gobbledygook

I have two more weeks until summer break and man alive, it cannot come soon enough.  Mentally, I am on summer break, but physically, I am showing up at a place by 7:30 every morning.  What is up with that?!  It is one of the most challenging mental feats I have yet encountered.  

You know how kids get yearbooks and then sometimes they want their teachers to sign them?  It’s a drag every year, because it takes time to write out a little blurb and also because I have very few unique blurbs to donate to high school yearbook signing.  This year, I (with inspiration from and consultation with my colleague) came up with a “yearbook sticker” that I will print on a sheet of address labels and adhere to all signature-seekers!  It looks like this:

This could really revolutionize the end of the year for teachers, I tell you.  Is it too much to ask the student to fill it out on her own?

 Summer Plans:

Work related

• Re-read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and create google site for science-specific reading selections, reflection questions/forms for submission.
• Create interdisciplinary unit/google site on nuclear power and the Fukushima disaster for science/math.
• Go to Boulder, learn about MAVEN mission, and figure out where the curriculum fits best into quimica.
• Work on crazy nugget of a project idea for dream fellowship on Jeffersonian architecture.

Life-related

• Theo therapies/swim/play/love
• Plan fun parental visit in July
• House reorg
• Organize/print pictures
• Finish that d*mn rainbow blanket
• Watch every summer blockbuster that is released
• Read (at minimum!  Must read again!) Requiem for a Nun, Garbology, Henrietta Lacks and The Maze Runner trilogy
• Nap daily
• Lunch
• Eat s’mores (weekly)
• Front-load family Halloween costume (pac-man (L) and ghosts (N and T))
• MORE AS SUMMER PROGRESSES!

This crazy profession and its frantic, chaotic and exhaustion-inducing 9 months, followed by totally free 10 weeks, seems pretty cool this time of year.  I cannot imagine a job that is more of a roller coaster--it is completely bonkers that I have done it for 7 years.  Can I do it for 7 more?  I think I can, especially considering that the mere thought of working during the summer months gives me hives and raises my blood pressure.  Come for the idealism and stay for the vacations, I say!

 The receipt is in focus

 Respectfully patting a back.

 He follows Natan around like a baby duck.

 The elusive white one!

 Getting down to their level.

He loves to open and close doors.

We took Theo to see some goats on Saturday and he was really into it—touching one and then moving on to the next.  He is in the stage where he refuses to be held and wants to walk everywhere, very fast (or, in the case of going to the car, very slow and in a dawdling manner).  He’s getting really good at just letting the glasses be on his face, but he’s probably going to have to have surgery for his eye crossing anyway, which causes me great anxiety.  

Here are some pictures of relatively recent things:

We went to this totally bananas corporate party a few months ago, where the company rented out an entire movie theater and all employees and their guests had unlimited dinner food, beer, popcorn, candy and sodas, along with the viewing of a movie of their choice.   (I chose Captain Phillips, most people chose Jobs).  They also had a balloon animal station, face painting and a photo booth (but not a vomitorium, unfortunately).  The kicker is that they do it four times a year (there are two silicon valleys--the one on this blog and that one).  Here is our pic from the photo booth.

  For mother's day, Natan made some chocolate-dipped strawberries.  

We found a geocache with a great view of San Jose.

Finally, we've started him on the New York Review of Books (one is never too young to read some comprehensive reviews of newly published scholarly work).