W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, October 23, 2024
looking straight up from the porch…. my favorite tree in the backyard Wednesday, October 23, 2024 3:46 PM
Yesterday, it rained for the first time in a couple of weeks. It didn’t rain much but our streak of clear skies came to a halt. it’s been a dry summer and early fall.
This morning it was overcast, and I couldn’t see the stars, or Jupiter, when I walked Ivy into the backyard for her morning business. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel well this morning and elected to use one of my sick days. By midday, the clouds had been replaced by a fabulous fall blue sky.
I was on the porch when I leaned back and looked up. This is what I saw.
Amazing, soon these leaves will carpet the backyard before being raked, bagged, and sent away.
The color this year has come late, but it is beautiful. I am going to appreciate the color before it gone for the season. It’s been a full day, even for a sick day. I am feeling much better, and I’ll be back in front of my kiddos tomorrow. It’ll be a great day, maybe a million and six times better than today, but who knows. In the meantime, I am going to proof, edit, upload, then head to bed. Making the Days Count, when I am sick, when I am well, and every time in between.
W^2 or W squared for Wordless Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Clean glassware drying on the drying rack. Naperville, IL Monday, June 3, 2024, 12:54 PM
It’s summer again, this year it’ll be my 25th summer break as a teacher. I have four more summer breaks after this one, then it’ll be permanent summer break.
It has been a long while since I sat down to write a blog post. And sadly, the busyness has sidelined some of my blog reading, too. Embarrassingly it’s been more than a month since my last post. In the interim my unread email has ballooned considerably, so what have I been up to?
this morning, the trees looking up
The end of September marked three weekends in row where I was away from home, the first in southern California, then two weekends at our lake house in Michigan.
BASEBALL At the end of September, I took a baseball trip to Southern California. I was able to find a weekend when both the LA Dodgers and the LA Angels were in town for home games. The trip added two more stadiums to my list of baseball stadiums where I have watched a major league baseball game. I have ten more stadiums before I have seen a baseball game in every MLB city, but I’ll have to include three teams whose stadiums have changed since I watched a game in their city – Texas Rangers, San Francisco Giants, and the Atlanta Braves.
It has been four weeks and I still have “I’m still standing” running through my head…. click the picture for the Dodger Stadium video…
The trip to the Los Angeles area was a great trip, and there were two bonuses. First was the Elton John bubblehead at Dodger Stadium on Friday night and second the choice of a hike along the beach or in the mountains or the beach on Saturday afternoon. I chose the beach and thoroughly enjoyed listening to the pounding surf while I walked in the soft sand of the Pacific Ocean beach.
Saturday, October 1 – Texas Rangers vs. Los Angeles Angels
That was the final weekend of baseball’s regular season, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Four weeks later and there are at least three games remaining in the season, and possible five.
Dodger Stadium
Angels Stadium of Anaheim
It’s the World Series and my team, the Houston Astros, is playing the Philadelphia Phillies. Last night the Astros tied the series 1-1 and the two team square off Monday night beginning three consecutive games in Philadelphia. I visited Philadelphia this summer as part of my epic seven-day, seven-game, six-city baseball trip and it was a fun park to watch baseball in but on Monday night the park will be full, loud, and unfriendly place for the Astros.
FALL LEAVES Yes, it is that time again. Fall and leaf clean up. My wife and I spent the first weekend in Michigan at our lake house to do fall clean up there. Fall begins earlier in Michigan than it does at home in northern Illinois. We also had a weekend football game with our daughter at Michigan State. It was fun to be on campus, but the Spartan football team was not a match for the Ohio State Buckeye football team losing 49-20.
The plan for the first weekend was to get the yard, the garage, and the home ready for the winter by the lake, but we ran out of time and daylight on Sunday. Continue reading October baseball and blog atrophy→
It’s Wednesday and Day 64. The past week has been my last full week of summer break. The school year restarts for me this coming Monday and Thursday for our students. I am excited and a little sad as I am every summer when school restarts.
“The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last forever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year – the days when summer is changing into autumn – the crickets spread the rumor of sadness and change.” ― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web
The past couple of nights we’ve had severe weather pass through the area. It’s that time of the year when thick humid unstable air masses cause thunderstorms to develop late in the day. Monday’s weather spawned six tornadoes which touched down to the west of us in mostly rural areas causing damage trees and minor damage to structures. We got very little rain from the storm.
Last night’s storms rolled through the area bringing more rain, but no tornadoes.
stopped at a stop sign looking east with storm advancing from behind me – rain and wind, but no tornadoes
Yesterday, our school hosted an event for our incoming sixth graders. Even though school hasn’t started I went in to help and be a welcoming face, answer questions, and help supervise. I met many of my new students who likely will remember me more than I will them, there were a lot new students wandering the hallways. Continue reading Days of Summer: Week 9 and crickets→
It’s Day 50, not sure how I got here so fast, but I am here.
“I could never in a hundred summers get tired of this.” – Susan Branch
I am back in school in 19 days, I am under 20 days to a regular schedule, a regular waking time and probably a much earlier going to bedtime, too.
a third summer office – on the deck in full view of the lake, the birds, and the world. Thanks to John at LVPhotoblog for the tip on iPhone photos
Up here at the lake the sunsets much later in the day than at home. We are almost 3 degrees further north and our position relative to the time zone line has a significant impact. Here at the lake, we are in the far western part of the US Eastern Time Zone, it is GMT – 4; and at home we are in the far eastern part of the US Central Time Zone where we are GMT – 5. The east west difference is a little more than 3 degrees longitude.
Today’s sunset will be at 9:08 PM or 21:08 EDT at 298˚ NW by the lake. And, at home it will be 8:14 PM or 20:14 CDT or 296˚ NW. That is a difference of six minutes, adjusting for the time zone change.
Yes, I am aware I went ‘sciencey’ there, but with nineteen days before school begins, I need to start thinking about teaching and making things interesting and relevant for 11–12-year-old. Full disclosure is that I had a science ZOOM call yesterday and we discussed teaching science for almost a full hour. Continue reading Days of Summer: a ‘sciencey’ Week 7→
We started with a few students coming back to school. The change was immediate. The change happened because our building became a school again where children’s laughter filled the halls and the classrooms. School isn’t school without a little bit of shenanigans and tom foolery, now and then. Making the Days Count recognizing that a little tom foolery and shenanigans boost the soul from time to time.
It snuck up on me, I don’t know how it did, but it did. Today is O’s birthday. She’s 12 and it doesn’t seem possible. I remember the morning we went to the hospital. The delivery was scheduled and B’s parents were here from Ohio to keep an eye on W and help where they could. When we came home with O – she didn’t have an official name, yet – we would decide between two choices: O and Hannah. We stuck with O and I’m glad.
October 23, 2002 – “It’s a Girl” fly from the mailbox and leaves litter the ground. It’s fall.
So much has happened between then and now – O’s growing up and is now in sixth grade. Sometimes, she’s sassy, but most of the time she’s my O.
Today’s her birthday; and there will be more birthdays to come. There will be more growing and probably a lot more sass, definitely a lot more sass; but she’ll still be my O, and B’s too, but I write this blog, so she’s mine for now.
Last night we looked through the photos of her first day and we snuggled, laughed, and cried. It was a special day twelve years ago and I captured it with our first digital camera. The photos look grainy but we don’t have similar photos of W – he’s pre-digital and I didn’t think to bring a camera into the delivery room when he was born.
O and I – she’s less than an hour old and all swaddled and warm…
Since that first camera, we’ve had five more – including the two we are using now. And, we have loads of photos, more than I can process. I am not including our phones, which happen to have better cameras than that first digital camera from 2002.
O came into the world about 8:35 AM on a Wednesday morning. I had a sub in my classroom and my students were researching in the library. I don’t have a sub this morning, but I’ll share the photo and a memory. Later this morning, my science students will be researching in the library – just twelve years later; my how some things change and some things simply stay the same.
B’s parents welcome O – grandpa passed away this past summer – we miss him dearly – glad we had the memories of his laugh and the twinkle in his eye…
Tonight, will have dinner and a cake – a delicious Italian Cream Cake. It’s our birthday cake, homemade with real buttermilk and frosted with cream cheese frosting. You can’t beat it. A birthday in our home isn’t the same without it. But for now, I’d better get moving. It’s gonna be a great day. I know it and I can feel it, so I had better jump up, jump in and seize the day. Making the days Count, one day at a time, one memory, and one birthday at a time.
Have you ever come close to forgetting a birthday? Or, let one sneak up on you?
an A340 glides out of the sun for a landing at O’Hare field – Sunday August 17th
Lately, it seems I have been very good at coming up with diversions. Errands, movies, games, practices; and on the surface, they appear legitimate, but really, they are distracting. O and I have been distracting ourselves quite well, lately. Honestly, I think we are both nervous about the coming year. She is headed off to 6th grade in three days and I am headed to 8th grade science. Saturday, I took her to O’Hare to watch airplanes land and takeoff after getting her new eyeglasses, and we did it again yesterday after the softball game. Granted, O’Hare was close, but there were so many more important things we could have been doing, but we were distracting ourselves from what’s important.
It’s Saturday morning, again and I’m sipping coffee and thinking. Thinking about all I have to do and all want to do. They do not line up it’s not even close.
I didn’t win the lottery last night, but I didn’t expect that I would. Yet, that reduces my options to the realistic ‘to dos.’ Grading papers, planning, balancing the checkbook, paying bills, decorating outdoors, cleaning the house, etc., and in no particular order. And, the list goes on.
We chose to stay home this holiday weekend and so far it’s been restful and what we needed as a family. I’ve been working on a few ‘to dos’ that have been ‘to dos’ for far too long and I am making progress. The kids have been kids. They marched in the parade holiday last night and W had wrestling meet Wednesday and another this morning. My girls, B and O, went shopping at the mall last night, and I went to the bookstore for three books and came home with four! Continue reading The watch→
