Five Day School Weeks are for Suckers

It's another snow day today!

Between holidays, inservice days, the President coming to town, waterline breaks, bomb threats and all of this miserable weather there just hasn't been that much educating done since we came back from Winter Break. C'est la guerre!

What I saw today

How about just some interesting pictures today?

The Boy spotted this tree in my tea this morning. It looked a bit more tree-like before I tried to take the spoon out.
The zombie room I'm in this week has this bucket of pointers.
Another teacher came in the room while I was standing on a chair getting this shot. Here they are from the side.

And that's all you get today. I've got Olympics to watch.

No Sleep for the Addicted

I love to watch the Olympics. While that is not a unique statement, especially right now, I'm very secure in my Olympic love even during non-Olympic times. We got cable because of the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Games. Before that we had an antenna line that we strung around the living room and occasionally out the front door to get reception. We got second television in 1996 because of the Atlanta Summer Games. Cable showed up for the second set for the Nagano Winter Games in 1998.

If it wasn't for the Olympics, we would still have that antenna hanging out the door. I truly believe this.

But these Olympics are killing me. They are so exciting and interesting... and late. They are running really late into the night and it's messing me up. I have got to get up to watch zombies in the morning and every night I'm keeping my eyes pried open so I can watch bobsledding, ice dancing and ski cross. My sleep schedule is a wreck. I came home from zombie duty today and instantly fell asleep sitting straight up in a chair!

So tonight, no Olympics for me. I don't know what events are happening and I don't want to know. (Okay, that's a lie. It's women's short program skating. But I'm resisting!) It's Lost tonight and then right to bed. The Olympics will have to do without me for one night.
(This is actually an Vancouver anarchist movement poster. Seems not everyone is happy in the Great White North. I just like the art and that it says "Resist" at the top.)

Never Too Late for a Gift

This past Saturday was not only The Man's birthday dinner out, but that same morning it was World Friendship Day for Girl Scouting. This year our theme was Cities of the World. Our troop is involved in a couple of other projects and used World Friendship Day to multi-purpose them all together by creating a Cleveland booth.

But this isn't about our booth, it's about our craft.

For the fourth year in a row, we've done Shrinky Dinks as our WFD craft. We create designs based on our booth, have the girls color them at the table and shrink them down to key chains right in front of their very eyes. It's always a wild time at our booth and we are crushed the entire time we're open. (Four years ago we bought a bulk package of 100 sheets of Shrinky Dink paper. It's almost gone now.)

To shrink the dinks, you need a toaster oven. The problem was that Co-Leader Supreme also needed a toaster oven for her younger troop. They were making tiny pizzas on crackers for New York City. "We could share the oven," she suggested. The more I thought about it the more I knew it wouldn't work. First of all, Shrinky Dinks don't smell that great while they are baking. No one would want to eat a Shrinky Dink flavored pizza. I also had a fear of things getting really crazy and someone eating a key chain or wearing a pizza. Nightmare! Finally, when we do this craft we are just slammed with customers. There would be too much of a traffic jam at the oven if both things were being made at once.

I was going through people who I though might want to loan us their oven when it occurred to me that I have a toaster oven of my own! (Stay with me here. I'll explain.)

My pots and pans cupboard is oddly shaped and too deep. It invites chaos and gets it. I take everything out and re-stack it up beautifully about once a month. Within a week it is completely wrecked again. And it's all me. The other three in this house don't dare even try to do anything with that cupboard.

To fight the chaos a bit, I keep a large box in the back of it, just to keep things from getting pushed WAY back. It's been there since we bought the house, that big place holder of a box.

And what is that box?

What do you know? A brand new toaster oven! My last unopened wedding gift!

Here it is all sealed up and...dusty.

It's been waiting for seventeen years to be wanted and needed. Now is its time!

Ooooooh, shiny.

This lucky little machine made its debut at World Friendship Day on Saturday and shrunk about 120 key chains to delight and amazement of little Girl Scouts.
I don't remember who gave us the toaster oven but I'd like to say thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved the day.

The oven is sealed up in the box again and in the awful cupboard doing the important job of holding back the tide. See you next year little guy!

Winter Formal

Winter Formal was last night and both of the kids attended. What is Winter Formal? It's the dance smack between Homecoming and Prom. A completely fabricated dance with no real purpose. It's like the Sweetest Day of high school dances.

Be that as it may the kids went and had a great time. Here they there are looking sharp.




She kicked her foot out just as I snapped that picture, so here's a close up of her killer heels.

It's not a launch off to a big event if you don't get all of the neighborhood kids together and take their picture dozens of times. This is one of the few that caught The Boy with a smile.

Birthday Night Out

No one around here has just one day of birthday. Oh no. We keep it rolling as long as we can stand it. Tonight was the dinner out with the literary type friends.

Literary type friends and their adorable rug rats!

Of course we went to Luchitas because we are all about supporting local small business and we are in LOVE with the food. It also helps that we have an in with the owner. He was so happy we were there that he bought our birthday boy a second margarita. (He's sleeping it off right now.)

And a dessert with a lit candle on top!

I knew that it would be a long haul of a visit and that there would be munchkins so I threw our bag of Nak Naks in my purse just for something to play with at the table. The Girl played with them most of all building some terrific towers.


Thanks to Jason, Wendy, Erin, Brad, Stacey, Mike, Kai and Cooper for hanging out with us tonight!

My job description

I've had a miserably long day but I have to share this little story with the three of you.

After an uncomfortably loud recess, I finally got the class of zombies to sit down and get quiet. The weirdest zombie in the pile raised his hand.

What's up?

Thank you for taking us to lunch.

What?

Thank you for taking us to lunch.

That's what I thought you said. I have to take you. It's my job.

Oh, that's right. I forgot. Isn't your job to keep everyone happy?

No, that's not my job. Not at all.

No?

No. My job is to make sure all of you get out of here with both your eyes and no broken bones.

What?

You heard me.

PS: Two hours later, this weird zombie was holding his chair over his head and about to launch it at a classmate who was teasing him. I stopped him just in time. He almost made me fail at my job for the day.

Happy Birthday to the ground...I mean The Man

Today is The Man's birthday. To celebrate the high school had a bomb threat which put all of the kids outside for about fifteen minutes. A little while later they canceled school altogether because of a water line break. The kids were home at 12:45 so we went out to lunch together.

Is this well-armed little guy not the cutest? Funny enough, he still carries a tomahawk everywhere he goes but leaves the sword home most days. It makes people nervous.

One of his Facebook friends sent him an adorable song for his birthday. I can't be outdone by that, so here is a selection of my own for him. Happy Birthday Sweetie!

I Heart George Washington

Most years President's Day goes by with just a furniture sale mention and me standing by the door wondering where in the hell is the mailman. But this year I've been chased around by George Washington and its been lovely.

It started last Friday. I was with a pile of zombies and we read this book.
You can read a review of this book right here. (The author himself drops a comment on the review.) I read the book over before the zombies showed up and was completely charmed by it. What a neat little window into the personality of our first president.


When I told The Man the story about Washington and General Howe's dog, we both started wondering about the names of George's other dogs besides Sweet Lips. Here's two sites that have partial lists of George Washington's dogs' names. On the whole, he had a flair for giving dogs insanely cute names.



This morning on the History channel they had a show about Washington and how, when he wasn't busy running the country, he personally surveyed the new federal city and made architectural changes to the blueprints for the new presidential mansion. The show said that he, "...micromanaged the construction of the city from Mount Vernon...". Now that's a guy who didn't have time management problems.


The Man's Page-a-Day Art calendar today is of Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze.

I mentioned to The Man that the Delaware River does not get big blocks of ice on it like that and that some point to this painting as evidence of global warming.

Man: That doesn't sound right. You're making that up.

Me: No I'm not. How could I make that up?

Man: Sounds like something you would make up.

Me: I think it sounds like something that I heard and completely plausible.

Man: Prove it.

Okay, so I can't. I have searched the web and I can't find anything that even remotely says anything like that. The closest I found were some yahoos that try to re-enact the crossing every year for kicks. But I swear I didn't make it up. I did hear it somewhere at sometime from someone. I will be vindicated on this.

Happy President's Day to everyone!

The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood

EHS Drama Department presents

The Somewhat True Tale of Robin Hood


February 12 and 13 at 7:30 PM
February 14 at 2:00 PM


The Boy has a bit part as a guard. The Girl has a even bittier part as a towns person. Yesterday was a snow day which meant that they lost two nights of rehearsal the week of the show. To fix this, they are having double rehearsal today AND they are getting pulled out of class for part of the day tomorrow to have another rehearsal. I haven't seen them since 7:15 this morning and they won't be home until 11 PM tonight. While I appreciate the gravity of the situation, I'm missing my kiddos here!

All reports are that the show is very funny. Of course I'm only getting reports from people who are in the show. They might be a bit biased. But even so, if you are not doing anything this weekend come on down and enjoy one of the last shows in the auditorium before it meets its maker.