This weekend, I vowed to grade 3 classes’ worth of composition notebooks, 2 classes’ letters of intent for senior project, and 3 classes’ letters to “Chris Tackle”–a fictional person to whom they are writing a lab report.

However, my dreams of getting 40 notebooks graded last night didn’t happen, and my 1 1/2 hour nap after my 8 mile run and shower cancelled out a good chunk of grading that could have happened this afternoon. I have a long way to go. I have only graded 10 or so. *Sigh*. I planned to go to game night tonight–I might be bringing notebooks with me.

Tomorrow I need to grade and plan. A LOT.

Why do I do this to myself??

Last weekend I was wondering what to do with myself. This week–every night of it–I was out past 8, so not much got done related to school.

Enough whinin’….Off to productive-ville!

This is my second year of blogging, as I started in September of 2004. Here’s to more interesting and more frequent (but not crazy-frequent) posts. And to more photos…

Any cake-baking for the Typing in the Dark’s birthday can be done in chocolate with coconut or chocolate frosting.

So today I was at a training for MESA (Math, Engineering, and Science Achievement) which was in a 100-year old building with creaky floors and original blackboards. My lunch was free and the training didn’t start until 8:30. We got finished at 2:30 after playing with clay and sun shadow points, so I walked to the coffee house across the street to grade papers with an Americano.

I picked up Justin a couple of hours later after running some errands and we grabbed some dinner at Kidd Valley burgers. We got an early meal because we had FREE entry* to see the Dead See Scrolls at the Pacific Science Center! After some light, though unnecessary snacks (d’oh–we should have known they’d feed us well!) culled from the tables of cheese, crackers, fruit, pitas and dip, cookies, and more, we started our windy voyage through the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. The processes used to date, preserve, and piece together the scrolls amazed me, as did the information provided to us as background. I stood amazed once we reached the room with the scroll fragments. To see Ezekiel, Genesis, Psalm 119, Isaiah, and Exodus written on parchment or papyrus from over 2,000 years ago felt surreal. To see coins and clay jars that were from Jesus’ time transported me to that biblical era.

These times are when it’s great to be a teacher.

Did I mention our free, cheesy IMAX “experience” that capped off our evening, “Mysteries of Ancient Egypt”?

Here’s another great reason to be married to a man who appreciates the Old Testament AND Science–when free dates to the science center to see ancient scrolls come along, we both get excited and consider it a night out!

*this would have been a $15 ticket each otherwise.

On this gorgeous day, I ran in a 5K with two running buddies and got my best time ever!! After careful checking on the race website, I found out that I did roughly 3 miles in 26:57! Here’s to closer to 26 minutes next year…and to homemade bread, my fuel for the race.

Written on Thursday, Sept. 21:

I’m trying to stay well in the midst of the sick Justin and sick Lesley. I ran my 3 miles today, which I skipped on Tuesday. The weather is not helping me any. It rains most days and may get sunny in the afternoon, but as it is getting dark earlier, I have a weaker will in working out. I took a nap from 5:00-6:30 with no problems. I have been running a temperature of 99.5-99.7, which is high for me, but I feel like my body is just waiting to get sick for the weekend, when it knows it will have time to rest.

Today has been a rather quiet day, but I can’t say I don’t relish it, especially after spending the better part of my week with almost 200 high school students for eight hours a day.

I began the day with my weekly long run. We did 7 miles on a surprisingly sunny morning, considering the clouds to the west of us and the drenching rains we had the day before. Seven of us ran–almost all of them were from Aaron’s workplace–and we attempted the additional mile by going up a hill of mass proportions. I’m getting better because I never fail to do my three mile runs on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at least for three weeks now. Next weekend is my 5K, so we’l see if it pushes me to be any faster than I was last year.

After my run, Lesley left for a work party and Justin was still at Danforth, so I made a list of what needed to be done. Shower, grocery shopping, bank, cooking, and cleaning were all on my list. However, I spent a great deal of my day reading or listening to my book on CD while cooking and cleaning.

Right now I am working on a Mitford series book and I just finished In the Company of Cheerful Ladies on CD. I don’t know why it is called that, but it’s in the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. I like series in books because I get to know the characters and I can follow them throughout their life. It’s not like you just get to know them and 300 or 400 pages later, they are yanked from your attention. I think I’ll get another book on CD because it’s something to do while driving, cooking, and cleaning besides talking on a cell phone. Let’s just give a big “hurrah” for the public libraries for making all of this entertainment possible!

Speaking of entertainment, last night, Justin, Lesley and I went to the Intiman Theater (our member venue) to see Moonlight and Magnolias, a play about the legendary producer David Selznick and his team’s adventure in writing the screenplay for Gone With the Wind. Hilarious as it was, the main message seemed to be how producers really control the content and message of a movie, and they sometimes feel that they have to please “the masses” rather than themselves when making a movie.

More about our weekend adventures another day…

This weekend has been delicious. I suppose it is because I had a satisfying work week and I am not yet overwhelmed.

I’ve been able to think about life and reflect on different issues, but only in snippets of time when I am cleaning. I rarely get to write them down. I don’t think it was the episodes of Alias that I watched or the football game that we went to Friday night that spurred my thinking, but I did enjoy those activities.

Right now I am listening to one of Alexander McCall Smith’s books on CD from the library while I do chores in the kitchen, and occasionally there will be a nugget of life truth in there that gets me thinking. Also, last night for film night we watched Motorcycle Diaries, which made me want to hit the open roads of South America on a motorcycle and start a revolution, or at least do something of adventure and importance. Everyone wants to do that, right? I got worried that my life of adventuring is over, and then I mentally slapped myself. I do want to live adventurously, but the life of home ownership, salaried work, property taxes, voting for primaries, cooking, and life insurance weighs on a person in her mid-twenties. Sigh.

And then for church, we were to read Mark for this morning. I enjoy reading the gospels, but it is hard to see them from outside my interpreting lens as the person I am in the place that I am in the time that I am from. Comprende? Jesus is just such an amazing character, but how was he seen then and there to those around him? What might have happened in those moments not recorded by the witnesses? What else did he do, and what was he really like?

I’m going to leave the house soon to get some work done. I just wanted to write a bit about what I was thinking, albeit in a non-thorough, disjointed way.

I used to get excited about fall and the idea of it when I lived in Arkansas. We started school in the dog days of summer, so all of the fashion magazines that showed the back-to-school wools and flannel plaids and boots seemed so irrelevant. Our back-to-school necessities were sandals, shorts, and air conditioning. However, at some point, after 4 or 5 months (at least it felt like it), there was a considerable drop in temperature at night, bringing chilly evenings and crisp mornings. Dew gathered on the grass, getting my new school shoes drenched if I took a shortcut on the way to class. The day’s weather changed without prediction, making it impossible to dress correctly for the day. Hayrides, cider, county fairs, school, marching bands, parades, festivals, jeans, sweaters, and the Methodist Church chili cook-off came our way. Fall, for those reasons and more, has always held a special place in my memories.

Here in Seattle it’s a little bit of a different story. Our temperatures don’t normally soar into the 90s and 100s, and the humidity is rather low. We might get cool days throughout the summer, making the cool weather of September and October anticlimactic. We start school later, so we get a couple of weeks of high- or mid-70s, and then it begins to cool down. And then the rains begin…

There are different activities and events that herald the coming of fall here–traditions that I have embraced since coming to Seattle. Late summer brings Bumbershoot and blackberry picking, but fall in Seattle means the Fremont Oktoberfest 5K, the chilly morning Dawg Dash at the University of Washington, and clear, windy days when you can see the mountains and the snow starting to collect on their peaks again. Autumn brings starchy fruits and vegetables: sweet potatoes, acorn squash, pumpkins, pears, apples, and plums. I go to the Puyallup Fair to visit the llamas, goats, and baby pigs, as well as to check out the Dahlias they have on display. Fall means starting school and going to football games, grading papers again, and calling my students’ parents. Fall means a schedule and shortened days, brown grass and brilliant leaves. Fall means pumpkin spice lattes. (Actually, I find them too sweet, but I like how they smell!)

Here’s to fall, especially to those of you who desperately need a change of pace and a change of seasons.

Today I ran my first 6 miles since June, and I can already tell it will take a while to get back to where I was then. 8 of us ran–most of them from Aaron’s workplace–and some of them are rather fast for 6 miles. I have been running 3 miles twice a week for two weeks, as the Fremont Oktoberfest 5K is in 2 weeks. I signed up for that and a 10K in late October. Here’s to my feet! One strategy that I am trying out is listening to books on tape (on i-pod?) while I run. I just need earbuds that actually stay in my ear for that to work.

I’ll blog about school next…we’ve done our first week, and it’s going great!

for a healthy baby boy, Raleigh, born Friday, September 1. I can’t wait to meet him!