A New Take

I try to keep the blog away from work -- seems best for everyone involved -- but I have to say, I'm really enjoying my new job. Science education and outreach is fun. And it's a blast from the science past.




Boyle's law. What was that again? Remind me how to solve X, Y, Z equation or talk slowly, with sincerity and common language about a difficult subject? How do I walk into a room full of 12 year olds and captivate their attention?

The last one was especially disconcerting before, but I'm getting more comfortable and found myself last week (at a middle school science fair) actually going up to a group of kids (middle schoolers rarely travel alone) to ask them about their projects. Some were really excited to show you, others were more subdued. Just getting them to talk opens them up pretty quickly. And conversations can go anywhere since 12 year olds rarely have an inner monologue (or filter). Dare I say it, 12 year olds are pretty hilarious.

So my job is fun and challenging and it's different everyday. Lots of science and lots of talking. I'm still learning the teaching ropes and probably will be for some time. I have a lot of respect for teachers, even more so now -- especially the ones who can captivate a classroom and control errant behavior with ease. My friend calls it crowd control.

I got a bunch of books at the library to read up on some strategies for teaching K-12, especially those written for substitute teachers (who, like me, don't already have a personal relationship with the class they are assigned to teach). Hopefully that will speed things along.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the poster that one of the middle schoolers made for the science fair we judged last week. Pretty funny.

Plunk

I dropped my wallet in the toilet this morning. Worse still was fishing the wet puppy out. Ew.

Ibuprofen 9, Ken and Lisa 0

Lots of work recently for both of us. But we're mostly caught up now, thanks to the 3 day weekend. Here's the weekend in review:

Friday night
We went out for dinner with some friends and then went "cosmic bowling", i.e. drinking beer while bowling in the dark with spinning colored lights. I got my highest score ever -- 118. It was exciting.

Saturday
Went to a garden & patio show with Emily that morning. I bought two new "friends": a red currant and two lingonberries. I am excited to have more fruit in the yard. Especially since they come back year after year.

Red currant


Lingonberry



After the garden show, I baked off some ciabatta bread that I made the night before and we took it over to Mindy's for a scrabble tournament. We'd never done a scrabble tournament before -- neither had they, but it was fun. 8 of us; double elimination. We had a round robin first to determine seeding: 1 minute per turn, 30 minute max. It was very stressful. I much prefer the 2 minutes per round that we had for the actual tournament. I ended up coming in third and I knocked Ken to the loser's bracket. Fun night overall.

Sunday
This was a big gardening day for us. It was 50 and sunny. We cleared a big mound of rock and dirt out the backyard (the new portion we bought in the fall). Then Ken went to his football game while I added a stone border around one of the beds. It had been on my "to do" list since last summer. When he got back, we ate fresh bagels that I made for lunch (I didn't know bagels were so easy to make). Then we built a two-bin compost area out of cinderblock in the backyard. It is ~14 square feet and I got to dump all of my yard debris into one of the bins. It felt good to clean up.

Monday
We were sore when we woke up. Lots of digging plus moving 60-some cinderblocks will do that. Ken went to the store and bought some posts and concrete to build part of an arbor (for the grapevine) and extend a fence (to cover the compost). While Ken was at the store, I laid stone around another border and trimmed my roses. Ken laid the posts and cut the wood for when the concrete cured. We both sufficiently ached.

I went to the store to get some project materials (not gardening related), but on my way I passed Portland Nursery so I stopped in to see if anything was new. Oh behold. I bought three new friends:

Evergreen Huckleberry


Gooseberry (Captivator)


Nugget Hops



I planted them all when I got home. Then we ate more ibuprofen and went to bed around 10. I am still sore. It hurts to walk.