Okay, I Teach Geography and I Didn't Know This.

Did you? I thought it was just a little bit cool. We learn something everyday.

The Equator Freak Zone


Plus, it is a cool website to browse around.

Down in Flames.....

You know its a bad teaching day when a student says: "Ms. SoThereThen.......you going down in flames." And it wasn't a threat, but rather......a comment on my teaching for the day.

In my defense, it was last block and I had a pounding headache. (That really doesn't defend me, now that I think about it. But it makes me feel better on the inside. So.)

There was not anything supes dupes abysmal, I just kept making dumb mistakes. like spelling "pollution" (it just took me three times before spellcheck said I had it friggin' right!!!) like this:

polullution.

And then correcting it to:

poluption.

I shit you not. Then, I kept mixing up letters in a word.......not when I was spelling, but when I was TALKING!!! Like my brain was moving faster than my mouth and the message got lost on the way out about the order of the letters.

Then, I spelled "fridge" like this:

fige.

What is going on?!?! I am losing all credibility. The students were having a bunch of side conversations (Usual, coming back from a four day weekend) and I felt like I was herding cats. I tried to re-group by saying, "Let's keep the ball rolling and keep the wheels from coming off the cart that is this class...." and that's when I got the Smackdown.

"It's your fault, Ms. SoThereThen, we can't concentrate with how weird you're being. (I kid you not.) It's your teaching. You're going down in flames today."

Which made me bust out laughing. It was true and while there are some that would gasp at their audacity, I think it is okay. It was in a jesting, kidding way. I laughed and then told them that there job is to still be focused. I will turn my ship around eventually, but they still have tasks in front of them regardless if I am being loony or not. And that worked. And they worked. And it was fine.

Going down in flames....ha! That's funny; if only they knew how some days were held together by a fine, fine filament of a threat......I meand thread. I eamn, I mean threa. Thread. Those typos are NOT, I repeat NOT, on purpose. My brain is on vacation. I need to be done with words today, I think.

Drying peppers....the lazy way.

I have a crap load of hot peppers. Mostly because a salsa pepper plant was mislabeled as an Italian Roaster plant at the nursery. It was also quite productive. There is no way we could go through the amount of hot peppers that the garden produced. It was a repeat of ZucchiniGate '04. I could put these on the radiator on a cookie sheet, but I can't have them sitting out that long as we have the house on the market and I don't want to deal with them should we have a showing.
Some are still green, and I might roast those. My housemate when I lived in Santa Fe would add roasted green chilies to her chicken soup. It was phenomenal. These two pictures were taken after I took out the red peppers to dry.
The last batch I did about a month ago, I took out the veins and the seeds. I am going to leave them in this time as see what happens in terms of drying. The heat of a hot pepper is in the veins and the seeds, so I already know this will be a much more heated batch. I cut the stems off and cut them in half. I arranged them willy-nilly on my favorite half cookie sheet from my mother in law, cut side up. Putting them in the oven on the lowest setting is what we want. We are trying to mimic the sun naturally drying the peppers.
This is after two hours at about 180 degrees.
After three hours. The edges are curling, the color is deepening and my whole kitchen is starting to smell like roasting peppers, even though we are not roasting.
I took out the small peppers before putting the sheet back in the oven. I don't want to burn them. I am going to let them cool down to check if they are brittle enough. I can always put them back in. What we are looking for is dried, completely, all the way through. We don't want them to mold. That would be bad. Very bad. I have to wait for them to cool completely in order to check that. While they are still warm, they are kind of bendy and leathery. Once they cool, it is a much more accurate check.
This is after four hours.
This is after five hours. Same temperature. I usually set the timer for an hour, just so I don't forget them and end up burning the house down. That would be bad. Very, very bad. I would probably get in trouble for that. I, apparently, am not to be trusted with candles either. I love candles.
These are the few that I took out a while ago, and it is the next day. You can see how they are a little translucent. We like that. Not all are going to be like this, especially if you leave the veins in, as some pepper varieties have thicker, meatier walls than others. I have four different varieties in this batch. I am not a Militant Freakshow about keeping the varieties separate. I don't think I will use even all these, but we have a friend, with whom we smoke meat, who makes his own meat rub mix. I can always get in good with him if I show up with a jar of dried peppers for him to grind into a powder for rubs.
This is after six hours and, again, the next day. On first look, I think they were in too long. But, it is a test and we shall see how they crumble.
These are the few that I left out. They are such a purty color of red. I like putting them in glass jars an putting them up on the shelf with my dried beans and other supplies that are also in glass jars.
I ended up putting a few peppers back into the oven for a couple hours. They were kind of sticky when I went to crush and crumble and I thought they had too much moisture (Ish. Hate that word.) still in them. I got a half jar of crushed red pepper flakes...correction: chunks. I like it chunkier, you can always crush them up into tinier pieces or even put them through a spice mill or coffee grinder to make chili powder. If you use your coffee grinder, run a couple batches of white rice through first to clean out the coffee.

Weekday Morning.

This is the kind of fall morning I love. A little bit of frost in the front lawn in lower areas, the lake calm, still, a couple ducks resting momentarily....the trees across the lake changing, crisp air (it was 36 at this point: 8 am) bright sunshine, leaves on the still green grass. And I don't have to go to work on a school day. I love that.

I can do puttery stuff that doesn't relate to school. As it should be on a no school day. I am drying hot peppers from the garden (different than roasting; a post is coming on that.), I pickled eggs, I made a farm breakfast for us, I cleaned out my cabinet of cookbooks. I went through and organized all the recipes I had in a three ring binder: got rid of the ones that I know I will never use, have used and didn't like, bothered me because they were old Weight Watchers recipes and didn't taste good (There are some really good ones that I have kept) and put them into categories. Then, all the annoying loose recipes, magazine pages and cards from friends that were all crazy unorganized were put into the binder as well. I found four recipes that I thought I lost.

This kind of activity is as satisfying as making lists and crossing things off them. I am preparing the nest for winter. I sure love fall.

Phoning It In.

I heart test days. We have a short week because of MEA (Statewide professional development convention......I have never been. Our district doesn't require it, so I have never really been motivated on my own to go.) and today was the last day of the week.

It is usually the day where I give a big world map test re-take and then the kids don't have homework over the long weekend. I always hated the teachers that would assign a huge project or paper over a long weekend. I try not to be "that" teacher too often.

Some kids have already tested out and passed the test, so they had a study hall. The ones that were taking the test, were a little stressed. A few were "sick" and a few were not accounted for. In addition, many of the students that passed the first one, were taking the PSATs today, so it was nice that they were not missing anything crucial by being gone.

Every block--the whole block, 90 minutes, was used by at least one student. Blessed quiet. Blessed productive-ish work. The majority of the kids did better, some much better, on the second test. Some did not.

From a teaching stand point, there was a whole lot of not much direct teaching going on today. AND......I was able to get them all corrected before I left, so I ALSO do not have homework. Not true. The end of the quarter is in two and a half weeks, I will be teaching a new class (Western Civilization) next quarter and I have read exactly one section of the first chapter. Yikes. It takes a lot to plan and prep for an entirely new class. So. That is what I will be doing over much of my long weekend.

That is really, truly one of my least favorite parts of being a teacher. I get extremely jealous of those folks that can leave their jobs at their job. When they metaphorically punch the clock, they are done.

Eh. I won't have the alarm going off at 5:30 tomorrow morning. I will probably still friggin' wake up at 5:30, but I don't have to get up then. Yay.

The Smoking.

A year ago (?) we began smoking meat with a couple of friends. Seriously. It just tastes so much better. I also would like to point out that I use the term "we" loosely here. This is the first smoking of 3, maybe 4, that I have even seen. Up until this one, it has a cult-ish, secret initiation type vibe as it was much talked about, and unseen by mine eyes. I saw it mostly because it was our turn to host it at our house and foot the electrical bill. (Which was so not as bad as I thought it would be.) Turns out the actual smoking consists of checking the thermometer a bunch of times, futzing around with draft holes, and drinking scotch. And maybe or maybe not shooting air rifles at targets. Now I realize that not everyone is going to do this as it takes a lot of time to prepare and a ton of time to smoke it. Not that I would know, a fact for which I am extremely pleased. Here are a couple shots from the last smoking, or meating. I like both terms interchangeably.

I believe in this picture, there is some rubbing of briskets. I have never tasted anything so good meat-wise after tasting this for the first time. I have no idea how much they smoked, but I think we ended up with three briskets in our freezer, which is a little too few for my comfort.
This was stuffing the casing for the salami. Which, by the way, was phenomenal. As a sidnote, the immature gal in me giggles at this picture. I had no part in creating it or planning for it or the actual smoking of it. And that's the way I like it. Because I was useless in the process, I can gush and ooo and aah over this meat. I'll provide food and booze for the smokers until the cows come home. I have heard allusions, stories and other sordid tales that the womenfolk (Throw in a facetious air quote here, please) might be invited (again......air quotes.) to help this time. Ironically, we might be put on overnight shift. Ah, no. You really don't want someone in charge of a 24-48 hour process whom has a great deal of trouble making it past 9 pm on a school night.
These are three pork bellies (I seriously never knew that pork bellies really existed. I just thought it was something made up for "Trading Places".) Again, Iwill never go back to store bought bacon if I can have any say whatsoever about it. These are actually hanging in the smoker.
These are briskets on the left in front and also on the right with the fat cap facing the other direction. Behind those: summer sausage. We have given away a couple sausage bits, but I don't think we have personally eaten any of the summer sausage we made. I'm not really a summer sausage fan. Country sausage, sure, love it. Bratwurst sausage, yep you betcha. Summer? Eh. Reminds me of those Hickory Farms Christmas packages/boxes that my dad would get every year with the mini jars of jam and mini pinwheels of cheese. Most sausage I like without complaint.

Attempted Lockdown.

When Sophie isn't sleeping when I am home.....which is like 92% of the time I am here---she is after all, a bajillion years old--she is usually putting me on Lockdown. This consists of following me from room to room. If I sit on the couch, it is sitting right next to me on said couch. At least until she wants the spot where I am sitting. Then, she will bark or come and give me the prison stare and THEN bark. Specifically blowing her death breath in my face whilst barking.

If I am moving around from room to room too much for her liking, she may give up on the one-on-one D, but will position herself strategically in the house, say..........in the hallway where she can see the den, dining room and both entrances to the kitchen.....oh and the door to the basement. I guess in case I get real creative and go to the basement to sneak out the Bilco door. So.

Lockdown might mean that if I am at the dining room table, she will come and lay on her side so that her body is up against my chair so she can feel if I move my chair to get up. Then she is bolting up out of a dead sleep to see where it is I think I am going.

It also might mean that if she sees me put on my sunglasses, pick up my purse, or get my keys....putting herself bodily between the door and me.

It might mean looking at me in an Orphan way.....or at least what I interpret is orphan-esque. It might just be gas. Or stifling a yawn. (Occasionally, if I come back into the house right after such an exchange, she is already up on the couch snoring. So. There's that.)

Whatever it is, I love her to bits and I don't mind that she gets a little crabby at me for not being around last week. Plus, we have Thursday and Friday off this week, so I will be around more than usual. So. There.

Protesting.

I am fighting the urge to make a list to quell the looming sense of overwhelmed. I am protesting the fact that the world doesn't stop if something like last week happens. The friggin' grass still grows. Clothes still get worn and need to be washed. Food still gets eaten and needs to be replaced by grocery shopping. Sophie still sheds hair that needs to be dealt with. Good lord, does it need to be dealt with. Hair balls the size of oranges hover and float as you walk by stirring up a faint breeze. Sometimes, if you make a large enough breeze and maybe don't look so closely, they just vanish. Disappear in a puff of smoke. (Did you see that? I just lied right to your face. They don't disappear. They never, ever, ever disappear.)

Maybe the first thing I would put on my list, and I am most certainly not going to make a list....but, if I WERE to make said list........the first thing I would probably put on it is to brush my teeth. For sure. Aim high, love, aim high.

I have conceded that I will most likely not be correcting papers today. Which is fine, I am okay with that. This past year I have loosened my death grip upon myself and the completely nutso obsession with correcting things and getting them back to students as soon as humanly possible. Why? Why would I feel this need? There are those high strung students that have to know yesterday what they got on the test they finished last block, there always will be these students. I was not really one of these students, so I can't really identify with this obsession......so why do I feel the need to ease their stress immediately at the cost of my having my own time of an evening? Nutso, I tell ya, nutso.

I have also arranged for the two neighbor twins to mow the lawn. Of course, it is supposed to rain today and I have yet to bring down the key for the garage. All in good time, my good man, all in good time. So mowing the lawn is off the list that I am not making. I don't even know where a pencil is in this house and everyone knows that if you make a list it must be in pencil. Pencil just sounds better on the paper than pen when you are decidedly crossing off a completed task.

If I were making a list, which I absolutely refuse to do, I would probably put a bajillion loads of laundry on the list somewhere near the top. Fine, I kid. Maybe three-ish loads of laundry. That doesn't seem so bad.

I had defrosted one of the two hambones from last week's baptism (We are "witnesses"....not of the Jehovah variety, but of the baptism variety. Easy mistake. I've never been a witness before. I grew up Roman Catholic. We had godparents. But then I quit Roman Catholicism. So, who knows what happens in religious type circles these days.). So. Ham Bone. I was going to make split pea soup today. Except when I went to look in the Hoosier cabinet, no split peas. So, I would have to go to the store...and that would definitely mean making a list because we have put the kibosh on going to the store for "just one thing". That is when the Impulse Buying Monkeys starting flying out my butt. Not really, but I tend to spend more than if I had a list. (I love lists. I really feel like making a list, but I have already declared today a list free Sunday.)

A colleague of mine lent me her Steam Shark or her Shark Steam or some weird name because it doesn't really look like a shark so I am not sure where Euro Pro came up with the name, but that is neither here nor there. Anyway, in order to not be a schmuck, I should use it and return it this week. But, first I would have to sweep and then swiffer........dog hair and dust respectively.....before I could Steam Shark. Can I make that a verb? Before I could Shark? Before I could Steam? Before I could Sharkenate?

Where do I begin? With gin? I keeeeeeed. It's only 10:57 in the morning for cripes sake! Everyone knows that 11 am is more acceptable. Imagine how much I would get done on my hypothetical list if I put gin at the top. I bet I would have a lot more fun doing a half assed job on all things listy.

My head swims less with a list. I can see progress instead of being overwhelmed. I can cross things off. And then forget about them instead of trying to remember everything like the storm window that needs to be repainted before it can go back up on our second story bedroom window from when we had the air conditioner in this summer. That kind of crap that gets forgotten and then suddenly someone is up a friggin ladder in a blizzard. Swearing. A lot. Christ. That does need to get done before that stellar moment appears.

I wouldn't need to put going to the hospital on my list. I won't forget to do that. Hopefully, a jailbreak has been thwarted today.

Surfacing.....

I have missed you. I have missed being able to blog. I have missed a normal day. I have missed downtime.

We have had a week of a lot. My dad had complications from a surgery a month ago surface late Thursday night. Admitted to the hospital. Friday, had a heart attack while in said hospital. Monday had triple by pass surgery. Thursday back into surgery to deal with said complications from last month's surgery. Today, out of the ICU.

A small, tiny, almost inaudible cheer goes up from the crowd. Cautiously. I am quite convinced that he will be okay as his stubborn is coming back, his color is coming back and when I told him he was a little crabby yesterday--in a lighthearted teasing way--he kind of giggled.

I love that man. We don't really tell each other, much less enough, those private heart feelings.......but man, do I love that man. He is my idol in so many ways. Generous. Kind hearted. Intelligent and wise...you don't always get that package deal, ya know? Goofy. Goofy, goofy and goofy in the best way a person possibly can be.

I am very glad that he is still around for a while. Things feel like they can be getting back to normal again soon. I can see the wheels turning, "I don't care what the doctors say, I am out of the hospital tomorrow."

I wouldn't be surprised in the least if he attempts a jailbreak. Mooning everyone in his hospital gown onthe way out. Only half on purpose.

How Could Your Mood Not Be Improved....

....if this was a daily view for you? It doesn't even have to be Florence to be mood enhancing, I would settle for almost anywhere in Italy as a sure fire mood alterer. I've always really liked this panorama of Firenze. Of course, living there is different than being on vacation there. But, conveniently, my brain blocks out all the headaches that go with living in another country. Even when I am there. It just seems less irritating???

Actually, sometimes the little buggers of daily life can sometimes get blown up in another country. You crave normalcy. You crave things "working"....or at least the way in which you area used to them working.....good or bad, you know what to expect in your home country and are usually not disappointed.

But.....that's the adventure. That is the exciting part. Sure. It is also the pain-in-the-ass part, but I kinda like the different-ness of it. The confusion. The "mystery" of how to do something that natives don't even think about, and you are confused beyond words. Learning the ropes, becoming an old hand at something that was once a frustration; I like that process of becoming accustomed to the differences and not being phased by them anymore.

I can't imagine a time in my life where I won't want to live in another country because of this reason. It doesn't mean I hate America, it doesn't mean I have an unfulfilled life, it doesn't mean I am running away from problems or issues or past mistakes.......Listen, some people play golf. I daydream about travel and living abroad. It is a hobby that I occasionally have been extremely fortunate to be able to live out.

Dunk Tank Update.

It. Wasn't. That. Bad.

Mostly, well all, because they heated up the water. They ran a hose from the school kitchen, hot water tap on full blast, and filled that puppy up. (Tax dollars at work, folks. I certainly am not complaining in this case, mind you.) That first dunking was like a warm bath by the time it was my turn. The second, however, was much more pleasant. MUCH. Because.......once you are wet, then the cold air isn't so pleasant. Really, not at all, if I must be completely honest. But there were so many kids that were hell bent on dunking a teacher that I spent most of my turn IN the water rather than perched above it. Which was rather nice.

Although I think cheaterpants who pretend to be coming up to pick up the thrown balls and really they are there to hit the seat release lever with their hand should get in trouble. Really big trouble. I'm not talking expulsion here, but a very firm talking to by someone. Who isn't dripping wet. Being dripping wet just makes said student giggle with glee. There was no chagrin, no remorse, no regret. Just giggling. Gleefully. Maybe even in the neighborhood or a cackle or two.