At the Grocery Store

I usually do the grocery shopping independently, but today Ben decided to tag along. Halfway through, I heard him frantically yelling "Caroline! Caroline! Caroline!" from several aisles over. I ran over expecting to see someone mugging him, only to find him grinning like an idiot and pointing at his handiwork:

"Get it? Get it? The controversy continues!"

No more grocery shopping with nerds.

Yay, it's up!

Remember when I raved about Kaya Henderson's closing remarks from one of the sessions I went to at the TFA summit? Well, video of that session is now up! In case you're not up for watching the full thing, the part that I really liked starts at 1:12 - right after she talks about peeing her pants.

When Michelle asked me, when she decided she was going to step down and she said, "I need you to do this, I need you to stay" I was like, "stay, are you crazy?" That was not the plan. See, the plan was to come to DC Public Schools, to work for seven years - the three years of the first Fenty term and the four years of the second Fenty term - and then go make some money, open up a new consulting firm that told everybody what we did, go back to our lives where we traveled and chilled and I could get a haircut in the middle of the day and, you know, have a life. I'm forty years old, I need to have a baby - there's all kinds of stuff going on! And this lady says, "I need you to stay and be the superintendent of DC public schools," are you smoking crack? But at the end of the day, I could go. I could leave today... I could go make a whole lot of money, I could have a life where I work a few days a week, I could go have a baby, I could do whatever I want to do. It would be really comfortable. It would be really comfortable to leave what I've been doing, and to do what would make me feel good. Except it wouldn't make me feel good. At the end of the day, despite the fact that some nights I don't go to sleep, despite the fact that I have crazy people screaming at me all day, it is absolutely uncomfortable, but I can't go home and sit down and make money when this pressing issue is here and there is something I can actually do to contribute.

Visitors!

We had friends visiting last weekend, Ben's parents this weekend, my parents next weekend, and more friends the weekend after that - whew! So we have been eating at a lot of restaurants and going to a lot of museums, but the only interesting photograph to come out of any of it is this:

That is us with our friends from college, inside some of the Art that adorns Penn's campus. Don't ask my why a giant broken button is Art.

(Actually, this wasn't my first encounter with the principal that oversized household objects are Art:)

At the Art Institute of Chicago, in 2006

In the completely opposite direction, yesterday we went to the Mütter Museum, a museum of medical history and anatomical oddities that I have vaguely traumatic memories of visiting as a child. In addition to all the preserved fetuses of conjoined twins, midget skeletons, and photos of truly horrifying skin conditions, there was also the Chevalier Jacskson Collection of Swallowed Objects and a Giant Colon, that contained forty pounds of feces when its owner finally died (after not pooping for months). Very disturbing.

Lastly, our college friends took a picture of us on our balcony, and since we don't usually take pictures of ourselves in our (sort of) new house I thought I'd share it:

Everyone is happy because their colons are functioning correctly.

Fun times accomplished!

Like, woah!

Ben and I got to spend some time hanging out with his extended family over the weekend. The highlight was definitely bonding with his 10 year old cousin, whose first statement to me was "you learn all kinds of cool things when you're trying to fall asleep!" I asked her to elaborate, and she described how she had figured out a whole variety of things, like if you look at the same object with only your left eye versus your right eye it looks different, but one eye makes it look more different than the other - so, basically, ocular dominance. I was impressed, but not half as much as when she revealed her most recent discovery: you can't hum when you pinch your nose!

Now, maybe everyone reading already knew that and thinks I am an idiot, but I had no idea, so when I hummed and pinched my nose and couldn't hum anymore it blew my mind. Also, I spent all day at work sharing this discovery with people, and none of them knew about it either (or maybe they were all humoring me). Anyway, the moral of the story is that Ben's little cousin is a genius, and I should stop wasting my "trying to fall asleep time."

My Latest Creation

I made another movie! Apparently there was a rumor going around our corps members that we only want them to collect and turn in data on how their students are doing because we get bonuses if they do (?), not because student performance data can actually be useful.

So, behold my mythbusting:



Note the special effect, and the blooper reel. I'm turning into a real professional!

Philadelphia Magic Gardens

Yesterday Ben and I went to Philadelphia Magic Gardens. Basically, this artist guy spent fourteen years covering every square inch of a South Philly row house and adjoining lot with crazy mosaics, so now it is three full city lots of magical, sparkly labyrinth.

It's hard to capture how impressive the place is with a camera - in person, with the sunlight glinting off of the thousands of mirrors and glass bottles, it looks utterly transporting, but on film it looks less glittery and more like a pile of trash in some places.

I think you could devote your entire life to exploring the place and pouring over all the details, and still find new things every time. There are so many tiny little touches that are easy to miss, but are so charming when you notice them.

It's only a couple of bucks to get in, so I think this will be our new sightseeing destination whenever people visit us!

My Directorial Debut

I have been tasked with creating a series of videos to "demystify" TFA for our corps members. Here is my first one:



Bet you didn't see that coming!