assigned seating

small-town Massachusetts

If you can't quite read it...the left bench is "Democrats" and the right is "Republicans."

(Photo credit to my professor.)

frogs and pennies

(Boston's Freedom Trail)

I was very much looking forward to seeing the site of Robert McCloskey's Make Way for Ducklings.  However this is what the lagoon in the Boston Public Garden currently looks like:

Me at the Frog Pond.  No water, again, but at least there were frogs.  (Angela and Tommy.)

Paul Revere's grave.  Tradition is to put a penny on it because he was a copper smith.

little pink things

This is sushi.  I have had sushi before, but not quite like this.  In my previous sushi-eating experience what you eat is chopped up very small and mixed with other chopped-up-small things so you aren't exactly sure what you are eating.

This time I was very sure that what I was spearing with my chopsticks were hunks of raw fish.  I could tell they were different kinds of fish too.  Not just because of color; they tasted and felt different.

After-picture, because it was tasty.  I'd do it again.

I'm pretty convinced those little pink things are fish eggs.  I normally would finish everything but they tasted sour and salty and something-else and I wasn't quite in the mood.  (Oh, the green dollop is horseradish...didn't finish that either.)

...What would my fifth-graders say if I brought this to lunch?

U.S.S. Constitution with Boston skyline

dead ends

Sometimes dead ends are the right ends.

For instance, when they end at the Atlantic Ocean.

(Manchester-by-the-sea, Massachusetts)

last week

Texas.  (I had never seen palm trees before.  I stood wide-eyed looking at the one in the schoolyard.  The sixth-graders stood looking at me and laughed.)

Oklahoma.  (At my sister's college.  The sun went to bed.  We didn't.  I kept thinking, "How did I do this in college??")

Nebraska.  (Why hullo, spring.)

Hay look -- it's Christmas in March!