Happiness is…

“…two kinds of ice cream…finding your skate key…telling the time! Happiness is learning to whistle, tying your shoe for the very first tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime!”Sorry! Got a little You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown there, but every time I hear someone say “happiness is,” my brain starts singing. Turns out, according to the CDC, happiness is living in...
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Into the Wild

I’m playing hooky today and tomorrow for one of my own personal children…Frack and the fifth grade class are having their class campout. This means mimi is in for a decidedly unglamorous overnight trip. No makeup, layers, and Lord knows what else. Of course, it’s raining–Murphy’s Law lurches into effect whenever a momentous occasion such as this one presents itself....
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Whither Work?

Teachers tend to be of two models: vampires or early birds. I’m in camp II. I hauled myself out of bed this morning just after four a.m. to do some paper grading, and lo and behold, our web-based gradebooks are down. They were down yesterday at this time as well, according to another teacher. If regular server maintenance is scheduled between four and five in the morning, they’re...
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Newbery Update: 1950s

I’m at the halfway mark now, much later in the year than I’d planned. I need to get crackin’ if I’m going to meet an end-of-the year deadline. Then again, this is the decade where things start to sound a bit more familiar. :The Door in the Wall by Marguerite de Angeli – Another de Angeli work of historical fiction, Thee, Hannah! was a childhood favorite, so I was...
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Logjams

mimi has finally had a breakthrough of sorts. I had to go all low-tech, printing out a calendar, but I can see holes in ye troublesome mauscript and now have some inkling of what to do with them!See, this is the trouble with a NaNo book. You get so busy lunging from beginning to end, you don’t see the pitfalls because you skip right over them. I’ve set a book in the fall and given my...
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