Random

(1) You know you order too often from Amazon.com when they give you free upgrades to priority mail on every order. I console myself by thinking that these are things that I would buy anyway were I not hundreds of miles from the nearest bookstore.

(2) Planning for the last week before winter break is difficult. Not only will the kids be all twitchy and ready for vacation to start, but so will their ELD teacher. Friday morning, I predict, will be a total loss, academically.

(3) The sun is nearing the horizon (it's 1:45 PM, not sunset just yet, but nearing the horizon). If I hadn't run over my digital camera with the school van, I'd totally take a picture and post it.

(4) I really like our school schedule - We have an extra hour of school Monday-Thursday, then the students get out at noon on Friday. Teachers have a student-free Friday afternoon to plan for the next week. It's not bad, even if I DO have trouble focusing on work at that point...

(5) How much STUFF can I fit into ten days of vacation? We shall soon find out. I have numerous people to drink a beer with (Shibby - is our table reserved at Guu's? Katie - got your Nalgene bottle handy? Too bad there's no parade to watch at MSP. Dz and J - we really need to meet up in the Twin Cities while you guys are there. Matt, Aimee, Mel, and Kelly - Bring on the FRE!), family Christmas stuff to do (popcorn and cranberry stringing, you know, all that Norman Rockwell jazz), shopping and mailing to do (a must when visiting civilization), and maybe might want to sleep a little somewhere in there.

(6) Knitting is fun.

(7) Lesson planning is not fun.

(8) When we run our washing machine, the house shakes. One of the many oddities associated with having a house on stilts. Not tall stilts, but about 4 feet off the ground. A lot of people store stuff under their houses. All that we have under ours is the old bathtub that a parent delivered a bunch of salmon in. He then left town without coming back for the bathtub. So now we have a bathtub under our house until he comes back. We say it'd be po' white trashy of us, but Roomie's half Chinese, so that wouldn't be entirely accurate.

(9) I have reached the point where salmon is no longer an exciting meal. Still delicious, but nothing special.

(10) Have run out of things to say but wanted to make it a nice even, divisible-by-ten number.