Classroom Funny

This blog is not about my trip!  This blog will not be really long!  Yay!  (I have Day Three written, I just need to go sift through pictures, and I think some of the ones I want are on Al's computer.)

Today we were talking about the three kinds of "there."  We had written down the definitions of there, their, and they're; looked at examples of the uses for each one; and were finally doing some class practice.  I have a student in my last class of the day who likes my class but is the often failing type and has a tendency to lose things and not turn stuff in.  He's a slow reader and an unenthusiastic writer.  Well, we were going through the practice questions as a class, and he suddenly had the lightning stroke of genius to look at his notes before answering a question. (I tell them to do this, all the time, for the last seven months.)  Suddenly he was getting them all right!  He could barely contain his glee.  "This is a lot easier if you use these," he told the people around him conspiratorially, gesturing to his notes.  You'd think I had him write those down for just that purpose or something, maybe, you know, perhaps.

Oh dear.  At least he finally noticed.  It was fun to watch a student suddenly get a testimony of notes before my very eyes.

Day Two--We Take San Francisco by Storm

Forewarning:  Day Two's post may end up being just as long as Day One's.  If you're not interested, skip it.  If you are, grab yourself a cookie and some hot chocolate and let's get started.

Since we had originally intended to see a bit more of San Francisco the night before but were unable to because of our late train, we were determined to make the most of our only full day in SF for the sake of our Great West Coast Extravaganza.  We woke up at about 7 and hit the ground running.  Gee and Kat, as I mentioned in Day One's post, live in a basement studio apartment.  The main room is of a pretty decent size, there's a smallish walk/in closet and a very tiny and cold bathroom, and a sort of entryway/kitchen.  However, the work they've done on the place makes it look much nicer than any basement studio apartment usually looks.  They've redone the floors, the walls, and all sorts of things to make it more comfortable before they moved in.  All in all, it was a great place to stay, and they were unfailingly generous hosts who insisted on sharing whatever they had.  I hope that I can do half as well when I have people staying at my place some day.

This is pretty much the sum total of Gee and Kat's apartment.

Kat had to head off to work at the lab that morning.  She's getting her doctorate and is studying the affects of aluminum on aging, which means getting to work with some very odd worms, which actually sounded quite fascinating when she explained it, but her awesome English accent probably helped.  Kat is, by the way, incredibly awesome.  I was a little nervous to meet her, since meeting the girlfriend of a very old friend (and one time boyfriend) and then immediately spending several days in her company could be quite awkward.  But instead it was awesome.  I heartily approve of her and think Gee is lucky to have her.  She made our trip that much better.  So that morning she headed off to work, and Gee, Allie, and I climbed into the car and headed straight for the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is only beginning of the hundreds cheesy smile pictures you're going to see.

 The Golden Gate Bridge is going on my list of landmarks and monuments I didn't at all expect to impressed with but was.  I'd seen a million pictures of the big red bridge, a million pictures better than any I was likely to take, pictures taken in sunset and fog and moonlight and a million other, cooler situation than our morning walk was likely to include.  What was there to see?  First, that sucker is huge.  I mean huge.  And the sheer size and redness of it is rather impressive.  Then there's the matter of the view.  We were lucky enough to be there on a beautiful day and the water was stunning.  There was even a sailboat race passing under the bridge, dotting the water with white sails.  The city skyline was a little misty and a little silhouetted and gave me my first real sense of the city. We walked along the bridge, talking, joking and looking our fill, until we were past halfway.  For several minutes now, Allie had been quietly suggesting that it was time to head back to the car if we didn't want our meter to expire.  Gee had brushed her concern aside with typical Gee energy and enthusiasm and confidence.  Since it was his car, we let him be the judge of when to go back.  Which is why, partway through our walk back along the bridge, he determined we did not actually have enough time.  Handing me his jacket, he set off at a run to get to the car.  Allie and I met up with him there after we finished the walk.

Periodically along the bridge there would be these crisis hotline phones, urging people not to jump and telling them there was still hope.  Gee said he'd actually seen someone jump once when he was stuck in traffic.  Crazy.

After the bridge, we set off for the beach.  We had meant to go to an aquarium, but it didn't work out as well as we thought, so we were left with some free time until lunch, and the beach seemed like the best option.  So we walked along Ocean Beach (a very original name, eh?).  The sand was hot, and the water was cold.  I grew up no where near the ocean, and have spent very little time on it over the years.  So just being there was exciting for me, though Allie and Gee found my enthusiasm amusing.  The ocean's just so big, and so very full, and so very much in motion, and so very awesome.

We walked for a long ways, carrying our shoes, and Allie lead us in the direction of some very promising-looking rocks.  When we got there, we found a cave where some climbers were just packing up their crash pad after a very sandy and slightly damp bouldering session. After clambering about in the cave for a while, we crawled out through a different, much smaller opening, and walked the long sandy walk back to the car.  I enjoyed the sand between my toes, the ocean, the breeze, the sun, and I especially enjoyed getting to be on friendly terms with Gee again.  Gee and I go way back, nearly five years, and we were once as close as close can be.  But then he moved to San Francisco, and I've only seen him once in the past four years.  We talk on the phone occasionally, but we seem to have less and less to talk about.  I was worried that staying with him and his girlfriend might be a tinsy bit awkward.  But it turns out that when put back in the same place we were still very much friends.  We rattled on like we hadn't in years.  Poor Allie, she had to hang out for days with two old friends who spent a lot of time alternating between catching up and reminiscing.

It's Gee!  In a cave!

We had a 2:50 ferry to Alcatraz, so we returned to Gee's place to rustle up some lunch and meet up with Kat.  Gee doesn't like to wait for things, and tends to wait until the last minute to eliminate any down or dead time.  That's how we found ourselves abandoning our bus trip part way through to take a taxi the last few blocks to the pier.  We were still cutting it awfully close, and Gee almost abandoned the taxi in traffic to run the last few blocks to pick up our tickets.  But once again, we made it just in time.  We got our tickets, read the placards about famous prisoners while we waited in line, and hopped aboard the ferry.  I have to admit that once again, I was skeptical about Alcatraz.  Was this going to be worth the $26 a piece we were paying?

Once again, I was impressed.  Alcatraz has been and is many things.  It has been a military fort, a military prison during the civil war times, a prison for America's most dangerous criminals, the idyllic home for a few generations of guards' families, "Indian Island," an exotic garden, and a bird sanctuary.  And all of it was interesting.  We watched a film about the island's stint as Indian Island and saw marks of the occupation, such as the word "FREE" being painted into the stripes of this flag.  We listened to the audio tour (that explains all the geeky headphones we're wearing), and wandered over all the parts of Alcatraz that are still safe.  The tour starts with the same hike up the hill the prisoners took, only without the shackles and cuffs, and then takes visitors into the shower room to begin the tour. 

The tour was both interesting and instructive.  The prison was surprisingly small.  There were only about 200-300 prisoners at a time, all the of them tortured by beautiful views of the city they were walled way from by bars and water.  We learned about notable escape attempts, famous prisoners, what life was like for both guards and prisoners, and why the prison was eventually closed.

After touring the prison, we also toured the gardens planted by the wives of the guards and maintained now by volunteers.  We saw the ruins of the warden's house, the social hall, and the old fort.  And there were thousands of birds. It was nesting season and many areas were roped off so that we didn't disturb the seagulls, cormorants, egrets, and others that we saw.  Alcatraz was actually named after the birds observed there, and now they are once again the island's primary inhabitants.  The prison was fascinating and horrifying, the gardens were beautiful, the birds amazing, the view of the city incredible.

A small sampling of the gazillions of cormorants we saw.

After the ferry ride back to the city, we walked around a long time through Pier 39 and other touristy places looking for food we wanted.  We ate at a small place called Lou's Blues which served southern seafood.  At this point I was discovering that San Francisco can be a dang cold place.  I had been told that San Francisco could be cold, but I was usually told that by Californians, whose opinions on hot and cold I usually hold to be invalid.  Let me assure all fellow skeptics, San Francisco can be COLD and WINDY, and I say this as an Idahoan who knows something of cold and wind.  We got to experience the cold and the wind in full that night as we tried to get back to Kat and Gee's place.  We walked a few blocks to our bus stop, waited for our bus, got off at our transfer point, walked a few more blocks in the cold and dark, and settled down to wait.  The next bus wasn't supposed to come for 20 minutes.  Allie and I huddled in the bus shelter, Kat braved the cold, and Gee paced and fumed.  Maybe you've noticed he doesn't like down time.  Which is why when the bus finally came, 10 minutes late, and it didn't stop because it had broken down at the stop before and was now on the way to the garage.  So we waited another 20 minutes.  By this point Gee was about ready to implode with pent up energy, and Allie and I were ready to hibernate for the winter.  Kat of course was cold, but had more class than the rest of us put together.

Alcatraz is for the birds. This is the remains of the warden's house.

When we finally got home, we crashed.  We felt like we had managed a great deal for one day.  We'd seen the bridge, the bay, the city, the ocean and the beach, Alcatraz, the pier, and the bus system.  I'd managed to get sunburned (surprise surprise), and we'd had a great time with friends old and new.

The view from Alcatraz.  Can you imagine how torturous that would be?  The inmates described being able to sometimes hear the sounds of the city.

Day One--What It's Like to Travel by Amtrak, and How I Trapped Someone in the Bathroom

I woke up before Allie, which isn't surprising, considering that I had neither a blanket to keep me warm and comfortable, nor had I drugged myself with Nyquil before collapsing at 2:30 when we got on the train.  I still managed to wake up only once an hour or so until around six thirty, which I figured was pretty decent considering that I usually get up at about 5 a.m.  During one of those once-an-hour conscious moments, I realized that the train had stopped and that we were, presumably, somewhere.

That somewhere turned out to be Elko, Nevada.  Unimpressed, I went back to sleep.

When I finally couldn't pretend to sleep another minute, I looked out the window to see what the new daylight would reveal of the landscape.  It turns out that there's large amounts of nothing in Nevada.  Large amounts of nothing scattered with cows, fences, and some snow.

The train itself was much more interesting than the Nevada landscape, so let's talk about it.  I'll explain the train as I experienced it.  At first glance, our coach class cars look a lot like the charter buses we used to ride in high school mixed with a large dose of airplane.  Tray tables, reclining seats, foot bars on the seat in front of you.  One of the conductors even brought around the standard pillows you get on international flights.

Unlike on a plane or a charter bus, there was ample foot room.  More than ample.  I could put two bags and my purse (the sum total of my luggage) at my feet and still have room for my feet.  Of course, I didn't need to do that; the overhead area was easily large enough hold three times what we had to put in it.

Unlike the portholes on planes, the windows on the train were large and, unlike the windows on charter buses, they were untinted.  If we hadn't been seated in between windows instead of next to one, we would have had a good view of the countryside in all its Nevada glory. While Allie still slept, I used my ninja skills to step soundlessly over her and head for the bathroom.  Unlike on planes, passengers on trains can pretty much move about wherever and whenever they want.  Our seats were up on the second level, so I followed the signs for restrooms down the narrow stairs and to my goal.  The bathrooms were almost exactly like plane bathrooms, except for the fact that there were about four of them on every single car.  Not only that, but one was a spacious handicapped restroom, another had an extended space for the fold down changing area, and one could only be reached through the women's lounge/dressing room.  That right.  I said it.  The Women's Lounge/Dressing Room.  It wasn't large, it wasn't ritzy, but it was a narrow room with a large mirror, two airplane-style sinks, and two bar stools.  It also had a small bathroom that only opened to the lounge.

Allie just before she went back to sleep...again. 

After Allie finally gave up on sleeping as well (Not until I'd been awake for close to an hour.  I passed the time by staring out the window, taking pictures of myself, and listening to the priesthood session of conference.), we began to feel the desire for some breakfast.  About this time the announcement was made that the "cafe" was open in the "sightseeing car."  Johnny, the cafe staff, cheerfully called out "Come out, come out, wherever you are."  Allie and I exchanged delighted looks, and set off for adventure.

After traipsing through a few cars (moving between cars while the train is moving is a bit frightening and rather thrilling), we found the sightseeing car, and on the bottom level of that was the cafe car.  We paid for our plain bagels and took them upstairs.

Allie's face upon our double discovery of bagels and the sightseeing car.

The sightseeing car is where we spent most of our awake time on the trains.  Half the car is filled with seats that face the window, the other is almost like restaurant booth seating.  On the train we took from SLC to San Francisco, there were outlets at every table.  Here the windows were huge and wrapped overhead.  People talked, read, worked, ate, made friends, and spent long hours looking out the window.  The sightseeing car is where the tour guides who would ride the trains for stretches of track that contained points of historic interest would set up and talk about the things we were seeing.  The sightseeing car was the best place to play Monopoly on my iPod, color in the Hello Kitty coloring book that Allie bought, and listen to This American Life.  The sightseeing car was where we shared a seat with a man who resembled an old prospector (no joke: long hair, floppy hat, missing front teeth, and talked about working the mines in a gravelly voice) who talked cheerfully as we crossed the Sierra Nevadas through winding canyons, by rivers, old mining flumes, deep snows, and periodic tunnels.

Train tunnels aren't lit the way car tunnels are, so our journey would be in the bright sunlight, almost blinding because of the snow, and then suddenly completely dark, with only the dim florescent lights on the train to show our wan-looking faces.  Then we'd be back into the light so suddenly we'd all flinch and squint.  The Summit Tunnel of the Sierra Nevadas took us four and a half minutes to travel through at 30 mph.  It was eerie, and it made me feel like watching old westerns with train robberies.

People watching and listening in on conversations were major sports on the sightseeing car.  Conversations sounded a lot light late-night Denny's philosophy discussions.  I heard discussions several hours of New Testament quoting and odd Christian philosophy, followed by The-universe-is-everything-and-inside-of-you and very very new age music is scripture discussions struck up between strangers.  This religion they were talking about also used large amounts of marijuana, apparently.  Towards the end of Friday afternoon I got real estate advice from lady whose table I shared to take pictures from that side of the train.  She says to buy, never bother renting.

In the late morning hours, before the beautiful mountains, the prospector, or California, Allie and I went to the women's lounge to change out of our pajamas and brush our teeth.  At that time we didn't know that the bathroom in the lounge only opened into the lounge, and assumed it had another entrance to the hall.  Allie and I had looked at the size of the bathrooms, considered the likelihood of being able to change in any kind of comfort and without getting our clothes grody on the floor, and then I declared I was just going to change in the lounge and take my chances with the fact that the door didn't lock.  So there I was, not nude by any means, but between shirts, when to my horror the door began to open.  Not the hallway door, the bathroom door, which was about six inches away from me.  Whoever was in there and I were about to have a very awkward and scantily clad moment.  So I reacted quickly, pushed the door back to closed with my foot and said, "Just a moment sir!--ma'am?...um...hold on a sec!"  I hastily grabbed a shirt and pulled it over my head with all possible speed, which, since my fingers had suddenly turned to celery stalks, took longer than I would have liked.  Then I sheepishly allowed the door to open, only to discover that I had trapped a very nice-looking middle-aged woman in the bathroom.  It was rather awkward, although fully clothed, and Allie's giggling certainly didn't help much.

Wrapping this insanely long blog up, Allie and I watched through the sightseeing car windows as Nevada turned to mountains and then to California and forests and snows and then back to flat.  Northern California is incredibly green in the spring.  Did you know that?  I didn't know that.  I'm sure I missed that memo some how.  It was beautiful, with water sometimes just lying around in small ponds.  When we finally got close to San Francisco (around 7 p.m.--It was supposed be more like 4, but the train was 3 hours late, see explanation on Day Zero) we were riding right alongside the delta and then the bay as the sun set.  It was beautiful.

At about 7:30, we disembarked and got pictures with our train.  The train had a big, dirty, weather-beaten Union Pacific engine, which was hooked up to the gleaming silver Amtrak cars.  It made for an interesting union that also reflects my overall impressions of traveling by train.  There are parts of it that make you feel closer to the land, and like you just stepped on the the set of the Music Man or White Christmas.  The abundance of time and the relaxed atmosphere made for easy conversation with strangers.   Other parts of train travel are very new, very modern, and have the same impersonal sterility of plane travel.

Bless their souls, Gee and Kat picked us up from the station.  Allie and I were pretty spacey and tired, but we were so excited to be finally in San Francisco that we kept up decent conversation while Gee and Kat drove us around and we eventually arrived at a sushi restaurant (It only took the four of as an hour to decide and then find it.).  The sushi was fantastic, the like of which I haven't had since Tokyo.  It melted in your mouth like cotton candy, but in a more raw fish kind of way.  By the time they drove us to their place, a basement studio apartment which they were so generous as to let us invade despite their limited space, Allie and I were pretty pooped.  Our polite conversation was getting slower and less animated.  Gee folded the futon down for us, and we collapsed in grateful exhaustion.  After so long in a train (17 hours), as I lay still I could still feel like I was moving, like the bed was swaying.  Luckily, I was so tired the phantom swaying didn't bother me at all, and I slept so deeply that I didn't move all night and woke up sore from having slept so hard.

Which brings us to the end of Day One and my Amtrak rant.  It was much longer than intended.  Sigh.  I have a feeling I'll be saying that about all my Great West Coast Extravaganza blogs.  Heaven help us all. 

Day Zero

If you don't want a lot of details about my trip, then skip this post and any others that posted in the next few days that have titles like "Day One" etc.  If you do, read as much as you like.

Ahem.

Day Zero.  The great task of last week was getting ready for the Great West Coast Extravaganza (GWCE).  To do this I needed to do several things.

I needed to

Get my classroom/lesson plans/copies/students ready for a sub
Pack/do/laundry/decide what I was packing in
Pay rent/car payment/other bills due at the beginning of the month
Go climbing (I wouldn't be able to for a week!)
Go skating (I wouldn't be able to for a week!)
Remember to water the plants.

All of this did get accomplished, but it involved some stress, some craziness, and a lot of extra hours at school.  I even bribed Cuny to come and staple packets for me while I frantically put together other stuff.  Finally, Thursday afternoon, the school stuff was already.  Cuny and I had time for a quick skate, and then it was time to pack.

The original plan was for Al and I to each check one bag (Did you know you can check bags on trains?  Cool, huh?).  We decided the bags that would be the most space efficient and easiest to maneuver around the public transit we planned on taking around the cities would be internal frame backpacking packs.  We also had all intentions of packing light in a manner few girls can equal.  Which meant that we put all our stuff in piles and thought, There's no way that stuff is going to fill up those bags.  So we resolved to share a pack and thought, There's no way that stuff is going to fill up even one bag.  Which is how Allie and I came to pack entirely in our carry on bags.  I fit in only a small orange day bag and my computer bag (without the computer in it--who needs another ten pounds and $900 dollars worth of worry?).

Nearly all of our stuff. Piled in the middle of the floor, ready for departure.

Our train was to leave at 11:30 from the Salt Lake City Amtrak station.  Allie's brother was dropping us off at the station for our adventure to begin.  At about 8 p.m. Amtrak called us to tell us our train would be 3 hours late.  We later learned that the train had struck "something" in Colorado and had to change engines.  Our 11:30 train would now be leaving at 2:30. 

Derek waiting for the time to pass so he could take us to the station.  The poor man had drill the next day, too. 

Because we didn't want Al's brother to have to stay up with us, we had him drop us off at midnight.  Which is how we not only found out where the Salt Lake Amtrak station is, but also ended up hanging out in the station for hours in the early hours of the morning.  Since we had time to read every posted sign in the station, we learned that the SLC station is only open at night.  Because only two trains pass through SLC on a daily basis--one from east to west at 11:30 p.m. and one from west to east at about 3:00 a.m.--the station's operating hours are from 10:30 p.m. to 5:00 a.m.  So if you want to buy your tickets in person instead of online, you're going to be picking them up in the middle of the night.

Did I mention it was snowing?  It was snowing.  It was snowing a lot.  Allie and I were both in our pajamas (makes sense for an all night train ride) and our sandals.  Of course we wanted pictures next to the Amtrak sign.

Allie claims the picture is blurry because my camera is dumb.  I say it's blurry because I was shivering so much.

When the train finally arrived at 2 a.m., there were was an inch or two of snow to be stood in while the conductor (YES!  He was wearing a cap!) boarded families first. Then there was snow to be trudged through carrying our bags to our train car, which was, of course, at least four or five cars from the front.  We gratefully hung our tags bearing a handwritten notice of our destination above our seats--although we felt like we should pin them to our jackets like children in WWII or something--and collapsed into our seats.  Allie chugged some Nyquil (she's been sick) and I put on my fluffy socks.  We spent a minimum of time fiddling with our seats and getting comfortable and getting out headphones before sinking into sleep.  Sleeping on an Amtrak train is much more comfortable than sleeping on a plane, but you still want to change positions every hour or so to avoid getting too stiff.  So that's how we passed what remained of the night, as the train sped on through the snow across Utah and into Nevada.  The morning light would show us the excitement of Nevada in the snow, but that would be part of Day 1, which will be over-explained later.

Where to Begin?

Where does one begin to describe spring break?  Do I sum up?  Do I start at the beginning?  Do I give a general itinerary and then detail highlights?  Do I start with where I am now (in the middle) and work backwards?  Do I arrange it by topic: "Traveling by Train," "Friends,"  "Sights--Manmade," and "Sights--The Glories of Nature"?  Do I drown my reader with a deluge of words or a barrage of pictures?  It is almost certain that, should I attempt a thorough, day by day explanation, it would take many blogs and many days.  That would increase the risk that the readers (all beloved five of you) would lose interest, and that I would grow distracted or bored with the project and leave it half finished.  I wish I could link you to Allie's blog, so that you could get her views and pictures, but hers is private and requires an invitation.  Everybody go facebook her and ask her for an invite.

Well, let's start at the very beginning, then.  It's a very good place to start.  Allie and I, ever partners in crime,  have been planning our spring break trip for months.  It was to unite several goals, whims, and wishes in one combination of awesomeness.  We would travel by train (something we've been curious about for years), I would get to see Olympia and hang out with her family (She's been to my place countless times, we've been living together for nearly 7 years, and I've never been to her house!), I would see San Francisco/visit friends there (That's been on the to-do list four nearly FIVE YEARS) and she would get to see it again (She hasn't been there since she was a wee little child), we would hang out in Portland and see the rain forest and visit friends and stuff, and we would take our longest trip together yet.  Our adventures together thus far have been limited to a few days; this would encompass more than week.

So the plan was formed.  We would take Friday off of work (the first day off I've taken this year, go me!), so that we could catch the California Zephyr from Salt Lake to Emeryville on Thursday night.  We would arrive in San Francisco on Friday afternoon after traveling by train for 17 hours.  We would stay with my friends in SF and gad about the city in high fashion until our departure Sunday night aboard the Coast Starlight (the cheesy train names are delightful, aren't they?).  After another 17 hours we would meet up with more friends in Portland on Monday afternoon.  There we would gad about the forest and gardens and bookstores until we left on Wednesday evening aboard some unremarkably named train.  That's about where we are now, although probably not where I'll be when I publish this, since I'm writing this on Angie's computer without access to my pictures, which would no doubt make this post more interesting.  So by the time I publish this blog post, I will probably no longer been in Portland.  Heck, it might not even be spring break anymore.  Anyway, this train will carry us for a measly 1 1/2 hours to Olympia, where the station is only a few blocks from Allie's house.  Then we'll spend the remaining four days hanging out in Allie's hometown with trips to Seattle and adventure.  Finally, on Sunday night, we'll fly home.  Monday morning reality will burst in on us in the form of alarm clocks, and normal life will resume. 

So, there you have it.  It only took a full page just to introduce our Great West Coast Extravaganza (the GWCE).  Describing it in detail shouldn't be hard, right?  Sheesh. 

Well.  This post will have to stand on its own without pictures.  Angie's home from work, and it's time for adventures to begin again.

Happy trails!

Sitting, Walking, and Tenting

At 7 a.m. I groped around on the floor next to my futon until I found my cell phone.  Without opening my yes, I mashed random buttons on the side of the phone until I found one that turned the beeping off.  I savored the feeling of having slept in.  Then I mocked myself for thinking that 7 a.m. was sleeping in, sighed, and got up.  Just before eight I grabbed my purse and a jacket and headed to my yoga class.  This was my second time going to the "challenging" class, and it was wonderful and relaxing, and I walked out of there an hour and fifteen minutes later feeling like I had been beaten with a stick and then placed on the rack and stretched.  I quickly walked the two blocks to my apartment, looking forward to conference.  That is when I discovered that I had left my keys on the table instead of in my purse and that my roommates, both of whom had still been asleep when I left, were now not only awake but gone.  I went to the apartment office, but the girl there was a temp who had no access to the key box. So I called Allie, and sat down to wait outside our door.  Luckily I had my camera to take pictures and a cell phone to text, and even an iPod to play tetris on if I needed to. The fifteen or twenty minutes until Allie came home passed quickly, and I only felt mildly moronic.

Either I also used drugs to pass the time and then forgot about it, or I was just really proud of myself for forgetting my keys in this picture. 

When Allie got home I changed out of my yoga clothes, grabbed a pie (did I mention I made two this week?) and Monopoly, and went to pick up Cuny, who had left his keys in my car.  Then we drove to Salt Lake to hang out with Borg, watch conference, and eat the pie I made to celebrate Borg's birthday.  After the first session, I used my leadership skills and my position as the driver of the vehicle to declare a trip to REI.  When we got there, I led us confidently on an entire circuit of the store before realizing that I had no idea where the tents were.  Cuny pointed them out effortlessly.  Jerk.  I had already large amounts of research on the tent that I wanted.  I found it, grabbed the bag and cuddled it to my chest as I debated whether I wanted to buy this bright orange, $250 tent.  I had a 20% of coupon, $15 dollars of store credit, and a $50 gift card coming that I could apply retroactively.  The cute salesman assured me I could retroactively use the gift card, and I trusted him.  Which may or may not turn out to be a bad idea.

Name suggestions anyone?

In the end, I walked out of there with my new tent.  Of course I needed to test it.  But, as an apartment dweller, I have no convenient backyard in which to pitch my tent and test its tentness.  So I did the only thing I could, I set it up in my room and dragged my futon in it.  Then I slept quite well.  Actually, I haven't gotten around to taking the tent down, yet, so I've been sleeping in my tent since Saturday night.  I think I'll miss it when I do pack it up, despite the amount of floor space it occupies in my small room.  I like waking up in the morning to the geometric lines of orange and mesh above my head.  I can almost imagine that I can see the stars.  It's a bit like having a cave, and a bit like having a fort, and it's a lot like having fun.  I've always loved tents.  They were my home away from home, my refuge from bugs and wind and sun and were a soft place to sack out for an afternoon nap while camping.  They have only ever felt flimsy or thin on the rare occasion that one has collapsed (stupid snow) or when I could swear I heard strange snuffling noises outside the tent in bear country (stupid bears, or, possibly, stupid overactive imagination).  I am thrilled to be the owner of my own palace.  It's new, it's clean, the poles are shiny, and it's ready for adventure.  I got a three man tent so I could adventure by myself or with friends this summer.  Any takers?

Sunday morning Allie's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew came over for a breakfast of pumpkin waffles and the best syrup on Earth.  Then, between sessions, I snuck out for a trip to the waterfall.  Battle Creek Falls is a half of a mile of fairly steep but not too challenging trail away from the trail head, but only 2.5 miles away from my apartment door.  So I've hiked from front door to waterfall and back many times.  Since I had only an hour or so before the next session, I decided just to drive to the trail head and take the much shorter version of my usual walk.  As you probably noticed, the weather on Sunday was very dependable and predictable.  It would snow like crazy, then the sun would come out and melt everything and it would look like summer, and then it would snow like crazy again.  It completed this cycle at least four or five times throughout the day.  This meant that it was sunny when I started my hike through the two inches of snow on the trail, and on the way down the trail I was walking through the wind and blowing snow, and watching my footprints from minutes earlier fill up with snow.  In short, it was absolutely beautiful and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

A winter scene juxtaposed with a summer sky.  

This isn't the waterfall.  This is just on the way to the waterfall.

Then, after the afternoon session, I made my first batch of pumpkin chocolate cookies ever, and Cuny, Allie, and I finished watching Doctor Who season 5.  For those of you who don't know Doctor Who, it is my new favorite show ever, and deserves a post of its own, which it isn't going to get today.  Suffice it to say, it's worth looking up.

So there you have it, my conference weekend.  I talked about everything but General Conference, rock climbing, and skateboarding.  But really, this week there are probably hundreds, if not thousands of blogs being posted about conference itself on the internet.  If you want to read about conference, go find one of them, or better yet.  Just watch the conference.  And the best way to get idea of my rock climbing and skate boarding is to come with me.  So come do that.

There.  I have now said everything that needs to be said.

Good bye.

'Till later when I think of something else to ramble at you about.

Hello.

I'm Miss E.  This is my classroom.  You know, where the magic happens?

This is some of what we've been talking about lately.

This is one of the posters on my wall.  Every year, 6 months in, some kid will interrupt a lesson to ask what it means because they've "never gotten it."

Then there's me.  The star of the show.  The animator of the room.  The amazing, the one and only, the serious, thought provoking enlightener of your youth.

Look! My hair's getting longer!

That means it's getting in my eyes now.

My earrings are dead butterflies!  And I can shoot lazers out of my eyes!  I'm a professional!

Actually, on Friday afternoons I don't get much work done.

Mostly I surf the internet and wait for spring break to get here.  Of course, what I'm surfing the internet for is advertisements to show my seventh graders to talk about persuasive techniques.  But still, it beats grading book tests.

Is it time to go skateboard yet?  The weather's fantastic today!

Sigh.  It's still not spring break, is it.  poop.

I guess I'll go gather up book tests to grade over the weekend.  I made them describe the climax using alliteration and write a haiku about their books; I wonder what on earth they said.