Blast from the Past

One of my former kids called me today! I was in a meeting so I missed the call, but she left me a funny message starting with "HEY MISS!! Do you remember meeeeeeeeeee??" She actually never identified herself, but I'm 95% sure I know who it is from the voice. It was beyond bizarre to be addressed as "Miss" again.

Unrelated: everyone at work is very excited because TFA was just named one of Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For (specifically, we are the 82nd best). Pretty good for a nonprofit, since we can't do all the "free daycare and massages and food and laundry!!" stuff that some of the tippy top companies do. Also, I'm almost certain that I know one of the girls in the photo that accompanies our blurb, so I'm basically in the photo too.

Master Manipulator

Since apparently nothing interesting is happening in my current life, here's another 20+ year old clip. I think it demonstrates that I was a precocious child, at least when it came to staying out of trouble.

(It should be noted that this comes on the heels of a solid 10 minutes of my mother trying to get me to do something, anything for the camera.)

One more step towards obscure fame...

Those of you who read my teaching blog might remember that on my very last post, a grad student commented and asked if I would let him use my blog in his dissertation on identity formation in beginning teachers. I said okay and basically forgot about it, until this arrived in the mail for my review:

 

(Sorry it's fuzzy, it's hard to hold the camera still so close)

That's not his full dissertation, that's just my chapter. All 78 pages of it. Apparently it took so long because mine was the "most intimidating" so he saved it for last.

Now that's two obscure academic works my writing will appear in this year! I'm basically a grad student myself at this point.

Wedding Overload!

We went to Boston for our college friends' wedding this weekend! It was basically a reunion of all our best friends from school, and there was a photobooth:

Ben is wearing a tux because he was the best man, and also because he is a very snazzy dresser. And as if this wedding wasn't exciting enough, at the after-party two more sets of college friends announced they are engaged! That means two more mini-reunions in the upcoming year or two, and I get to be the maid of honor at one:

It's good to know that I will still have something to look forward to in my life after the last Harry Potter movie comes out, or I probably would have lost the will to live on July 16.

Winnie the Pooh

First, for reference:



Now, my version:



I don't know which contrast is better - the one between the real version and how I sing it, or the one between how I sing it voluntarily and how I sing it under duress from my mother.

Guest Star!

My friend Sam came to visit! This is regular great because Sam is awesome, and double great because he promised to cook me dinner. He is a master chef and I can't read his blog before meals because it makes me too hungry and sad that I don't know how to cook, so he kindly narrated his whole cooking process so I could learn. I learned many things from him, including:

• What blanching means, and how to do it.
• What brown butter is, and how to make it.
• How to not be scared of chicken bones and use them to make delicious stock.
• That the list he keeps of mean things I've said isn't just in the back of his head, but is actually written down for posterity.

I had always thought that Sam's drool-inducing food pictures were a result of some fancy food camera he had, or at least some fancy food photographing technique. But it turns out you just need a regular camera and regular photographing techniques, because his food really is that beautiful:

Have you ever seen such good looking brussels sprouts?

What a perfect chicken!

Sam is an expert chicken carver.

Can you believe I got to eat this for dinner? At home? On a Tuesday?

I think the limiting factor in these pictures is that I don't have fancy enough plates to properly showcase Sam's work.

After we ate, he put the bones and a bunch of random food scraps in a pot and cooked it overnight to make stock.

Even Sam's food scraps look great!

Now I have frozen stock to eat in Sam's absence, and my whole house smells like magic. Thanks, Sam!

Farm Fun

Today we went to a farm!

Ben is pretending to whittle.

My parents' friends decided that they wanted to spend their retirement farming (which to me seems to defeat the purpose of not having to work anymore...) so we spent the day visiting them and their animals. First we got to play with the goats:

And then the chickens:

Ben was really excited because he got to test out chicken head stabilization in person, and it works just like in the video!

My sister was really excited about the chickens.

Before we left, we all got to take a turn driving the tractor. It was very scary because it had a clutch and other things incomprehensible to someone who has only ever driven automatic. It was also huge.

I don't have a picture of me driving it, unfortunately.

I think the best part of the day was a conversation I had with Ben's mother via texting.

Me: [picture of Ben holding a goat] Ben and a goat!
Her: I hope this isn't like Ben and the chicken [which is the only other picture message I've sent her]
Me: [picture of Ben holding chickens] The chickens are alright
Her: Okay. What about the cows?
Me: [picture of Ben on the tractor] There are no cows, sorry
Her: Where are you?
Me: [picture of us in front of the cabin] Maryland, of course
Her: Oh, of course!

I particularly love the fact that it took three pictures of unusual situations before she asked where we were. Because a picture of Ben and a goat or Ben holding live chickens wasn't enough to pique her curiosity.