Sunday DInner and HBD Bill

To accommodate everyone's schedule, we finally celebrated Bill's birthday tonight, at the tail end of his birthday week. Sunday is not our usual evening to gather, so as I was planning the menu, I tried to play on a Sunday dinner from our childhood, with some elevated elements. 

My dad loved chicken with white gravy, a kind of cross between stew and fricassee, with pieces of bone-in chicken and chunks of celery and carrots. My mom served it with biscuits, peas, and mashed potatoes, a recipe she got from his sister. It is a comforting dish, but it lends itself to a lighter version, particularly if you use spring vegetables. 

I made a version tonight with a sous vide chicken thigh roulade stuffed with herbs and pea shoots. Then I blanched haricot vert, baby carrots, tiny turnips, and baby leeks, and served it all with Yukon gold potato puree and white gravy, and of course, biscuits.

The dish was light but filling, so for dessert I made pumpkin pie tassies and mini cream puffs with custard and chocolate glaze. Just one bite each, if you could stop at one! 

I was pleased with the way the meal turned out but even happier to have the chance to cook for and celebrate my brother. I do love that guy!

Imagine That

 "Are you watching the second season of The Pitt?" a friend asked us a few weeks ago.

"Not yet," I told him. "We're waiting for the whole thing to drop, so we can binge it."

His eyes widened. "You mean you're going to watch it all in one day?" he said. "I guess it will be like you're working the shift with them." He shook his head.

"That's not exactly what we had planned," I laughed. "But, wouldn't that be something!"

Lost Art

"Hey there, John!" I hailed the tech guy as he wheeled the laptop cart into my temporary office. The other substitute testing coordinator and I had been hard at work organizing the lists and materials for the district assessment next week.

"Sorry, this is late," he apologized, "but I just got out of a two-hour meeting where they told us that all middle school kids are probably going to get a laptop instead of a tablet next year."

We all groaned. "This is their plan for managing screen time?" I shook my head.

What followed was a 20-minute commiseration about the downsides of technology for young learners. I shared my theory that many kids actually resent having to use a device they consider recreational to do work. "Technology is not as engaging as it used to be, because it's so ubiquitous," I shrugged.

John nodded. "In the summer, I go to the high schools to help distribute laptops to the rising freshmen," he told us. "I bring copies of directions with me so the kids can set them up once they're issued. It's like three steps." He sighed. "You would not believe the number of students who tell me that they can't read on paper!"

Slow on the Download

"I don't have the desktop version of Excel," I informed my colleague. "This is my personal computer, so..." I trailed off. "I couldn't actually figure out how to do it," I confessed.

We spent the next 30 minutes or so looking for workarounds to the complicated directions we had been left for printing testing rosters from an enormous spreadsheet. I booted up the loaner laptop that the school's Instructional Technology Coordinator had provided, but personalizing its settings and familiarizing myself with another brand was also very time-consuming. 

Finally, through a combination of converting, sharing, saving, and YouTube research, we completed the task and printed the 80 testing rosters they would need to prepare the bins starting tomorrow.

"Everything takes longer than you think it will in this job," my colleague sighed. "Thank goodness there are two of us!"

"No kidding," I agreed and thanked her heartily for all her guidance and help.

It wasn't until I got home that it occurred to me to just download Excel from the App Store. The days when you had to buy installation discs are long gone, and nowadays you just pay for a subscription to use the software you download for free. 

And, DUH! I already have a subscription through school!

Much Ado

I was beyond dismayed yesterday when I discovered that our internet and cable services were out, but I followed all available guidance to try to remedy the situation on my own. After restarting the modem and all network devices without success, I checked the provider's website for outages, but none were listed. Then I consulted the neighbors, but their service was up and running. So, as a last resort, I called the provider and scheduled an appointment with their automated help line. 

The earliest a technician could get out here was this afternoon, and although I understood that 24 hours was a relatively quick response, spending a day without wifi seemed impossible. In addition to the online work I had for both jobs, what would we ever do for entertainment without cable or streaming? I spent a few disregulated minutes before setting up my phone as a hotspot, which allowed me to do some work. 

A while later, I experimented with using an HDMI adapter to stream content from my phone to the TV, and frankly? The results were amazing! The only thing missing was a remote, but I guess a slightly longer cable may have been sufficient, too. It wasn't long before I was wondering why we even pay for high-speed service, because it seemed like we could do everything we needed to with our data plan. 

Even so, I adjusted my plans and left school early this afternoon to meet the technician. I was a little flustered from my quick departure and commute when he rang the bell, but he seemed understanding. 

"Before I do anything," he said to me once he had his booties on over his shoes, "do you happen to know if your service has been restored? I think they were doing some work in the area."

"What?" I replied in disbelief.

Do I really need to tell you that everything was working exactly as it should?

Yup.

Bowling Season 1: Wrap Up

Today was my last bowling day of the season. I started in September with a 96 average and ended with a 110. I'm happy with my progress, but disappointed that my final game was an 85, which is actually my lowest. Clearly? Consistency will be my goal in the fall-- and by that I'm not talking about that 85!

Here are a few more of my league stats:

Games: 90
High Game: 158
High Series: 406
Total pins: 9858

And I have all summer to practice!

Faith in the Profession

And in the Pendulum meet Swing department, I received an invitation to the following webinar:

How Worksheets Support Active Learning in Ways That Screens Can’t: Myths, Busted!

It's funny, but it connects to a conversation I had just the other day with our 21-year-old house guest. "What has your experience been with Gen Alpha?" I asked the Zoomer.

"I think they're annoying," she answered predictably. (Oh, hey there, Millennials.) "And very different from us."

"How so?" I asked with interest.

"When I was born," she began, "not everyone had a screen 24/7. I mean, my baby pictures are actually printed out in an album. That's not true of younger people. Their pictures are all on somebody's phone."

I nodded, thoughtfully. "Did you have a tablet?" I asked her. 

"Not of my own. There was a family iPad, and we had to share it," she answered.

"So watching movies and other things was more of a communal experience for you," I said. "That tracks. It used to be very engaging to use short videos in a lesson, but in the last few years, kids have found them boring. Maybe because they watch short videos of their own choice all the time."

"Probably," she agreed. 

"It's not a novelty anymore," I added. "And they also hate doing skill drills on their devices. It's as if such platforms are a desecration of their screens." I laughed. "I guess teachers are going to have to figure out something else." I paused. "I'm sure they will!"

Once a Teacher...

"You should put the top down on the Jeep," I suggested to Heidi at breakfast this morning. She and Delaney were going to go shopping for a bit before we headed back up to Carlisle. 

"It's not supposed to rain, is it?" Heidi asked. Then her eyes widened. "What about the crows! They might poop in it overnight!"

We agreed that that would be extremely gross, but the weather is amazing, sunny and not too warm, so we decided to put the top down anyway and just make sure it was back up before nightfall. 

It's been several months, however, since last we put down the top, and the procedure eluded us. After digging out the manual and watching a couple of YouTube videos, we managed to convert the vehicle, though. 

As we returned to the house, I was dreading putting the top back up in just a few hours, but I bucked up thinking about the fun of riding in a convertible on a beautiful day. "You know what we should do?" I said. "We should take it down and put it back five times in a row! We need to build that automaticity."

Last to Know

Our 21-year-old goddaughter is visiting from college this weekend, and as happens whenever she is here, this evening found us lingering around the dinner table chatting long after the dishes had been cleared. "Do you know what?" she asked as the conversation meandered through the family. "I had no idea until recently that my grandparents were divorced!"

We nodded sympathetically, knowing that her grandmother had passed away the day after she was born. Her grandfather was already remarried, but she was unaware of the timeline.

Well," I laughed, "you are officially an adult now. You're going to get all the dirt now."

A little while later, we made good on that. We were reminiscing about her mom and Heidi coming to Virginia together for a summer job. "That's how I met Larry," Heidi told her, mentioning a mutual friend.

"How did my mom know him again?" she asked.

"They were dating!" Heidi said.

Her eyes widened. "So that's the guy before my dad," she replied, connecting the dots. "I have questions!"

Professional Courtesy

"If you're not familiar with farro," our waiter told us last night, "it's a grain, similar to, uh, I would say, quinoa?" he finished on an upnote. I raised my eyebrows at Heidi, but did not correct him. Everyone in our group was either farro savvy or had no intention of ordering it. I did have it on my meal, and it was excellent.

It was the second time this week I have stayed mum on food facts. On Wednesday, we went with friends to a cooking class downtown. The experience was my Christmas gift from them, and I was looking forward to it. Our session was on handmade ravioli, and as a former chef and teacher, I was very curious about both the content and the presentation. As the instructor proceeded through the lesson, the members of my party did a lot of nudging and winking at me, mostly because I refused to engage on any level other than learner. 

"How many times have you done this?" someone whispered.

"Just once, today," I answered.

"How would you do this?" someone else asked me a little later. 

I shrugged. "This way, right now," I said pointedly.

And although I didn't really learn anything new, and I may have taught the class differently, it was still enjoyable. Just like the farro.

Leaping Llamas

"What is that animal?" the teacher asked her first-graders, pointing to a black-and-white illustration in their workbooks.

"A sheep!" someone called out.

"It does kind of look like a sheep," she acknowledged.

"A llama!" suggested another.

I giggled because a llama was not something I ever would have guessed. But even though the school was less than three miles from my grandparents' house, the kids in the class were from a much different background than mine. All but one were multilingual learners, most speaking Spanish at home and English at school. (Also, llamas are a lot more ubiquitous today.)

The teacher laughed too. "It's actually a goat," she told her class. "And do you know what we call a baby goat?" She waited, but hearing no volunteers, continued, "A kid!"

Many of the students looked blankly.

"You know, like sometimes we call children kids," she said. "You're kids, and a baby goat is a kid, too." She smiled. "Now, what does this kid do?" she asked, pointing to the word "jumps" on the handwriting line beneath the picture.

"El niño salta," whispered one boy to the girl next to him, hopping up and down in his seat a bit.

He does indeed.

The Yin and the Yang

The weather today was perfect.  The sun was so pleasantly warm, and the air had just the slightest chill. It was my very favorite kind of day.

And as I walked through its glory, it occurred to me that this is why I love my cooling comforter so very, very much. It keeps me cozy and warm, but if I wake up in the middle of the night, a slight adjustment gives me a smooth, cool sensation on my bare feet or hands, soothing me right back to sleep. It's like flipping to the other side of the pillow-- a perfect combination of warm and cool. 

It's no wonder I have been sleeping so well!

AND Good Company

Besides the obvious spiffing up your house and guest quarters, having company often gives you the opportunity to do things you mean to, but never get around to. Take this weekend, for example. We're driving up to Carlisle, PA, to fetch our goddaughter, who is a senior at Dickinson. On the way back to our newly-cleaned home, we're going to stop for dinner in Frederick, MD, at Bryan Voltaggio's restaurant, Showroom. 

He's one of our Top Chef favs, and we've been meaning to get up to his hometown for over a decade. Even though we've driven through dozens of times on our way back and forth from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia (not to mention Carlisle), we've never made time to actually eat at one of his places. That's going to change on Friday.

Then, on Saturday, we have tickets to As You Like It at the Folger Library Theatre, another place we know we should visit more often. The current production has been well-reviewed and cited as a "love letter to Washington, D.C." and "a light-hearted tonic for the troubled times the city finds itself in." Honestly, who could say no to that?

As of now, Sunday is open, but it turns out so are we, so who knows what fun we'll get into?

The Magic Bridge

Lucy and I went out for a walk through the neighborhood on this glorious spring day. As we headed over the bridge spanning the interstate, a dark pickup truck passed us and then slowed to an ominous roll, stopping just ahead. I was skeptical, but Lucy knew who it was right away. She began shrieking and whining as Sarah, her dogwalker, clambered down and came over to say hello. 

After chatting for a good while, Lucy and I continued on our way, walking about a mile and a half before looping back to pass over the same bridge on our way home. As we crossed, a tan Honda CRV slowed with a friendly wave. Lucy stood up on the leash and craned her neck to see who it was, just as our friend Mary considerately made a U-turn and came back to say hi.

Lucy put on another shrieky-whiny show; she was that happy. "She already thinks this bridge is magical," I laughed, recalling the lady who gave her treats there a couple of months ago. 

"Maybe she's right!" Mary said.

Tales of Temping

"It should be simple!" they said. "Just swap the grade level groups for teachers in their own grades."

But of course, nothing is ever that easy, especially when you're dealing with over a thousand kids and a hundred staff members, not to mention accommodations and room size. It took me all weekend to finalize the assignments and make transparent, easily accessible lists for all the stakeholders for just one of the two upcoming tests.

Thank goodness I'm getting paid by the hour! (Also, that I don't actually have to report to work tomorrow, although I do have a meeting at 9:30.)

That Hat

"Excuse me?" a young woman at the Jeep service center approached me. "Did you use to coach at TJ School?"

I nodded and laughed. "Yes," I answered, "but I taught there, too."

"I knew it!" she said. 

"And you are...?" I asked, examining her curiously. She looked slightly familiar, but it had probably been about 20 years since she was in middle school. 

When she told me her name, I saw it right away. I reminded her that she had been in my homeroom, asked about her brother and sisters, and even her cousins. I could tell that she knew I remembered her, and she was pleased.

Later, I thought about how she remembered me as a coach rather than as a teacher. I had co-coached the girls basketball team when she was on it, and I recalled her game. She was small but very skilled, made the team in 6th grade, and became an outstanding shooting guard. She was also a good student, but basketball was her strength and her joy.

Given that? I'm glad she recognized me as Coach.

Mixed Signals

There was a carnival-like atmosphere at the home opener for the Nats today. Parking was out of the question, so we metroed over, leaving the car in the garage of the nearby mall, but it wasn't until we crowded into the green line train at L'Enfant Plaza that the party began. 

Everyone was decked out in their fan duds, and the fact that there was as many Dodgers jerseys as there were hometown gear, might have been a tipoff. Even so, who could blame anyone for being excited to see the back-to-back world champs featuring the best player in baseball? 

And for an inning or two, it even seemed like the home team might pull off an upset, especially when Miles Mikolas struck out the lead-off batter, none other than Ohtani himself, and CJ Abrams hit a three-run homer in the bottom of the first. But the Dodgers have an incredible offense, and answering that homer with five of their own, they killed the Nats 13-6. 

"I don't think we've ever seen them win!" Heidi said in disgust as we headed out the gates. 

"Maybe not," I shrugged, "but they did score more runs than we've ever seen today."

Long Shot

I think my interest in space was renewed last year, around this time, when I took a long-term sub job teaching sixth-grade science. The unit was on weather and the atmosphere, and as I reviewed the material to prepare, I remembered how fascinating both topics could be. I also recognized some gaps in my understanding of those subjects, particularly regarding the layers of the atmosphere and where outer space actually begins. 

Yesterday, as I was working at my laptop, I received a news alert that the Artemis II mission was minutes away from launching its journey to the moon. I clicked on the link and joined the live feed showing the enormous rocket in that classic position at Kennedy Space Center. As they ran through their final checklists, I considered when I last watched a manned rocket launch.

It may have been in January of 1986. At that time, I was enthralled by the notion of sending a teacher to space, and I eagerly joined my father in front of his enormous TV. We watched the crew waving in their blue jumpsuits as they boarded the bus to the launch pad, and of course, we saw what happened 73 seconds into the flight. I guess it's no surprise that I haven't really wanted to see anything blastoff since then.

As I waited for the countdown to resume, I studied the graphics describing the mission and flight plan. It seemed hard to believe that it would take four days to get to the moon, that bright rock that we see in the sky almost every night. I read that this was the first time human beings would leave Earth's low orbit since 1972. I was in 5th grade then, and flying to the moon seemed like a normal occurrence, a lot like launching the space shuttle seemed a decade or so later. 

I heard mission control wish the crew good luck and Godspeed, and then ten, nine, eight. The earth rumbled, and fire, smoke, and steam surged from the propulsion nozzle, thrusting the frame and the payload into the clear blue Florida sky. Safely. And they were on their way to the moon.

The Great Bollard Debate

Heidi, bless her heart, is on the board of our homeowner's association, a thankless role she regularly curses. Recently, our community replaced our aging lighting system at significant expense. As part of the upgrade, the lighting company installed bollards in front of some of the lamp posts most vulnerable to damage from cars or delivery trucks. 

The installation makes sense to protect our investment and was included in the comprehensive plan approved by the board. What was not noted, however, was that the bollards would be four feet tall and sheathed in a high-visibility shade of safety yellow. Understandably, when they appeared, they became the subject of a lot of neighborhood chatter, especially because they are so hard to miss. 

Some residents demanded their immediate removal, prompting the board to clap back. Others wondered if they could be another color, acknowledging their usefulness, but wishing to dial back their industrial appearance. 

Ever since this controversy erupted, Heidi and I have noticed and discussed the bollards wherever we go. Friends! They are everywhere! And they come in all sizes and shapes, which raises the question: who chose our bollards and why? 

As of today, the board has not been able to come to an agreement about the issue, although one of the members did confess on their text chain that she was all bollarded out, and once this was resolved, she hoped never to hear the word again, or at least not in such frequency.

Here and Now

It's fun to travel, but it's always sweet to get back home. After a day spent on the road yesterday, I slept in this morning and enjoyed a late breakfast of coffee and cinnamon toast made from homemade bread. I went through the mail, caught up with neighbors, and enjoyed relaxing with the cat on my lap in my easy chair. The sliding glass door is open to let in the warm spring air, and a light breeze ruffles the barely-budding branches as doves, robins, and cardinals fly back and forth from my neighbor's bird feeder. In a few minutes, I'll head out to walk the dog, and after that, it will be a light supper of fresh veggies and fish. 

Maybe tomorrow will be more ambitious, but I doubt it will be any better.

Why take on just one challenge when you can tackle two? This month, I'm using the Action for Happiness Mindful March calendar as a daily prompt for living and writing.