I'm finished with Summer Boot Camp but I'm NOT finished with summer. I'm still waiting to sit on the balcony with a drink and book in the heat...I have this week off Mother Nature and I could use a 3 or 4 days of doing nothing.
August was a whirlwind. My birthday was good although I did teach for 8 hours that day. I amassed my birthday money and bought an Ipod Touch. For years I have avoided Ipod, resisted their charms and disdained their corporate culture. BUT, one day while my class was supposed to be writing a timed essay, a certain student was obviously not writing but was playing a game. I confiscated his toy and had a few minutes to play with it myself. I hit the App called Classics and was presented with classic books that you could turn the pages while you read and my soul said, "We MUST have one of these." I had hoped that Andrew would talk me out of it, but no he actively encouraged my techno lust. So I bought the 16 Gig size. Fortunately it is even better than I imagined. I can check my email, I have a dictionary I can consult in class and a myriad of other fun and functional aspects. I'm very happy with it although I have not figured out how to make audio books from the library work as audio books and not regular music on the Ipod but I will persevere and bend it to my will.
The weekend of the 15th we went to Niagara Falls for Andrew's Parent's 40th anniversary. We took the Go Train which was crowded and slow. Those seats are meant to be sat on for 30 minutes not 2 + hours. We had a lovely dinner at the Lake House and then dessert back at the Barton's house. Then we had a good visit on Sunday with everyone. The next weekend we went to Goderich to relax. Melanie was in Goderich as well so we got to visit with her. Saturday we sat at Grandma's pool talking but the weather really did not cooperate and so we did not go swimming. However, Mom and Dad's hot tub was nice on Saturday night. Then on Sunday Andrew and I tackled my storage locker. After I closed the bookstore, I boxed up the books and stored them...8 years later the book were still there costing me money every month so we decided to cut our losses. The majority of the books were donated to a worthy cause and we filled the car (Thanks heavens we were upgraded to a sedan) with bankers boxes of the cream of the crop. Said boxes are populating our small apartment now although I have squirreled many of them under the bed and in our storage locker. Hopefully we can sell the majority of them on Ebay or ABE. We returned from Goderich to find the squirrels had had a party in my garden. Dirt was everywhere (not in the pots), the trellises were knocked over and half of the tomato plants have had their stems broken. Rotten rodents.
After that I had only one more week of SAT Boot Camp. The summer went very well but the last week is always tough because the kids are all tired and they cannot even think of memorizing one more vocabulary word, so it is a struggle to keep everyone on task for the last few classes. I received some nice Thank You cards from the students on the last day which is always a good barometer of the summer's success. The students also do Teacher evaluations on the last day and the reviews were good. I have managed to cultivate an image of omnipotence and I think I convinced them that there is little that Teacher Michelle doesn't know. Perhaps it was just in comparison to the Reading Teacher who is new and has a shiny new Bachelors of Education...but knows nothing. Its bad when the students are correcting the teacher's definitions.
I have this week off ,but on Saturday we are back to work and the race to college application deadlines start. Andrew starts school on the 8th but he is ready to go now. I bought him his first MP3 player and we spent Saturday filling it with music for his long subway ride. His schedule arrived last week and it looks good except for the 2 days a week that his classes start at 8 am which means he has to leave the house before 7 am. I'm sure we will adjust.
I'm going to try to tidy up the balcony disaster and then have lunch with Heather today.
I hope everyone gets another blast of summer in September.
M
2 hours later
P.S. Work just phoned. A student desperately needs personal attention from Teacher Michelle starting tomorrowfor the rest of the week. Crap.
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