Valentine's Day

At the high school this day is usually chaotic at best. Girls expectin, boys deliverin, helium gas going into the student body balloons at full blast. Its got to be Heather's idea of a nightmare.. she has loud pop phobia. Students running aroudn campus delivering huge unmanageable balloon bouquets to a sea of red colored outfits.

This year it was somewhat subdued. The is significantly less available cash for such stuff. Balloons in 25 mile an hour winds are not too acceptable. One may student sidled with about 6 of them (a very small quantity) got ticked off at them and started poping them one at a time. At Merced High the Ag department with their flower arrangement class, became the sole distributor of real flowers on campus. This would have been great for them except the proceeds were purloined around second period. More then a hundred dollars.

I always thought the the ultimate subtle revenge for an almost ememy would be to burden them down with so many balloons that they could not take the bus home, they would have difficulty getting into a car with them and that they would want the recognition that so many balloons would engender. Talk about killing them with kindness!

I bought Sue a little mini yellow rose bush from Loews. I had spotted them on an earlier foray. Unfortunately the wind was working its magic and it was not the perky little plant that I had seen eariler. It worked however.

Tonight I went to Costco and bought some shrimp for dinner. Viet Nam tiger shrimp. They were 10 dollars a pound and I bought a pound and a half. I cooked them with some olive oil and butter, with some garlic thrown in. Once they were pink I pulled them out and reduced the sauce (no corn starch) and at the last moment I tossed in some capri tomatoes. Yum. We had some potato patties from the mashed last night and some fresh asparagus. We only had 4 shrimp left after we ate our fill. Sue was hungry for shrimp and so it all worked out great. Sue loves their frozen lattes there. I bought five and brought them home and put them in smaller cups to be refrozen in the freezer.

Today I was working my classes with associations. They worked to name 15 things that were purple. This is difficult for them. Once we got purple down we went on to red (much easier) and white (the easiest). I pointed out how they could take a word that was up the board and think of other items that would go with that one that could be the same color. Cars.. think trucks...both could me purple... or white or red.

Then I divided the class up with even and odd numbers and we played a game. The color was tan. Each team came up with 20 things that are tan. Tan was a new concept for some of them. Then they prioritized the items on the basis of uniqueness. What are 10 that the other side will not have. Most of the time they guessed right and the other side did not have the supported item on their list. They enjoyed learning how to work together, (some of them could not) and the whisper communication (if the other side heard they would know what that side was thinking) and the general illusion of competition. It kept me up at the board writing entries throughout the period.

Tomorrow is a minimum day for one school (the morning school). Each period will only be 30 minutes. Usually they are 50 minutes in length. I think that we will be working on notable structures of the world. We have worked with the GG brige in SF, the arch in St. Louis, and the Empire State Building. Europe was represented by the Eiffel tower. I am going to introduce the leaning tower of Pisa and the Taj Mahal in India tomorrow.

I hope you had a great valentines day all you valentines of mine!

Love
Pat