I put up a group of photos from the harbor of Puerto Vallarta in Flickr.
My sister wrote a valid comment in Flickr that the one photo had too much of a phallic flavor to it.. and guess what? That photo is somehow not available on Flickr anymore.
Coincidence? I think not. Its amazing how a comment will automatically throw a photo off the viewfinder. As you know the comment was perfectly innocent and so was the photo. There really wasn't anything phallic about he photo at all.. it was just symbolic in her eyes.
Flickr is being very careful about what goes up.
I guess that if it takes that.. so be it..
: ) Pat
Saturday, March 7, 2009
The Chair is Fixed!
Stuff like this is ongoing so to expect that it will stay like this forever is foolish.. but the chair is fixed.
Sue was sort of leaning toward taking it up to Turlock to the repair guys.. it may still need to have the brake repaired..but the handle works and the hex nut is secure under the handle so that it won't move.
The first thing that I had to do was to remove a half a roll of tape that we used to get it through the cruise. By the way, that is a pretty handy thing to bring along.. a roll of electrical vinyl tape. It can me used for all sorts of things and the request for it at the desk with the American English learners could be problematic. So pack some on your next cruise!
It would also be good to pack a phillips head screwdriver in the bag for other kinds of emergencies.
: ) Pat
Sue was sort of leaning toward taking it up to Turlock to the repair guys.. it may still need to have the brake repaired..but the handle works and the hex nut is secure under the handle so that it won't move.
The first thing that I had to do was to remove a half a roll of tape that we used to get it through the cruise. By the way, that is a pretty handy thing to bring along.. a roll of electrical vinyl tape. It can me used for all sorts of things and the request for it at the desk with the American English learners could be problematic. So pack some on your next cruise!
It would also be good to pack a phillips head screwdriver in the bag for other kinds of emergencies.
: ) Pat
Clear Bright Saturday Morning
There was a little fog earlier this morning. That is a little unusual for this time of the year. Last week should have been warmer.. it wasn't. There is promise for today.
Grades are due this week. This is a major drawback to doing classes with my students. I have a feeling that as long as the grades are okay they really don't care whether they are A's B's or C's. In the long scheme of things it really dosen't matter. Most of my students are trying hard. They are so needy in so many ways academically. Motivation has to come from other areas than grades. Still grades are required to be turned in.
I have been working on a Puerto Vallarta cathedral photo. I have one that is vertical which is nearly perfect. It has tall palm trees in the front of the photo. The horizontal is somewhat problematic because it shows wires, has an idiot like me taking photos in front of it and has red and white radio towers. Careful editing and some sky cloning is in order.
Sue's chair is in total disarray. It started going bad on the ship and has continued to exhibit problems. The arm rest that controls the speed and direction of the power chair is coming off of its support. I need to go find some screws (again) and strengthen its attachment to the arm support. Sounds like a great Saturday project.
I hope that the bees find the weather to their liking. I have not seen any bees working on my trees this year. The pluots are through blooming and the peaches and apricots and hoping for a marvelously warm weekend.. and so am I.
: ) Pat
Grades are due this week. This is a major drawback to doing classes with my students. I have a feeling that as long as the grades are okay they really don't care whether they are A's B's or C's. In the long scheme of things it really dosen't matter. Most of my students are trying hard. They are so needy in so many ways academically. Motivation has to come from other areas than grades. Still grades are required to be turned in.
I have been working on a Puerto Vallarta cathedral photo. I have one that is vertical which is nearly perfect. It has tall palm trees in the front of the photo. The horizontal is somewhat problematic because it shows wires, has an idiot like me taking photos in front of it and has red and white radio towers. Careful editing and some sky cloning is in order.
Sue's chair is in total disarray. It started going bad on the ship and has continued to exhibit problems. The arm rest that controls the speed and direction of the power chair is coming off of its support. I need to go find some screws (again) and strengthen its attachment to the arm support. Sounds like a great Saturday project.
I hope that the bees find the weather to their liking. I have not seen any bees working on my trees this year. The pluots are through blooming and the peaches and apricots and hoping for a marvelously warm weekend.. and so am I.
: ) Pat
Friday, March 6, 2009
Mixed Bag
Today I started with 4 intakes at a junior high.
I explained the program and had a chance to ask questions of the speech and lang that serves one of the junior highs in town.
It was a great opportunity to see the students of next year and their parents.
When I returned to school, I taught my students about story boarding the movie, Wild Hearts cannot be Broken. We had a couple of multiple meaning words that worked themselves into the discussion. I explained the difference between a carnival and a county fair.
The story board is a form of a current "in" thing in education. The fancy name for these things is a visual graphic organizer.
The final period I was able to test a student that is doing well enough to be considered for exiting from the speech program at the high school.
All in all it was a pretty good day.
Check out the story board from my white board in the flickr postings. I just put it up this afternoon.
: ) Pat
I explained the program and had a chance to ask questions of the speech and lang that serves one of the junior highs in town.
It was a great opportunity to see the students of next year and their parents.
When I returned to school, I taught my students about story boarding the movie, Wild Hearts cannot be Broken. We had a couple of multiple meaning words that worked themselves into the discussion. I explained the difference between a carnival and a county fair.
The story board is a form of a current "in" thing in education. The fancy name for these things is a visual graphic organizer.
The final period I was able to test a student that is doing well enough to be considered for exiting from the speech program at the high school.
All in all it was a pretty good day.
Check out the story board from my white board in the flickr postings. I just put it up this afternoon.
: ) Pat
Its Friday and all the Angels rejoice
Its Friday in the valley and almost everywhere else.
Friday is a day to make sure you got done everything you wanted to do this week.. or..
Today I am off to do intakes at the Junior High. There seems to be fewer coming in next year with speech services on their IEP.
This week brought some very bad news to some teachers. Some in our schools were told that they were not coming back next year. This is not the layoff because there are no funds kind of thing. This is officially a "non re-elect". So some of us suspect it might be because of the budget. People in management are coming down to take the jobs of non permanent teachers because their management job has been eliminated. Some of these people have not been in the classroom for 4 or 5 years. Many have been advising people in the classroom. They may be in for a rude awakening. In normal years they would seek administrative jobs in other districts instead of taking the pay cut to come back into the classroom line of fire. Our district is starting a new model next year based on RTI. This could also confuse the mix. In the mean time the non permanent teachers are left gasping for air and seeking jobs in other districts that may or may not materialize in August.
Our painting class was a lot of fun this week. We are starting to explore new options on watercolor paper. This week we did some collage building on gessoed watercolor paper. We were using all kinds of packing and trash to build texture on the paper. Next week we will be painting on it and starting another new project. In the mean time Kate is exciting about some successes in local juried shows. Yeah Kate! We are having a great time and Sue is getting out to do something every week. This week she even walked from the parking lot to the art room without a wheelchair. It was a bit a stretch to get back to the car in the evening but she did it with a couple of resting periods.
Its hard to believe that we are still in drought condtions with all of the rain that we have had this week. A lot of the rain just soaked into the parched soil with little runoff in the lower elevations.. that is us.
Have a great Friday..
: ) Pat
Friday is a day to make sure you got done everything you wanted to do this week.. or..
Today I am off to do intakes at the Junior High. There seems to be fewer coming in next year with speech services on their IEP.
This week brought some very bad news to some teachers. Some in our schools were told that they were not coming back next year. This is not the layoff because there are no funds kind of thing. This is officially a "non re-elect". So some of us suspect it might be because of the budget. People in management are coming down to take the jobs of non permanent teachers because their management job has been eliminated. Some of these people have not been in the classroom for 4 or 5 years. Many have been advising people in the classroom. They may be in for a rude awakening. In normal years they would seek administrative jobs in other districts instead of taking the pay cut to come back into the classroom line of fire. Our district is starting a new model next year based on RTI. This could also confuse the mix. In the mean time the non permanent teachers are left gasping for air and seeking jobs in other districts that may or may not materialize in August.
Our painting class was a lot of fun this week. We are starting to explore new options on watercolor paper. This week we did some collage building on gessoed watercolor paper. We were using all kinds of packing and trash to build texture on the paper. Next week we will be painting on it and starting another new project. In the mean time Kate is exciting about some successes in local juried shows. Yeah Kate! We are having a great time and Sue is getting out to do something every week. This week she even walked from the parking lot to the art room without a wheelchair. It was a bit a stretch to get back to the car in the evening but she did it with a couple of resting periods.
Its hard to believe that we are still in drought condtions with all of the rain that we have had this week. A lot of the rain just soaked into the parched soil with little runoff in the lower elevations.. that is us.
Have a great Friday..
: ) Pat
Monday, March 2, 2009
Puerto Vallarta
Every time I have been to Pv it has been delightful.
I was up early in the morning as we docked a little before 8am. I took a series of photos of the Carnival ship, Pride coming into to join us in the tiny cruise section of the port. The steamy tropical mountains rise above the mist in the early morning. The layers of mountains around the port seperate out and spread before the development. Right in front of the ships park is the local Walmart. I have not been in but I heard that it is somewhat different than stateside's Walmarts. There has been significant development since were we were here last. More condos are built or being built, Cranes dot the new city sections.
The cruise park has great expanses of lawn around the dock. The park is completely fenced in and is secure. A long series of white tents usher the disemarking guest to the taxi and tour bus turn around.
When we first got to Puerto Vallarta the air temperatures had risen another 10 degrees. Many of the first people off the ship were a little older than we were. They were headed back to the boat when we were getting off. It is so nice not to have to tender. These people came on the boat looking tired and said that it was too hot to go ashore. Sounds like a tale for mid February. It was warm when you go off the boat, but once you put your hat on and felt some of the ocean breeze it was wonderful.
Sue got a chance to get off again and took it. She had a great time shoping for a mexican dress, some sandals and a little jewelry. I tagged along and through the merchants off balance. They didn't know who they were bargaining with mammacita or pappa. We had a great time. After mom had had enough, we got her to get some food aboard ship for lunch.. its always nice to have a spot to provide basic sustence and liquid. I had a marvelous lamb shank.
On the way back to the ship I spotted an atm. My ATm card from the credit union worked! It didn't on the ship. So I pulled out the maximum I could at one time.. in pesos.. 1,000. It pitched them out in two 500 peso bills. The exchange rate is 15 to one so the 1000 pesos was really 65 American dollars. So we worked with pesos in the afternoon as much as possible. The merchants were less happy to deal in pesos although after most of the bargaining in English in the morning the merchants translated it with a calculator to pesos and all the receipts were listed in pesos. The 15 to one ratio is a little harder to figure than you would expect. So I basically figured from the 1000= 65 ratio and that means the 500 equals 33 dollars.
Mom was happy to get some rest, while the girls and I set out to walk the river walk shops. Under the canopy of wild exotic trees were a group of wild iguanas that lived up in the trees. They have red highlights on their combs. The shops that follow the walk are particularly nice with everything you could imagine in in stand level crafts. There were also a couple of very nice stores that contained a rather select artisan set of crafts and Mexican pewter. The girls and I found some very nice treasures in a couple of these stores.
We also found a very cool restaurant/bar that looked out over the walk. It looked like a very nice place for a cool drink. The bar was advertising two for one happy hour.. so we got happy. I was wondering how we were going to do the two for one bit especially since we were strictly top shelf margarita drinkers... and there were three of us.. No problem man.. they brought us six. We sipped and watched the crowd walk by. It was getting late afternoon and people were gettting past their siesta. Linzi asked the manager where she could mail a postcard that she had made in Cabo with me up on the deck. He asked the waiter and pointed and described a place back up the walk to the swinging bridge and over to the grocery store. She found it and made it back to finish the drinks.
Heather fell in love with a ring in the silver store and the proprietor had no probems with a mix between my leftover pesos and a few American dollars.
The ride to the river walk in the suburban like truck was 3 dollars each. The driver took 7 passengers form the ship. One passenger was headed to a bar a little further out, he was charged 4 dollars. We were charged 4 bucks each to get back to the ship in a little Honda. The three of us was enough to get the taxi driver to make the run.
The end of the River Walk put us on the ocean. The Malacon fronts the ocean in PV. There are some cool galleries and some really classy stores along the way. Of course it is also the home of Senior Froggs.. the most marketed designer tee shirt/bar/restaurant in Mexico. Apparently there are Senior Froggs both of the coasts and not unlike the hard rock cafes, collecting the ones from the different locations provides some folks a chance to buy something Mexican. We enjoyed the walk at dusk along the other side of the street where the public sculpture meets the ocean.
So we had a great time in PV. Everyone in the family got to enjoy a little taste of it on shore and the port did not disappoint.
: ) Pat
I was up early in the morning as we docked a little before 8am. I took a series of photos of the Carnival ship, Pride coming into to join us in the tiny cruise section of the port. The steamy tropical mountains rise above the mist in the early morning. The layers of mountains around the port seperate out and spread before the development. Right in front of the ships park is the local Walmart. I have not been in but I heard that it is somewhat different than stateside's Walmarts. There has been significant development since were we were here last. More condos are built or being built, Cranes dot the new city sections.
The cruise park has great expanses of lawn around the dock. The park is completely fenced in and is secure. A long series of white tents usher the disemarking guest to the taxi and tour bus turn around.
When we first got to Puerto Vallarta the air temperatures had risen another 10 degrees. Many of the first people off the ship were a little older than we were. They were headed back to the boat when we were getting off. It is so nice not to have to tender. These people came on the boat looking tired and said that it was too hot to go ashore. Sounds like a tale for mid February. It was warm when you go off the boat, but once you put your hat on and felt some of the ocean breeze it was wonderful.
Sue got a chance to get off again and took it. She had a great time shoping for a mexican dress, some sandals and a little jewelry. I tagged along and through the merchants off balance. They didn't know who they were bargaining with mammacita or pappa. We had a great time. After mom had had enough, we got her to get some food aboard ship for lunch.. its always nice to have a spot to provide basic sustence and liquid. I had a marvelous lamb shank.
On the way back to the ship I spotted an atm. My ATm card from the credit union worked! It didn't on the ship. So I pulled out the maximum I could at one time.. in pesos.. 1,000. It pitched them out in two 500 peso bills. The exchange rate is 15 to one so the 1000 pesos was really 65 American dollars. So we worked with pesos in the afternoon as much as possible. The merchants were less happy to deal in pesos although after most of the bargaining in English in the morning the merchants translated it with a calculator to pesos and all the receipts were listed in pesos. The 15 to one ratio is a little harder to figure than you would expect. So I basically figured from the 1000= 65 ratio and that means the 500 equals 33 dollars.
Mom was happy to get some rest, while the girls and I set out to walk the river walk shops. Under the canopy of wild exotic trees were a group of wild iguanas that lived up in the trees. They have red highlights on their combs. The shops that follow the walk are particularly nice with everything you could imagine in in stand level crafts. There were also a couple of very nice stores that contained a rather select artisan set of crafts and Mexican pewter. The girls and I found some very nice treasures in a couple of these stores.
We also found a very cool restaurant/bar that looked out over the walk. It looked like a very nice place for a cool drink. The bar was advertising two for one happy hour.. so we got happy. I was wondering how we were going to do the two for one bit especially since we were strictly top shelf margarita drinkers... and there were three of us.. No problem man.. they brought us six. We sipped and watched the crowd walk by. It was getting late afternoon and people were gettting past their siesta. Linzi asked the manager where she could mail a postcard that she had made in Cabo with me up on the deck. He asked the waiter and pointed and described a place back up the walk to the swinging bridge and over to the grocery store. She found it and made it back to finish the drinks.
Heather fell in love with a ring in the silver store and the proprietor had no probems with a mix between my leftover pesos and a few American dollars.
The ride to the river walk in the suburban like truck was 3 dollars each. The driver took 7 passengers form the ship. One passenger was headed to a bar a little further out, he was charged 4 dollars. We were charged 4 bucks each to get back to the ship in a little Honda. The three of us was enough to get the taxi driver to make the run.
The end of the River Walk put us on the ocean. The Malacon fronts the ocean in PV. There are some cool galleries and some really classy stores along the way. Of course it is also the home of Senior Froggs.. the most marketed designer tee shirt/bar/restaurant in Mexico. Apparently there are Senior Froggs both of the coasts and not unlike the hard rock cafes, collecting the ones from the different locations provides some folks a chance to buy something Mexican. We enjoyed the walk at dusk along the other side of the street where the public sculpture meets the ocean.
So we had a great time in PV. Everyone in the family got to enjoy a little taste of it on shore and the port did not disappoint.
: ) Pat
Sunday, March 1, 2009
Just a lIttle walk this AM
I had my camera in hand.
Dad always laughed at grandma Nelly (mom's mom) because she always wanted to be a photographer. She had a brownie camera and enjoyed taking photos of her flowers. She literally had a quarter of an acre of roses in front of her house in Palisade. She moved on up to a Ansco 120 twin reflex camera that the photographer looked down in the ground glass and focused the image on a 2 and quarter inch paperbacked film. It was a heavy camera that swung from her neck with a neck strap. There were a few settings but it was pretty simple. The classic quote comes from my grandfather Bayard. When she was futzing with the camera and worrying about the results, grandpa would say,"Just leave it the way the man sold it to you!"
And so now we are in the digital age of photgraphy, and once again there are no rangefinders and we are popping off photos from a "digital groundglass." The more things are different the more they are alike.
Check out my new additions to the flickr photostream. There are some photos of the dogwood in bloom as well as the start of the Bradford Flowering Pear tree collection.
Have a great Sunday!
Pat
Dad always laughed at grandma Nelly (mom's mom) because she always wanted to be a photographer. She had a brownie camera and enjoyed taking photos of her flowers. She literally had a quarter of an acre of roses in front of her house in Palisade. She moved on up to a Ansco 120 twin reflex camera that the photographer looked down in the ground glass and focused the image on a 2 and quarter inch paperbacked film. It was a heavy camera that swung from her neck with a neck strap. There were a few settings but it was pretty simple. The classic quote comes from my grandfather Bayard. When she was futzing with the camera and worrying about the results, grandpa would say,"Just leave it the way the man sold it to you!"
And so now we are in the digital age of photgraphy, and once again there are no rangefinders and we are popping off photos from a "digital groundglass." The more things are different the more they are alike.
Check out my new additions to the flickr photostream. There are some photos of the dogwood in bloom as well as the start of the Bradford Flowering Pear tree collection.
Have a great Sunday!
Pat
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