International travel in a day

When I went to DC with Danny in 2012, one of our tour guides pointed out the Canadian embassy, making the claim that it technically sits on Canadian soil. I have no idea if that is true- it sounds fishy.

If it is true, I went to Peru today. It's just north of LBJ on Preston, as it turns out. My former student Cristina was ready on time and came along to make English out of so much Spanish. I was happy to have her there- she's a very level-headed kid who does not act like a kid at all. Here was the beginning of our international journey in North Dallas. 

For a while, we sat in the waiting area- just Uncle Brad, cousin Colleen, my kid Cristina  and me. At a certain point, Brad and Cristina had to head back to an office and conduct the majority of the business. Uncle Brad had to take care of some paperwork for uncle Clayton, who is recovering from a serious stroke in Peru. Not the most thrilling day, I'm afraid. 

I really appreciated Cristina coming to help, and it was very handy that I could connect her to Brad for this task. Being from Minnesota, Brad doesn't exactly have a list of bilingual friends in Texas. This is the unique service I can provide as a teacher. 

My mother handed me some money to compensate Cristina for her time and effort. I added an extra 20 bucks to it just because it took longer than I imagined. I was happy to chauffeur her there and back, and I was glad to throw a few bucks on top of the agreed-upon payment. She's a good kid and she really did something that my family needed. 

It's one of those moments that I will point to when people react negatively to the information that I teach public high school in Dallas. It happens more often than you think. They hear what I do for a living and where I work, and the first reaction is pity or sympathy or something. That's when I pull out a little nugget like this story. I get really good kids, and that doesn't always for the narrative people have in their minds about my job. I get kids like Cristina. I'm a pretty lucky teacher. 

Dinner and a show

I closed my eyes at about 2:30 in the afternoon yesterday, grateful for the fast finish to the garage sale.  I had gone to bed late the night before and I was awake pretty early to get everything set up in the morning.  I was a little behind on my sleep, so a substantial nap was in order.  The plan was that Cas and I would sleep and clean up after the garage sale, then reconvene for a fancy dinner.

Of course, I had a Groupon.  We went to Geisha Steak and Sushi again.  They are yet another restaurant to which we have been before, and quite like Simply Fondue, we were glad to return... with a discount.

I picked him up, since he had come to my place earlier in the day.  It isn't too long until we're done deciding who picks up whom and which person's place we start from.  We headed out for dinner, which was more like dinner and a show with a hibachi chef in the middle of the table.  This time, we shared the table with a family of eight people.  It felt a little like we were invading someone else's big dinner, but there were two seats left at the table, and that is the way they tend to operate at restaurants like that.

It wasn't much different than the last time we went there, but it was totally fun.  Behold, a flaming pile of onion pieces:

It's Sunday today, so I am headed to Richardson.  At my house, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel.  I think it's the disappearance of so much furniture that makes the goal of packing my worldly possessions seem more achievable.  I told Cas yesterday that I kind of wanted to stand in my living room with my arms outstretched, singing about how the hills are alive.  

I mean, there's plenty of space to do that...  Maybe later. 

Garage sale

It rained like crazy last night, which is why I wasn't 100% sure the garage sale would happen today, but humid as it was, we dragged all of the crap I wanted to shed prior to the big move out to the front yard. Cas came, and so did Dan and Laurie. I had good helpers. That was at about 7:30. Cas and I closed up shop three hours later, thanks mostly to a woman who was apparently furnishing a whole house. She paid and went to get a friend with a pickup truck, so we marked all of her purchases with tape.

I'm sure I could have gotten more money than the $135 her purchase amounted to, but I was just really happy to get it all out of the front yard so fast. 

Someone else came and picked up my couch, loveseat and big chair. Since they bought l three, I knocked $10 off the price. We even managed to sell a desk for Cas' mom. 

In the background, Cas and I signed a whole new batch of papers for our mortgage lady and scanned them, and I got confirmation from a kid who is going to help my uncle Brad by translating Spanish to English at the Peruvian embassy on Tuesday. Whew. 

Mom and uncle Brad have a brother (my uncle Clayton) in Peru who had a stroke. They're trying to work out his finances from a continent away, and the embassy needed info on any individual who would be present to act as a translator. I knew just the kid to call. She's off to college in a few months, but she lives in my current neighborhood, and I had a feeling she would be willing to trade some hours on a Tuesday in the middle of the summer for a few bucks. She was also in AP Spanish 4 or 5 or something last year. 

I hesitate to say how well everything is going- it is the same superstition, I think, that prevents baseball fans from saying no hitter in the middle of one. Still, I'm pretty darn happy today. 

Now, it's time for a nap so I can be rested and ready. I'm taking some of my garage sale profits to a hibachi restaurant tonight and properly expressing my appreciation for Cas' assistance this morning. Hooray for a great Saturday! 

Rain delay

Today was full.  I mean full...  I got up and threw on some shorts and a T-shirt and headed to the Home Depot.  I was there to pick up some switch plates and outlet covers, a fireplace key, some bathtub caulk and some flowers for the little strip of dirt next to my sidewalk.  I went with these:

 
After they were planted, I had to get clean so I could have lunch with Cas.  I wanted to have him at my house to help when Jeanne and Dave stopped by to deposit items for the pending garage sale.  I had already made pretty good progress getting my things together and labeling them.

After that lot left the house, Danny stopped by on the way home from work.  He helped me with a few little things I need.  I now have new stoppers on both toilets so they won't constantly run, and the number is finally mounted on the front of my house.  It's a little thing, but he had the proper tools to make it happen.  He's a very handy guy to have around.

I took him out for pizza when we finished up at my house, but I made him promise to come back at 7:30 tomorrow and help me move things to the front yard.  We parted ways after the restaurant.  When I got back to my house, the rain had begun in earnest.  It looks like we will have a pretty steady downpour for several hours, so maybe tomorrow is not the best day to start up with the whole garage sale.

Great...  I may be stuck with a house full of things piled up in the front rooms with price tags on them.  Like I said in my texts to Cas, Jeanne and Danny, I think we should just play it by ear and see what the ground and the sky look like in the morning.  It may be that we do a Sunday-only sale.  I just want to get this stuff out of my house, and I do not particularly enjoy being at the mercy of the weather.  Apparently, though, it's still monsoon season in Dallas, and we will do what we must...

Inspection

Our home inspection took place yesterday.  Cas and I met for lunch, then we went to the house and met with Steve.  The inspector came in and looked around the whole place, finding very little wrong. We're insisting on having the air conditioner serviced prior to moving in, and there are several little things we are asking to have repaired.  It sounds like the sellers will just hand over the cash, Steve will call in some appropriate repair personnel and we'll get things like the fogged windows replaced.

It was a very informative day.  We now know that everything is pretty great, but the inspector doesn't think that the water heater is long for this world.  He said it was pretty old, and rust was prominent on the top.  It happens to be in the attic, so waiting for it to fail prior to replacement would probably result in a lot of damage to the house.  It would be a real shame to have this old thing dripping through the ceiling upstairs, through the floorboards and through the ceiling downstairs.  Especially since we have such pretty ceilings.  This is the dining room:

So, before we move in, the air conditioner has to be serviced.  After we move in, we need to buy a refrigerator and a water heater.

I brought the batteries for our electric fence gate controller with me yesterday so we could make sure they both work, but I took away a picture of another thing I need to purchase in a hardware store.  The gas log fireplace needs a starter key.

 But for today, I have to get myself ready for the pending garage sale.  I must get a sign, put price tags on everything and get ready to haul all of my old stuff out into the front lawn.  It's a good thing I started my day yesterday by mowing the grass...

The greatest nation in the world is donation

I have a donation all ready for pickup tomorrow morning.  The Leukemia Society is one of the many organizations that sends out those cards in the mail saying they will soon have a truck on your street for picking up donations.  I have been receiving those cards for the whole ten years I have lived in this house, and I have always intended to have someone simply pick up my old stuff off of the porch.  I have even bagged or boxed up several things over the years, but I had never actually put the stuff on the porch.  I got it all together this morning, and my donation looks pretty big to me.

I am doing a lot to thin out my possessions before we move.  I put six bags of books into my car today, picked up Cas, went to Half Price Books, then had a nice lunch.  I took everything to the buyback counter at the store, and they offered me $25 for the lot.  Sold!  I was just glad to have two easy-to-carry pieces of paper currency instead of six heavy bags of books.  Walking out of the store was a lot easier than walking in.  

So, with the Best Buy trip for recycling Monday, the book buyback today, the donation tomorrow morning and the garage sale slated for the weekend, I have really decreased the number of things that have to move to the new place.  It just doesn't make any sense to pay someone to move things I don't really want to keep in the first place.  

Tomorrow, I have to mow the grass as soon as it's appropriate in the morning, then I need to shower and get ready to go to our home inspection.  For now, I need to get some dinner and maybe get a little more work done in my current house. 

I'm with the band

Jim came to my house at nine to start working again yesterday. My bathrooms are really vastly improved. They're nearly there, now, in fact. The back one needs texture and paint; the front one only needs paint.

While Jim worked on that all day, Cas and I went to lunch and  to meet with the woman who is putting our mortgage together. There were stacks of paper to read and sign and questions to ask. When we left there, Cas dropped me back off at my house. 

I got a few things done prior to our Geeks Who Drink pub quiz. When it was just about quiz time, Cas texted me to say that he missed his class at the gym and had a nap instead. By the end of the night, I regretted that I hadn't napped, too. 

Cas and I came in first, then Laura arrived, then Jerone showed up. It was our team of four reunited from last summer, and we were truly having a great game. As is the standard procedure when we have Cas on the team, we were in first place all night, resulting in our eventual win. 

We called our team. "getting the band back together." Appropriate, no? When Quizmaster Brett came over to take our photo, he seemed almost annoyed. Almost like, oh, great. These guys again. Gosh, sorry, Brett. We can't help but to be amazeballs. 

For today, Jim will be back to finish up his work in my house. I think I'll make a mid-day trip to half price books to unload the six canvas grocery bags of things I won't read again. I also need to schedule a charity pick up for tomorrow. The leukemia and lymphoma society needs my gently used clothes and household goods. I'm glad someone needs them... 

Reduce, recycle, reuse

I got up early today so I could be sure to have showered prior to Jim's arrival at my house. He came this morning and started work on my master bathroom- certainly an arduous task. The walls are all smooth and flat, now- a far cry from their bumpy, uneven prior selves. I believe tomorrow, he will texture and paint them, and probably move on to the front bathroom. It only needs the texture and the paint.

I can do a lot of things myself, but these two critical rooms called for an expert. I am so glad he is so very talented. 

In the morning, I was called upon to help Holly retrieve her car from the repair shop so she could get to the hospital and see her babies. The darn thing was locking her inside, and her locking mechanism required some work. It wouldn't do to crawl out of her vehicle by hopping the door with the top down- especially so soon after a C-section. 

Later in the afternoon, I headed to Best Buy with a carload of old electronics. They took the larger things off of my hands for recycling. It was a total of three printers, a VCR, a small TV, a broken hard drive and a screwed up stereo. 

It's good to responsibly dispose of this crap and get it all out of my house before I had to pay someone to move it for me. 

On the way there, I met up with Cas for a glass of iced tea and a discussion about homeowners insurance. After I left the Best Buy with a lighter vehicle, I was in errand mode. I went to the bank and the grocery store. My favorite guy at the store? The one who ran to the express lane at a half jog with only a case of beer in his cart. Classy, pal. Really classy. 

He seemed aggravated that other people wanted to buy food. I am glad I was behind him and not ahead of him. The man had places to be...

When I got back to the house, Jim had left for the day. Job well done, sir. I'll post pics when it's finished, I'm sure. I have more to do myself this evening. I'm just glad I was able to recycle my old electronics today. One less thing to worry about, really. Actually, seven less things... 

Trapeze photos

We got the link to the photo gallery from the good people at Skyline Trapeze.  Here are the best photos from our rather unconventional date night:

Swingin' Saturday

This was a real red-letter day.  I haven't had a Saturday like it...  Ever.

We started out the morning with a very nice brunch.  We went to Breadwinners in Plano about three and a half miles north of the house we're in the process of buying.  It was a very nice breakfast, but it was just a little too Plano for me.  I think we will endeavor to keep ourselves south of the George HW Bush toll road in the future.

We wrapped that up in time to head the our new neighborhood a bit early for our noon meeting with our realtor.  Since we were early, we headed to the park just around the corner from our new place.  It is a lovely park.

There are tennis courts there.  Maybe Cas can teach me to play tennis.  Who knows?

We headed to the house for our noon meeting, and our realtor Steve was on the way.  While we stood outside for our new house selfie, our brand new across-the-street neighbor came out and said hello.  He told us about the neighborhood, where our guests should probably park for maximum safety from oncoming traffic, how the homeowner's association works and a few little tidbits about the neighborhood.  He seemed like a pretty nice guy.  

Also, here is our new house selfie.  Because why not?

We worked out some of our paperwork crap while we were there and did a pretty thorough walk-through of the house.

After that total win, we went back to his apartment and settled in for some iced tea, leftover baked yummy stuff from brunch and a few episodes of Archer on Netflix.

We had to change clothes and go redeem a Groupon.  We scheduled it about a week ago, and today was the day.  We took three trial swings each on a trapeze.  Sometime in the near future, the "photo package" portion of the deal will be made available to us, but until then, I have this freeze-frame from the video Cas shot while I was swinging.

That was a ridiculous amount of fun.  We finished up our day early so we could get some rest.  It was a pretty full day.  In the spirit of the good deal, we used another Groupon for some dinner at a delightful little dive.  The food was good, and we happened to have $20 off of our dinner.  

I haven't had a Saturday as full as this one in a very long time.  It was pretty amazing.  Cas let me know that we won Saturday.  Because all we do is win, win, win, no matter what.  

House party

At 10:15, the email from our realtor came through.  We got the house.  We GOT the HOUSE!

Cas and I have to go meet with the realtor tomorrow at noon and get the papers together.

This is it:

I am so excited I could explode.  

That's all I have for now.  Woo Hoo!  

Hunter-gatherer

Cas and I took our second realtor-guided trip house hunting yesterday.  We looked at five properties and absolutely loved one of them.  In fact, we made an offer on it.  It's likely that there will be multiple offers on that house.  There was a realtor showing it when we arrived and one who showed up after we left.  I just got off the phone with Cas, and apparently, we will know what the result of our offer is tonight.  We actually sat down at a Starbucks and did the paperwork for the offer digitally.

It's pretty exciting.  Cas and I had margaritas after the very first open house we visited, so we decided it was only appropriate to repeat that stroke of genius yesterday.  After the offer went in and we parted ways with our realtor, we headed over the the Blue Goose in Addison.

It was definitely the right way to close out the day we had.

I am making progress on my own place.  I have the whole living room painted, though I need a second coat around the front window.  I have a few more boxes packed up and a bit of cleaning done.  I think I will wrap up the work for today.  It's probably best if I get something to eat and relax a little this evening.  I've been working pretty steadily on my house, and my muscles are sore.  It's clearly time to recline a little and await the answer to our offer on the house.

Study break

Yesterday when I stepped into the shower, I was three different kinds of totally filthy.  I had gotten up pretty early to beat the hot temperatures outside.  I took the weed whacker out and scaled back the mess in the recently fence-less part of my yard.  Now, it just looks like it needs a mow.  I was grassy dirty after that.  When I came inside, I did a little more painting in the living room.  I became painty-dirty.  I thought it was for the best if I continued to work, since I was already clearly a mess.  I decided to pull apart some of my fence pieces so they may better fit into a fire pit.  The text of my Craigslist free stuff ad counted on that.

Cas and I had plans to go to the movies in the evening.  I felt it was appropriate.  I had been working on my house pretty hard for the past few days, and I felt I deserved a break.  When either of us gets too far into school stuff and has to take a breather to talk or go out, we call it a study break.  I kind of needed a study break, and a date was in order.  

Cas mentioned that we hadn't been to a movie in a while, and we decided to check out the movie Spy with Melissa McCarthy and Jason Statham.  Oh. My. God.  It was the funniest thing I had seen in a very long time.  I laughed so hard that I could feel it in my stomach muscles.  

Cas and I are working on getting loan pre-approval as soon as possible, since we have a list of homes to look at tomorrow.  Our plan is to head out with our realtor at 1:00 and take a look at the properties we marked from the list he sent us.  There was one on that list that was so pretty, I wanted to make an offer from just the photos.  If it looks remotely like the pictures in real life, I think we should put an offer in immediately.  In the meantime, I think I'm due for a little breakfast and some more paint.  

De - Fence

It's Monday.  A week ago today, I was working my last day of the school year.  Today, I filled up three trash bags, four boxes and six bags of books to take to Half Price and sell.  After 4, Danny came over to my house and helped me pull the fence out of the small portion of my backyard.  We're just getting rid of the whole thing.  It's more trouble than it's worth.  The ground was so soft from the rain lately and the posts were so old that the pieces came out of the ground easily.  Danny described it as wiggling like a loose tooth.  Once properly motivated, the thing came down quickly.

I have to wake up early tomorrow and get the weed eater working.  It's necessary...  

Danny loaded up a bunch of broken fence chunks into his car and took them over to his friend's house.  He has a friend who has a fire pit in the back yard, and my fence would probably go up pretty quickly.  I am throwing a few pieces in my fireplace, as well.  I can't put construction debris on the curb, so I have to find alternatives.  Seems counter-intuitive to have my fireplace running smack in the middle of June, but we do what we must... 

It's been a big, difficult week.  Yesterday, Dad and Danny came over and we ended up taking down a whole bathroom full of wallpaper.  It was hideous paper.  My former roommate described it as the wallpaper that Sophia from the Golden Girls would have selected.  It was good to see it go.  

Danny also hooked up my temporarily broken smoke detector and verified that my dishwasher is truly broken.  Dad took a look around and helped me develop a more realistic to-do list than Alejandro had given me.  It's probably best for my sanity to pare it down a bit.  

I have no money, no repair budget to speak of and no experience in fixing things up, but I have extremely good people on my side, and they are interested in helping my life go well.  I would rather have my goofballs than some silly old repair budget, anyhow.  

Coming out of the closet

I am in the process of getting my crap out of this house. It's a pretty steep climb. I have ten years worth of stuff poked away in this house. My mother has this habit of offering me things that may help out. I have this habit of accepting things- even if I don't need them- and stashing them in my house somewhere. The closet attached to my front bedroom is full of stuff I don't need. I started pulling things out this morning, and it's nearly terrifying. I legitimately don't know what to do with all of this stuff.

I need to have a garage sale. 

I got in touch with Kris' boyfriend Alejandro yesterday. I told him I want to put a sign in the yard somewhere in the neighborhood of two weeks to a month from now. 

I've got a lot of stuff to do... 

Batting cleanup

I am sure I should be painting the rest of my living room right now, but it's time to sit still for a moment. This morning, I cleaned out my fireplace and cleaned my bathroom floor. I scrubbed up the bathtub. I packed up another box of stuff from my kitchen. It seems the deeper I dig into the process of cleaning and packing up my house, the more insurmountable it feels.

It smells like bleach in here. Bleach and this other stuff:

Not the worst smell, but my afternoon trip for groceries was a welcome change in atmosphere. 

When I returned from the store, there was a sign up in the yard right next door to mine. It appears that Man Boobs is selling his half of the duplex now. I kind of saw this coming. He had actually been making repairs over the past month, and that is a bit unlike him. 

For now, it's time to comb my hair and head over to Cas's apartment. We have plans to stay in, eat pizza and determine if Frank and Claire Underwood are still horrible people. My money is on yes.

Day one done

This is my second day of summer break.  The first day was marked by some rather large news.  I had eight second cousins at the beginning of the day.  I had 11 second cousins at the end of the day.  Holly had her babies.  Three of them.  She and Jason went from a party of two to a party of five in three minutes.  She literally had a baby a minute starting at 10:21 am.  Here's the crew:

Wow, that's a lot of babies.  

Cas and I went out for lunch and had some free pancakes.  One of my students works at an IHOP, and for teacher appreciation week, she handed me two certificates for a free entree.  Done and done.  After pancakes, we went to look at a house in Canyon Creek.  It was pretty much a bust, actually.  One of his teacher friends invited us over to look at her house.  We were under the impression she was interested in selling the house.  Apparently, she was leaning more heavily toward renting her house out for a year while she made a decision on how to proceed.  She had two cats.  Cas is allergic to cats.  He said that the catmosphere was pretty severe.  If we were to live there, we would probably have to replace all of the carpets.  It still was just a little aggravating that we went to look at a house that was not going to be for sale for a year.  As we were wrapping up the visit, I asked what kind of time frame she was looking at for selling the place.  That's when she said she wanted to rent for a year while she figured out her next move.  I sure would have liked to know that before we spent all that time thinking we were looking at a home for sale.  

Alas, we gathered more data points.  We walked out with more ideas about what we liked and disliked.  After that, we did a wine and paint night we had scheduled a while back.  Julie came with us and brought her favorite niece Jessica.  Cas is pretty fond of Jessica, too.  She's a sweet girl.  We painted a version of Starry Night.  Julie and Jessica had done things like this before, so they took a little more liberty with the colors and techniques.  Cas and I kind of stuck to the script a little more.  

I have my day planned out- I'm going to hit the showers, then head to the hospital to see my cousin and her instant family of five, then I have to meet up with Cas and our realtor Steve to look at some properties.  

My first day of summer break was pretty full, and the second day looks to be pretty full, too.  Maybe one day this week. I can sleep late and lounge.  Or not.  We shall see.  

Out for summer

Out 'til fall

We might not go

Back at all

Oh, Alice Cooper, you brilliant poet! Indeed, school's out for summer. The weekend was heavy with celebration for just that reason. Friday kicked off the no more pencils, no more books glee with a happy hour. I was completely exhausted, so Cas and I left pretty early. On Saturday, we went to visit my cousin Holly, who is in the hospital on "bed rest with bathroom privileges" while attempting to carry her triplets as long as possible. After that, we had a fancy meal. Simply Fondue went and ran that Groupon again. Silly people- they had to know we weren't headed back there without a serious discount. 

It was just about the perfect way to celebrate. You wouldn't think that the portions necessary for cooking this way would fill you up, but I was stuffed. It was fabulous. Plus, fancy drinks! Woo! 

Hard to go wrong.

Yesterday, Dad and Danny accompanied Cas and me to a pair of open houses. Loved one; hated the other. I now have a few pro-tips for sellers:

- If exterior paint is peeling, please fix it before you host dozens of potential buyers. 

- Remove your backyard rodent traps for the duration of the open house. All that tells me is that there are probably rodents nearby. 

Alas, it's good to see things you don't want as well as those that you do. It helps you refine your search criteria. 

I have to go to work today. I know, right? June 8th, and I'm going in. We all are. Thanks, second snow make-up day... I have to move some of my tables three feet away from the heat register thing that is slated for summer removal. The heater-thing removal crew may not be as careful with my beautiful computers as I'd like, so it's best to remove some of the risk. 

I'll show up, handle that and get the heck out. But first, I should probably shower. Feels wrong to be getting ready for work right now... Meh. Alice Cooper did not sing about teacher workdays after the pencils+books diassapear. 

Mightier than the sword

Last night was the last Thursday of the school year for me.  Cas is already done, and I am doing my level best not to resent him.  But since it was technically a Thursday night during the school year (at least my school year), we had our date night.  We went and sat on a patio with a list of homes he printed off, his iPad and a set of multicolored pens. 

 

I had seen the red pen, green pen, blue pen and black pen sitting together before, but I just assumed that they were stuck together because they were pens being placed in the spot pens go.  Apparently, they were all stuck together because they act as a team.  It was hilarious to me, while still highly effective.  We looked at one listing.  All negative things were circled in red or written in red off to the side.  All positive things were green.  Questions were blue.  I never got too clear on what the black pen was for, but the whole process was one I like to call "a-dork-able." 

 

It was productive.  Here's a screen shot of our first choice:

He wrote to the realtor this morning with a list of properties we would like to see.  Apparently, we're trying to set it all up for Wednesday.  That sounds smart.  I have to go in to work on Monday to wrap up the year, making Tuesday my first full day of summer.  Wednesday seems like as good a day as any to dig in and start looking at places. 

 

For now, I have to get myself out of this classroom.  We had a window of time between the last final ending and the mandatory fun that is the end of year luncheon.  The food is usually good and the retirees usually keep their speeches brief.  Usually.  Fingers crossed for this batch...

 

You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here

Just a few more moments left with students, and after that. I get a reprieve from the governor. Today was my last one with the newspaper kids. I just have to test my speech kids, then we're done. Hooray!

Two of the news kids will be going to different schools next year, and one of the two wanted to give me a hug. I obliged, but I'm not one for long, tear-filled goodbyes. Some teachers get really emotional and squishy at the end of the year. I act more like a bartender at last call. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Seems like the most rational reaction to the calendar switching over to summer break. 

I was off for the first testing session today, and I was running around closing up shop, so to speak. One of the counselors let me know that she had picked up the trophy my kids earned for their anti-bullying video. Enjoy:

Man, all I do is win...

Walking down a different hallway, I saw my friend Susan standing in a classroom holding a stack of completed tests. I offered to watch the students while she turned in the test materials. As I awaited her return, I saw that she was testing in a room where the teacher used a chalkboard. It may have been the chalkiest place on earth. 

Wow. 

But the day was long for one that ended in early release. It started and ended with meetings. I did sit down with the new yearbook adviser and share a few things I've picked up running the paper. I also got her some Photoshop lessons and the login to the yearbook's Twitter account. All in a day's work... Remarkably, I'm all caught up on work, too. It feels pretty strange, but it won't last. It's almost time to get to the work of changing my address. 

Testing 1, 2, 3

Today was the first day of final exams for our freshmen, sophomores and juniors.

It's also the day our seniors walk across the stage in burnt orange caps and gowns. I know they're all happy and proud and such, but honestly, I have not seen a lot of people who genuinely look good in burnt orange. 

I'm happy, though. I made absolutely no promises to attend the ceremony, and I held up my end of the bargain. I stayed home. As for my day, I gave a pair of final exams and even entered the grades into the book. Just four more to go. And tomorrow is the test for my journalism kids. That's the last one that will require me to actually read stuff to grade them. The rest are online, multiple choice and self-scoring. 

Hooray, technology! 

To be fair, there is an essay component to my professional communications test, but I had them do that part in advance. It's graded already. I'm trying to work smarter. 

Cas is in professional development this week. His kids were done on Friday. I'm a little jealous, but I'm nearly done. 

I just have to clean up my classroom, fill in the last few blanks on my paperwork and hand over my key to room 329. I'll be needing it back in the fall, but I'm happy to lose custody over the summer months.