Thursday, September 07, 2006

a man's point of view

Hello all. Mindi has been asking me to pen a few words here on the blog. So without further ado, allow me to recount the last several weeks.

Mindi has started a new job. She is the 7th grade English teacher at a middle school in Howard County. Before classes started, the Abster (that is our code word right?), well she helped Mindi and I move Mindi’s school supplies from her old school in Northern Virginia to the new one in Elkridge, MD. The Abster also helped us arrange the desks in the new classroom and even tried one out for size – check out the pic.




Things are same-old same-old for me at work – making those flavors so you can all enjoy your flavored sodas, teas, cereals, you name it.

Now that both of us are working, the Abster is in daycare (The Goddard School). She really likes it and we do too. The teachers there are nice and fuss over her, which she doesn’t seem to mind. The Abster sets her own schedule though, and plays by her rules. When it is nap time, she likes to play. When it is arts and crafts time, she likes to nap. After the first art class, all of the other parents got a sheet of colored paper with some crayon markings on them. Ours was blank!

The Abster is up to four teeth – two on top and two on bottom. We’re already looking for a good orthodontist since she seems to have what I am learning is called the Harrod gap – this mountain of a space located between the top two front teeth. For those dental experts on the blog world, I believe it’s called a diastema.

Sissy is doing well. She’s about to turn four and already talking about a birthday party. On our last visit, I stayed with her in WV (didn’t have enough time to come back to MD). We toured the Organ Caves with our own private tour guide – this was nice since he tailored the tour to our pace. “We” got tired about halfway through so had to turn around. One of us had to carry the other one, so let’s just say it was quite comforting to see the daylight.


A few weeks ago, we visited some friends in NJ. We’ll call them Ed and Jenny – names may be changed to protect the innocent (or maybe not). We enjoyed our time with them, and mainly chilled and relaxed. We spent a few hours with them at the beach. There was a serious game of Trivial Pursuit played one evening, guys against gals – and let’s just say that one of the teams wasn’t afraid to look at the answers before giving their response to the question. Hmmmm.


Labor Day weekend we spent up in New York. The Abster was with Gamma in Richmond, so Mindi and I had a weekend to ourselves, actually we met up with some of my old college friends there, so it was just the four of us. It was a great time, we did a ton of things in just a few days – went to a Yankee’s game, saw the Broadway show Hairspray, did shopping on Fifth Avenue (Mindi “needed” something from Tiffany & Co. – something she had just happened to pick out before our trip to NY was even started), went to FAO Schwartz, Times Square, and a nice restaurant where I tried rabbit for the first time. On our first night in NY, this crazy fella came up to us in a bar. One of those guys that wants to tell you his story and you can’t shake. Well we finally shook him (thanks to the help of the manager), but the next day this guy crossed our path again on the way to the Yankees game. Fortunately we saw him before he saw us. Just when we thought we had seen the last of this guy, he popped up again. This last time though was where we least expected it. We were watching the Today Show on Sunday morning, the show they film in Rockefeller Center. Well there he is, standing there in the crowd, eagerly looking into the camera as if he was looking for us. It was really crazy – he found himself a good spot.


One last shout out to my good friend Marty. He sent the Abster a 1-yr birthday card, we received it today, and in it scribed a note that said that he was sorry that he missed her party. The Abster doesn’t turn 1 until November and we haven’t even started planning yet, but I guess this is Marty’s way of saying that he won’t be able to make it.


That is about all I can think of for now. Ciao.

Teaching is Hard

I'm have been teaching in some capacity since 2003. I started out as a substitute teacher and did that while I went BACK to school and g...