Friday at last. It's been a long week. Kids are sitting nicely working. I'm blogging, obviously, my son is headed to Cleveland for the weekend. He will be visiting some of his college friends. Have a good time Ross. Be safe. Drive carefully. Me and the Mrs. have some plans for tomorrow at church. Looking forward to it.

Not much else to say. Spring sports begin Monday. Where did winter go?

Exactly how many months a year can you wear shorts here in the northeast? May, June, July, August, September. October, April are sort of iffy. I love wearing shorts. The one thing I hate about coming back to school is having to wear long pants. But, that's the job. If I taught Phys. Ed, I could wear shorts all year round.

Rambling....

It's Thursday. As long at the week was, now it seems to have flown by, but tomorrow is still this week. If it seems that I'm rambling, I am.

By the way, the games were amazing. We had a great time. High school basketball at its best. It cost nothing to park, five bucks a piece to get in, and $22.75 for the chicken strips, french fries and drinks, but it was worth every penny. We did have a small accident with the nav system but I think it will be okay. Just need a new adapter for it.

My rock star period....

A few years ago, Mrs. Masser, Mr. Hess, Mr. Hunsicker, and I formed a little band that played for students at lunch, we played for a teacher gathering and we played dinner music for the prom in 2004 (my daughter's senior year). We also filled in for a benefit for a student from Cedar Crest who was suffering from cancer. Here is the picture that appeared in the Lebanon Daily News.

It's period 11 and the kids are just beginning to come in for class. We are finishing up the essays from the lit book and we are preparing for the quiz tomorrow.


Tonight my son and I are going to head up to the Giant Center to see Harrisburg and York play for the District 3 finals. York is undefeated. It should be some good basketball. I want to have a nice time out with my son. Maybe we'll grab some bad food, not bad food but bad for us food.

Lent starts tomorrow and though I'm not Catholic, I thought perhaps I'd like to give something up for lent. Meat? Chocolate? I don't drink that much soda, so that's really not a sacrifice. I should do sugar, but there's suger in so many things. And really, I don't do much sugar either. The meat could be the thing, but Saturday my wife and I are going to this thing at church and Subway is providing the meals, but I could probably pack. Meat! I have a little under 24 hours to consider it.

I gave a little quiz in class today to see what the kids knew about religious terms and they knew pretty much. I wonder if this class would.

Welcome back to school from the weekend. School is cool. I am trying to get my kids caught up a bit but it's not as easy as I'd like it to be. There tends to be a lot of foot dragging....this is too hard. Those sorts of comments. I am wondering when the new season of Deadliest Catch will commence. Does anyone know?
I can't believe how fast this year is going. Next week is March already.
Spring, Spring Sports, the Musical. All good stuff. Then April, then May, then....JUNE. Wow.
I am a counter of days. I think it's a silly habit I have, but it's something I do. I don't know how many days there are left in the school year, I think in the 60's, school days that is, but I do know that there are 72 days until my daughter graduates.
I look forward to that!

I just changed my format yesterday and added my lists. It's difficult to come up with lists like that because after awhile, you think of things you should have added.

It's Friday. I'd say it's been an interesting week. I started the week in Florida and finished it here in Fredericksburg, overseeing the instruction of my little students, hopefully sharing the joys of reading and writing with them, inspiring them to become life long learner. I have a couple letters of recommendation to write, three actually, and I should probably be doing those, but I have to work up to them.

Letters of recommendation are interesting. Used to be you never saw them, you just trusted the writers of them to say things that were positive about you. Now, there are legal ramifications, so much so that I often wonder how much people really check recommendations and references. I believe in being truthful. If a student is one of the best I've had, I'll say that. A few years ago, I saw a couple letters that were written about me. To say the least, they were pretty interesting. Anyway, that's my little talk on letters of recommendation. Don't ask me for one if you haven't done much in my class. I will be honest. I won't lie.

Doughnuts are wonderful but they are bad for you. When I was a kids, having a coke float was a real treat. When I got older, I treated myself to coke floats often, and my waisteline suffered for it. Now, I rarely have them, so I guess they are a real treat again. I like to make my own. If you get one out, they get too foamy and I have found that you need to work them slowing, adding coke bit by bit rather than all at once. I also do the icecream first, packing it down into the cup and then watching the liquid fill in the cavities left in the packed icecream. Often those freeze and become little treats. Finally, you drink the liquid coke and icecream at the end. You also need something salty to offset the sweet. Pretzels are the best, really salty ones. Chips are best with pizza.

I should have mentioned that I ate at Chipotle on Saturday night. Actually, we took our food home. That was worth the entire trip.

It's really quiet in here today. I don't know why. Perhaps just because I'm back and the kids aren't used to me.

A lot of people wish they had a twin. I guess in my younger days, I felt that way. I don't know what it would be like as an adult. My advisor in college was one of those rare individuals who had an identical twin brother but they were separated at birth and raised by two completely different families in two completely different areas of the country. Later, they were reunited and they had so much in common that it was really eerie. I don't remember specifics, but things like having named their children the same names, and having married woman who looked a lot a like. Having similar interests and so forth. Weird. It makes you wonder how much of who we are is genetic and how much is our environment.

I am still sitting in the conference, and like the kids, I am most likely doing something I shouldn't be doing while I should be listening, but quite honestly, I'm not sure at all what I am listening to. I admit here and now, our flight got into Baltimore at 10:45 and we got home about two hours later so a nap may be in the offing.

It really doesn't feel like a Tuesday.

I had a lovely talk with my sister yesterday. We hadn't talked for awhile. She and her husband were involved in a missions trip to Equator a few weeks ago. She mentioned how in their poverty ridden country, with little or nothing other than the clothes on their backs, they are happy. I think one of the greatest dangers we as a society may face, and this isn't original, is an overabundance of free time and resources.

It's lunch time at the conference. I thought I'd blog. I saw the absentee sheet. Are there any seniors there at all.

I had a really nice weekend. Being away from home was great, but coming home is great too. There is something to be said for being in one place for a bit longer than three days.

There were two new things we experienced at Disney Studios. The American Idol Experience was one. That was pretty cool. You audition and then they actually do something like the show. We also did the new Toy Story ride which was amazing.

I had a lot of time to think about life. I was watching the Duggar wedding, and one of the people talked about how these may be the best days of our lives and we're living them. I thought about how often we think about the future, we plan and prepare for the future, but do we ever really live our lives totally for today. The news is so depressing and discouraging, and yet has anything really changed. "Do we ever realize life while we live it?" I'm coming back to that previous quote.

There are just a whole lot of things that we have little or no control over, and yet those tend to be the things that can be most troubling.

I did find them in a really obscure file. Here are two. The second is my brother and me. The other is my wife. Though she is smiling, she is scared to death.

It's Friday. My wife and I are heading out of town for the long weekend. PSSA testing is over for now. It's now time to prepare for the reading portion. I enjoyed Cal Thomas this morning in the Patriot. "Nation needs 'Hoosiers' spirit." Read it. It's an interesting perspective on things.

I made reservations for my daughter's graduation trip yesterday. Fly down, graduate, fly back. I know we'll have a bit more time than just that, but that's how it feels.

I won't be here on Tuesday or Wednesday. Tuesday I'll be attending a conference on tech education. I am a big supporter of technical education. I believe that more students should pursue that than perhaps do. I am obviously not opposed to college, but college isn't for all students. Two year degrees are great. I personally enjoy watching shows where they work on engines, motorcycle engines, car engines, plane engines. I wouldn't mind taking a class or two to learn more about engines. One of the things I used to enjoy when I was younger was summer jobs where I was able to do different things. I have laid block, built homes, done basic wiring, roofing, siding, and it's a great and honest way to make a living. I did it for a little extra cash but it did make me appreciate the work I do a bit more. At times putting on a roof in 99 degree weather seemed exhausting, but the full time guys would tell me it was a whole lot easier than putting on a roof in 25 degree weather with a wind chill of 10 is a whole lot more difficult. You can't really wear gloves, you can't feel your hands after awhile and once you get cold, it's hard to get warm, so I was thankful that I was able to avoid that. I don't like the cold. I digressed a bit there. for whatever reason, I think working at an airport could be cool. A number of years ago, a few of us faculty members spent a few days at Penn Tech, a division of Penn State University in Williamsport. There you can learn to work on airplane engines. Since then I've learned that all planes get their engines rebuilt usually every couple thousand hours of use. That's why it's not uncommon to see old planes. They must be maintained to high safety standards. It's also why it's quite expensive to own and maintain a plane. My brother had a plane, actually over the years he had two, but he has since sold it. I flew with him a couple times. I have posted a few pictures of him and me flying. I'll see if I did here.

Apparently I didn't. If you read this, comment. Just seeing who is following my blogs.

PSSA Tests

Haven't seen the PSSA police yet. All is well. My kids worked pretty hard on theirs today. I didn't think the prompt was too difficult. It mirrored one that we worked on earlier. After the kids I was testing were complete for the day, I put in an old sports bloopers video. The shorts those old basketball players wore were quite short. Quite.
There is an interesting word. Quite.
Did you ever get the Q in scrabble. It's a tough one to use if you don't have a naked U.
The girls didn't win last night but they did play hard. Now they must prepare for Friday night.
Tonight is Duke and North Carolina. That's a pretty big rivalry in college men's basketball.

I haven't blogged in awhile. I am currently giving PSSA tests to juniors so here goes. I did go to the dentist yesterday. I did find out what root canals cost and I am thankful for insurance. It looks like I'll need a crown or else I'll never be able to chew completely with any force on that tooth, so some time in the near future we're off to see the dentist again.
I had an interesting weekend sort of. My son bought me a cup of Starbucks coffee. Near there was construction of a new fast food looking structure and I was so hoping it was the Chipotle I was talking about in class, that I actually stopped and asked the one worker what it was going to be. He said it's a Dunkin Donuts...
Oh well. DD is certainly making a comeback. There was one in Lebanon that closed a long time ago and now they are popping up in a variety of places.
I do love ice cream cake though it's not good for my figure.
A few weeks ago, I opened a facebook account and created a profile. Since then, I have connected with over 40 people who I either went to high school or college with. Mostly college and since I went to college quite far away, many of my former classmates from (gasp) 30 years ago when I graduated have spread throughout the country and Canada. One of the people I connected with was an old friend who I worked with during the summer. He and his wife met my wife and me for dinner at Red Robin on Sunday. He said he reads this. Hi John! You rock...!
Another of my friends is a minister at a church in the Canadian Rockies. The pictures he has posted are spectacular. One of my high school friends is living in Colorado and he works with search and rescue out there. His pictures are gorgeous as well. A girl I went to college with has a farmish type place in Montana though she lived in Chicago for 25 years. That's quite a change. So as resistant to technology as I am, I must say this has been a delight connecting with old friends. Our perception of who we were and what we were like is often quite different from other's perceptions of who we were and what we were like. I don't feel as though I have changed that much, but I suspect I have. I think in many ways I am much more serious than I used to be and yet I'd like to be much more spontaneous and carefree. Seeing the pictures of my friends and where they live creates in me a desire to do more traveling. I've posted a number of pictures here and I've been fortunate to have been able to do a lot of traveling, but there are still so many places I'd like to visit and things I'd like to do. Part of me would love to just get in the car, throw some stuff in the trunk, fill the gas tank and head...anywhere, and stop when and where I feel like it, take some pictures, meet people, find little local places along the way to grab a bite to eat and then just keep going, in no particular direction. A totally random trip. Maybe one summer. Just go. Age...it's a weird thing.

Do them both. There was talk of a huge snowstorm. I didn't know about it but apparently it's not happening, at least not here, so we have nothing to get excited about. The class is working arduously on grammar exercises, mostly confusing words and spellings.

I think the superbowl was super. My favorite commercials were the little dude from etrade. He cracks me up. The one with the old golfer and the other one with the second kid who was singing. Funny stuff.

Our printer at home is out of ink. It's funny how when you buy a computer they give you the printer for free, but they don't tell you that the ink cartridges cost as much as a small house.

Coffee is the elixir of life. Did I spell elixir right? No, but now I fixed it.

I get my root canal finished next Monday. I wonder how much that's going to cost. It's weird that they don't let you know ahead of time what the procedure costs because they have to do it anyway and you probably aren't going to shop around for a root canal. What do they do with used braces? If someone dies and has dentures, do they bury them with the body?

I noticed in the paper this morning that someone found the wreck of a ship which contained 500 million dollars in treasure. That would be a cool job, diving for ship wrecks and the gold and silver that is under the seas.....

My neighbor growing up was Burt Webber. He used to come around every year and sell things that he discovered in his dives. Usually they were bottles and stuff like that, but that's how he'd finance his next exploration. For awhile my dad would buy his stuff, but after while, he stopped, my dad that is. A bunch of years ago, old Burt hit the mother lode. He found the ship he'd been looking for and now he is worth a gazillion dollars. Google Burt Webber and see this story.

http://thethunderchild.com/GhostGunsVirginia/TreasureWrecks/BurtWebber.html

I wasn't making this stuff up.