Sunday morning coming down

Hi everybody. Well, this morning, we checked out of the hotel (they let us leave the car there until noon, though), then got breakfast at Cafe Noir. Sweetie enjoyed his latte, too. I had pain au chocolate, which is SO WRONG, but I love the stuff... I like that place. I would definitely go back.

My first session was another principal of a small school in San Diego. He was talking about ways to personalize your school, to make kids feel a part of a community. It was enjoyable, and he had a lot of good ideas. I definitely thought about things like having t-shirts with our logo (I'm stil pushing for us to be IS/ES, International Studies and Environmental Science, instead of IES, International and Environmental Studies. See, if you turn that slash into a lightning bolt, it's INSTANT COOL). He asked us for other examples, and I asked whether our "ugly tie day" would count. He LOVED that, and even brought it up at the panel discussion later.

My second session was with one of this year's teachers of the year. His workshop was on poverty and how it affects our kids in the classroom. I had read a lot on the same subject before, like Ruby Payne's book. It's interesting stuff, but most of it wasn't new. I did, however, like some of his practical ideas for teaching register (i.e. the language you use for certain situations).

The final thing was the panel discussion. It sounded dull, but they were doing a drawing for free registration to the July conference in Maui, so I was like "what the hell." It was, in fact, pretty dull. The problem with panel discussions is that if there are seven people on the panel, ann seven feel like they have to say SOMETHING in answer to each question, whether they have anything important to say or not. SO one question takes like ten minutes to answer, and they just end up repeating each other. Lame. And I didn't win the drawing. Interestingly, when I was putting my survey in the basket for the drawing, one of the ladies sitting at the table was like "I was at a session with you earlier. You were really taking a lot of notes!" I answered pleasantly, "well, if my school is going to send me to Monterey for the weekend, I figure they should get something out of it." But I wondered, would she have said the same thing to a 50 year old guy in a suit? Was it the nose ring or the funky hair? It was a little... condescending, kind of. I mean, hell yes I take good notes! Why isn't everyone else?

Then I went to the little shop where I found a cute dress on sale yesterday, but it didn't fit my apparently wine-barrel-sized ribcage. It fit my waist fine, it was just my giant torso that the dress wouldn't accommodate. Then I met sweetie and we got the car and went looking for a place to have lunch. Since "Turtle Bay Taqueria" had a parking lot, but all its spaces were for some laundromat, we went to the Paris Bakery. I had a sandwich that was better than it looked. The bread was really fresh and good, and it had jicama and carrots. A lot of veggie sandwiches go really overboard on cheese and avocado, thinking that a veggie sandwich could not possibly be good without them, but this one just had small amounts of each for a nice balance. Then we each got a sweet! I had a "chocolate triangle," which was sort of a shortbread-y almond thing with chocolate on it. Plus we got to eavesdrop on a wannabe librarian who can't get a job. He was really sad and pathetic, but what was worse was that he and an older female companion were there with a Japanese (?) woman who was not talking much, and the way they were talking to her, it was clear she was not an American. They had, and I am not kidding, probably the longest conversation about the Brady Bunch I have ever been privy to. And it went into great detail and they spoke with great reverence about the show, its cultural impact, and Barry Williams. I am not fucking with you when I say that part of the conversation went like this: "There's an actor named Barry Williams. He was a child star, or, not a child, but perhaps an adolescent when the show began. He was on a show called the Brady Bunch, and he played the eldest of three brothers." Later there was some talk from the older woman about having choreographed a dance to "Sunshine Day." We were sitting right next to them, so I'm sure you can imagine the kind of bug-eyes we were making at each other to indicate "Can you believe this shit? Are you listening to this?" while pretending to enjoy our sandwiches in comfortable silence.

Then we drove home. It was fairly uneventful, although we did stop at Casa de Fruta. Casa de Fruta is a glorified fruit stand, but over the years it has gained Casa de Restaurant, Casa de Choo-Choo (a train ride for the kids), and Casa de pretty-much-whatever-you-could-want. It's goofy. But I got a bottle of Pomegranate wine and some taffy. I love that place -- they have like four thousand bottles of olives. It was so cold in there that the olive oil was all solid!

Which brings me to... California is having a cold snap. It's fucking cold. I don't like it. It's cold all over. My car has an outside temperature gauge, and the warmest it got anywhere we went today was 51. Now I know, that's not like someplace in the midwest, but... but we're in California!!

A few other notes: Teachers like free food. At the exhibitors' tables, many of them had candy out. I think the unspoken rule is that you have to listen to at least part of their sales pitch to earn your candy, but many people just wander by, grab a handful of M&Ms, and keep walking. I feel bad for the salespeople. Also, they put out bagels and pastries, and if you weren't movin' fast, they were GONE.

Also, I know it's all too common -- everybody leaves cell phones on during big group events. It just irks me that it happens in gian groups of teachers. Know why? 'Cause it's SO hypocritical. Like, if THEY were teaching in front of a group, they'd go ballistic if a kid's phone went off. They'd say "It's very rude to have your phone ring in class. It's completely disrespecful of my teaching." And yet 20 phones must have rung during one focus session, and a bunch of those people took the calls and went outside. Hmph.

That's about it, I think. I had a nice time. Take care, everybody!