from the "olden days"

Last weekend I picked up a few photographs and things that my biological father's caretaker thought I should have. It's been interesting sorting through them and seeing what he looked like when he was a little boy. I thought I would share some of them here. There were lots of photographs from when he was young and he even kept some of his cub scout cards from 1948. Coming from a scouting family I thought these were very interesting. There was even a couple of pictures of me that I had given him through the years...I thought I would share those too. Scroll over each picture for a few more tidbits.

Random Photo 4

Be like a duck.

Calm on the surface, but always paddling

like the dickens underneath.

...and then there's Monday

I had such a nice weekend. I've never seen so many English teachers (about 550) gathered in one spot...lol, undoubtedly a student's worse nightmare. Friday evening one of the textbook publishers chartered a bus and treated about fifty of us to a gourmet dinner at Testarossa Vineyards and then we heard the amazing storyteller, Diane Ferlatte afterwards. Saturday I spent my entire day attending workshops put on by teachers, authors and guest speakers and the best part was all the freebies! They held a new teacher's reception where there were tables lined up with FREE books and you could have as many as you wanted! Collectively, through the various opportunities I ended up with 5-6 new books and about 50 lesson plans (yes, I was a bit too conservative!). I LOVE books and I tried to select them with my students in mind because I want to have an assortment available to the them.





This was the view from my seventh floor window...nothing too exciting.

This is where I snuggled in to get my homework finished late at night so I wouldn't have any regrets once I got home.

This is what the weather looked like as I was leaving this afternoon...wet and cold...time to go home!

Who knows if I will get to attend next year. The California Association of Teachers of English (CATE) meets once a year in new locations and next year it will be in Los Angeles, about an 8-hour drive for me and while I definitely think it is worth the trip, I don't know if I will want to drive that far! Maybe if I can get an inexpensive round-trip ticket I will fly!

Random Photo 3

"Gum Alley" San Luis Obispo, California

Mildly disgusting isn't it?

Better here as an artistic expression

than beneath the tables and chairs elsewhere.

Random Photo 2

"Money makes us tired"

Graffiti outside of Bank of America in San Francisco, Ca.

It can also corrupt a nation.

** You ladies have convinced me to save my photos to a flash drive, so before they go off to storage I'll be sharing a few random shots to give them purpose for their existence.