Powerpoint & Poetry

We kicked off this morning with story time~grabbed a stack of children's books from the library. Didn't even realize that I had gotten a lovely book written by a friend of a friend~an author I met briefly in Austin. Pick up anything by Liz Garland Scanton and you know you'll have a good story.

After a truly vile week of political fiascos, we were all buoyed by this book's ending.

It was computer lab day, so I bribed them with Trader's treats.

coulda, woulda, shoulda

One of today's lessons was on modals and when I asked students to form questions using them~Talal's was "could you make the mid-term easy?" Major points for proper usage!!

double take

Working on adjectives of likes/dislikes, I turned around and one of my beginning students listed this under "Interesting". I don't know how many of my American students would even know that word!!

un-titled

Vivid lilies in the twilight. 

I don't know what these weeds are, but I remember years of my cousins & I pulling them apart and whomever had the longest/most strings told the most lies that day. Why we were endlessly amused by this, I do not know! Who can explain the minds of middle schoolers?

enchantment

~noun

1. a feeling of great pleasure; delight. "the enchantment of the mountains"

 2. the state of being under a spell; magic.

After a rather dismal week on myriad levels, (Kate Spade AND Anthony Bourdain??), it was a delight to see the season's first fireflies tonight!! Another memory I will tuck in my pocket forever is that of my sweet three-year-old niece "reading" a bedtime story to me.

These glimmers of magic carry us onwards.

childhood epics/family lore

If you have siblings, you well know the hilarious (mostly) and many-sided tales from childhood. Last weekend, I was having a discussion with my sis about HOW much of my lip gloss she and our brother ate. I was particularly sore about the above tin as it was a rare item.

So.

Imagine the shrieking that happened this evening when I randomly went into a shop and saw a display of these tins?? I told the entire tale to the clerk and she laughed and said that EVERY person who came into the shop and bought a lip gloss had some kind of amusing anecdote about the gloss.

It's the little things, y'all.

"she leaves a little sparkle wherever she goes"

This may seem an odd post for a blog about finding joys~but am saddened today to find out that the designer Kate Spade committed suicide this morning.

While I've yet to afford one of her whimsical purses/totes, I do sleep on shimmery polka-dotted sheets of her design. While in grad school, I used to walk past her shop in Princeton just for the beauty displayed in the windows~and for the hope that someday I would be graduated/employed and carry one of these bags. 

The quote in the title is one of hers~it is too bad she didn't realize how much she spread sparkle on a global level.

sing along...."it's a small world after all..."

The new sesh kicked off today and we added new flags to our bulletin board~I now have students from Italy, Dominican Republic, and Vietnam to add to the roster of KSA, Mongolia, and Brazil. 

Marco~from Naples~is a hoot and a half. He's an art history professor and a professional dancer with the Napoli Theatro. He came to class with bright red shoes and matching bow tie. 

Yeri is from the Dominican and is an au pair for a French family who moved here. So, our language is rather hilarious by the end of the day~becoming a mish-mash of English/Spanish/Italian/French. It's nice for me to have a few students with whom I can share vocab~I am of no use to those who speak Vietnamese, Arabic, or Kazakh.

And? After TEN inches of bloody rains, we're seeing a hint of sunshine today.

random rest

Odd grouping of chairs along the W & OD Trail.

June joys

Not my photo~but I now have a new photographic quest~to capture the cutest little chipmunks that are suddenly everywhere. They move rather zippily, so I expect many blurred shots over the next few weeks.

And speaking of cheese, look what I found at Trader's today! Planning on grilling it and drizzling some balsamic over it and fresh strawberries. 

deliciousness

For two years (here), I've been getting my hairs fixed at the Aveda Institute and while I sit/wait for processing, I've been eying La Tasca across the street from my chair for the same amount of time.

Finally got to try some of their menu today and it was worth the wait!! Cheese is one of my best friends and to discover that you can fry Manchego and dip it in honey orange marmalade was a revelation. 

Also tasted Idiazabal cheese for the first time and will be using it in future risottos. Aside from the wonder of the food, it was some solid hours of catching up with a good friend. Soul & body were well fed.

And now to address the panic of having NO garlic in my abode. How that happened, I am unclear but it needs to be fixed immediately.

delight

It's so nice of my Littles to provide a legit reason for me to buy the sparkly pipe cleaners and the glow sticks and the bubbles and the stickers. (Actually, I'm pretty good about buying those for myself, but now it doesn't have to be a stealth operation!)

A fun rainy afternoon of creating shapes and putting together puzzles. Oh, and lots of baby snuggles. Grateful for borrowed clothes as my littlest niece has an astonishing capacity for projectile vomiting. 

stalwart

A break in the rains. 

A few bushes are defiantly hanging onto their blossoms despite the said torrents.