:: p-dog ::

In other news, this is old but crazy funny. (If you're okay with a little profanity.)

:: Leslie H - 3:13 PM - ::

Our place is all set up and beautiful, and I love it.

I've mentally been in August for a few days, now. This morning I made a to do list for the coming week that basically consists of reading every teaching book, resource packet, and training binder that I've accumulated over the past year, and taking copious notes. It's helping to quell my nightmares, make me feel somewhat prepared for 8/25, and get a little excited about starting over again. I'm feeling pretty good about the prospect right now.

:: Leslie H - 1:58 PM - ::

Many apologies for the delay in posting. We've been in transit, but that's no real excuse--Bryan managed to post days ago. I'll refer you to his website for an account of the move itself.

I really love our new place. Aside from being 20-30 minutes away from my work and friends, and a good hour for Bryan to commute on BART, I'm thrilled. We're to the point where everything is unpacked and more-or-less set up, just some arrangements and hanging tasks left before it looks like we've lived here for years, minus the dust and bugs of long-term residence.


Bryan in the truck, half-packed (Saturday, circa 4:30pm).

Moving was a pain, but we're recovered. Check out pictures of the process, and some of the new place, all set up, on gallery. The apartment (is that the right word? It's two-stories, more like a townhouse.) feels gigantic. It's over 200 square feet bigger than our Santa Clara place, and having the second story makes it feel like a real house. It feels bigger to me even than the Enfield house, because unlike that house, I belong in and use every room. The kitchen is much more open than the normal dark hallway of an apartment kitchen, with a nice big window over the sink and a convenient ledge for my light-starved houseplants. All the windows look out on trees. And the patio, Bryan determined, is large enough for yoga. So, really, what more could we want? (Other than a washer/dryer in the unit, a second parking space, and a city with a little more pizazz than Fremont, California.)

I highly encourage visitors, though wild parties are out because, as I discovered yesterday, we live in the unit next door to the property manager.

Not much is going on in my life, other than frequent dreams/near-perpetual anxiety about school. I estimate that by the time I actually begin the year, I will have had two dozen dreams about the first day. August 1st is looming, the date by which I vowed to start planning in earnest for the year. The good odds I will have some of my students from last year again is a significant contributor to my angst. Since this past year I taught 7th and 8th grade, and next year I'll just teach 8th, I'll probably have 12-15 of my students again. Something about the idea of seeing those particular faces (and I have very specific ones in mind) is especially daunting. I want to start fresh with strangers, and carry with me none of the psychological scars of the past year. I want no student to remember how much I sucked.

:: Leslie H - 1:56 PM - ::

Well, Bryan and I move tomorrow. The best apartment in the world is (almost) all boxed up. Tomorrow we rent the U-haul and drive it all to Fremont. This will actually be my first U-haul renting experience. I've always had obliging parents, or friends with large-enough vehicles (memories of fitting that couch in the back of Danny's van...). I've also never had quite so much furniture. I've also never been moving in tandem with someone else. :)

Anyway, I'll be out of internet-touch for a few days--our cable/internet won't be turned on until Tuesday, so call if you need to reach me. This past week I spent madly scrapbooking (my largest scrapbook yet, completed in 5 days--record time), and then madly packing. My back hurts a little. And for those of you who think scrapbooks have to have little stickers and festive borders, I assure you that mine are nothing like that. So don't worry that I have lapsed into some weird state of cutesy. Unless by "stickers" you mean "blasphemous quotations," and by "festive borders" you mean "porn." (Less of both those in this newest scrapbook, actually. I miss college.)

My new address, for all of my internet stalkers out there, is:
4141 Stevenson Blvd. #325
Fremont, CA 94538

I demand visitors.

:: Leslie H - 9:22 PM - ::

We've hit the midpoint of summer, so, naturally, I've gotten a head start on freaking out about the fall. I like to stay on top of these things. Bryan and I move to Fremont in a week. In order to jumpstart my packing and planning for the coming year, I started work on "Teaching Middle School: The Scrapbook," and it's actually been quite calming. I had been imagining the contents as pictures of my students, student work, defunct To Do lists. But as it turns out, I've got many more pictures of travel and friends than I do of students. Assembling the detritus of my year has reminded me that it has been very rich. Trips to ski and scuba dive, many visits to and from friends and family, amazing outings in the Bay, making new friends, living with Bryan for the first time: much of it was quite wonderful. I'd bet that if I let selective memory do its work, by the time I'm 30 I'll be looking back fondly.

I just got back from our Institute visit to L.A.--more on that soon. We basically giggled for 48 hours. It was awesome.

:: Leslie H - 9:52 PM - ::

Yay for us! Bryan and I went on a quest today and found an apartment in sunny Fremont. The town itself actually improved on acquaintance, too. It's not totally a tractless wilderness of cookie-cutter apartments. There are strip malls, too.

Here's an exterior shot of our new home, at an ideal sort of spot in central Fremont.



The coolest thing about it (okay, the only cool thing about it) is that it's 2 stories, so we get to feel a little more like we're living in a house. Nice patio facing a stand of redwoods, open kitchen, 2 bedrooms upstairs, and a fantastic price. Aside from no washer/dryer in the unit and no sun for our dying plants, we're excited. We move in two weeks from today.

:: Leslie H - 6:08 PM - ::

Bryan and I have both taken to talking aggressively at the flies as we stalk and kill them. I just heard him yelling in the kitchen, "I am going to kill your fly-ass. That's right, bitch! BAM! BAM!"

:: Leslie H - 7:47 PM - ::

I know! I've been lousy at posting. I've actually been lousy at doing anything. I haven't left the house in three days. And it's been glorious.

Last weekend was a blast. Bryan and I fled city life with my good friend Johanna, who took us to her adorably weird hometown of Sebastopol, CA. We stayed in her mom's guest house, a converted watertower, and took lots of naps. Good times were had by all: Bryan got to eat sushi and jump on the trampoline; I got to pick blackberries and play with half-grown cats; Chester the dog got to try to eat fireworks. Johanna was a very sweet hostess and carted us all over the region to go wine-tasting, see fireworks, and visit the windy Pacific. Then we capped it all off by taking advantage of Bryan's end-of-the-year gift--a massage at a swanky spa. I'm already trying to concoct excuses to go do that again.

Pictures are, as always, available on gallery. They're pretty but rather unexciting--nearly half involve someone napping or rolling in the grass. Well, the grass rolling was mainly Chester the dog, but we saw his point. There is a great video of Bryan on the trampoline.

Aside from that, I have little to report. The most excitement I've had all day has been battling the plague of flies that has invaded our house. I've been lunging at them with my broom and increasing rage; they've been spontaneously generating themselves, hiding in wily places, and coming back to life. I have also: cleaned house, cooked, crocheted until I ran out of yarn, finished the shirt I started sewing in Dallas, and otherwise wallowed in fiendish domesticity. I'd have made an excellent housewife in the 50s, as long as my husband was deaf. And blind.

Here's a picture of Johanna and I trying to stay warm at the beach.


Bryan's been updating the look of overt, and he borrowed my school laptop to check out how it looked on Windows IE (bad, as it turns out). Then he informed me he was going to do some serious updating on my computer, as it was so behind on security updates that it was a danger to itself and to others on the internet. I told him I never really used it to get on the internet. He said, "Good--you would have lasted 5-10 minutes. Nothing would have been *apparantly* wrong with your computer, but you would have been spewing spam emails for a Russian crime syndicate." I thought that had a nice ring to it.

:: Leslie H - 5:18 PM - ::

Little sister Cameron is engaged. (Check out the pictures.) How old am I?


(Many congratulations.)

:: Leslie H - 8:26 AM - ::