Andy Smallman

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.

School starts on Tuesday at PSCS, meaning we’ve been working hard gearing up for the new school year. I had a long day today, getting up early to take Chloe to her babysitting job at 6:30am, then coming home for a couple of hours of PSCS work before heading to school and working until about 7pm. I think the site is pretty well ready for Tuesday and now I have only “several” things to do over the holiday weekend instead “too many.”

Not that I’m complaining. I love my job.

I was readying a simplified version of the school’s eNewsletter for delivery tomorrow (sign up here) and came across this picture in the school archives. It’s from 1998, I think, back when PSCS spent a day each week not far from the Seattle Center and the Space Needle. This shot was taken of a couple of students walking across the Seattle Center grounds.

18 years ago was the beginning of PSCS. That’s really something, you know.

Isn’t that what it says on this sign, a sign I spotted along Aurora Avenue in Seattle (I think makes “Aurora Rents” an apt name)? I’ve never rented popcorn. I’ve bought it, both popped and unpopped. I’ve had it given to me, both popped and unpopped. But I’ve never rented it, either popped or unpopped.

I didn’t go in to ask about rental prices on popcorn, or when the due date is for returning it. Certainly, a more curious blogger would have provided details like these for his dedicated readers.

But I do want to plant in your heads the question of other kinds of food one might rent. What about a steak? Or maybe a side of fries? I bet there would be a whole new income stream for fast food if they started to rent it instead of selling it.

Although when it comes to fast food, you kind of are *renting* it when you buy it, if you know what I mean.

Our niece Jessica got married earlier this month (you might remember this since I mentioned it here). Earlier today, Jessica sent out a weblink to the 600+ professional photos that were taken at the wedding. I’m not sure what copyright I may have infringed when I snagged this one via a screen capture, but I just couldn’t resist.

It’s a pretty fine shot, don’t you think? I mean, it’s not every day I present a photo of Melinda, let alone one of her involved in a line dance (and, yes, that’s Chloe & Ella on the right).

There she is. Melinda. My wife.