#306: Getting paid to play

I LOVE eight graders!  

Today we learned about constant rates of change, and students punched a balloon for a set period of time to come up with their own personal rate of change.  They. Loved. It.

I had loads of kids ask if they could have the balloons after school. They were utterly fascinated. The really funny thing is that each kid got to punch the balloon for a minute. Literally one minute. 60 seconds.

But that was enough. The fun was on!

I get paid to play!!

#305: Princesses!

Disney on Ice. Frozen. Front row. So much of me makes sense with kids in my life!

#304: A Happy Halloween!

Oh my gosh, I love Halloween now!!  I never thought much of it as a kid because I always felt so awkward and didn't have too many friends to go with and was not social in general.  [I DID love eating all the candy, however!]

When I moved to Boise I bought lots of candy and carved Jack-o-Lanterns and waited all night and got two or three doorbell rings all night long.

All along the way, if I did get invited to a Halloween party, I would make very little effort at putting together a costume, partly out of not-knowing-what-to-do-ness, partly out of self-consciousness and partly out of not-doing-it-well-enough-ness.

Oh, and I would ridicule those that WOULD dress up, because making fun of people is far less painful than showing up and feeling uncomfortable myself. [This habit was used on anything I felt awkward about doing myself, btw.] I would show up late and leave early, often standing self-consciously around the food table, not knowing what to do.

This year was not like that at all! The theme was gnomes. I dressed up. I arrived late but with candy in hand. I was comfortable in my own skin. I talked to people I didn't know. I passed out candy and saw amazing costumes [Btw, what is up with all these little kids dressed in Grease and Wizard of Oz costumes?].  I had so much fun!  It was the kind of fun I was always looking for in the past when I made different [read: not good] choices. After passing out candy, I went to another friend's house and got to watch baseball with friends. Again, feeling comfortable in my own skin and so happy to be alive!

Not the house I was at, but very cool

#303: Beautiful sunrises

#298: Dublin Dr. Peppers

I'm a Pepper! Are you a Pepper?

My recent visit to Texas got my brain thinking about those gems that are not necessarily Texas, but are specific to Texas: Blue Bell Ice Cream (the best ice cream in the country); Whataburger; Taco Cabana; and of course, Dr. Pepper [the greatest beverage ever. EVER.]

I know I've spent a lot of time in Ireland, but this time I mean Dublin, TEXAS. It's here:

For well over 100 years a small bottling plant in Dublin, TX bottled Dr. Pepper using Imperial Pure Cane Sugar rather than High Fructose Corn Syrup. For a long time, they were only available in Texas and so hard to find my aunt would ration my allotment when I visited. 

Imagine my surprise, then, when out to lunch in Boise at Jenny's Lunch Line when I noticed, among the other specialty colas, a small, glass bottle, retro Dr. Pepper-

However, when I was researching this fantastic beverage for this blog, I learned some very, very sad news. Dublin Dr. Pepper is no more. Since 2012 (Wow, have I not been paying attention!), the Dublin Bottling Works has not been bottling the famous beverage since Dr. Pepper decided to pull out after a dispute with the bottler.

It is very, very sad, but what a fantastic beverage it was! And if you are lucky enough to find Dr. Pepper made with cane sugar instead of HFCS, you are lucky, indeed!

#297: Scrabble

SCRABBLE!!!

Benefits:

• Brings families together (Scrabble World Championships every holiday in Dallas between myself and Aunt Debbie)
• Learn new words!
• Learn to follow rules
• Learn to live with changing rules when other players make up new ones in the middle of the game
• Begin to think of words in points: "That Zig Zag on that picture is pink. That's 10+1+3, or is G worth 4?..."
• Learn to add quickly!
• Train yourself to always look first for the Triple Letter in all you do (Triple points at Starbucks?)
• Scrabble parties!
• Goes great with wine!

Downsides:

• Can pull families apart [read: Aunt Debbie not talking to me because I beat her for first time in years]
• You may start counting words
• You may start having long pauses in conversations as you calculate the points in the words you are going to use
• People may stop playing games with you because they are afraid they will never beat you
• May cause fatigue after all-night tournaments in Dallas with Aunt [see above] accompanied by serial episodes of The Tudors and classic movies.
• People may stop coming to your parties because you only want to play Scrabble

#296: Full Moons

The moon was SO humungous tonight, even MY phone found it in pictures. I'd heard it was a Harvest Moon, but upon further investigation I discovered it is not. The Harvest Moon is the closest full moon to the fall equinox, which this year was September 23rd. The Harvest Moon coincided with the Lunar Eclipse a little while back.

Turns out the full moon in October is called the Hunter's Moon! Although my pictures don't show it, it was stunningly beautiful ad enormous.  For a really stunning picture of the Hunter's moon, visit the blog AJ Buruca.