i love being home! things to do, people to see... humidity, rain, thunderstorms, and mister bee bbq potato chips.

chances are i won't be updating the blog too often, but i'll post photos pretty often.

xoxo

...who i can credit for at least half of the joy of going to work each day.

more self-indulgent group shots that happen a lot at 2am

a fun crew. good times.

alison and xavier share the office between their rooms. they are on the other end of the hallway from my room.

xavier is the mariachi teacher @ vtms. he has done amazing things with our program. last month, the kids performed at the national mariachi in tuscon... the ONLY middle school to be represented there. the kids never want to leave his room.

... and let the tears splash all over you. (xoxo dmb, after all these years)

there are tons of songs about rain. i think there is even a country song ABOUT all the songs about rain. none of them come close to the feeling of standing in a desert rain, though. this is maybe the 3rd or 4th time this school year that it has rained, and most of those times i'm either in class or asleep.

today i was home.

it seems that in the desert, "weather" is referred to as any weather-related incident outside of wind and sun. conversations will include a comment such as "we're gonna have some weather this weekend," which strikes me as odd, because don't we have weather every day?

some record highs...
1972 - 121 degrees (july)
1972- 81 degrees (january)
1980- 108 degrees (october)

record lows... (apparently, it's never been colder here than 0 degrees.)
1963 - 0 degrees (january)


anyway, the rain and gloomy weather just makes me sad and miss home. btw, i'll be there very soon.

*disclaimer* i love nature

however

i do not love black widow spiders. while i was out enjoying the rain (yes, i went and stood in it for a bit) i decided to knock down the webs, which i do on a daily basis. this spider was frantically trying to make a web.

"i'm going to torch it," maggie said heatedly. (see this site)

and so i did... i think. i torched a little into the crevice 'cause it ran away. i dislike potentially deadly spiders living in my back yard.

this weekend was pretty active. end of school brings about a shift in focus. i'm constantly cleaning and organizing things, getting ready to pack up what i can before i head to wv for the summer. it feels good to have less stuff and look in my closet and know that i really will (and can) wear everything that is in there.

these are the images from my weekend, in a somewhat backward order.

a few weeks ago my friend greg and i went to the griffin bar, what he calls "the harry potter bar." and sure enough, it's as if they turned the gryffindor common room into a bar. comfy seating, a couple of fireplaces, stonework all over the place, rough-hewn bar, british beers...

the place: fremont street
the time: saturday night
almanac info: almost a full moon.

... and i've yet to look it up, but i will sometime. the "e"s were what caught my attention, though, because they somehow seem out of place.

i'm pretty sure this is all part of the neon museum, a push to fix and display vintage neon signs. there are more than i remember. it's a pretty neat sight to see these lined up down the street.

this one actually spins in a circle.

it's big, it blinks, it's vegas....

after hello astro's set, we (now there are 4 of us... vanessa, me, greg, and kim) decided to walk around fremont for awhile. there were free country concerts all weekend, a parade, and fireworks! plus a TON of people i can only compare to what new years eve might be like (which is why nye is best spent at a house party).

turns out we were standing right below the firework setting-off point, so we had a great view.

after bowling, we went downstairs for hello astro's show. it was a great show, as always.

on saturday night, vanessa and i met up with our friend, greg, at the bowling alley on fremont street. at the end of each lane are GIANT tv screens. the scoring is automatic. you can order food and have it delivered to your lane. it's a far, far cry from bruce lanes! :-)

we just finished reading the novel "walk two moons" by sharon creech. (kids book yes, but one EVERYONE should read)

i made 4 huge sections on the wall, one for each of the sayings featured in the novel:
*don't judge a man until you've walked two moons in his moccassins
*everyone has his own agenda
*you can't keep the birds of sadness from flying overhead, but you can keep them from nesting in your hair
*in the course of a lifetime, what does it matter

my 5th period honors class sorted the statements, colored them, then taped them to the wall. standing on the tables to do this was a big deal. then, all of the classes were given sticky notes and sticky index cards. they wrote their interpretation of the saying on the note and stuck it on the wall. again, standing on the table was a big deal.

the pyramid thingies hanging are vocabulary words covering the parts of a story.

the gloves remind me of late spring/early summer as a kid. mom and ma had gloves like those. when i'm wearing the gloves, i smell the sandbox and "feel" the texture of sand against tin toys. sensory memories at their strongest.