You Could Drive a Person Crazy

Inspired by my friend Meg's recent commute-in-pictures post, I thought I would show you guys the excitement that is the drive to Colorado for me:

By the way, my east coast friends, these are mountains!



Entering the canyon.









Sunny skies, dry roads, red rocks, green trees, and white snow - it's a great day to drive!







Just past the summit, starting one of the long, straight stretches.






More long straightness.











Following the railroad tracks (which I memorably tried out last summer)






"Welcome to Colorful Colorado!"








Entering the grand valley.








The exciting town of Fruita!







A glimpse of the river, and a "Deer Crossing" sign that should be heeded (as my sorority friends and I can well attest, right Emily?)







A bit of the monument, close to my parents' home.

Big

I got a bit crafty this Christmas. The big project was a pair of felt Norwegian house slippers for my daddy-o.

It was an educational project. First, about 9/16 of the way into the crocheting, I finally looked up the directions for how to felt and found that acryllic yarn doesn't felt. Whoops. So I ran to JoAnn's on my lunch break and picked up more skeins of yarn (100% wool this time). It took almost non-stop crocheting, but I managed to finish the 16 squares required, and I sewed them together.

They were rather large.


However, when I tried them on my feet, I realized how big they were. I hoped that felting really did shrink things. A lot.


Natasha "helping".


Although they didn't shrink nearly as much as I had hoped, Dad liked them. Here he is Christmas afternoon wearing the slippers, playing with one of his own Christmas craftiness projects - a harmonium-type instrument for Andy. Essentially, a collection of glasses glued to a board that, when filled with the right amount of water, become worthy to play the theme of "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on.

Whistle Down the Wind

A storm's a brewin'!

I rather like it when the weather become so tricky. After a long freeze (it hasn't been above 28 degrees since Christmas), the mercury soared today to above 50! As Janelle and Ben and I left our faculty meeting to get lunch/debrief the week at a Mediterranean restaurant, the winds kicked up and the icicles started melting.

The early arrival of spring? Nuh-uh! 'Tis a blizzard!

It hasn't hit yet. They're saying sometime after midnight comes the first wave, and the second wave Sunday afternoon. Sitting here, listening to the threats of the meteorologists, I decided to get ready for a day-at-home tomorrow. I threw on a coat and headed out to the grocery store, and found my doormat on the lawn in front of my apartment building. These are really strong winds. I put it back, drove to the store, got the basics that I hadn't replaced since going to Colorado, drove back, picked my doormat off the lawn again, and took it and my groceries inside. Now I'm all set for the storm, and my cat's sniffing the mat for a taste of the outdoors.

If I'm snowed in tomorrow morning as expected, I'll finally upload my holiday photos and post them for you.

Till then, bonne nuit!

The Last Five Years

It's the five-year anniversary of my teaching career!

(And the three-year anniversary of my blog!)


Can you believe it?

Everybody Dance

'Tis the season for teachers to make fools of themselves for the love of their students!

At Dead President Junior High, the winter assembly is a grand event. It's traditionally capped off by a performance by the faculty band (which only exists for the sake of this one performance), an appearance by Santa (played by the hilarious shop teacher who also builds my sets for me), and a dance choreographed by Kelley and performed by any teacher courageous enough to join.

This year, Kelley made a mash-up of music that included "Soulja Boy" and "Kiss Kiss", which prompted immediate and boisterous screams of delight from the student body out there in the darkness. (Kelley is a very wise producer!)

Anyway, our brave dance troupe this year, in addition to Kelley, included Amber, the gym teacher, Erin, the science teacher, Angie, the technology specialist at our school, and me. We donned our finest "gangsta" clothes and did our very best with one day's rehearsal. I feel bad since I am usually better at not obviously watching the best dancer in the group for cues.

Still, it was a blast, as always. Here's the video, as shot by techie Carly from the booth:



My pants, by the way, were safety-pinned to my other pants to achieve the ultimate sag. I really don't know how the boys at our school beat gravity so consistently. My English class came up with the idea for the arm tats. They gave me many, many styling tips, then proceeded to mock me mercilessly for following their advice. I love these kids.

Hair

With the remnants of my purple hair color growing out into way-too-obvious roots, I decided to dye my hair this morning. I had bought a DIY "Dark Golden Brown" kit and followed the instructions right down the the strand test.

Of course, the joy of DIY is the unpredictability of the results, right?



Actually, I don't think this photo does justice to how startled I am when I look in a mirror. I actually don't mind it too much, but it is way darker than I intended.

Hair color experimentations aside, things are busy, but fine. With the concerts, special projects, and, of course, the much-anticipated winter break, it is taking more and more energy to reign them in long enough to teach them each period. In my Advanced Drama classes, we've started work on Shakespeare monologues. I assigned a unique monologue to each of my kids - something that took quite a bit of time on my part, but that paid off in their eagerness to see which speech they each "get" to do. They do like individual attention. In addition, as classes we've choreographed "To Be or Not To Be" and "All the World's a Stage". I've now got them memorized, and my students are not too far behind. They are catching on to the impressiveness of being able to spout off such famous speeches on cue.

The musical is going along fine as well. Kelley and Janelle and I were noting the other day how much easier it seems to be this time. I think we're figuring out how to do these things. For example, instead of trying to take roll by calling it outloud (as we did two shows ago) or in small groups with appointed-but-sometimes-flaky section student leaders (as we did last year), this time we've created boxes for each 25 students. The boxes get set out across the stage at the top of the rehearsal, and the student go to them to pick up their sheet music and to sign in on a clipboard. Meanwhile, we have three excellent students who check off the clipboards and put away the boxes at the end of each rehearsal. They're the ones who figure out who's missing too much unexcused practices, who's coming late, etc. A lot less work for us directors, but it keep the kids accountable.

Speaking of special projects, it's "babies are bad" time at school again. Rather than the raw egg I had to carry around as an eigth graders, our ninth graders get flour babies - ten-pound sacks of flour that the Home Ec. teacher wraps up in duct tape and the students personalize with blankets, baby clothes, and the occasional Cabbage Patch Kid's head. While the caring requirements certainly convince the students that a baby's inconvenient, I have my doubts about whether this assignment promotes abstinence. That "indestructible" falsehood they buy into at this age also applies to the consequences of sex - you know, "Sure, I know that sex=babies, but it won't happen to me."

The project did lead to an amusing scene outside my door, though. The flour babies unit coincided with the winter dance. While some teachers though the students should experience the difficulty in dancing with an "baby" in your arms, others (thankfully) realized that turning 400-some-odd students loose in a gym with dark lights and bags of flour may lead to some undesired white powder flying, well, everywhere. So, they set up a day care center. For 75 cents, the student could leave his/her baby outside of the dance, tended by one of our school aides. It was pretty popular with the "parents", although it must have been uncomfortable for the "babies":

The Argument

In English class earlier this week, I introduced persuasive writing to my students. On the board I wrote

Logos
Pathos
Ethos

and I said, "These are the three types of arguments. Can anyone guess what the words mean?"

Lui, one of my delights in this class, called out, "Dirty, nasty, and ugly!"

"What?" I asked as the students and I looked at him.

He grinned and replied, "That's the kind of arguments I do!"

Christmas Bells Are Ringing

Snow!
All night, all morning, and part of the afternoon, too. It's finally become pretty outside.

So, inspired by that and my newly rekindled health, I pulled out my Christmas decorations today.

Since I rarely have guests, and since I spend the actual holiday elsewhere, I don't do too much decorating for the holidays. Last year, in fact, I did absolutely nothing. This year, I decided to pull out only some of my favorites and set them up for the next month.

I've been collecting creches for a few years now. Nothing too extensive, I just look out for them when I'm traveling. I've got seven at the moment, as you can see here:


My newest creche (from St. Petersburg):


My littlest creche (from the Vatican) (the wood to the right is the edge of another creche, to give you a sense of the scale):


My favorite creche (from Peru, bought at Ten Thousand Villages)



Rather than setting up the little fake tree stored in my closet, I got this cute little plant at IKEA last weekend, and set it up on my piano:



While I'm posting photos, here's a few others that were on my camera:

Our carriage-ride tour guide in New Orleans:


The ladies out and about town
(The fellow in the photo above took this picture, after peering into my camera and saying "Smile, damn it!")


Daddy-o hanging out at Preservation Hall (and browsing on his Blackberry):



When Janelle and I went to her classroom after auditions on Friday, we discovered this:

It seems the auditioners made us a mural out of their numbers.

Throw It Out

Tuesday night I decided to put the Thanksgiving leftovers to good use, so I made a quiche.

Three hours later, I was laying on my bathroom floor, cursing quiches and their kin.

At 3:00 am, I called in for a substitute. At 6:00 am, I dragged my laptop into the bathroom so I could email sub plans to Janelle in between bouts.

As the symptoms increased in include body aches and a fever, I began to suspect that my cooking was not at fault. Since I'm home now for the third day in a row, still not trusting myself to be more than seconds away from a toilet, I've decided that I've fallen victim to the flu. Unfortunately, I still can't imagine eating quiche again anytime soon.

The biggest problem is the auditions. First of all, I love being at school this week - watching so many kids talk about them, seeing the dance being practiced in the hallway, hearing the same 16 bars sung over and over again. The excitement is tangible, and I miss it.

I have been dragging myself to school for the auditions themselves. There's not much I can do about that. Fortunately, because of busy evenings this week (orchestra concert Wednesday, Kelley's dance class Thursday), we spread out the auditions over three days rather than one or two really long nights. The three of us sit near each other in the fourth row, surrounded by student information papers and contracts, each with our own clipboard of audition notes. The past two days, I've added to the picture by being huddled up in as close to a fetal position as I can manage in a theater seat.

The students come in in groups of four, always looking freaked out. They bring us their papers first, then line up on stage. Each one sings a few bars from "Opening For a Princess", then reads one of six scenes I selected. Then, the group performs a bit of "The Spanish Panic".

We've seen maybe half of the auditioners so far, mostly kids who are new to our musicals. We've got about 30 on our call back list so far (we'll whittle out some of the "maybes" today after the rest of the auditions). It feels good to be doing this again - I love working with Janelle and Kelley. And those of you who have done school musicals know how strange that is.

So, it's the best of weeks and it's the worst of weeks. I tried real food yesterday (chicken soup), but that didn't take so well. Instead, I'm trying bananas, applesauce, and toast. Yay for the BRAT diet!

Young Blood

I'm sorry, dear friends, that the last real entry I left up here for so long was rather pessimistic. Especially since that was a very passing mood. Things have been pleasant, although busy as always, for the past week or so. Here's an update:

The Play

"Robin Hood" went happily. Both casts had rockier first performances - messed up lines, missed cues, a few forgotten props, etc. One of my leads was so nervous he just plain froze up during his first scene. He couldn't remember any of his lines, even with the Town's Girl heroically prompting him with decreasing subtlety ("Robin, weren't you going to tell us that you think the Sheriff of Nottingham is a little, slimy worm?")

Once he stumbled his way into the scene with the Sheriff and Marian, those two actors did such a smooth job that he pulled it together and the rest of the play went fairly well. I talked to him later and found out that not only was it his very first performance ever, his "real dad" had flown here from Portland for the day just to see his performance. No wonder the poor kid was nervous.

That cast (4A, by the way) let their shaky first show push them beautifully and their second performance couldn't have been better. We even had the drama club from the nearby elementary school come to that show, and the cast and I stayed behind a bit to do a Q&A with those eager little thespians. It was fun to see my kids being admired, and it did them good to be the authorities and answer questions about acting. The cast bonded in ways that still amaze me, even though I watch it happen every time.

The other cast (period 4B) had smoother shows. I both loved and hated some of their between-shows behaviors. I was really curious to see how the two classes would respond to each other. I required each class to see the other's evening show, stressing that there was absolutely no competition between them. The 4B cast were in the audience first, and I couldn't be prouder of them - they cheered and laughed and brought such a positive energy to the entire show that they made the audience one of the best. Essentially, they did my director's-laugh-in-the-audience job, but times 30.

Which is why I was disappointed when some of the 4A class came to me the next day. A few of the other class members had been making fun of their stumbling performance, even going so far as to mock Robin Hood to his face for messing up the first scene. No, disappointed is the wrong word for my emotions when I heard that - I was shocked and livid. I asked the 4A cast to
1) be the better people (pointing out that it would be a far better revenge anyway than any insult they could come up with),
2) let any anger or hurt push them to a better performance, and
3) know that the other cast was far from perfect, and I would be talking sternly with them.

A bit later, the stage manager for the 4A cast came to me and said the actors didn't feel like I needed to say anything to the other cast - they had decided that they didn't really care what they said, since they knew their second performance had gone so well. I assured her that, while I admired their charity, the 4B cast still needed to hear what I was going to say.

So I had a talk with the 4B cast. They knew they had acted badly, but what I think finally drove the point home to them was when I reminded them that I was the director of both shows, so when they insulted the other performance, they insulted me, and it hurt my feelings.

(I think I really am getting better about sharing my feelings with students since the Shakespeare Institute. No crying or anything like that, but I do try to remind them that I'm human. I think they respect me more for it.)

Anyway, aside from that incident, I really am pleased with how it all turned out. Numerically, by the way, we paid off the costs of the show the first night, which means a 100% profit. So, whoo-hoo!

Thanksgiving

For some reason, the school board was generous with their calendaring this year, and we had Wednesday off school. It was a wonderful start to the holiday weekend, since it gave me a day to get things done before the family time started. I went to the dentist, the bank, two grocery stores, got a haircut, did two loads of laundry, cleaned my bathroom, and shopped with Janelle before meeting my parents for dinner.

We feasted on Thursday, went to see the silly "Enchanted" all together, played board games, shopped, and hung out. Oh! We also met my grandmother's suitor, Dick. He's been lurking in her conversations for several months now, but we hadn't actually met him, due to deliberate avoidance on her part. I was a little disappointed to find out that he was real after all - the idea that she had an actual http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif was far more interesting.

Aside from missing my sister (Rachel and Ben went to Maine instead this year), it was a fun weekend. I even got in quite a bit of obsessive reading; finally giving in to the suggestions of my cousins and my female students by reading Stephenie Meyer's teenage-vampire-love trilogy. Yes, it sound ridiculous. And it was. But it was also 1800+ pages of compelling story telling (in between all of the "Edward can't possibly love me as much as I love him!" and "His absolute physical perfection stunned me again!" and "Breath, Bella!" romanticism over and over again). She even got enough Shakespeare in the second book to make me decide to work it into an essay question for the Romeo and Juliet unit next semester. As with Harry Potter, I'm grateful for any decent book that gets kids reading as obsessively as I do. I just wish there were more books like that out in the world.

The Musical

With just two school days and a five-day weekend to rest, auditions for the spring musical began today. Yes, it's five weeks earlier - with Janelle's pregnancy coming to term in early April, we had to move up the performance dates, which lead to scheduling the auditions around all of the concerts that herald the month of December at school. I'm both excited to be doing it again, and a little sad knowing that it's probably the last show the three of us will do together. I'm well aware of how extraordinarily lucky I am to get to direct with two ladies who are talented, creative, passionate, dedicated, and my friends. Really, it's too good to last.

In any case, we had 169 students come to the auditions today, and the excitement is tasty. We also had about 10 alumni show up from the high school to help out, which is always pleasant. They asked for the microphone at one point, and when I passed it over, they cautioned the prospective cast, "Don't piss off the directors - they're scary when they're angry."

I will, of course, keep you posted on how the auditions go!

Birdhouse in Your Soul

Little something-to-do, anticipated movie, excellent book.

(And, yes, I cheated by using a non-showtune song title, but it fit so well!)

Pandamonium

This will probably be an entry of complaints. Just to give you fair warning.

So I had a marvelous weekend in New Orleans. Great food, fun town, interesting tours, fantastic music. There are two kitties who seem to frequent Preservation Hall. Did you know that?

Did you also know that when the people around you are tapping their feet to the music, it feels like Preservation Hall has a heartbeat that's also keeping time? It was a happy sensory moment for me.

So I came back from a fun little trip to the hell that is Show Week. Specifically, I landed, got luggage, got Gma Cook off on the right parking stop, got dinner, and then spent the evening finding and editing the sound effects for the show.

This morning I got up early and headed to school for what I knew would be a crazy day. It was one of those days where I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom, let alone handle things patiently and rationally. Between sewing last-minute tunics, setting light cues, fixing broken microphones, printing the program, emailing teachers who are bringing their elementary school classes to see the show on Wednesday, making last-minute props, striking the set for the symphony tomorrow, meeting with Howard and the wrestling coach to smooth things over, racing out to a nearby high school to find thrones, answering hundreds of little questions, and, oh yeah, teaching, my patience was non-existent today.

And I hate that. I wish I could be the calm type, getting things done early and smoothly with no last-minute rush. And while I know I'm getting better at my job, I'm far from where I want to be.

When I ran out to the high school today I was surprised that 1) I felt short (no, really. I forget that students can be taller than me) and 2) the neediness doesn't change. And while a lot of students are needy and that's exhausting and all; my kids are also totally inexperienced and messy and forgetful and selfish and they just don't think about the consequences of their behavior for anyone else. Like the wrestlers who, while running laps through the halls, pulled down 15 of our show posters and left them on the floor. I know it wasn't malicious, but it was incredibly inconsiderate. That's probably the most frustrating part of dealing with this age every day.

So, yeah, I'm stressed and I feel like a bad teacher and I'm trying really hard to stop caring that neither cast has their lines fully memorized. It's out of my hand, really, but that's probably a big part of my stress. I like to be in control, if you haven't noticed. And really, I'm disappoint right now because I know this isn't going to be my best show yet and I really don't like falling short of my standards.

I really do believe that doing theater is good for these kids. How healthy is it for me, though? I hate that I didn't even have time to listen to my stage manager when she told me that the sub they had on Friday said some really inappropriate things to the class. I have no idea when the sub said, since my stage manager told me this in the midst of a blizzard of demands for my attention. I did promise her that I was not blowing it off and I really, truly did want to hear about it. I just couldn't do it then. When I can't even stop long enough to go to the bathroom all day, I don't know how to stop long enough to listen to her. Tomorrow I will, though.

I should be going to bed, since I have to be on my way to school by 6:30 tomorrow to set up for the symphony, but I'm having a hard time clearing out my head and heart enough to sleep. I wonder if it would be different if I had someone to talk to about all of this when I get home. Part of me is glad that I don't have someone, because I'm sure this side of me is far from attractive, let alone pleasant. Then again, I'm all knotted up with frustration over so many different strings that I don't know if I can untangle them without someone to actually talk to in those precious moments between school and bed.

It'll pass. It always does.

Thanks for listening.

Books - an encore

Sometimes the best lessons are the ones I come up with at the last minute.

With the show next week and all of the craziness, I had no idea - absolutely, literally no idea - what to do with my AVID class today. For my other classes, we're either in the middle of projects or I've got enough stock lesson plans that I could come up with worthwhile activities for the 80 minutes I have to prep for each class. But AVID? Nothing.

So last night I was heading for bed, figuring that I would just have to come with something when I got to school in the morning, and I stepped into my library to enjoy the room. I was admiring my fine alphabetizing when I recalled the assignment I had given the AVID kids last time.

You see, the more I teach, the more I believe that the foundation to educational success is a love of reading. I did a poll with this class and found that out of 30 kids, about 6 of them read for pleasure. How sad is that? So I told them that they each needed to get a book (age-appropriate, at least 200 pages long) and read it by winter break. Not too hard, right?

I recalled that assignment as I enjoyed my own biblioholism last night, and suddenly I started pulling out books from the shelf. I went through my collection and soon had a pile of about 40 books that meet the assignment's needs - roughly appropriate for 8th and 9th graders, and all over 200 pages long.

I began the class by spreading the books out on the floor in the middle of my room. They were immediately curious. Then I walked them through these steps:

1. Look, but no touchie - Based only on the front cover, which book would you pick to read and why?
2. Select a book, one book per student. Read the back cover and any inside flaps. Write down a summary of what the book is about and what kind of book it is.
3. Read the first chapter OR the first ten pages (whichever comes first). Describe what's happened so far in the book, and what characters you've met.
4. Would you continue reading this book? Why or why not?

And badda-boom, a 75 minute lesson. But here's the magical part - they were way into it. They wanted to touch the books, look through the books. They were fighting over who got to pick which book. And I'm not sure if you will understand the significance of this, but when it came time for them to read the first part of their books - they all did. Silently. I mean, I even stepped out of the room for a moment to get something, and when I came back they were all still reading quietly.

I though to myself, "Holy crap, it's a literary miracle!"

At the end I asked how many of them would like to keep reading the books they had picked - two-thirds of them raised their hands. And I know some of the others didn't because another student had nabbed the books they wanted to see.

So I realized a few things.
1. I should never hide or undermine my own passion. I think it's the reverance and excitement that I can't suppress when I talk about books that sold them on this project to begin with.
2. One of the greatest things my parents did for me was take me to the library regularly. I talked with Janelle about it, and she told me that going to the library is still anxiety-ridden for her, since her family never did that. It's just overwhelming, so she doesn't go. No wonder these kids of mine don't read - their parents don't either. That's why
3. I have to teach them how to pick up a book. It's so intuitive for me now, but it's not for them. But, hopefully, it's not too late for them to learn it.

I hope this project works. I need to hunt down more books for them, though. Especially books with Hispanic main characters - "Sister Chicas" was one of the most popular choices.

If you have any suggestions for my kids to read, feel free to post a comment!

The List

Here are the books I took for my students, as best as I can recall without looking at the stack since I left them at school:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Arther Conan Doyle)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll)
All Creatures Great and Small (James Herriot)
The Amulet of Samarkand (Jonathan Stroud)
Artimus Fowl (Eoin Colfer)
Birdwing (Rafe Martin)
Burning City (Ariel Dorfman and Joaquin Dorfman)
The Blue Sword (Robin McKinley)
The City of Ember (Jeanne DuPrau)
The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
Dealing With Dragons (Patricia Wrede)
Dune (Frank Herbert)
Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
The Fellowship of the Ring (J.R.R. Tolkein)
Finding Miracles (Julia Alvarez)
The Freedom Writers' Diaries (Erin Gruwell)
The Golden Compass (Phillip Pullman)
The Goose Girl (Shannon Hale)
Hero's Song (Edith Pattou)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
Holes (Louis Sacher)
Hoot (Carl Hiaasen)
The Legend of Holly Claus (Brittany Ryan and Laurel Long)
The Lightening Thief (Rick Riordan)
Magyk (Angie Sage and Mark Zug)
The Merchant of Death (D.J. MacHale)
The Outlaws of Sherwood (Robin McKinley)
Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
The Princess Bride (William Goldman)
Redwall (Brain Jacques)
A Ring of Endless Light (Madeline L'Engle)
Sister Chicas (Lisa Alvarado, Ann Hagman Cardinal, and Jane Alberdeston Coralin)
The Thief Lord (Cornelia Funke)
Uglies (Scott Westerfeld)
Walk Two Moons (Sharon Creech)
Warriors (Erin Hunter and Gary Chalk)
The Wind Singer (William Nicholson)

Books

Rather than sewing costumes, as I was supposed to do today, I spent the afternoon and evening putting together my new bookcase from Ikea.

If you give a girl a bookcase, she's going to put it together.
Once she puts it together, she'll want to put it up.
Once she puts it up, she'll decide it looks better on the other side of the room.
Once she decides that, she has to put all of her books in the hall so she can move the other bookcases around, too.
Once she moves the other bookcases around, she will decide that the chair from the living room belongs in the library.
Once she puts the chair in the library, she has to move the bookcases around even more to decide where they go.
Once she decides where they go, she will have to put all her books back.
But those books have to go into categories
and then they have to be alphabetized
and then they have to be shelved.
And once she gets her books all shelved,
she'll look around the library and say,
"I think I'd like another bookcase."

Actually, I jest. For once, I think I'm actually good on shelf space. I even moved the second taller bookcase into the living room, and I'm debating which books belong out there.

I wonder, though, if I have just cinched the true ownership of the second bedroom. Nash already claims it during the day, and now that I've put her favorite scratching post/napping spot/fur-collector (i.e. my reading chair) in there, I might need to change this door sign:

to read "Natasha's Room".

Here's a few more pics of the rearrangement:



Hopefully I'll have time this week to hang those pictures up, although between the usual week-before-a-show stress and a trip to New Orleans next weekend, they may have to wait until after "Robin Hood" is over. Sigh.

Photos from Portland

I ran away last weekend, and it was marvelous! I flew up to Portland, Oregon Saturday morning, and spent a wonderful two days there walking, reading, exploring, shopping, and just enjoying a new city.

Brace yourself and your server for a lot of photos.

The Japanese Gardens:




There, I attended an Ikebana demonstration:



The International Rose Test Garden (In late October... imagine it in June!)


There were a lot of dogs out with their people. These two are staring at a Starbucks.


Where I stayed:


The sign speaks the truth:


Reading three books, buying a dozen or so more while sipping white chocolate-steamed milk, watching "The Darjeeling Limited", eavesdropping on three French sisters, chatting with a gal from Bath, enjoying great public transportation, and walking around a Bobo's paradise, it was a delightful 52 hours away from home.

Halloween/ The Happy Goth

Happy Halloween!

Keeping with school dress code, I did my hair and makeup today going for a different me. I tried to go as goth as I could without buying anything. Turns out, I'm not much of a goth. The students liked it quiet a bit, though.

Janelle brought Donavon to school this afternoon, and I did his makeup. Here's a picture of the two of us in costume:


and another, since I can't decide which one I like better:


Cute, aren't we? Too bad you can't see my hands - wearing every ring I own, purple-painted nails with red french tips, and the fingerless gloves my sister knitted for me, they were the most gothic part of me.

By the way, Donavon isn't sullen looking because of me - he missed his nap and was in a pouty mood. I'm sure he loved his lion look deep down inside.


Coming soon - pictures from Portland!

The Duel

So. It turns out I'm an athlete.
I know, I know. You're just as surprised as I am. Although, after my spectacular basketball victory last year, I really should have known.

Last Thursday was my last fencing class. We held a tournament ("we" being the three other students who had stuck it out and I), and get this - I won! I am officially a fencing champion.

Here are some photos of the event:

(I'm the one in the green tennis shoes):


An action shot (the green light means I scored a touch!)


The score sheet (you may need to click on the picture to actually be able to read it):


Our instructor, Kenny (same guy as you, Annie?):


In retrospect, I'm glad I did this. It wasn't what I expected, but I'm getting more comfortable with the sporting life, and I enjoyed myself. Besides, I at least have some basic knowledge to use the next time I'm choreographing a duel on stage. And that was really this point of it all.