Dilemma

Every once in awhile I see stories on the news of those bad, bad teachers who have bad, bad relationships with students. Now with Facebook and Myspace and everything, it gets even trickier because teachers are friends with their students on those sites, and lines get all blurry. Everytime I see those stories I feel thankful that I am never planning on teaching people older than 12, and should therefore never run into this problem.

But yesterday I got a Facebook 'friend request' and then a follow-up message from a name that sounded familiar. I then realized it was a former summer school student. This student is on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, and was 13 when I taught him 6 summers ago. This past summer, he attended a summer program at the school where I was teaching summer school. I recognized him immediately, but didn't know if he'd recognize me until he walked right up to me and said, "Hey Stace!" He has an incredible memory, so it shouldn't have been that surprising.

So. Yesterday he sent a nice facebook message telling me how he graduated from high school, and about the lifeskills program he's attending now, and how he enjoyed summer school. I'm certainly not going to accept his friend request, but I can't decide whether or not to send him a message back. I want to tell him that I'm happy to hear that he's doing so well, but I don't want to cross that line by sending an email to a former student, even though I know there's no chance of being his teacher again. Can you do that? Is it a bad idea? Am I better off ignoring him, or is it harmless to send a message back?

Costumes

I love love LOOOVVVVE Halloween. And I don't understand people who don't like the holiday. You get to eat lots of candy for weeks before and after the date, you wear costumes, and you have fun, crazy decorations like spider webs. Also, you can do the "fun" kind of scary things, like the Simpsons Halloween special, which is scary but not really scary, so you can still fall asleep at night and not worry about someone climbing in through your window to get you.

However, when I reached the age of adult Halloween parties, I realized that I never got the memo that girls are supposed to dress...differently. I finally got the hint when I watched "Mean Girls" a few years back, and Lindsay Lohan set me straight. Even so, I've spent the past two years arriving at Halloween parties and then realizing that I had the most clothes on our of all of the girls there, with th exception of Caitlin, because she and I had planned our costumes together. There was a few years of dressing up in a gigantic whoopie cushion costume, then my 4th/5th grade girl scout uniform, and then last year I topped it all by being a nun.




Yes, I'm standing with an abortion doctor in the 3rd picture.

So last November 1st, I decided that my goal for the next Halloween would be to wear less clothing. I stressed out all Sunday trying to think of something good, and I think I came up with it. I'm going to be a mummy, but not one of those mummies that's wrapped up head to toe. I got what I think is a good idea here:



I like it because hopefully I'll be the only mummy at the party (I had been planning for months to be Sarah Palin, until I heard there was going to be another Sarah Palin there, and that the girl had dressed up as Tina Fey last year). And I think I can make the whole costume for $20 or less, depending on what I find for a skirt/shirt to go underneath the wraps. Oh, and I get to use a glue gun to make my costume!

What do you think? Any other ideas???

I'm bad with this blog thing lately. By lately, I mean the last year and a half.

But I'm writing because I have big news. You know how some people all of a sudden have a huge enlightening religious moment? Like, someone accepts Jesus? Well, last week, I reached my own enlightening moment. I accepted fall into my life. I spent almost 26.5 years (yikes...someone asked how old I was the other day and I said 23) thinking that I hated fall. And I did. I hated that summer was over. I hated to put away summer clothes. I hated being cold all the time for about 6 months, and having numbs hands and feet constantly. I hate when the leaves change color because it means they're just going to fall off. I hate that summer vacation ends. I hated saying goodbye to flipflops.

But last Friday, I walked to downtown to meet up with Caitlin and Jeff for drinks and Sox. I liked that it was cool, but not too cold and I was comfy in my fleece and not getting sweaty for once as I walked over the Charlestown bridge like I did all summer. And I was thinking about the fact that I had just bought pumpkin muffin mix, and had a bunch of apples to make applesauce with. And, I was excited that I was heading the next day to Philadelphia to essentially kick off Halloween season by going to Molly's sister-in-law's birthday costume party. I had also just bought a lot of candy corn and broke out the Halloween candy bowls. And, I was really excited that I was going to watch the Sox in a playoff game. There's something especially cozy about seeing sox fans all bundled up at Fenway like they're getting ready to hibernate after a hot season. Plus, if Sox fans are all bundled up, it means good things for the Sox and the length of their playoff run. All of a sudden I though, "Wait, I like fall!" I was excited about lots of things happening, and not freezing, and I decided that fall isn't so bad.

It also helps that it got into the 70s today. I'm off to watch game 1 of the ALCS...go Sox.

2 down, 178 to go

So today was the second day of school, and it's great so far. With the exception of one boy and one girl who I think will drive me crazy by next week, my class is awesome. Someone even picked me flowers/weeds at recess this afternoon. My lessons have mostly been going well, and with the use of some minor threats, I managed to keep all 23 of them absolutely silent for five minutes as they waited in the hallway taking turns at the bathroom today. I've made a huge deal about how great it is to be in third grade because you're so grown up, and so they're all excited about the planners I gave them to write their homework in, and even about the fact that I'll be giving them homework every night and on weekends. Being 8 or 9 is just about the coolest thing ever.

The only little glitch in today was when I was collecting my class on the playground after recess, and all of a sudden my sandal broke. I felt just a wee bit unprofessional about the idea of walking around wearing only one shoe even in my own room, so I hobbled around for the next 3 hours trying to grip the sandal with my toes. It wasn't pretty. I tripped on the rug twice during my math lesson, which led to gasps from my suck-up table of girls and "Are you ok Ms. G???"


Even Miss America falls. At least I stayed on my feet.

Eats leaves and shoots

I can't stand when people older than 12 make silly grammar mistakes. At the top of my list is when people add an apostrophe when changing a word to plural form. But I also get irritated when people mix of your/you're, their/there, and its/it's.

On the other hand, I LOVE finding typos in published stuff that's supposedly edited, like books and things like that.

So, I found THIS pretty amazing. These guys are pretty cool, and one is from my old (and Obama's old) neighborhood!

This post isn't going to be interesting to anyone but me.

I've been very sad that summer is ending. It means getting back into a regular routine (for some reason I treated summer school as a pretend job--going to bed late a lot, and getting a little lazy about my teaching), and it also means the sad goodbye to warm weather and summer clothing. Today was my first day back at work, filled with new teacher orientation and training and meetings up until next week's first day of school. While I was getting ready this morning all I could think about was "Oh goddddddd how can summer be done??!?!" (I whined a lot in my head). And I wasn't excited about going back. But then I got there, and hadn't really thought about the fact that I'd see some friends at work who also got new positions over the summer, or the fact that there were a few new teachers at my school that I hadn't met yet. So it turned out to be a lot of fun! Plus, I'm kind of a sucker for corniness, as are many teachers. The superintendent of course realizes this and began his speech with some inspiring message and stories and quotations, and so now I'm all eager to get my students in the room and start changing the world.



But wait. The day gets even better. I decided to do a little bit of work in my classroom after the meetings, and when I got in I found that a brand new rug had been delivered to my room for meetings on the floor (and it's so clean and pretty...) and all of my classroom supplies had been delivered. I had a gigantic mess of brand new dry-erase markers and erasers, pencils, pink erasers, pens, crayons, staples, tape, and all that other fun stuff. Plus a big pile of 3rd grade composition notebooks (they're red!) and math workbooks (which smell amazing, like new workbooks do).

Clearly I've been on vacation for far too long if this is the kind of stuff that makes my day.

Mishmash

I haven't blogged in a long time (again) because I've had 80 thousand thoughts going through my head and couldn't decide what to write about, so I wrote about nothing. So, I decided it was time to get my thoughts out, only it's going to come as one big rambling mess right now.

Kerrin's wedding was this weekend. And it was weird, because it was Kerrin! Becoming a wife! And I've known her since we were 7, and I went to her 8th birthday party, which was a "tea party" theme and we had to come in our mom's dresses. Her wedding kind of felt like that--dressing up and pretending and having fun while doing both. But Kerrin looked amazing and the wedding was beautiful and my dress didn't fall down and expose everyone, so I'd consider it a success. Plus, I stayed away from beer all day (minus one in the limo from the church to reception), and I managed to drink steadily for almost 12 hours. I think I'm on to something.


I like this one because it looks like I'm a stunning 5'9". But Caitlin and I are actually the same height--I was just standing on a step with the other two.






Around hour 5 of drinking, a ride on the playground airplane was just about the greatest thing ever


In other news, I feel like I'm bipolar these days, or maybe have multiple personalities. I have different thoughts about my new job going through my head about 85% of the day lately. But I go back and forth between "Ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod-ohgod" to "I think I can do this." But during the "Oh god" stretches, it's a pretty awful feeling. I keep thinking of stuff--some big, some little--that I hadn't even realized I had to do before the first day of school. Like, I should probably put the kids' birthdays up on a door in my room to make it look a little more homey because I'm keeping most of the bulletin boards naked for the beginning of school. And that's easy, but it'll take a little bit of time to write down 46 names and birthdays. Or a bigger project I realized is to sort through all of the books I'm putting in my classroom library and categorize them by content and difficulty. I'm not that familiar with a whole lot of 3rd grade chapter books, so that's going to take way more time than it should.


Finally, I'm so stressed out, and when I get stressed out I don't pick up after myself, which only makes me feel more stressed out.
In case you forgot, I did the same thing during the end of each semester of grad school, as seen below:



Now ordinarily I might make an effort to clean up a bit more so as not to make my roommate jump out the window, Swiffer in hand, but my roommate is off in China for the week. Just like the old pictures above, I've created piles all over the apartment. I've got a pile of books the principal left me about teaching English language learners, another pile with binders of the 3rd grade curriculum in my city, and piles of mail I need to sort through, plus a bag of veggies from my parents' garden, and stuff I haven't unpacked yet from this past weekend. It's a disaster. But I figure that Kate will be so tired from a week without pima, that she won't even notice until the middle of next week. Just as long as the piles don't creep down the stairs to her room.

Choo Choo

After almost 8 months away, I've decided to get back on the blogging train. I can't say that I know it will last, as I tend to start lot of activities in the summer when I feel ambitious (puzzles, avid reading, exercise) only to drop them in September. But I hope to write at least more than once every 8 months, if just to ensure I don't become illiterate.

I was mostly inspired by Molly to start writing again, because in my hiatus, Molly started her own blog about what's happening in her life. And Molly is pretty influential in my life. Like the time she asked if I wanted to wear her nicotine patch, and since there was that one time when I took a few puffs of a cigarette, I said yes. You can't be too careful when it comes to addictions, afterall.

Last week I got a new job. I'm going to be a third grade teacher in less than a month, which is completely exciting and completely horrifying at the same time, and my brain doesn't really know what to do with it. I was ambitious with my teaching in what I wanted to do in the classroom while student teaching and shortly after finishing grad school. But then I spent two years (cough, preschool, cough) realizing that I was working in a place where I could do little work and get by, while still looking like an ok teacher. So I'm trying to adjust now to the idea that just "getting by" doesn't exactly fly in a public elementary school. Nevermind a public elementary school where 80% of the kids don't speak English at home.

I'm also thinking back to my elementary school days, when third grade was my all-time favorite grade because I loved my teacher. And I wonder what my class would think if they knew their teacher was spending her summer with nights like this:








July has, for some reason, been filled with an unreasonable amount of flip cup, beirut, and nights that end with pictures like these.

December stuff.

The holiday season has hit the apartment, as evidence by the fact that I somehow get a mouthful of Xmas tree needles nearly every time I grab a handful of mint M&Ms.

The tree has finally finished "unfurling." It's huge. And it looks pretty cool.

See for yourself.


Kate did all the hard work. I ate M&Ms.



It's big!






The flying pig is my favorite again this year



Right after we took this picture, we sang Christmas carols around the fireplace.


And, it's the 6th night of Hanukkah. Bring on the presents.


It's going to snow soon!!!

O (giant) Christmas Tree

Today Kate and I went to Home Depot, the land of Christmas trees. Our new living room is gigantic, with enormous ceilings, so we looked for the biggest tree we could find.

We knew instantly when we had found one that was a solid foot higher than the rest, and so big that the two of us could barely get it to the car.



But when we plopped it in the living room, and cut off the ties holding it together, we realized it was the most gigantic tree, ever. Seriously, out of the history of trees.

I've glanced over at it periodically throughout the day as it's unfurling, and each time, it has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger. I'm worried that some branches will make their way into my bedroom by the time I wake up tomorrow.



Really. It's huge.

We elves try to stick to the 4 main food groups...

Did you know that Kate and I are having a housewarming/holiday/potluck party on December 14th? Did you know that it's going to be a classy party, because we're classy girls, and because we don't live in the dumps anymore? Did you know that we're going to have a large Christmas tree? Did you know that Kate will be wearing an ugly Christmas sweater? And did you know that there's a high probability that the two of us will be performing this dance that evening? Turn the sound up when you watch the video...it's pretty amazing.

Turkey is just so good.

October through November is my favorite time of year, outside of the spring and summer. I have a hard time deciding whether Halloween or Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. But I'm pretty excited about the upcoming three-day work week, and three pretty tasty dinners planned for next weekend. Is it wrong to get so excited about a week revolving around food? I didn't think so either.

It was a pretty eventful day in the new apartment. After weeks of worrying whether a new couch would fit in the apartment, it made it in, with minimal damage! And Kate and I didn't need to manuever it through the doorway, instead watching some manly men lift it over the staircase and slide it in. And I got to see Kate do a U-turn with the moving truck. That was probably the highlight.

There are still piles of boxes and trashbags scattered around each room of the apartment, but it's finally starting to come together! It's so good that it's making me want to skip work just so I can sit at home and look around the apartment all day. Perhaps you should visit with a bottle of wine in hand, or a Miller fridge pack?

'Ween 2007

I love, love, love Halloween. It reminds me of being a kid. And what's not to like about lots of candy? And dressing up? This year I got a costume at the last minute, and as a result, I was a nun (Molly, I'm practicing for your wedding!). After being a girl scout last year, and a nun this year, I'm going to try really hard to remember next year that girls aren't supposed to wear that much clothes on Halloween.









We're sort of all moved into the new apartment, and I was pretty excited to potentially have trick-or-treaters this year. I went out and got a lot of candy a few nights ago, though I realized about an hour later (after I had eaten a good portion from each of the bags) that neither of us would be home for most of the trick-or-treating hours. But I was still pretty happy to hold down the fort from 5:30 to 6 last night. So when the doorbell rang and I heard a pack of noisy kids outside, I was a bit disappointed to find 5 kids ranging in age from about 11 to 16, one without a costume and holding a plastic bag from the supermarket, and people who appeared to be parents, videotaping the whole thing. I think I need to move to the suburbs by next October.

Shipping off to Boston

On Sunday night I knew that the Sox were going to win and go on to the World Series when I found my watch in the washing machine. It had been missing for almost a week, and it stresses me out to not know the time constantly, so I knew things were headed up when it turned up there.

Anyway, I know I haven't blogged for a month and a half. But the idea has made me hold my hands to my neck and feel like I'm going crazy, so stop bothering me now that I am.

In the past month...

I came close to throwing children in my class out the window at least 24 times. My class is so bad. It makes me hate children. At least children under 5. My devil child who speaks only french and hebrew has decided he loves to run up to other kids when they're standing and waiting at the door, and crash into them to smush their faces into the glass. He also keeps trying to climb a tree on the playground to escape, and he has a grip of steel so I have a hard time pulling him off of the tree.

I got a new apartment! I've been slowly moving somethings in, but I move in officially this weekend. I'm excited because my new place has a closet INSIDE my bedroom, and the kitchen has a disposal. Also, we live down the street from Stacey Street. I'm guessing that some day I'll have too much beer and think it's a good idea to bring my Sharpie down the road and cross out the "E."

I ran a 10K. That's 6.2 miles! I did it with my mom, and 7,000 other women, and we surprised ourselves and ran the whole thing without any walking. Sadly, I had gone for runs only about 5 times in the past two months, and I hurt in a bad, bad way for the following two days.

I went to Philadelphia this weekend and helped Molly and Danny pick out wines and champagne for their wedding. That's one long car ride, but the wine was excellent. Plus, Molly and Danny made me pumpkin pancakes before I had to leave. Thanks guys!

It's an early bedtime for me tonight. It's the last night before late-night world series nights. GO SOX!!!!

Back To It

I went back to work last week, but today was the first day of school. I should have been ready. I came off of a four-day weekend. I spent three of the days at the beach, and one day at the pool, playing wiffle ball and darts and water polo and eating. But can anything really prepare you for 18 preschoolers? No, not really.

It's a pretty cute class, with the exception of 1 or 2. I've got a pair of red-headed twins, one of which looks a bit like Conan O'Brian. I've got a little punk kid who thinks he's king of the classroom. I've got a spanish speaker who spent the first half of the morning crying to me in spanish, but turned off the tears when I told her we were having apples for snack.

And then I've got a devil child, who I'm sure will replace the void that last year's Biter left in my heart. This kid is hard, but to make it worse, he speaks 2 languages: French, and Hebrew with a French accent. I am 0 for 2 in those languages. He spent the day pushing kids off of chairs, hitting kids with shovels, and wandering around the room and taking out every single puzzle when I had corralled the 17 others into morning circle time. When I wasn't looking, because I was dealing with the kid who had just been pushed off his chair by Devil Boy, D.B. had climbed up onto the kid-sized fridge, which is a good four feet tall. He was just hanging out, getting a bird's eye view of the room. I'm hoping that once he realizes that more than half of the class also speak Hebrew, he'll start playing with other kids, and aggravate me a bit less.

But even with all of the other nice, sweet kids, I forgot how exhausted I get at school. I came home, had my afternoon snack, and napped for nearly two hours. And I sort of feel like I should be in bed by 8 to rest up for tomorrow.

Reading is FUNdamental (so says the poster in my school)

I'm a bit of a hypocrite. I spent two years getting a master's, focusing half of that time on getting certification to be a reading specialist. It was pretty much one year of hearing "Kids need to read read read read read read read" to become better readers. I feel like with that certification under my belt, I should be a huge reader. But I'm not. I have a "reading season," which is generally from about June through early September, depending on the weather--I like reading outside. So far, since I finished my regular teaching in June, I've read 6 books, which is considerably greater than the mere two or three books that I read for pleasure through last fall, winter, and early spring. The problem is that everytime I try reading inside, there are way too many other things to distract me, or the couch is too comfy and I wake up an hour and a half later. Another problem is that I was so totally turned off from reading during high school. I don't like being forced to read something.

Anyway. I know I'm not a ravenous reader at the time being. And I actually kind of thought I generally read less than a lot of people. Maybe I just have really smart friends? But this article completely shocked me. One in four adults didn't read a single book last year?! That fact alone made me think about how dumb our country is, but a few quotes in the article hammered that idea home:

"Fiction just doesn't interest me," said Bob Ryan, 41, who works for a construction company in Guntersville, Alabama. "If I'm going to get a story, I'll get a movie."

"I just get sleepy when I read," said Richard Bustos of Dallas, Texas. Bustos, a 34-year-old project manager for a telecommunications company, said he had not read any books in the last year and would rather spend time in his backyard pool.


On another subject completely, I chugged an iced coffee at 5pm today, severely breaking my "No coffee after 12pm" rule, as well as my "Coffee needs to be sipped slowly through the course of several hours" rule. Around 6 tonight, my hands were shaking, I was sweating all over, and my legs needed to be moving to a rhythm that matched my heart rate. Bill and I walked to Harvard square and back so I'd be able to sit at dinner without looking like an antsy four year old. It was ugly. And, nearly 7 hours later, I have a feeling I won't be falling asleep anytime soon.

Ballz

Hooray for vacation! The weather's been lousy so far. But I always feel like I should be outside and active when it's nice out during the summer, so it's been really nice to be mostly lazy for a few days. I've been reading a lot, and it's making me feel really smart. I've also done a fair amount of shopping. I picked up new sneakers, which I think look fast. I'm going to test them out tomorrow morning. I'm hoping all of a sudden I can run a 19 minute 5k. They're magic shoes.

I've also done my share of drinking. I played Taboo in a bar, and Caitlin and I lost a beirut game to a pair of 22 year olds, making me feel very old and useless.

I went to what was perhaps my favorite Sox game so far last Friday. It started off great because it was a makeup game from the first weekend of the season, and it was a one o'clock game so I got to skip the last day of summer school. I told them it was a "family celebration." Which was sort of true, right? The whole afternoon was much sweeter knowing that I should have been working. The day was great. We had amazing seats on the third base line. The weather was perfect, sunny and not too hot. I got to see Manny up close:



And I got to see Papelbon pitch. He's southern, but cute:



During the 6th or 7th inning, I looked up, and the jumbotron even said "The Red Sox welcome the Gross family to Fenway Park." I know it wasn't us, but it was still neat.

But the best part was during the 8th inning. We were all hoping that we'd get some foul balls in the seats we had (my dad wanted to bring his glove, but I told him he'd look dumb. I had to have the same talk with my mom, who wanted to wear a fanny pack instead of bringing her purse). At the bottom of the 8th, David Ortiz hit a really high foul ball. It was up in the air, and seemed to be headed directly toward us. As it was racing back to Earth, I knew right then that was how I was going to die. So naturally, I ducked behind my dad and screamed "OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD." When I opened my eyes, it had landed on Caitlin's seat (she had also instinctively moved out of its path), so I grabbed it, along with two or three men. I yelled "I have it I have it!" and the other guys eventually let go, and I looked and realized I had David Ortiz's ball!

My mom took this picture right after I got it. You can't tell, but I shook for a solid 15 minutes after.



You can however see the big man in the red jersey behind me, who was pretty pissed that I got the ball. When the kids behind me wanted to hold the ball, he said that you could probably see his fingerprints on it.


And here it is!



I have a very exciting hump day planned for tomorrow. I think I might have a lunch date with Kate, and if so, I plan on stopping off at the Apple Store to touch an iPhone. I've also decided I miss having actual photo albums (that aren't online), so I'm going to get a lot of pictures printed out. I should get some rest. Tomorrow's going to be exhausting.

Remix

I've got this boy in my class this summer who I'll call Teddy. Teddy's 11, he's very cute, and he likes to have the back of his neck scratched. He likes Barney, Sesame Street, and he LOVES Teletubbies. He is crazy about meatballs and chicken. Teddy is definitely autistic though. He has a pretty hardcore obsession with watching people walk in flip flops, and he has just a few phrases that he says. This summer he's been working on things like counting how many spoons are in a pile, or sorting out pictures of girls, boys, and himself.

But Teddy is pretty amazing on the computer. Still, I was completely shocked on Monday when Teddy was using up his free choice time on the computer, and all of a sudden I heard a song that was not at all like the sesame street songs I usually hear him playing. I went over to find out what he was doing, and saw that Teddy had gone onto Youtube, and found this:




Teddy was extremely thrilled with himself, as were two other kids, who looked on, mesmorized, at the jackpot that Teddy had found online. Since then, all week, anytime Teddy earned computer time, he's been on youtube, searching out teletubbies. I've caught him finding Teletubbies videos that range from "YMCA" to "Shake That Ass Bitch," which sadly I had to ask him to turn off. It was awfully good though.

Annnnnd....

A very Happy Birthday to Ms. Caitlin Melia, who turns a whopping 25 today. That's a pretty high number, but I'm happy to report that Caitlin is aging well. Caitlin is one of the most dependable, trustworthy people that you could ask for as a friend, plus she can tell you which nuts have the most protein! (You'd never guess the answer...)

Happy birthday!!

There is freedom within

What a great weekend. I kicked it off by taking Friday off to go to a surprise "Ladies Luncheon" for my aunt's 65th birthday. And that kind of blew, but it was nice to get a day off from the biter trying to pull my hair. Doesn't she know it messes up the curls?

On Saturday, I went to Caitlin's dad's 50th birthday bash, which just reminded me how lame my family is. It was pretty nice sitting around, chatting with the Medway girls for hours, sipping on Sam Summers and chowing down on good bbq food.


We're a pretty hot group.

And Sunday I did a little reading in my pool lounger, and then headed off to a Pete Yorn concert! Pete was, once again, amazing. But it was way different from the other PY concert I went to, and it was all due to the fact that Pete Yorn opened for Crowded House. Don't know them? Sure you do. They had the 80s one-hit-wonder, "Hey now, HEEEEY NOW, don't dream it's over..." So, Kate and I were easily one of the youngest people, and enjoyed being in the company of people in their 40s and 50s who were thrilled to relive their 20s and 30s for once magical evening.

Here's Pete. Our seats were awesome, but my camera isnt:


Look! He's playing his harmonica in a song I really like.

Here's Crowded House, singing I song I didn't know:



We sat there in our chairs, drinking $8 beers during the Crowded House portion of the evening, while people that were our parents' contemporaries were standing up, singing along, and giving us mean glances like they wanted us to stop saying bad things about their favorite band, or at least use quieter voices. Oddly, they didn't seem to appreciate each time Crowded House began the introduction to a new song, which we of course didn't know, and Kate and I just started singing:
Kate:"There is freedom within..."
Me:"There is freedom without..."
Together!: "Try to catch the deluge in a paper cup."

I don't even get what the lyrics mean. But Kate tells me it's about the Berlin Wall going down?

Then the night changed when they played "Don't dream it's over," and we were definitely not ashamed to stand up and sing along. The Australian group of guys sitting near us, who thought that Crowded House, being that they're an Australian band, were just about the coolest thing ever, turned around during our favorite song and asked if we were huge fans. So we got a picture with one of them. His neck was thicker than my leg.



Here's Kate, singing along:



Don't laugh. If you were there, you would've sung along as well. It was pretty awesome.

BUT. The best part of the weekend was finding out Saturday night that my brother and Katherine got engaged!! I am so happy for them, but wish that they would move up their wedding plans to like, September. That's not too much to ask now, is it? Anyway, congrats Eric & Katherine!! I need some updated pictures of you I realized.