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Yesterday we drove down to Cincinnati so that we could celebrate my mother-in-law, Joyce’s, birthday.  Dan also need to get some work time in with his Dad because Angelone Arcade has four more orders!  First, we went to Jess’ house for lunch and a delicious homemade ice cream dessert.  Here’s Joyce opening up her Coach gifts:

The rest of the day was spent with family hanging out, stopping at the outlets to be sure Joyce got what she wanted, and then eating dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

On a side note, since Dan was downloading pictures last night, we finally have nice pictures from the Reds’ game on flickr (see piictures tab for all the new ones!) and I really like this one of Uncle Ray, a lifelong die-hard Yankees fan.  When in Rome.

Today, I worked from home at Pete and Joyce’s house.  They have a nice deck in the back.  I consider it a good day at work when I get to be barefoot all day. 

Today is my last day in Cincinnati for the week.  This morning I got up and ran in the heat.  Then, I went into Heritage to help Jess set up my old room.  I don’t think I’ve talked about it before, but my sister-in-law, Jess, was a third grade teacher at the same school where I was a sixth grade teacher (she was my in).  She has taught third grade for twelve years, but this year, the district and the state are having all kinds of financial problems and they eliminated a third grade section at our school and Jess was bumped to sixth grade.  Sixth grade science to be exact, my old room to be even more exact.  Quite a coincidence, I know.  So, even though I’ve been gone for two years and someone else has been teaching in “my room,” I went in to help sort out some things and give some advice about room arrangement, computers, the location of various supplies, etc.  I didn’t feel all that helpful, but I did feel like I was in the twilight zone.  Three years ago (for the fourth year in a row), I was setting up this room and preparing for my own school year.  It was kind of nice, but I think it might have cured my nostalgia.  I forgot how overwhelming it can be to walk into a classroom at the end of summer.  There is much to be done.

A crowded table

This afternoon, I did a bit of schoolwork and then Joyce made dinner and had a few people over (see picture at left).  Then, we walked around to the preview of tomorrow’s neighborhood garage sale.  I got the book Julie and Julia for a $1.  Sweet.

Today was all lump lumping around the house while it thundered and rained outside.  I read, I wrote, I ate.  I like days like this.

Terry's Turf Club

For dinner though, everyone got together and we headed down to Cincinnati (the real and actual city of) to a place called Terry’s Turf Club.  It was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives recently, so my brother-in-law Jeff thought it would be fun to try it out.  The place is a restaurant conundrum if I ever saw one.  It’s all neon signs, cracked paint, giant plastic hamburger, ancient movie theater chairs outside to wait and all sort of other delightfully tacky decorations.  It’s definitely a dive.  But, at the same time it has gourmet toppings for burgers like red pepper and goat cheese sauce, or mango curry sauce or red wine and mushrooms.  It’s confused.  I like that.

Shitake Burger with Mango Curry Sauce

Dan got the burger with red wine and mushroom sauce and, lucky for this vegetarian, they had the option to get a portabella or shitake mushroom burger.  Since I’ve seen and eaten many a portabella burger, I opted for the shitake burger and added the mango curry sauce.  The burger was stacked high with the most enormous shitake mushrooms I had ever seen and the mango curry sauce was delicious, but in my humble opinion, the bun had way too much butter on it.  I felt like I got a mouthful of butter with every bite, which don’t get me wrong, isn’t the worst flavor or anything, but it was almost too rich (in Dan’s words).  So, while I finished the whole burger and enjoyed myself thoroughly, my stomach was really churning for the rest of the night.  Ugh, dive food.  Good thing we stopped at Graeter’s so I could get some mint chip ice cream to calm my stomach.  Oh wait, that’s mint tea that does that?  My bad.

Last night we went to the Reds game.  Yes, it was pretty hot, but we managed to survive.  The Reds, however, did not.  They got beat pretty badly. I haven’t been a big baseball fan since the Indians went to the world series in 1995 (and then broke my heart), but, still, there are things I like about baseball and going to the park made me remember some of those things.

1) Fights!  Oh, yes, I love baseball fights.  I don’t know why it’s sort of disturbingly exciting to see any fight (maybe because it

Fight, fight, fight!

doesn’t happen very often? or maybe it’s just me and my raised-in-the-Canton-hood mindset?), but baseball fights are exceptionally awesome.  Here’s why.  The two guys that exchange words are never the only two to fight.  The outfield comes running in.  The managers come running over.  The whole dugout is cleared and there’s no longer a little fight between two guys, but a war between two teams.  Those baseball players, they may stand around for 90% of the sport, but they ain’t no weenies.  Last night the first batter of the night got into a fight with the catcher.  I thought it was a good omen, turns out it wasn’t.  Worst part?  The first time that catcher (for the Cardinals) was up to bat, we all booed him and then he hit a homerun.  That must have been very satisfying for him.  Anyway, the picture is the view I had of last night’s fight.

2) No cheerleaders.  Yeah, baseball has more dignity than that.  But, I must say that I’m not a fan of those stupid fuzzy monster mascots/nonmascots that every team has now for some reason.  I liked the redlegs mascot, but not the dumb monster.  But hey, at least there weren’t any annoying cheerleaders (speaking as a one-year-only annoying cheerleader).

3) Pop-up foul balls.  I’m not sure if that’s exactly how you say it, but I like when the foul balls go really high and then into the stands.  The going really high part is important because 1) when the foul balls come flying directly at you, you fear you might die and 2) it builds the “Where’s it going to land?  Do I have a chance?” excitement.  Last night I think I saw the best foul ball catch in history.  The ball popped straight up and directly backward toward the windows where the announcers and television people sit.  A few of the windows were open and a single hand, reached out and snatched the ball and then disappeared.  It was so weirdly anticlimactic and mechanical that it seemed kind of like a joke.  It was awesome.

4) Putting the fans on the big screen.  I don’t know why I get kicks from seeing kids staring off in a daze, only to be shaken by their parents, pointing to the screen trying to tell them that they’re on, looking around and then waving like crazy.  Last night they did the “Kiss cam” where they point the camera at couples and then they are supposed to kiss.  It was cute.  But then at the end, they put the camera on two of the Cardinals.  They noticed, stared at the camera for a second, and the one guy grabbed the other and laid one on his cheek.  I like a good sense of humor.

5) The music that each of the batters pick to play when they are at bat.  I think it’s interesting to hear what the players pick and it gives me a few moments to dance in my seat.  I especially like the hip hop selections.  I was very excited, though, to hear that Henry Rolen had picked Viva La Vida by Coldplay.  I can’t resist movement during that song.  If I was up to bat, my choice, hands down, would be Gold Digger.

6) The changing of the pitcher.  I don’t know why, but I think when they decide to change pitchers, it’s sort of regal ceremony.  The manager and the catcher walk to the mound with their heads down, solemnly.  A few other serious looking guys join them.  The pitcher remains calm, nodding.  The whole group exits as the relief pitcher is released from the bull pen.  This is especially fun during a championship series when they have a big closer and they make the release from the bull pen extra dramatic (I’m thinking of good ol’ Jose Mesa!).

7) The slowness of the sport.  I like the fact that people, for the most part, sit casually at baseball games.  Their relaxed state is punctuated only by occasional excitement.  There are nine innings nicely paced by the rituals of the batters and the pitchers, scraping the dirt with their toe, tapping home plate with their bat, taking a couple of slow practice swings, swaying carefully before settling into their own careful stance, while the pitcher tosses the rosin bag and pauses with the uncanny ability to slow down time and capture everyone’s breath before they make their slow-motion pitch that somehow manages to speed up to 90mph.  This goes on through the tops and the bottoms of innings, requiring a 7th inning stretch (which I like a lot).  Being at a baseball games makes it easy to imagine what it felt like to live in a “simpler time” (whether or not that is something that really ever existed).  I like to imagine that as I watch this familiar American scene, it could just as easily be 1920 as 2010.  A few seats in front of us, there was a frail elderly man with wispy white hair, wearing a tailored long-sleeved shirt in the 93 degree heat, holding his grandson (or great grandson?) on his lap watching the same game I imagine he has watched since he was just as small.

An aside: Of course, as I wake from that nostalgic dream, I know that the baseball players of yesteryear were slimmer, hit less home runs (because they weren’t all on steroids), played in stadiums that weren’t named for big corporations and actually wore pants that fit.  Seriously, what happened to baseball pants anyway?  In high school, that would have been number 1 on my list.  Baseball pants.  In the last 15 years they’ve become a little saggy for my taste. 

Sunday night, Dan and I headed south to Cincinnati for the week.  We picked up Uncle Ray from the airport bright and early Monday morning, hung around with the family all day and then took Ray to the mall in the evening to get his new iPad.  He loves it.

Today, I got up early again to run before meeting a couple of my teacher friends for breakfast.  I offered to help them set up their classrooms, but they preferred breakfast.  I know why.  They knew that we would get very little classroom setting up done what with all the yakking that would be taking place.  They are very wise indeed.  So, instead we ate breakfast and yakked it up, most likely annoying the poor waitress who was down a table for a few hours.  But, it was oh so nice getting to tell them how I was doing, hearing about travel, weddings and babies, and listening in on some Very Important School Business.

It reminded me that I’d been wanting to share a story from my first year at Heritage… a puke story, so… fair warning.

My first year at Heritage was my second year teaching, but I had student-taught at Heritage and I was glad to be back at the elementary school that made me feel very welcome, even lucky, to be around such a great group of teachers and a nice crop of students.  It was mid year, and we were coming up on our volcano unit.  I had a great idea.  I would allow students to create volcanoes (that’s not the great idea), but instead of giving them step-by-step instructions, I would let them determine how much of each ingredient to use to construct it.  It would be an inquiry lesson inside of a content lesson and it would be experimental, it would be open-ended and it would be fun.  Before I go any further, it’s worth noting that for one reason or another the classrooms at Heritage had carpet instead of the standard school-issue linoleum.  This is not a good idea in an elementary school where things get spilled and accidents happen pretty frequently.  And, my room had, in it’s first incarnation, housed Kindergartners, so there’s really no telling what was on that carpet.  There were many unidentified stains that I didn’t really like to think about and I certainly preferred that students not even sit on the carpet during group projects or indoor recess.  And as a Science teacher, I did not help the carpet situation.  In fact, I made it much much worse every time I pulled out raisins and peanuts to make conglomerate rocks or filled basins with water to illustrate the way that the plates ride on currents of magma or set up a fake crime scene with carefully (usually) placed drops of fake blood or had that one spaghetti/marshmallow building contest or… well, you get the idea.  The janitor started to enter my room each evening with disdain.  Actually, there’s a really good (bad) story about that particular janitor that I’d rather not go into, but suffice it to say that he wasn’t the typical nice, helpful, kindly janitor… still, I don’t blame him for being generally annoyed by me.

So, back to those volcanoes (now that I’m sure you can guess where this is going).  I gathered up a bunch of materials which included flour, sand, plaster of paris, water, paint, paper towel tubes, and paper plates (that’s all I can remember).  I also created a nice little handout that would “guide” student experimentation.  It was conservative.  Make a plan and test a small amount of each mixture before actually making the whole volcano.  That morning, I lay out all of the materials, students start arriving, and we go through our typical morning routine, unpacking, doing classroom chores, waiting for announcements, etc.  When it’s time, all of the 6th graders head to their first period classroom.

Honestly, I don’t remember anything between the beginning of that first period and the moment I looked around at absolute chaos.  Clouds of flour and plaster of paris surrounded the desks and covered large swaths of the thoroughly soiled carpet.  In other places, the carpet was sopping wet or sand was being ground into it.  Kids were running around with doughy concoctions covering their hands, getting it in their hair and on their clothes.  I shout for someone to go grab a giant trashcan and broom from the cafeteria, so that we can get rid of some of the mess when one student yells, “She’s gonna be sick!”  I look over at a tiny little girl with blunt shoulder length hair and small wire rimmed glasses.  She’s got her hands in a bin of a soupy mixture looking sick and saying something about how she doesn’t like the way the stuff feels.  I tell her to take her hands out and urge her to get to the sink, but just as she takes her hands out and the goop drips on the floor, she leans over her chair and throws up all over that poor, pitiful carpet.  I pause, I look around at what I did, and having no other choice… “Get the janitor!”

A few years later, my room was the first to have linoleum installed.

And so ends week 2 of the exam process.  It rained all day today and I think it helped me work.  I have a tin roof and the sound was so nice, I just got in the zone and read for hours.  Now I’m all set to start writing question 3 on Monday.  This is good.

Tonight, Dan got home and we decided to go to Cincinnati for a visit.  Dan’s going to do some work with his Dad and I’m going to spend some time reading in a new location (and also visiting Ikea to find a cheap chair/table set for my porch that I won’t mind getting stolen).  Should be fun!

Wow, I’ve been a super slacker on this blog.  The last couple of days in Cincinnati were nice.  I ran in the sticky heat and then met up with a teacher friend for breakfast on Saturday.  We chatted all the way until lunch time and it was great to catch up.  Then, I sat around all afternoon at Dan’s parents, trying to read Walden and half-watching some World Cup.  Then, Dan and I ran a few errands and drove by our old house.  I would be lying if I were to say I was nostalgic about it.  It was a good first house and it’s where we spent our first year of marriage, but it wasn’t exactly our dream house.

Today, we went to church and had a Father’s day lunch with the whole family.  Then we headed back to Columbus.  We stopped at the outlets on the way so I could blow my J.Crew gift card.  That was easy.

Four or five episodes of Lost later, and I should be writing my blog about how I read (half of) Walden this week for my challenge, but I think that will have to wait until tomorrow.  I know that all three of you that check this blog on a regular basis will be mightily disappointed, but I swear, I will get to it!

Tonight, Dan and I headed to Cincinnati for the weekend.  We had dinner with the whole family and a cake for my birthday!  A DQ cake made of chocolate ice cream with cookie dough pieces…  Mmm.

Afterward, we all went outside and played cornhole, kickball, frisbee, wiffle ball, catch, and even a fake soccer football game (in honor of the World Cup beginning today) where Dan tried to make a goal between two trees and Cole and I blocked them.  And, we caught a lightning bug.  I love summer (and my birthday).

Check out even more pictures under the piictures tab!

4:50am, our alarms go off simultaneously.

Dan, “Why does Cincinnati have the earliest marathon ever?”

It’s raining outside, but it’s light and I’m hopeful that we will have a lull for the 6:30 start time.

I have all of my gear laying out, bib pinned to shirt, chip fastened to shoe.  I put away my watch and iPod band.  It’ll have to be a no electronics race.  I don’t want to risk damaging either one.  So, I get dressed.  By the time I’m all ready, Dan, Pete and Joyce have gathered in the kitchen.  We grab coffee and our umbrellas and head south.

On the way downtown, we see lightning and the rain picks up.  I update my facebook status and see that the race is a go.  That’s good news.  “At least it’s not cold and rainy,” I say to Dan, trying to stay positive about this race that I love.  It’s about 60 degrees out.

We end up having to wait in a long line to get off of the 5th street exit, but we make it to the garage under Fountain Square with 20 minutes to spare.  We all hurry in the pouring rain to the start line.  I hear the countdown when I am still a little ways away, so I shed my jacket, hand it off to Dan and give a wave to Pete and Joyce.  I find a gap in the fence and hop in amongst the thousands of runners, drenched before the race even starts.  Lots of people are wearing trashbags and start to jettison them within the first two miles.  Everyone is forced to slosh through puddles, hats dripping, pants sagging from the weight of the rain, and yet even in the midst of a pretty crappy day, they laugh, make jokes and generally make the best of things.  I love runners.

We cross over into Kentucky.  I see a little kid with a sign that says, “Go Mom!” and I smile.  Someday.  I feel pretty good, my breath is even, and even without my electronics, I am enjoying the run.  I think it is the collective good vibes of the crowd.  By the time I get to the hill entering Eden Park, I’m feeling like I’m slowing down a bit.  The rain stops for a while, I pass Elvis, grab some gatorade at the top of the hill and start the descent back into downtown.  My socks are soaked and are starting to get a little uncomfortable.  I hear a couple of guys behind me, “My hammy’s are killing me!”  “Yeah, this is some weather, huh?  Are you going to make it?”  “Oh yeah, I’ll make it.”  I start to feel grateful that I’m healthy and running.  I can run.  I’m thankful for that.  I also think of my hubby and in-laws waiting at the finish.  Life could be worse.

Two miles left and I’m still feeling pretty good.  I pass another couple of little kids going crazy with noisemakers.  It makes me laugh and I approach the “finish swine” without much of a push at the end.  I get my medal, grab my water, banana, and bagel and meet Dan, Pete and Joyce at the porta-potties as was the plan.  We make a break for the car.

One more (half) marathon under my belt and it feels kinda great.

4th Flying Pig medal

Yesterday I woke up in Akron and went to bed in Cincinnati.  After Katie’s confirmation, Dan and I stayed the night with my mom.  She took the next morning off of work and made us pancakes.  Isn’t she nice?  Then, we headed back to Columbus so Dan and I could get some work done in the afternoon and then, we headed further south to Cincinnati for the weekend.  I’m running the half Flying Pig marathon on Sunday and we’re also celebrating mother’s day with Dan’s mom.  We’re getting pedicures together this afternoon (me, Dan’s mom, and Dan’s sister… not Dan).  This morning though, I’ve been at Panera eating and doing as much schoolwork as I can.  I feel like I’ve made pretty good progress, but I’m stuck on my analysis of my (soon to be very old) blog study.  How can you just say “Everyone’s sort of different,” or “Hey pal, it’s complicated?” That doesn’t seem like a finding.