The Challenge!!!!

The City

The trip to Chicago was a whirlwind of activity. It was fun fooling around with the iPads, the MacBooks and the iTouches. When we were done with all that learning, we visited Taste of Chicago and then checked out the sky ledges at Sears Tower.

Tonight I had fun over at Streibie's birthday party. I played corn hole for the first time and I wasn't half bad.

There was a little kid there who loves to catch turtles. He had 7 in his bucket earlier today. He came running out of the woods looking pretty upset at one point. He said, "There's a dead turtle in the woods. Dead turtle. Dead turtle!"

"Did it freak you out a little bit?"

"SMELL ME!" the kid said. I think he wanted me to know that the turtle was smelly, but I'm not sure.

"I'm good." I told him, "Why don't you have a cold root beer and just relax?"

That seemed to calm him down. We all had some cool blue cake and partied on.

The Apples

Day 2. I'm not sure I'm up to it.

The Challenge

In about 2 hours, I'll be driving to Chicago. There's an Apple Summer Learning Institute going on and I'm going to attend it. I'll be missing Top Chef tonight, but Pronto Pup is going to hold off on the challenge for a little while. I didn't need the extra time because I had studied all the cheftestants' bios today and had my picks read. Every week you pick the person who will win the Quick Fire Challenge and then you pick the person who will win the big Elimination Challenge and you also have to pick who will be asked to pack their knives and go. It's fun and you should join in if you feel like it. Check it out right here.

The Names

Started reading Borrowed Names today. I'm in the section about Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter Rose. I love books like this. I read a little of the novel and then read a bunch of web pages about this famous mom and daughter. Good job, Jeannine Atkins.

The Weekend

We drove to the West Baden Springs Hotel and as you can see it's magnificent. There's a casino down the way and we put 1$ in a slot machine. We gave that dollar a good ride, and almost walked away with 9$. In the end, we left with 1 cent. So that was disappointing.

The Museum

I toured the Museum of Broken Relationships this afternoon. The museum features artifacts that people left behind when their relationships ended. The artifacts are accompanied by notes written by the people left behind. It's wild to read these notes. Many were painful and personal. As I was leaving a woman said to me, "What's with this people? Do we need to know this stuff? Talk about oversharing. Is this the facebook generation?"

I mumbled and murmured, but I didn't agree with her. There was something refreshing about people putting this info out into the world. Well done, museum of broken relationships. I support you and thank you for reminding me that my relationships are wonderfully intact.

The Chefs

I missed the Top Chef premiere last night so I watched it on Hulu tonight. It's obviously going to be a great season. The guy who gets kicked off had weird long dreads. I felt a little sorry for him because he was from Detroit and I think he had a lot of heart. The good news is this: Pronto's going to sponsor a Top Chef contest over at pronto pup right here. I'm excited about this.

And KC and I have already begun conferring about the July blogging challenge. Summer fun, here for the taking.

The Summer

Husbandman and I are watching the 1st season of The Wire. It's pretty good, but slightly confusing. I should wear a wire around. It would add significance to all my conversations. If I told people, "I'm wearing a wire," they'd probably choose their words carefully.

The Brochure

I'm working on a brochure project for our new school. Working with some graphic design students. Graphic design is a pretty good field. These graphic design peeps made a cool brochure for us. I met with them in their work studio a few times. I liked their studio. It had a lot of neat art and equipment. I wish I could be a graphic designer. And I hope the school peeps like the brochure.

The Missing

Left the restaurant for a short time last night to visit a shop across the street. While I was gone the woman at the next table inadvertently cut the tip of her finger off because there was a nail sticking out of the bottom of her chair. When she scooted back in her chair, the tip of her finger flew off and landed on the floor. I was a little irked to miss this event, but pals did retell the tale through dinner, so that was almost as good.

The Conference

This is a story that my friend Jayma told me a few days ago. Her last day visiting Florida, she was at the beach and collected some colorful shells, so she brought the shells in her car and started driving north to get home. 100's of miles away she heard some scritch scratching from the shell bag and discovered that hermit crabs were in the shells. Living hermit crabs. When she got home, she didn't know what to do so she poured bleach on the hermit crabs to kill them. She said she was bummed out that the bleach destroyed the bright colors of the shells, so she had to throw them away.

The Trip

Nancy and I are in St. Charles Missouri. We drove in my car because we did not want to ride on the bus. The road trip was fun and we walked along the MISSOURI RIVER once we got here. I think it's lucky to live in a town that has a river running through it. Tomorrow's the big conference where we learn more about Professional Learning Communities. I think it's going to be good. I'm glad to be here with so many Btown educators.

The Frittata

Tonight Husbandman and I followed written directions called a recipe. We made a veggie frittata. It was exceptional.

The Garden

After a lovely trip to the Farmer's Market, I got to weeding out our flower bed. 100% of it was covered with weeds. Now about 22% is covered with weeds. After the arduous labor in the fields, we saw Get Him to the Greek at our local theater. I'm giving it a solid B. Then I finished up the dragon tattoo book. Then we went to the hardware store and bought a hoe and a cultivator. Now we're watching The Usual Suspects. I saw this movie a long time ago and I can only remember parts of it. It's fairly confusing but the cast is phenomenal. My favorite is Gabriel Byrne.

The Squares

I'm crocheting a huge granny square. I'm going to try to create the largest granny square in the world. After crocheting for a bit, Fab Fam of Four went down to the courthouse square for a light repast. En route, we wandered into a photography gallery having a new exhibit. The photos were of Chicago, one of our all time fave places. Then we went into another gallery and coveted some limestone sculptures.

Summer continues to go well.

The Lake

First day of summer. #1 son and I took a drive out to the lake and took some pix. Then I read some more of the book that never ends, then I napped. Now I'm watching Lovely Bones with Husbandman. We're off to a good start.

The End

Well, stick a fork in it. The school year's done. For some odd reason I got kind of nostalgic for the classroom this week. I think it's because I took a tour of the new building and the new classrooms are beautiful. I would like to set one of those bad boys up next August. It's also a nice feeling to end the school year with the peeps on that last day, sharing the memories and singing all the old songs together one last time. But I'm going to plug along as a literacy partner, even though I don't know if I'm being super effective. On a good note, we had our final convocation in the gym at the end of the day and then we walked outside to watch our student council pres. put a ribbon on the school doors, symbolically closing the school forever. As we filed out of the school, we were greeted by a bagpiper. We all stood silently outside and listened in awe. I was holding a thirdie's hand and lovingly keeping her by my side, somewhat against her will. We loaded the buses up at the park, waved goodbye for the summer, and then we went back to the building for more packing. We're getting there.