Month: March 2009 (Page 2 of 7)

This past weekend, I was browsing through the bargain book area of the bookstore and saw a book on optical illusions. I’m always looking for new additions to my “Spare Time Reading” shelf at school, so I got it.

It was perfect! The kids love it – especially the boys. I’ve seen kids arguing over it. I’ve seen kids sit transfixed. I’ve had to take it away from kids who were supposed to be paying attention in class. It has all the qualities I want in a book for my classroom: desirability, worthy of repeated looks, and no boobies (the Guinness Book of World Records has a picture of a booby lady that has given me no end of trouble).

Well done, Brad. Well done.

In my 8th Grade Religion class, we were talking about witnessing to people who were different and I talked about regional differences in language. I brought up the whole pop/soda/coke thing, and showed them a map I had seen a while back. It shows what word is used by county. I find it to be very fascinating. Even more interestingly, you can click on a particular state and look at the county-by-county breakdown.

I have to admit, I’ve gone native. I’ve converted to saying “soda”.
When in Rome…

Click HERE for the interactive map. The website I found this on has some other interesting pop/soda information. Click HERE to explore it.

Still not quite done with the data-entry part of my grading, I brought my computer home last night. I don’t often even attempt to do work at home. Work and home are incompatable. There are too many distractions and I have no comfortable place to do any kind of serious paperwork.

Last night I brought my computer home on the off chance that I might do something with it. And I actually did! I entered scores for the seventh grade. It took forever! I think I’ll stick with working at school. This “work at home” stuff just doesn’t work for me.

Third Quarter ended on Friday. I had let grading pile up a little, so I spent most of yesterday at school. First, I went before church. I get a lot done in those two hours. Normally it’s enough. But because of my gunny-sacking, I had to go back after church as well. I was excited to see that my Arabian Jasmine plant is blooming. But I wasn’t happy that it was happening over the weekend. This seems to happen each year: the plant blooms when no one is around to enjoy it. There are a few more buds. Hopefully they’ll open during the week.

I came home to a surprise: natural light in my stairwell. Denis said he was curious, so he started poking at the ceiling where the skylight is. As it turns out, it was only covered by a piece of plywood. It came right off! The skylight hole is deeper than I expected.

The skylights are vented. They’re actually open to the outside. Won’t all the heat go straight up and out? I’ll need to ask someone about this…

Last night I was really craving chocolate, so I made some Canadian Cookies. (I still don’t know why my family calls them “Canadian”. Does Canada have an oven shortage, so they have to make no-bake cookies?)

Anyway, after scraping out the pan and eating the stuff that “accidentally” wouldn’t fit on the foil, I sat down with three cookies to have them for dinner. Three warm, chocolatey globs of butter, sugar and oatmeal, and a tall glass of milk. A tall glass of sour milk. Dang it! I had just opened the gallon to pour this glass. The expiration date was the 30th. That’s forever from now. I didn’t believe my taste buds, so I drank the whole glass. Between the super rich cookies and the sour milk, my stomach wasn’t feeling too good. …stupid sour milk. I poured it all down the drain. A whole gallon minus one glass. Dang.