Until Next Year

Blustery skies gave way early this afternoon to what is easily the prettiest day of the summer, all sunshiny, breezy and blue, and so the question became what to do with this, the final day of our summer vacation. In the end, summer ended as it has passed: a walk with the dog, a bit of reading and writing, a trip to the gym and the grocery, and time spent at the pool with friends. Soon there will be a glass of wine, a nice dinner, maybe a movie on TV, and then it will be time to set the alarm for the first time since June.

Storm's A-Comin

My mom called yesterday to see if we were all set for the hurricane. "Kind of," I said, "in the sense that we're not really doing anything to get ready."

"Not even filling the tub with water?" she asked.

"Nope," I answered. "I don't really see the point. Anyway, the worst that might happen is that we could lose power, and I've already had to dump the fridge twice this year, so I feel ready for that."

My mom got into the spirit right away. "At least your garden will get a lot of water," she said.

Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but I just don't have a bad feeling about Irene. The last hurricane that had any impact on our area was in late September, 2003. Many people in the county lost power for a week or so, but we didn't. We got a day off from school and took the opportunity to drive to Pennsylvania and pick up our puppy. We named her Isabel, after the storm, and it all worked out pretty well, as anyone who's ever seen Heidi and Isabel together can confirm.

In fact, I wouldn't entirely rule out a puppy Irene.

G-L-O-R-I-A... Gloria!

Twenty six years ago I was in Virginia Beach and bracing for Hurricane Gloria. I was living about three blocks from the ocean with my dad, who was terminally ill, my sister, who was in college, and our two geriatric cats. It fell to me to carry out the recommended preparations for what they were calling the storm of a generation. I bought tape for the windows, batteries for the flashlights and radio, and water to drink. I filled the tub, secured the porch furniture, and when they recommended evacuating our neighborhood, I panicked a little, mostly about the cats.

"What should we do?" I asked my dad.

"You can do what you want," he said, drawing an X on his hurricane tracking grid (they put one in the Sunday supplements every week from June until November), "but I'm not going anywhere."

And so we stayed to literally weather the storm. It was supposed to hit sometime around midnight, but after all the running around I had done, I passed out about 10, after moving my bed away from the windows, of course. I remember waking up once and squinting out the window. The night seemed darker than usual, but when it came into focus, I saw trees bent over almost double and rain pelting horizontally. It looked like a typhoon on Gilligan's Island and I lay back down and went to sleep.

The next morning my dad and my sister told me about the storm-- how they had stayed up and the power had gone out and they had retreated to an inner hallway when it was at its worst. In the end there was no damage and as they went off to bed exhausted by the ordeal, I headed down to the freshly scrubbed beach to see what the storm had left.

Inclement Weather

The day here was grey and rainy, but it was hard to be upset about it; our summer has been pretty hot and dry. Instead of cursing the clouds we did a little light hunkering, curled up reading in the big chair by the window with the rain streaming down and then venturing out between downpours to the movies and to run a few errands in the afternoon. Before we left the house though, I looked up the snow forecast for this winter.

It is promising indeed.

Note to Self: Schedule Introspection ASAP.

We had our annual summer team leaders meeting yesterday. This is where the leadership cadre of our school devotes several hours the week before everyone else comes back to getting up to speed on what's developed since classes ended in June as well as laying the groundwork for the year to come.

I've had the privilege of being included in this group since 1999, so what does it say that I was most engaged when it came to the discussion of our new building security system? Sure it involves card swiping and new keys for everyone, but it seems like the other stuff on the agenda should have grabbed my attention, too.

The earthquake was cool, though.

The Earth Shook

I was sitting in a meeting in the school library when the whole room swerved onto the rumble strips. We bumped along for a thrilling thirty seconds before we regained control of the building, and when it was over I knew I had experienced my first earthquake.

In the aftermath everyone there whipped out a phone, but the mobile networks were all overloaded and had crashed. I went to find a land line so that I could check in with Heidi at home and fortunately I was able to reach her right away and although there was a lot of alarmed cussing, everything was fine. "Holy shit!" she said. "You should have seen Penelope! That cat was running all over the house looking for a place to hide!"

"I don't blame her; it was an earthquake!" I said.

"No!" she told me. "This was before anything happened! She totally knew it was coming!"

Later we learned that the quake was 5.8 on the richter scale, centered 83 miles to our southwest, and also that there was very little resulting damage or injury. Even so, they were evacuating a number of local buildings and the federal government was shutting down. That seemed a little like closing the barn door after the horse was gone to me, but I guess they didn't have a Penelope to alert them beforehand.

The Devil You Know

I'm at school today to do a few pre-pre-service week chores, and I've run into a couple of other teachers. One guy has been on practically the same team of teachers for the last 15 years and this September, by way of retirement, re-assignment, and re-organization, he is facing several new faces. Our conversation was punctuated with considerable skepticism and rueful laughter on his part.

Once I made a chart showing all the teachers I've taught with in the 18 years I've been on the same sixth grade team. It was fun to remember past colleagues and surprising to see how much change there has been over the years. We've had five science teachers, five math teachers, five ESL teachers, five special ed teachers, and seven social studies teachers, but just one English teacher, me. Even so, our team has been remarkably stable lately; for the last three years, there's been no change at all, and other teachers on the team have been here for seven years, fifteen years, and sixteen years. I kind of like that consistency, even though I appreciate the benefits of change.