutia" is probably the best way to describe a good chunk of it. We'll see how it went next week when we get them back. I guess that is one very big plus to being on the taking end of a test--I don't have to waste a weekend grading them. =)

Walls so blue, and sunshine yellow

Very blue.
Very yellow. Fortunately both shots are of only one wall, a wall I am hoping to be able to use as the back of the room for a number of reasons--one of them being that if I don't have time to paint before school starts, it's not going to be the focal point of the room.


I managed to make it over to my new room again. This time I brought my camera so I could document how interesting the walls are. I'm slowly making headway on things. In these pictures, I can't blame all of the mess on the former occupant--most of the piles are mine. It's been hard finding time to get over there, because the school is only open Monday-Thursday, which also happen to be the days I have class or am working. I still have plenty of time before school starts though, right...? Just a little over a month and I'm back. I'm not ready to think about that yet.

An Enchanted Forest

It's been a while since I've been on. Ryan and I went to Washington to be with my family for a weekend. It was a lot of fun! It was also more green than I have ever seen anywhere else. On one of the days we were out there, we went and visited Beard's Hollow. With a name like that, you can't go wrong. It was so beautiful, it was cheesy beyond words. I loved tromping through it, even though I was doing it in my sandals (not a good idea).


Mom went on the hike with me.

Food for thought

I'm still chipping away at The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's been a very thought-provoking and enjoyable read. I have now decided to buy 500 acres of land somewhere and start a self-sustainable farm with cows, chickens, grass, and produce. Just kidding. What it has really inspired me to do, is to research viable options for eating locally produced food. In the book, Michael Pollen spends a week on Polyface Farm in Virginia that does its best to buck the industrialized way of producing and distributing food. In doing so, it is also able to produce food of a highly superior quality that you can't find in any grocery store--be it Walmart or Whole Foods. It made me want to move to Virginia.

After deciding that moving to Virginia probably isn't too practical, I spent a little time digging around online for places around here that make that kind of food accessible. It just so happens that next week is a big celebration hoo-rah for locally produced food and businesses in Utah. After looking around on that site a bit, I found a link to a CSA (community supported agriculture) in Utah that makes food drops to several locations around the Wasatch Front to people who subscribe to their service. You pay the money up front for the year, but then all season get to have farm-fresh, pesticide-free food. It looks very interesting!

An almost perfect match with UTA

I'm taking an ASL Linguistics class at the DATC this summer. Everything about it has been very good so far, including the fact that it is a near perfect match with UTA's bus schedule. It does add on another half-hour or so to the commute, but it's time that I can spend freezing to death on the over-air conditioned bus reading a book instead of fretting over morning traffic. Today I was able to get all of my homework from class done before I got home--and it only cost me $3.50 as opposed to the $6.26 I would have spent on gas (not to mention wear and tear on the vehicle), assuming I filled up at $4 a gallon. Not bad.

One thing that was a little odd was on the ride home, was that the driver kept stopping and waiting at some of the stops to stay on schedule. I rode the bus quite a bit in Provo, and never saw that happen. The strangest part was when the driver announced "I'm going to be waiting for about 6 minutes because I'm ahead of schedule, and I'm going to go over there to see if I can use the restroom." He left the bus running, doors open, got out and sure enough, headed over to a group of businesses to make a pit stop. Weird! I've never seen that, not even on all of the buses I rode in Russia. Anyone could have walked on and driven off with the bus.

So the next time you are stuck behind a bus that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, just realize that honking may not help. You might simply try pulling over and moving the bus...although in some places they might call that hijacking.

An excuse for lunch

It doesn't take much to make an excuse for lunch around here (ask Ryan about Subway--the whole 12 inches story). It is nice though, when lunch, my sister and a fabulous restaurant all happen to coincide.

I had a class this morning at the DATC in Kaysville, and plans to meet the Silent Weekend director (I'm her assistant) at a location we are considering as a potential place to have our event. So, I just happened to be driving through Salt Lake at lunchtime, and met up with Emily (she happened to be free, and even wanted to hang out with me!) at the Red Butte Cafe. Yum! I stepped out on a limb and ordered something different that what I might ordinarily order--a vegetarian dish involving spaghetti squash and some other goodies that ended up being quite good. I always get orderer's remorse when I go out to eat...you know where you order something, and then spend the rest of the time watching plates go by thinking "Ooooh, that looks good. Dang!"

The location Pam and I scouted out looks promising. It's located near Salt Lake, making it more centrally situated than other places we have had the Silent Weekend. Because we have schools coming from all over, that makes a big difference. It's also a LOT cheaper than one of the venues we have used for many years, but isn't quite as posh. The biggest concern that I have is that we will have 100+ people, and no real good meeting place where everyone can gather--unless you count the soccer field-sized bit of lawn outside. We will have to eat our meals in two shifts, and will be keeping fingers crossed for good weather!!

Hard at work or hardly working?

Yesterday, I finally moved my boxes and boxes of classroom stuff over to my new school. I am very thankful for my wonderful in-laws, who are always willing to help us with things like that. I'm also thankful that my father in-law was able to sweet-talk one of the student custodians into helping us haul it all in. And, did I mention that I am grateful to be at a school with an elevator?!? Heavenly bliss!
This is actually the second time in two years that I've had to move my classroom. Two years ago, I moved to a different room in the same building, and everything that I owned--books, filing cabinets, TV/VCR, bookshelves--had to be carried piece by piece up a flight of stairs. This fall I will be starting at a new school entirely, so my classroom moves again. It's been in my living room for the last three weeks while I waited for the carpets to be cleaned at my new school.
I think it's interesting that no matter what school you go in to during the summer, if you go expecting help from the custodians, you can pretty much forget it. "Oh, they are really busy--we can't spare any of our student custodians..." or "I think I could maybe send you someone in about an hour, but only for 10 minutes." These kind of statements are generally made (in all seriousness) while the student custodians are horsing around in some other part of the school, "cleaning lockers" or whatever else they pretend to do.
Yesterday was no different. I was going to avoid the whole issue and not ask for help, but my ever practical, silver-tongued father in-law wanted to expedite the process, and managed to talk one of the student custodians into finding a third hand-truck for us, and still another to haul boxes. It went a lot faster, and even though one of the full-time custodians kept muttering things like: "These teachers expect us to drop everything and help them haul all of their crap around," we managed to get it all done in short order.
Now I'm officially moved in to my beautiful room with windows (sigh!), and my not-so-beautiful sky blue and brilliant sunshine yellow walls. That's another story for a different day. I think sometime soon I will be thankful for some buckets of paint, and the off-the-record permission granted from someone at the school to paint... ("Teachers aren't supposed to paint the walls. We won't be painting your room anytime soon. If you do it, no one would blame you, and I didn't hear a thing you just said about painting.")

Cats and books

It's been a while since I've posted. It doesn't mean I'm not thankful for anything, it just means that I'm a slacker. Today I am thankful for...
1. Our new cat-scaring device
2. An interesting book

1. Cat-scaring devices
Let me just preface this with saying that I have been a cat owner before, and I don't really hate cats, or the people who own them. I just hate them pooping in my lettuce patch. We have been waging war with a cat who has staked out my garden to be its litter box. Grrr! I think that cat probably has the same wicked expression on its face when it sneaks in at night that you see on those horrible renditions of Calvin peeing on the Ford/Chevrolet/other symbol of your choice. I can give you a whole list of things that don't work:
--cayenne pepper (washes away after the first rain)
--upside-down mouse traps (Maybe it scared the poop out of the stupid beast--we've found a couple that have been sprung, next to a newly soiled part of garden. It didn't scare it enough, because it came back after that.)
--skewers planted about every three inches (cat just pushes them to the side so it can more comfortably do its business)

We had some old chicken-wire-like-mesh kicking around that Ryan rigged up to cover one patch that has been hit multiple times. That worked for that one, but we can't do that to the entire garden.

Enter: The Scarecrow

(This isn't our dog or yard, by the way.) Ryan found the scarecrow online, and installed it yesterday (after a few trips to the plumbing store). It will be interesting to see if it works. It will also be interesting to see how long it will take for the kids on the other side of the fence to figure out they can trigger the motion sensor by lobbing a ball over the fence.

2. Interesting book
I think I'm thankful I'm reading this one. It's a jaw-dropper. I'll let you know if I'm still glad I've read it when I'm done. I kicked off my summer reading with a bit of brain fluff (River Secrets by Shannon Hale). I'm following that up with The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Wow. This book has really opened my eyes to what it is that we are actually eating when we are eating anything that has been processed (90% of what you find in the grocery store), and why we have some of the health and eating problems that we do today. Did you know that most everything we eat today is made out of corn? Our diet has changed more radically in the last 50 years than it has in the preceding 500. Although the industrialization of our food production has increased the amount of food we can produce, it has been very damaging to the environment, to farmers, and to our relationship with food.
That's the simplified version of it. This book has really given me something to chew over (pun intended--I've been living with Ryan too long...) All silliness aside, it has made me very grateful for my amazing mom and grandma, and their thoughtful approach to preparing food for their families. In addition, it has made me re-think my initial reaction to a few things I encountered on my mission. We were always grossed out by the thought of buying any kind of meat at the outdoor markets in Russia, and so tended to stick to a vegetarian diet (and probably with good reason). One time, my companion and I found some Tyson chicken pieces being sold. They were leg quarters that were plump, frozen and plucked (things in its favor that other offerings lacked). We bumped in to one of the members of the branch while we were out, and we told her about our find. Her total disgust and suspicion of the chicken pieces surprised me, along with her fear of the "American-made chicken full of hormones". I had never given much thought to why American chicken was so much plumper than the skinny Russian birds laid out on the butcher blocks. She was just as skeptical of American meat as we were of the local Russian-produced birds. In hindsight, we probably were eating more garbage while dining on our American chicken than she was eating a Russian chicken which, although probably exposed to pollutants and radioactive fallout from Chernobyl, was raised without all of the crap we put the poor beasts through that Americans eat.

And on that happy note, I think I'm done for the day. Happy Sunday to all! I don't know what I would do without my day of rest. =)