Adventures

An Early Christmas

We spent Dec 12-20 in Crystal Lake, IL, visiting my parents and my brother and attending a wedding of one of Andy's good friends from college. The visit was an early Christmas/Solstice celebration, so we got our presents on Dec 14. Yea for early gifts!

Sofia had a great time playing in the snow, learning how to weld (from my brother Rob), and learning how to make lace (from Mum). She had so much fun, in fact, i think she will be disappointed if we don't make it out there again next winter (as will i).

On Dec 17, my parents, Andy, and i went to downtown Chicago for a taping of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, leaving Sofia in the care of Rob and his partner Rob. This was when she welded, and they also sang karaoke! The adults in the family were well entertained by the hosts of the radio show, Carl Kasell and Peter Sagal, along with the guest panel that week: Roxanne Roberts, Tom Bodett, and Paula Poundstone. After the show, they all hung around talking to audience members and signing autographs. Andy bought Paula Poundstone's latest book and had her inscribe it to Mum, since the comedian is one of Mum's favorites.

We did other stuff, too, like going to the Field Museum of Natural History to see Sue, the T-Rex, or playing with Mum's new Wii, or packing and shipping boxes of my books to Seattle. I think everyone had fun while we were there, and it's nice to have my books again ;)

Wild orchids

On the way to my bus stop I pass a patch of dendrobium orchids growing wild. It's not something I ever really expected to see near a major urban highway, so I wanted to share them with you.

Georgia floods

Some of you are aware of the severe flooding that happened in the Atlanta area last week; the floods wiped out homes, schools, businesses, and farms. Judith, a woman i know, and her partner Joe run an organic farm in Douglasville named Love Is Love Farm. More than three quarters of their arable land is now ruined by sand and clay. Here's a video of Judith talking to local news about her farm:

Judith let me know that there are a number of ways people can help both Love Is Love Farm and other organic farms in the area. Go to slowfoodatlanta.org to find out about the Georgia Flooded Farms Relief Fund, or, if you are in the Atlanta area, check out these fundraisers:

Oct 4th Field of Greens will contribute funds

Oct 11th Woodfire Grill is preparing a dinner

Oct 17th The Peachtree Road Farmers Market is having a bbq plate/fall festival

As Judith says in the video, small organic farming is about creating a healthy, local, sustainable community, and this community needs help right now.

Fast times

Good grief i have been busy lately! I was looking forward to some down time after moving last month, but my volunteer job at Puget Sound Community School has started up this past week. I have only myself to blame for my workload, of course. I didn't have to agree to teach three classes, but i'm a bit of a sucker. So, i'm teaching French twice a week from the Foreign Service Institute's (US diplomat school) curriculum, plus a weekly class on Flannery O'Connor's short stories from the collection Everything That Rises Must Converge, and a course in preparation for and participating in NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, this November.

All of this is fun, but i'm not sure how grouchy i'm going to be once my paying job with TechStart begins again next month. I'll be teaching robotics again, but not until the spring quarter. Fall and winter will be taken up with Scratch and Alice, neither of which i have used before. Should be interesting, especially during November when i'm supposed to be churning out a 50,000 word novel. Wish me luck!

P.S., Some people have been asking me about Puget Sound Community School and how it works. Here's a YouTube video of the scheduling process to give you an idea:

Makin' like hobos

So we're moving this weekend, and our landlord has been showing our old apartment to prospective tenants for the past week or so. This not only entails that the apartment be in showable condition (i.e. all cat hair tumbleweeds must at least be out of sight), but also that Jack, Andy's 11-year old Australian terrier, be absent during show times. As Michael, the landlord said, "We love Jack, but it can be hard to have a conversation with him around."

Jack has a distinct personality that is (to me) likable only about 15% of the time that he is awake. I have no quarrel with the dog when he's sleeping; i find his snores funny. One of Jack's quirks is a decided dislike for rain. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the reasoning skills that would allow him to figure out how to get out of the rain quickly. That is to say, when it rains, Jack goes out and stands motionless, disgusted and distressed by the precipitation. He makes very little attempt to do what he went outside to do; instead he looks pathetic and gets very wet.

Well, today it was pouring down rain when Michael came over, and Jack and i needed to vacate for about an hour. We went out, and Jack stopped. We bumbled around the neighborhood a little, with Jack halting every 5 feet to make sure i knew it was raining. These halts, by the way, are not just a stop, they are a dead-weight-with-heels-dug-in braking system. Since there was no way Jack was going to consent to walking the 6 blocks to our new apartment, i decided to take advantage of this forced exile by peering in the windows of the empty house across the street from us. It has been vacant since June, and i'm nosy.

Jack really liked standing at the front door as if we were waiting for it to open, but the porch afforded very little shelter from the rain. I was also wary of looking like a lurker, especially to any of the prospective tenants that were coming to see our apartment. I took us around the side of the house toward the back yard just to keep moving, and that is when opportunity knocked. On the side of the house are some stairs that go down to a covered entrance to the basement. It was completely sheltered and dry. So we made like hobos and trespassed for about 45 minutes. Jack spent most of the time staring through a window, while i read a book i had with me.

When we eventually climbed up the stairs, Jack tried to go back down again. Twice. I guess he finally figured out how to get out of the rain.