Room 15 Rotters have been complaining that there hasn’t been any new Platypus updates lately, so here goes. Before we all went off to vacation, we talked about posting our summer events. Here are mine so far.

Since “vacation” started I have had 14 hours of Teacher Union meetings (a meeting each day for the first six days of summer), and I’ve taken care of a bunch of household chores I never had time for during the school year (finished installing our new back door, took a bunch of aluminum to the recycler, cleaned the greenhouse, collected bids for a new roof I can’t afford, “fixed” the lawnmower, vacuumed the pool, trimmed trees, and took some stuff to Goodwill). I’ve also worked on a new play for Scholastic’s Scope magazine (about child labor in the early 1900’s) and tried to get caught up on my Spanish lessons (Y tu?). Not much of a summer so far, huh? Between meetings and chores, we have managed a few moments of fun: we spent a night car-camping at Farewell Bend, went to my former student Olivia’s surprise engagement party (!), took in a CP American Legion baseball game (go Comets), met my first-ever student, Amee, for dinner at Mazatlan (right after her National Guard drill), and cooked an Italian dinner (provided by the Ryersons) with my oldest son and his girlfriend (hence the picture of the ground beef in the skillet and the water on to boil). I also managed to send a real (and complete) text message on my Tracfone. HBTA! (which means “How ’bout them apples?” in textspeak).

I’ve also noticed that only a couple kids have posted on their webpages. Good job Jocelyn for your Top Ten lists. And good job Makaila for telling us about Seattle. I want to see more such posts. (Kulpa, if you’re reading this, I have something special for you.) And now that I’m almost caught up, I hope to provide a few posts of my own about summer adventure, so stay tuned!