Random Updates

Auntie Mame is coming Monday for a brief dinnertime stopover, as she's coming from Austin up to Hartford for a 1-day job, then on to Toronto. The Boy and the Drama Queen are pretty excited! If the weather's decent we'll grill steaks, if it's lousy we'll get takeout.

The Boy's birthday is next weekend, and we're having a family party (read: have the cousins over and play and have cupcakes), then the "real" party is the following weekend. For some reason, Hubby thought it was a good idea to book a music party (fine) in Wilton (????). I have no idea if people will actually be willing to go that far for a birthday party. Guess we'll find out.

Went to the show-and-tell for the Other School. Lots of good info on class sizes, curriculum and staffing, and I think The Boy would do well there. Hubby was predictably racist and stubborn: "I don't want him going to school with a bunch of blacks and Puerto Ricans." We're still battling this one out. We'll see if he gets in and then we'll have the showdown. I think if we did send him there, it would change Hubby's mind (at least to some degree). He's got what he remembers from high school in his head -- when the kids there were the lowest performing and least able students, and also the most troublesome. The school is very different now than it was then, esp with the new principal. She's one tough, organized lady.

I'm done with the first draft of the district summer reading website, and am updating author lists and working on the brochure version as suggestions come in. Got a couple new banners done for the genre pages, and they look better than the old ones. Still waiting to get final copy from the LA dept on the intro letter and assignment. Eeyore was annoying about that. Everything I do she comes up and announces she will do it too. I told her flat out no on the summer reading business -- I probably would have given her the brochure part of it had I not been so aggravated that she had assumed that she could do half my booktalks this entire week. I let that go this week, but we are going to have to have a sit-down this coming week and discuss division of responsibilities because this "if you're doing it I should get to do part of it too" crap is annoying the shit out of me. I'm not a particularly territorial person, but I feel like Eeyore is up my ass most of the time and my patience is coming to the end.

I also volunteered for one session of summer work, helping the LA dept revise and update the core books/reading lists. That will be difficult to say the least. Trying to get that group to agree on anything new is usually like stopping the earth from rotating. Hopefully there will be enough younger teachers on the committee who are willing to look at newer stuff. There are a few teachers (mostly from Wonderland) who would be total stick-in-the-muds about everything. Maybe they'll be on vacation.