Magic Jewball

I’m sitting here on the train at 30th Street Station in Philadelphia as we change engines for the rest of the trip. I’ll be spending the next week in Pittsburgh, all expenses paid, playing with robots. It is really tough to be me right now, lemme tell you. If you know anything fun to see in Pittsburgh, lay it on me! I have no idea if I’ll have time to do anything non-robot related but maybe!

… hopefully. I had to post this in advance and who wants to jinx things when airlines are involved?

First stop on the American Cities I Have Not Visited Tour 2012:

Title from Nirvana. Yes, I know I used the homophone. School’s out!

Edited to add: this didn’t post on time, obviously. But I made it!

The truth is, this is the best thing Richard Dawson ever did. And he didn’t even do it.

I have to say, the whole working in a school thing totally feeds my “navel gaze sentimentally at your childhood” issue. Sorry! But remember that feeling, at the last week of school, when suddenly there was nothing serious left to study, classrooms got hot and lethargic, and all those “I can’t wait for freedom!” feelings shifted to “I will miss these people!” Yeah. Like that. This is the last week of classes and I am finding that as I write DONE on each class’ sheet in my book, there’s a bittersweet sensation. I’ll miss these kids and some of them even say they’ll miss me. I got to sign yearbooks! I haven’t done that since I was 17.

~sigh~

I just reread A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and liked it less than I did as a kid when I adored it and read it a hundred times. I found parts of it dull and trite, but that’s probably since I have outgrown the intended demographic. Anyway, it does this neat trick of making you feel nostalgic at the end of the book for the beginning when the heroine was abjectly poor, had few friends, and suffered in school. I’m not sure how it does that. But it’s often possible to have a tough time and a great time. Francie knows.

And now….UPDATE!

I got the grant!!!!1 So I will be doing two weeks of curriculum work. Also, I will be away most of the month of June after school ends next week (for me, after the kids go) on a grand tour of Lesser Visited But Great Cities of Our Nation. Then I’ll mostly be around. I am thinking of getting access to a pool around here, but it might cut into my Netflix time. Also, that whole “buy a bathing suit” aspect. We’ll see.

Summer. I can smell it.

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