Loving teaching.

After an exhausting day at school today, I was carrying my tired self and many bags of homework to the parking lot when I spotted a few of my students. At first, I figured that it would be "uncool" for their teacher to say hi...then I figured, hell with it, and called out a hello.

"Hey, Ms. A!"
Some fussing in the group.
"Hey, don't I have your class tomorrow?"
"Yeah, you do!"
"See! Told you I did! Are you gonna be there? If you're not there I'm not going!"

Aww. They do like me. And I like them back--there's definitely a sense of "those are my kids!" developing along with the overwhelming sleepiness. Teachers have such early bedtimes.

Hum.

Today was a sprint day--that's not terribly unusual, one of those usually comes every week. I run at a middle school a few blocks from my house: there aren't many kids hanging around the building after school, so I can train without worrying about my students coming over to visit.

The street runs parallel to the part of the field I run on, so occasionally there will be another jogger or a dogwalker, a family out for a stroll, or other similar company. Today, there were a few people like that, but one unusual visitor in particular.

A car paused at the stop sign just before the school as I finished one leg of sprinting and jogged back to the start. I thought it was a little weird that this car hadn't moved from the corner, but wrote it off as a lost driver. Reaching my start cone, I stopped, pivoted, and took off for another sprint.

Now, it may have been that the driver suddenly realized where he was and continued on his way past the school...but I'm going to choose to believe that he wanted to race me instead. (He won. Oh well.)

Just another instance of the universe sending just what's needed.

This has been making the rounds on many blogs I read or am considering reading, and I love it enough to take it for my own.

Beautiful day for a walk.

After a week of century-plus heat indices, last night's rainstorms brought things down to a brisk 90 degrees or so. It was perfect for running errands: little brother and I picked up food supplies for the fields tomorrow. (I even ordered everything in Spanish!)

I found some time to explore this new place called home, too. Collegetown is very familiar to me, since I came of age there, but I have no idea what to do in my own hometown as a grownup. When are the best nights to go out? What's the best coffee shop? Which bookstores have the coolest recommendations? Where can I find some knitting buddies? These are pressing questions.

What a perfectly portentious portal.

I passed this school on my walk today, after three glasses of perfectly cold iced tea and perfectly lovely conversation in a local cafe. They say red doors are lucky...having them on a school seems appropriately hopeful. The rest of the neighborhood was beautiful, old houses with lots of charm and varying amounts of upkeep, mainly divided into apartments or rental units. I'd always figured on saving my money instead of "throwing it down the drain" of rent, but walking by places like these (whose property values are astronomical, I'm sure), I start getting mightily tempted to drain a little cash. Very soon, I'll have a job to support the place I live and the style I choose...within reason, sure, but if having an apartment on a beautiful street is a priority, I'll spend accordingly.