Category: Journal (Page 3 of 863)

Some of the boys in the eighth grade are in a community flag football league, and they invited me to see a game yesterday after school. It was just down the hill from our campus at a very large public field.

It was fun to watch the game. There are a LOT of rules for flag football.

The boys played well. And they won! Woo hoo! Good job, boys!

There are crows that hang out at my school. I see them picking around the lunch area outside, but I don’t really know what they like to eat. I’ve tried tossing things to them, but they fly away.

On Wednesday, someone had spilled trail mix on the floor outside my classroom. There was a crow in the courtyard, and I threw a peanut to it. It ate it! Then I threw a cashew. It flew away. Dang.

Then yesterday morning when I walked past the pile of trail mix, it looked like this:

Ha! The crows had found it and eaten all the peanuts and cashews, but left the raisins. So I have learned a little bit about what crows eat – not raisins.

There was another partial eclipse here yesterday. The last one was in October. The October one was on a Saturday. This time, it was a school day. All the kids had eclipse glasses, and we went out at the height of our coverage, which was only about maybe a third(?) of the sun.

I took a picture like last time, and like last time, you can’t see the actual eclipse, but you can see the shape in the lens “ghost”.

Here’s a zoomed in image:

I kept telling the kids they should remember the day. The next eclipse that touches North America is twenty years from now.

I went on a field trip yesterday. I had heard about a small town called Ojai (pronounced OH-hi) that people like to visit, and decided to check it out. As an added bonus, the rose nursery that I visited last fall was on the way. Nice!

I shopped with my nose, looking for roses that smelled nice.

Their display garden is particularly beautiful:

I have three spots left in the planter in front of my house, so I got three more roses: Fragrant Cloud, Grande Dame, and Sugar Moon. They all have powerful, but different, scents. I’m very happy with these selections.

After that, it was on to Ojai. The main drag was kind of short and small. It was quaint, and fun to walk, but smaller than I was expecting.

I did make sure to visit Bert’s Books, which is a cool bookstore without a roof. I guess it doesn’t rain very much in Ojai. I found some music books for church, so that’s cool.

There was a honey store that had all kinds of local honey from different flowers. I got some orange flower honey. It’s really interesting, and much different from the clover honey that’s so common.

On a side note, I can’t shake the feeling that there was something advertised during Saturday morning cartoons when I was a kid that included Ojai as its address. I have done a search of the internet, and couldn’t come up with anything, but it’s bothering me. The announcer said: “something… something… something… Ojai, California!” accompanied by a sort of cartoonish font of the address. If any of you out there remember what it is, I’d be very glad to know.

Well, after one day of vacation, I have to say it’s stressing me out, because I have a list of things I want to do on these days off, and I’m afraid I’m just going to be lazy and waste all this time. I usually only get one day off per week. This is a bunch of them in a row! I should be able to do a whole bunch of things!

Yesterday, I worked on my bedroom. I had previously painted it, but it’s been in disarray since then. I want to get it straightened out, and then actually hang things on the walls and stuff. I could have a room that’s completely finished! None of the rooms in my house are like that.

I didn’t finish. Each thing I tried to do led to a myriad of smaller jobs. For instance, I had a stack of sheets that needed a spot. I decided to put them in a hallway closet that is the obvious location for linens, but there wasn’t room for them because I have so many towels. I decided to sort the towels. They went into three stacks: bathroom, kitchen, and “get rid of”. Then I had to find a spot for the kitchen towels, because they obviously should be in the kitchen, not the hallway. Then I had to agonize over the “get rid of” pile, because why would I get rid of something that is useful, even though I have 47 hand towels and only need probably four. Sheesh!

Anyway, I did make some progress. Most notably, I got rid of a stack of sheets, I moved the bedside table to the other side of the bed, and I thinned out how many plant pots were on the cabinet by the window. I guess something is better than nothing…