Tuesday I was in the same district, but got to sleep almost an hour later.  I headed the same way in the morning, but turned off at the middle school corner to continue on northward to hometown-district’s northernmost school.  I checked in and headed to class.  The big difference in subbing for elementary versus middle school, besides the size of the students, is the lesson plans.  Most of the time in middle school I teach some or all lessons more than once, occasionally six times.  In elementary school however it is one class so there are a lot more plans.  Lucky me (not) I arrived on the no-specials day.  At least, no specials that gave me a break.  This was their computer lab day, so that at least was an hour I didn’t teach, but I still had to be there to help.  They learned about a website with books online, and when I say that I mean thousands of books- current and fully illustrated, in dozens of languages, accessible like a library.  Some even had audio tracks so they could listen as the stories were read to them.

Trying to remember the rest of the day- I worked in elementary again Thursday in hometown district and have fresher memories…  Ah yes, the math lesson was fun.  They had a test for half the period, and then I taught part of the next lesson.  What was fun was teaching them about standard units of measure.  We started off with a non-standard unit- how many 2nd-graders long is the room, then how many of one second-grader.  The answers were slightly different- 8 second graders, but only 7 2/3 of the one student.  I reminded them that if I chose the shortest student to measure the room, the number would have been higher and if we measured using a teacher, it would have been lower.  So then I introduced the yard by covering the last few inches of the meterstick (most metersticks have inches printed on the other side, and a meter is longer than a yard) and they estimated the the length of the room in yards before we ran out of time.

If I can recall any more good moments this day I will add them, but for the most part is was really a standard day otherwise with guided reading groups, social studies, silent reading, lunch…

Monday: Industrial technology in hometown district.

In near-city district, only 7th and 8th grade take this class- I think this year the teacher at one of these schools only teaches for four periods.  What does he do with the rest of the day?  In hometown district all three middle-school grades take this class.  The other two districts I’m in don’t have 6th graders in junior high (they don’t call it middle school) so…

Anyway, I arrived at about 7:30 and headed across the hall from the office into the IT room.  Dropped my stuff and looked for the plans.  Dug around a bit on the front table- there were the seating charts, buried, but no plans.  Hmm.  Open his office door, looked, no plans.  Right then.  Fortunately I knew he had an assistant so I shrugged it off for the moment, though last time I subbed here the assistant was gone too so we watched videos all day.  In other words, there was still a chance everything could go wrong.  Ah, there she was walking in, and sure enough she knew what we were doing.  Because she was there, the students would work on their projects or modules.  For 6th grade, their work was enlarging drawings of cartoon characters by using a grid, which they had to draw themselves on the large sheet of paper.  Tweety Bird, Marvin the Martian, Woody Woodpecker, Dumbo, Pink Panther, and more could be seen all around the tables.  Students had to carefully draw the character making sure every line was in the correct grid box.  It was interesting tho see the different ways students accomplished this.  Most outlined then filled in the details starting at random spots, but there were a few who worked from top to bottom, filling in everything for one row before moving to the next.  Several I couldn’t tell as they were far enough along that they were going over it in marker or even coloring.  I was called on to do spot checks when students felt they were ready, so I had to compare their drawings with the originals and let them know if I saw something that wasn’t right.  The second period of this I actually had a line at one point waiting to be checked.  As it turns out, 6th grade hands for the most part still aren’t attuned to finer writing as most looked no better than I with my poor fine motor control could draw, but there were definitely a few exceptional ones and I said so.

7th and 8th grades were on modules.  That meant that pairs of them were in different areas doing different things like building roller coasters and other objects with K’Nex; working on computers on audio engineering, electricity & magnetism, and more; working with woods or plastics; and a number of other things.  This time my job generally worked like this- I would see a help light on, go over to see if I could help, then ask the assistant when I couldn’t answer the question.  Seriously, I last worked with plastics and woods when I was in high school or lower, and I just didn’t have experience with the software they use.  I think out of a couple dozen help calls throughout the day, there were maybe three I didn’t have to refer to the assistant- not that I should really call her that because today I was the assistant and not a very good one due to lack of experience.

During the middle of the day the regular teacher came in with several people from administration.  Apparently he was trying to get the computers updated as they were about seven years old- a difficult proposition for this economic climate.  I wish them well in this.  Following the last class chess club came in, but I had no part in that so I bid them farewell.

On to Tuesday…

Of course we know last weekend was Easter weekend.  For me, that means celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Of course, before a resurrection, there had to be a death.  That is what Good Friday is all about.  Now, some churches celebrate the entire week starting with Palm Sunday, going into Holy Monday – Holy Wednesday, following with Maundy Thursday, and then finally moving to Good Friday and Easter.  My church starts with Good Friday.  In the past, there had been Good Friday dramas of which I had been part.  During two four-year cycles I played one of the disciples, and some years a member of the mob condemning Jesus.  I kind of miss those times.  Last year the church decided to do something different with a walk-through one could start at any time.  I think I blogged about it.  This year they changed again.  It was still dark as the day of Christ’s death was dark.  It was touching to hear video testimonies of a few people, one of whom accepted Christ just last year on Good Friday from the walk-through.  Besides the testimonies there were some songs, and a short message by our pastor.  We left as usual in a somber mood.  That would of course be remedied the following day for Easter Saturday.  What do you mean you’ve never heard of Easter Saturday?  Well, our church has a Saturday service every week, so the Easter service is naturally duplicated for that Saturday service.  We have to change the words a little bit:

Christ the Lord is Risen Today Tomorrow… Ha-a-a-a-a-le-e-lu-u-ja.

Okay, not really.  But it is still a little strange having grown up in a traditional church, sometimes I feel like altering the lyrics.  So Saturday started with rehearsal at 1:45 until 4:25.  Fortunately not all of it was singing so I had some voice left for the real deal at 5:00.  We went through each choir piece at least three times, and the worship set of five songs twice.  It was nice to finally sing with the soloists.  The main soloist has actually been in a Christian band and has been heard on the radio, and it showed (in a nice way).  She sings at our church once or twice a year.  By the end of the rehearsal I needed to sit down after standing for over two hours.  It turned out to be the last time of the night I got to sit in a chair.  More on that in a moment.

A little time out:  Our choir I’d like to think is a little unique.  We have women tricking into the tenor section and a couple of guys in the alto section.  Women in the tenor section?  Probably not entirely odd.  Guys in the alto section?  Well, the clever readers may have noticed that while I used the term “women” for the tenor section, I did not reciprocate for the alto section with the term “men.”  That’s right, the two guys are actually kids.  While the rules for the last couple of years stated choir members had to be at least 14, they had been singing for about a year prior to that rule, so they were allowed to continue.  In any event, they did just turn 14 (they’re identical twins by the way) so this was the first year they met the rules.  Another factoid, but probably not so unique- I think the Alto section was as large as the other three put together.  Simply huge.

Okay, back to the present.  Following rehearsal, we grabbed our robes and had a bit of time to ourselves before having to line up.  Just before lining up, about ten minutes before the service, it was announced to us that the worship center was completely full.  Wow.  There were multiple overflow rooms all in use by the time service started.  All told, there were together 19,000 attendees at all the church’s campuses- a new record I think.  It might have been helped along by knowlwdge of our special guest.  A former teen-idol from the 80’s turned Christian, he now has a talk show on a Christian station and has starred in some Christian movies, the latest out last year.  I had a moment I could cringe when our pastor asked how we all felt about that movie and there was much cheering.  Now you all know me by now with movies- do you think I saw it yet?  That’s right, I did not cheer because I had not seen it- it would have been a dishonest cheer.  Of course our guest turned around just then and looked back toward my section of the choir.  I hope he didn’t see me and mistake my lack of cheering to not liking the film, I just haven’t seen it.  He thinks he might partner with the church in a marriage ministry, so we may see more of him.  Feel free to make your guesses of who he is in the comments section. 🙂

So following choir we returned to the gym which was our “green room.”  No chairs.  They took every one of our chairs for the overflow rooms leaving us with tables to stand around.  😯 . Fortunately I still had kid’s ministry to go to so the lack of chairs wasn’t an issue- or so I thought.  I got to the room and everyone was sitting on the floor.  That’s right, they took 4th and 5th grade chairs too.  I wonder if all of children’s ministry lost their chairs?  What happened was all those overflow rooms needed those chairs for people to sit in.  Well, we made do.  It turned out that while the crowds in the church were huge, it didn’t seem to translate to many more 4th and 5th graders.  My own small group was all regulars.

So Sunday rolled around, and we had to be there at 7:30 to rehearse.  Yuck.  Well, it’s only a few times during the year.  The 9:00 service was not a full service.  However, the pastor was at the other main campus along with our guest, so they may have had a much bigger crowd than normal.  Every week, our pastor switches between the two main campuses on Sunday to preach live.  The other gets a live feed or recorded video from Saturday night.  The 11:00 service was back to overflow capacity, but not quite as bad as the night before, which in my mind was pretty odd.  I would have thought that more people would have come on Sunday because that is actually Easter.  Saturday is Easter Eve, if you will.  So that was it, except for one more factoid: neither the main sermon nor the 4th/5th grade lesson were specifically Easter.  For the former, our pastor just started a new series, and for the latter we continued the series from the book of James.

So, that was my weekend.  If I think of anything I may have missed, I’ll add it to the comments.  Right now I need to start getting ready for bed.

Just a quick note to say (in pictures shamelessly ripped from here and here):

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Happy Easter!

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It’s a little late in the day, but it is still Good Friday so I bring to you this galaxy recently discovered.  How is it timely? Well, I could post a picture for you to see, but I would rather you be surprised when you go to the link.  Here is part of the story from FoxNews:

An unusual large galaxy with a shape bordering between spiral and elliptical has been spotted by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

NGC 7049 sits in the southern constellation Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are some of the oldest and most massive galaxies, which provide excellent opportunities for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within.

The halo, a ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy, is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049’s core.

What does that mean for today?  Well click on the title to go to the news story.  If you would like even more suspense first, click this link to space.com instead to see a video leading up to the breathtaking final moment.  I only wish I could find a high-resolution version of this picture to use on my desktop.

It has been a long, long time since I have posted education humor,  so I hope you enjoy this one.  The two-person trailer-run operation known as Snopes has this marked as undetermined, but whether Tennessee, Florida, Alabama, or whatever state in the title I’d like to think that these notes from parents could have actually existed.  Have fun reading!

Sick Notes

These are real notes written by parents in a Tennessee school district…(spellings have been left intact.)

1. My son is under a doctor’s care and should not take PE today. Please execute him.

2. Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and i had her shot.

3. Dear school: please ecsc’s john being absent on jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.

4. Please excuse gloria from jim today. She is administrating.

5. Please excuse roland from p.e. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

6. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.

7. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

8. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.

9. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.

10. Please excuse ray friday from school. He has very loose vowels.

11. Please excuse pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre, dyrea, direathe), the sh**s. [note: words in ( )’s were crossed out] .

12. Please excuse tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.

13. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.

14. Please excuse jimmy for being.It was his father’s fault.

15. I kept billie home because she had to go christmas shopping because i don’t know what size she wear.

16. Please excuse jennifer fo! R missing school yesterday. We
forgot to get the sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it monday. We thought it was sunday.

17. Sally won’t be in school a week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.

18. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.

19. Ple ase excuse jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.

20. Please excuse mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.

21. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.

22. Please excuse brenda. She has been sick and under the doctor.

23. Maryann was absent december 11-16, because she had a fever,sore throat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick,fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.

Now we know why parents are screaming for better education for our kids [ed- and parents!] !

Back to the school entries- it’s been too long.  Before I continue though, one of my friends mentioned that I have been too general with my district descriptions, that she is always wondering which district I’m talking about.  I have been thinking about how to refer to these districts because I want to play it safe so any wondering eyes from those districts don’t lock on to my posts and figure out who this is in case I post something I shouldn’t.  I could of course refer to the districts as A, B, C, and D, but that would probably get to be just as confusing.  How about I come up with some better descriptions:

♦ Hometown district = the district in which I live, presently my favorite district I might add.

♦ Near-city district = the district I work in that is closest to the big city, Chicago, to where I live and bears a few similarities.  This is the district that has the really tough ELL and BD classrooms.

♦ Next-door district.  Of course, there is more than one town next to me, but the ones to the north, east, northeast, and southeast of me I am not signed up in at the present time.  Two are too small, and the other two called me so rarely I didn’t sign back up with them.

♦ Supersized district.  This district has a lot of schools.  It encompasses one entire town plus parts of at least three others.  It of course isn’t as big as Chicago’s school district, but what is?  Besides which I am not signed up for that one of course.

With that out of the way, I was in near-city district today doing something quite crazy- I returned to the classroom I had big problems in just a few months ago.  C will be glad to know that this is officially a BD/ED classroom, no LD kids to be found, unless they are also BD or ED (behavior, emotional disorders).  I was in my full faculties when I accepted this assignment just so you know, tired but not so much I didn’t know what I was doing.  I reasoned that there were unusual special circumstances last time- all four teachers/assistants were sick the day before, and I was one of two subs that day.  If you think young kids need consistency, these kids are like autistic kids in their such need.  They just broke down without it and I happened to be one of the targets that day.  So, in full figurative battle gear I headed to the school this morning, expecting anything.  I was early, got a look at the plans, talked with the other teachers, then read a book until the start of the day.  Fortunately I was the only sub this time.  The kids arrived, I waited for the explosion, then.. nothing.  It was actually a quite pleasant day.  One 8th-grader was absent for the first few periods meaning I didn’t have him at all which turned out to be a good thing as when he arrived it was apparent he remembered last time and got visibly upset if I just talked to him.  As for the rest, they had no such problem even if they did remember last time I was there.  Also making for an easy day, two of the classes involved just listening to an audiobook while the kids followed along (and they did, I guess S.E. Hinton is a hit with them), and one class was a single girl watching a movie.  The other two had potential for disaster as they actually involved my input and/or teaching, but the other teacher smoothed things out before they happened.  Kudos to her for using her planning time to keep watch as I led reading a story together before they could get a chance to work independently, which is what they are most comfortable with.  The other two, assistants, were off in watching the ones in specials at this time.  The last class was tutorial, and because this is the last day of the week (Good Friday tomorrow) the ones who did well that week got to watch part of a movie.  The other teacher took the ones who didn’t earn it to another room.

You were looking for a, err, more exciting day, weren’t you?  Admit it!  Sorry I had to disappoint you

How about the other three days this week?  Well, I subbed for art in hometown-district yesterday, special-ed math the day before (same district), and, lessee…  oh yes- Spanish in the near-city district on Monday.  All days went very well.  The Spanish lesson, oddly enough, was actually social-studies lesson on Latin America rather than a lesson or worktime on actual Spanish.  At that school the 6th-graders don’t take Spanish so it was all 7th and 8th.  They also don’t do industrial tech which leads me to wonder what they do instead of these classes.  Art was movies for all followed by a little drawing.  5th grade had the most problems but the rest of the day went well.  The only real thing to report for the special-ed math day was 8th grade at the end of the day- they were so quiet and really worked- was this really 8th grade in April (the start of 8th-grade-itis, a common condition in those who know they will be in high school in a few short months).  That and there was a little mess-up at the end of the day when I found out I was supposed to bring the 8th graders down at 2:00 for an assembly.  Couldn’t they have announced it at 1:55 or something?  Oh, well.  They only missed 15 minutes of it.

For the other two districts I haven’t worked much in them as of late.  Next-door district continues to have next-to-no assignments available for some reason and supersized district actually canceled the last two days I signed up for.  Thanks a lot.  At least they didn’t do it the morning of so I was easily able to get other assignments.  Speaking of canceling, I wonder how long it will take to cancel this next one I signed up for?  This isn’t bitterness talking, but reality.  You see, it’s a three-week assignment.  Yes, you read that right- three weeks.  As a noncertified sub, they are sure to pull that one away when they realize what happened.  I have my suspicions it wasn’t even meant to go up on the system.  Perhaps another sub canceled the assignment by using the system instead of calling the school.  I will be genuinely surprised if I still have the job come next Friday.  I am more than willing to do it-  I just don’t think the district will let me.  Anyway, make your wagers and I’ll keep you posted.

It seems as if yesterday I skipped over Saturday morning, so I guess I will go back to it before skipping ahead to Sunday.  Saturday morning several of us met at Ritzy’s (did I get that right?) for breakfast.  For those who weren’t there, they somehow interpreted a party of 12 as a party of 20, so here were five tables put together in a C shape.  Most people sat together, but Jamiahsh and I kind of sat alone on the opposite side, though in my defense there was only one seat between C and I.  The eldest girls and their cousin Austin had some fun being little animals under the table.  The look on J’s face when he was caught unawares one time was priceless- sorry J! 😀

Following breakfast (oh yes, the food was good) L’s family bid farewell and headed out.  The rest of us headed back to C and L’s house.  The girls invited J and myself into their room to play with their pet rats.  Now, I never had rats growing up, but we did have hamsters, gerbils and guinea pigs at various times so I was familiar with rodent pets and didn’t freak like the preschool teacher mentioned in T’s blog.  I was happy when they didn’t relieve themselves on me during this playtime as often happens with rodents.  After we had enough of the rats, T took us into their closet and showed us some Viewmaster (R.I.P.) slides on the ceiling using their projector.  Call me old-fashioned, but I think the whole point of the Viewmaster was lost by using the projector, that of the images in 3D.  I think we went through their entire library.  Finally, T and S put on a puppet show for J and me, during which time I was called away and we finished organizing our fun activity- see previous blog entry.

So… Sunday rolled around and I got up and showered, then went to Mickey D’s for a small breakfast before church.  Too bad for me it was 10:28 and they had just closed breakfast.  I’m I the only one who thinks anything before 11AM should be considered breakfast?  I must be in the minority, else why would McD’s have changed to 10:30 so long ago and stuck with it?  So breakfastless, I headed to the house.  Fortunately I had bought a box of Crunch and Munch at the dollar store the previous day.  That worked.

We headed to their church, which I had to admit was pretty nice.  I’m not sure I liked their pastor’s preaching style, but that’s probably because I’m used to my own pastor constantly on the move while he gives his sermons.  I did enjoy the worship time though.  Following this service T, who had gone to children’s church was waiting for us- apparently grade school kids can be trusted to be let out on their own, or maybe their teachers were still watching, I don’t know.  The younger ones still needed to be retrieved from their rooms though.  After church, we headed to a hotel by the turnpike for brunch.  There was no waiting time to be seated as there were plenty of seats, but there was definitely some waiting to get the food.  I would have to rate this meal lower than Saturday’s breakfast unfortunately, but at least I could eat as much as I wanted since it was a buffet.

Back at the house again, C and L pulled out their Office board game and we played.  Unfortunately, I learned that seeing every episode only once, including deleted scenes for seasons 2-4, did not mean in any way shape or form that I would remember the details.  I did manage to get three Dundies, though once by a complete guess and once because C pretty much gave the answer away (thanks!).  L won the day though, but even C earned more than me even though he took the harder (“regional manager”) questions while I barely managed the “assistant to the regional manager” ones.  Oh, well.  Finally, they had to do some cleaning for the meeting that night and I bid my farewell.  This, however, doesn’t end the post…

As most of my readers here are well aware, Sunday was a day of rain, starting after brunch.  For much of the trip driving was fine, but as it got later it stated coming down pretty hard.  The worst parts were the trucks- just approaching one would cause a torrent of water to be unleashed onto the windshield from their wheels.  Passing them was a nail-biting experience.  Remember- the speed limit for trucks is 15MPH less than for cars until Illinois.  Speaking of Illinois, when I got there- you think I’m going to say traffic, don’t you?  Well, traffic can be a hassle, but I lucked out.  While there were some traffic spots, for the most part it was fairly light for suburban Chicago.  Maybe people just weren’t driving because of the sleet.  That’s right- the rain turned into sleet and snow.  Wonderful.  No longer was it a nail-biting experience just to pass a truck- now just driving was problematic.  But as I said, traffic wasn’t bad at all and I did manage to make it home in one piece.  Next time I think I will check the weather report before I leave, even if it might mean having to leave earlier.

So, that was my weekend, how was yours? 😉

Sing with me… “Friday night I crashed your party, Saturday I said I’m sorry…” Okay, so I was actually invited but then the song doesn’t quite fit.  Oh well.  Anyway, this story starts before Friday, actually earlier this week.  I was given advice to see what represented a 10th wedding anniversary.  So I did a web search and found this site with information on anniversaries.  We all know about silver and gold wedding anniversaries, but the years leading up to them are rather short of the glamour silver and gold bring, with things like paper, cotton, leather, and wood.  10th anniversary is tin or aluminum, so I got the idea to purchase them some snacks in tins.  Well, apparently stores only sell snacks in tins around Christmastime- they were nowhere to be found.  I finally found something kind of lame at Meijer, but it was in a tin.  I would be giving them another gift along with it so I figured as long as the idea got across the tin would be fine.  Next day, I had a job in 8th grade and I noticed the teacher had a tin in his room- full of puzzles.  Ding- of course.  Games and puzzles can come in tins, and my friends are wild for games! So, back in Meijer after school I found some options in domino sets (double 6, 9, and 12), and Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader Disney edition.  I leaned toward the dominos, but decided to check Walmart across the street first.  Good thing, as their domino sets were half the price of Meijer’s!  But wait, they had several more items in tins including a classic game set, a couple of jigsaw puzzles, and a Phase 10 card game.  It took me awhile to decide what to get, but C & L know what the final selection was.  So, I wrapped them up, found a half-day job for Friday AM, went to bed, couldn’t sleep, canceled the job at about 4:30 after only short bursts of sleep, went back to bed until 9:30, then got up, finished getting ready, ate, and headed to Ohio, stopping only once for gas and a snack (what a sentence, whew!).  Once I finally gave the gifts away later in the evening C guessed something about me wrapping the gifts in tin foil and I had to kick myself for not thinking of it.  Well, the paper was the color of tin anyway.

Backing up just a little, I arrived at 3:45 and checked into the motel.  $25 per night- even better than the amazing $29 C told me on the phone!  Not too many frills, but I wouldn’t be there except to sleep so I didn’t care.  I finally arrived at the theatre around 5:40 and discovered several people were already there and I didn’t really need to delay at the motel as long as I did.  I saw C’s mom for the first time in a long time, as well as the rest of the family and friends there.  Once they started it was short but emotional.  One of the two (I won’t say which, though most of you readers already know!) broke down while reading which only added to the powerful sincerity of what s/he said.  Then it was off to the reception across the street where I had my second meal of the day (I skipped lunch) and, well I’ll just skip ahead since this part is already in my friends’ blogs.  We all had a good time.  When we went to their house afterward, they graciously allowed the few of us to stay for a short time and we had a fun few rounds of a Tribond game before we all retired for the night.

The next day they gave me some options for a fun, family activity- drive an hour to the Toledo Zoo or even longer to an animal park.  Umm…  Since I drove four hours the day before and would drive four hours again the next day, the animal park was really a no-go.  The zoo might have been an option, but I had seen the zoo just a year before around the same time of year so we finally decided to go to town.  It wasn’t bad.  The important part was just hanging out together, so it really didn’t matter much what we did.  The kids enjoyed some playtime at Menards, and then we went to a couple other places, including a few runs of go-karting (their eldest was visibly upset when she was asked to sit out first since not all could go at once, but I think she got over it after going twice in a row.  Everyone- including us adults as we had to watch their youngest who couldn’t ride- rode two out of the three runs) before having dinner at a pizza buffet.  Since it was a Chuck-E-Cheese style (somewhat) place I wasn’t expecting much from the pizza, but it was actually pretty good.  Not Gino’s East or Giordano’s good, but for sure better than Dominos or Little Caesar’s.  They even took requests, so I jokingly asked for something with jalapeños, and they actually obliged- not an unusual request I guess.  Well, when they have peanut butter and jelly pizza I guess nothing’s unusual!  The kids had their fun at the games there, and then we rented a blu-ray movie to watch through my computer on their HDTV.  Unfortunately, due to draconian copy protection and software issues it took some time to get the movie going, but we were glad when we finally did.

Hmm.  This post is getting a little long so I think I will chop it here with a:

I think…

New post coming soon- I hope.  I have a couple of things I want to post, but I’m really tired just now.