Thoughts that flit into my head for a moment

First of all, in addition to the crap Kate went through in that recent post on the way home from the concert that never was she was driving her dad's new car on the interstate and a tire blew out on her--could've been very bad news indeed. Oh, and I forgot to mention the uncertainty about where she will live if her dad's job moves since his workplace was destroyed?

Send her hugs.

I've updated my photobuckets a bit, and am in process of updating them more. If you already have the addresses and password, feel free to stop by and if you don't, and want to see them, just email me and I'll send you the info.

Heavy and/or tough things happening in a variety of friends' lives right now, but I can't go into details entirely here--here's hoping this doesn't become Fall 2004, part 2.

I was a bit relieved not to be asked specifics about some of my examples by the parents of my English students on last Thursday night's open house. For instance, I was explaining the difference between "count nouns" and "non-count nouns" and how you can say there are "fewer" students in the class but in order to say there are "less" students you'd have to put them in a big blender and liquify them first...

Yeah, I got a few looks. Yes, I'm strange.

We had Vicki Gabereau as our guest speaker this afternoon. (I'm not sure if that's the right spelling of her name.) It's an odd phenomenon this "speakers' bureau" approach to professional development activities. Other groups she's spoken to recently include both a neurosurgeon's convention and a nurse's conference. She's somewhat of a minor celebrity as a journalist/talk show host for many years, and I must admit, she's an entertaining and engaging speaker. Truthfully, though--nothing we did today really was more valuable than simply getting some marking and planning done would have been.

Yesterday, we took my inlaws up to this year's "dream home" being raffled off as part of the big annual cancer society lottery. Quite a crowd going through, and as always, it looks nice but there's so much impracticality about it. Here are a few pics: