12-11-2010

We have one more week of school until winter break starts.   I’m looking forward to spending a few weeks with my wife back in Wenatchee.  When she asked me what I wanted to do when I got home, everything I thought about involved eating.  And if it didn’t involve eating, it was sandwiched between eating.  Yes, I know I just used a delicious combination of meat, cheese, mayo and bread as a verb. 

This past week I said a phrase that I’ve never said before.  No, it wasn’t, “No thanks, I’m full” or “I think I’ve had enough to drink” or “Now that I look at it that way, I can see how I was mistaken”.  As I was sitting at my desk looking out the window, I said “What a beautiful sunrise this afternoon!”  The shortest day of the year is still a week and a half away, but it does take awhile for the sun to come out now.  The horizon starts to lighten at about 10:30, but it takes until after 12:00 to fully come over the horizon.  Even when it does, it doesn’t get very high in the sky, like in the summer.  It hangs just above the horizon, uneasy to stray too far in the sky. 

Last week also included Pearl Harbor Day, 69 years after the attack.  I asked the class on Tuesday morning what had happened 69 years ago.  I don’t think anyone watched CNN that morning because the only answer that followed was “that the dinosaurs became extinct”.  I guess their teacher should get on the ball and teach them something.  I had told the class earlier in the school year that I had been stationed at Pearl Harbor, so of course they all wanted to know if I was there during the attack.  I hope I convinced them with a time-line that there were many years between the attack on Pearl Harbor and my birth.  Now I have to convince one student that when I was born, dinosaurs were not roaming the planes; they were busy being oil. 

With less than a week until I head south, I’m trying to decide how to pack.  I will have to wear my cold weather gear because we are below zero here, and it looks like it will stay that way for a while.  I need my parka and boots for the plane ride to Bethel, but I don’t want to wear them once I get on a big plane, since they take up a lot of room and aren’t very comfortable.  But I need them incase I have to stand outside at one of these little airports here.  This decision will take up most of my time between now and when I leave, so at least I’ll keep busy.  Plus I’ll have to decide my meal plan when I’m home.  Maybe if I’d spend as much time planning what I will teach as I spend planning what I will eat, my students wouldn’t confuse me with the Flintstones. I’ll get to that right after I figure out what I’m going to make for lunch.