i hope heaven has food trucks!

happy valentine's day, all you lovebirds out there! and elementary school teachers! i mean no one rakes in the cheap chocolates better than teachers, along with stuffed animals and other silly knick-knacks! don't get me wrong, the sentiment is absolutely precious, but how many pink teddy bears does one human being really need??

it's been a busy week with ups and downs. i got to attend a REAL SCHOOL GARDENS coordinator meeting last night-which means i received some great instruction to pass on, and i also received baby onions and potatoes to plant. we will be participating in the SMART POTATO program again. i think we may try something a little different this year. we may be planting some of our potatoes in laundry baskets-and have classes be in charge of taking care of their potatoes, so that we can have an additional garden bed for the hot season plants.

but the best part of the evening was the food truck! when i got to the school, i parked and there was a food truck near the door. i thought to myself, 'hmm... that's pretty cool, parents can get dinner to go on the way home!" it smelled SO GOOD!!! i was wishing that it was for our meeting. weeeellllll.....when i got inside, they gave me a green ticket to go back out to get dinner at the food truck! nammi food truck showed up and i was in heaven! woah! i mean to tell you: it was incredible! in fact, i didn't know which food truck it was, nor what type of food it actually was, so i just looked it up a bit ago and found out it was vietnamese-ish. so then i had to look up recipes because if i were stuck on an island and could only have one meal for the rest of my life, this might be it! AND guess what! they have a permanent spot at valley view mall-which is mere minutes from me-i'm excited to see if it's as good the second time around!

i do need to go get some groceries tomorrow so i can make fruit roll-ups and prepare some meals for the week-including my contributions for tuesday's AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE MEAL-yum.

so, there's this chair that i've had for years that i really like. about 4 weeks ago, i saw some strange pieces of metal scrap on the floor-no idea where it came from. the next day, another piece, before i knew it, i rolled the chair and it lifted a little, and the wheel fell off. so i put it back and just tried to keep it on the ground. finally, after the wheel falling off several times, i decided i had to do something about it. so i got it to a point where the wheel was no longer falling out.

yesterday, i heard a little clink! and when i looked down, i saw the same piece of metal on the ground that started the demise of the first wheel. so i took the wheel and rigged it up the same way. now it's a matter of a. seeing how long the 'fix' lasts, and b. seeing how long it is before another wheel bites the dust! most people would probably have thrown the chair out by now, but nope...not me-

whatever works!

then this happened this week as well: i  was at school and i had lunch. when i went to grab the sweet-potato chips i'd baked the night before, i only saw an empty baggie. i didn't remember having eaten them, so i thought, "wow, i must be boredom eating or something..." and i was still hungry to boot...it was a little strange. well, it must've been a baggie from something else because when i got home, there were my snacks sitting where i had left them in preparation for the day!

nothing is worse than leaving food at home!

looking forward to another relaxing weekend and whatever next week brings!

julie

don't mess with my bundt cake and HONDURAS, and i won't have to punch you in the face.

today was another full day. career day, feedback, writing prep, smart potatoes, AWARD, more smart potatoes...and when i got home, i finished smart potatoes...(uy, papa)...

it wasn't a bad day, just a full day. it was productive, and i feel that i was able to get some stuff done, yet there are other things that are undone, that need some doing.  i am proud to say that i got one of the posters up that wendy and i were trying to get up, and one more to go...i would've gotten that one up as well, but there were screws sticking out of the bricks that would've punctured the already frail poster. so  i will speak with the custodian when i get back to school to see if he can help...i may just go get a hacksaw and cut them off-that would be the easiest, and isn't everyone in need of a good hacksaw? yes.

if only i could remember all of the one-liners that were spewing out today when andrea and i were conversing in the morning. they were funny. i laughed. but obviously not funny enough to remember-she even said we should write them down. oops. i needed my go-go-gadget recorder.

smart potatoes...what are smart potatoes anyway? well..we DID grow them at the school. 'nuf said. only not really. the students planted the potatoes back in february or march, and we just harvested them today-over 100 days. the key was staying away from the ants. they did a pretty good job. (i need to go back after the fire ants later). so the students harvested, weighed and sorted the potatoes. they may or may not use the information to create a graph tomorrow. i ended up having to re-weigh all of the potatoes...in grams...on a triple balance beam because accuracy is not a mastered fifth grade standard. anyhoo, andrea helped me out with the first few, and i was going to use the students' numbers until i lifted the bag and realized how heavy it was and that the numbers certainly did not add up.

how did i know? you're talking to the girl that lives on the 3rd floor and has to carry groceries up the stairs..i know the difference between 10 lbs and 25 lbs! so i stayed after our meeting and weighed the remainder of the pots so that i could take them in to the food pantry (which i plan to do tomorrow after jury duty). and the total (if i recall the numbers from school that i jotted on a paper) are about 35 lbs of potatoes from two raised beds. not a bad haul considering last year was pathetic little pea-sized potatoes!

this afternoon we received a prestigious award from real school gardens for the integration of the garden into our lessons and making it part of our cabell culture. that was really neat. it came with a $500 gift, which we will be deciding how to use in the near future! woohoo!!

and during our feedback, my principal told me that if she were the lawyers, she would pick me to be on the jury. fair and impartial...so...i am trying to find a t-shirt and a book that have something super controversial on them...i don't have time for this kind of thing. hopefully they will fill their white-woman quota before they get to me.

and this afternoon, the math facilitator, carol, came in and she is so thoughtful- i feel like she kinda' adopted me as well when my first facilitator flew the coop and went to a different division...but while she was meeting with andrea, she brought us each one of these, and i was in heaven!

MY NEMESIS..MY KRYPTONITE!

you think i jest...no..no..if someone said, "julie, i will give you a NOTHING-BUNDT-CAKE if you let that sumo wrestler fall on your head." i think i might do it...on the other hand, if you said, "julie, i'll give you a NOTHING-BUNDT-CAKE if you fore-go your trip to HONDURAS", i'd probably punch you in the face, take the cake and run to the boarding gate! so, don't do that...i don't like to punch people in the face.

alright, it's bedtime..jury duty comes early.
julie