Change of Mind

My vegan has become a pescatarian, so what's on the menu?

Why lobster risotto of course.

Bon apetite!

And One More Thing...

about Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation:

Throughout the entire movie, no one ate a single bite of food.

What does it mean?

Bellwethers

On such a rainy Saturday it seemed like a great idea to go to the movies. There are still a couple of fun summer flicks on our list and today we chose Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.

I confess to being a little distracted by Tom Cruise, at least in the beginning of the movie: he and I are only three days apart in age, and I wanted to see how he was holding up. After inspecting him carefully, it turns out he's aging quite well, unlike, say, Sebastian Koch. 

Don't know him? Well. I didn't either, by name, until this morning when I saw he joined the cast of Homeland for this season.

Who is that old guy? I thought when I looked at his picture, and then added, Oops! when I saw his birthday, just a month before mine.

First Friday

I had some variation of the following conversation at least 4 times today:

Colleague: "Thank goodness it's Friday! I can't believe it's only the first week! It feels like we've been at it for months!"

Heidi says it's just because everyone is out of practice, and in that in a few weeks we'll all be back in shape and hitting our stride. I hope she's right, because otherwise?

It's going to be a realllllly long year!

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

I was talking today with our Instructional Technology Coordinator about the details of rolling out the iPads for the new sixth graders. I really like her, but I'm feeling a little skeptical about the plan they have in place.

"Oh, they should know it from 5th grade," our ITC assured me. "Watch." She turned to a random student. "What elementary school did you go to?"

The student told her.

"Did you use google.docs there?" the ITC continued.

The student nodded; the ITC winked triumphantly at me.

"Do you know your password?"

The student hesitated. "Wait. Did you say 'google'?" she asked, frowning. "No. I don't think so."

The ITC sighed.

The student turned her head. "Oh. Wait. Yeah. We did use that."

The ITC brightened.

The student shook her head. "I forgot my password, though."

Something Old, Something New

On a day when so many of this year's sixth graders are still just one in a jumble of faces and names, a woman caught my eye as I dashed into the grocery store on the way home from work and held it. She was finished with her own shopping and an adorable little girl danced along behind her, swinging one of the grocery bags.

"Ashley!" I cried. "Is it you?" because she looked exactly like the grown-up version of one of the students in my first class, ever.

"Yeah!" she answered in amazement. "What's your name again?"

"Ms. S! Your sixth grade English teacher!" I reminded her.

"Wow! I can't believe you remember me! You really haven't changed a bit!" she said.

And two thousand or so kids later? I accepted the compliment gleefully, though I knew how wrong she was.

Intro to Sixth Grade

"What are you going to do on the first day of school?" a colleague asked me last week.

"Oh, I'm not quite sure," I answered, "but I know it will involve popsicle sticks and index cards."

And it did.

And it was great!