Month: September 2012

Late in the school day I took a group of 12 PSCS students to an indoor gym a block from the school that we use for physical fitness activities. As expected, they started up a game of Mushroom Ball.

Mushroom Ball? Never heard of that, you say?

Neither had I until I was introduced to it by a group of PSCS students a couple of years ago. Basically, it’s a non-stop version of dodgeball in which it’s “every person for him/herself.” If you get hit, you take a seat until the person who hit you gets hit, whereupon you are immediately back in play. Since it’s virtually impossible for one person to get everyone else out, the game typically goes on and on.

And the students love it.

Today’s photo is from just after the end of the game. Two of the kids are quite good at Mushroom Ball, so much so that they repeatedly got the other kids out. I asked if they’d be willing to just stand still and let the other kids pelt them with the balls (believe me, the balls are quite soft). You know, let them get out any remaining aggression or frustration.

With big smiles on their faces they both said yes. Then they stood there and got bombarded with balls, smiles intact.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Melinda & I saw Ira Glass last night. Given he works in radio, rarely do people see him. Understanding this, he came on stage in the dark and proceeded to speak to the audience for several minutes without being seen. It was a fun start to the show, which, in many ways, was like an extended version of a “This American Life” episode.

He talked for about 2 hours before taking a few questions at the end. And during the last of the questions, my cell phone rang. Yes, that’s right, I left it on. So rarely do I get actual calls, I figured if anyone is going to be calling me on a Saturday night it’s likely to be serious. Call me rude.

Anyway, when I looked down and saw it was from my mom, who just happens to be vacationing in Alaska with my dad and both of whom have had health issues recently, my heart skipped a beat. I hustled out into the hall to take the call.

It turns out my parents had arrived in Seward, the little town in which I lived 30 years ago and where I worked as a deejay. She was excited because they found the building I had lived in. She was calling to get my current mailing address (she couldn’t remember it) because she wanted to send me a postcard from Seward and get a local postmark.

Some emergency.

Oh, today’s picture is one I took in Seward 30 years ago. I lived in the green building there, above the Liberty Theatre.

In a couple of hours, Melinda and I are going out to hear Ira Glass speak. Glass is a producer and the spirit behind the wonderful radio program “This American Life” aired on NPR. We both enjoy the show so when I heard Glass was going to be in town, I surprised Melinda with a couple of tickets.

News Flash – Melinda just came in from sunning herself & reading a book in our backyard. She asked me, “What are you wearing tonight? Are you going to get dressed up?” Man, I hadn’t even thought of that yet.

Today’s picture is another one from Tuesday night’s PSCS high school retreat. I showed up to deliver a talk of my own, as I’ve reported, and I was dressed as you see in the photo. Is that appropriate attire for Ira Glass? More importantly, is it appropriate for my night out with Melinda?

That’s Ella on the far right, a picture from Tuesday and the first day of school. The high schoolers at PSCS, as I mentioned that day, began the school year on an overnight retreat away from campus. The location is pretty special, Camp Burton on Vashon Island. The water behind the group in this photo is the Puget Sound (now you know where the the P & the S of PSCS come from!).

As I write, our house is filled with 5 girls, including Ella, all high schoolers at PSCS. What better way to wrap up the first week of school than a slumber party at the house of the school founders. Oh, right, in this case that’s just coincidental. The slumber party is REALLY at Ella’s house.

Get it straight.

I’ve mentioned before that I write a regular blog post for The Intelligent Optimist magazine, posting about once a month. In August, I wrote about how I think the world is constantly providing us little treasures or surprises to find. In fact, I think these surprises are actually a form of road sign, marking our paths as we move through our lives. I referenced Annie Dillard’s book, “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,” in which she tells how as a child she would hide pennies for strangers to find. She’d mark a trail about how to find them with arrows and notes, one that said, “Surprise Ahead!”

If you want, go read that entry now, for further context.

I mention this here today as I made reference to this idea at the talk I gave to the PSCS high schoolers on Tuesday night. Then today, when they arrived at school for the first time this year, they found a little note from me on the floor (today’s photo), with arrows pointing them to their cubbies. In each of their cubbies I had placed a penny.

Heads up, of course.

So said Perrin today on her first day of kindergarten. When you think about it, there really isn’t a whole lot more to say than that, once you’re 5 and your first day of elementary school is behind you. The fact that you use crayons instead of pens, that there are four animals in the classroom (not counting Mr. Hansen, the teacher), etc. pales in comparison. It’s about the short toilets.

I did my best a few minutes ago to conduct a phone interview with the kindergarten celebrity, but wasn’t getting a whole lot of quotable material, that is until the quip about toilets. That’s golden. I did hear that her teacher is nice and it’s a lot of fun, but those are such, you know, generic kinds of comments. Heck, I heard that today from a group of middle schoolers at PSCS.

Then again, our toilets at PSCS aren’t so short…

Whew, it’s been a busy day. It’s 10pm and Melinda and I just got home from school, the first day of actual school of the new school year.

Why such a late night?

Well, we were at the school itself for the 9-3:30pm regular school day. Today that was just with our new middle schoolers. Then we took a ferry to meet up with all the high schoolers who had connected earlier in the day with the high school teaching staff. Together, they had taken a morning ferry to Vashon Island (about 25 minutes from West Seattle), their ultimate destination being a retreat center where they are spending the night. I came out to give a little “first night of school” talk about the school.

Melinda snagged this picture of me on our ferry ride over to Vashon this afternoon. Yes, it really was that beautiful in Seattle today. And a beautiful first day of school, too!

This photo is from Saturday as we approached the Canadian border while taking Chloe to her university in British Columbia. That’s the Peace Arch on the left side of the photo, and Melinda’s hands on the steering wheel. What prompted me to take the picture, though, was the “scooter gang” (not to be confused with a biker gang) in front of us. There were a couple of them in front of our car, all part of the long line waiting to cross the border. Several more came zooming up and pulled in front of us.

That’s right. They cut in line.

We got a little indignant. Maybe even a little bit angry. Mostly, I’d say, we were just shocked. You see, each one had to go through customs individually. So having 5 or 6 scooters pull in front of us was like having 5 or 6 cars cut in front of us.

Oh, well, right? Life regularly gives you opportunities to practice patience.

Interestingly, tonight will be the first night since we returned from France that we haven’t had a guest or guests spend the night. In fact, I’m writing this post in the company of Ella and Melinda, the only other people in the house. It’s both nice and a little sad. Quiet, too.

Today’s photo, of course, comes from France. Specifically, it comes from a little café in the city of Guérnande and the same “photo shoot” that produced the photo from this blog entry back in July. That was a fun day.

Dessert is on my mind, I guess, what with Ella, Melinda & me having just finished dinner. That chocolate cake on the right side of the photo would really hit the spot…

Melinda & I left the house at 8am, Chloe snug in the backseat with the car packed full of her stuff. Yes, we were off to Canada, specifically to Quest University in the beautiful British Columbia city of Squamish. It’s Chloe’s second year there as a university student and she was excited to get there and reconnect with her friends.

We stopped in Vancouver (West Van, for those in the know) to run a couple of errands and to grab a bit of lunch, then continued on to Squamish. This was very reminiscent of our trip a year ago when we brought Chloe to Quest for her first year. Only this time she is a veteran and knows all the ropes. So last year’s nerves were replaced by this year’s excitement. For Melinda and me as parents, it was all quite fun.

Having carried in Chloe’s boxes, we pretty much said goodbye and came home. It was probably 8 hours in the car, 2.5 hours in Vancouver, and 30 minutes at Quest. A whirlwind.