Just going crazy with the last week of planning before the kids get here and no idea what is happening on the first day. Fun times. Also, no internet access from home (except on Ross’s computer). Also, moving!

YAY, moving! Tonight is our last night on North Harvard Street. Tomorrow we get to share the apartment with the previous tenant and her gorgeous black cat, so I think we’ll camp in the living room just for one night until she gets moved out the next morning. It should be fun.

Also, also, does anyone want a gmail account? I have six invitations all of a sudden. Let me know.

I promise regular updates will resume once I have moved, reinstalled a home DSL connection, and gotten into some kind of rhythm with school. I estimate that this will take a total of approximately three years.

Just kidding. I should be up and running again in a week or so, hopefully. Keep the candle burning till then! I miss you too!

What do you think it means that the meetings of the Science/Math department are harmonious and efficient, and the meetings of my Humanities department are incredibly long and seem to take hours to reach consensus on every little thing? Clearly there is an imbalance somewhere when I keep looking over (longingly) at the laughing chat going on in the dining room and we are always the last to leave our work for the day. I don’t necessarily think the dynamics are a bad thing — in fact, I think it’s going to be an incredibly interesting year with four such passionate and intelligent people on a team. It’s very exhausting, though, and if today was any indication, our conversations tend to give me a headache. Hardly surprising considering all of the ideas bumper-car-ing around in there whenever we talk.

Which is why I would rather tell a funny story about one of my favourite new colleagues than think about what I’m supposed to be thinking about right now, which is the scope and sequence of the 5-8th grade Humanities curriculum (what we want to teach and when). I’m also supposed to be writing a self-introduction for a new teacher mentor group listserv, and punching holes in and filing my papers, since I have a purple folder from which articles and vital-documents-which-affirm-my-legal-status-in-this-country are falling out at an alarming rate. But those things can wait. Because of the funny story.

………………………………………

Okay, I just tried to tell the funny story, but it totally isn’t working, because it’s a really short story and the names I made up to replace the real names of the people involved take so much time to read that the story itself gets lost. So call me, and I’ll tell you the funny story. Or, maybe I’ll just ramble incoherently because I’m so tired.

Clearly, I need to figure out a way to work hard during the day and still save enough mental energy to write reasonably interesting entries here at night, because otherwise all of my posts will look like nlaaaaarrrrrrrfghh. If you have any suggestions, please let me know. In the meantime, send me your good vibes and keep checking for the latest updates. Don’t be discouraged if I seem to have disappeared; we’re going to be cancelling our DSL line here at the old house and will probably be without an internet connection for a little bit. But never fear!

For like an old sock that you thought was gone forever, one day I will show up inside the sleeve of your shirt.

Check it out!

I ran into Sean yesterday in Harvard Square, about thirty seconds after I had said goodbye to Peter post-dinner at Hong Kong (Hee. A cold can of Chef Boyardee). I was very, very tired from work and maybe a little drunk on scallion pancakes (ok, so you probably can’t actually get drunk on scallion pancakes. Maybe it was the scallion pancake sauce), and so I was reeling a little bit from exhaustion. I lurched into Sean and berated him for moving to Boston and failing to get in touch with me, while his sister and friend looked on in bemusement. And when I got home, I was so giggly and punchy from weariness that Ross asked me if I had had anything to drink.

I tell you this in order that you will understand the full extent of the following statement:

I thought I was tired yesterday, but in fact I was practically bubbling over with enthusiastic energy compared to how pooped I was after work today.

Here is how tired I was at 5:30pm….

I wanted a bottle of Half and Half, but when I picked up a bottle of iced tea from the cooler by mistake, I was too tired to put it back and pull out the right kind. I looked at the bottle, thought about reaching down to make the switch, and decided that if I did that I might faint. So I just drank iced tea instead. This may not sound like much, unless you know how much I like Half and Half.

Fortunately, I’m tired for a really wonderful reason — I’m tired from using my brain in interesting ways all day long. Today’s session of teacher bootcamp was sort of surreal because it required so much intellectual effort. More than most of my graduate classes. It was also surreal because every single one of my colleagues is incredibly smart, well-read, and provocative. Every one. No one was bored or boring, no one didn’t do the reading, and no one said a single stupid thing. That never happens in my graduate classes. We spent two hours this morning discussing a section of Plato’s Phaedrus and an article that attempted to describe the history of narrative by analysing three child-authored stories. The conversation bounced from person to person for the entire two hours, I was wide awake and listening to every comment, and I can’t remember when I last had that much fun thinking about complex ideas with other people. It was a little bit like being in heaven (heaven for people who enjoy erudite conversations, anyway).

The best thing about it is that I also feel like as a team, we can switch from that kind of dialogue to cracking totally silly jokes, and back, in a second.

Speaking of seconds, my department (Humanities) spent approximately a billion trillion of them in the latter half of the day working on coming up with benchmarks for our subject (skills or standards kids have to achieve in order to be promoted), talking about our accountability plan (which is the list of promises we make to the state of Massachusetts about what our students will achieve. If we don’t keep our promises, we lose our charter) and trying to figure out how we can actually assess progress that kids are making towards our accountability goals, through the benchmarks. Yes, I know how boring and meaningless that last sentence was. But it’s vital stuff for us to work out now, and I think it’s quite astonishing that four people were smart and caring enough about these things to spend three hours arguing about them this afternoon.

Okay — now I’m officially done gushing about my job. You have permission to remind me of my gushiness in a month, when I am actually teaching and scared out of my mind.

P.S. Hi, Barb! Happy to have you in Boston for the next little bit!

Part of me doesn’t want to write about my first day of work….

… in the way you sometimes want to keep a really wonderful secret all to yourself, because it’s so sweet you’d ruin it by trying to tell someone about it.

In other words, I had a good first day — thanks for asking! I love my boss, my new colleagues seem very smart, and the entire experience was like going through the first session of a class that you know is going to be interesting, exciting, and kind of mind-blowing. It really doesn’t seem like I should be getting paid for this (I wonder how long that feeling will last).

Part of me also generally doesn’t want to write about work here in much detail, at least not personal detail, because I’d hate it if I ever said anything incendiary (or even just mildly flammable) about a teacher or a kid and someone ran across it — so I guess the only other thing I’ll tell you is that I now know I am the only one of my co-workers who has a tattoo (there was an ice-breaker thing, I didn’t go around lifting up people’s shirts). Frankly, I’m somewhat surprised. Almost everyone seems to be between 25 and 35 (although I am a terrible one for guessing ages), so it just seems sort of odd, statistically speaking. To make up for this and to show team spirit I think we should all have the name of the school tattooed on our biceps (this will also make us look really tough, which is important because ten year olds can smell fear).

So, since I’m not going to say much about my day, and since I know you all set aside at least an hour every eve to read my entries, you can spend that time reading this, which is a (very good) short story we read and discussed today as part of our attempt to get to know each other. And if anyone really loves me a lot and wants to buy me this, I won’t complain. ;-)

I’m afraid I really don’t have that much to say about Monday night’s Red Sox game. Susan and I got beers, the cast of Forever Plaid sang the National Anthem, a little kid said “Play ball!” and then it got boring out there on the field. But we were in really cool seats (maybe a dozen rows from the front), and there were funny fans and peanut throwers to watch, and Elizabeth and Alec were there too, and so it was really quite delightful. I tried to be very polite when Susan explained what was going on, and I did the wave and everything. That was fun. I also asked a lot of questions, but maybe they were the wrong ones:

“How come everyone boos at poor Kevin Youkilis? What did he do wrong?”

(Nothing. They were going “Youuuuuuuuuuuu,” not “Booooooooooooo.”)

“Why are some people’s Red Sox shirts pink?”

(Because they’re girly-girls.)

At any rate I had a fabulous time, mostly because I wasn’t too worried about what was happening on the field (we lost). And there was a hot dog in my stomach and three cold beers as well on a beautiful evening with three beautiful people. I really couldn’t ask for more.

I could ask for Elizabeth (and Kristin, and Susan) not to move out of town (and for Sarah to move back from Omaha), but everyone has to follow the dream, I guess. Too bad the dreams don’t all live in Boston. So today we said goodbye to another of the flock, and Erdos helped. Kristin (who thought she was done packing!) discovered another nine boxes (and a carpet*) worth of stuff that she wanted to take with her to California, so I drove to her apartment and we loaded up the little black beast with all her things, parked at the post-office, and got intimate with the man behind the counter for half an hour while he stuck stickers, stamped stamps, and charged Kristin 240 dollars to ship half her life back home. It’s tough moving across the country.

Fortunately, then there were sandwiches. We went to the Parish Cafe for lunch. The Parish Cafe invites chefs at famous restaurants from around Boston to create fancy gourmet sandwiches, which they then make and serve at their own place. These are not your mother’s ham and cheese sandwiches. These sandwiches involve slices of flank steak in soy sauce and balsamic vinegar. These sandwiches involve cranberry chipotle. They have tomato confit in them and their fillings sit within peppercorn brioche. I have no idea what chipotle, confit, or brioche are, but they sure sound good to me. I had the Zuni Roll (Smoked turkey breast, crisp bacon, chopped scallions, Dill Havarti cheese and cranberry chipotle sauce wrapped in a flour tortilla. Served warm with a side of homemade potato salad), and it was goooood.

Kristin leaving for the airport was less good, but (car-phobic) Jo getting in Erdos while I was driving and not flinching once was very good.

And being awake and on time for my first day of work will be very, very good, so I’ll leave you here until next time. Wish me luck and I’ll let you know how it turns out… I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be wonderful.

*If you ever want to pack and ship a carpet, here’s how you do it:

1) Roll up the carpet (make sure it doesn’t weigh more than seventy pounds, or they won’t take it at the post office. If your carpet is like Kristin’s carpet, it will weigh about 37 pounds. It will also be called a rug.)

2) Slide a clean garbage bag onto either end of the rolled up carpet, rip the bottom of a third bag, and slide it over the middle part of the carpet. Tape everything down with duct tape, to keep the carpet cylindrical in shape.

3) Slit the bottom and side seams of five or six Trader Joe’s paper bags and rip off their handles, turning them into handy rectangles of brown wrapping paper. Or you could use actual brown wrapping paper, but this way is more fun.

4) Wrap the carpet in the bags and secure with duct tape.

5) Address and mail your carpet! No one will think it is a dead body. Trust me.

You know, it’s a lot harder to write entries every day when you’re actually occupied during the day instead of sitting on your butt eating apples and watching Ellen stutter. So, my apologies for the three day hiatus… but it’s been a terrific three days.

I think I’ll start on Saturday, five minutes after Ross dropped me off on the corner of Huntington Avenue in downtown Boston to catch my Chinatown bus to Hartford, CT. Without even enquiring at the counter of the convenience store where (according to my ticket) I was supposed to wait, I deduced that I actually needed to be across the street, in the midst of a small group of strangers with backpacks who were gathering together like shy ducks. (I like it when I can work the word “ducks” into my posts.)

Strangely, although there were several large buses parked along the street, it turned out that our limo for the night was going to be a large, blue, unmarked van driven by a 20 year old Chinese speedfreak. Why do I call him a speedfreak? Because he sped, freakily. He did freakily speed. Freakily speed did he. (And since the first part of this entry involves Erica, I’ll pay homage to her by offering 10 points to the first person who can tell me what picturebook I just referenced.)

At any rate, we got to Hartford a half hour earlier than I anticipated (and my butt suffered from approximately a hundred and two more leaps over bumps in the road than it anticipated). Which was unfortunate, since Erica woke up a half hour later than she had planned, and so I had an hour’s wait in lovely Hartford. That was ok, though, because it gave me time to grab an iced latte at the Dunkin’ Donuts stand in the gas station, and get a few more pages into Inkheart. (Inkheart, like The Neverending Story, is a book about a book — one of the best kinds of books.)

But Erica picked me up soon enough in Johnny, whose smooth ride and leather interior I appreciated a lot more now that I have a car of my own to compare it to (Sorry, Erdos. You’re a honey, but Johnny is really sexy.) And on our way back to New Haven, we swung by a swing dance — because swing dancing is what Erica does best, when she’s not being a cellular biologist, roller-blader, or all around genius.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that I can sometimes be a little… well. Disinclined to play with the other children. I ran away (literally, in some cases) from most of the orientation events at Brandeis, and I generally avoid parties where I only know one person. By any account this swing dance should have set off all of my alarms: Erica was my only ally, there was organized dancing involved, and people I didn’t know were going to come up to me and ask me to do potentially embarrassing things.

So it must have been something in the air (or the pizza), because I had the best time at the Wethersfield American Legion Hall on Saturday night. I danced three times (and had fun two of those times), got to watch Erica swish her hips doing her West Coast Swing thing, and, perhaps most thrilling of all, witnessed one of the most elaborate farewell tributes I have ever seen in my life — and probably ever will.

I am not going to describe the video montage they put together for Savio.

I am not going to describe the little metal piano-shaped sculpture/musical box they made for Savio, which plays a tinkly version of his favourite song.

I am not going to describe the Savio-impressions, the Savio scrapbook, or the Savio T-shirt.

I am just going to transcribe the lyrics of the song we (yes, we) sang for Savio.

SAVIO (To the tune, in case anyone needed a hint, of “Bingo”)

1) There is a man who loves to dance, and Savio is his name-o.

CHORUS: S-A-V-I-O, S-A-V-I-O-, S-A-V-I-O-, and Savio is his name-o.

2) He started off with two left feet, and Savio was his name-o. (Chorus)

3) He practiced and he learned to dance, and Savio was his name-o. (Chorus)

4) Leads or follows with all he meets, and Savio was his name-o. (Chorus)

5) He teaches Cha-Cha, Swing and more, and Savio was his name-o. (Chorus)

6) To dance with him is such a treat, and Savio was his name-o. (Chorus)

I’ll end my discussion of the night’s festivities by assuring you that Savio (a wonderfully nerdy looking Chinese guy with thick glasses, bermuda shorts, and a knee-brace), while leaving his post as organizer of the weekly jams, is still going to be at all the weekly jams. I wonder what they’d have done if he were moving out of town…

Exhausted from saying goodbye to Savio, Erica and I tooled back to New Haven, where we waited for Ben (and a couple of other people who, not being Ben, are not important) at a cute little tequila bar. When Ben came, I fondled his head for a while (he’s just gotten a hair-cut, people. His head cries out to be fondled. I don’t care if it sounds dirty.) and we sipped our four dollar drinks. Then, although I at least was certainly dizzy enough from one delicious blueberry margarita (they make them strong), we went to another New Haven drinking establishment, a place where they encourage you to throw peanut shells on the ground. I am sorry to report that this colonial practice is not as much fun as it sounds. (However, the practice of bitching about the rude waitress and then leaving her a 6 percent tip is.)

I will draw a veil over my night with Erica in her bed with its fluffy down mattress pad. Except to say that now, I want a fluffy down mattress pad of my very own.

Sunday was the mellowest day in the universe — we woke up and watched The West Wing, had brunch at an adorable cafe (smoked salmon on toast with cream cheese, onions, tomatoes, and capers. Well, Erica was the only one who got any capers. But Ben and I coveted her capers.), and checked out Ben’s new pad. Ben’s new pad is very nice: large, sunny, and newly painted. I encourage everyone to go visit Ben in his new pad once it’s, you know — furnished.

We spent the afternoon walking along a beach, where Erica undid millions of years of work by careening rocks into the cliff face and breaking off little bits of it, and we engaged in the timeless pleasure of throwing stones into the sea (not skipping stones. Just throwing them. Into the sea.) We also saw the moulted shell of a horseshoe crab, a dude giving his guinea pigs a day out (in their cage next to him while he lay on the grass), and a bunch of young hoodlums selling lemonade and iced tea. We scandalized the mother who was next in line for lemonade by ordering lemonade and iced tea in one cup (guess she’s never heard of Half and Half), and generally had a terrific day. We even saw a carousel at Lighthouse Point Park, but they were closed for lunch so we didn’t snag a ride, which I sort of regret now.

Good lord. I don’t know about you, but I’m pooped. And I’m only up to Sunday evening. I’m going to take a break to fortify myself, and come back later to tell you about the baseball game, the incredibly good sandwiches at the Parish Cafe, and my adventures in moving (Kristin), during which I drove Erdos without Ross for the first time. In the meantime, please try to keep yourselves from going insane with the suspense.